L’insediamento longobardo a Chiusi e nella Valdichiana

The present research work intends to study the longobard settlement in the area of Chiusi, outlining its historical origins during the struggles between Byzantines and Longobards in Tuscany. The working method chosen to study the early-medieval territory of Chiusi can be defined as “combinatory”, because we made use of a wide range of data which came from very different sources, but all convergent to our purpose. The main sources we refer to are the written sources, which are bibliographical and documentary, and, of course, all the data which comes from the archaeological investigations. The early-medieval storiographical and archaeological informations about the longobard settlement in Tuscany have just in part explained the forms and the different periods of the first german settlements. The few late excavations and the scattering of the archaeological informations of the past researches did not allow to make an exhaustive cartographic description of the longobard settling in the region. Lucca and Chiusi, in Tuscany, are the most ancient longobard dukedoms. The researches in the areas of Chiusi and Valdichiana, even if scientifically important, have been limited to few aspects of the longobard archaeology, whithout giving a territorial reading of the connected insediative phenomenons. Through the analysis of the historical sources and the contemporary storiographic studies about the longobard invasion, it has been demonstrated the hypothesis of the presence of longobard mercenaries in Chiusi immediately after the death of King Alboino (572). It has also been supported that the town of Chiusi, most likely, had been part of the longobard Kingdom under King Agilulfo (591-615). The current research intended to make the census of the longobard evidences inside and outside the town of Chiusi. Various necropolis have been found outside the town but only the tombs of Arcisa preserved evidences which can be referred to the period of the immigration. Inside the town have been excavated several tombs whose objects instead can be dated from the first half of the VII century. The archaeological evidences, which coincide chronologically with the historical witnesses, support that Chiusi was probably submitted to the longobard Kingdom by Agilulfo’s army in one of the two moments in which he went from Valdichiana to conquer Perugia, in 594, or the towns of Bagnoregio and Orvieto, in 605. As regards the inhabitated area of Chiusi during the Longobard age, the research has presented the scientific unpublished results of two archaeological urban excavations, that are the Monastery of S. Francesco and the domus of via de’ Longobardi. The results of the current research are been placed on an “archaeological map” of the territory of Chiusi during the longobard age. We wanted to integrate the comparison between the current knowledges on the Longobards of Chiusi with the historical and archaeological frame of the settlings around the town, describing the topograhic network of the settlings surrounding the town. This network has been then completed by the toponomastic informations and the historical reconstruction of the contemporary viability. In conclusion we can demonstrate that the main role of the Longobards of Chiusi and Valdichiana was to get control over the viability of Cassia, in its north-south direction, together with their consanguineous of Arezzo. The other important role of the Longobards of Chiusi was to defend the lines of penetration of possible byzantin counter-offensives from Umbria and the dukedom of Rome to the centre of Tuscany, towards the vital arterial road of the longobard Tuscia which would be then called Francigena

Towards Robust Velocity and Position Estimation of Opponents for Autonomous Racing Using Low-Power Radar

This paper presents the design and development of an intelligent subsystem that includes a novel low-power radar sensor integrated into an autonomous racing perception pipeline to robustly estimate the position and velocity of dynamic obstacles. The proposed system, based on the Infineon BGT60TR13D radar, is evaluated in a real-world scenario with scaled race cars. The paper explores the benefits and limitations of using such a sensor subsystem and draws conclusions based on field-collected data. The results demonstrate a tracking error up to 0.21 +- 0.29 m in distance estimation and 0.39 +- 0.19 m/s in velocity estimation, despite the power consumption in the range of 10s of milliwatts. The presented system provides complementary information to other sensors such as LiDAR and camera, and can be used in a wide range of applications beyond autonomous racing

Metacognitive Reading Strategy and Emerging Reading Comprehension in Students With Intellectual Disabilities

This article ventures to address the gap in special education practices by providing a metacognitive reading strategy to support the emerging reading comprehension skills of kindergarten students with intellectual disabilities. Historically, students with intellectual disabilities have low reading comprehension skills that can impede their overall academic success. There is a gap in practice regarding the identification and effective use of evidence-based reading comprehension instructional strategies for students with intellectual disabilities. Guided by Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s constructivist theories, the purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a metacognitive reading strategy on the emerging reading comprehension (ERC) skills of kindergarten students with intellectual disabilities. A single-participant, multiple baseline design with graphical visual analysis was used across four kindergarten students with intellectual disabilities to illustrate the influence of the reading intervention. All four kindergarten students showed increases in their ERC skills after the completion of the intervention. An effect-size statistic was calculated to measure the improvement in percentage rate of correct responses between each participant’s baseline and intervention phase. The effect-size results indicated a 60% to 80% improvement rate difference. Therefore, for these kindergartners, the metacognitive reading strategy significantly increased the ERC skills of the participants. The implications for social change include providing teachers with effective metacognitive instructional strategies for ERC skills and for improving ERC skills among students with intellectual disabilities, thus allowing intellectual disability students greater opportunity to benefit from curriculum and instruction over time

Articulación entre escuela primaria y universidad: primera aproximación al inglés a partir de la lectura

Este relato pretende dar cuenta de una experiencia de articulación entre estudiantes y docentes de la escuela primaria 702 de adultos de Villa Tesei y estudiantes y docentes universitarios del profesorado de inglés de la Universidad Nacional de Hurlingham. La experiencia surgió a partir de la convocatoria de la directora de dicha escuela, que presta algunas de sus aulas a la universidad, para que se brinden “horas de inglés” a los estudiantes de los dos grupos que cursaban sus clases en dicho establecimiento. A partir de este intercambio se diseñó un proyecto de extensión para hacer una prueba piloto durante el último trimestre de 2017 en el que se llevó a cabo una primera aproximación al inglés a partir de la lectura de textos auténticos. Las clases estuvieron a cargo de las autoras del proyecto como docentes responsables del espacio de inglés como “área curricular especial”, y de la formación de futuros docentes en sus prácticas pre-profesionales, y de cinco estudiantes del primer año del profesorado de inglés que dieron sus primeros pasos en la observación de clases y las prácticas docentes altamente controladas. Los resultados nos dan algunas pautas para la continuación del proyecto a lo largo del presente año.Trabajo publicado en Giordano, Carlos José y Morandi, Glenda (comps.). Memorias de las 2º Jornadas sobre las Prácticas Docentes en la Universidad Pública. La enseñanza universitaria a 100 años de la reforma: legados, transformaciones y compromisos. Universidad Nacional de La Plata: La Plata, 2019.Presidenci

Assessing the Robustness of LiDAR, Radar and Depth Cameras Against Ill-Reflecting Surfaces in Autonomous Vehicles: An Experimental Study

Range-measuring sensors play a critical role in autonomous driving systems. While LiDAR technology has been dominant, its vulnerability to adverse weather conditions is well-documented. This paper focuses on secondary adverse conditions and the implications of ill-reflective surfaces on range measurement sensors. We assess the influence of this condition on the three primary ranging modalities used in autonomous mobile robotics: LiDAR, RADAR, and Depth-Camera. Based on accurate experimental evaluation the papers findings reveal that under ill-reflectivity, LiDAR ranging performance drops significantly to 33% of its nominal operating conditions, whereas RADAR and Depth-Cameras maintain up to 100% of their nominal distance ranging capabilities. Additionally, we demonstrate on a 1:10 scaled autonomous racecar how ill-reflectivity adversely impacts downstream robotics tasks, highlighting the necessity for robust range sensing in autonomous driving.Comment: Accepted at IEEE 9th World Forum on Internet of Thing

Articulación entre escuela primaria y universidad: primera aproximación al inglés a partir de la lectura

Este relato pretende dar cuenta de una experiencia de articulación entre estudiantes y docentes de la escuela primaria 702 de adultos de Villa Tesei y estudiantes y docentes universitarios del profesorado de inglés de la Universidad Nacional de Hurlingham. La experiencia surgió a partir de la convocatoria de la directora de dicha escuela, que presta algunas de sus aulas a la universidad, para que se brinden “horas de inglés” a los estudiantes de los dos grupos que cursaban sus clases en dicho establecimiento. A partir de este intercambio se diseñó un proyecto de extensión para hacer una prueba piloto durante el último trimestre de 2017 en el que se llevó a cabo una primera aproximación al inglés a partir de la lectura de textos auténticos. Las clases estuvieron a cargo de las autoras del proyecto como docentes responsables del espacio de inglés como “área curricular especial”, y de la formación de futuros docentes en sus prácticas pre-profesionales, y de cinco estudiantes del primer año del profesorado de inglés que dieron sus primeros pasos en la observación de clases y las prácticas docentes altamente controladas. Los resultados nos dan algunas pautas para la continuación del proyecto a lo largo del presente año.Trabajo publicado en Giordano, Carlos José y Morandi, Glenda (comps.). Memorias de las 2º Jornadas sobre las Prácticas Docentes en la Universidad Pública. La enseñanza universitaria a 100 años de la reforma: legados, transformaciones y compromisos. Universidad Nacional de La Plata: La Plata, 2019.Presidenci

In-Ear-Voice: Towards Milli-Watt Audio Enhancement With Bone-Conduction Microphones for In-Ear Sensing Platforms

The recent ubiquitous adoption of remote conferencing has been accompanied by omnipresent frustration with distorted or otherwise unclear voice communication. Audio enhancement can compensate for low-quality input signals from, for example, small true wireless earbuds, by applying noise suppression techniques. Such processing relies on voice activity detection (VAD) with low latency and the added capability of discriminating the wearer's voice from others - a task of significant computational complexity. The tight energy budget of devices as small as modern earphones, however, requires any system attempting to tackle this problem to do so with minimal power and processing overhead, while not relying on speaker-specific voice samples and training due to usability concerns. This paper presents the design and implementation of a custom research platform for low-power wireless earbuds based on novel, commercial, MEMS bone-conduction microphones. Such microphones can record the wearer's speech with much greater isolation, enabling personalized voice activity detection and further audio enhancement applications. Furthermore, the paper accurately evaluates a proposed low-power personalized speech detection algorithm based on bone conduction data and a recurrent neural network running on the implemented research platform. This algorithm is compared to an approach based on traditional microphone input. The performance of the bone conduction system, achieving detection of speech within 12.8ms at an accuracy of 95\% is evaluated. Different SoC choices are contrasted, with the final implementation based on the cutting-edge Ambiq Apollo 4 Blue SoC achieving 2.64mW average power consumption at 14uJ per inference, reaching 43h of battery life on a miniature 32mAh li-ion cell and without duty cycling

Very slightly anomalous leakage of CO2, CH4 and radon along the main activated faults of the strong L'Aquila earthquake (Magnitude 6.3, Italy). Implications for risk assessment monitoring tools & public acceptance of CO2 and CH4 underground storage.

Abstract The 2009-2010 L'Aquila seismic sequence is still slightly occurring along the central Apenninic Belt (August 2010), spanning more than one year period. The main- shock (Mw 6.3) occurred on April 6th at 1:32 (UTC). The earthquake was destructive and caused among 300 casualties. The hypocenter has been located at 42.35 °N, 13.38° at a depth of around 10 km. The main shock was preceded by a long seismic sequence starting several months before (i.e., March, 30, 2009 with Mw 4.1; April, 5 with Mw 3.9 and Mw 3.5, a few hours before the main shock). A lot of evidences stress the role of deep fluids pore-pressure evolution–possibly CO2 or brines - as occurred in the past, along seismically activated segments in Apennines. Our geochemical group started to survey the seismically activated area soon after the main-shock, by sampling around 1000 soil gas points and around 80 groundwater points (springs and wells, sampled on monthly basis still ongoing), to help in understanding the activated fault segments geometry and behaviour, as well as leakage patterns at surface (CO2, CH4, Radon and other geogas as He, H2, N2, H2S, O2, etc …), in the main sector of the activated seismic sequence, not far from a deep natural CO2 reservoir underground (termomethamorphic CO2 from carbonate diagenesis), degassing at surface only over the Cotilia-Canetra area, 20 km NW from the seismically activated area. The work highlighted that geochemical measurements on soils are very powerful to discriminate the activated seismogenic segments at surface, their jointing belt, as well as co-seismic depocenter of deformation. Mostly where the measured "threshold" magnitude of earthquakes (around 6), involve that the superficial effects could be absent or masked, our geochemical method demonstrated to be strategic, and we wish to use these methods in CO2 analogues/ CO2 reservoir studies abroad, after done in Weyburn. The highlighted geochemical - slight but clear anomalies are, in any case, not dangerous for the human health and keep away the fear around the CO2–CH4 bursts or explosions during strong earthquakes, as the L'Aquila one, when these gases are stored naturally/industrially underground in the vicinity (1–2 km deep). These findings are not new for these kind of Italian seismically activated faults and are very useful for the CO2–CH4 geological storage public acceptance: Not necessarily (rarely or never) these geogas escape abruptly from underground along strongly activated faults

Very slightly anomalous leakage of CO2, CH4 and radon along the main activated faults of the strong L’Aquila earthquake (Magnitude 6.3, Italy). Implications for risk assessment monitoring tools & public acceptance of CO2 and CH4 underground storage.

The 2009-2010 L'Aquila seismic sequence is still slightly occurring along the central Apenninic Belt (August 2010), spanning more than one year period. The main- shock (Mw 6.3) occurred on April 6th at 1:32 (UTC). The earthquake was destructive and caused among 300 casualties. The hypocenter has been located at 42.35°N, 13.38° at a depth of around 10 km. The main shock was preceded by a long seismic sequence starting several months before (i.e., March, 30, 2009 with Mw 4.1; April, 5 with Mw 3.9 and Mw 3.5, a few hours before the main shock). A lot of evidences stress the role of deep fluids porepressure evolution – possibly CO2 or brines - as occurred in the past, along seismically activated segments in Apennines. Our geochemical group started to survey the seismically activated area soon after the main-shock, by sampling around 1000 soil gas points and around 80 groundwater points (springs and wells, sampled on monthly basis still ongoing), to help in understanding the activated fault segments geometry and behaviour, as well as leakage patterns at surface (CO2, CH4, Radon and other geogas as He, H2, N2, H2S, O2, etc...), in the main sector of the activated seismic sequence, not far from a deep natural CO2 reservoir underground (termomethamorphic CO2 from carbonate diagenesis), degassing at surface only over the Cotilia-Canetra area, 20 km NW from the seismically activated area. The work highlighted that geochemical measurements on soils are very powerful to discriminate the activated seismogenic segments at surface, their jointing belt, as well as co-seismic depocenter of deformation. Mostly where the measured “threshold” magnitude of earthquakes (around 6), involve that the superficial effects could be absent or masked, our geochemical method demonstrated to be strategic, and we wish to use these methods in CO2 analogues/CO2 reservoir studies abroad, after done in Weyburn. The highlighted geochemical -slight but clear- anomalies are, in any case, not dangerous for the human health and keep away the fear around the CO2-CH4 bursts or explosions during strong earthquakes, as the L'Aquila one, when these gases are stored naturally/industrially underground in the vicinity (1-2 km deep). These findings are not new for these kind of Italian seismically activated faults and are very useful for the CO2- CH4 geological storage public acceptance: not necessarily (rarely or never) these geogas escape abruptly from underground along strongly activated faults

Optimizing IoT-Based Asset and Utilization Tracking: Efficient Activity Classification with MiniRocket on Resource-Constrained Devices

This paper introduces an effective solution for retrofitting construction power tools with low-power IoT to enable accurate activity classification. We address the challenge of distinguishing between when a power tool is being moved and when it is actually being used. To achieve classification accuracy and power consumption preservation a newly released algorithm called MiniRocket was employed. Known for its accuracy, scalability, and fast training for time-series classification, in this paper, it is proposed as a TinyML algorithm for inference on resource-constrained IoT devices. The paper demonstrates the portability and performance of MiniRocket on a resource-constrained, ultra-low power sensor node for floating-point and fixed-point arithmetic, matching up to 1% of the floating-point accuracy. The hyperparameters of the algorithm have been optimized for the task at hand to find a Pareto point that balances memory usage, accuracy and energy consumption. For the classification problem, we rely on an accelerometer as the sole sensor source, and BLE for data transmission. Extensive real-world construction data, using 16 different power tools, were collected, labeled, and used to validate the algorithm's performance directly embedded in the IoT device. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed solution achieves an accuracy of 96.9% in distinguishing between real usage status and other motion statuses while consuming only 7kB of flash and 3kB of RAM. The final application exhibits an average current consumption of less than 15{\mu}W for the whole system, resulting in battery life performance ranging from 3 to 9 years depending on the battery capacity (250-500mAh) and the number of power tool usage hours (100-1500h)