Cittadini al tempo della Datafication: i Big data possono essere usati per il bene sociale?

La digitalizzazione degli ultimi vent’anni ha permesso la trasformazione di molti aspetti della nostra vita sotto forma di dati da cui è possibile estrapolare preziose informazioni. Questo particolare trend prende il nome di “Datafication” il quale tuttavia introduce anche una serie di problematiche ed effetti collaterali negativi, come per esempio lo sfruttamento delle persone attraverso i propri dati che è stato sintetizzato attraverso il neologismo del Colonialismo dei dati. Dopo aver approfondito la dimensione e le problematiche di questi fenomeni, il mio lavoro si focalizza sull’analisi di alcuni progetti sociali e umanitari che utilizzano un approccio basato sui dati; realizzati da iniziative internazionali come “UN Global Pulse”, “GSMA – Big Data for Social Good” e “IBM – Science for Social Good”. Quest’approfondimento mi ha permesso di formulare alcune ipotesi riguardo quali caratteristiche ed elementi comuni abilitano i big data per essere utilizzati per il bene sociale ed in modo etico. Oltre ciò, tramite l’analisi dell’iniziativa “AgID – Agenzia per L’Italia Digitale” ho cercato di approfondire se il trend della Datafication e un approccio basato sui big data potessero aiutare la Pubblica amministrazione italiana a generare dei benefici per i singoli cittadini e per l’intera comunità

Personalized bundle recommendation using preference elicitation and the Choquet integral

Bundle recommendation aims to generate bundles of associated products that users tend to consume as a whole under certain circumstances. Modeling the bundle utility for users is a non-trivial task, as it requires to account for the potential interdependencies between bundle attributes. To address this challenge, we introduce a new preference-based approach for bundle recommendation exploiting the Choquet integral. This allows us to formalize preferences for coalitions of environmental-related attributes, thus recommending product bundles accounting for synergies among product attributes. An experimental evaluation of a dataset of local food products in Northern Italy shows how the Choquet integral allows the natural formalization of a sensible notion of environmental friendliness and that standard approaches based on weighted sums of attributes end up recommending bundles with lower environmental friendliness even if weights are explicitly learned to maximize it. We further show how preference elicitation strategies can be leveraged to acquire weights of the Choquet integral from user feedback in terms of preferences over candidate bundles, and show how a handful of queries allow to recommend optimal bundles for a diverse set of user prototypes

Glitter or Gold? Deriving Structured Insights from Sustainability Reports via Large Language Models

Over the last decade, several regulatory bodies have started requiring the disclosure of non-financial information from publicly listed companies, in light of the investors' increasing attention to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues. Publicly released information on sustainability practices is often disclosed in diverse, unstructured, and multi-modal documentation. This poses a challenge in efficiently gathering and aligning the data into a unified framework to derive insights related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Thus, using Information Extraction (IE) methods becomes an intuitive choice for delivering insightful and actionable data to stakeholders. In this study, we employ Large Language Models (LLMs), In-Context Learning, and the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) paradigm to extract structured insights related to ESG aspects from companies' sustainability reports. We then leverage graph-based representations to conduct statistical analyses concerning the extracted insights. These analyses revealed that ESG criteria cover a wide range of topics, exceeding 500, often beyond those considered in existing categorizations, and are addressed by companies through a variety of initiatives. Moreover, disclosure similarities emerged among companies from the same region or sector, validating ongoing hypotheses in the ESG literature. Lastly, by incorporating additional company attributes into our analyses, we investigated which factors impact the most on companies' ESG ratings, showing that ESG disclosure affects the obtained ratings more than other financial or company data

Two days, two marathons: superman?

The river marathon races are characterized by a duration longer than two hours, with intermissions at predetermined distances depending on the route. In these intermissions the athletes make portages where the competitors carry their canoes in a foot race with a distance of about 150 meters, and then they resumes paddling

Children’s winter training in Kayak: a multilateral approach

Children’s approach to Kayak as a sport takes place at about the age of ten. The winter weather conditions of the Northern Italian valley do not usually permit training at the river for a long period of time. Additionally the weather increases the risk of the boat to turn over in case of imperfect control. For this reason we have elaborated a training scheme in which going out on the boat starts in April when the temperature (both of the water and the atmosphere) begins to raise

Building kayak excellence: from the adolescent to the elite athlete.

Building an athlete in order to reach his maximum possible performance is a long process which starts from infancy. The history of our interdisciplinary group ( medical doctors-trainers) is equally long. It started in the 80s with the cooperation of a medical doctor and a trainer. Over the years, the group has grown involving new trainers, former athletes, athletes and young doctors who share their own specific knowledge in order to individualize and promote the maximal performance of each single athlete, trying to keep them in optimal health and prevent typical injuries caused by overload

J.D. Thompson’s Organizations in Action 50th anniversary: a reflection

At the 50th anniversary of James D. Thompson’s fundamental book, Organizations in Action, TAO Digital Library proposes a reflection on this great master’s legacy and the evolution of organizational studies. Twelve researchers, from different disciplinary fields, analyze both the texts utilized for teaching and the contribution of several important journals, particularly in recent decades. The outcome is an overall picture that may stimulate different, divergent evaluations and, even more importantly, desirable, deeper reflections

Lactic Acid: a great help for the canoeing coach.

Six athletes who are practicing canoe kayak (n. 4) and canadese (n. 2, Mirko and Enrico) were submitted to an incremental test of 1000 meters which was repeated three times with an increasing speed. The test was carried out at the river named Ticino, in an area with constant water depth and no current

The Intracellular DNA Sensor IFI16 Gene Acts as Restriction Factor for Human Cytomegalovirus Replication

Human interferon (IFN)-inducible IFI16 protein, an innate immune sensor of intracellular DNA, modulates various cell functions, however, its role in regulating virus growth remains unresolved. Here, we adopt two approaches to investigate whether IFI16 exerts pro- and/or anti-viral actions. First, the IFI16 gene was silenced using specific small interfering RNAs (siRNA) in human embryo lung fibroblasts (HELF) and replication of DNA and RNA viruses evaluated. IFI16-knockdown resulted in enhanced replication of Herpesviruses, in particular, Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV). Consistent with this, HELF transduction with a dominant negative form of IFI16 lacking the PYRIN domain (PYD) enhanced the replication of HCMV. Second, HCMV replication was compared between HELFs overexpressing either the IFI16 gene or the LacZ gene. IFI16 overexpression decreased both virus yield and viral DNA copy number. Early and late, but not immediate-early, mRNAs and proteins were strongly down-regulated, thus IFI16 may exert its antiviral effect by impairing viral DNA synthesis. Constructs with the luciferase reporter gene driven by deleted or site-specific mutated forms of the HCMV DNA polymerase (UL54) promoter demonstrated that the inverted repeat element 1 (IR-1), located between −54 and −43 relative to the transcription start site, is the target of IFI16 suppression. Indeed, electrophoretic mobility shift assays and chromatin immunoprecipitation demonstrated that suppression of the UL54 promoter is mediated by IFI16-induced blocking of Sp1-like factors. Consistent with these results, deletion of the putative Sp1 responsive element from the HCMV UL44 promoter also relieved IFI16 suppression. Together, these data implicate IFI16 as a novel restriction factor against HCMV replication and provide new insight into the physiological functions of the IFN-inducible gene IFI16 as a viral restriction factor