Il ruolo delle prescrizioni normative ne "La Politica" di Sartori. Una plausibile lettura

Abstract Nell’articolo utilizzo il contributo di Sartori riguardante l’ingegneria istituzionale per considerare quali dovrebbero essere le giuste ragioni di una scelta politica. L’obiettivo che mi prefiggo è quello di stabilire quale ruolo dovrebbero possedere le prescrizioni normative durante la scelta dei mezzi politici partendo dalla condivisione dell’analisi dei capitoli centrali de “La Politica”. Buona parte dell’articolo consiste quindi in una rassegna degli argomenti in modo da poter specificare le ragioni di eventuali disaccordi. In questa prima parte, espongo gli argomenti grazie ai quali Sartori sostiene la preminenza delle teorie politiche scientifiche nella definizione dei mezzi migliori. Le spiegazioni scientifiche avrebbero in questo caso un’aderenza empirica tale da poter valutare il miglior saldo d’efficienza dei mezzi rispetto allo scopo e rispetto all’equilibrio sistemico. Data questa capacità di valutazione, emergerebbero delle chiare prescrizioni, d’origine empirica, rispetto ai mezzi migliori (più efficienti) rispetto allo scopo politico. Dal canto mio, sostengo che forse sarebbe necessario considerare anche l’aderenza con i principi normativi che orientano e qualificano il sistema durante la scelta dei mezzi politici. Il ruolo che affido alle prescrizioni normative è quello di discriminare alcuni strumenti politici in virtù della loro estraneità ai valori etici del sistema politico

Compressive Sensing for Dynamic XRF Scanning

X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) scanning is a widespread technique of high importance and impact since it provides chemical composition maps crucial for several scientific investigations. There are continuous requirements for larger, faster and highly resolved acquisitions in order to study complex structures. Among the scientific applications that benefit from it, some of them, such as wide scale brain imaging, are prohibitively difficult due to time constraints. However, typically the overall XRF imaging performance is improving through technological progress on XRF detectors and X-ray sources. This paper suggests an additional approach where XRF scanning is performed in a sparse way by skipping specific points or by varying dynamically acquisition time or other scan settings in a conditional manner. This paves the way for Compressive Sensing in XRF scans where data are acquired in a reduced manner allowing for challenging experiments, currently not feasible with the traditional scanning strategies. A series of different compressive sensing strategies for dynamic scans are presented here. A proof of principle experiment was performed at the TwinMic beamline of Elettra synchrotron. The outcome demonstrates the potential of Compressive Sensing for dynamic scans, suggesting its use in challenging scientific experiments while proposing a technical solution for beamline acquisition software.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Poblaciones y comunidades de algas bentónicas en la costa catalana

Las poblaciones de algas bentónicas forman comunidades que en unos lugares están poco diferenciadas y en otros constituyen comunidades definidas de un cierto valor indicativo. En este trabajo se comentan diversos perfiles de la costa catalana, confeccionadas según esquemas tomados sobre el terreno y auxiliados por fotografías submarinas.Los perfiles, tomados en varias localidades de la costa, revelan algunos horizontes y facies característicos del Mediterráneo occidental, lo que nos permite a modo de síntesis, tabular según su exposición al oleaje y a la luz, las facies más conspicuas y mejor caracterizadas.The populations of benthic algae form communities which are little differenciated in some spots while in others they constitute definite communities with some indicative value. Several profiles of the catalan coast are treated in this paper they have been drawn in accordance with outlines taken on the ground and with the aid of submarine pictures.The profiles, taken at several spots of the coast, reveal some horizonts and facieswhich are characteristic of the west Mediterranean, this allows us to tabulate the facies more evidents and better characterized according to their exposure to the swell and to the light

IDDA: a large-scale multi-domain dataset for autonomous driving

Semantic segmentation is key in autonomous driving. Using deep visual learning architectures is not trivial in this context, because of the challenges in creating suitable large scale annotated datasets. This issue has been traditionally circumvented through the use of synthetic datasets, that have become a popular resource in this field. They have been released with the need to develop semantic segmentation algorithms able to close the visual domain shift between the training and test data. Although exacerbated by the use of artificial data, the problem is extremely relevant in this field even when training on real data. Indeed, weather conditions, viewpoint changes and variations in the city appearances can vary considerably from car to car, and even at test time for a single, specific vehicle. How to deal with domain adaptation in semantic segmentation, and how to leverage effectively several different data distributions (source domains) are important research questions in this field. To support work in this direction, this paper contributes a new large scale, synthetic dataset for semantic segmentation with more than 100 different source visual domains. The dataset has been created to explicitly address the challenges of domain shift between training and test data in various weather and view point conditions, in seven different city types. Extensive benchmark experiments assess the dataset, showcasing open challenges for the current state of the art. The dataset will be available at: https://idda-dataset.github.io/home/ .Comment: Accepted at IROS 2020 and RA-L. Download at: https://idda-dataset.github.io/home

Conversações no umbral: entrevista com Antonio Briceño

Interview given by the artist Antonio Briceño to the art historian Liuba Alberti. The conversation develops around various issues: science as a font of resources in the artist's creative process; the relationships between sensible, emotional and rational knowledge; the artist as activist; the freedom in the investigative and creative processes in art and science; and the multiplicity and complexity of the human dimension, among others.Entrevista concedida por el artista Antonio Briceño a la historiadora del arte Liuba Alberti. La conversación se desarrolla alrededor de varios asuntos: la ciencia como fuente de recursos en el proceso creativo del artista; las relaciones entre los conocimientos sensible, emocional y racional; el artista como activista; la libertad en los procesos investigativos y creativos en el arte y la ciencia; y la multiplicidad y complejidad de la dimensión humana, entre otros.Entrevista concedida pelo artista Antonio Briceño à historiadora da arte Liuba Alberti. A conversa se desenvolve emtorno de várias questões: a ciência como fonte de recursos no processo criativo do artista; as relações entre os conhecimentos sensível, emocional e racional; o artista como ativista; a liberdade nos processos investigativos e criativos naarte e na ciência; e a multiplicidade e complexidade da dimensão humana, dentre outros

The distribution and ecological effects of the introduced Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas (Thunberg, 1793) in Northern Patagonia

In this work we studied the actual coverage, distribution patterns and ecologic effects of the introduced oyster Crassostrea gigas 20 y after their introduction to the Northern Argentinean Patagonia (Bahia Anegada; 39º50´S to 40º40´S and 61º59 to 62º28 W). Using satellite imagery and field and aerial inspections we found 10 oyster beds that cover less than 0.05% of the bay intertidal (area covered: 36.45 ha). These beds are restricted to intertidal zones with superficial hard substrata (limestone outcrops). Most epifaunal organisms (the crabs Cyrtagrapsus angulatus, Chasmagnathus granulatus, the isopod Melita palmata. and the snail Heleobia australis) showed higher densities inside oyster beds compared with outside and experiments showed that artificially deployed oyster beds increased the densities of their at three intertidal zones (high intertidal marsh, low intertidal marsh. and low intertidal with hard substrata) and also increased densities of infaunal organisms (the polychaetes Laeonereis acuta, Nepthys fluviatilis, and the priapulid Priapulus tuberculatospinosus) at the low intertidal with hard substrata. This may be the result of increasing habitat structure and refuge for epifaunal organisms, and enhancement of deposition and sediment stability that may benefit infaunal organisms. Densities bird species (Local species: Larus dominicanus, Haematopus palliatits: Regional migratory shorebird: Charadrius falklandicus; Long range migratory shorebirds: Pluvialis dominica, Calidris canutus, Tringa flavipes) were higher inside oyster beds compared with similar zones without oysters, which may be the result of higher prey availability. Foraging rate was also higher for some of these species (P. dominica, C. falklandicus). However, due to the limited availability of hard substratum the distribution of oysters is small. In conclusion, no negative effects were observed as a result of this introduction. There was an increase in species abundance and the area was preferred by local and migratory bird species, which also showed higher feeding rates.Fil: Escapa, Carlos Mauricio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Isacch, Juan Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Daleo, Pedro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Alberti, Juan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Iribarne, Oscar Osvaldo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Borges, Mónica Elisa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía; ArgentinaFil: Dos Santos, Eder Paulo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto Argentino de Oceanografía; ArgentinaFil: Gagliardini, Domingo Antonio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Lasta, Mario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Subsede Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo Pesquero; Argentin

Clutch size in great tits (Parus major) in orange-groves of Valencia and in the holm oak forest of Monte Poblet (Tarragona)

La estación de nidificación del Carbonero Común (Parus major) en la franja mediterránea ibérica comienza en abril y finaliza en julio. No obstante, la fecha media de puesta es diferente en distintas localidades. El tamaño medio de la puesta gira en torno a los 7 huevos por nido en las localidades estudiadas. Este valor es diferente del tamaño de la puesta al norte de los Pirineos y en regiones más occidentales de la Península Ibérica.In the Iberian Mediterranean area, the Great Tit's breeding season starts in April and finishes in July, but the mean laying date differs in different areas. The mean clutch size is about 7 eggs in the study sites. This values is significantly lower than mean clutch size both in more northern localities and in Salamanca (western Spain)

Tired of losing valuable data? Build your lab ecological database as a cornerstone for long-term approaches

Long-term ecological data is essential to identify impacts of global change or to analyse the response  of local systems to perturbations. Thus, ecologists are facing the compromise to collect and process longer-term data while specific funding for those purposes is extremely scarce. Although more funding to gather and store long term data would be ideal, it is unlikely to occur, at least in the short term. Another (most plausible) option could be to dive among the many spreadsheets belonging to one or more colleagues with shared variables and from several projects over the years. Obviously, this might be an extremely time-consuming and tedious task. To simplify this and save time, it would be ideal to store as much data as possible (individual or lab generated) in a single comprehensive database. Given that the process of building, maintaining and doing queries on such databases could be scary for ecologists not familiarized, here we provide a step-by-step guide to build 1) a generic and versatile ecological database, and 2) a graphical user interface to load, update, verify, view and download data. The scripts to build them are programmed on open-software (MariaDB and R), and we also provide instructions to change them according to many usual situations.Los datos ecológicos a largo plazo son esenciales para identificar impactos del cambio global o para analizar la respuesta de ecosistemas locales a perturbaciones. Por lo tanto, los/as ecólogos/as se enfrentan al compromiso de recolectar y procesar datos a largo plazo mientras que los fondos específicos para estos fines son extremadamente escasos. Si bien sería ideal que hubiera mayor financiamiento para recolectar y almacenar datos a largo plazo, es poco probable que esto vaya a suceder, al menos en el corto plazo. Otra opción (más realista) podría ser la de bucear en las múltiples libretas y archivos propios y de colegas en busca de variables compartidas a lo largo del tiempo. Esto obviamente requiere de mucho tiempo y dedicación. Para simplificar esta tarea y ahorrar algo de tiempo, sería ideal poder almacenar tantos datos como fuera posible (propios o del laboratorio) en una base de datos única y completa. Dado que el proceso de armado y mantenimiento de bases de datos, junto con las consultas pertinentes, puede sonar atemorizador para ecólogas/os no familiarizadas/os, acá proponemos una guía paso a paso para crear 1) una base de datos ecológica genérica y versátil, y 2) una interfaz gráfica para cargar, actualizar, verificar, visualizar y descargar datos de dicha base. Los comandos para crearlas fueron programados en software libre (MariaDB y R) y también proveemos instrucciones para cambiarlos de acuerdo a varias situaciones comunes.Fil: Alberti, Juan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Massone, Octavio Antonio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; Argentin