Modeling an offshore container terminal: the Venice case study

In order to reduce marine transportation times and related costs, as well as the environmental impacts, an alternative multimodal route to the current Suez-Gibraltar-North Sea corridor for the containers shipped from Far and Middle East was identified as potentially very effective. A key operational problem to achieve this result is the capacity and the effectiveness of the terminals within the concerned new logistic chain. In this framework, the Venice Port Authority is developing a project aimed to improve relevantly the potential of its container terminals to al-low loading/unloading of containers to and from the Central Europe. The project includes a new offshore terminal for mooring huge ships (up to 18.000 TEU) in the Adriatic Sea and a link operated by barges with an onshore terminal in Venice to overcome the constraints for the navigation of the containers ships in the Venetian lagoon. This innovative operational scheme requires a deep functional analysis to ensure the full capacity operation, assess the reachable performances and correspondingly dimensioning the required equipment (cranes, barges, quays, etc.). For this purpose, the authors developed a specific discrete-events simulation model. The paper includes the presentation of the model and the results of its application to Venice case study, by identifying the benefits achievable with this approach and the potential wider application fields

John O’Malley and Jesuit Education: A Journey into Humanism

This article reflects upon the impact of the work of John W. O’Malley, S.J. (1927–2022), on the field of the history of Jesuit education. In The First Jesuits (1993), O’Malley provided an innovative approach to the subject that refuted some long-standing preconceptions about the way Jesuit schools and universities had originally developed. The approach that he took to to the topic throughout the 1990s and 2000s allowed him to identify two intertwined educational traditions at the heart of the Jesuit pedagogical model: the humanistic tradition of the Renaissance period, based on the Isocratic concept of pietas, and the scholastic tradition inherited from the medieval universities. This article focuses on the consequences of these findings: 1) at the historiographical level, O’Malley came to elaborate a philosophy of history around the traditional concept of humanism as it emerged in The Four Cultures of the West (2004) and in his tetralogy (2008–2019) on modern ecumenical councils; 2) at the pedagogical level, O’Malley came to outline 5 “humanistic” hooks (2015), which are still an essential tool for those actively working in Jesuit educational institutions

A computational analysis of motor synergies by dynamic response decomposition

Analyses of experimental data acquired from humans and other vertebrates have suggested that motor commands may emerge from the combination of a limited set of modules. While many studies have focused on physiological aspects of this modularity, in this paper we propose an investigation of its theoretical foundations. We consider the problem of controlling a planar kinematic chain, and we restrict the admissible actuations to linear combinations of a small set of torque profiles (i.e. motor synergies). This scheme is equivalent to the time-varying synergy model, and it is formalized by means of the dynamic response decomposition (DRD). DRD is a general method to generate open-loop controllers for a dynamical system to solve desired tasks, and it can also be used to synthesize effective motor synergies. We show that a control architecture based on synergies can greatly reduce the dimensionality of the control problem, while keeping a good performance level. Our results suggest that in order to realize an effective and low-dimensional controller, synergies should embed features of both the desired tasks and the system dynamics. These characteristics can be achieved by defining synergies as solutions to a representative set of task instances. The required number of synergies increases with the complexity of the desired tasks. However, a possible strategy to keep the number of synergies low is to construct solutions to complex tasks by concatenating synergy-based actuations associated to simple point-to-point movements, with a limited loss of performance. Ultimately, this work supports the feasibility of controlling a non-linear dynamical systems by linear combinations of basic actuations, and illustrates the fundamental relationship between synergies, desired tasks and system dynamics

Synthesis and Adaptation of Effective Motor Synergies for the Solution of Reaching Tasks

Taking inspiration from the hypothesis of muscle synergies, we propose a method to generate open loop controllers for an agent solving point-to-point reaching tasks. The controller output is defined as a linear combination of a small set of predefined actuations, termed synergies. The method can be interpreted from a developmental perspective, since it allows the agent to autonomously synthesize and adapt an effective set of synergies to new behavioral needs. This scheme greatly reduces the dimensionality of the control problem, while keeping a good performance level. The framework is evaluated in a planar kinematic chain, and the quality of the solutions is quantified in several scenarios.Comment: conference pape

Social media strategies to protect brand image and corporate reputation in the digital era: a digital investigation of the Eni vs. Report case

Over the last decade digital technologies have significantly affected branding strategies and corporate reputation monitoring. Due to the diffusion of digital platforms, stakeholders and consumers have become more engaged in marketing strategies. Specifically, the “consumer decision journey” has represented a new paradigmatic shift in recent marketing literature. The advent of social networking sites has indeed caused an increase of digital touch points, which foster the connection between brand strategists and consumers. Hence, nowadays consumers may directly express their opinions about companies’ practices and products using the Internet. Because of this emerging phenomenon, modern marketing strategies are progressively focusing on preserving corporate reputations in the digital environment. In order to better understand how monitoring corporate reputations and responding to consumers to avoid the rise of negative brand perceptions, this explorative paper analyses the digital response strategy implemented by Eni, the largest Italian oil and gas company. The case explored consists of a digital investigation on Twitter, aimed at investigating how Eni’s digital counterattack strategies affected consumers’ perceptions after accusations moved by Report, a popular Italian journalism TV programme. The conclusions suggest that real-time digital counterattack strategies on social networking sites represent effective strategies to preserve corporate reputations as perceived by customers

AmI Systems as Agent-Based Mirror Worlds: Bridging Humans and Agents through Stigmergy

In this chapter we introduce a vision of agent-oriented AmI systems that is extended to integrate ideas inspired by MirrorWorlds as introduced by Gelernter at the beginning of the eighties. In this view, AmI systems are actually a digital world mirroring but also augmenting the physical world with capabilities, services and functionalities.We then discuss the value of stigmergy as background reference conceptual framework to define and understand interactions occurring between the physical environments and its digital agent-based extension. The digital world augments the physical world so that traces left by humans acting in the physical world are represented in the digital one in order to be perceived by software agents living there and, viceversa, actions taken by software agents in the mirror can have an effect on the connected physical counterpart

A survey on hardware-based malware detection approaches

This paper delves into the dynamic landscape of computer security, where malware poses a paramount threat. Our focus is a riveting exploration of the recent and promising hardware-based malware detection approaches. Leveraging hardware performance counters and machine learning prowess, hardware-based malware detection approaches bring forth compelling advantages such as real-time detection, resilience to code variations, minimal performance overhead, protection disablement fortitude, and cost-effectiveness. Navigating through a generic hardware-based detection framework, we meticulously analyze the approach, unraveling the most common methods, algorithms, tools, and datasets that shape its contours. This survey is not only a resource for seasoned experts but also an inviting starting point for those venturing into the field of malware detection. However, challenges emerge in detecting malware based on hardware events. We struggle with the imperative of accuracy improvements and strategies to address the remaining classification errors. The discussion extends to crafting mixed hardware and software approaches for collaborative efficacy, essential enhancements in hardware monitoring units, and a better understanding of the correlation between hardware events and malware applications

Using Analog Scrambling Circuits for Automotive Sensor Integrity and Authenticity

The automotive domain rapidly increases the embedded amount of complex and interconnected electronics systems. A considerable proportion of them are real-time safety-critical devices and must be protected against cybersecurity attacks. Recent regulations impose carmakers to safeguard vehicles from replacing trusted electronic hardware and manipulating the information collected by sensors. Analog sensors are critical elements whose security is now strictly regulated by the new UN R155 recommendation, but it lacks well-developed and established solutions. This work adds integrity and authentication to automotive analog sensors by proposing a schema to create analog signatures based on a scrambling mechanism implemented with commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) operational amplifiers. The proposed architecture implements a hardware secret key and a hard-to-invert exponential function to generate a signal’s signature. A prototype of the circuit was implemented and simulated on LTspice. Preliminary results show the feasibility of the proposed schema and provide interesting hints for further developments to increase the robustness of the approach

Analyzing the main types of co-created experiences

espanolProposito La presente investigacion se propone analizar en profundidad como las marcas pueden estar de acuerdo con la co-creacion de las experiencias de los consumidores. En particular, el objetivo de la investigacion es aclarar cuales son los principales tipos de experiencias co-creadas que los consumidores pueden experimentar debido a su participacion en las comunidades de marcas de redes sociales. Diseno/metodologia/enfoque Para hacerlo, en primer lugar, se han identificado los factores que influyen en la co-creacion de las experiencias de los miembros de las comunidades de marcas. En particular, el punto de partida de esta investigacion esta representado por el papel de otros consumidores y de la marca en la co-creacion de experiencias. Con el fin de identificar los principales tipos de experiencias co-creadas, se ha utilizado una investigacion digital como el principal metodo de analisis. Dibujamos nuestra investigacion digital en el paradigma de Metodos Digitales. Hallazgos Se identificaron y conceptualizaron cuatro tipos principales de experiencias co-creadas. Originalidad/valor Los resultados enfatizan la importancia de que los estrategas de marca involucren a los miembros de las comunidades de marcas de medios sociales para estimular la co-creacion de experiencias. Especificamente, surgio como la interaccion simultanea de otros miembros de la comunidad y la marca puede afectar la co-creacion. EnglishPurpose – This paper presents an in-depth investigation on how brands may concur to the co-creation of consumers' experiences. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the main types of co-created experiences that consumers may encounter as a result of social media brand communities. Design/methodology/approach – To identify the main types of co-created experiences, a digital investigation has been used as the main method of analysis. The authors draw their digital investigation on the digital methods paradigm. Findings – Four principal types of co-created experiences have been identified and conceptualized, namely, brand's products' individual usage experiences, auto-celebrative experiences, brand's products' communal usage experiences and collective celebration experiences. Originality/value – Results stress the importance for brand strategists to involve members of social media brand communities to stimulate co-creation experiences. Specifically, it emerges that the simultaneous interaction among members of the community and the brand may directly affect co-creation experiences