MODALITIES OF VALORISATION AND PROMOTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE THROUGH ICT: ADDING NEW MILESTONES TO THE "STANDARD" PRACTICE

Abstract. Nowadays, in the academic field, it is growing the demand for digital competencies bounded to advanced communication strategies. More and more national and international project required to the scientific community to be increasingly open to new targets of public, even not expert one. The focus point is that the research must be accessed not only by professionals, but it has to engage a broader public, starting from local communities to the public of the web. This statement is testified by the European funds calls that ask for communication activities and strategies, along with dissemination and exploitation. Why these three activities are so important? Because they are strictly related to the impact that a project can have, not only for the academic world, but also for the outside. This trend is growing fast in each scientific field: also in Cultural Heritage conservation, where it is more and more common the uses of 3D digital models not only for maintenance purposes, but also as a bridge between the heritage and non-expert publics. The question is how advanced digital techniques can help the process of valorisation of Cultural Heritage at different stages? The article wants to look for a standard practice to promote and enhance Cultural Heritage using digital technologies. Through the analysis of a series of case studies, it wants to show how to build a valorisation strategy, considering all the components of CH, and how it can be implemented adding new disciplines and skills (communication and promotion), enhancing users' access and interaction

Optimal estimation for finite population parameters in two phase sampling.

In this paper we propose a general approh for estimating a finite population parameter in double sampling. When two dependent samples are drawn, several estimators were proposed to estimate the population me, ratio and variance. While there are few proposals in double sampling with independent samples. We treat both cases, i.e. dependent and independent samples, showing that all the proposed estimators can be obtained as particular cases of a unique general class. The minimum variance bound for any estimator in this class is provided (at the first order of approximation). Furthermore, a chain regression type estimator which reaches this minimum is found

The orbifold cohomology of moduli of genus 3 curves

In this work we study the additive orbifold cohomology of the moduli stack of smooth genus g curves. We show that this problem reduces to investigating the rational cohomology of moduli spaces of cyclic covers of curves where the genus of the covering curve is g. Then we work out the case of genus g=3. Furthermore, we determine the part of the orbifold cohomology of the Deligne-Mumford compactification of the moduli space of genus 3 curves that comes from the Zariski closure of the inertia stack of M_3.Comment: 29 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes, to appear in Manuscripta Mat

The Biology of Varicella-Zoster Virus Replication in the Skin

The replication of varicella-zoster virus (VZV) in skin is critical to its pathogenesis and spread. Primary infection causes chickenpox, which is characterised by centrally distributed skin blistering lesions that are rich in infectious virus. Cell-free virus in the cutaneous blistering lesions not only spreads to cause further cases, but infects sensory nerve endings, leading to the establishment of lifelong latency in sensory and autonomic ganglia. The reactivation of virus to cause herpes zoster is again characterised by localised painful skin blistering rash containing infectious virus. The development of in vitro and in vivo models of VZV skin replication has revealed aspects of VZV replication and pathogenesis in this important target organ and improved our understanding of the vaccine strain vOKa attenuation. In this review, we outline the current knowledge on VZV interaction with host signalling pathways, the viral association with proteins associated with epidermal terminal differentiation, and how these interconnect with the VZV life cycle to facilitate viral replication and shedding

Construction of MV - and SMV - optimum designs for binary response models.

Recently, Dette and Sahm (1998) have put forward a procedure to construct MV-and SMV-optimurn designs for binary response models. In order to implement computationally this procedure some assumptions have to be made and some theoretical results must be proved. This paper provides the background to produce a computer code for computing local designs for different regions of the parameters of the model. Designs for some models used in practice are also provided as well as the efficiencies for estima the parameters

Are You Tampering With My Data?

We propose a novel approach towards adversarial attacks on neural networks (NN), focusing on tampering the data used for training instead of generating attacks on trained models. Our network-agnostic method creates a backdoor during training which can be exploited at test time to force a neural network to exhibit abnormal behaviour. We demonstrate on two widely used datasets (CIFAR-10 and SVHN) that a universal modification of just one pixel per image for all the images of a class in the training set is enough to corrupt the training procedure of several state-of-the-art deep neural networks causing the networks to misclassify any images to which the modification is applied. Our aim is to bring to the attention of the machine learning community, the possibility that even learning-based methods that are personally trained on public datasets can be subject to attacks by a skillful adversary.Comment: 18 page

Solving Visual Madlibs with Multiple Cues

This paper focuses on answering fill-in-the-blank style multiple choice questions from the Visual Madlibs dataset. Previous approaches to Visual Question Answering (VQA) have mainly used generic image features from networks trained on the ImageNet dataset, despite the wide scope of questions. In contrast, our approach employs features derived from networks trained for specialized tasks of scene classification, person activity prediction, and person and object attribute prediction. We also present a method for selecting sub-regions of an image that are relevant for evaluating the appropriateness of a putative answer. Visual features are computed both from the whole image and from local regions, while sentences are mapped to a common space using a simple normalized canonical correlation analysis (CCA) model. Our results show a significant improvement over the previous state of the art, and indicate that answering different question types benefits from examining a variety of image cues and carefully choosing informative image sub-regions

Horvitz-Thompson Estimators in Center Sampling.

The problem of the estimation of the size of an immigrant population is very important in many countries as well as in Italy. Center sampling theory has been recently proposed and it is based on the hypothesis that all the individuals use to frequent centers of aggregation. Two approaches to center sampling are developed in literature. In the first people are drawn through simple random sampling without replacement from all the availables centers. In the second one centers are drawn through the same scheme and all the individuals in the sample centers are considered. In this paper the second approach is followed and generalized to a different sampling scheme according to the situation in which all centers has not the same importance: i.e. a big center could have a higher selection probability than a little center. So an unequal selection probablilities scheme is presented

The Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus Glomus viscosum Improves the Tolerance to Verticillium Wilt in Artichoke by Modulating the Antioxidant Defense Systems

Verticillium wilt, caused by the fungal pathogen Verticillium dahliae, is the most severe disease that threatens artichoke (Cynara scolymus L.) plants. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) may represent a useful biological control strategy against this pathogen attack, replacing chemical compounds that, up to now, have been not very effective. In this study, we evaluated the effect of the AMF Glomus viscosum Nicolson in enhancing the plant tolerance towards the pathogen V. dahliae. The role of the ascorbate-glutathione (ASC-GSH) cycle and other antioxidant systems involved in the complex network of the pathogen-fungi-plant interaction have been investigated. The results obtained showed that the AMF G. viscosum is able to enhance the defense antioxidant systems in artichoke plants affected by V. dahliae, alleviating the oxidative stress symptoms. AMF-inoculated plants exhibited significant increases in ascorbate peroxidase (APX), monodehydroascorbate reductase (MDHAR), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities, a higher content of ascorbate (ASC) and glutathione (GSH), and a decrease in the levels of lipid peroxidation and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Hence, G. viscosum may represent an effective strategy for mitigating V. dahliae pathogenicity in artichokes, enhancing the plant defense systems, and improving the nutritional values and benefit to human health

Optimal design to discriminate between rival copula models for a bivariate binary response

We consider a bivariate logistic model for a binary response, and we assume that two rival dependence structures are possible. Copula functions are very useful tools to model different kinds of dependence with arbitrary marginal distributions. We consider Clayton and Gumbel copulae as competing association models. The focus is on applications in testing a new drug looking at both efficacy and toxicity outcomes. In this context, one of the main goals is to find the dose which maximizes the probability of efficacy without toxicity, herein called P-optimal dose. If the P-optimal dose changes under the two rival copulae, then it is relevant to identify the proper association model. To this aim, we propose a criterion (called PKL) which enables us to find the optimal doses to discriminate between the rival copulae, subject to a constraint that protects patients against dangerous doses. Furthermore, by applying the likelihood ratio test for non-nested models, via a simulation study we confirm that the PKL-optimal design is really able to discriminate between the rival copulae