Mn(II) complexes of some acylhydrazones with NNO donor sites: Syntheses, a spectroscopic view on their coordination possibilities and crystal structures

Mn(II) complexes derived from a set of acylhydrazones were synthesised and characterized by elemental analyzes, IR, UV–vis and X-band EPR spectral studies as well as conductivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements. In the reported complexes, the hydrazones exist either in the keto or enolate form, as evidenced by IR spectral data. Crystal structures of two complexes are well established using single crystal X-ray diffraction studies. In both of these complexes two equivalent monoanionic ligands are coordinated in a meridional fashion using cis pyridyl, trans azomethine nitrogen and cis enolate oxygen atoms positioned very nearly perpendicular to each other. EPR spectra in DMF solutions at 77 K show hyperfine sextets and in some of the complexes the low intensity forbidden lines lying between each of the two hyperfine lines are also observed

Beyond - Another view on space and landscape

Die Beiträge dieser Veröffentlichung sind aus Vorträgen anlässlich der Postdoc-Konferenz zu Ehren von Prof. Dr. Detlev Ipsen, der sich im September 2010 aus dem Universitätsdienst verabschiedete, entstanden. Das inhaltliche Kernprogramm der Postdoc-Konferenz war bewusst auf sehr unterschiedliche Perspektiven auf den Raum und die Raumwahrnehmung ausgerichtet und bildet sich auch in den Beiträgen dieser Veröffentlichung ab. Elisabeth Heidenreich widmet sich in ihrem Beitrag „Der moderne Dschihad und seine (sakralen) Räume“ den technischen Räumen des islamistischen Terrorismus. Hans-Ulrich Werner zeigt in seinem Beitrag „SoundScapes als Klang und Raum“ verschiedene Begegnungen der Musik- und Klangwissenschaft mit der Stadt- und Umweltplanung auf und setzt sich mit der Bedeutung und Transformation von „Klangräumen“ in der Planung auseinander. Der Beitrag von Susanne Kost „Kulturbedingte Unterschiede im Landschaftsbewusstsein – eine Annäherung“ analysiert, wie und wodurch sich bestimmte Handlungs- und Wahrnehmungsweisen in Kulturen entwickelt haben könnten und ob sich am Beispiel der Niederlande bestimmte Muster der Landschaftswahrnehmung identifizieren lassen. Ilya Maharika erörtert in seinem Beitrag „Urban Gene of Desakota. A Dynamic of Indonesian Urban-Rural Continuum with the Case of Yogyakarta Region” internationale Phänomene und Dynamiken im Stadt-Land-Gefüge.

Integrating top down policies and bottom up practices in Urban and Periurban Agriculture: an Italian dilemma

The paper deals with some relevant and contradictory aspects of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Italy: the traditional exclusion of agricultural areas from the goals of territorial planning; the separation between top-down policies and bottom-up practices; the lack of agricultural policies at local scale. In the first part the paper summarises the weak relation between urban planning and agriculture, showing how in Italy this gap has been only partially overcome by new laws and plans. Moreover the paper focuses on how, due to the lack of suitable solutions coming from regional and local planning, a large number of vibrant initiatives were started by local stakeholders. In order to show the limitations and the potentialities of these various approaches, three peculiar experiences based on Milan, Turin and Pisa are presented. They give a cross-section of the variegated Italian situation, demonstrating that a major challenge in Italian context affects the fields of governance and inclusiveness.

The role of organic farming for food security: local nexus with a global view

A convergence of factors has made food security one of the most important global issues. It has been the core concept of the Milan Expo 2015, whose title, Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life, embodied the challenge to provide the world’s growing population with a sustainable, secure supply of safe, nutritious, and affordable high-quality food using less land with lower inputs. Meeting the food security agenda using current agricultural production techniques cannot be achieved without serious degradation to the environment, including soil degradation, loss of biodiversity and climate change. Organic farming is seen as a solution to the challenge of sustainable food production, as it provides more nutritious food, with less or no pesticide residues and lower use of inputs. A limit of organic farming is its restricted capability of producing food compared to conventional agriculture, thus being an inefficient approach to food production and to food security. The authors maintain, on the basis of a scientific literature review, that organic soils tend to retain the physical, chemical and biological properties over the long term, while maintaining stable levels of productivity and thereby ensuring long-term food production and safety. Furthermore, the productivity gap of organic crops may be worked out by further investment in research and in particular into diversification techniques. Moreover, strong scientific evidence indicates that organic agricultural systems deliver greater ecosystem services and social benefits.

A View on Dyslexia

We describe here, briefly, a perceptual non-reading measure which reliably distinguishes between dyslexic persons and ordinary readers. More importantly, we describe a regimen of practice with which dyslexics learn a new perceptual strategy for reading. Two controlled experiment on dyslexics children demonstrate the regimen's efficiency.

Image-Based View Synthesis

We present a new method for rendering novel images of flexible 3D objects from a small number of example images in correspondence. The strength of the method is the ability to synthesize images whose viewing position is significantly far away from the viewing cone of the example images ("view extrapolation"), yet without ever modeling the 3D structure of the scene. The method relies on synthesizing a chain of "trilinear tensors" that governs the warping function from the example images to the novel image, together with a multi-dimensional interpolation function that synthesizes the non-rigid motions of the viewed object from the virtual camera position. We show that two closely spaced example images alone are sufficient in practice to synthesize a significant viewing cone, thus demonstrating the ability of representing an object by a relatively small number of model images --- for the purpose of cheap and fast viewers that can run on standard hardware.

Example Based Learning for View-Based Human Face Detection

We present an example-based learning approach for locating vertical frontal views of human faces in complex scenes. The technique models the distribution of human face patterns by means of a few view-based "face'' and "non-face'' prototype clusters. At each image location, the local pattern is matched against the distribution-based model, and a trained classifier determines, based on the local difference measurements, whether or not a human face exists at the current image location. We provide an analysis that helps identify the critical components of our system.

View-Based Strategies for 3D Object Recognition

A persistent issue of debate in the area of 3D object recognition concerns the nature of the experientially acquired object models in the primate visual system. One prominent proposal in this regard has expounded the use of object centered models, such as representations of the objects' 3D structures in a coordinate frame independent of the viewing parameters [Marr and Nishihara, 1978]. In contrast to this is another proposal which suggests that the viewing parameters encountered during the learning phase might be inextricably linked to subsequent performance on a recognition task [Tarr and Pinker, 1989; Poggio and Edelman, 1990]. The 'object model', according to this idea, is simply a collection of the sample views encountered during training. Given that object centered recognition strategies have the attractive feature of leading to viewpoint independence, they have garnered much of the research effort in the field of computational vision. Furthermore, since human recognition performance seems remarkably robust in the face of imaging variations [Ellis et al., 1989], it has often been implicitly assumed that the visual system employs an object centered strategy. In the present study we examine this assumption more closely. Our experimental results with a class of novel 3D structures strongly suggest the use of a view-based strategy by the human visual system even when it has the opportunity of constructing and using object-centered models. In fact, for our chosen class of objects, the results seem to support a stronger claim: 3D object recognition is 2D view-based.

A Negotiation Style Recommender Based on Computational Ecology in Open Negotiation Environments

The system described herein represents the first example of a recommender system in digital ecosystems where agents negotiate services on behalf of small companies. The small companies compete not only with price or quality, but with a wider service-by-service composition by subcontracting with other companies. The final result of these offerings depends on negotiations at the scale of millions of small companies. This scale requires new platforms for supporting digital business ecosystems, as well as related services like open-id, trust management, monitors and recommenders. This is done in the Open Negotiation Environment (ONE), which is an open-source platform that allows agents, on behalf of small companies, to negotiate and use the ecosystem services, and enables the development of new agent technologies. The methods and tools of cyber engineering are necessary to build up Open Negotiation Environments that are stable, a basic condition for predictable business and reliable business environments. Aiming to build stable digital business ecosystems by means of improved collective intelligence, we introduce a model of negotiation style dynamics from the point of view of computational ecology. This model inspires an ecosystem monitor as well as a novel negotiation style recommender. The ecosystem monitor provides hints to the negotiation style recommender to achieve greater stability of an open negotiation environment in a digital business ecosystem. The greater stability provides the small companies with higher predictability, and therefore better business results. The negotiation style recommender is implemented with a simulated annealing algorithm at a constant temperature, and its impact is shown by applying it to a real case of an open negotiation environment populated by Italian companies

The Outline View

When creating a document it can be difficult to know from the outset what the final layout and structure of a document should be. Using headings and styles, users can create a document and structure it appropriately at the end using the outline function.