The European Migration System and Global Justice. A First Appraisal

Migration is at the heart of the current political debate in Europe. Moreover, the migration crisis has disclosed a number of normative and ethical issues connected to the current management of migration in the EU. This report provides a preliminary insight into the EU’s policy on migration. It looks specifically at the terms the EU chooses, the definitions it devises and the concepts and understandings it endorses in its migration policies. In order to grasp the actual working of an emerging EU Migration System of Governance (EUMSG), the same terms, concepts and definitions are also examined with reference to a set of national cases: Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Hungary, Greece and Norway

Preliminary survey of historic buildings with wearable mobile mapping systems and uav photogrammetry

In cultural heritage, three-dimensional documentation of historic buildings is fundamental for conservation and valorisation projects. In recent years, the consolidated tools and methods: Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and close-range photogrammetry, have been joined by portable Mobile Mapping Systems (MMSs), which can offer significant advantages in terms of speed of survey operations at the price of reduced accuracy. The reduction of survey times and, therefore, costs makes the application of MMS techniques ideal for the preliminary stages of analysis of historical artifacts, when a rapid survey is indispensable for estimating the costs of conservation interventions. In this paper, we present a methodology for the expeditious survey of historic buildings and the surrounding urban fabric that is based on the use of an MMS and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The MMS is the Gexcel Heron MS Twin color. It was used to survey two architecture of interest and the urban context surrounding them from the ground level. The UAV is the DJI Mini 2, used to integrate the terrestrial survey by acquiring the buildings' roofs. The case study presented in the paper is the survey of San Clemente and San Zeno al Foro churches, two historic churches in the city centre of Brescia (Italy). The result are a complete point cloud of the two buildings and a metric virtual tour of all spaces. These results were made available to the architects through the Cintoo web platform to plan future activities

LEARNING GEOMATICS FOR RESTORATION: ICOMOS SUMMER SCHOOL IN OSSOLA VALLEY

Documentation and preservation of widespread rural heritage are today possible only if you can activate processes of conservation headed by local communities, thereby recognizing the link between the communities and their culture. The cultural heritage places (villages, sites and landscapes) can take different values; action is needed respecting the right of communities to identify the values contained in them. ‘Collaborative networks should be set up at different levels among multiple stakeholders in order to address issues related to heritage and create new value chains through innovative synergies. Dynamic, flexible, inclusive and integrated processes of engagement need to be employed for assessing long-term social impacts of heritage conservation programmes’ (Icomos, 2014). In 2011 the 3DSurvey Group of the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the Canova Association initiated an annual summer school program entitled ‘Laboratory of Places 2017, Ghesc and surroundings, History, survey, evolution Laboratory of Places'. The definition of “Laboratory of Places 2017, Ghesc and surroundings” links the idea of an inhabited space to an open space suitable for study, research, and an interactive absorption and confrontation of differing ideas. Founding elements of the project involve educational collaborations with university, but equally important will be the development of programs with local schools, associations, and public administration (Quaderni di Ghesc, 2010)

TARGETLESS REGISTRATION METHODS BETWEEN UAV LIDAR AND WEARABLE MMS POINT CLOUDS

Fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and wearable or portable Mobile Mapping Systems (MMS) are two widely used platforms for point cloud acquisition with Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) sensors. The two platforms acquire from distant viewpoints and produce complementary point clouds, one describing predominantly horizontal surfaces and the other primarily vertical. Thus, the registration of the two data is not straightforward. This paper presents a test of targetless registration between a UAV LiDAR point cloud and terrestrial MMS surveys. The case study is a vegetated hilly landscape characterized by the presence of a structure of interest; the UAV acquisition allows the entire area to be acquired from above, while the terrestrial MMS acquisitions will enable the construction of interest to be detailed. The paper describes the survey phase with both techniques. It focuses on processing and registration strategies to fuse the two data together. Our approach is based on the ICP (Iterative Closest Point) method by exploiting the data processing algorithms available in the Heron Desktop post-processing software for handling data acquired with the Heron Backpack MMS instrument. Two co-registration methods are compared. Both ways use the UAV point cloud as a reference and derive the registration of the terrestrial MMS data by finding ICP matches between the ground acquisition and the reference cloud exploiting only a few areas of overlap. The two methods are detailed in the paper, and both allow us to complete the co-registration task

BUILT-IN LENS CORRECTION PROFILES IN LOW-COST CAMERAS: AN ISSUE FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRIC APPLICATIONS?

Photogrammetric applications nowadays envisage the use of more and more low-cost cameras such as those equipped on commercial UAV platforms. Typically, these low-grade cameras suffer from extreme radial distortion and strong vignetting among other defects. This, initiated a trend among the low-cost cameras’ manufacturers to try to hide the camera defects by applying software pre-corrections to the images. These Built-In Correction Profiles gets applied to both the JPG files, directly in-camera, and usually to the raw files as well, through the opcode functions of the DNG standard. In this paper we rise this issue that is still under-reported in the literature and further assess the accuracy implication of applying or discarding the Built-In Correction Profile in the scenario of UAV mapping. We tested the commercial UAV DJI Phantom 4 Pro v2 in a calibration environment and a field test to compare the performance of pre-corrected versus uncorrected images. In our tests, processing the original uncorrected images led to improved IO calibration and reduced bowing effect in the field test

L’urethrorraphie Terminoterminale Dans Le Traitement des Retrecissements de L’uretre Bulbaire et Membraneux

Objectifs: Evaluer les résultats de d’urétrorraphie termino-terminale dans le traitement des sténoses de l’urètre bulbaire et membraneux à travers l’étude de la série de notre service et une revue récente de la littérature.Patients et méthodes: Il s’agit d’une étude rétrospective basée sur la revue des dossiers médicaux des patients ayant bénéficiés d’une Urétrorraphie Termino-Terminale (UTT) dans notre formation entre Février 2006 et Février 2010. La moyenne d’âge des patients était de38, 3 ans. L’étiologie du rétrécissement urétral était infectieuse et traumatique respectivement dans 40 % et 60% des cas. Chez 68 % d’entre eux, le rétrécissement urétral était localisé au niveau bulbaire et chez 32 % au niveau membraneux. Tous les patients avaient une sténoseunique inférieure à 2 cm à l’urétro-cystographie rétrograde et mictionnelle.Résultats: La durée moyenne de suivi était de 28 mois. Le taux de succès de l’urétrorraphie termino-terminale dans notre étude était de 88 %. 12% des patients avaient présenté une récidive de la sténose. Tow patients (8%) ayant une sténose bulbaire avaient rapporté des troubles éjaculatoires. Aucun de nos patients (0%) n’avait présenté ni dysfonction érectile ni incontinence suite à cette intervention.Conclusion: L’urétroplastie anastomotique termino-terminale permet des taux élevés de reperméabilisation urétrale après une première procédure. Le taux de récidive de la sténose reste faible comparativement aux autres techniques chirurgicales. Les troubles éjaculatoires peuvent être prévenus par une dissection minutieuse et une restitution anatomique desmuscles bulbo-caverneux

Optimization of chloroxylenol degradation by Aspergillus niger using Plackett-Burman design and response surface methodology

Chloroxylenol is a very toxic phenolic derivative and it represents potential hazard towards human health and to the environment. Aspergillus niger, local isolate, is an efficient fungus to degrade 99.72% of 2 mg/L of chloroxylenol after 7 days of fermentation. It also has a high capacity to degrade 91.83% of higher chloroxylenol concentration of 20 mg/L after 6 days of incubation on mineral medium amended with 2 g/L of glucose. Statistical experimental designs were used to optimize the process of chloroxylenol degradation by the fungus. The most important factors influencing chloroxylenol degradation, as identified by a two-level Plackett-Burman design with 11 variables, were NaCl, (NH4)2SO4, and inoculums size. Response surface analysis was adopted to further investigate the mutual interactions between these variables and to identify their optimal values that would generate maximum chloroxylenol degradation. Under the optimized medium compositions and culture conditions, A. niger was able to degrade completely (100%) chloroxylenol (20 mg/L) after 134.6 h of fermentation. The predicted values of Plackett-Burman conditions and response surface methodology were further verified by validation experiments. The excellent correlation between predicted and experimental values confirmed the validity and practicability of this statistical optimum strategy. Optimal conditions obtained in this work laid to a solid foundation for further use of A. niger in treatment of high strength chloroxylenol polluted effluents. So, the optimized conditions were applied to bioremediate crude sewage containing 27.8 mg/L of chloroxylenol by A. niger. The fungus efficiently degraded chloroxylenol after 8 days of fermentation.Key words: Chloroxylenol degradation, Aspergillus niger, Plackett-Burman design, Response surface methodology

SURVEY OF HISTORICAL GARDENS: MULTI-CAMERA PHOTOGRAMMETRY VS MOBILE LASER SCANNING

This paper presents an investigation into the characterization of historical gardens by comparing two 3D survey methodologies. In this context, approaches employing terrestrial laser scanning are considered the most accurate, while Mobile Mapping Systems (MMSs) are considered promising due to their extreme productivity. Less common is the use of close-range photogrammetry. This paper compares two approaches based on the use of a wearable MMS and the use of an in-house built photogrammetric multi-camera prototype. The comparison aims to assess the applicability of the two techniques in this field, evaluating their advantages and disadvantages in surveying a historical garden and extracting information for tree inventory, such as the DBH (Diameter at Breast Height) and canopy footprint. We compared the practicality of surveying and processing operations; and the quality and characteristics of the point clouds obtained. Both systems produced a dense representation of the terrain. The multi-camera survey resulted to be more defined due to the lower noise of the point cloud but incomplete in the definition of tree canopies. DBH of tree trunks can be extracted with both systems, except for thinner and finer diameter trunks detected by the MMS approach but not always by the multi-camera. The MMS approach proved more effective thanks to a shorter survey time required to cover an equal area and the fact that the MMS survey alone is sufficient for the geometric description of trees. In contrast, the multi-camera approach cannot avoid integration with an aerial survey for canopy reconstruction

Genetic and nongenetic effects on the number of ovarian follicles and oocyte yield and quality in the bovine local (Oulmes Zaer), exotic breeds and their crosses in Morocco

The effects of genetic and non genetic factors on the number of ovarian follicles and oocyte yield and quality in the bovine local breed (Oulmes Zaer), exotic breeds and their crosses in Morocco was investigated. In this study, females in very bad body conditions (BCS < 2) were not slaughtered and the average. The body condition scores (BCS) was 2.94 ± 0.89. Although some individual values were out of the normal ranges, mean values of total proteins, albumin, urea, &#946;-OH and GOT remain normal and were 77.83 ± 8.74 g/l, 32.4 ± 4.41g/l, 4.43 ± 2.13 mmol/l , 0.83± 0.48 mmol/l et 45.55 ± 11.95 UI/l, respectively. The mean number of ovarian follicles per cow (2-8 mm) was high (22.98 ± 8.41) whereas the oocyte yield (and 2.60 ± 1.53) was very low. The effects of genetic group, age and BCS on the number of follicles, oocyte yield and the quality were significant. Key Words: Cows, follicular population, oocyte yield and quality. African Journal of Biotechnology Vol.4(1) 2005: 9-1