Art-mapping smart-cities: accessing art collections outside the museum

PublishedArticlePaper presented at the international conference, Museums and the Web Florence (MWF2014) held in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy 19 to 21 February 2014In this paper I will discuss the outreach potential of those mobile museum applications that relate art collections to places on a digital map and in the real world, at first focusing my attention on a specific crowd-sourcing application and on a case study that illustrates its usage, then making more general observations on the related constructivist learning experience and recommendations on how to effectively adapt it to the city of Florence’s historical context. I will start describing the affordances of the Art Maps web-based application, a research project funded by Horizon and led by researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Nottingham in collaboration with the departments of Learning, Digital and Research at Tate, London. Such application allows users to access the Tate collection through a digital map from a desktop or mobile device, and invites them to comment on an artwork and either confirm its proposed location, or suggest a new one according to their prior knowledge and experience of a place or an artwork, in a crowdsourcing exercise that aims at mapping a total of 70,000 works around the world. I will then present the Migrants Resource Centre’s case study, recounting activities run at and around Tate Britain in November 2013 by the Art Maps Research Team and aimed at a group of women recently migrated to London from non-European countries. Through the Art Maps application, participants were encouraged to use artworks from the Tate collection as landmarks, to get familiar with their area of residence and foster their orientation skills both on a digital map and in the real world, but also to tap into their knowledge and experience of the borough to interpret selected Tate artworks and precisely mark them on the map. Using a co-constructivist framework, I will then discuss the participants’ learning experience, focusing in particular on the possible changes in confidence in accessing the collection they experienced, and on the nature of the digital crowd-sourcing collaboration they embarked upon in order to exactly place Tate artworks on the map. My argument is that applications such as Art Maps constitute an effective way to flatten the perceived barrier of the museum as an elite’s stronghold, bringing collections to the more neutral territory of the places where communities dwell in. Along these lines, I will propose the idea of running similar activities in Florence and illustrate some of the many ways Art Maps can effectively intertwine the city’s cultural heritage with artworks from the Tate collection. Attendees will be invited to access the application and contribute to it with their knowledge of the city, or use it to explore its historically rich areas. In conclusion, through this paper I intend to demonstrate how the relationship between art and place, experienced through flexible digital technologies greatly enhances the quality of engagement that community groups may experience, and encourages them to visit the museum in real life

Learning the lessons from a regional industrial energy efficiency initiative

Industry accounts for 29% of UK energy use, placing energy efficiency in this sector as a fundamental to sustainable development. Given that 99% of UK industrial companies are Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) supportive initiatives in this area have the potential for significant savings and impact. This paper present a deep reflection of a local government project called “SUSTAIN Lincolnshire – Phase 2” to improve the energy efficiency of industrial SMEs within its region. A critical analysis will centre on the problems of co-ordinating and encouraging a large number of SME to become pro-active in this area. This starts with the importance of clearly defined and understood requirements, through engagement and activities with SME, to achievements attainable beyond the project. Currently, many Councils, leasing with universities, have numerous initiatives, similar in style to the project considered. The critical analysis in this paper will allow those project initiators and stakeholders to take advantage of the lessons learned when developing similar projects

Secular orbital dynamics of the innermost exoplanet of the υ -Andromedæ system

We introduce a quasi-periodic restricted Hamiltonian to describe the secular motion of a small-mass planet in a multi-planetary system. In particular, we refer to the motion of υ -And b which is the innermost planet among those discovered in the extrasolar system orbiting around the υ -Andromedæ A star. We preassign the orbits of the Super-Jupiter exoplanets υ -And c and υ -And d in a stable configuration. The Fourier decompositions of their secular motions are reconstructed by using the well-known technique of the (so-called) frequency analysis and are injected in the equations describing the orbital dynamics of υ -And b under the gravitational effects exerted by those two external exoplanets (that are expected to be major ones in such an extrasolar system). Therefore, we end up with a Hamiltonian model having 2 + 3 / 2 degrees of freedom; its validity is confirmed by the comparison with several numerical integrations of the complete four-body problem. Furthermore, the model is enriched by taking into account also the effects due to the relativistic corrections on the secular motion of the innermost exoplanet. We focus on the problem of the stability of υ -And b as a function of the parameters that mostly impact on its orbit, that are the initial values of its inclination and the longitude of its node (as they are measured with respect to the plane of the sky). In particular, we study the evolution of its eccentricity, which is crucial to exclude orbital configurations with high probability of (quasi)collision with the central star in the long-time evolution of the system. Moreover, we also introduce a normal form approach, that is based on the complete average of our restricted model with respect to the angles describing the secular motions of the major exoplanets. Therefore, our Hamiltonian model is further reduced to a system with 2 degrees of freedom, which is integrable because it admits a constant of motion that is related to the total angular momentum. This allows us to very quickly preselect the domains of stability for υ -And b , with respect to the set of the initial orbital configurations that are compatible with the observations

Physical properties of the jet from DG Tauri on sub-arcsecond scales with HST/STIS

We derive the physical properties at the base of the jet from DG Tau both along and across the flow and as a function of velocity. We analysed seven optical spectra of the DG Tau jet, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The spectra were obtained by placing a long-slit parallel to the jet axis and stepping it across the jet width. The resulting position-velocity diagrams in optical forbidden emission lines allowed access to plasma conditions via calculation of emission line ratios. We find at the base of the jet high electron density, $n_e \sim$ 10$^5$, and very low ionisation, $x_e \sim 0.02-0.05$, which combine to give a total density up to $n_H \sim$ 3 10$^6$. This analysis confirms previous reports of variations in plasma parameters along the jet, (i.e. decrease in density by several orders of magnitude, increase of $x_e$ from 0.05 to a plateau at 0.7 downstream at 2$''$ from the star). Furthermore, a spatial coincidence is revealed between sharp gradients in the total density and supersonic velocity jumps. This strongly suggests that the emission is caused by shock excitation. The position-velocity diagrams indicate the presence of both fast accelerating gas and slower, less collimated material. We derive the mass outflow rate, $\dot{M}_j$, in the blue-shifted lobe in different velocity channels, that contribute to a total of $\dot{M}_j \sim$ 8 $\pm$ 4 10$^{-9}$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$. We estimate that a symmetric bipolar jet would transport at the low and intermediate velocities probed by rotation measurements, an angular momentum flux of $\dot{L}_j \sim$ 2.9 $\pm$ 1.5 10$^{-6}$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$ AU km s$^{-1}$. The derived properties of the DG Tau jet are demonstrated to be consistent with magneto-centrifugal theory. However, non-stationary modelling is required in order to explain all of the features revealed at high resolution.Comment: 16 pages, 18 figure

Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) in pediatric soft tissue sarcomas: first implications.

Soft tissue sarcomas of childhood are a group of heterogeneous tumors thought to be derived from mesenchymal stem cells. Surgical resection is effective only in about 50% of cases and resistance to conventional chemotherapy is often responsible for treatment failure. Therefore, investigations on novel therapeutic targets are of fundamental importance. Deregulation of epigenetic mechanisms underlying chromatin modifications during stem cell differentiation has been suggested to contribute to soft tissue sarcoma pathogenesis. One of the main elements in this scenario is enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2), a methyltransferase belonging to the Polycomb group proteins. EZH2 catalyzes histone H3 methylation on gene promoters, thus repressing genes that induce stem cell differentiation to maintain an embryonic stem cell signature. EZH2 deregulated expression/function in soft tissue sarcomas has been recently reported. In this review, an overview of the recently reported functions of EZH2 in soft tissue sarcomas is given and the hypothesis that its expression might be involved in soft tissue sarcomagenesis is discussed. Finally, the therapeutic potential of epigenetic therapies modulating EZH2-mediated gene repression is considered