A servant of Two masters: the Translator Michel Angelo Corai as a Tuscan Diplomat (1599-1609)

On 14 January 1597, as recorded by the archivist in the Archivio di Stato di Mantova on the carta 475 of the Fondo Gonzaga, Fr Giovan Battista Ruffini wrote directly to Manerbio Aderbale, secretary of Duke Vincenzo I’s Chancellery, from Venice. Ruffini rejoices for having arrived in Venice on Christmas day after his journey to the Holy Land; with a tone of satisfaction, he reveals that he has brought a ‘special gift’ back for the Duke. With me I brought back a Syrian, who owns beautiful writings, and can make beautiful things with his hands; I would like you to consent for me to take him to meet His Serenissima Highness … He [the Syrian] has three or four very ancient books in Ajiam-Farsi, Chaldaic, and Arabic and I hope he will have something to please His Highness; he speaks very well; and he writes Arabic, Persian/Farsi, and Turkish. He is a person that I imagine will not displease His Highness; he was the personal scribe of Cigalah when this was the Sinan Pasha of Babylon, he has father, wife, and children in Aleppo but he came with me because he was persecuted by a fellow Turkish

Translators, interpreters, and cultural negotiators : mediating and communicating power from the Middle Ages to the modern era.

This book reconsiders the intellectual, social and professional identity of translators and interpreters when their role involves an intercultural negotiation with institutional powers, be them medieval rulers, modern States, an army of invasion or a dominant culture. Surprisingly little is known of how historical mediations took place, how the mediators worked, and the ways in which transcultural mediations become implicit or explicit forms of power. The chapters seek to address how translators and interpreters can emerge in a position of power by presenting visions, methods, and case studies dealing with a wide thematic range of issues, such as historical concerns, cultural identity, and the role of translation in mediation and cultural transfer. With far-reaching analysis of history, politics, religion and literature, this book will appeal to researchers and students of translation, the history of communication, and institutional power

RR Lyrae variables in the globular cluster M3 (NGC5272). I. BVI CCD photometry

New BVI CCD photometry is presented for 60 RR Lyrae variables in the globular cluster M3. Light curves have been constructed and ephemerides have been (re)-derived for all of them. Four stars (i.e. V29, V136, V155 and V209), although recognized as variables, had no previous period determinations. Also, the period derived for V129 is significantly different from the one published by Sawyer-Hogg (1973). Light curve parameters, i.e. mean magnitudes, amplitudes and rise-times, have been derived. The discussion of these results in the framework of the stellar evolution and pulsation theories will be presented in a forthcoming paper.Comment: 19 pages, latex, uses mn.sty, 12 encapsulated figures, to be published in MNRAS, text and figures also available at http://www.bo.astro.it/bap/BAPhome.html or via anonymous ftp at ftp://boas3.bo.astro.it/bap/files (bap98-12-textfig.ps

A fault diagnosis methodology for an external gear pump with the use of Machine Learning classification algorithms: Support Vector Machine and Multilayer Perceptron

This paper presents a fault diagnosis Machine Learning (ML) computational strategy for an external gear pump. The method uses supervised learning of descriptive features. The focus is on two types of ML nonlinear multi-class classification algorithms: Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) algorithms. Although significant work has been reported by previous authors, it is still difficult to optimise ab initio the choice of the hyper parameters (ML method dependent) for each specific application. For instance, the type of SVM kernel function or the selection of the MLP activation function and the optimum number of hidden layers (and neurons). As it is well known, reliability of ML algorithms is strongly dependent upon the existence of a sufficiently large quantity of high-quality training data. In our case, and in the absence of experimental data, high-fidelity in-silico data (generated via the software PumpLinx) have been used for the training of the underlying ML metamodel. A variety of working conditions are recreated, ranging from healthy to various kinds of faulty scenarios (i.e., clogging, radial gap variations, viscosity variations). In addition, noise perturbation has been considered in order to increase the sample data available for ML training. This paper explores and compares the use of SVM and MLP algorithms for predictive maintenance. To reduce the high computational cost during the training stage in the MLP algorithm, some predefined network architectures, like 2n neurons per hidden layer, are used to speed up the identification of the precise number of neurons (shown to be useful when the sample data set is sufficiently large). A series of benchmark tests are presented, enabling to conclude that the use of wavelet features and SVM or MLP algorithms can provide the best accuracy for classification

The Gaia spectrophotometric standard stars survey - V. Preliminary flux tables for the calibration of Gaia DR2 and (E)DR3

We present the flux tables of the spectrophotometric standard stars (SPSS) used to calibrate in flux the Gaia DR2 and (E)DR3 data releases. The latest SPSS grid version contains 112 stars, whose flux tables agree to better than 1 per cent with the CALSPEC spectra of 11 flux standards for the calibration of the Hubble Space Telescope. The synthetic magnitudes computed on the SPSS spectra also agree to better than 1 per cent with the Landolt magnitudes of 37 stars in common. The typical spreads in both comparisons are of the order of 1 per cent. These uncertainties already meet the initial requirements for the Gaia SPSS project, but further improvements are expected in the next SPSS versions, that will be used to calibrate future Gaia releases. We complement the SPSS flux tables with literature spectra of 60 additional stars that did not pass all the criteria to be SPSS, the Passband Validation Library (PVL). The PVL contains stars of extreme spectral types, such as bright O and B stars and late M stars and brown dwarfs, and was useful to investigate systematic effects in the previous Gaia DR2 release and to minimize them in the EDR3 one. The PVL literature spectra are recalibrated as accurately as possible on to the SPSS reference scale, so that the two sets together can be used in a variety of validation and comparison studie

The Gaia spectrophotometric standard stars survey - III. Short-term variability monitoring

We present the results of the short-term constancy monitoring of candidate Gaia Spectrophotometric Standard Stars (SPSS). We obtained time series of typically 1.24 h - with sampling periods from 1-3 min to a few hours, depending on the case - to monitor the constancy of our candidate SPSS down to 10 mmag, as required for the calibration of Gaia photometric data. We monitored 162 out of a total of 212 SPSS candidates. The observing campaign started in 2006 and finished in 2015, using 143 observing nights on nine different instruments covering both hemispheres. Using differential photometry techniques, we built light curves with a typical precision of 4 mmag, depending on the data quality. As a result of our constancy assessment, 150 SPSS candidates were validated against short-term variability, and only 12 were rejected because of variability including some widely used flux standards such as BD+174708, SA 105-448, 1740346, and HD 37725