Evaluating automatic cross-domain Dutch semantic role annotation

In this paper we present the first corpus where one million Dutch words from a variety of text genres have been annotated with semantic roles. 500K have been completely manually verified and used as training material to automatically label another 500K. All data has been annotated following an adapted version of the PropBank guidelines. The corpus’s rich text type diversity and the availability of manually verified syntactic dependency structures allowed us to experiment with an existing semantic role labeler for Dutch. In order to test the system’s portability across various domains, we experimented with training on individual domains and compared this with training on multiple domains by adding more data. Our results show that training on large data sets is necessary but that including genre-specific training material is also crucial to optimize classification. We observed that a small amount of in-domain training data is already sufficient to improve our semantic role labeler

Age Friendly Characteristics and Sense of Community of an Italian City: The Case of Macerata

The paper presents a study about the city of Macerata, as a representative case of an urban community in the Marche Region, Italy. The aim of this paper is to assess the level of its age-friendliness by means of a quantitative analysis based on a questionnaire that relies on the well-established eight AFC domains proposed by the WHO. In addition, the sense of community (SOC) is investigated and how the older residents relate to it. Studies that analyze age-friendly Italian cities in relation to elder outcomes are limited. The paper contributes to fill this gap, and the findings reveal that the elderly respondents are not particularly satisfied about the services and the urban infrastructure of the city but show nevertheless a sense of community. It might be the combination of urban and rural features that contributes to the longevity and strong sense of community of the city despite its poor infrastructure and average services

Fostering sustainable urban futures through Twitter public space

The smart city is based on digital data that can contribute to a better understanding and efficient management of urban processes. These data, which are produced by devices and citizens through online and social media activities, are usually managed and exploited by big tech companies. We claim that digital sustainability is tightly connected to environmental sustainability. Citizens have lost control over data-driven processes that are happening on a global arena. However, communities, through their online communication, can contribute to an alternative narrative and the creation of public spaces that constitute the premise to build more sustainable cities. In this paper, a social media analysis of the Twitter communication of two grassroots communities (i.e., creative skilled migrants living in Amsterdam and Dutch elderly) is carried out. It is based on a language analysis of geo-tagged data, combined with a social network analysis that show the contribution of these two groups to the smart city debate. Their different voices can give rise to more sustainable cities in which social equity and environmental protection become priority themes. These two communities exploit the available Twitter space, as a contact zone. Even though there might not be a clear political purpose in their narrative, the interaction between the local and global level of communication (mediated by social networks) gives rise to a space that stimulates participation, and has the potential to contribute to a more sustainable urban future

The Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning Project

Berlanga, A. J., Van Rosmalen, P., Trausan-Matu, S., Monachesi, P., & Burek, G. (2009). The Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning Project. In I. Aedo., N. Chen, Kinshuk, D. Sampson & L. Zaitseva (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT2009) (pp. 624-625). July, 14-18, 2009, Riga, Latvia: IEEE.This poster presents an ongoing European project: Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning (LTfLL). The aim of the project is to create a next-generation of support and advice services to enhance individual and collaborative building of competences and knowledge creation in educational and organizational settings. The project makes extensive use of language technologies and cognitive models in the services to face a number of learning specific problems

D7.4 Validation 4

Armitt, G., Stoyanov, S., Hensgens, J., Smithies, A., Braidman, I., Mauerhofer, C., Osenova, P., Simov, K., Berlanga, A. J., Van Bruggen, J., Greller, W., Rebedea, T., Posea, V., Trausan-Matu, S., Dupre, D., Salem, H., Dessus, P., Loiseau, M., Westerhout, E., Monachesi, P., Koblische, R., Hoisl, B., Haley, D., & Wild, F. (2011). D7.4 Validation 4. LTfLL-project.This deliverable describes the objectives, approach, planning and results of the third pilot round, in which both individual and threaded services underwent validation. The two goals of this round were to provide input to the LTfLL exploitation plan and roadmap (deliverable 2.5). 531 participants (316 learners) took part in the pilots, which used LTfLL services based on five different languages. The average timespan of the pilots was three weeks and involved learners, tutors, teaching managers, the LTfLL team and Technology Enhanced Learning experts. The validation approach was based on Prototypical Validation Topics derived from the Round 2 validation topics, which refocused the validation topics on exploitation and allowed conclusions to be drawn across all services. Results demonstrated the areas of strength and weakness of each service, informing the selling points and barriers to adoption within the exploitation strategy, as well as suggesting possible further contexts of use. All services were noted to have high relevance in addressing burning issues for organizations, but further improvements to accuracy from a user viewpoint are required. Results on future enhancements to improve likelihood of adoption contribute to the roadmap. Results also provide an indication of each service's current readiness for adoption and provided insights into transferability issues. The overall conclusion is that some LTfLL services are more ready than others for adoption now, with some being currently more suited to sustainability in research settings.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the LTfLL STREP that is funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. Contract 212578 [http://www.ltfll-project.org

An environmental dependence of the physical and structural properties in the Hydra cluster galaxies

The nearby Hydra cluster (∼50 Mpc) is an ideal laboratory to understand, in detail, the influence of the environment on the morphology and quenching of galaxies in dense environments. We study the Hydra cluster galaxies in the inner regions (1R200) of the cluster using data from the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey, which uses 12 narrow and broad-band filters in the visible region of the spectrum. We analyse structural (Sérsic index, effective radius) and physical (colours, stellar masses, and star formation rates) properties. Based on this analysis, we find that ∼88 per cent of the Hydra cluster galaxies are quenched. Using the Dressler–Schectman test approach, we also find that the cluster shows possible substructures. Our analysis of the phase-space diagram together with density-based spatial clustering algorithm indicates that Hydra shows an additional substructure that appears to be in front of the cluster centre, which is still falling into it. Our results, thus, suggest that the Hydra cluster might not be relaxed. We analyse the median Sérsic index as a function of wavelength and find that for red [(u − r) ≥2.3] and early-type galaxies it displays a slight increase towards redder filters (13 and 18 per cent, for red and early type, respectively), whereas for blue + green [(u − r)<2.3] galaxies it remains constant. Late-type galaxies show a small decrease of the median Sérsic index towards redder filters. Also, the Sérsic index of galaxies, and thus their structural properties, do not significantly vary as a function of clustercentric distance and density within the cluster; and this is the case regardless of the filter.CL-D acknowledges scholarship from CONICYT-PFCHA/Doctorado Nacional/2019-21191938. CL-D and AM acknowledge support from FONDECYT Regular grant 1181797. CL-D acknowledges also the support given by the ‘Vicerrectoría de Investigacion de la Universidad de La Serena’ program ‘Apoyo al fortalecimiento de grupos de investigacion’. CL-D and AC acknowledges to Steven Bamford and Boris Haeussler with the MegaMorph project. CL-D and DP acknowledge support from fellowship ‘Becas Doctorales Institucionales ULS’, granted by the ‘Vicerrectoría de Investigacion y Postgrado de la Universidad de La Serena’. AM and DP acknowledge funding from the Max Planck Society through a ‘Partner Group’ grant. DP acknowledges support from FONDECYT Regular grant 1181264. This work has used the computing facilities of the Laboratory of Astroinformatics (Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciencias Atmosféricas, Departamento de Astronomia/USP, NAT/Unicsul), whose purchase was made possible by FAPESP (grant 2009/54006-4) and the INCT-A. YJ acknowledges financial support from CONICYT PAI (Concurso Nacional de Inserción en la Academia 2017) No. 79170132 and FONDECYT Iniciación 2018 No. 11180558. LS thanks the FAPESP scholarship grant 2016/21664-2. AAC acknowledges support from FAPERJ (grant E26/203.186/2016), CNPq (grants 304971/2016-2 and 401669/2016-5), and the Universidad de Alicante (contract UATALENTO18-02). AMB thanks the FAPESP scholarship grant 2014/11806-9. RA acknowedges support from ANID FONDECYT Regular grant 1202007

Association of kidney disease measures with risk of renal function worsening in patients with type 1 diabetes

Background: Albuminuria has been classically considered a marker of kidney damage progression in diabetic patients and it is routinely assessed to monitor kidney function. However, the role of a mild GFR reduction on the development of stage 653 CKD has been less explored in type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients. Aim of the present study was to evaluate the prognostic role of kidney disease measures, namely albuminuria and reduced GFR, on the development of stage 653 CKD in a large cohort of patients affected by T1DM. Methods: A total of 4284 patients affected by T1DM followed-up at 76 diabetes centers participating to the Italian Association of Clinical Diabetologists (Associazione Medici Diabetologi, AMD) initiative constitutes the study population. Urinary albumin excretion (ACR) and estimated GFR (eGFR) were retrieved and analyzed. The incidence of stage 653 CKD (eGFR &lt; 60 mL/min/1.73 m2) or eGFR reduction &gt; 30% from baseline was evaluated. Results: The mean estimated GFR was 98 \ub1 17 mL/min/1.73m2 and the proportion of patients with albuminuria was 15.3% (n = 654) at baseline. About 8% (n = 337) of patients developed one of the two renal endpoints during the 4-year follow-up period. Age, albuminuria (micro or macro) and baseline eGFR &lt; 90 ml/min/m2 were independent risk factors for stage 653 CKD and renal function worsening. When compared to patients with eGFR &gt; 90 ml/min/1.73m2 and normoalbuminuria, those with albuminuria at baseline had a 1.69 greater risk of reaching stage 3 CKD, while patients with mild eGFR reduction (i.e. eGFR between 90 and 60 mL/min/1.73 m2) show a 3.81 greater risk that rose to 8.24 for those patients with albuminuria and mild eGFR reduction at baseline. Conclusions: Albuminuria and eGFR reduction represent independent risk factors for incident stage 653 CKD in T1DM patients. The simultaneous occurrence of reduced eGFR and albuminuria have a synergistic effect on renal function worsening

Emergenza sismica nel centro Italia 2016-2017. Secondo rapporto del gruppo operativo SISMIKO. Sviluppo e mantenimento della rete sismica mobile a seguito del terremoto di Amatrice Mw 6.0 (24 agosto 2016, Italia centrale)

La rete sismica temporanea installata dal gruppo operativo INGV SISMIKO a seguito del terremoto del 24 agosto 2016 tra i Monti della Laga e la Valnerina, è stata ampliata nel settore settentrionale a seguito dei forti terremoti avvenuti alla fine del mese di ottobre 2016. Successivamente alle due scosse di Mw 5.4 e 5.9 che il 26 ottobre hanno interessato l’area al confine Marche-Umbria tra i Comuni di Castelsantangelo sul Nera (MC), Norcia (PG) e Arquata del Tronto (AP), la geometria della rete è stata estesa di circa 25 km verso nord con l’attivazione di ulteriori tre stazioni temporanee di cui una, da subito, disposta per la trasmissione dei dati in tempo reale e per l’inserimento nel sistema di sorveglianza sismica dell’Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). Un’ultima stazione è stata inoltre installata nei pressi di Campello del Clitunno in provincia di Perugia ad ovest della sequenza, a seguito del terremoto Mw 6.5 che la mattina del 30 ottobre ha interessato l’intera area già fortemente provata dalla sequenza in corso; questo è stato il più forte terremoto registrato negli ultimi 30 in Italia. A circa 5 mesi dall’inizio dell’emergenza sismica, la rete temporanea conta quindi 23 stazioni che da metà dicembre sono tutte trasmesse in tempo reale ai diversi centri di acquisizione INGV, ovvero Milano, Ancona e Grottaminarda ma soprattutto Roma dove i dati vengono contestualmente archiviati nell’European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA) e integrati nel sistema di monitoraggio e sorveglianza sismica dell’INGV; per la sorveglianza sono incluse solo parte delle stazioni. Nelle ultime settimane, le attività di campagna del gruppo operativo SISMIKO sono state costantemente focalizzate alla cura e alla manutenzione della strumentazione per garantire la continuità della trasmissione e dell’acquisizione dei dati, a volte compromesse da malfunzionamenti legati al maltempo. Alla data di aggiornamento del presente report, non è ancora stata decretata una dismissione o una rimodulazione della geometria della rete sismica temporanea, anche in considerazione della attività sismica in corso a tutt’oggi molto sostenuta. Tutti i dati acquisiti dalle stazioni temporanee SISMIKO, sono distribuiti senza alcun vincolo, al pari dei dati della Rete Sismica Nazionale (RSN, codice di rete IV), ed utilizzati per prodotti scientifici in tempo reale (localizzazioni di sala, calcolo dei Time Domain Moment Tensor -TDMT delle ShakeMaps, ecc) e per l’aggiornamento dei database dell’INGV come l’Italian Seismological Instrumental and Parametric Database (ISIDe) con la revisione del Bollettino Sismico Italiano (BSI), dell’INGV Strong Motion Data (ISMD) e dell’ITalian ACcelerometric Archive (ITACA), dell’European-Mediterranean Regional Centroid Moment Tensors (RCMT) e nei lavori scientifici che utilizzano forme d’onda velocimetriche ed accelerometriche (ri- localizzazioni, studi della sorgente sismica ecc.).Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)Published1SR. TERREMOTI - Servizi e ricerca per la Societ