The Italian Draft Law on the \u2018Provisions Concerning the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage\u2019

Intangible cultural heritage in Italy is still in need of a unified approach, capable of providing reliable criteria for identifying its assets and for indicating timescales and means by which they should be safeguarded. In the continued absence of up-to-date, ad hoc state legislation (since the content of those laws which do implement international Conventions is too generic in nature to be sufficiently effective), the Regions have proceeded to act in a somewhat scattered manner, giving rise to an extremely fragmented and very disorderly regulatory framework. The draft law N. 4486, "Provisions Concerning the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage", presented on 12th May 2017 at the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic - as the result of the work of an interdisciplinary and inter-university research team coordinated by Marco Giampieretti, who has drafted the final text with the collaboration of Simona Pinton - seeks to fill the serious void that exists in Italian legal system by aligning it to the principles of international and European law, by redirecting the relevant State and Regional legislation, and by satisfying the fundamental requirements of the national community

Evaluating Mobile Applications for Urban Tourism

With the spread of mobile communication, destinations have to decide whether, and in case how, to inform and drive their guests through smartphones.Three groups of issues must be addressed.a. Mobile content and its usability differ from those designed for desktop.b. Smartphones use web pages as well as proprietary applications.c. Smartphones connect both through telecoms and hotspots, posing specific cost problems.With a view to understanding how these issues have been addressed by urban destinations, a reasonably representative sample of forty-four European destinations was identified.To compare the quality of the mobile applications available in the sample destinations, the 7Loci meta-model – already well established for destination websites – was used.More discursively, some critical points were finally identified, and the mobile services available on-site were compared with those offered for the same cities by four global platforms: TripAdvisor, Foursquare, TripWolf and Google.With the spread of mobile communication, destinations have to decide whether, and in case how, to inform and drive their guests through smartphones.Three groups of issues must be addressed.a. Mobile content and its usability differ from those designed for desktop.b. Smartphones use web pages as well as proprietary applications.c. Smartphones connect both through telecoms and hotspots, posing specific cost problems.With a view to understanding how these issues have been addressed by urban destinations, a reasonably representative sample of forty-four European destinations was identified.To compare the quality of the mobile applications available in the sample destinations, the 7Loci meta-model – already well established for destination websites – was used.More discursively, some critical points were finally identified, and the mobile services available on-site were compared with those offered for the same cities by four global platforms: TripAdvisor, Foursquare, TripWolf and Google

Social Network e destinazioni turistiche: problemi e strategie

Il ricorso ai Social Network – come Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Google o LinkedIn – da parte delle destinazioni turistiche ripropone una sfida obbligata, rivoluzionariané più né meno di quanto era avvenuto una diecina di anni fa con il primo imporsi anche nel settore della comunicazione digitale stessa e della Web (Werthner - Klein, 1999). Se fino a qualche anno fa la presenza on line di una destinazione si esauriva con la progettazione di un portale adeguato – un problema che già di per sé non si presta a risposte scontate – negli ultimi tempi non si possono trascurare gli spazi checaratterizzano il cosiddetto Web 2.0. Sono spazi che includono strumenti di diversa complessità – quali forum, blog, wiki, podcast, RSS, applicazioni per iPhone, mappe interattive ecc. – che stanno cambiando profondamente i ruoli dei diversi stakeholder, aumentando il livello di coinvolgimento dell’utente, che può creare, pubblicare e condividerecon facilità contenuti sul Web (User Generated Content, UGC), aumentando la trasparenza, ma diminuendo il controllo delle destinazioni e degli operatori sulle informazioni che li riguardano

Facebook in tourism: destinazioni turistiche e Social Network

Gli strumenti e le potenzialità del Web 2.0 sono in costante evoluzione. Le aziende, le organizzazioni e le istituzioni di ogni settore si stanno avvicinando a questo mondo per promuovere i propri prodotti e per far parlare di sé, e così anche il settore turistico. L'obiettivo del volume è delineare come gli operatori del settore - in modo particolare quelli delle destinazioni - stiano portando avanti questo approccio, quali siano le modalità per sfruttare gli strumenti in modo efficace e le potenzialità che il Web 2.0 mette loro a disposizione.The tools and the power of Web 2.0 are evolving. Companies, organizations and institutions are approaching this world to promote their products and to talk about themselves, and so the tourism industry. The aim of the volume is to outline how tourism industry are pursuing this approach, what are the ways to do it at its best and the potential that Web 2.0 makes available to them

3-D laser scan reconstruction of the face and jaws: a new approach in cranio-maxillofacial surgery

The aim of this study was to finely adjust a method for the construction of a 3D-textured digital model of the face and dental arches of the maxilla and mandible from a laser scan of the face and plaster casts of the mouth and dental arches of patients with craniofacial malformations, and reconstruction after facial trauma or resection for neoplasm of facial skeleton. This is motivated by the need to obtain a virtual copy of the patient\u2019s face at no biological cost as an alternative to the method which involves using CT. The method based on CT provides a great deal of information, but the radiation absorbed by the patient is very high. Materials and methods The 3-D Laser scanner Konica Minolta VIVID 910 is used to scan the surface of the patient\u2019s face from different perspectives. These scanning perspectives are then recombined to reconstruct the three-dimensional facial features with minimal error in order to reconstruct the 3D-textured model of the face. A bite fork adapted to the purpose is used as the 3-D reference mark for repositioning the scan of the maxillar and mandibular arch plaster casts within the face model. The acquisition method was validated by verifying the consistency of several anthropometric measurements recorded in vivo with the corresponding measurements recorded on the virtual computer model. Results The patient\u2019s virtual face reconstructed by means of meshes can, be analysed as it is or can be later on converted into a NURBS (Nonuniform Rational B-Splines) surface. This virtual model is used not only to extrapolate isoparametric curves reproducing facial sections in the three spatial planes, but also to obtain further metric information regarding surface and volumes. This enables the patient\u2019s profile to be studied in the usual way, but also provides other useful anthropometric features, its volumetric characteristics and the changes induced by cranio-maxillofacial surgery. Conclusions The facial skin surface may serve as a sufficiently stable and invariable entity for registering patients for computer-assisted cranio-maxillofacial surgery. The proposed method proves an excellent way to study all the morphological facial features of patients with cranio-facial malformation or after facial trauma or resection for neoplasm of facial skeleton. The collection of an appropriate database of case studies, before and after surgical treatment, will enable us to implement a software for correlating dental arch displacements with changes in the corresponding facial surface

A 3-Dimensional Facial Morpho-Dynamic Database in the development of a Prediction Model in Orthognathic Surgery

Current methodologies in the prevision of post-surgical features of the face in orthognathic surgery are mainly 2-D. An improvement is certainly given by the introduction of CT, but its acceptance is controversial due to its high biological cost. As an alternative, in this study an effective procedure for the construction of a 3-D textured digital model of the face and dental arches of patients with dentofacial malformations using a 3-D laser scanner at no biological cost is presented. A 3-D Laser scanner Konica-Minolta VIVID 910 is used to obtain multiple scans from different perspectives of the face of patients with dentofacial malocclusions requiring orthognathic surgery. These multiple views are then recombined, integrating also the maxillary and mandibular arch plaster casts, to obtain the 3-D textured model of the face and occlusion with minimal error. A viable methodology was identified for the face and occlusal modeling of orthognathic patients and validated in a test case, confirming its effectiveness: the 3-D model created accurately describes the actual features of the patient's face; the proposed methodology can be easily applied in the clinical routine to accurately record the steps of the surgical treatment and to perform accurate anthropometric analyses of the facial morphology, and thus constitute the necessary database for the development of previsional tools in orthognathic surgery. The proposed method is effective in recording all the morphological facial features of patients with dentofacial malformations, to develop a facial modification database and tools for virtual surgery

Unilateral Masseter Muscle Hypertrophy: Morpho-functional Analysis of the Relapse After Treatment with Botulinum Toxin

This is a case of unilateral masseter muscle hypertrophy (MMH) treated with botulinum toxin (NHAI - normalised hemi-facial asymmetry index improvement from 5.48 to 3.04). After 19 months, the treatment was repeated because of hypertrophy relapse (NHAI increase up to 6.82). The volume variations in the masseter area were monitored during 25 months using a laser scanner to compute facial volume. In order to relate the cause of hypertrophy and relapse to the presence of parafunctional activities, a nocturnal electromyography (EMG) study was conducted with positive results (nocturnal parafunctions of patients 4074.99 mu V to be compared with a control group value of 1644.63 mu V). The lack of the left inferior molars and the consequent right occlusal support seemed to justify the hypertrophy of right masseter (MMRight-POC [percent overlapping coefficient] 91.9%). However, the prosthetic rehabilitation did not prevent relapse in the same muscle. The EMG analysis of both the muscular activation (MMRight-POC 66.0% after relapse) and inhibition activity in Maximum Voluntary Clench (MVC) resulted in contradictory conclusions. At present, the available knowledge regarding MMH physiopathology is very limited and does not support a therapeutic rationale for relapse prevention