ARIADNE: A Research Infrastructure for Archaeology

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives, and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades have become ever more collaborative, distributed, and data intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organization, analysis, and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access, and (re)use have lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE, the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EU-funded network has developed an e-infrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access, and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realize. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users’ expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the e-infrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery, and access), and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarizes lessons learned and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in the sharing of data through ARIADNE

Impatto del moisture buffering sul clima interno di uffici ventilati meccanicamente

The aim of this work is to demonstrate the reliability of measured hygroscopic properties of materials in predicting the RH variation inside a room taking into account the material’s buffering effect. An analysis of reliability of the measured hygroscopic properties and their influence on numerical simulation is carried out. The influence of an important room factor as ventilation on the moisture buffer is taken into account for different scenarios

Decision-Making Support Systems for the Archaeological Domain: a Natural Language Processing Proposal

Using linguistic data, related to phrases and parts of speech (POS) information, could improve decision-making performances. This paper presents an ongoing research that aims to apply Natural Language Processing (NLP) based on Lexicon Grammar (LG) approach to increase information retrieval in the Archaeological domain. In particularly, the main scope of this work is to apply language formalization techniques to describe decision-making and problem-solving processes in the field of Archaeology, in order to formalize an ontology for this domain

Impact of moisture buffering on indoor climate for mechanically ventilated offices.

The aim of this work is to demonstrate the reliability of a simplified model in predicting the RH variation inside a room, taking into account the indoor material buffering effect. Starting from the characterization of the main hygroscopic properties of wood fiber an analysis of reliability of measured data for vapour permeability and sorption isotherm and their influence on numerical simulation is carried out. The determination of measured Moisture Buffer Value for the wood fiber is carried out through the simulation of the MBV test for uncoated elements. The results are compared to those from literature. The ventilation influence as room factor is taken into account for the whole room hygroscopic performance. More scenarios for different mechanical ventilation rates are foreseen considering a demand controlled and a fixed volume airflow. Simulations are carried out considering Turin weather data

Selection of systemic therapy in patients with locally advanced and recurrent/metastatic head and neck cancer: RAND-based expert opinion by an Italian multidisciplinary panel

Background: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a heterogeneous disease often presenting at an already advanced stage. Cisplatin chemoradiotherapy is the standard treatment for locally advanced disease, although its efficacy varies according to different studies. Thus, treatment selection is a challenge, especially in older patients, who frequently have several comorbidities. Moreover, the majority of patients with recurrent and/or metastatic disease are unsuitable for local treatment, either surgery or radiation therapy. The only treatment option for them is systemic therapy, but prognosis remains poor, with a median overall survival of less than 12 months. Methods: A group of Italian key opinion leaders in the field of HNSCC gathered several times in 2018 in order to retrieve a set of statements to help clinicians in their daily decision-making process for the treatment of patients with different scenarios of HNSCC. Results and Conclusion: The panel agreed on 22 statements that were identified as \u201cgood clinical points\u201d based on the available literature or after discussion of the most relevant aspect of the underlying diseases when no international consensus was available. The panel identified a number of possible scenarios (namely 71) in which these statements may be helpful to guide decision-making for the best treatment selection