• Publicationsclose
• Research dataclose
• 2013-2022close
• Doctoral thesis close
• IT close

La ricerca si colloca nel quadro degli studi volti a rendere operativo l’approccio del paesaggio storico urbano attraverso strumenti per la “gestione del cambiamento” del paesaggio. Riconoscendo la “piazza” come il luogo in cui si concentrano i valori urbani e si sublima l'idea stessa di comunità, la ricerca affronta il tema del recupero dello spazio pubblico come azione strategica per promuovere uno sviluppo umano sostenibile a partire da azioni locali. La tesi proposta è che il recupero dello spazio pubblico, configurato dall’arte e dalla cultura e condiviso con le comunità locali in un processo inclusivo, contribuisce a rigenerare la creatività, ricostruendo le relazioni tra gli individui, la comunità ed il paesaggio e gettando le basi per la costruzione di un «ambiente creativo», in cui le relazioni diventano sinergie creative e produttive. La tesi viene dimostrata attraverso lo studio teorico, l'analisi di un caso studio e supportata dalla sperimentazione di un living lab nel Parco Nazionale del Cilento, Vallo di Diano e Alburni.

English was the main focus of attention of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) community for years. As a result, there are significantly more annotated linguistic resources in English than in any other language. Consequently, data-driven tools for automatic text or speech processing are developed mainly for English. Developing similar corpora and tools for other languages is an important issue. However, this requires significant amount of effort. Recently, Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) techniques and parallel corpora were used to transfer annotations from a linguistic resource rich languages to a resource-poor languages for a variety of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, including Part-of-Speech tagging, Noun Phrase chunking, dependency parsing, textual entailment, etc. This cross-language NLP paradigm relies on the solution of the following sub-problems: - Data-driven NLP techniques are very sensitive to the differences in training and testing conditions. Different domains, such as financial news-wire and biomedical publications, have different distributions of NLP task-specific properties; thus, the domain adaptation of the source language tools -- either the development of models with good cross-domain performance or tuned to the target domain -- is critical. - Another difference in training and testing conditions arises with cross-genre applications such as written text (monologues) and spontaneous dialog data. Properties of written text such as punctuation and the notion of sentence are not present in spoken conversation transcriptions. Thus, style-adaptation techniques to cover a wider range of genres is critical as well. - The basis of cross-language porting is parallel corpora. Unfortunately, parallel corpora are scarce. Thus, generation or retrieval of parallel corpora between the languages of interest is important. Additionally, these parallel corpora most often are not in the domains of interest; consequently, the cross-language porting should be augmented with SMT domain adaptation techniques. - The language distance play an important role within the paradigm, since for close family language pairs (e.g. Romance languages Italian and Spanish) the range of linguistic phenomena to consider is significantly less compared to the distant family language pairs (e.g. Italian and Turkish). The developed cross-language techniques should be applicable to both conditions. In this thesis we address these sub-problems on complex Natural Language Processing tasks of Discourse Parsing and Spoken Language Understanding. Both tasks are cast as token-level shallow parsing. Penn Discourse Treebank (PDTB) style discourse parsing is applied cross-domain and we contribute feature-level domain adaptation techniques for the task. Additionally, we explore PDTB-style discourse parsing on dialog data in Italian are report on challenges. The problems of parallel corpora creation, language style adaptation, SMT domain-adaptation and language distance are addressed on the task of cross-language porting of Spoken Language Understanding. This thesis contributes to the task with the language-style and domain adaptation techniques for machine translation of spoken conversations using off-the-shelf systems like Google Translate, SMT systems trained on both out-of-domain and in-domain parallel data. We demonstrate that the techniques are beneficial for both close and distant language pairs. We propose the methodologies for the creation of parallel spoken conversation corpora via professional translation services that considers speech phenomena such as disfluencies. Additionally, we explore the semantic annotation transfer using automatic SMT methods and crowdsourcing. For the later, we propose the computational methodology to obtain acceptable quality corpus without the target language references and the low worker agreement.

In prima istanza è stato condotto un attento lavoro di literature review relativamente ai temi della relationship governance nelle agri-food supply chain. Le analisi hanno permesso di indagare le principale metodologie utilizzate valutazione della relationship governance, dall’approccio neo-istituzionale dei costi di transazione all’impiego di metodi statistici, quali le equazioni strutturali. Definito il campo d’indagine, ovvero il settore-lattiero caseario ovino sardo, sono state individuate le principali variabili che concorrono alla definizione delle relazioni tra i membri della Supply chain. Le analisi del settore hanno messo in luce un crescente bisogno di comprensione delle dinamiche relative alle relazioni di filiera. Una prima conoscenza del settore unita all’analisi bibliografica hanno permesso di strutturare il modello concettuale alla base dell’analisi empirica e le ipotesi sottostanti il progetto di ricerca. Su questo modello sono stati costruiti due distinti questionari per allevatori e trasformatori dediti alla produzione dei tre formaggi DOP : Pecorino Romano, Pecorino Sardo e Fiore Sardo. Successivamente sono state condotte una serie di analisi statistiche esplorative volte a testare l’associazioni tra variabili, ovvero prezzo e modalità di coordinamento, modalità di coordinamento e fiducia tra i partners. Successivamente è stato condotto il test delle ipotesi formulate attraverso l’analisi ad equazioni strutturali, costruendo il modello di misurazione (analisi fattoriale) e il modello strutturale, volto ad individuare i parametri di causalità tra le variabili latenti. Le analisi permettono quindi di individuare le determinanti della relationships governance nel settore lattiero caseario sardo, sia rispetto all’ambiente – inteso sia nell’accezione istituzionale che strutturale e culturale – sia rispetto alle caratteristiche del prodotto, tenendo presente la natura agro-alimentare e le connesse specificità. È stato quindi valutato l’effetto che la relationship governance, e quindi le dimensioni individuate che concorrono a definirla, ha su una delle dimensioni più critiche di performance, ovvero il prezzo del bene scambiato Characteristics of modern food demand force retailers to acquire more information about product process along the food supply chain to ensure that product are in accordance with consumer preference. Therefore, the product process involves more information flows between buyer and supplier which requires collaborative efforts. These changes translate into several studies on the inter-organizational relationship in agri-food systems. Studies on inter-organizational relationships have been conducted in various academic disciplines, including sociology, psychology, law, economics, marketing, management, and combination of these. Inter-organizational relationships is an interaction between organizations which involved firms horizontally, as well as, vertically. In this study we deal with vertical, buyer-seller relationship which are sometimes referred to chain relationships. We define vertical business relationship in the agriculture-food based sector as “agri-food chain relationships”. The focus is on sustainable inter-organizational relationships in a way that they can be scientifically investigated. We study characteristics which ensure that a relationship is long-lasting and rewarding for all involved parties in the sardinian dairy. We test the theoretical model using structural equation modeling. The results suggest that the most important determinant for the relationships is technology and the price isn’t significant for the relationship governance.

Fish products are essential to the food and economic security for almost a billion people around the world. Parasitic diseases outbreaks are a major concern for aquaculture and fishery industries, and they may represent a major constraint for sectors’ expansion. Fish-borne parasitic zoonoses due to the consumption of fishery products are an increasing phenomenon in European Countries. This work maps the available information on Enterospora nucleophila and Cryptosporidium molnari presence in gilthead sea bream Mediterranean aquaculture. The existing diagnostic techniques for the detection of E. nucleophila and C. molnari were reviewed and a new in situ hybridization assay for the detection of E. nucleophila developmental stages is provided. Data from a survey involving 17 gilthead sea bream facilities showed a wide distribution pattern of E. nucleophila and C. molnari, with their detection in 41% and 47% farms, respectively. Data also showed a non-homogeneous distribution within different production phases and type of facilities. Parasites were mainly detected in post-weaning production phases, with higher detection of E. nucleophila at ongrowing in-land and cage-based rearing systems, and higher positivity percentages of C. molnari at pre-growing and in-land tanks. The absence of positivity at early production stages including eggs led to consider vertical transmission unlikely and to confirm the role of water in transmitting the infection. This work aimed at shedding light on emerging zoonotic parasites in European freshwater fishery products. This work provided consistent information on Eustrongylides excisus epidemiology in Central Italy lakes and confirmed the presence of infective stages in freshwater fish. A molecular assay for the identification of adult and larval stages of E. excisus is reported. A novel multiplex PCR assay for the simultaneous identification of Opisthorchis felineus, Pseudamphistomum truncatum, Metorchis spp., Metagonimus spp. and Apophallus spp., the main zoonotic or potentially zoonotic trematodes described in Europe, is also provided.

Over the years, initiatives involving software products have enabled increasing maintenance costs to keep them operating and meeting the needs of their users. During the lifetime of these software-based systems, development and maintenance activities inevitably introduce technical violations (some of which can be considered items of technical debt principal), whether intentional or not. If these violations are not adequately addressed, they can negatively impact the software product\'s maintainability and its capacity to adapt and evolve. In this context, there is growing motivation from the software engineering community, and from those directly involved in decision-making related to software investments, to assess and anticipate the impacts of resource allocation policies (investments) in the various maintenance activity types (perfective, corrective, and preventive). The aim is to preserve satisfactory technical quality characteristics of the software and, at the same time, maintain the cost and the tangible software asset itself at levels acceptable to organizations. Software-based systems have often been in operation for long period, which makes assessing how to allocate resources to maintenance a non-trivial and often complex activity. In line with these decision-making challenges, the modeling of the complexity, mainly with reference to the dynamic dimension, is gaining attention in terms of its use as a support tool for assessing the impact of various decisions on maintenance investments regarding the long-term effects. These effects inevitability define the evolutionary path of the software product, which goes through numerous iterations throughout its lifetime. The objective of this research is twofold. First, it aims to propose and develop a simulation model that enable us to expand knowledge in the area of software maintenance and technical debt management. Second, it aims to explore and evaluate the impact of different resource allocation policies among the different types of maintenance activities on the evolutionary behavior of software systems and their quality attributes related to functional suitability, reliability, and maintainability, together with economic aspects related to cost and tangible assets. The proposed simulation model was developed and tested using the system dynamics approach and, together with computational simulations, was used to evaluate three different resource allocation scenarios focused on (1) perfective maintenance, (2) preventive 11 maintenance, and (3) corrective maintenance. The data obtained from the three scenarios demonstrate counter-intuitive results. For example, focusing on preventive or corrective maintenance can cause, in the long run, the number of functional requirements in operation to be higher than when focusing exclusively on the development of functional requirements (perfective maintenance). However, the results obtained cannot be easily generalized. They depend on countless factors and variables that must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, depending on context-specific characteristics related to each decision made regarding investments in software maintenance. Ao longo dos anos, iniciativas envolvendo produtos de software tem apresentado custos crescentes para mantê-los operando e satisfazendo as necessidades de seus usuários. Durante o tempo de vida desses sistemas baseados em software, as atividades de desenvolvimento e manutenção inevitavelmente introduzem violações técnicas (algumas dessas podendo ser consideradas itens da dívida técnica). Essas violações podem ser geradas intencionalmente ou não e, se não forem tradadas, podem impactar negativamente a manutenibilidade e capacidade de adaptação e evolução do software com o passar do tempo. Nesse contexto, existe um interesse crescente da comunidade de engenharia de software e daqueles envolvidos diretamente nas tomadas de decisões relacionadas aos investimentos em manutenção de software. Esse interesse existe em avaliar e antecipar os impactos causados pelas políticas de alocações de recursos (investimentos) nas diversas modalidades de manutenção (perfectiva, corretiva e preventiva) de modo a preservar níveis satisfatórios de qualidade das características técnicas do software e, ao mesmo tempo, manter o custo e os ativos tangíveis de software em patamares aceitáveis para as organizações. Atualmente, os sistemas baseados em software têm operado por períodos longos e cada vez maiores, o que torna a avaliação de como alocar os recursos uma atividade não trivial e muitas vezes complexa. Alinhado a essas expectativas, a modelagem da complexidade, em especial pela dimensão dinâmica, vem ganhando atenção e sendo considerada como uma ferramenta de suporte capaz de avaliar o impacto de longo prazo de possíveis tomadas de decisão sobre investimentos em manutenção de software, que inevitavelmente definem o caminho evolucionário do produto de software que sofre inúmeras interferências ao longo do seu ciclo de vida. O objetivo deste trabalho de pesquisa foi propor e desenvolver um modelo de simulação que permitisse ampliar o conhecimento na área de manutenção de software e, ao mesmo tempo, explorar e avaliar o impacto que diferentes políticas de alocação de recursos em manutenção podem causar no comportamento evolutivo dos sistemas baseados em software e nos seus atributos de qualidade relacionados a adequação funcional, disponibilidade e manutenibilidade, juntamente com aspectos econômicos relacionados a custo e ativostangíveis. O modelo de simulação proposto foi construído e testado 13 utilizando a abordagem de dinâmica de sistemas e, junto com simulações computacionais, permitiu avaliar três cenários distintos de alocação de recursos: o primeiro com foco na manutenção perfectiva, o segundo com foco na manutenção preventiva e o terceiro com foco na manutenção corretiva. Os dados obtidos a partir dos três cenários simulados demonstraram resultados contra intuitivos. Por exemplo, focar na manutenção preventiva ou corretiva pode fazer com que, no longo prazo, o número de requisitos funcionais em operação seja maior do que o obtido quando se foca exclusivamente no desenvolvimento de requisitos funcionais (manutenção perfectiva). Entretanto, os resultados obtidos não podem ser analisados de forma objetiva e conclusiva. Eles dependem de inúmeros fatores e variáveis que devem ser analisados caso a caso, dependendo do contexto único de cada tomada de decisão em investimentos em manutenção de software.

La tesi approfondisce il complesso sistema di misure volte ad assicurare la più ampia tutela sociale ed economica dei lavoratori impiegati negli appalti in cui il committente sia una stazione appaltante, al fine di verificarne l’organicità e la coerenza, nonché la compatibilità con i principi cardine del nostro ordinamento e dell’ordinamento comunitario.