The church of San Marco in the eleventh century

In 1084 the most important of the few consecrations of St Mark's church in Venice - that which solemnized the completion of its largest altar - took place. It is assumed that Doge Dominico Selvo (1071-1084) assigned Byzantine mosaicists to finish the decorative programme in time for the respective event. In part because of the beauty and the remarkable quality of the works they created, the eleventh century saw the prestige of this Venetian shrine increase. Also what in the popular imagination was the miraculous appearance of the relics of its patron saint from a pillar (either in 1084 or 1094, depending on the source employed) further augmented it. The article attempts to prove that the eleventh century was the most important period in the existence of the medieval Venetian church which much later became the cathedral San Marco. It will venture a description of this shrine not only on the basis of its similarities, claimed by most scholars, with the Apostoleion church in Constantinople, but also using information from extant documents as well as results of new scientific and archaeological discoveries, especially those published in the catalogue of the exhibition organised by its Procuratoria between July and November 2011, in Ken Dark and Ferudun Özgümüş's works, in the reports concerning the research undertaken by the British Museum, and in other sources.En 1084 tuvo lugar la más importante de las pocas consagraciones de la iglesia de San Marcos en Venecia, la que solemnizó la finalización de su altar mayor. Se supone que el dogo Dominico Selvo (1071-1084) encargó mosaicos bizantinos para terminar el programa decorativo a tiempo para el evento respectivo. En parte debido a la belleza y la notable calidad de las obras que crearon, el siglo XI vio aumentar el prestigio de este santuario veneciano. También lo que en el imaginario popular fue la aparición milagrosa de las reliquias de su santo patrón en un pilar (ya sea en 1084 o en 1094, según la fuente empleada) lo aumentó aún más. El artículo intenta demostrar que el siglo XI fue el período más importante en la existencia de la iglesia medieval veneciana, que mucho más tarde se convirtió en la catedral de San Marco. Se venturará una descripción de este santuario no solo sobre la base de sus similitudes, afirmadas por la mayoría de los eruditos, con la iglesia Apostoleion en Constantinopla, sino también utilizando información de documentos existentes, así como los resultados de nuevos descubrimientos científicos y arqueológicos, especialmente los publicados. en el catálogo de la exposición organizada por su Procuratoria entre julio y noviembre de 2011, en las obras de Ken Dark y Ferudun Özgümüş, en los informes sobre la investigación realizada por el Museo Británico, y en otras fuentes

The epektasis [ἐπέκτασις] and the exploits of the soul (ἡψυχή) in Gregory of Nyssa's De anima et resurrectione

The paper refers to a notion central to Gregory of Nyssa's theology -that of epektasis(ἐπέkτασις), i.e. progression of the soul (ἡψυχή) towards its Creator, as presented in the dialogue De anima et resurrectione/On the Soul and the Resurrection. The conversation between Nyssen and his sister Macrina, employing concepts peculiar to the most advanced science of their time, emphasizes that in the afterlife the soul does not leave the body (and neither does human memory). The interesting consequences of this state of affairs for both the resurrection of people and that of Jesus Christ are also discussed.El artículo se refiere a una noción central de la teología de Gregorio de Nisa: la de epektasis(ἐπέkτασις), es decir, la progresión del alma (ἡψυχή) hacia su Creador, como se presenta en el diálogo De anima et resurrectione/Sobre el alma y la resurrección. La conversación entre Nissa ysu hermana Macrina, empleando conceptos propios de la ciencia más avanzada de su tiempo, enfatiza que en el más allá el alma no abandona el cuerpo (tampoco la memoria humana). También se discuten las interesantes consecuencias de este estado de cosas tanto para la resurrección de las personas como para la de Jesús Cristo

ROMANIAN RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE FINANCING POLICY

Romania has a large rural areas and a great potential, but the Romanian rural has many economic and social issues. The main idea is that the major risk for the Romanian rural development is generated of the combination between the transition problems, poverty and financing possibilities. For Romania is a need for benchmarking rural development and Romania looks at European Union and United States policy and programme. In Romania there is a vicious circle regarding the correlation between productivity and poverty. Because the poverty is a huge problem for Romanian rural areas, an essential problem is the access to the community funds. Important is the chain of the European structural funds financing: Allocation, Accession, and Absorption. One single error on every part of this chain would stop the investment. All insist that Romania should reform its administration and reduce red tape, to create a depoliticized and transparent system.rural development, financing, structural funds

BIM in teaching — lessons learned from exploratory study

Building Information Technology bears promise to bring integration into fragmented AEC industry, as well as large potentials for optimization and management of building performance along life cycle. However, the adoption in Central Europe is much slower than in the USA or Scandinavia; the designers and planners are sceptical about BIM benefits. In order to build up capabilities and thus support BIM adoption in the practice, BIM skills have be built up already in university teaching. This endeavour is the central aim of the BIM_sustain project accomplished at the Vienna University of Technology. In winter term 2012/13 and winter term 2013/14 we accomplished interdisciplinary BIM-supported design labs with student participants from architecture, civil engineering and building science. The teams used different modelling and simulation software constellations for building design and analysis. The software-constellations were evaluated in terms of BIMinteroperability, and the design process was documented by means of time and activity assessment, surveys on team performance, process satisfaction and technology acceptance and focus group interviews. In this paper we will present the results of the evaluation of both courses and analyse the differences resulting from the different course design in the two consequent terms. The first course was dominated by the issue of interfaces, whereas the second course, where better functioning software combinations in terms of data transfer were used, was dominated by the issues related to the collaboration and teamwork. Our results are not only informative for the configuration of interdisciplinary BIM-supported university teaching, but can be derived for the practice as well, especially in the areas of project management, software usage, modelling conventions or incentive systems

Multilinear Wavelets: A Statistical Shape Space for Human Faces

We present a statistical model for $3$D human faces in varying expression, which decomposes the surface of the face using a wavelet transform, and learns many localized, decorrelated multilinear models on the resulting coefficients. Using this model we are able to reconstruct faces from noisy and occluded $3$D face scans, and facial motion sequences. Accurate reconstruction of face shape is important for applications such as tele-presence and gaming. The localized and multi-scale nature of our model allows for recovery of fine-scale detail while retaining robustness to severe noise and occlusion, and is computationally efficient and scalable. We validate these properties experimentally on challenging data in the form of static scans and motion sequences. We show that in comparison to a global multilinear model, our model better preserves fine detail and is computationally faster, while in comparison to a localized PCA model, our model better handles variation in expression, is faster, and allows us to fix identity parameters for a given subject.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures; accepted to ECCV 201

Sentinel-2 60-m Band Super-Resolution Using Hybrid CNN-GPR Model

Sentinel-2 image super-resolution (SR) has proven advantageous in multiple data analysis pipelines, leading to a more comprehensive assessment of different environment-related metrics. This research aims to provide a method for super-resolving the 60-m bands provided by Sentinel-2 up to 10-m spatial resolution, using Gaussian process regression (GPR). While common GPR methods directly operate on raw data using carefully designed kernels, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based feature extraction kernel to directly process the input 10-m patches, applied in constructing the elements of the integrated covariance matrices. For each scene, a small number of training patches are sampled to optimize the CNN parameters and to construct the predictive mean function, the latter being further used for predicting super-resolved pixels for new input areas. We prove that our method is a reliable SR mechanism by assessing its performance both quantitatively, using metrics against other methods from literature, and qualitatively, through visual analysis of the results

A microfluidic approach to rapid sperm recovery from heterogeneous cell suspensions

The isolation of sperm cells from background cell populations and debris is an essential step in all assisted reproductive technologies. Conventional techniques for sperm recovery from testicular sperm extractions stagnate at the sample processing stage, where it can take several hours to identify viable sperm from a background of collateral cells such as white bloods cells (WBCs), red blood cells (RBCs), epithelial cells (ECs) and in some cases cancer cells. Manual identification of sperm from contaminating cells and debris is a tedious and time-consuming operation that can be suitably addressed through inertial microfluidics. Microfluidics has proven an effective technology for high-quality sperm selection based on motility. However, motility-based selection methods cannot cater for viable, non-motile sperm often present in testicular or epididymal sperm extractions and aspirations. This study demonstrates the use of a 3D printed inertial microfluidic device for the separation of sperm cells from a mixed suspension of WBCs, RBCs, ECs, and leukemic cancer cells. This technology presents a 36-fold time improvement for the recovery of sperm cells (> 96%) by separating sperm, RBCS, WBCs, ECs and cancer cells into tight bands in less than 5 min. Furthermore, microfluidic processing of sperm has no impact on sperm parameters; vitality, motility, morphology, or DNA fragmentation of sperm. Applying inertial microfluidics for non-motile sperm recovery can greatly improve the current processing procedure of testicular sperm extractions, simplifying the fertility outcomes for severe forms of male infertility that warrant the surgery

Novel pendant azobenzene/polymer systems for second harmonic generation and optical data storage

New poly(methyl methacrylate)s bearing push–pull azo-moieties, with the azo-dye content ranging from 31 wt% to 100 wt%, are synthesized by (co)polymerization of a methacrylamide-based azo-monomer. The high reactivity of the colored monomer allowed well-balanced structures to be achieved, characterized by a suitable thermal stability. The second harmonic generation efficiency of the poled samples is investigated by means of the SHG Maker fringes setup. Features that hinder the translation of the azo-moiety optical nonlinearity in the material at the macroscopic level are debated. The results underline the role of chromophore–chromophore and chromophore–polymer interactions on the alignment of the azo-moieties. The polarity of the polymer matrix is proven to influence the chromophore–chromophore interactions. Two-photon absorption is employed for gray scale encoding of second harmonic signals on poled thin films, thus pointing out the possibility to employ these new materials for optical data storage applications.