A Value-Sensitive Design Approach to Intelligent Agents

This chapter proposed a novel design methodology called Value-Sensitive Design and its potential application to the field of artificial intelligence research and design. It discusses the imperatives in adopting a design philosophy that embeds values into the design of artificial agents at the early stages of AI development. Because of the high risk stakes in the unmitigated design of artificial agents, this chapter proposes that even though VSD may turn out to be a less-than-optimal design methodology, it currently provides a framework that has the potential to embed stakeholder values and incorporate current design methods. The reader should begin to take away the importance of a proactive design approach to intelligent agents

Work hard, party harder:drug use and sexual behaviour in young British casual workers in Ibiza, Spain

Background: Every summer, young people flock to nightlife-focused holiday resorts around the world to find casual work. Despite being exposed to hedonistic environments, often for several months, little is known about their substance use, sexual activity and health service needs over this extended amount of time abroad. Methods: A short anonymous questionnaire examining alcohol and drug use, sexual behaviour and use of health services was administered to young British casual workers aged 16–35 in San Antonio, Ibiza (n = 171). Results: 97.7% of casual workers used alcohol in Ibiza, and the majority (85.3%) used drugs. Almost half (43.5%) of all participants used a drug in Ibiza that they had never used in the UK. Most casual workers arrived in Ibiza without a partner or spouse (86.5%). Of these, 86.9% had sex during their stay and 50.0% had unprotected sex; often while under the influence of alcohol. Only 14.3% of those having unprotected sex with a new partner sought a sexual health check-up in Ibiza, although 84.1% intended to do this on their return to the UK. Conclusion: Substance use and sexual risk taking is widespread among young British casual workers in Ibiza. Such international nightlife resorts represent key settings for substance-related health and social problems, and for the international spread of sexually transmitted infections. Addressing the health needs of casual workers and the environments that permit and promote their excessive behaviour requires collaboration between authorities in home and destination countries and the tourism industry

Corso del Popolo in Terni: An Interpretative Hypothesis for the Contemporary Urban Design

This work is grounded on the idea that the approach to the urban design should require a preordained cultural choice of interpretative paradigm of reality, allowing a selection of the significant values to be determined for the project itself. The proposed subject concerns a particular interpretation, theoretical as much as practical, provided by Mario Ridolfi and Volfango Frankl in the post-war reconstruction of the city of Terni, midway between the forties and sixties in the last century, through that which would define 500 meters Urbanism. Such a definition, used afterwards by the same authors in the discussion of their town planning experience, sounds like a phenomenological manifesto which identifies the physical and cultural dimension in which the urban design could significantly express a precise idea of a city. Also of great interest is the authors cultural matrix, which dates back to the work of the masters C.Sitte, G.Giovannoni, M.Piacentini, according to whom the theoretical observation on the city aesthetic is inextricably linked to its etymological nature of sensitive perception of the quality of the space, of its volumetric realisation and of its foundation upon History through the continuity with tradition. The paradigmatic example of this cultural position can be considered the Plan for Corso del Popolo, where the design consideration, developed along a forty years path, leaves the principles of architecture and those of town planning in an organic and unitary way, through the contextual realisation, on the part of Ridolfi and Frankl, of formidable architectures, as with the Franconi and the Pallotta Houses, and of the town planning tool subject to the rules and normative regulations of the planning. The research case, therefore, consistent with its interest in redefining a field of validity, aesthetic and ethical together, in the modern day construction of the city, is proposed as a tool of knowledge of reality and of its structure in terms of its possible planning hermeneutics

Left atrial anomalous muscular band as incidental finding during video-assisted mitral surgery

Congenital fibromuscular bands have been described inleft ventricle or right atrium and have been diagnosed by echocardiography and CT scan. The first report of anomalous band in the left atrium was described in 1897 by Rollestone (1). We hereby present a case of a patient with an incidental finding of left atrial band during a minimally invasive mitral surgery procedure

A Tabulated-Chemistry Approach applied to a Quasi-Dimensional Combustion Model for a Fast and Accurate Knock Prediction in Spark-Ignition Engines

The description of knock phenomenon is a critical issue in a combustion model for Spark-Ignition (SI) engines. The most known theory to explain this phenomenon is based on the Auto-Ignition (AI) of the end-gas, ahead the flame front. The accurate description of this process requires the handling of various aspects, such as the impact of the fuel composition, the presence of residual gas or water in the burning mixture, the influence of cool flame heat release, etc. This concern can be faced by the solution of proper chemistry schemes for gasoline blends. Whichever is the modeling environment, either 3D or 0D, the on-line solution of a chemical kinetic scheme drastically affects the computational time. In this paper, a procedure for an accurate and fast prediction of the hydrocarbons auto-ignition, applied to phenomenological SI engine combustion models, is proposed. It is based on a tabulated approach, operated on both ignition delay times and reaction rates. This technique, widely used in 3D calculations, is extended to 0D models to overcome the inaccuracies typical of the most common ignition delay approaches, based on the Livengood-Wu integral solution. The aim is to combine the predictability of a detailed chemistry with an acceptable computational effort. First, the tabulated technique is verified through comparisons with a chemical solver for a semi-detailed kinetic scheme in constant-pressure and constant-volume configurations. Then a phenomenological model, based on the end-gas AI computation, is utilized to predict the knock occurrence in different SI engines, including both naturally-aspirated and turbocharged architectures. 0D/1D simulations are performed both with an online solution of the chemistry and employing the tabulated approach. Assessment with reference KLSA values shows that the knock model, based on the tabulated chemistry, is able to well reproduce the essential features of the auto-ignition process in the analyzed engines, with a limited impact on the computational time

Genetic structure of Coffea canephora Pierre species assessed by microsatellites markers

Coffee is one of the most important cash crops for numbers of countries in the intertropical zones all over the world. Coffea canephora is responsible for about 35% of the total world production of coffee. Natural area of this species corresponds to the actual zone of tropical rainforest in Africa. In order to better assess genetic resources and natural history of this species, we analysed a sample of 285 individuals from different sampling points on the repartition area, including some cultivated genotypes. A set of 39 nuclear microsatellites markers was genotyped in order to investigate species genetic structure and population history. An integrate approach combining both distances (factorial analysis) and bayesian model (Structure) methods was used to study the species structure. We shown that 2 major groups can be clearly discriminated, those two groups correspond to previous work led by Berthaud. However a finest structure has been shown, dividing the previous groups in a total of 6 groups, whereas previous studies have shown 5). We tried to investigate those groups history by computing the dm² statistic of Goldstein in our sample. Results show the possible effect of glaciation refuge areas on the elaboration of the Coffea canephora genetic structure, separating a guinean region composed by 2 groups and a Congolese one composed by four groups

Piezoelectric effect and electroactive phase nucleation in self-standing films of unpoled PVDF nanocomposite films

Novel polymer-based piezoelectric nanocomposites with enhanced electromechanical properties open new opportunities for the development of wearable energy harvesters and sensors. This paper investigates how the dissolution of different types of hexahydrate metal salts affects β-phase content and piezoelectric response (d33) at nano-and macroscales of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanocomposite films. The strongest enhancement of the piezoresponse is observed in PVDF nanocomposites processed with Mg(NO3)2·6H2O. The increased piezoresponse is attributed to the synergistic effect of the dipole moment associated with the nucleation of the electroactive phase and with the electrostatic interaction between the CF2group of PVDF and the dissolved salt through hydrogen bonding. The combination of nanofillers like graphene nanoplatelets or zinc oxide nanorods with the hexahydrate salt dissolution in PVDF results in a dramatic reduction of d33, because the nanofiller assumes a competitive role with respect to H-bond formation between PVDF and the dissolved metal salt. The measured peak value of d33reaches the local value of 13.49 pm/V, with an average of 8.88 pm/V over an area of 1 cm2. The proposed selection of metal salt enables low-cost production of piezoelectric PVDF nanocomposite films, without electrical poling or mechanical stretching, offering new opportunities for the development of devices for energy harvesting and wearable sensors

Graphene-based dental adhesive with anti-biofilm activity

BACKGROUND: Secondary caries are considered the main cause of dental restoration failure. In this context, anti-biofilm and bactericidal properties are desired in dental materials against pathogens such as Streptococcus mutans. To this purpose, graphene based materials can be used as fillers of polymer dental adhesives. In this work, we investigated the possibility to use as filler of dental adhesives, graphene nanoplatelets (GNP), a non toxic hydrophobic nanomaterial with antimicrobial and anti-biofilm properties. RESULTS: Graphene nanoplatelets have been produced starting from graphite intercalated compounds through a process consisting of thermal expansion and liquid exfoliation. Then, a dental adhesive filled with GNPs at different volume fractions has been produced through a solvent evaporation method. The rheological properties of the new experimental adhesives have been assessed experimentally. The adhesive properties have been tested using microtensile bond strength measurements (µ-TBS). Biocidal activity has been studied using the colony forming units count (CFU) method. The anti-biofilm properties have been demonstrated through FE-SEM imaging of the biofilm development after 3 and 24 h of growth. CONCLUSIONS: A significantly lower vitality of S. mutans cells has been demonstrated when in contact with the GNP filled dental adhesives. Biofilm growth on adhesive-covered dentine tissues demonstrated anti-adhesion properties of the produced materials. µ-TBS results demonstrated no significant difference in µ-TBS between the experimental and the control adhesive. The rheology tests highlighted the necessity to avoid low shear rate regimes during adhesive processing and application in clinical protocol, and confirmed that the adhesive containing the 0.2%wt of GNPs possess mechanical properties comparable with the ones of the control adhesive

Surgical embolectomy for acute massive pulmonary embolism: state of the art

Massive pulmonary embolism (PE) is a severe condition that can potentially lead to death caused by right ventricular (RV) failure and the consequent cardiogenic shock. Despite the fact thrombolysis is often administrated to critical patients to increase pulmonary perfusion and to reduce RV afterload, surgical treatment represents another valid option in case of failure or contraindications to thrombolytic therapy. Correct risk stratification and multidisciplinary proactive teams are critical factors to dramatically decrease the mortality of this global health burden. In fact, the worldwide incidence of PE is 60–70 per 100,000, with a mortality ranging from 1% for small PE to 65% for massive PE. This review provides an overview of the diagnosis and management of this highly lethal pathology, with a focus on the surgical approaches at the state of the art

Is your EPL attractive? Classification of publications through download statistics

Here we consider the download statistics of EPL publications. We find that papers in the journal are characterised by fast accumulations of downloads during the first couple of months after publication, followed by slower rates thereafter, behaviour which can be represented by a model with predictive power. We also find that individual papers can be classified in various ways, allowing us to compare categories for open-access and non-open-access papers. For example, for the latter publications, which comprise the bulk of EPL papers, a small proportion (2%) display intense bursts of download activity, possibly following an extended period of less remarkable behaviour. About 18% have an especially high degree of attractiveness over and above what is typical for the journal. One can also classify the ageing of attractiveness by examining download half-lives. Approximately 18% have strong interest initially, waning in time. A further 20% exhibit "delayed recognition" with relatively late spurs in download activity. Although open-access papers enjoy more downloads on average, the proportions falling into each category are similar.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in EP