Complexity, Governance and the Smart City

The city is today object of scientific interest around the concept of environmental complexity. Its multiformity is an element of richness on which cities base opportunities and raison d'être, thus making it necessary their protection and enhancement, through administrative and managerial actions able to replicate rather than reduce this complex articulation. Yet the inclusive and diffuse management of the vital characters of a city includes explicit or tacit agent/environment relationships. Technology becomes critical support towards intelligent systems for structuring the problems posed by the intricacy, fuzziness and dynamical uncertainty of complex environments -particularly urban settlements. Urban organization becomes a smart city by overcoming prejudices that evoke presumed enhancing mechanisms induced by diffused infrastructuring per se. The cognitive management of the characters and features involved in the formation and organization of the smart city certainly needs adequate architectures, homotetically related to such complexity. An ontology-based approach is proposed here, as an opportunity for analysing and managing this multimensional cognitive assortment, looking for suitable formalization models beyond reductionist smart city commonplaces

<i>Linaria arcusangeli</i> Atzei et Camarda species nova de l'île de Sardaigne

The Authors describe a new species of the genus Linaria Miller, endemic of Sardinia, named L. arcusangeli from the site of origin. The plant is perennial, woody at the base, multicaulis, with stems 20-60 cm long, glabrous, leaves linear or linear-lanceolate, and racemes terminal, single, with few flowers; corolla 14-18 mm, pink-violet, with spur straight; capsule 5-6 mm, longer than calyx, with seeds rugulose-tubercolate. It might be included in the sect. Repentes Valdés, where shows the greatest affinities to L. capraria Moris et De Notaris. Biological, ecological, caryological (2n = 12) and phytogeographical notes of the species are also described

Smart Technologies for Environmental Safety and Knowledge Enhancement in Intermodal Transport

International concerns about security in transport systems are leading to a new international regulation in this field. This introduces new requirements for operators and authorities as well as it opens new challenges, in particular when referred to seaports and maritime transport in the Mediterranean area, where many seaport terminals and infrastructures are affected by a noteworthy technological divide from North European contexts. In such contexts, the adoption of the new regulations can represent the right chance for upgrading the local operative standards, increasing latu sensu the quality of maritime transport performances, while conferring a greater level to security and safety checks. This paper explores the chances for increasing the level of Mediterranean seaport competitiveness allowed by technological innovations in transport systems, both in operations and organization of these infrastructures. The aim of the work is to study the effects of the adoption of technological solutions such as wireless communications and radiofrequency identification on the competitiveness of Mediterranean seaport infrastructures. Technological solutions designed to identify good items help operators in organizing activities in terminals and make maritime transport faster in delivering goods, by cutting the handling time and costs in seaport terminals. Seaports that adopt this kind of technologies, and the surrounding economic areas connected to seaports, have a greater attractiveness on shipping companies and operators, since they allow faster handling activities and easier checks on goods. Besides, the analysis of direct and indirect effects of the use of such technologies specifically focuses on the contribution that the use of these solutions gives in ensuring higher security levels, by increasing the level of information and knowledge associated to goods. The different types of security provided (e.g. for people, environment and goods) and the extreme flexibility of the technologies involved give the overall worth of the challenge. It seems to be a great chance of growth for the Mediterranean area, more than a mere compliance to the international security regulations.

Spatial primitives and knowledge organization in planning and architecture: some experimental notes

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Navigating in multi-level buildings: the effect of rotation

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La conoscenza spaziale degli ambienti di grande scala dimensionale: uno studio preliminare planning-oriented

Lo studio degli ambienti spaziali si è evoluto considerevolmente nel tempo, seguendo diverse prospettive. In accordo con la prospettiva cognitivista, gli spazi sono entità ad alta densità di conoscenza nei quali gli agenti umani si muovono in maniera flessibile per tutto l'arco della loro vita. Riconoscere e comprendere gli elementi caratterizzanti tali spazi, pertanto, diventa fondamentale per una efficace pianificazione e per i processi di decision-making ambientale, sia a livello urbano che regionale, poiché essi rappresentano elementi strutturali e resilienti. La cognizione dello spazio si sviluppa anche attraverso elementi taciti o impliciti quali percezioni, emozioni, sensazioni. Questo lavoro rappresenta un tentativo preliminare di riconoscere questi elementi in ambienti a popolazione estremamente ridotta come gli spazi rurali. Trattandosi di aree scarsamente strutturate rispetto agli insediamenti urbani, percezioni, sensazioni ed emozioni diventano variabili particolarmente importanti per l'interpretazione e la strutturazione degli spazi

Phospholipase activity of yeasts from wild birds and possible implications for human disease

Over the last decades, reports on yeast infections in humans have increased especially with respect to immunocompromised individuals. Phospholipases are enzymes which may be associated with pathogenic processes caused by opportunistic yeasts. Phospholipase activity (ph.a.) was investigated in 163 isolates of 13 species of yeasts. A total of 133 isolates were obtained through the screening of a total of 768 cloacae of wild birds (Group I: 182 birds of prey; Group II: 165 passeriformes and Group III: 421 other wild migratory birds), while 30 isolates were recovered from the droppings of birds housed in 32 distinct aviaries (Group IV). Phospholipase production was evaluated and quantified at 2 and 5 day pre-incubation (Pr.t) and incubation times (I.t). Isolates from cloacae (48.1%) and excreta (73.3%) produced ph.a. with the highest values registered after 5 days of I.t. Candida albicans, C. tropicalis, C. glabrata, C. lusitaniae, C. pelliculosa, Cryptococcus albidus, C. laurentii, Trichosporon beigelii, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae displayed the highest ph.a. after 2 days of Pr.t while Candida famata, C. guilliermondii and Cryptococcus neoformans after 5 days of Pr.t. Ph.a. was never found in Rhodotorula rubra isolates recovered from the cloacae of wild birds. Isolates (73.3%) from bird droppings showed a higher ph.a. than those from cloacae thus indicating that wild birds not only act as carriers but may also spread phospholipase-producing yeasts in the environment

Video Smoothing of Aggregates of Streams with Bandwidth Constraints

Compressed variable bit rate (VBR) video transmission is acquiring a growing importance in the telecommunication world. High data rate variability of compressed video over multiple time scales makes an efficient bandwidth resource utilization difficult to obtain. One of the approaches developed to face this problem are smoothing techniques. Various smoothing algorithms that exploit client buffers have been proposed, thus reducing the peak rate and high rate variability by efficiently scheduling the video data to be transmitted over the network. The novel smoothing algorithm proposed in this paper, which represents a significant improvements over the existing methods, performs data scheduling both for a single stream and for stream aggregations, by taking into account available bandwidth constraints. It modifies, whenever possible, the smoothing schedule in such a way as to eliminate frame losses due to available bandwidth limitations. This technique can be applied to any smoothing algorithm already present in literature and can be usefully exploited to minimize losses in multiplexed stream scenarios, like Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T), where a specific known available bandwidth must be shared by several multimedia flows. The developed algorithm has been exploited for smoothing stored video, although it can also be quite easily adapted for real time smoothing. The obtained numerical results, compared with the MVBA, another smoothing algorithm that is already presented and discussed in literature, show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, in terms of lost video frames, for different multiplexed scenarios