Search results for "SIM"
showing 10 items of 10139 documents
Mafia Methods, Extortion Dynamics and Social Responses
2016
This chapter is devoted to exploring both the empirical results and the policy proposals produced by the GLODERS project. Based on 631 cases of extortions, the Sicily and Calabria extortion database represents a relevant achievement in the field of the research on extortion racket and it is one of the main results of the GLODERS project. Gathering a great amount of information, our empirical analysis revealed the existence of several differences in the extortive conducts carried on within these two regions, which are presented. Moreover, the chapter introduces the legislation related to the crime of extortion. Social and legal responses to the phenomenon are then discussed.
The Loss of Grammatical Gender and Case Features Between Old and Early Middle English: Its Impact on Simple Demonstratives and Topic Shift
2017
AbstractIn this paper we examine the relation between the loss of formal gender and Case features on simple demonstratives and the topic shifting property they manifest. The examination period spans between Old English and Early Middle English. While we argue that this loss has important discourse-pragmatic and derivational effects on demonstratives, we also employ the Strong Minimalist Hypothesis approach (Chomsky 2001) and feature valuation, as defined in Pesetsky & Torrego (2007), to display how their syntactic computation and pragmatic properties have come about. To account for the above innovations yielding the Early Middle Englishϸe(‘the’), we first discuss the formal properties o…
Beware of the dog! Private linguistic landscapes in two ‘Hungarian’ villages in South-West Slovakia
2015
This study demonstrates how a single type of sign can be connected to language policy on a larger scale. Focusing on the relationship between language policy and language ideologies, I investigate the private Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Hungarians living in two villages in Slovakia. Through an examination of ‘beware of the dog’ signs, it is shown how such signs can be indicative of different language policies. In Slovakia, the Hungarian public LL is often referred to as a threat to the state language and public order. This ideology is reflected on the LL so that there are mostly Slovak-only public signs in bilingual and Hungarian dominant villages. The private realm is the only significant…
Progress Checking for Dummies
2018
Verification of progress properties is both conceptually and technically significantly more difficult than verification of safety and deadlock properties. In this study we focus on the conceptual side. We make a simple modification to a well-known model to demonstrate that it passes progress verification although the resulting model is intuitively badly incorrect. Then we point out that the error can be caught easily by adding a termination branch to the system. We compare the use of termination branches to the established method of addressing the same need, that is, weak fairness. Then we discuss another problem that may cause failure of catching progress errors even with weak fairness. Fi…
Perceived similarity between written Estonian and Finnish : Strings of letters or morphological units?
2017
The distance or similarity between two languages can be objective or actual, i.e. discoverable by the tools and methods of linguists, or perceived by users of the languages. In this article two methods, the Levenshtein Distance (LD), which purports to measure the objective distance, and the Index of Perceived Similarity (IPS), which quantifies language users’ perceptions, are compared. The data are the quantitative results of a test measuring conscious perceptions of similarity between Estonian and Finnish inflectional morphology by Finnish and Estonian native speakers (‘Finns’ and ‘Estonians’) with no knowledge of and exposure to the other (‘target’) language. The results show that Finns s…
Stability of Asymmetric Lipid Bilayers Assessed by Molecular Dynamics Simulations
2009
The asymmetric insertion of amphiphiles into biological membranes compromises the balance between the inner and outer monolayers. As a result, area expansion of the receiving leaflet and curvature strain may lead to membrane permeation, shape changes, or membrane fusion events. We have conducted both atomistic and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of dipalmitoyl-phosphatidylcholine (DPPC) bilayers to study the effect of an asymmetric distribution of lipids between the two monolayers on membrane stability. Highly asymmetric lipid bilayers were found to be surprisingly stable within the submicrosecond time span of the simulations. Even the limiting case of a monolayer immersed in …
Partition of Indicaxanthin in Membrane Biomimetic Systems. A Kinetic and Modeling Approach
2009
The solubilization site of indicaxanthin (Ind) in lipid bilayers was investigated by the kinetics of Ind oxidation by peroxyl radicals in water and in aqueous/L-alpha-dipalmitoyl-phosphatidylcholine (DPPC) vesicles, pH 7.4, and 37.0 and 48.0 degrees C, that is, in a gel-like and a crystal liquidlike bilayer state, respectively. The time-dependent Ind absorbance decay, matched with a successful simulation of the reaction kinetic mechanism by Gepasi software, supported a multistep pathway. Computer-assisted analysis allowed calculation of the rate constants associated with the reactions involved, the values of which decreased with increasing DPPC concentration. The binding constant calculated…
Retrieving Monitoring and Accounting Information from Constrained Devices in Internet-of-Things Applications
2013
Part 6: Monitoring Mechanisms; International audience; Internet-of-Things (IoT) is envisioned to provide connectivity to a vast number of sensing or actuating devices with limited computational and communication capabilities. For the organizations that manage these constrained devices, the monitoring of each device’s operational status and performance level as well as the accounting of their resource usage are of great importance. However, monitoring and accounting support is lacking in today’s IoT platforms. Hence, this paper studies the applicability of the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), a lightweight transfer protocol under development by IETF, for efficiently retrieving monito…
Influence of the exchange and correlation functional on the structure of amorphous InSb and In3SbTe2 compounds
2016
We have investigated the structural, vibrational, and electronic properties of the amorphous phase of InSb and In3SbTe2 compounds of interest for applications in phase change non-volatile memories. Models of the amorphous phase have been generated by quenching from the melt by molecular dynamics simulations based on density functional theory. In particular, we have studied the dependence of the structural properties on the choice of the exchange-correlation functional. It turns out that the use of the Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr functional provides models with a much larger fraction of In atoms in a tetrahedral bonding geometry with respect to previous results obtained with the most commonly used P…
A posteriori modelling-discretization error estimate for elliptic problems with L ∞-Coefficients
2017
We consider elliptic problems with complicated, discontinuous diffusion tensor A0. One of the standard approaches to numerically treat such problems is to simplify the coefficient by some approximation, say Aϵ, and to use standard finite elements. In [19] a combined modelling-discretization strategy has been proposed which estimates the discretization and modelling errors by a posteriori estimates of functional type. This strategy allows to balance these two errors in a problem adapted way. However, the estimate of the modelling error was derived under the assumption that the difference A0 - Aϵ becomes small with respect to the L∞-norm. This implies in particular that interfaces/discontinui…