A Nature-Inspired Green–Blue Solution: Incorporating a Fog Harvesting Technique into Urban Green Wall Design

This research aims to explore the use of vegetation and nets to collect water from fog on facades to meet the needs of buildings’ functional requirements, particularly outdoor thermal comfort, water demands, and encouraging sustainability by suggesting a new architectural green–blue wall system. The system is posited to be applicable within an urban context, given its minimal spatial requirements and adaptability to existing structures. However, similar challenges to those encountered by green walls are anticipated, wherein the provision of sustainable benefits is offset by the demands of maintenance and associated additional costs. For this reason, this paper is mainly divided into two parts: in the first part, green facades are explained, referring to their effect on urban environment, including thermal comfort, pollution absorption, noise pollution, and well-being, as well as types of plants to apply on green walls; the second part focuses on the fog collector as an irrigation system for green walls, analyzing its components, structure, and fabric, to identify its development margins in the construction industry. Fog harvesting initiatives predominantly focus on rural regions to cater to agricultural demands; however, limiting fog harvesting to agricultural settings is considered insufficient, as it represents a crucial solution for addressing water challenges in specific urban environments. Nevertheless, it is worth investigating the fog collector’s potential for integrating water supply in urban environments as well. The study focuses on exploring the environmental benefits of fog harvesting and green walls, particularly through their combined implementation. The proposed review is significant for guiding the integration of a device into green facades, ensuring water self-sufficiency while concurrently addressing air purification, noise reduction, and thermal comfort for pedestrians and urban inhabitants. Nevertheless, it is worth investigating the fog collector’s potential for integrating water supply in urban environments as well. The proposed review is, therefore, useful for integrating a device represented by the fog harvesting system, also identified in the text as the blue system, into the design of green facades, identified in the text as the green system, integrating the blue element in the design of the green wall to make them water self-sufficient and at the same time purifying the air, reducing noise pollution, or giving thermal comfort to pedestrians and inhabitants of the urban context.his research was funded by the Global Platform of Syrian Students and financed by FCT (Grant SFRH/BD/2018)/MCTES through national 406 funds (PIDDAC) under the R&D Centre for Territory, Environment and Construction (CTAC), 407 under reference UID/04047/2020 and Landscapes, Heritage and Territory Laboratory (Lab2PT) 408 Center of Design and Technology (DeTech)

Climate Change and Soil Health: Explainable Artificial Intelligence Reveals Microbiome Response to Warming

Climate change presents an unprecedented global challenge, demanding collective action to both mitigate its effects and adapt to its consequences. Soil health and function are profoundly impacted by climate change, particularly evident in the sensitivity of soil microbial respiration to warming, known as Q10. Q10 measures the rate of microbial respiration’s increase with a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius, playing a pivotal role in understanding soil carbon dynamics in response to climate change. Leveraging machine learning techniques, particularly explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), offers a promising avenue to analyze complex data and identify biomarkers crucial for developing innovative climate change mitigation strategies. This research aims to evaluate the extent to which chemical, physical, and microbiological soil characteristics are associated with high or low Q10 values, utilizing XAI approaches. The Extra Trees Classifier algorithm was employed, yielding an average accuracy of (Formula presented.), an average AUCROC of (Formula presented.), and an average AUCPRC of (Formula presented.). Additionally, through XAI techniques, we elucidate the significant features contributing to the prediction of Q10 classes. The XAI analysis shows that the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration increases with microbiome variables but decreases with non-microbiome variables beyond a threshold. Our findings underscore the critical role of the soil microbiome in predicting soil Q10 dynamics, providing valuable insights for developing targeted climate change mitigation strategies

Dancing With Parkinson's Disease: The SI-ROBOTICS Study Protocol

Introduction: Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most frequent causes of disability among older people, characterized by motor disorders, rigidity, and balance problems. Recently, dance has started to be considered an effective exercise for people with PD. In particular, Irish dancing, along with tango and different forms of modern dance, may be a valid strategy to motivate people with PD to perform physical activity. The present protocol aims to implement and evaluate a rehabilitation program based on a new system called “SI-ROBOTICS,” composed of multiple technological components, such as a social robotic platform embedded with an artificial vision setting, a dance-based game, environmental and wearable sensors, and an advanced AI reasoner module. Methods and Analysis: For this study, 20 patients with PD will be recruited. Sixteen therapy sessions of 50 min will be conducted (two training sessions per week, for 8 weeks), involving two patients at a time. Evaluation will be primarily focused on the acceptability of the SI-ROBOTICS system. Moreover, the analysis of the impact on the patients' functional status, gait, balance, fear of falling, cardio-respiratory performance, motor symptoms related to PD, and quality of life, will be considered as secondary outcomes. The trial will start in November 2021 and is expected to end by April 2022. Discussions: The study aims to propose and evaluate a new approach in PD rehabilitation, focused on the use of Irish dancing, together with a new technological system focused on helping the patient perform the dance steps and on collecting kinematic and performance parameters used both by the physiotherapist (for the evaluation and planning of the subsequent sessions) and by the system (to outline the levels of difficulty of the exercise). Ethics and Dissemination: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the IRCCS INRCA. It was recorded in ClinicalTrials.gov on the number NCT05005208. The study findings will be used for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presentations in scientific meetings

Dynamic tailoring of SCORM sequencing and navigation rules

The widespread use of the new information technologies in the teaching sector has driven an ever faster evolution of both technological and methodological tools. The proliferation of standards and specifics for defining pedagogical models, describing resources and drawing the student profile bears clear witness to this phenomenon. However, these specifics are rarely used synergically in virtual learning environments. Aim of the present work is to use the IMS Learner Information Package specifics, together with the Sequencing and Navigation specifics of the SCORM standard, as a means of personalizing the use of LO on an e-learning platform. We present the architecture of an intelligent agent that, when integrated in LMS, can tailor navigation of the learning content to the specific student characteristics

A recommendation technique for cultural heritage hypermedial objects

The ever more widespread use of the Web for knowledge sharing has led to the creation of a wide spectrum of opportunities for employing shared information resources and, at the same time, a gradual increase in the technologies for making these resources available. In this scenario, it is important to define new methods and techniques that can support users’ search activities and selection of the resources corresponding most closely to their needs. The work is situated in the context of research into recommendation methods for defining systems that can suggest to users what hypermedial resource best fits their specific requirements. The paper proposes a recommendation technique that can elicit relations existing within complex domains so as to be able to suggest semantically correlated hypermedial objects to users according to their requests

Architettura Multiagente per Learning Object Repository

Fino a questo momento il lavoro incessante della comunità di e-learning é stato rivolto più alla definizione di standard che garantiscano l’interoperabilità e la riusabilità (informatica) del materiale, piuttosto che alla riusabilità (pedagogica) e alla personalizzazione dei percorsi di apprendimento. Una delle mancanze nel campo della strutturazione dei contenuti é la quantità, ma soprattutto la qualità, delle informazioni pedagogiche che accompagnano il contenuto. Ma come é possibile prescindere dal contesto educativo in cui una determinata risorsa didattica é stata utilizzata? Tutto questo va a discapito sia della qualità del riuso che della personalizzazione dei percorsi di apprendimento. Solitamente quando si pensa ad un processo di e-learning istintivamente si é portati a pensare che questo differisca da un processo di formazione tradizionale da diversi punti di vista. Il lavoro propone, partendo da una proposta di specifiche per la descrizione degli scenari di apprendimento/insegnamento, un modello architetturale di repository al fine di creare una comunità di buone pratiche in cui i docenti non solo ritrovano del materiale didattico da utilizzare, ma anche la collezione di tutte le esperienze di tutti i colleghi che ne hanno già fatto uso

Formative evaluation of a didactic software for acquiring problem solving abilities using Prolog

The Informatics has permeated the educational environments at all levels. In Italian primary schools Informatics teachers present the computer and how it works rather than the programming languages. At present, a deeply discussion about the use of programming languages and, in particular, logic programming in the primary school is ongoing. On the basis of these premises, the paper presents a didactic software, named KidsPro, addressed to pupils attending fifth-grade of primary school. It aims at improving the user problem solving abilities using Prolog. In order to build an effective and efficient software the User-Centred Design approach was used and the paper presents the results of the formative evaluation performed. The results of this pilot study will be used in the further implementation of the software

Un software didattico per imparare la programmazione logica a scuola

La cultura dell’informatica ha coinvolto tutte le scuole di ogni ordine e grado. Il curricolo delle scuole del primo ciclo menziona la tecnologia come uno degli obiettivi formativi fondamentali. Ma quando la tecnologia coincide con l’informatica? Sono poche le esperienze di uso dei linguaggi di programmazione procedurali nelle scuole del primo ciclo, ancor meno le esperienze d’uso dei linguaggi di programmazione logica. Il lavoro presenta il software didattico KidsPro che mira a far acquisire abilità di problem solving attraverso l’uso dell’approccio dichiarativo e del linguaggio di programmazione logica Prolog. I risultati dello studio pilota condotto evidenziano l’efficacia, l’usabilità del sistema e l’efficacia dell’approccio dichiarativo rispetto all’approccio procedurale nella risoluzione di un problema