18 research outputs found
Stochastic learning in a neural network with adapting synapses
We consider a neural network with adapting synapses whose dynamics can be
analitically computed. The model is made of neurons and each of them is
connected to input neurons chosen at random in the network. The synapses
are -states variables which evolve in time according to Stochastic Learning
rules; a parallel stochastic dynamics is assumed for neurons. Since the network
maintains the same dynamics whether it is engaged in computation or in learning
new memories, a very low probability of synaptic transitions is assumed. In the
limit with large and finite, the correlations of neurons and
synapses can be neglected and the dynamics can be analitically calculated by
flow equations for the macroscopic parameters of the system.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX fil
Mental, Social and Visual Alienation in DâAlessandroâs Photography
This chapter analyzes the first of several photobooks that illustrated the reform of psychiatric health care in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s: Luciano DâAlessandroâs 1969 Gli esclusi. In 1967, DâAlessandro was invited by the director of the asylum of Nocera Superiore, Sergio Piro, to document through photography the abysmal conditions of the âtotal institutionâ that was the pre-reform mental hospital. DâAlessandro first published a small selection of photos, in Popular Photography Italiana (1967), which he then expanded in Gli esclusi. This chapter claims that, in the evolution between the two publications, we can read the complex and multilayered notion of alienation that informed the work of reform, especially that of one of the most famous figures associated with it, Franco Basaglia. By analyzing DâAlessandroâs Gli esclusi through the notion of alienation, this chapter lets what Sekula calls the conditions of âreadabilityâ of the photographic message emerge
A reciprocal legitimation: Corrado Gini and statistics in fascist Italy
This article deals with the relationship between science and politics and in particular with the reciprocal legitimation process involving research schools and political regimes. It focuses on the case of Italian statistics during the early twentieth century. Its emergence as both an independent scientific field and a national research school, in fact, went together with the rise of nationalism and the establishment of the fascist regime. The paper uses the biography of Corrado Gini to analyze the process of mutual legitimization between science and politics under fascism. Gini's academic and professional careers show in fact how actors and ideas could compete through their ability to alter the status of the discipline, the technical functions it was assigned, and to attract funds in a changing political context Gini, as an institutional entrepreneur, was able to make his research school hegemonic in Italy by leveraging the need for scientific legitimation of new state policies during World War I and under fascism. The reinterpretation he provided of his career after the end of World War II is crucial both to deconstructing this process and to shedding light on the postwar de-legitimation of Italian statistics