Imagining the thinking machine: Technological myths and the rise of artificial intelligence

This article discusses the role of technological myths in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies from 1950s to the early 1970s. It shows how the rise of AI was accompanied by the construction of a powerful cultural myth: the creation of a thinking machine, which would be able to perfectly simulate the cognitive faculties of the human mind. Based on a content analysis of articles on Artificial Intelligence published in two magazines, the Scientific American and the New Scientist, which were aimed at a broad readership of scientists, engineers, and technologists, three dominant patterns in the construction of the AI myth are identified: (1) the recurrence of analogies and discursive shifts, by which ideas and concepts from other fields were employed to describe the functioning of AI technologies; (2) a rhetorical use of the future, imagining that present shortcomings and limitations will shortly be overcome; (3) the relevance of controversies around the claims of AI, which we argue should be considered as an integral part of the discourse surrounding the AI myth

Where the streets have known names

Street names provide important insights into the local culture, history, and politics of places. Linked open data provide a wealth of knowledge that can be associated with street names, enabling novel ways to explore cultural geographies. This paper presents a three-fold contribution. We present (1) a technique to establish a correspondence between street names and the entities that they refer to. The method is based on Wikidata, a knowledge base derived from Wikipedia. The accuracy of this mapping is evaluated on a sample of streets in Rome. As this approach reaches limited coverage, we propose to tap local knowledge with (2) a simple web platform. Users can select the best correspondence from the calculated ones or add another entity not discovered by the automated process. As a result, we design (3) an enriched OpenStreetMap web map where each street name can be explored in terms of the properties of its associated entity. Through several filters, this tool is a first step towards the interactive exploration of toponymy, showing how open data can reveal facets of the cultural texture that pervades places

Linking geographic vocabularies through WordNet

The linked open data (LOD) paradigm has emerged as a promising approach to structuring and sharing geospatial information. One of the major obstacles to this vision lies in the difficulties found in the automatic integration between heterogeneous vocabularies and ontologies that provides the semantic backbone of the growing constellation of open geo-knowledge bases. In this article, we show how to utilize WordNet as a semantic hub to increase the integration of LOD. With this purpose in mind, we devise Voc2WordNet, an unsupervised mapping technique between a given vocabulary and WordNet, combining intensional and extensional aspects of the geographic terms. Voc2WordNet is evaluated against a sample of human-generated alignments with the OpenStreetMap (OSM) Semantic Network, a crowdsourced geospatial resource, and the GeoNames ontology, the vocabulary of a large digital gazetteer. These empirical results indicate that the approach can obtain high precision and recall

Présentation. Quand passion et précarité se rencontrent dans les métiers du savoir

http://rsa.revues.org/124

Calorimetric analysis of ice onset temperature during cryoablation: a model approach to identify early predictors of effective applications

Aim of the present study is to analyze thermal events occurring during cryoablation. Different bovine liver samples underwent freezing cycles at different cooling rate (from 0.0075 to 25 K/min). Ice onset temperature and specific latent heat capacity of the ice formation process were measured according to differential scanning calorimetry signals. A computational model of the thermal events occurring during cryoablation was compiled using Neumann’s analytical solution. Latent heat (#1 = 139.8 ± 7.4 J/g, #2 = 147.8 ± 7.9 J/g, #3 = 159.0 ± 4.1 J/g) of all liver samples was independent of the ice onset temperature, but linearly dependent on the water content. Ice onset temperature was proportional to the logarithm of the cooling rate in the range 5 ÷ 25 K/min (#3a = − 12.2 °C, #3b = − 16.2 °C, #3c = − 6.6 °C at 5K/min; #3a = − 16.5 °C, #3b = − 19.3 °C, #3c = − 11.6 °C at 25 K/min). Ice onset temperature was associated with both the way in which the heat involved into the phase transition was delivered and with the thermal gradient inside the tissue. Ice onset temperature should be evaluated in the early phase of the ablation to tailor cryoenergy delivery. In order to obtain low ice trigger temperatures and consequent low ablation temperatures a high cooling rate is necessary

ANNA Tool: A Way to Connect Future and Past Students in STEM

The 'Increasing Gender Diversity in STEM' project involved six different partner universities around Europe. The scope of the project was to investigate the gender difference in self-perception of students in relation to their career choice. This was done through a web-based app, ANNA tool, that allows high school students to match their own personality, views, and expectations to those of engineering students and professional engineers. In the meantime, the data collection gave the opportunity to take a look at how students perceive their university and undergraduate program. This pilot application is then been further studied in order to analyse its scalability in other countries with broader STEM content

How Online Solutions Help Beat the Lockdown in Higher Education: A Central Asia Case Study

This chapter is aimed at summarizing the recent initiatives put in action for solving the problems in delivering the educational services in the Turin Polytechnic University in Tashkent, TTPU, after the lockdown, and the stringent measures taken by the Uzbek government in March 2020, for the pandemic explosion of the COVID-19 virus. The long-lasting connection between Politecnico di Torino, a European University, and this Central Asia Institution has been proven to be extremely effective, maximizing the benefits of TTPU in promptly offering online solutions for remote lectures, and the preparation of the technical substrate for both the exams and admission test which will be delivered after the completion of the second semester lectures. A summary of the IT tools adopted, with compact highlights of their features, as well as the qualitative feedback collected from the first courses offered with a reshaped structure suitable for online classes are thoroughly discussed in this work