MONET: The Minor Body Generator Tool at DART Lab

Minor bodies exhibit considerable variability in shape and surface morphology, posing challenges for spacecraft operations, which are further compounded by highly non-linear dynamics and limited communication windows with Earth. Additionally, uncertainties persist in the shape and surface morphology of minor bodies due to errors in ground-based estimation techniques. The growing need for autonomy underscores the importance of robust image processing and visual-based navigation methods. To address this demand, it is essential to conduct tests on a variety of body shapes and with different surface morphological features. This work introduces the procedural Minor bOdy geNErator Tool (MONET), implemented using an open-source 3D computer graphics software. The starting point of MONET is the three-dimensional mesh of a generic minor body, which is procedurally modified by introducing craters, boulders, and surface roughness, resulting in a photorealistic model. MONET offers the flexibility to generate a diverse range of shapes and surface morphological features, aiding in the recreation of various minor bodies. Users can fine-tune relevant parameters to create the desired conditions based on the specific application requirements. The tool offers the capability to generate two default families of models: rubble-pile, characterized by numerous different-sized boulders, and comet-like, reflecting the typical morphology of comets. MONET serves as a valuable resource for researchers and engineers involved in minor body exploration missions and related projects, providing insights into the adaptability and effectiveness of guidance and navigation techniques across a wide range of morphological scenarios

Visible Bullets: Critical Responses to Shakespeare’s Representation of War

Although war is ubiquitous in Shakespeare, criticism on this topic has been sporadic and sparse. A seminal book by Paul Jorgensen, Shakespeare’s Military World, was published in 1956, but was not followed by other substantial literary studies. Not even “new historicism”, the critical movement developed in the 1980s and 1990s, and which was alert to the examination of all early modern cultural formations, devoted attention to the representation of war in Shakespeare. While, interestingly, in those same years, Shakesepare’s representation of war was examined by jurists in connection with the “just war” principles, it was only in the late 1990s that the topic started to gain ground in the work of professional Shakespeareans, as seen in the publications of a few book-length studies and collections of essays (de Somogyi, Taunton, Barker, King and Franssen, Pugliatti, Quabeck). This new wave of interest had also been preceded by seminars and conferences starting in 2003, a significant date with regard to the waging of war, with the invasion of Iraq and the war of aggression which followed. Indeed, as this article intends to show, the most crucial factor in determining, or reviving, interest in this dimension of Shakespeare have been the wars being waged in the world. It is certainly to be hoped that the study of war in Shakespeare may not again sink into oblivion; but, more importantly, it is hoped that its discussion may not be revived, as happened in the past, in the harsh light of more wars being waged around the world

Diversos estils, un sol estil. Obres en fusta de la Sicília nord-oriental

El articulo muestra cómo, a partir del confluir armonioso y calibrado de estilos y culturas diferentes, puede nacer un estilo independiente y a la vez fruto de la cultura con la que se ha mezclado. A través de un recorrido por la producción de talla de madera fechada entre XVI y XVII en Sicilia, se evidencia cómo caracteres renacentistas y barrocos dan vida a obras definidas por una cultura al mismo tiempo áulica y popular.This article tries to explain how, within certain contexts, the free and balanced confluence of different styles and cultures may produce a new as well as traditional style. Namely, the article focuses on the Renaissence and Baroque influence on wooden sculpture in Sicily between the sixteenth and eighteenth century, whose features reveal the coexistence of both high and popular culture