Open City, Rossellini and neorealism : sixty years on

For Bakhtin, it is always important to know from where one speaks. The place from which I speak is that of a person who grew up in Italy during the economic miracle (pre-1968) in a working class family, watching film matinees on television during school holidays. All sort of films and genres were shown: from film noir to westerns, to Jean Renoir's films, German expressionism, Italian neorealism and Italian comedy. Cinema has come to represent over time a sort of memory extension that supplements lived memory of events, and one which, especially, mediates the intersection of many cultural discourses. When later in life I moved to Australia and started teaching in film studies, my choice of a film that was emblematic of neorealism went naturally to Roma città aperta (Open city hereafter) by Roberto Rossellini (1945), and not to Paisan or Sciuscà or Bicycle Thieves. My choice was certainly grounded in my personal memory - especially those aspects transmitted to me by my parents, who lived through the war and maintained that Open City had truly made them cry. With a mother who voted for the Christian Democratic Party and a father who was a unionist, I thought that this was normal in Italian families and society. In the early 1960s, the Resistance still offered a narrative of suffering and redemption, shared by Catholics or Communists. This construction of psychological realism is what I believe Open City continues to offer in time.

Network

Network has emerged from a contempory worldwide phenomenon, culturally manifested as a consequence of globalization and the knowledge economy. It is in this context that the internet revolution has prompted a radical re-ordering of social and institutional relations and the associated structures, processes and places which support them. Within the duality of virtual space and the augmentation of traditional notions of physical place, the organizational structures pose new challenges for the design professions. Technological developments increasingly permit communication anytime and anywhere, and provide the opportunity for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. The resultant ecology formed through the network enterprise has resulted in an often convolted and complex world wherein designers are forced to consider the relevance and meaning of this new context. The role of technology and that of space are thus interwined in the relation between the network and the individual workplace. This paper explores a way to inform the interior desgn process for contemporary workplace environments. It reports on both theoretical and practical outcomes through an Australia-wide case study of three collaborating, yet independent business entities. It further suggests the link between workplace design and successful business innovation being realized between partnering organizations in Great Britain. Evidence presented indicates that, for architects and interior designers, the scope of the problem has widened, the depth of knowledge required to provide solutions has increased, and the rules of engagement are required to change. The ontological and epistemological positions adopted in the study enabled the spatial dimensions to be examined from both within and beyond the confines of a traditional design only viewpoint. Importantly it highlights the significance of a trans-disiplinary collaboration in dealing with the multiple layers and complexity of the contemporary social and business world, from both a research and practice perspective.

Patterns

In recent years there has been widespread interest in patterns, perhaps provoked by a realisation that they constitute a fundamental brain activity and underpin many artificial intelligence systems. Theorised concepts of spatial patterns including scale, proportion, and symmetry, as well as social and psychological understandings are being revived through digital/parametric means of visualisation and production. The effect of pattern as an ornamental device has also changed from applied styling to mediated dynamic effect. The interior has also seen patterned motifs applied to wall coverings, linen, furniture and artefacts with the effect of enhancing aesthetic appreciation, or in some cases causing psychological and/or perceptual distress (Rodemann 1999). ----- ----- While much of this work concerns a repeating array of surface treatment, Philip Ball’s The Self- Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature (1999) suggests a number of ways that patterns are present at the macro and micro level, both in their formation and disposition. Unlike the conventional notion of a pattern being the regular repetition of a motif (geometrical or pictorial) he suggests that in nature they are not necessarily restricted to a repeating array of identical units, but also include those that are similar rather than identical (Ball 1999, 9). From his observations Ball argues that they need not necessarily all be the same size, but do share similar features that we recognise as typical. Examples include self-organized patterns on a grand scale such as sand dunes, or fractal networks caused by rivers on hills and mountains, through to patterns of flow observed in both scientific experiments and the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.

Process mining manifesto

Process mining techniques are able to extract knowledge from event logs commonly available in today’s information systems. These techniques provide new means to discover, monitor, and improve processes in a variety of application domains. There are two main drivers for the growing interest in process mining. On the one hand, more and more events are being recorded, thus, providing detailed information about the history of processes. On the other hand, there is a need to improve and support business processes in competitive and rapidly changing environments. This manifesto is created by the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining and aims to promote the topic of process mining. Moreover, by defining a set of guiding principles and listing important challenges, this manifesto hopes to serve as a guide for software developers, scientists, consultants, business managers, and end-users. The goal is to increase the maturity of process mining as a new tool to improve the (re)design, control, and support of operational business processes.

Structural damage detection using frequency response functions and neural networks

This paper illustrates the damage identification and condition assessment of a three story bookshelf structure using a new frequency response functions (FRFs) based damage index and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). A major obstacle of using measured frequency response function data is a large size input variables to ANNs. This problem is overcome by applying a data reduction technique called principal component analysis (PCA). In the proposed procedure, ANNs with their powerful pattern recognition and classification ability were used to extract damage information such as damage locations and severities from measured FRFs. Therefore, simple neural network models are developed, trained by Back Propagation (BP), to associate the FRFs with the damage or undamaged locations and severity of the damage of the structure. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated and validated by using the real data provided by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA. The illustrated results show that the PCA based artificial Neural Network method is suitable and effective for damage identification and condition assessment of building structures. In addition, it is clearly demonstrated that the accuracy of proposed damage detection method can also be improved by increasing number of baseline datasets and number of principal components of the baseline dataset.

Developmental components of resting ventilation among high- and low-altitude Andean children and adults

This paper evaluates the age-associated changes of resting ventilation of 115 high- and low-altitude Aymara subjects, of whom 61 were from the rural Aymara village of Ventilla situated at an average altitude of 4,200 m and 54 from the rural village of Caranavi situated at an average altitude of 900 m. Comparison of the age patterns of resting ventilation suggests the following conclusions: 1) the resting ventilation (ml/kg/min) of high-altitude natives is markedly higher than that of low-altitude natives; 2) the age decline of ventilation is similar in both lowlanders and highlanders, but the starting point and therefore the age decline are much higher at high altitude; 3) the resting ventilation that characterizes high-altitude Andean natives is developmentally expressed in the same manner as it is at low altitude; and 4) the resting ventilation (ml/kg/min) of Aymara high-altitude natives is between 40–80% lower than that of Tibetans. Am J Phys Anthropol 109:295–301, 1999. © 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The effects of truth in the hinterlands and abused [in Portugese] Os efeitos de verdade em os sertões e abusado

O presente livro propõe-se a refletir sobre a construção dos efeitos de verdade em dois modos de produção de ordem discursiva: Os sertões, romance de Euclides da Cunha, e Abusado: o dono do morro Dona Marta, romance-reportagem do jornalista Caco Barcellos. A autora apresenta a fragilidade do discurso jornalístico em legitimar-se como o discurso do verdadeiro, em dura oposição ao discurso da literatura, lugar da ficção, expressão dos sentimentos, imaginário, da não-verdade. [Portugese]

Glider path-planning for optimal sampling of mesocale eddies

Ocean gliders constitute an important advance in the highly demanding ocean monitoring scenario. Their effciency, endurance and increasing robustness make these vehicles an ideal observing platform for many long term oceanographic applications. However, they have proved to be also useful in the opportunis-tic short term characterization of dynamic structures. Among these, mesoscale eddies are of particular interest due to the relevance they have in many oceano-graphic processes.

First steps towards modeling a multi-scale Earth system

Recent advances in computational geodynamics are applied to explore the link between Earth’s heat, its chemistry and its mechanical behavior. Computational thermal-mechanical solutions are now allowing us to understand Earth patterns by solving the basic physics of heat transfer. This approach is currently used to solve basic convection patterns of terrestrial planets. Applying the same methodology to smaller scales delivers promising similarities between observed and predicted structures which are often the site of mineral deposits. The new approach involves a fully coupled solution to the energy, momentum and continuity equations of the system at all scales, allowing the prediction of fractures, shear zones and other typical geological patterns out of a randomly perturbed initial state. The results of this approach are linking a global geodynamic mechanical framework over regional-scale mineral deposits down to the underlying micro-scale processes. Ongoing work includes the challenge of incorporating chemistry into the formulation.

Predicting invasion in grassland ecosystems: is exotic dominance the real embarrassment of richness?

Invasions have increased the size of regional species pools, but are typically assumed to reduce native diversity. However, global-scale tests of this assumption have been elusive because of the focus on exotic species richness, rather than relative abundance. This is problematic because low invader richness can indicate invasion resistance by the native community or, alternatively, dominance by a single exotic species. Here, we used a globally replicated study to quantify relationships between exotic richness and abundance in grass-dominated ecosystems in 13 countries on six continents, ranging from salt marshes to alpine tundra. We tested effects of human land use, native community diversity, herbivore pressure, and nutrient limitation on exotic plant dominance. Despite its widespread use, exotic richness was a poor proxy for exotic dominance at low exotic richness, because sites that contained few exotic species ranged from relatively pristine (low exotic richness and cover) to almost completely exotic-dominated ones (low exotic richness but high exotic cover). Both exotic cover and richness were predicted by native plant diversity (native grass richness) and land use (distance to cultivation). Although climate was important for predicting both exotic cover and richness, climatic factors predicting cover (precipitation variability) differed from those predicting richness (maximum temperature and mean temperature in the wettest quarter). Herbivory and nutrient limitation did not predict exotic richness or cover. Exotic dominance was greatest in areas with low native grass richness at the site- or regional-scale. Although this could reflect native grass displacement, a lack of biotic resistance is a more likely explanation, given that grasses comprise the most aggressive invaders. These findings underscore the need to move beyond richness as a surrogate for the extent of invasion, because this metric confounds monodominance with invasion resistance. Monitoring species' relative abundance will more rapidly advance our understanding of invasions.

Lessons from the 4-hour standard in England for Australia

Australia is in the process of making the most important change to its health care system since the implementation of Medicare.1 We agree with Cameron and Cooke that there are important lessons for Australia from the implementation of the 4-hour rule in the United Kingdom. As in Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 movie classic, Back to the future, the old question of “If I had the opportunity to do something again, what would I have done differently?” applies. We challenge the assumption that Australia is embarking on something that the UK has recently abandoned. The UK has not actually abandoned the 4-hour rule but expanded it into a suite of eight indicators that include three time-based measures, including total time in the emergency department (ED).

Development of a new signal processing diagnostic tool for vibration signals acquired in transient conditions

The diagnostics of mechanical components operating in transient conditions is still an open issue, in both research and industrial field. Indeed, the signal processing techniques developed to analyse stationary data are not applicable or are affected by a loss of effectiveness when applied to signal acquired in transient conditions. In this paper, a suitable and original signal processing tool (named EEMED), which can be used for mechanical component diagnostics in whatever operating condition and noise level, is developed exploiting some data-adaptive techniques such as Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), Minimum Entropy Deconvolution (MED) and the analytical approach of the Hilbert transform. The proposed tool is able to supply diagnostic information on the basis of experimental vibrations measured in transient conditions. The tool has been originally developed in order to detect localized faults on bearings installed in high speed train traction equipments and it is more effective to detect a fault in non-stationary conditions than signal processing tools based on spectral kurtosis or envelope analysis, which represent until now the landmark for bearings diagnostics.

Effectiveness of MED for Fault Diagnosis in Roller Bearings

Diagnostics of rolling element bearings is usually performed by means of vibration signals measured by accelerometers placed in the proximity of the bearing under investigation. The aim is to monitor the integrity of the bearing components, in order to avoid catastrophic failures, or to implement condition based maintenance strategies. In particular, the trend in this field is to combine in a single algorithm different signal-enhancement and signal-analysis techniques. Among the first ones, Minimum Entropy Deconvolution (MED) has been pointed out as a key tool able to highlight the effect of a possible damage in one of the bearing components within the vibration signal. This paper presents the application of this technique to signals collected on a simple test-rig, able to test damaged industrial roller bearings in different working conditions. The effectiveness of the technique has been tested, comparing the results of one undamaged bearing with three bearings artificially damaged in different locations, namely on the inner race, outer race and rollers. Since MED performances are dependent on the filter length, the most suitable value of this parameter is defined on the basis of both the application and measured signals. This represents an original contribution of the paper.

Signal Processing Diagnostic Tool for Rolling Element Bearings Using EMD and MED

The signal processing techniques developed for the diagnostics of mechanical components operating in stationary conditions are often not applicable or are affected by a loss of effectiveness when applied to signals measured in transient conditions. In this chapter, an original signal processing tool is developed exploiting some data-adaptive techniques such as Empirical Mode Decomposition, Minimum Entropy Deconvolution and the analytical approach of the Hilbert transform. The tool has been developed to detect localized faults on bearings of traction systems of high speed trains and it is more effective to detect a fault in non-stationary conditions than signal processing tools based on envelope analysis or spectral kurtosis, which represent until now the landmark for bearings diagnostics.