A Relation-Based Page Rank Algorithm for Semantic Web Search Engines

With the tremendous growth of information available to end users through the Web, search engines come to play ever a more critical role. Nevertheless, because of their general-purpose approach, it is always less uncommon that obtained result sets provide a burden of useless pages. The next-generation Web architecture, represented by the Semantic Web, provides the layered architecture possibly allowing overcoming this limitation. Several search engines have been proposed, which allow increasing information retrieval accuracy by exploiting a key content of Semantic Web resources, that is, relations. However, in order to rank results, most of the existing solutions need to work on the whole annotated knowledge base. In this paper, we propose a relation-based page rank algorithm to be used in conjunction with Semantic Web search engines that simply relies on information that could be extracted from user queries and on annotated resources. Relevance is measured as the probability that a retrieved resource actually contains those relations whose existence was assumed by the user at the time of query definitio

A QFD framework for quality, innovation and high-tech product development dynamics

The customer mostly chooses a product on the base of its quality, which therefore arises as the main cause of its commercial success. In a nearly axiomatic drawing, it follows that the effect of innovation is the improvement of quality, which itself becomes the aim of innovation. Even though the previous statement relates quality and innovation, it still does not explain their dynamics. To stress them, the ‘quality' concept must be analyzed in more detail. In fact, in addition to the ‘perceived quality', the quality ensured through `design, manufacturing and marketing' combined domains should be dealt with. This paper enhances this issue taking advantage of principles and models made available by control theory schemes coupled with quality function development (QFD) and best practice software modeling based on unified modeling language (UML

LO-MATCH: A semantic platform for matching migrants' competences with labour market's needs

Citizens' mobility and employability are receiving ever more attention by the European legislation. Various instruments have been defined to overcome lexical and semantic differences in the descriptions of qualifications, résumés and job profiles. However, the above differences still represent a significant constraint when abilities of non-European people have to be validated either for education and training or occupation purposes. In this work, a web platform that exploits semantic technologies to address such heterogeneity issues is presented. The platform allows migrants to annotate their knowledge, skills and competences in a shared format based on the European tools. The resulting knowledge base is then used to enable the automatic matchmaking of job seekers' abilities with companies' needs. The platform can additionally be used to support students and workers in the identification of their competence gap with respect to a given education or occupation opportunity, so that to personalize their further trainin

Agri-Food Traceability Management using a RFID System with Privacy Protection

In this paper an agri-food traceability system based on public key cryptography and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is proposed. In order to guarantee safety in food, an efficient tracking and tracing system is required. RFID devices allow recording all useful information for traceability directly on the commodity. The security issues are discussed and two different methods based on public cryptography are proposed and evaluated. The first algorithm uses a nested RSA based structure to improve security, while the second also provides authenticity of data. An experimental analysis demonstrated that the proposed system is well suitable on PDAs to

Mixed marker-based/marker-less visual odometry system for mobile robots

When moving in generic indoor environments, robotic platforms generally rely solely on information provided by onboard sensors to determine their position and orientation. However, the lack of absolute references often leads to the introduction of severe drifts in estimates computed, making autonomous operations really hard to accomplish. This paper proposes a solution to alleviate the impact of the above issues by combining two vision‐based pose estimation techniques working on relative and absolute coordinate systems, respectively. In particular, the unknown ground features in the images that are captured by the vertical camera of a mobile platform are processed by a vision‐based odometry algorithm, which is capable of estimating the relative frame‐to‐frame movements. Then, errors accumulated in the above step are corrected using artificial markers displaced at known positions in the environment. The markers are framed from time to time, which allows the robot to maintain the drifts bounded by additionally providing it with the navigation commands needed for autonomous flight. Accuracy and robustness of the designed technique are demonstrated using an off‐the‐shelf quadrotor via extensive experimental test

A mobile platform for collaborative urban freight transportation

Abstract In recent years, online shopping is increasing the flows that transit into the urban areas. An increase in demand corresponds to an increase in operational complexity for logistics operators and environmental issues. This paper presents the development of a mobile platform integrated with wearable features to foster the collaboration between different actors in urban freight logistics

Education and Digital Transformation: The Riconnessioni Project

Schools, universities, and other educational entities are increasingly aware of the untapped potential of digital transformation, an essential process for increasing efficiency and collaboration, and reducing costs and errors in the management of at-scale training systems. In this context, the "Riconnessioni'' project was promoted by the Compagnia di San Paolo in agreement with the Ministry of Education but planned, started and developed by the Foundation for the School. The digital transformation started with a defined strategy that leveraged opportunities presented by new technology while meeting the objectives of system stakeholders. Through several steps, that strategy was developed for education connecting everything to support tomorrow's digital world and creating strong strategic partnerships able to build an ecosystem connecting people, processes, and things into a powerful, secure, and smart communications network. This paper reports on the three-year Riconnessioni project, which is combining the energies of teachers, managers, administrative staff, students, among others, and experimenting with new learning models, taking advantage of opportunities that emerged from perceptions stemming from concerns and systemic issues. To date, more than 150 schools in Italy have been included in the project, together with 550 teachers selected to scale up the instructional process. Using a methodology called "cascade training'', the 550 selected teachers were able to spread the knowledge to more than 2,600 colleagues. The monitoring and evaluation activity performed in Riconnessioni aims at processing information on implementation and results, following three lines. First, it regularly evaluates project activities from a reporting standpoint. Second, it verifies the plan consistency against implementation achievements. Third, it identifies changes produced and focuses on teachers' and students' skills to evaluate the effects of the project. The assessment framework is also discussed in this work, reporting on results regarding feedback, follow-up, and effects gathered from the field. The evaluation highlighted that labs were indeed able to improve teachers' competence and underlined the added value of cascade training which spread digital domain knowledge and awareness into the group of involved schools

Thinking BigData: Motivation, Results and a Few Recipes for a Balanced Growth of High Performance Computing in Academia

Big Data is today both an emerging research area and a real present and future demand. High Performance Computing (HPC) Centers cannot neglect this fact and have to be reshaped to fulfill this need. In this paper we share our experience of upgrading a HPC Center at Politecnico di Torino, originally designed and deployed in 2010. We believe that this issue could be common to some other existing "general purpose" HPC centers where, at least in the short term, the possibility to start from scratch a new Big Data HPC center cannot be afforded but a balanced upgrade of the existing system has to be preferre

Blockchain and smart contracts for insurance: Is the technology mature enough?

Blockchain is receiving increasing attention from academy and industry, since it is considered a breakthrough technology that could bring huge benefits to many different sectors. In 2017, Gartner positioned blockchain close to the peak of inflated expectations, acknowledging the enthusiasm for this technology that is now largely discussed by media. In this scenario, the risk to adopt it in the wake of enthusiasm, without objectively judging its actual added value is rather high. Insurance is one the sectors that, among others, started to carefully investigate the possibilities of blockchain. For this specific sector, however, the hype cycle shows that the technology is still in the innovation trigger phase, meaning that the spectrum of possible applications has not been fully explored yet. Insurers, as with many other companies not necessarily active only in the financial sector, are currently requested to make a hard decision, that is, whether to adopt blockchain or not, and they will only know if they were right in 3â\u80\u935 years. The objective of this paper is to support actors involved in this decision process by illustrating what a blockchain is, analyzing its advantages and disadvantages, as well as discussing several use cases taken from the insurance sector, which could easily be extended to other domains