Searching for a state-of-the-art public space: city museums among archives and networks

The article focuses on innovations in city museum in recent years. By focusing on the user – as opposed to the collection – the changes in city museums have an influence on the statute of the museum, considerably altering its mission. Going so far as to build up databases and digital displays, the museum increasingly intersects its functions with those of an archive which (with particular regard to architectural materials) now proposes exhibitive forms of fruition. The most extreme consequences of this phenomenon is the online museum, with numerous peculiar aspects: it is flexible (its collection can grow without problems, and be presented in different forms), democratic, interactive and inexpensive, and it allows flows of information in several directions. The comparison with the contemporary city remains the fundamental, hinging element, as several intuitions has already shown in the past

Modeling the catastrophe, and beyond. Digital History and Visualization methods for multiscalar process description of the Nubia Temples flooding

World heritage sites are exposed to the impacts of natural and human-induced catastrophic events which threaten their integrity. According with UNESCO the loss or deterioration of these outstanding properties have severely negative impacts on local communities because of their cultural importance and because of their socio-economic value. The paper focuses on a multiscalar human-induced environmental change with catastrophic effects on the Nubia temples and on the prospective of using a multiscalar process description for studying and visualizing historical and environmental changes related to disasters. Beyond the disaster, the displacement both of temples and villages provoked other kind of damages. The case study presents how the disaster and the risk of damages on Cultural Heritage can be recorded and monitored at the scale of temples, artistic elements (i.e. statues, decorations), till the large portion of territory including villages. The paper highlights the disaster caused by the High Aswan Dam as a warning for an international awareness on a sustainable development that needs to take into account the cultural heritage. It discusses the cultural memory as crucial for Disaster Risk Reduction strategies. Our approach uses 3D models in order to collect data and to make understandable risks, damages and solutions. Historical research and Visualization methods create a fresh context of knowledge for a case study strongly representative of the World Heritage Disaster

Numerical modeling of the rheological characteristic of olive paste under different conditioning treatments: Traditional malaxation, high-frequency ultrasound and microwave

Olive paste, a mixture of olive oil, vegetation water and solid particles, have a complex rheological behavior. Its viscosity (μ) cannot be considered as constant and depends on several parameters. The olive paste changes its rheological characteristics from the inlet to the outlet of the olive oil extraction line because of temperature increase and variation in fluid composition (i.e., solid-liquid m). A numerical analysis was carried out using different mathematical models to predict the apparent viscosity of olive paste as a function of the solids and olive oil volume fractions. Experimental trials were carried out processing the olive paste using different techniques: traditional malaxing (TM), the use of megasound (MS) and the use of microwaves (MW). The collected data consisted of apparent viscosity values, the related shear strain rates and the composition of the olive paste. These data were interpolated using a power law model whose parameters were determined by means of a linear regression in a bi-logarithmic scale at each step of the olive milling process. As a result of comparison with the experimental data, the different models were found to be quite effective for describing the relative viscosity behavior and the obtained solid volume fraction obtained after the three different processing methods confirms the best behavior of the MS technique. As a final consideration, the results of this work represent another step toward full comprehension of the physical characteristics of the olive paste finalizes to improve the solid-liquid separation in olive oil centrifugal decanters

Composting of olive mill pomace, agro‐industrial sewage sludge and other residues: Process monitoring and agronomic use of the resulting composts

The viability of co‐composting of olive mill pomace added to sewage sludge with other organic residues was evaluated and the agronomic use of the final composts was investigated. Two composting piles at different carbon‐nitrogen ratios were performed, in which olive mill pomace (OMP), sewage sludge from vegetable processing (SS), fresh residues from artichoke processing residues (AR), and wheat straw (WS) were used. The two composting piles were placed inside a spe-cially built greenhouse and a turning machine pulled by a tractor was used for turning and shred-ding the organic matrix (every 6 days) during the process. The humidity and temperature of organic matrices have been monitored and controlled during the entire composting process, which lasted 90 days. The process was also monitored to evaluate the microbiological safety of the final compost. The humidity of both piles was always kept just above 50% until the end of the thermophilic phase and the maximum temperature was about 50 °C during the thermophilic phase. The carbon‐nitro-gen ratio decreased from 21.4 and 28.2, respectively (initial value at day 1 in Pile A and B), to values ranging from 12.9 to 15.1, both composts that originated from the two different piles were microbi-ologically safe. During a two‐year period, the effects of different types of compost on the main qualitative parameters of processing tomato and durum wheat was evaluated. Five fertilization treatments were evaluated for tomato and durum wheat crops: unfertilized control (TR1); compost A (TR2); compost B (TR3); ½ mineral and ½ compost A (TR4); and mineral fertilizer commonly used for the two crops (TR5). Concerning the processing tomato yield, TR5 and TR4 showed the best results (2.73 and 2.51 kg, respectively). The same trend was observed considering the marketable yield per plant. The only difference was related to the treatments that included the compost (2.32, 1.77, and 1.73 kg/plant for TR4, TR3, and TR2, respectively). As regards the qualitative parameters of to-mato, the highest average weight of the fruits was found in the TR5, TR4, and TR3 treatments (re-spectively, 73.67 g, 70.34 g, and 68.10 g). For durum wheat, only the protein component was differ-entiated between treatments. Furthermore, wheat grain yield parameters generally increased by combined application of mineral fertilizer and compost

Novel Reconstruction Errors for Saliency Detection in Hyperspectral Images

When hyperspectral images are analyzed, a big amount of data, representing the reflectance at hundreds of wavelengths, needs to be processed. Hence, dimensionality reduction techniques are used to discard unnecessary information. In order to detect the so called “saliency”, i.e., the relevant pixels, we propose a bottom-up approach based on three main ingredients: sparse non negative matrix factorization (SNMF), spatial and spectral functions to measure the reconstruction error between the input image and the reconstructed one and a final clustering technique. We introduce novel error functions and show some useful mathematical properties. The method is validated on hyperspectral images and compared with state-of-the-art different approaches

DIGITAL CULTURAL HERITAGE MEETS DIGITAL HUMANITIES

Digital Cultural Heritage and Digital Humanities are, historically seen, in focus of different communities as well as approaching different research topics and - from an organizational point of view - departments. However, are they that different? The idea of this joint article involving digital humanists and heritage researchers is to examine communities, concepts and research applications as well as shared challenges. Beyond a collection of problem-centred essays this is intended to initiate a fruitful discussion about commonalities and differences between both scholarly fields as well as to assess to which extent they are two sides of the same medal

A resources ecosystem for digital and heritage-led holistic knowledge in rural regeneration

This paper presents a digital resources ecosystem prototype of integrated tools and resources to support heritage-led regeneration of rural regions, thanks to a deeper understanding of the complexity of cultural natural landscapes throughout their historical and current development. The ecosystem is conceived as a distributed software platform establishing data ecosystem and open standards for the management of information, aimed at providing different services and applications to address the needs of the various end-users identified. The platform has been conceived and realised in the framework of a Horizon 2020 research project, with a view to building a set of holistic knowledge about rural regions and their cultural and natural heritage and making it available for long-lasting heritage-led territorial processes of change. It is the product of a multidisciplinary collaboration amongst heritage, digital humanities and ICTs experts, and combines data and methodologies from a range of approaches to humanities together with the customisation of effective digital tools. It has been designed for deployment also in cloud systems compliant with the Infrastructure-as-a-Service paradigm. All data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR data). It hosts and integrates different tools, making the data gathered with/for local stakeholders usable and making the same data re-usable within the tools’ functions, generating integrated heritage knowledge. It comprises data on 19 rural pilot territories, where the tools and their integration have been developed and tested, while 62 more are partially included as additional territories which participate in certain activities within the project. The main testers for this platform and its functions are the local stakeholders of these territories. The paper describes and analyses the platform and its impact, discussing the integration of tools as an innovative approach that goes beyond the use of individual tools in shaping a multidimensional vision. It also offers an analysis of the potential of an integrated digital ecosystem in evidence-based and place-based regeneration strategies. Some reflections for developments and cooperation during the pandemic are also presented

I convegni di architettura montana a Bardonecchia, Roberto Gabetti e la questione del moderno nel Piemonte del dopoguerra

Il saggio documenta alcuni convegni dedicati all’architettura in montagna che si svolgono a Bardonecchia nel dopoguerra, mettendo in luce come la discussione intorno ai convegni costituisca uno snodo critico di grande interesse in quel periodo di discontinuità storica. Si dimostra come le questioni che vi vengono affrontate travalichino la specificità dei luoghi rivelando temi eloquenti degli sviluppi del dibattito sul moderno in Piemonte in quegli anni. I protagonisti del dibattito, tra cui Carlo Mollino, spesso anche artefici di opere realizzate in quel contesto, mettono in discussione eredità culturali recenti e antiche con punte di grande intensità. Tali riflessioni muovono da un ambito geografico e culturale molto specifico, e tuttavia esso comporta aspetti nodali, di piccola e grande scala, che spingono ad affrontare la dimensione dell’ambiente e del paesaggio. Il saggio ne ricerca le connessioni con il dibattito su questi temi in Italia e in particolare a Torino, facendo emergere altri incontri e mettendo in relazione tali ambiti con gli sviluppi dell’architettura Neoliberty e con gli inizi di Roberto Gabetti, estensore dei resoconti dei convegni