Le Lettere di Luca Contile: studio e antologia di testi

Il lavoro si articola in due parti: la prima è un'introduzione critica all'epistolario, che contestualizza l'opera nel contesto culturale del tempo e nella biografia dell'autore e ne presenta i temi fondamentali; la seconda è composta da sessanta lettere selezionate, ognuna preceduta da un cappello introduttivo e corredata da un apparato di note che ne facilita la piena comprensione

Writer\u2019s uncertainty identification in scientific biomedical articles: a tool for automatic if-clause tagging

In a previous study, we manually identified seven categories (verbs, non- verbs, modal verbs in the simple present, modal verbs in the conditional mood, if, uncertain questions, and epistemic future) of Uncertainty Markers (UMs) in a corpus of 80 articles from the British Medical Journal randomly sampled from a 167-year period (1840\u20132007). The UMs detected on the base of an epistemic stance approach were those referring only to the authors of the articles and only in the present. We also performed preliminary experiments to assess the manual annotated corpus and to establish a baseline for the UMs automatic detection. The results of the experiments showed that most UMs could be recognized with good accuracy, except for the if-category, which includes four subcategories: if-clauses in a narrow sense; if-less clauses; as if/as though; if and whether introducing embedded questions. The unsatisfactory results concerning the if-category were probably due to both its complexity and the inadequacy of the detection rules, which were only lexical, not grammatical. In the current article, we describe a different approach, which combines grammatical and syntactic rules. The performed experiments show that the identification of uncertainty in the if-category has been largely double improved compared to our previous results. The complex overall process of uncertainty detection can greatly profit from a hybrid approach which should combine supervised Machine learning techniques with a knowledge-based approach constituted by a rule-based inference engine devoted to the if-clause case and designed on the basis of the above mentioned epistemic stance approach

An fMRI investigation of the relationship between future imagination and cognitive flexibility

While future imagination is largely considered to be a cognitive process grounded in default mode network activity, studies have shown that future imagination recruits regions in both default mode and frontoparietal control networks. In addition, it has recently been shown that the ability to imagine the future is associated with cognitive flexibility, and that tasks requiring cognitive flexibility result in increased coupling of the default mode network with frontoparietal control and salience networks. In the current study, we investigated the neural correlates underlying the association between cognitive flexibility and future imagination in two ways. First, we experimentally varied the degree of cognitive flexibility required during future imagination by manipulating the disparateness of episodic details contributing to imagined events. To this end, participants generated episodic details (persons, locations, objects) within three social spheres; during fMRI scanning they were presented with sets of three episodic details all taken from the same social sphere (Congruent condition) or different social spheres (Incongruent condition) and required to imagine a future event involving the three details. We predicted that, relative to the Congruent condition, future simulation in the Incongruent condition would be associated with increased activity in regions of the default mode, frontoparietal and salience networks. Second, we hypothesized that individual differences in cognitive flexibility, as measured by performance on the Alternate Uses Task, would correspond to individual differences in the brain regions recruited during future imagination. A task partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that the Incongruent condition resulted in an increase in activity in regions in salience networks (e.g. the insula) but, contrary to our prediction, reduced activity in many regions of the default mode network (including the hippocampus). A subsequent functional connectivity (within-subject seed PLS) analysis showed that the insula exhibited increased coupling with default mode regions during the Incongruent condition. Finally, a behavioral PLS analysis showed that individual differences in cognitive flexibility were associated with differences in activity in a number of regions from frontoparietal, salience and default-mode networks during both future imagination conditions, further highlighting that the cognitive flexibility underlying future imagination is grounded in the complex interaction of regions in these networks

Search for massive resonances in dijet systems containing jets tagged as W or Z boson decays in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Constraints on the Higgs boson width from off-shell production and decay to Z-boson pairs

Constraints are presented on the total width of the recently discovered Higgs boson, GH, using its relative on-shell and off-shell production and decay rates to a pair of Z bosons, where one Z boson decays to an electron or muon pair, and the other to an electron, muon, or neutrino pair. The analysis is based on the data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011 and 2012, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 5.1fb-1 at a center-of-mass energy vs=7 TeV and 19.7fb-1at vs=8 TeV. A simultaneous maximum likelihood fit to the measured kinematic distributions near the resonance peak and above the Z-boson pair production threshold leads to an upper limit on the Higgs boson width of GH<22 MeV at a 95% confidence level, which is 5.4 times the expected value in the standard model at the measured mass of mH=125.6 GeV

Design delle traiettorie di un tour delle lune galileiane di Giove usando come propulsore un tether elettrodinamico

The Jovian system represents the perfect environment for electrodynamic tethers due to its magnetic field, dense plasmasphere and high rotation rate. The use of EDT for orbital maneuvers can save propellant and mass. In this thesis a mission for the exploration of the Galilean moons, along with the optimization techniques used, from interplanetary phase through capture, till the moons tour itself, is presented

Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection using Machine Learning Models

Intracranial Hemorrhage is the internal bleeding caused in the skull and brain due to excessive intake of alcohol, stoke,etc. Radiologists sometimes miss subtle and critical findings which when detected at later stages becomes a critical concern. Previous research on this field mainly focused on feature extraction and image classification using supervised learning which produces inaccurate results due to inappropriate input data. This research work concentrates on modelling a network for detection of intracranial hemorrhage using sparse autoencoder for unsupervised machine learning for complex feature extraction then feeding to SVM classifier for Image Classification. This deep learning network was compared with other models like Random Forest, CNNs, PCA with a SVM classifier. The performance shown by sparse autoencoder with SVM classifier was better than other models

Molecular Mechanisms of Microtubule-Based Transport in a Genetic Model System

Intracellular cargos such as organelles and vesicles move on microtubules by motor-driven transport. The canonical mode of microtubule-based transport is that adaptor proteins are required to link cargos to motors (kinesins or dynein). An alternative mode was discovered in which peroxisomes move by hitchhiking in the filamentous fungi Aspergillus nidulans. Hitchhiking involves transient tethering of peroxisomes to early endosomes attached to motor proteins. In this schematic, the early endosomes comigrate with peroxisome at the leading edge to “pull” the cargo; it requires the recruitment of a linker protein PxdA as well as its cofactor DipA phosphatase. To better understand the mechanisms of hitchhiking, I conducted phenotypic mutagenesis screens in A. nidulans, identifying 7 positive hits. I was able to pursue two hits further, JSA216 and JSA217. JSA216 mutation is a G44V substitution localized to AN6372, a highly disordered and uncharacterized protein. JSA217 mutation is a C106R substitution in an Aspergillus kinesin-3 called UncA, one of the three major classes of cargo-carrying kinesins. These data indicate areas of further research to discern the hitchhiking machinery in this genetic model filamentous fungus

Domain-generality of Parietal Attentional Processes and their Implications for Old Age

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been reliably implicated in visuospatial attention, such that the dorsal regions (dPPC) are associated with voluntary ‘top-down’ attention, whereas the ventral regions (vPPC) are associated with automatic ‘bottom-up’ attentional processes. The Attention-to-Memory model (AtoM: Ciaramelli, Grady, & Moscovitch, 2008) has suggested that it also plays a similar role in memory retrieval, suggesting that the PPC mediates a domain-general attentional process. Furthermore, domain-generality of attentional processes may account for differences in perception and memory function accompanying old age. This study examined domain-generality by determining the shared variance in performance of tasks thought to recruit top-down and bottom-up attentional processes mediated across both domains. Results clearly suggested generality across domains in top-down processing; and in bottom-up processing, depending on its operationalization. Ageing was characterized by an absence of shared variance across domains and slower reaction times during bottom-up attentional reorienting only in perception.MAS