Financial stability, monetary autonomy and fiscal interference: Bulgaria in search of its way, 1879-1913

The Bulgarian monetary system was established, immediately after independence. Having experienced it already under Ottoman rule, newly independent Bulgaria adopted the bimetallic standard. Without being a member of the Latin Monetary Union, it tried broadly to follow the principles of the convention, yet with some exceptions, the most important of which concerned the limit on silver coinage. The absence of such a clause in Bulgaria turned out to be crucial since the financial needs of the recently established state triggered excessive silver coinage which resulted in a persistent agio - a positive and variable difference between the legal and the commercial value of silver coins. The interference of fiscal authorities obstructed the Bulgarian National Bank's ability to manage money in circulation and to secure the monetary stability required by economic development). The attempts of the Bulgarian monetary authorities to eliminate the agio were unsuccessful until they acquired the right to issue silver-backed banknotes. Soon after that, in 1906, Bulgaria introduced a short-lived typical Gold standard.financial stability, monetary autonomy, fiscal interference, Bulgaria

Simulating Dye-Sensitized TiO2 Heterointerfaces in Explicit Solvent: Absorption Spectra, Energy Levels, and Dye Desorption

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) represent a valuable, efficient, and low-cost alternative to conventional semiconductor photovoltaic devices. A deeper understanding of the dye/semiconductor heterointerface and of the dye-sensitized semiconductor/ electrolyte interactions are fundamental for further progress in DSC technology. Here we report an ab initio molecular dynamics simulation of a dye-sensitized TiO2 heterointerface “immersed” in an explicit water environment for an efficient organic dye, followed by TDDFT excited state calculations of the coupled dye/semiconductor/ solvent system. This new computational protocol and the extended model system allows us to gain unprecedented insight into the excited state changes occurring for the solvated dye-sensitized heterointerface at room temperature, and to provide an atomistic picture of water-mediated dye desorption

An automatic system to discriminate malignant from benign massive lesions in mammograms

Evaluating the degree of malignancy of a massive lesion on the basis of the mere visual analysis of the mammogram is a non-trivial task. We developed a semi-automated system for massive-lesion characterization with the aim to support the radiological diagnosis. A dataset of 226 masses has been used in the present analysis. The system performances have been evaluated in terms of the area under the ROC curve, obtaining A_z=0.80+-0.04.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure; Proceedings of the Frontier Science 2005, 4th International Conference on Frontier Science, 12-17 September, 2005, Milano, Ital

Sleep Period Optimization Model For Layered Video Service Delivery Over eMBMS Networks

Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) and the evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast System (eMBMS) are the most promising technologies for the delivery of highly bandwidth demanding applications. In this paper we propose a green resource allocation strategy for the delivery of layered video streams to users with different propagation conditions. The goal of the proposed model is to minimize the user energy consumption. That goal is achieved by minimizing the time required by each user to receive the broadcast data via an efficient power transmission allocation model. A key point in our system model is that the reliability of layered video communications is ensured by means of the Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) approach. Analytical results show that the proposed resource allocation model ensures the desired quality of service constraints, while the user energy footprint is significantly reduced.Comment: Proc. of IEEE ICC 2015, Selected Areas in Communications Symposium - Green Communications Track, to appea

Experiencing Life as Cinematic Fiction: The Marvelous within the Daily Media Landscape

Ogni giorno abitiamo numerosi universi digitali che si sovrappongono dramma-ticamente alla realtà fisica. La nostra identità è costituita da una moltitudine di personaggi creati appositamente per interpretare una personalità frammentata. Tuttavia, fino a che punto ne siamo consapevoli? Applicando il concetto di “meraviglioso” di Torquato Tasso in quanto elemento rivelatore, ovvero, «un processo che dà accesso a una dimensione nascosta oltre la realtà» (Ardissino 2019), il saggio si propone di analizzare Monomyth: gaiden (2018-2020), una serie animata in quattro atti realizzata dall’artista ungherese Petra Széman. Rielaborando il tema del viaggio dell’eroe e una narrazione non lineare tipica di anime e manga, gaiden in giapponese, Széman intercetta le discrepanze che nascono all’intersezione tra schermo e individuo «in una realtà elusiva e multilivello» (Széman 2018). L’artista crea un épos digitale per osservare ciò che accade «tra il sistema percettivo umano e il suo ambiente mediale» (Levitt 2018) in una rete interconnessa composta da regni virtuali e identità non localizzate.Daily, we enter and exit several digital realms which dramatically overlap with our physical reality. Our identity is scattered in a multitude of customized characters, explicitly created to represent the fragments of our personality. However, up to what extent are we aware of all this? By applying Torquato Tasso’s notion of “marvelous” as a revelatory element, that is, «a process that provides access to a hidden dimension beyond reality» (Ardissino 2019), this essay aims at analyzing Monomyth: gaiden (2018-2020), a four parts animated series by Petra Széman, a Hungarian moving image artist. Széman uses the hero’s journey trope and the principles of the gaiden, a nonlinear narrative used in manga and anime, to investigate the discrepancies occurring at the spectator-screen nexus «when journeying through an elusive multiplanar reality» (Széman 2018). Traveling between the fictional and the real world, Széman creates a digital épos which investigates «how the encounter between the human perceptual system and its media environment» (Levitt 2018) interacts in an interwoven network of virtual realms and non-localized identities

An automated system for lung nodule detection in low-dose computed tomography

A computer-aided detection (CAD) system for the identification of pulmonary nodules in low-dose multi-detector helical Computed Tomography (CT) images was developed in the framework of the MAGIC-5 Italian project. One of the main goals of this project is to build a distributed database of lung CT scans in order to enable automated image analysis through a data and cpu GRID infrastructure. The basic modules of our lung-CAD system, a dot-enhancement filter for nodule candidate selection and a neural classifier for false-positive finding reduction, are described. The system was designed and tested for both internal and sub-pleural nodules. The results obtained on the collected database of low-dose thin-slice CT scans are shown in terms of free response receiver operating characteristic (FROC) curves and discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures; Proceedings of the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference, 17-22 February 2007, San Diego, California, USA, Vol. 6514, 65143

Markerless visual servoing on unknown objects for humanoid robot platforms

To precisely reach for an object with a humanoid robot, it is of central importance to have good knowledge of both end-effector, object pose and shape. In this work we propose a framework for markerless visual servoing on unknown objects, which is divided in four main parts: I) a least-squares minimization problem is formulated to find the volume of the object graspable by the robot's hand using its stereo vision; II) a recursive Bayesian filtering technique, based on Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) filtering, estimates the 6D pose (position and orientation) of the robot's end-effector without the use of markers; III) a nonlinear constrained optimization problem is formulated to compute the desired graspable pose about the object; IV) an image-based visual servo control commands the robot's end-effector toward the desired pose. We demonstrate effectiveness and robustness of our approach with extensive experiments on the iCub humanoid robot platform, achieving real-time computation, smooth trajectories and sub-pixel precisions