Distributed First Order Logic

Distributed First Order Logic (DFOL) has been introduced more than ten years ago with the purpose of formalising distributed knowledge-based systems, where knowledge about heterogeneous domains is scattered into a set of interconnected modules. DFOL formalises the knowledge contained in each module by means of first-order theories, and the interconnections between modules by means of special inference rules called bridge rules. Despite their restricted form in the original DFOL formulation, bridge rules have influenced several works in the areas of heterogeneous knowledge integration, modular knowledge representation, and schema/ontology matching. This, in turn, has fostered extensions and modifications of the original DFOL that have never been systematically described and published. This paper tackles the lack of a comprehensive description of DFOL by providing a systematic account of a completely revised and extended version of the logic, together with a sound and complete axiomatisation of a general form of bridge rules based on Natural Deduction. The resulting DFOL framework is then proposed as a clear formal tool for the representation of and reasoning about distributed knowledge and bridge rules

“NOT OF THIS WORLD, NOR PARTED FROM THIS WORLD”. THE MULTIVALENT DREAM SCAPE OF MYŌE SHŌNIN

The article focuses on the dreamscape of Japanese Buddhist monk Myōe shōnin and on the multiple valences of his dreams, analyzed alongside the cultural, religious, and socio-political dynamics of his time. Attention is also paid to the interconnections between dreams, impermanence, and the intensification of knowledge within a Buddhist context

Chapter Japanese shōjin ryōri: the green competition from Buddhist temples to TV shows

Registered in 2013 by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as Intangible Cultural Heritage, washoku, the “traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese,” includes the so-called shōjin ryōri, an expression dated to the early modern period and related to the Buddhist avoidance of meat eating. Since its early appearance, shōjin ryōri has undergone a variety of changes, and its evolution up to contemporary times is relevant to Japan’s cultural history. Traditionally, vegetables (sōjimono) were not thought of as precious or tasty ingredients. However, during the Kamakura period (1185–1333), the introduction of vegetarian dishes made to resemble fish and fowl, both in shape and flavor -- the so-called modoki ryōri-- attracted people's attention, contributing to the spread within Kyoto and the Japanese archipelago of a tastier and aesthetically pleasing Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Throughout the 15th century local specialties and banquet cooking culture were extremely important: mountain products were generally still deemed inferior compared to sea and river ones, but in a text belonging to the irui gassen mono genre, the Shōjin gyorui monogatari, the reader witnesses the triumph of vegetables over the army of fish and animals. During the Meiji era (1868–1912), Buddhist vegetarianism faced the rise of a different culinary culture, whereby eating (beef) meat turned into a symbol for physical strength, both the individual one of young male citizens and the collective one of Japan as a new-born nation. Even part of the Buddhist clergy chose to embrace the meat-eating culture. Today, shōjin ryōri coexists with vegetarian choices based on different theoretical tenets and is promoted by NHK Television within programs designed for a global audience and aimed to advocate the Cool Japan strategy as well as in TV shows like Yamato amadera shōjin nikki, focused on the everyday (cooking) life of Buddhist nuns in a secluded temple within Nara prefecture. While encouraging local (and Buddhist) vegetarian food literacy, this program also fulfills the government agenda in terms of rural rejuvenation policies and the promotion of washoku (which includes shōjin ryōri) as a brand to be popularized both within and outside Japan

Incremental Predictive Process Monitoring: How to Deal with the Variability of Real Environments

A characteristic of existing predictive process monitoring techniques is to first construct a predictive model based on past process executions, and then use it to predict the future of new ongoing cases, without the possibility of updating it with new cases when they complete their execution. This can make predictive process monitoring too rigid to deal with the variability of processes working in real environments that continuously evolve and/or exhibit new variant behaviors over time. As a solution to this problem, we propose the use of algorithms that allow the incremental construction of the predictive model. These incremental learning algorithms update the model whenever new cases become available so that the predictive model evolves over time to fit the current circumstances. The algorithms have been implemented using different case encoding strategies and evaluated on a number of real and synthetic datasets. The results provide a first evidence of the potential of incremental learning strategies for predicting process monitoring in real environments, and of the impact of different case encoding strategies in this setting

L’ABC del funerale. Umorismo e satira sul rito funebre nel Giappone contemporaneo

In the 1960s Tamamuro Taijō, observing how funerals had become the main activity of Japanese Buddhism, critically coined the expression “Funeral Buddhism” to refer to Buddhist practices in modern Japan.Later developments led to an increasing process of commodification, in some cases even spectacularisation, of funeral rituals, applied also to real and robotic pets, as well as to people who are still alive.This commodification has been acknowledged and analysed in a humoristic and/or satirical key within contemporary Japanese fiction and cinema. In particular, the article aims to focus on a story written by Matsuura Rieko, entitled The Day of the Funeral (1978), and on the film The Funeral (1984), by internationally acclaimed director Itami Jūzō.Negli anni Sessanta del secolo scorso Tamamuro Taijō osservava criticamente come i riti mortuari fossero divenuti l’attività pressoché esclusiva del buddhismo giapponese di epoca moderna, arrivando a definire quest’ultimo “sōshiki bukkyō”, o buddhismo dei funerali.Ulteriori sviluppi hanno portato a una progressiva commercializzazione, e in alcuni casi persino a una spettacolarizzazione, della cerimonia funebre, oggi riservata anche agli animali domestici — reali e robotici — e ai vivi. Tale tendenza è stata colta e analizzata in chiave umoristica e/o satirica dalla narrativa e dalla cinematografia giapponese. In particolare, saranno presi in esame un racconto di Matsuura Rieko, Il giorno del funerale (1978), e il film Il Funerale (1984) del regista Itami Jūzō

Process Extraction from Text: state of the art and challenges for the future

Automatic Process Discovery aims at developing algorithmic methodologies for the extraction and elicitation of process models as described in data. While Process Discovery from event-log data is a well established area, that has already moved from research to concrete adoption in a mature manner, Process Discovery from text is still a research area at an early stage of development, which rarely scales to real world documents. In this paper we analyze, in a comparative manner, reference state-of-the-art literature, especially for what concerns the techniques used, the process elements extracted and the evaluations performed. As a result of the analysis we discuss important limitations that hamper the exploitation of recent Natural Language Processing techniques in this field and we discuss fundamental limitations and challenges for the future concerning the datasets, the techniques, the experimental evaluations, and the pipelines currently adopted and to be developed in the future

A “confucian” Epaminondas in Meiji Japan

Cette étude est construite autour du roman politique Sebe meishi. Keikoku bidan (Young Politicians of Thebes: Inspiring Instances of Good Statesmanship, 1883-84. [ Jeunes hommes politiques de Thèbes: une belle histoire de gouvernement], écrit par Yano Ryūkei dans les premières années de l’ère japonaise de Meiji. C’est à ce moment, en effet, que plusieurs intellectuels se sont tournés vers les idées et les institutions occidentales pour y puiser des modèles culturels et politiques, en vue d’une modernisation du Japon. Dans le roman politique de Yano, les actions accomplies dans la cité de Thèbes par Pélopidas et Épaminondas servent de miroir aux actions des réformistes japonais qui  aspiraient à la mise en place d’un gouvernement constitutionnel dans leur propre pays. En dressant les portraits de Pélopidas et d’Épaminondas, Yano emprunte aux historiens anglais, en particulier à George Grote, mais il transforme en même temps les deux personnages grecs, afin de les rendre plus familiers aux lecteurs japonais.In this paper, I focus on the political novel Sebe meishi. Keikoku bidan (Young Politicians of Thebes: Inspiring Instances of Good Statesmanship, 1883-84), written by Yano Ryūkei in the early years of Japan’s Meiji era, when many intellectuals looked at Western ideas and institutions to find inspiring cultural and political models for a modernising Japan. In Yano’s political novel the deeds of Pelopidas and Epaminondas in Thebes mirror those of Japanese reformists, who aimed to implement a constitutional government in their country. In his portrayal of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, Yano draws from British historiographers, in particular George Grote, and adapts the two Greek characters, in order for Japanese readers to feel more familiar with them

Sottosopra. Ascesa e declino di Long fa tang

Storia della "cura mentale" a Taiwan e analisi dell'asilo mentale buddhista Longfa tang a Gaoxiong, attivo da circa 50 anni e ora chiuso a causa di un'epidemia che ha causato il decesso di alcuni pazienti