Enhancing competitive advantage for European maritime sector

This poster presentation explores the topic of enhancing competitive advantage for the European maritime sector

Una Proposta per a l'atles dels vestigis lexicals dalmàtics a la Riba oriental de l'Adriàtic

Les qüestions de fonètica històrica han dominat durant molt de temps el camp de la dialectologia històrica dalmàtica des dels primers estudis de Bartoli i Rosenkranz, fins als treballs més recents de Muljači ć. I ben encertadament, atès que es tracta d?un domini lingüístic la morfosintaxi del qual només es coneix en part i únicament en el cas del vegliotto, que n?és el representant més afortunat. Per aquests mateixos motius les diferències lexicals entre els dialectes dalmàtics tampoc han merescut gaire atenció. Les parles riberenques i illenques croates tanmateix conserven encara més de mil paraules del dalmàtic, sobretot als camps semàntics de la pesca, la navegació i d?altres realitats mediterrànies. Em propose ací de fer un esbós d?una primera classificació dialectal del lèxic dalmatoromànic, basada en els dalmatismes de la terminologia pesquera croata, recollits en enquestes realitzades en més de 180 punts de la costa de Croàcia.A proposal for the Atlas of Vestigial Dalmatian Lexis from the east coast of the Adriatic Historical Dalmatian dialectology has been dominated for a long time by concern for sound change, beginning with the first studies by Bartoli and Rosenkranz up to the more recent contributions of Muljačić. And quite rightly so, since we are dealing with a lingüístic domain whose morphosyntax is only partially known, and only in the case of vegliotto, the most widely studied variety. For these very same reasons, lexical differences between the Dalmatian dialects have been largely neglected. However, the Croatian varieties spoken on the coast and islands still contain more than a thousand words of Dalmatian, notably in the semantic fields of fishing, navegation and other Mediterranean activities. My intention here is to attempt a preliminary dialectal classification of Dalmatian Romance lexis based on Dalmatian forms in Croatian fishing terminology collected from questionnaires presented in more than 180 places on the Croatian coast

Observation of Aubry transition in finite atom chains via friction

The highly nonlinear many-body physics of a chain of mutually interacting atoms in contact with a periodic substrate gives rise to complex static and dynamical phenomena, such as structural phase transitions and friction. In the limit of an infinite chain incommensurate with the substrate, Aubry predicted a structural transition with increasing substrate potential, from the chain's intrinsic arrangement free to slide on the substrate, to a pinned arrangement favoring the substrate pattern. To date, the Aubry transition has not been observed. Here, using a chain of cold ions subject to a periodic optical potential we qualitatively and quantitatively establish a close relation between Aubry's sliding-to-pinned transition and superlubricity breaking in stick-slip friction. Using friction measurements with high spatial resolution and individual ion detection, we experimentally observe the Aubry transition and the onset of its hallmark fractal atomic arrangement. Notably, the observed critical lattice depth for a finite chain agrees well with the Aubry prediction for an infinite chain. Our results elucidate the connection between competing ordering patterns and superlubricity in nanocontacts - the elementary building blocks of friction.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

User-based gesture vocabulary for form creation during a product design process

There are inconsistencies between the nature of the conceptual design and the functionalities of the computational systems supporting it, which disrupt the designers’ process, focusing on technology rather than designers’ needs. A need for elicitation of hand gestures appropriate for the requirements of the conceptual design, rather than those arbitrarily chosen or focusing on ease of implementation was identified.The aim of this thesis is to identify natural and intuitive hand gestures for conceptual design, performed by designers (3rd, 4th year product design engineering students and recent graduates) working on their own, without instruction and without limitations imposed by the facilitating technology. This was done via a user centred study including 44 participants. 1785 gestures were collected. Gestures were explored as a sole mean for shape creation and manipulation in virtual 3D space. Gestures were identified, described in writing, sketched, coded based on the taxonomy used, categorised based on hand form and the path travelled and variants identified. Then they were statistically analysed to ascertain agreement rates between the participants, significance of the agreement and the likelihood of number of repetitions for each category occurring by chance. The most frequently used and statistically significant gestures formed the consensus set of vocabulary for conceptual design. The effect of the shape of the manipulated object on the gesture performed, and if the sequence of the gestures participants proposed was different from the established CAD solid modelling practices were also observed.Vocabulary was evaluated by non-designer participants, and the outcomes have shown that the majority of gestures were appropriate and easy to perform. Evaluation was performed theoretically and in the VR environment. Participants selected their preferred gestures for each activity, and a variant of the vocabulary for conceptual design was created as an outcome, that aims to ensure that extensive training is not required, extending the ability to design beyond trained designers only.There are inconsistencies between the nature of the conceptual design and the functionalities of the computational systems supporting it, which disrupt the designers’ process, focusing on technology rather than designers’ needs. A need for elicitation of hand gestures appropriate for the requirements of the conceptual design, rather than those arbitrarily chosen or focusing on ease of implementation was identified.The aim of this thesis is to identify natural and intuitive hand gestures for conceptual design, performed by designers (3rd, 4th year product design engineering students and recent graduates) working on their own, without instruction and without limitations imposed by the facilitating technology. This was done via a user centred study including 44 participants. 1785 gestures were collected. Gestures were explored as a sole mean for shape creation and manipulation in virtual 3D space. Gestures were identified, described in writing, sketched, coded based on the taxonomy used, categorised based on hand form and the path travelled and variants identified. Then they were statistically analysed to ascertain agreement rates between the participants, significance of the agreement and the likelihood of number of repetitions for each category occurring by chance. The most frequently used and statistically significant gestures formed the consensus set of vocabulary for conceptual design. The effect of the shape of the manipulated object on the gesture performed, and if the sequence of the gestures participants proposed was different from the established CAD solid modelling practices were also observed.Vocabulary was evaluated by non-designer participants, and the outcomes have shown that the majority of gestures were appropriate and easy to perform. Evaluation was performed theoretically and in the VR environment. Participants selected their preferred gestures for each activity, and a variant of the vocabulary for conceptual design was created as an outcome, that aims to ensure that extensive training is not required, extending the ability to design beyond trained designers only

Squeezing on momentum states for atom interferometry

We propose and analyse a method that allows for the production of squeezed states of the atomic center-of-mass motion that can be injected into an atom interferometer. Our scheme employs dispersive probing in a ring resonator on a narrow transition of strontium atoms in order to provide a collective measurement of the relative population of two momentum states. We show that this method is applicable to a Bragg diffraction-based atom interferometer with large diffraction orders. The applicability of this technique can be extended also to small diffraction orders and large atom numbers by inducing atomic transparency at the frequency of the probe field, reaching an interferometer phase resolution scaling $\Delta\phi\sim N^{-3/4}$, where $N$ is the atom number. We show that for realistic parameters it is possible to obtain a 20 dB gain in interferometer phase estimation compared to the Standard Quantum Limit.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure