A blockchain-based Decentralized System for proper handling of temporary Employment contracts

Temporary work is an employment situation useful and suitable in all occasions in which business needs to adjust more easily and quickly to workload fluctuations or maintain staffing flexibility. Temporary workers play therefore an important role in many companies, but this kind of activity is subject to a special form of legal protections and many aspects and risks must be taken into account both employers and employees. In this work we propose a blockchain-based system that aims to ensure respect for the rights for all actors involved in a temporary employment, in order to provide employees with the fair and legal remuneration (including taxes) of work performances and a protection in the case employer becomes insolvent. At the same time, our system wants to assist the employer in processing contracts with a fully automated and fast procedure. To resolve these problems we propose the D-ES (Decentralized Employment System). We first model the employment relationship as a state system. Then we describe the enabling technology that makes us able to realize the D-ES. In facts, we propose the implementation of a DLT (Decentralized Ledger Technology) based system, consisting in a blockchain system and of a web-based environment. Thanks the decentralized application platforms that makes us able to develop smart contracts, we define a discrete event control system that works inside the blockchain. In addition, we discuss the temporary work in agriculture as a interesting case of study.Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of the "Computing Conference 2018" - 10-12 July 2018 - London, United Kingdo

A Petri Nets Model for Blockchain Analysis

A Blockchain is a global shared infrastructure where cryptocurrency transactions among addresses are recorded, validated and made publicly available in a peer- to-peer network. To date the best known and important cryptocurrency is the bitcoin. In this paper we focus on this cryptocurrency and in particular on the modeling of the Bitcoin Blockchain by using the Petri Nets formalism. The proposed model allows us to quickly collect information about identities owning Bitcoin addresses and to recover measures and statistics on the Bitcoin network. By exploiting algebraic formalism, we reconstructed an Entities network associated to Blockchain transactions gathering together Bitcoin addresses into the single entity holding permits to manage Bitcoins held by those addresses. The model allows also to identify a set of behaviours typical of Bitcoin owners, like that of using an address only once, and to reconstruct chains for this behaviour together with the rate of firing. Our model is highly flexible and can easily be adapted to include different features of the Bitcoin crypto-currency system

Recognition and Res Judicata of US class action judgments in European legal systems

Class actions, which allow individual plaintiffs to represent a group of others in a similar situation in a claim against a same defendant, are still a specificity of US law. Recently, transnational class actions, either against a foreign defendant or including foreign class members, have become popular. The author addresses the possibility of bringing such claims involving parties that are residents of a European country. The United States, traditionally known for the extraterritorial application of their laws and for easily retaining jurisdiction of their courts, are trying to coordinate the legal systems involved by being concerned with the possibility of recognition in a foreign country of class action judgments. Therefore, the original issue needs to be addressed of the recognition and the res judicata effect of these judgments in European countries that do not know similar collective judicial procedures

Analysis of heat kernel highlights the strongly modular and heat-preserving structure of proteins

In this paper, we study the structure and dynamical properties of protein contact networks with respect to other biological networks, together with simulated archetypal models acting as probes. We consider both classical topological descriptors, such as the modularity and statistics of the shortest paths, and different interpretations in terms of diffusion provided by the discrete heat kernel, which is elaborated from the normalized graph Laplacians. A principal component analysis shows high discrimination among the network types, either by considering the topological and heat kernel based vector characterizations. Furthermore, a canonical correlation analysis demonstrates the strong agreement among those two characterizations, providing thus an important justification in terms of interpretability for the heat kernel. Finally, and most importantly, the focused analysis of the heat kernel provides a way to yield insights on the fact that proteins have to satisfy specific structural design constraints that the other considered networks do not need to obey. Notably, the heat trace decay of an ensemble of varying-size proteins denotes subdiffusion, a peculiar property of proteins

Tactile sensing chips with POSFET array and integrated interface electronics

This work presents the advanced version of novel POSFET (Piezoelectric Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) devices based tactile sensing chip. The new version of the tactile sensing chip presented here comprises of a 4 x 4 array of POSFET touch sensing devices and integrated interface electronics (i.e. multiplexers, high compliance current sinks and voltage output buffers). The chip also includes four temperature diodes for the measurement of contact temperature. Various components on the chip have been characterized systematically and the overall operation of the tactile sensing system has been evaluated. With new design the POSFET devices have improved performance (i.e. linear response in the dynamic contact forces range of 0.01–3N and sensitivity (without amplification) of 102.4 mV/N), which is more than twice the performance of their previous implementations. The integrated interface electronics result in reduced interconnections which otherwise would be needed to connect the POSFET array with off-chip interface electronic circuitry. This research paves the way for CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) implementation of full on-chip tactile sensing systems based on POSFETs

Memory-Efficient Graph Convolutional Networks for Object Classification and Detection with Event Cameras

Recent advances in event camera research emphasize processing data in its original sparse form, which allows the use of its unique features such as high temporal resolution, high dynamic range, low latency, and resistance to image blur. One promising approach for analyzing event data is through graph convolutional networks (GCNs). However, current research in this domain primarily focuses on optimizing computational costs, neglecting the associated memory costs. In this paper, we consider both factors together in order to achieve satisfying results and relatively low model complexity. For this purpose, we performed a comparative analysis of different graph convolution operations, considering factors such as execution time, the number of trainable model parameters, data format requirements, and training outcomes. Our results show a 450-fold reduction in the number of parameters for the feature extraction module and a 4.5-fold reduction in the size of the data representation while maintaining a classification accuracy of 52.3%, which is 6.3% higher compared to the operation used in state-of-the-art approaches. To further evaluate performance, we implemented the object detection architecture and evaluated its performance on the N-Caltech101 dataset. The results showed an accuracy of 53.7 % [email protected] and reached an execution rate of 82 graphs per second.Comment: Accepted for the SPA 2023 conferenc

La obsolescencia de la ciudad turística. Propuesta de actuación en el área turística consolidada de Gandia.

[ES] Este trabajo propone analizar la obsolescencia urbana centrada, de forma particular, en el sector turístico. Dicho análisis detecta síntomas bastante claros de decadencia, expresados en la bajada de calidad en el sector, en la menor economía generada por el mismo, y los problemas urbanísticos generados como consecuencia de una mala planificación previa, y de las problemáticas urbanísticas generadas por la falta de una verdadera conexión entre ciudad, establecimiento turístico, territorio y población La obsolescencia urbana se puede definir como una ¿patología¿, que se manifiesta con el paso del tiempo, como el en el ciclo de vida de una persona. Esta va a afectar la ciudad tanto de manera física, expresada con el deterioro de edificios y en mayor escala en las zonas urbanas, en lo social generando de esta manera un fenómeno de segregación y el incremento de la exclusión social, criminalidad etc. De forma resumida la obsolescencia urbana crea unas situaciones de desconfianza y desequilibrio de una buena parte de la población local en relación a los lugares afectados, generando divisiones sociales, ambientales y económicas. En el ámbito turístico, al igual que en la ciudad residencial, el envejecimiento y la obsolescencia de los espacios urbanos demandan soluciones que garantices el mantenimiento y, posiblemente el incremento de su competitividad. Esta necesidad de solucionar dicho problema se ha visto reflejado a través de las líneas de políticas públicas de los últimos años, actuándose concretamente con planes estratégicos y de mejoría de los sectores tradicionalmente turísticos en el panorama nacional. Este trabajo se ocupa de realizar una búsqueda de las causas principales al problema de la obsolescencia turística en el caso concreto de la ciudad turística de Gandía (España), y buscar unas posibles soluciones, basándose en casos estudio ya existentes. Finaliza el trabajo con una propuesta concreta de desarrollo de un proyecto que trata de dar una respuesta efectiva a dicha situación de declive tanto físico, como económico y social.[EN] The aim of this work is to analize the problem of urban obsolescence, with a particular focus on the turism sector. This analysis studies some claire sintoms of such decadence as the lowering of quality in the sector, the less economy that it generates, and the urbanistic problems caused by a lack of previous planification and all those problem based on an non-existent dialogue between the city, the tourism establishment, the territory and the people. The urban obsolescence can be defined as a proper ¿patology¿ that shows up as time passes, just like in a normal person lifetime. It affects the city either in a physic way, with the degradation of buildings or , in a wider view, of entire urban areas, or social way creating the segregation phenomenon and an increasing of social exclusion, criminality ando so on. Summing up the urban obsolescence creates mistrust and imbalance situations for a big part of the local population towards the degraded areas, generating social, enviromental and economic divisions. In the tourism sphere, as it happens in the residential part of the city, is expressed the necessity of answers and solutions for the degradation and aging of urban areas, that may possibly bring to an increasement of its competitivity. The need of solving this problem is expressed also by the latest guide-lines of public politics that ,in the last years, concretely adopted several improvement plans of the famous tourism sectors in the national panorama. Thus ,this work deal with the research of the main causes of the problem of touristic obsolescence , in the specific case of the touristic city of Gandìa (Spain), and to find possibles solutions to it starting from exsisting studies. In conclusion, is proposed, in this work, an effective proposition of development of the project in order to give a possible solution to such an econimic, Physic and social problem.Pinna, A. (2021). La obsolescencia de la ciudad turística. Propuesta de actuación en el área turística consolidada de Gandia. Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/167938TFG

Simulation and identification of gene regulatory networks

Gene regulatory networks are a well-established model to represent the functioning, at gene level, of utterly elaborated biological networks. Studying and understanding such models of gene communication might enable researchers to rightly address costly laboratory experiments, e.g. by selecting a small set of genes deemed to be responsible for a particular disease, or by indicating with confidence which molecule is supposed to be susceptible to certain drug treatments. This thesis explores two main aspects regarding gene regulatory networks: (i) the simulation of realistic perturbative and systems genetics experiments in gene networks, and (ii) the inference of gene networks from simulated and real data measurements. In detail, the following themes will be discussed: (i) SysGenSIM, an open source software to produce gene networks with realistic topology and simulate systems genetics or targeted perturbative experiments; (ii) two state of the arts algorithms for the structural identification of gene networks from single-gene knockout measurements; (iii) an approach to reverse-engineering gene networks from heterogeneous compendia; (iv) a methodology to infer gene interactions fromsystems genetics dataset. These works have been positively recognized by the scientific community. In particular, SysGenSIM has been used – in addition to providing valuable test benches for the development of the above inference algorithms – to generate benchmark datasets for international competitions as the DREAM5 Systems Genetics challenge and the StatSeq workshop. The identificationmethodologies earned their worth by accurately reverse-engineering gene networks at established contests, namely the DREAM Network Inference challenges. Results are explained and discussed thoroughly in the thesis

Effect of different pastures on CLA content in milk and sheep cheese

It is known that milk composition included conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is affected by animal feeding system (Cabiddu et al., 2001). In Sardinia dairy sheep feeding is mainly based on pastures. Most of them are characterised by self-regenerating species, like annual ryegrass (Lolium rigidum Gaudin) and burr medic (Medicago polymorpha L.). Non conventional species belonging to the Compositae family such as (Chrysanthemum coronarium L.) seem interesting for sheep feeding when other herbages decrease in quality (late spring- early summer). It was observed that C. coronarium establishes rapidly, can be grazed early in the growing season and persist where other pasture species may disappear; for these reasons it can be considered a valuable source of food. Moreover a preliminary study with dairy sheep fed fresh forage of C. coronarium showed relatively high levels of CLA in milk (Molle G. pers. com.) The aim of the present work was to study the influence of different pastures on milk composition, with particular reference to CLA and its precursors