Tommy - The Story of an Oppressed Family

Tommy was unhappy. He loved his Mommy and Daddy, but he thought that they didn\u27t love him. Everytime he walked into a room where his Mommy and Daddy were, they would yell at him. Tommy didn\u27t pick up his dirty clothes. Tommy didn\u27t feed his dog. Tommy tore his dungarees. Tommy wasn\u27t nice to his baby sister

Paths and Technologies in the Life Project of People with Disabilities: International Perspectives and Educational Potential

The purpose of this paper was to analyse the core of the quality of life, intended as a complex construct with specific and transversal features. The approach to this issue, by linking it to the great emergency of disability in adulthood, pushes the analysis into deep conceptual pedagogical reflections, which lead the authors\u2019 initial reflections to focus on the theoretical framework related to the quality of life model and subsequently on the identification of some areas of intervention as a tangible application of the quality of life model. New perspectives and innovative potentials for the quality of life of adults with disability are investigated to reach new awareness, which can also be applied in different life contexts. The paper mentions meaningful trajectories, also from the international scene, aiming to guarantee significantly oriented life trajectories

A milestone in the era of esports: The Olympics through the lens of virtual reality

Whether the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ever includes electronic sports (esports) in the official program of the Olympic Games, the popularity of competitive gaming continues to grow—sports present a modern audience powerhouse the world cannot fail to notice. By the end of 2025, the number of viewers in esports is expected to reach 640.8 million and revenue growth of 1,866.2 billion U.S. dollars (Gough, 2022). Over 170 colleges in the United States have established varsity esports teams and offer esports players' educational opportunities, including partial or full scholarships (Lyman, 2022). Esports has also found its place in schools, largely influencing the youth (Rothwell and Shaffer, 2019). Additionally, numerous NBA teams have entered the esports race, and even Usain Bolt owns an esports team (Gardner, 2022), perhaps better illustrating esports' global prevalence. In 2021, the IOC took a step closer to the digital world, creating the Olympic Virtual Series (OVS). The main objective was to promote the development of virtual sports games and engage with the gaming communities worldwide. The OVS consisted of five different games: baseball (Powerful Pro Baseball 2020), cycling (Zwift), rowing (World rowing, using a rowing machine), sailing (Virtual Regatta), and motor racing (Gran Turismo). The IOC fused traditional elements of sport physicality and video games to uniquely incorporate physical activity (PA) to new audiences, connecting “e” and sports through the Olympic Movement (Palaar, 2021). Opposingly, the 2022 Asian Games (postponed to 2023 due to COVID-19) in Hangzhou will be the first official continental competition to include eight esports games played on computers, consoles, and even smartphone devices (Daniels, 2021). While these actions by the IOC certainly took cognizance of esports and presented it to a world audience, none of the included games utilized virtual reality (VR) technology. Compared to the vast library of traditional esports games (e.g., Dota 2, League of Legends, Apex, CS:GO), VR games have a small selection of titles—which has affected the global VR prevalence in the gaming world. However, an excellent example is the VR game Onward, which (according to players) brought new features and a higher skill ceiling than traditional games, in addition to the physical embodiment and “immersiveness” for players (Turkay et al., 2021). VR is defined as an immersive and multisensory experience for the user, with the support of multimedia components such as VR headset and body tracking sensors (Gigante, 1993). As opposed to the 360° VR, which relies on the video recorded by the actual camera and then implemented into the system—this gives users a more realistic view and experience. However, both rely on the physical headset device with or without motion controllers. VR and the gaming industry joint became more evident as VR became a globally more available technology (e.g., Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation) on the market. While the VR player base is not as big as Dota 2 or CS:GO, VR esports have a promising future with exponential growth, forecasted to reach 2.4 billion U.S dollars by 2024 (Clement, 2022). Besides games, VR technology has wide application in the rehabilitation of specific populations, psychology, psychiatry, education, and even sports performance (Lange et al., 2010; Salem and Elokda, 2014; Izard et al., 2018; Michalski et al., 2019; Park et al., 2019; Kaplan et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2021)

Responsabilità e merito nel mondo antico. Retorica, Giustizia, Società. Atti del Convegno di Palermo, 10-11 febbraio 2016

"Merit and Responsability. A Study in Greek Values" è il titolo di un volume pubblicato ormai cinquant’anni or sono da W.H. Adkins. L’autore metteva in evidenza il mancato sviluppo, nel mondo greco, del concetto di responsabilità morale a vantaggio della nozione di arete, postulando la distanza irriducibile tra l’etica greca e quella contemporanea. Quelle di responsabilità e merito sono in effetti categorie su cui la cultura contemporanea si è notevolmente esercitata e continua a interrogarsi, soprattutto in questi anni caratterizzati da un sentimento di incertezza in tutti gli aspetti della nostra esistenza e in particolare nell’agire quotidiano e nelle relazioni sociali. E tuttavia si tratta di un insieme di riflessioni su cui il pensiero antico molto ha ancora da dirci, spesso con una complessità e una sensibilità sorprendenti

Periodic Structural Defects in Graphene Sheets Engineered via Electron Irradiation

Artificially-induced defects in the lattice of graphene are a powerful tool for engineering the properties of the crystal, especially if organized in highly-ordered structures such as periodic arrays. A method to deterministically induce defects in graphene is to irradiate the crystal with low-energy (<20 keV) electrons delivered by a scanning electron microscope. However, the nanometric precision granted by the focused beam can be hindered by the pattern irradiation itself due to the small lateral separation among the elements, which can prevent the generation of sharp features. An accurate analysis of the achievable resolution is thus essential for practical applications. To this end, we investigated patterns generated by low-energy electron irradiation combining atomic force microscopy and micro-Raman spectroscopy measurements. We proved that it is possible to create well-defined periodic patterns with precision of a few tens of nanometers. We found that the defected lines are influenced by electrons back-scattered by the substrate, which limit the achievable resolution. We provided a model that takes into account such substrate effects. The findings of our study allow the design and easily accessible fabrication of graphene devices featuring complex defect engineering, with a remarkable impact on technologies exploiting the increased surface reactivity

Scheduling aircraft landings - the static case

This is the publisher version of the article, obtained from the link below.In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling aircraft (plane) landings at an airport. This problem is one of deciding a landing time for each plane such that each plane lands within a predetermined time window and that separation criteria between the landing of a plane and the landing of all successive planes are respected. We present a mixed-integer zero–one formulation of the problem for the single runway case and extend it to the multiple runway case. We strengthen the linear programming relaxations of these formulations by introducing additional constraints. Throughout, we discuss how our formulations can be used to model a number of issues (choice of objective function, precedence restrictions, restricting the number of landings in a given time period, runway workload balancing) commonly encountered in practice. The problem is solved optimally using linear programming-based tree search. We also present an effective heuristic algorithm for the problem. Computational results for both the heuristic and the optimal algorithm are presented for a number of test problems involving up to 50 planes and four runways.J.E.Beasley. would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia

Responsabilit\ue0 e merito nel mondo antico. Retorica, Giustizia, Societ\ue0. Atti del Convegno di Palermo, 10-11 febbraio 2016

"Merit and Responsability. A Study in Greek Values" \ue8 il titolo di un volume pubblicato ormai cinquant\u2019anni or sono da W.H. Adkins. L\u2019autore metteva in evidenza il mancato sviluppo, nel mondo greco, del concetto di responsabilit\ue0 morale a vantaggio della nozione di arete, postulando la distanza irriducibile tra l\u2019etica greca e quella contemporanea. Quelle di responsabilit\ue0 e merito sono in effetti categorie su cui la cultura contemporanea si \ue8 notevolmente esercitata e continua a interrogarsi, soprattutto in questi anni caratterizzati da un sentimento di incertezza in tutti gli aspetti della nostra esistenza e in particolare nell\u2019agire quotidiano e nelle relazioni sociali. E tuttavia si tratta di un insieme di riflessioni su cui il pensiero antico molto ha ancora da dirci, spesso con una complessit\ue0 e una sensibilit\ue0 sorprendenti