The Palaearctic species of Pristaulacus Kieffer, 1900 (Hymenoptera, Aulacidae) : remarks on taxonomy, systematic, and biogeography

Taxonomic, systematic, and biogeography knowledge on the Palaearctic species of Pristaulacus Kieffer 1900 is summarized. Twenty-one valid species are recognized. The most important morphological characters taken into consideration are: shape, cuticular sculpture, and pubescence of head; index length/width of antennomeres; shape, sculpture and cuticular processes of mesosoma, especially of pronotum and mesonotum; number and shape of teeth on claw; shape and sculpture of metasoma; ovipositor length compared with wing and antenna length; and colour pattern (e.g., the dark spots on fore wing, and the colour of hind tarsus). Several characters of the genital capsule of the male were proved to be very useful for species identification, e.g., the shape of the paramere, volsella, cuspis, and digitus. Based on analysis of twenty-five morphological characters, eight species groups are recognized. The critical revision of the chorological data, including many new records, introduced relevant changes of the geographical distribution pattern of most species. Twelve species are restricted to the western part of the Palaearctic Region and eight species are restricted to its eastern part; only one species, P. gibbator, has a wider distribution, including both western and eastern parts of the Palaearctics

The past, the present and the future of eutardigrade taxonomy

The Author first recalls the past of eutardigrade taxonomy and indicates the main factors that for a long time restrained its progress. One consequence of a superficial analysis is that very wide individual variability has been erroneously attributed to many species, and this has become the main problem for tardigrade taxonomists. The situation began to change after 1969 because of the first attempts to eliminate the above mentioned problems. Novelties gave impetus to the revision of tardigrade taxonomy, and genuine systematics, finally based on phylogenetics, became popular. Today the morphological characters are considered more in depth and studies utilising DNA sequences are more in fashion; they are surely useful and allow the distinction of morphologically very similar species. However, in the author's opinion, this progress will be possible only if the molecular studies are always associated with careful morphological studies, which, in the meantime, will be more and more detailed also thanks to the use of the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)

Structure, Intraspecific Variability and Systematic Value of the Buccal Armature of Eutardigrades

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TSVD as a Statistical Estimator in the Latent Semantic Analysis Paradigm

The aim of this paper is to present a new point of view that makes it possible to give a statistical interpretation of the traditional latent semantic analysis (LSA) paradigm based on the truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD) technique. We show how the TSVD can be interpreted as a statistical estimator derived from the LSA co-occurrence relationship matrix by mapping probability distributions on Riemanian manifolds. Besides, the quality of the estimator model can be expressed by introducing a figure of merit arising from the Solomonoff approach. This figure of merit takes into account both the adherence to the sample data and the simplicity of the model. In our model, the simplicity parameter of the proposed figure of merit depends on the number of the singular values retained after the truncation process, while the TSVD estimator, according to the Hellinger distance, guarantees the minimal distance between the sample probability distribution and the inferred probabilistic model

Data-driven Social Mood Analysis through the Conceptualization of Emotional Fingerprints

Abstract A body of knowledge shows the emerging of evidence according to a better account for the emotional spectrum is achievable by employing a complete selection of emotion keywords. Basic emotions, such as Ekman's ones, cannot be considered universal, but are related to with implicit thematic affairs within the corpus under analysis. The paper tracks some preliminary experiments obtained by employing a data-driven methodology that captures emotions, relying on domain data that you want to model. The experimentation consists of investigating the corresponding conceptual space based on a set of terms (i.e., keywords) that are representative of the domain and the determination. Furthermore, the conceptual space is exploited as a bridge between the textual content and its sub-symbolic mapping as an "emotional fingerprint" into a six-dimensional hyperspace

A Framework Based on Semantic Spaces and Glyphs for Social Sensing on Twitter

Abstract In this paper we present a framework aimed at detecting emotions and sentiments in a Twitter stream. The approach uses the well-founded Latent Semantic Analysis technique, which can be seen as a bio-insipred cognitive architecture, to induce a semantic space where tweets are mapped and analysed by soft sensors. The measurements of the soft sensors are then used by a visualisation module which exploits glyphs to graphically present them. The result is an interactive map which makes easy the exploration of reactions and opinions in the whole globe regarding tweets retrieved from specific queries

Remarks on tardigrades from the Seychelles, with a description of two new species

Nine species of tardigrades are recorded; two of them, Echiniscus tropicalis and Minibiotus decrescens, are new to science. Macrobiotus peteri Pilato et al. 1989 has been found in Australia and Indonesia only. Echiniscus tropicalis has plate sculpture similar to that of E. spinulosus (Doyere 1840) but less regular. Lateral appendages are short filaments A and short spines B, C, D, E; dorsal appendages are short spines Cd and Dd. Minibiotus decrescens has fine, scattered, cuticular dots; the pharyngeal bulb has three granular macroplacoids, decreasing in length; microplacoid absent

Milnesium tetralamellatum, new species of Milnesiidae from Africa (Eutardigrada)

A new species of Milnesiidae is described, Milnesium tetralamellatum, from Tanzania. It differs from Milnesium tardigradum Doyere 1840 essentially by having four peribuccal lamellae instead of six

A Modular System Oriented to the Design of Versatile Knowledge Bases for Chatbots

The paper illustrates a system that implements a framework, which is oriented to the development of a modular knowledge base for a conversational agent. This solution improves the flexibility of intelligent conversational agents in managing conversations. The modularity of the system grants a concurrent and synergic use of different knowledge representation techniques. According to this choice, it is possible to use the most adequate methodology for managing a conversation for a specific domain, taking into account particular features of the dialogue or the user behavior. We illustrate the implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype: a set of modules exploiting different knowledge representation methodologies and capable of managing different conversation features has been developed. Each module is automatically triggered through a component, named corpus callosum, that selects in real time the most adequate chatbot knowledge module to activate