Perceptions of STEM and Liberal Arts Policy in Florida

The promotion of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is similar to the rhetoric of the Space Race. Only 19% of U.S. degrees are in STEM fields, compared to over 50% in China (National Science and Technology Council, 2013). Policy makers like President Obama, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley tie STEM investment directly to economic impact, using language similar to the rhetoric President Eisenhower utilized to promote the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958. Florida Governor Rick Scott places STEM in zero-sum competition against liberal arts subjects with the rationale of stimulating economic growth. I surveyed and interviewed Florida policy makers to explore their perceptions of STEM and liberal arts fields. I wanted to know how these perceptions influenced policy formation. I examined press releases to identify trends and messaging from Governor Scott's office. The majority of policy actors supported balanced positions on the 7-point Likert scale survey items, recognizing the economic importance of STEM education while also noting the value of liberal arts disciplines. However, when given the freedom to respond in open-ended survey items and semi-structured interviews, many policy makers revealed positions closer to the zero-sum strategies of Governor Scott. They were dismissive of the utility of liberal arts subjects, and saw them as frivolous and unnecessary. Other participants defended the value of the liberal arts and saw them as a necessary component of a tertiary education. My research demonstrates that the relationship between higher education and economic impact is unpredictable. To maximize economic growth, universities should produce opportunistic communicators who recognize opportunities in the Information Age economy and communicate to consumers across state and national borders. Zero-sum competitions between STEM and the liberal arts are unnecessary and detrimental in a non-zero-sum global economy

Securing digital ecosystems: Harnessing the power of intelligent machines in a secure and sustainable environment

Industries are evolving towards an integral digitisation of their processes. In the face of ever-faster market demands and ever-increasing quality, information technology (IT) progress represents the only solution to these needs. Industry 4.0 was born with this focus, where cybernetic systems interact with each other to achieve, efficiently, a predetermined goal. The whole process takes place with minimal, or in some cases total, absence of human intervention, leaving the systems to interact in full autonomy. This approach commonly falls under the internet of things (IoT) paradigm, in which all objects, regardless of size and functionality, are connected in a standard network exchanging information. In this sense, objects acquire intelligence because they can modify their behaviours based on the data they receive and transmit

Decentralized approach for data security of Medical IoT Devices

In recent years, smart medical devices have become part of people's daily lives. The massive diffusion of these devices is due to the increasing availability and accessibility to hardware resources with limited features but sufficient to perform a particular task (i.e., monitoring of heartbeat, blood oxygenation, etc.). Recently it has been possible to allow these devices to connect with the outside world, and through the internet, they have become part of what is now generally defined as the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Due to the limited computing power of these devices, very often security protocols are neglected or sometimes impossible to implement. In many cases this is not a problem, but in the medical field this issue is immediately crucial. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of decentralized systems for the collection and certification of data from medical IoT (MIoT) devices. In particular, a software hardware architecture capable of connecting MIoT devices with a decentralized system based on Blockchain and Smart Contract has been described. The results obtained are promising, demonstrating the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed solution

Fake News Detection Using LDA Topic Modelling and K-Nearest Neighbor Classifier

The spread of the COVID 19 virus has dramatically impacted global society by modifying its lifestyle. Social networks, video streaming tools, virtual collaborative environments have been the primary source of communication through the Internet. This suspension of the “real” has led all activities to be declined through new places and contexts of virtual discussion, increasing new problems, including the most important related to the spread of so-called Fake News. The spread of such news can be devastating: consider what is happening during the critical vaccination phase for COVID 19. In this scenario, systems able to recognize, in a practical way, the truthfulness of news are becoming more and more valuable. This paper aims to present an approach that combines probabilistic and machine learning techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation and K-NN in combination with Context-Awareness techniques to identify the veracity of the news. Adopting Context-Awareness techniques within the proposed system allows a better definition of the operational context Fake News refers to, reducing the problems of semantic polysemy. The first results obtained through standard datasets or using data from real contexts are very interesting and promising

Blockchain and NFT: a novel approach to support BIM and Architectural Design

Digital Design is becoming more advanced by the year, software more sophisticated, and products of ever-increasing quality. In the design and implementation processes of structural works, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has now established itself as a standard process in professional and non-professional environments. In particular, the creation of BIM families is a topic of great interest to engineers and designers who can focus on describing a single object in every detail before it is included in a larger, more complex project. Since they represent digital products, specific problems could arise, particularly copyright management and certification of digital files, which must be able to be shared within the entire reference project, which is sometimes large and complex. This paper aims to solve these issues by leveraging blockchain technology as a tool for certification and attribution of authorship and/or ownership of a particular file. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) represent an excellent opportunity for the digital design world as they were born precisely to manage the ownership of digital assets in a secure manner certified by the Blockchain. The results show how BIM and Blockchain technologies can work together and benefit from each other

A Deep Learning Approach to Protecting Cultural Heritage Buildings Through IoT-Based Systems

Cultural Heritage Buildings need to be preserved through interventions and actions that ensure accessibility and availability to present and future generations. The diffusion o f new technologies, including low-cost sensors and devices, has introduced many possibilities and strategies to monitor environments, including Historical and Cultural value buildings. Based on the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, modern devices and sensors can collect and manage helpful information to build a Digital Twin of the surrounding environment. In this scenario, reproducing a Digital Twin of Cultural Heritage Buildings could be crucial to monitoring, managing, and performing action aiming to protect them. One of the challenges in recent years is the automatic analysis of collected information. This paper introduces a novel approach to protecting Buildings using Heritage Building Information Modeling (HBIM), which leverages a sensor network and Deep Learning techniques to analyze sensor data. A case study related to the Archeological Park of Pompeii will be presented, where real-time collected data is managed and shared via a web-cloud-IoT platform. Then, collected data are analyzed through a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to prevent future issues related to Cultural Heritage Buildings, particularly humidity inside structures, which is crucial for ancient building preservation

Context Aware Recommender Systems: A Novel Approach Based on Matrix Factorization and Contextual Bias

In the world of Big Data, a tool capable of filtering data and providing choice support is crucial. Recommender Systems have this aim. These have evolved further through the use of information that would improve the ability to suggest. Among the possible exploited information, the context is widely used in literature and leads to the definition of the Context-Aware Recommender System. This paper proposes a Context-Aware Recommender System based on the concept of embedded context. This technique has been tested on different datasets to evaluate its accuracy. In particular, the use of multiple datasets allows a deep analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed approach. The numerical results obtained are promising

The role of AI in improving interaction with cultural heritage: An overview

Over the years, artificial intelligence techniques have been applied in several application fields, exploiting data to execute different tasks and achieve disparate objectives. Therefore, the cultural heritage field can utilise AI techniques to improve the interaction between visitors and cultural assets. Then, this work aims to present the background related to the principal AI techniques and provides an overview of the literature aimed at improving the user cultural experience. This overview focuses on AI integration with tools aimed to enhance the interaction among visitors and cultural sites, such as recommender systems, context-aware recommender systems, and chatbots. Finally, the most common measure used for estimating the accuracy of the AI methodologies will be introduced

Fabrication, characterization and cell cultures on a novel composite chitosan-nano-hydroxyapatite scaffold

This paper deals with the characterizations made during the development of a nano-HAp loaded chitosan scaffold, obtained by the freeze-drying technique combined with a novel in situ crystal growth method. The nano-composites were characterized by a highly porous and interconnected structure. The XRD patterns and calculated domain sizes of the HAp nano-crystals nucleated on the chitosan scaffolds are very similar to the ones recorded for deproteinated bone apatite. Both osteoblasts (MG63) and mesenchimal cells (hMSC) were showing good proliferation and adhesion onto the scaffolds. The presence of extensive filopodia and excellent spreading in and around the interconnected porous structure, indicated a strong cellular adhesion and growth. Moreover a good hMSC osteogenic differentiation has been verified. The observations related to well-developed structure morphology, physicochemical properties and high cytocompatibility suggest that the obtained chitosan-nHA porous scaffolds are potential candidate materials for bone regeneration

A Situation Awareness Approach for Smart Home Management

Nowadays, the digitization of reality is increasingly prominent due to the Internet of Things paradigm. Even the environments we live in, such as homes, can be equipped with smart devices that make their management more effective. This paper presents a case study related to the Smart Home field, which exploits graph approaches to provide suggestions to users in home management. The proposed approach allows extracting and elaborating data from the context and using probabilistic approaches to provide helpful information and autonomous actions. The learning phase is related to graph approaches able to represent and able to increase the comprehension of the environment. The experimental phase is conducted through a prototype to test the ability of the proposed approach in saving energy and ventilation management. The experiments consist of the accuracy measure and a questionnaire, and the obtained results are promising