Rising China and Internet governance: Multistakeholderism, fragmentation and the Liberal Order in the age of digital sovereignty

In its open and private-based dimension, the Internet is the epitome of the Liberal International Order in its global spatial dimension. Therefore, normative questions arise from the emergence of powerful non-liberal actors such as China in Internet governance. In particular, China has supported a UN-based multilateral Internet governance model based on state sovereignty aimed at replacing the existing ICANN-based multistakeholder model. While persistent, this debate has become less dualistic through time. However, fear of Internet fragmentation has increased as the US-China technological competition grew harsher. This thesis inquires “(To what extent) are Chinese stakeholders reshaping the rules of Global Internet Governance?”. This is further unpacked in three smaller questions: (i) (To what extent) are Chinese stakeholders contributing to increased state influence in multistakeholder fora?; (ii) (how) is China contributing to Internet fragmentation?; and (iii) what are the main drivers of Chinese stakeholders’ stances? To answer these questions, Chinese stakeholders’ actions are observed in the making and management of critical Internet resources at the IETF and ICANN respectively, and in mobile connectivity standard-making at 3GPP. Through the lens of norm entrepreneurship in regime complexes, this thesis interprets changes and persistence in the Internet governance normative order and Chinese attitudes towards it. Three research methods are employed: network analysis, semi-structured expert interviews, and thematic document analysis. While China has enhanced state intervention in several technological fields, fostering debates on digital sovereignty, this research finds that the Chinese government does not exert full control on its domestic private actors and concludes that Chinese stakeholders have increasingly adapted to multistakeholder Internet governance as they grew influential within it. To enhance control over Internet-based activities, the Chinese government resorted to regulatory and technical control domestically rather than establishing a splinternet. This is due to Chinese stakeholders’ interest in retaining the network benefits of global interconnectivity.

Designing and Programming Organizational Infrastructures for Agents situated in Artifact-based Environments

Actual trends in software development are pushing the need to face a multiplicity of diverse activities and interaction styles characterizing complex and distributed application domains, in such a way that the resulting dynamics exhibits some grade of order, i.e. in terms of evolution of the system and desired equilibrium. Autonomous agents and Multiagent Systems are argued in literature as one of the most immediate approaches for describing such a kind of challenges. Actually, agent research seems to converge towards the definition of renewed abstraction tools aimed at better capturing the new demands of open systems. Besides agents, which are assumed as autonomous entities purposing a series of design objectives, Multiagent Systems account new notions as first-class entities, aimed, above all, at modeling institutional/organizational entities, placed for normative regulation, interaction and teamwork management, as well as environmental entities, placed as resources to further support and regulate agent work. The starting point of this thesis is recognizing that both organizations and environments can be rooted in a unifying perspective. Whereas recent research in agent systems seems to account a set of diverse approaches to specifically face with at least one aspect within the above mentioned, this work aims at proposing a unifying approach where both agents and their organizations can be straightforwardly situated in properly designed working environments. In this line, this work pursues reconciliation of environments with sociality, social interaction with environment based interaction, environmental resources with organizational functionalities with the aim to smoothly integrate the various aspects of complex and situated organizations in a coherent programming approach. Rooted in Agents and Artifacts (A&A) meta-model, which has been recently introduced both in the context of agent oriented software engineering and programming, the thesis promotes the notion of Embodied Organizations, characterized by computational infrastructures attaining a seamless integration between agents, organizations and environmental entities.

A mixed methods inquiry into the political economy of agriculture and rural areas in Lebanon

The present work, then, is concerned with the forgotten elements of the Lebanese economy, agriculture and rural development. It investigates the main problematic which arose from these forgotten components, in particular the structure of the agricultural sector, production technology, income distribution, poverty, food security, territorial development and local livelihood strategies. It will do so using quantitative Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling and a qualitative phenomenological case study analysis, both embedded in a critical review of the historical development of the political economy of Lebanon, and a structural analysis of its economy. The research shows that under-development in Lebanese rural areas is not due to lack of resources, but rather is the consequence of political choices. It further suggests that agriculture – in both its mainstream conventional and its innovative locally initiated forms of production – still represents important potential for inducing economic growth and development. In order to do so, Lebanon has to take full advantage of its human and territorial capital, by developing a rural development strategy based on two parallel sets of actions: one directed toward the support of local rural development initiatives, and the other directed toward intensive form of production. In addition to its economic returns, such a strategy would promote social and political stability.

Procedures of quality control and data analysis of multi-site ground-based observations for the absolute flux calibration of Gaia

The Gaia space mission is a major project for the European astronomical community. As challenging as it is, the processing and analysis of the huge data-flow incoming from Gaia is the subject of thorough study and preparatory work by the DPAC (Data Processing and Analysis Consortium), in charge of all aspects of the Gaia data reduction. This PhD Thesis was carried out in the framework of the DPAC, within the team based in Bologna. The task of the Bologna team is to define the calibration model and to build a grid of spectro-photometric standard stars (SPSS) suitable for the absolute flux calibration of the Gaia G-band photometry and the BP/RP spectrophotometry. Such a flux calibration can be performed by repeatedly observing each SPSS during the life-time of the Gaia mission and by comparing the observed Gaia spectra to the spectra obtained by our ground-based observations. Due to both the different observing sites involved and the huge amount of frames expected (≃100000), it is essential to maintain the maximum homogeneity in data quality, acquisition and treatment, and a particular care has to be used to test the capabilities of each telescope/instrument combination (through the “instrument familiarization plan”), to devise methods to keep under control, and eventually to correct for, the typical instrumental effects that can affect the high precision required for the Gaia SPSS grid (a few % with respect to Vega). I contributed to the ground-based survey of Gaia SPSS in many respects: with the observations, the instrument familiarization plan, the data reduction and analysis activities (both photometry and spectroscopy), and to the maintenance of the data archives. However, the field I was personally responsible for was photometry and in particular relative photometry for the production of short-term light curves. In this context I defined and tested a semi-automated pipeline which allows for the pre-reduction of imaging SPSS data and the production of aperture photometry catalogues ready to be used for further analysis. A series of semi-automated quality control criteria are included in the pipeline at various levels, from pre-reduction, to aperture photometry, to light curves production and analysis.

Design and implementation of a novel multi-constellation FPGA-based dual frequency GNSS receiver for space applications

The PhD activity described in the document is part of the Microsatellite and Microsystem Laboratory of the II Faculty of Engineering, University of Bologna. The main objective is the design and development of a GNSS receiver for the orbit determination of microsatellites in low earth orbit. The development starts from the electronic design and goes up to the implementation of the navigation algorithms, covering all the aspects that are involved in this type of applications. The use of GPS receivers for orbit determination is a consolidated application used in many space missions, but the development of the new GNSS system within few years, such as the European Galileo, the Chinese COMPASS and the Russian modernized GLONASS, proposes new challenges and offers new opportunities to increase the orbit determination performances. The evaluation of improvements coming from the new systems together with the implementation of a receiver that is compatible with at least one of the new systems, are the main activities of the PhD. The activities can be divided in three section: receiver requirements definition and prototype implementation, design and analysis of the GNSS signal tracking algorithms, and design and analysis of the navigation algorithms. The receiver prototype is based on a Virtex FPGA by Xilinx, and includes a PowerPC processor. The architecture follows the software defined radio paradigm, so most of signal processing is performed in software while only what is strictly necessary is done in hardware. The tracking algorithms are implemented as a combination of Phase Locked Loop and Frequency Locked Loop for the carrier, and Delay Locked Loop with variable bandwidth for the code. The navigation algorithm is based on the extended Kalman filter and includes an accurate LEO orbit model.

Constraint based methods for allocation and scheduling of periodic applications

This work presents exact algorithms for the Resource Allocation and Cyclic Scheduling Problems (RA&CSPs). Cyclic Scheduling Problems arise in a number of application areas, such as in hoist scheduling, mass production, compiler design (implementing scheduling loops on parallel architectures), software pipelining, and in embedded system design. The RA&CS problem concerns time and resource assignment to a set of activities, to be indefinitely repeated, subject to precedence and resource capacity constraints. In this work we present two constraint programming frameworks facing two different types of cyclic problems. In first instance, we consider the disjunctive RA&CSP, where the allocation problem considers unary resources. Instances are described through the Synchronous Data-flow (SDF) Model of Computation. The key problem of finding a maximum-throughput allocation and scheduling of Synchronous Data-Flow graphs onto a multi-core architecture is NP-hard and has been traditionally solved by means of heuristic (incomplete) algorithms. We propose an exact (complete) algorithm for the computation of a maximum-throughput mapping of applications specified as SDFG onto multi-core architectures. Results show that the approach can handle realistic instances in terms of size and complexity. Next, we tackle the Cyclic Resource-Constrained Scheduling Problem (i.e. CRCSP). We propose a Constraint Programming approach based on modular arithmetic: in particular, we introduce a modular precedence constraint and a global cumulative constraint along with their filtering algorithms. Many traditional approaches to cyclic scheduling operate by fixing the period value and then solving a linear problem in a generate-and-test fashion. Conversely, our technique is based on a non-linear model and tackles the problem as a whole: the period value is inferred from the scheduling decisions. The proposed approaches have been tested on a number of non-trivial synthetic instances and on a set of realistic industrial instances achieving good results on practical size problem.

Land use change to perennial energy crops in Northern Italy: Effects on soil organic carbon sequestration and distribution, soil enzyme activities and microbial communities.

Studies on soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration in perennial energy crops are available for North-Central Europe, while there is insufficient information for Southern Europe. This research was conducted in the Po Valley, a Mediterranean-temperate zone characterised by low SOC levels, due to intensive management. The aim was to assess the factors influencing SOC sequestration and its distribution through depth and within soil fractions, after a 9-year old conversion from two annual systems to Miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus) and giant reed (Arundo donax). The 13C natural abundance was used to evaluate the amount of SOC in annual and perennial species, and determine the percentage of carbon derived from perennial crops. SOC was significantly higher under perennial species, especially in the topsoil (0-0.15 m). After 9 years, the amount of C derived from Miscanthus was 18.7 Mg ha-1, mostly stored at 0-0.15 m, whereas the amount of C derived from giant reed was 34.7 Mg ha-1, evenly distributed through layers. Physical soil fractionation was combined with 13C abundance analysis. C derived from perennial crops was mainly found in macroaggregates. Under giant reed, more newly derived-carbon was stored in microaggregates and mineral fraction than under Miscanthus. A molecular approach based on denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) allowed to evaluate changes on microbial community, after the introduction of perennial crops. Functional aspects were investigated by determining relevant soil enzymes (β-glucosidase, urease, alkaline phosphatase). Perennial crops positively stimulated these enzymes, especially in the topsoil. DGGE profiles revealed that community richness was higher in perennial crops; Shannon index of diversity was influenced only by depth. In conclusion, Miscanthus and giant reed represent a sustainable choice for the recovery of soils exhausted by intensive management, also in Mediterranean conditions and this is relevant mainly because this geographical area is notoriously characterised by a rapid turnover of SOC.

Design and Synthesis of Naphthalene Diimides Based Small Molecules as Anticancer Agents: Targeting the Polyamine Transporter, G-quadruplex Structures and HDAC

Cancer is a multifactorial disease characterized by a very complex etiology. Basing on its complex nature, a promising therapeutic strategy could be based by the “Multi-Target-Directed Ligand” (MTDL) approach, based on the assumption that a single molecule could hit several targets responsible for the pathology. Several agents acting on DNA are clinically used, but the severe deriving side effects limit their therapeutic application. G-quadruplex structures are DNA secondary structures located in key zones of human genome; targeting quadruplex structures could allow obtaining an anticancer therapy more free from side effects. In the last years it has been proved that epigenetic modulation can control the expression of human genes, playing a crucial role in carcinogenesis and, in particular, an abnormal expression of histone deacetylase enzymes are related to tumor onset and progression. This thesis deals with the design and synthesis of new naphthalene diimide (NDI) derivatives endowed with anticancer activity, interacting with DNA together with other targets implicated in cancer development, such as HDACs. NDI-polyamine and NDI-polyamine-hydroxamic acid conjugates have been designed with the aim to provide potential MTDLs, in order to create molecules able simultaneously to interact with different targets involved in this pathology, specifically the G-quadruplex structures and HDAC, and to exploit the polyamine transport system to get selectively into cancer cells. Macrocyclic NDIs have been designed with the aim to improve the quadruplex targeting profile of the disubstituted NDIs. These compounds proved the ability to induce a high and selective stabilization of the quadruplex structures, together with cytotoxic activities in the micromolar range. Finally, trisubstituted NDIs have been developed as G-quadruplex-binders, potentially effective against pancreatic adenocarcinoma. In conclusion, all these studies may represent a promising starting point for the development of new interesting molecules useful for the treatment of cancer, underlining the versatility of the NDI scaffold.

Credit-Default-Swaps and the 2008 Financial Crisis: An Inquiry into the Underlying Legal Origins and the European Union’s Regulatory Reforms

After the 2008 financial crisis, the financial innovation product Credit-Default-Swap (CDS) was widely blamed as the main cause of this crisis. CDS is one type of over-the-counter (OTC) traded derivatives. Before the crisis, the trading of CDS was very popular among the financial institutions. But meanwhile, excessive speculative CDSs transactions in a legal environment of scant regulation accumulated huge risks in the financial system. This dissertation is divided into three parts. In Part I, we discussed the primers of the CDSs and its market development, then we analyzed in detail the roles CDSs had played in this crisis based on economic studies. It is advanced that CDSs not just promoted the eruption of the crisis in 2007 but also exacerbated it in 2008. In part II, we asked ourselves what are the legal origins of this crisis in relation with CDSs, as we believe that financial instruments could only function, positive or negative, under certain legal institutional environment. After an in-depth inquiry, we observed that at least three traditional legal doctrines were eroded or circumvented by OTC derivatives. It is argued that the malfunction of these doctrines, on the one hand, facilitated the proliferation of speculative CDSs transactions; on the other hand, eroded the original risk-control legal mechanism. Therefore, the 2008 crisis could escalate rapidly into a global financial tsunami, which was out of control of the regulators. In Part III, we focused on the European Union’s regulatory reform towards the OTC derivatives market. In specific, EU introduced mandatory central counterparty clearing obligation for qualified OTC derivatives, and requires that all OTC derivatives shall be reported to a trade repository. It is observable that EU’s approach in re-regulating the derivatives market is different with the traditional administrative regulation, but aiming at constructing a new market infrastructure for OTC derivatives.

Development and experimental validation of a knock induced damage model and real-time implementation of model-based strategies to control knock intensity in boosted gasoline engines

This PhD thesis reports the main activities carried out during the 3 years long “Mechanics and advanced engineering sciences” course, at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Bologna. The research project title is “Development and analysis of high efficiency combustion systems for internal combustion engines” and the main topic is knock, one of the main challenges for boosted gasoline engines. Through experimental campaigns, modelling activity and test bench validation, 4 different aspects have been addressed to tackle the issue. The main path goes towards the definition and calibration of a knock-induced damage model, to be implemented in the on-board control strategy, but also usable for the engine calibration and potentially during the engine design. Ionization current signal capabilities have been investigated to fully replace the pressure sensor, to develop a robust on-board close-loop combustion control strategy, both in knock-free and knock-limited conditions. Water injection is a powerful solution to mitigate knock intensity and exhaust temperature, improving fuel consumption; its capabilities have been modelled and validated at the test bench. Finally, an empiric model is proposed to predict the engine knock response, depending on several operating condition and control parameters, including injected water quantity.

Robotic Sensing and Manipulation of Deformable Linear Objects with Learning-based methods

Nowadays robotic applications are widespread and most of the manipulation tasks are efficiently solved. However, Deformable-Objects (DOs) still represent a huge limitation for robots. The main difficulty in DOs manipulation is dealing with the shape and dynamics uncertainties, which prevents the use of model-based approaches (since they are excessively computationally complex) and makes sensory data difficult to interpret. This thesis reports the research activities aimed to address some applications in robotic manipulation and sensing of Deformable-Linear-Objects (DLOs), with particular focus to electric wires. In all the works, a significant effort was made in the study of an effective strategy for analyzing sensory signals with various machine learning algorithms. In the former part of the document, the main focus concerns the wire terminals, i.e. detection, grasping, and insertion. First, a pipeline that integrates vision and tactile sensing is developed, then further improvements are proposed for each module. A novel procedure is proposed to gather and label massive amounts of training images for object detection with minimal human intervention. Together with this strategy, we extend a generic object detector based on Convolutional-Neural-Networks for orientation prediction. The insertion task is also extended by developing a closed-loop control capable to guide the insertion of a longer and curved segment of wire through a hole, where the contact forces are estimated by means of a Recurrent-Neural-Network. In the latter part of the thesis, the interest shifts to the DLO shape. Robotic reshaping of a DLO is addressed by means of a sequence of pick-and-place primitives, while a decision making process driven by visual data learns the optimal grasping locations exploiting Deep Q-learning and finds the best releasing point. The success of the solution leverages on a reliable interpretation of the DLO shape. For this reason, further developments are made on the visual segmentation.

Design, development and characterization of DHA-based emulsion for Nutrilipidomics strategies

The industrial PhD project presented here is part of the R&D strategies of the Lipinutragen company. The innovation brought by the company concerns nutrilipidomics, i.e. the correlation between the lipid composition (in fatty acids) of the cell membrane and lipid-based nutraceuticals, especially starting from the well-known dependence of the lipid composition on the intake of essential fats, omega- 6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Among the results obtained from the membrane lipidomic profiles, the case of autistic subjects is here highlighted, showing the significant deficiency of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). The activity during the PhD was devoted to the nutrilipidomic approach. Part of the activities were devoted to scientific research in lipidomics: a) the study of lipidomic profiles in the frame of two collaboration projects: one with the group of Dr. I. Tueros at AZTI, Bilbao, regading obese population, and the other one regarding seed germination with the changes of the fatty acid profiles with the group of prof. A. Balestrazzi of the University of Parma; b) the liposome preparation for protection and lifetime prolongation of the peptide somatostatin, which was an important premise to the formulation of the DHA-containing microemulsion. The activities was also focused on the development of DHA-containing nutraceutical formulations in the form of emulsion, overcoming the difficulty of the capsule ingestion, to be administered orally. The work pointed to study the combination of active ingredients, based on the previous know-how regarding the bioavailability for the cell membrane incorporation. The ingredients of the formulation were studied and tested in vitro for the bioavailability of DHA to be incorporated in the cell membranes of different types of cultured cells. Part of this study is covered by non-disclosure agreement since it belongs to the know-how of Lipinutragen.

Spatial based approach to fisheries management. An application to bottom trawling in the strait of Sicily

At the beginning of my thesis project, considering that some stocks are in overfishing status due to both high fishing effort and high level of juveniles in the catch, my main purpose was to understand how to contribute to improving the state of the fishery resources of the Mediterranean Sea. To mitigate the overfishing, the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) adopted several Fishery Restricted Areas, which are geographically defined areas where some specific fishing activities are temporarily or permanently banned or restricted in order to reduce the exploitation patterns and conservation of specific stocks as well as of habitats and deep-sea ecosystems, including the Essential Fish Habitats (EFH) and the Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VME). Considering that GFCM established 3 Fisheries Restricted Areas (FRAs) in the Strait of Sicily (SoS) in 2016 aimed at protecting the nursery areas of the deep-water rose shrimp (DPS, Parapenaeus longirostris – Lucas, 1846) and the European hake (HKE, Merluccius merluccius – Linnaeus, 1758) to reduce the exploitation pattern of undersized species, in my thesis project I devoted myself to evaluate the effect of the FRAs on the status stock and the fishery performance using a spatial bio-economic model.

Pedagogy of healthcare interactions. A study on pediatric well-child visits as culture-oriented and culture-making sites

This study investigates interactions between parents and pediatricians during pediatric well-child visits. Despite constituting a pivotal moment for monitoring and evaluating children’s development during the critical ‘first thousand days of life’ and for family support, no study has so far empirically investigated the in vivo realization of pediatrician-parent interactions in the Italian context, especially not from a pedagogical perspective. Filling this gap, the present study draws on a corpus of 23 videorecorded well-child visits involving two pediatricians and twenty-two families with children aged between 0 and 18 months. Combining an ethnographic perspective and conversation analysis theoretical-analytical constructs, the micro-analysis of interactions reveals how well-child visits unfold as culture-oriented and culture-making sites. By zooming into what actually happens during these visits, the analysis shows that there is much more than the “mere” accomplishment of institutionally relevant activities like assessing children’s health or giving parents advice on baby care. Rather, through the interactional ways these institutional tasks are carried out, parents and pediatricians presuppose, ratify, and transmit culturally-informed models of “normal” growth, “healthy” development, “good” caring practices, and “competent” parenting, thereby enacting a pervasive yet unnoticed educational and moral work. Inaugurating a new promising line of inquiry within Italian pedagogical research, this study illuminates how a) pediatricians work as a “social antenna”, bridging families’ private “small cultures” and broader socio-cultural models of children’s well-being and caregiving practices, and b) parents act as agentive, knowledgeable, (communicatively) competent, and caring parents, while also sensitive to the pediatrician’s ultimate epistemic and deontic authority. I argue that a video-based, micro-analysis of interactions represents a heuristically powerful instrument for raising pediatricians’ and parents’ awareness of the educational and moral density of well-child visits. Insights from this study can constitute a valuable empirical resource for underpinning medical and parental training programs aimed at fostering pediatricians’ and parents’ reflexivity.