«Praga è sola»: the1968 in Czechoslovakia, a tale told by the Italian press (January 1968 – September 1969)

La Primavera di Praga è stato uno degli eventi più significativi del 1968, capace di lasciare larghe tracce nella storia del ‘900 europeo. Analizzando i principali quotidiani e riviste italiane del periodo, questo saggio intende fornire un’interpretazione delle linee di lettura, delle analisi e delle cronache giornalistiche più interessanti di quell’evento. Particolare attenzione è stata dedicata a tre momenti che hanno avuto una particolare importanza nello svolgimento dell’intera vicenda: la caduta di Novotný e l’ascesa di Dubček; il consolidamento del gruppo riformista; l’intervento armato sovietico e la reazione della stampa italiana.Prague’s Spring was one of the most significant event of 1968, able of leaving large signs in the history of the 20th century in Europe. This essay intends to provide an interpretation of the most interesting reading lines, analysis and journalistic reports of that event through the main Italian newspapers and magazines of that period. A particular attention is given to three important momentsthat were the turning point of that event: the falling of Novotný and the rising of Dubček; solidification of the reformist’s group; the armed intervention of the soviets and the reaction of the Italian press

An agent-based signal processing in-node environment for real-time human activity monitoring based on wireless body sensor networks

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Multi-agent system for integrating quality and process control in a home appliance production line

A current trend in manufacturing is the deployment of modular, distributed and intelligent control systems that introduce adaptation facing unexpected deviations and failures, namely in terms of production conditions and product demand fluctuation. The integration of quality and process control allows the implementation of dynamic self-adaptation procedures and feedback control loops to address a large variety of disturbances and changes in process parameters and variables, aiming to improve the production efficiency and the product quality. Multi-agent systems (MAS) technology (Wooldridge 2002)(Leitão et al. 2013) is suitable to face this challenge, offering an alternative way to design these adaptive systems, based on the decentralization of functions over distributed autonomous and cooperative agents, providing modularity, flexibility, adaptation and robustness. In spite of the potential benefits of the MAS technology, the number of deployed agent-based solutions in industrial environments, reported in the literature, are few, as illustrated in (Leitão et al. 2013) [colocar aqui referencia ao Pechoucek & Marik]. This chapter describes the development, installation and operation of a multi-agent system, designated as GRACE, integrating quality and process control to operate in a real home appliance production line, producing laundry washing machines, owned by Whirlpool and located in Naples, Italy. The use of the MAS technology acts as the intelligent and distributed infra-structure to support the implementation of real-time monitoring and feedback control loops that apply dynamic self-adaptation and optimization mechanisms to adjust the process and product variables. The agent-based solution was developed using the JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework) framework and successfully installed in the industrial factory plant, contributing for demonstrating the effective applicability and benefits of the MAS technology, namely in terms of production efficiency and product quality.This work has been partly financed by the EU Commission, within the research contract GRACE coordinated by Univ. Politecnica delle Marche and having partners SINTEF, AEA srl, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Whirlpool Europe srl, Siemens AG.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

SPINE: A domain-specific framework for rapid prototyping of WBSN applications

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Toward seamless environments for dispute prevention and resolution

Given the evolution of the Information Technology society, it is now rather simple to acquire products or services in a foreign country. This practice may conduct to the event of conflicts whenever a consumer detects some fault or malfunction in services or products he/she had bought. A situation that may worsen if at the time of the uncovering of the defect, the shopper is already in a different geographical arena. There is thus the need to develop computational tools that may prevent these disputes from even happening. In this work it is proposed the development of seamless intelligent environments for dispute resolution that will surround the user, independently of his/her location. It is described the implementation of a prototype that may provide contextualized real-time information and legal support to consumers. The objective is to decrease the number of disputes due to a poor understanding in relation to the The Law and make justice more personalized and closer to people.The work described in this paper was developed under the TIARAC - Telematics and Artificial Intelligence in Alternative Conflict Resolution Project (PTDC/JUR/71354/2006), which is a research project supported by FCT (Science & Technology Foundation), Portuga

A Semantic Grid Oriented to E-Tourism

With increasing complexity of tourism business models and tasks, there is a clear need of the next generation e-Tourism infrastructure to support flexible automation, integration, computation, storage, and collaboration. Currently several enabling technologies such as semantic Web, Web service, agent and grid computing have been applied in the different e-Tourism applications, however there is no a unified framework to be able to integrate all of them. So this paper presents a promising e-Tourism framework based on emerging semantic grid, in which a number of key design issues are discussed including architecture, ontologies structure, semantic reconciliation, service and resource discovery, role based authorization and intelligent agent. The paper finally provides the implementation of the framework.Comment: 12 PAGES, 7 Figure

Paleoepidemiological Patterns of Interpersonal Aggression in a Prehistoric Central California Population from CA-ALA-329

Interpersonal aggression is assessed paleoepidemiologically in a large skeletal population from the CA-ALA-329 site located on the southeastern side of San Francisco Bay, California. This comprehensive analysis included all currently recognized skeletal criteria, including craniofacial fracture, projectile injury, forearm fracture, and perimortem bone modification. Craniofacial injury is moderately common, showing an adult prevalence of 9.0% with facial lesions accounting for \u3e50% of involvement. Clinical studies suggest that such separate evaluation of facial involvement provides a useful perspective for understanding patterns of interpersonal aggression. In this group male facial involvement is significantly greater than in females, paralleling the pattern found widely in contemporary populations as well as in African apes. When compared to other North American skeletal samples the prevalence of adult cranial vault injury (3.3%) and especially projectile injury (4.4%) are quite high. However, well documented populations from southern California show markedly higher prevalence for both types of skeletal markers of aggression. Forearm fracture is also assessed using a rigorous radiographic methodology and results suggest that these injuries are not reliable indicators of interpersonal aggression. Lastly, perimortem bone modification was not observed in this population, although it has been recorded from other (older) sites nearby. This study provides an evaluation of multiple skeletal markers of interpersonal aggression in the largest sample from a single site yet reported in North America and, joined with consideration of cultural context, helps further illuminate both geographic and temporal patterns of interpersonal aggression in California

Developing intelligent environments with OSGi and JADE

Series: IFIP International Federation for Information ProcessingThe development of intelligent environments poses complex challenges, namely at the level of device heterogeneity and environment dynamics. In fact, we still lack supporting technologies and development approaches that can efficiently integrate different devices and technologies. In this paper we present how a recent integration of two important technologies, OSGi and Jade, can be used to significantly improve the development process, making it a more dynamic, modular and configurable one. We also focus on the main advantages that this integration provides to developers, from the Ambient Intelligence point of view. This work results from the development of two intelligent environments: VirtualECare, which is an intelligent environment for the monitorization of elderly in their homes and UMCourt, a virtual environment for dispute resolution.The work described in this paper is included in TIARAC - Telematics and Artificial Intelligence in Alternative Conflict Resolution Project (PTDC/JUR/71354/2006), which is a research project supported by FCT (Science & Technology Foundation), Portugal