Search results for "TACL"
showing 10 items of 204 documents
Space matters: meristem expansion triggers corona formation in Passiflora
2015
Background and aims Flower meristems differ from vegetative meristems in various aspects. One characteristic is the capacity for ongoing meristem expansion providing space for new structures. Here, corona formation in four species of Passiflora is investigated to understand the spatio-temporal conditions of its formation and to clarify homology of the corona elements. Methods One bird-pollinated species with a single-rowed tubular corona (Passiflora tulae) and three insect-pollinated species with three (P. standleyi Killip), four (P. foetida L. ‘Sanctae Martae’) and six (P. foetida L. var. hispida) ray-shaped corona rows are chosen as representative examples for the study. Flower developmen…
The ‘magic square’: A roadmap towards emotional business intelligence
2014
Emotions are known to be an important driver in human behaviour and decision-making. In the business world, there is a growing belief that emotions are not an obstacle but rather an enabler for a successful business. Business intelligence (by providing analytical processing and convenient presentation of a business data) traditionally supports rational decision-making. However, opposite to former opinion that all decisions should be ‘cleansed’ of emotions, there are more and more indicators of the need for solutions supporting also emotional decision-making. The domain of emotional business intelligence, suggested in this paper, concerns emotional and emotion-aware decisions, intuition, inn…
<title>HAP: a hybrid system for reasoning about actions and plans in robotics</title>
1990
The paper describes the main ideas and principles of HAP (Hybrid representation of Actions and Plans), a system for hybrid representation and reasoning in advanced robotics. In this context, hybrid representation refers to the integration of both symbolic and analogic knowledge representation paradigms. In particular, the logic/symbolic component is based on a KL-ONE-like representation language. The system embeds "analogic experts", that are concurrent procedures operating in a direct and fast way on the world representation. These "experts" help the system in planning a correct temporal sequence of actions. As a reference scenario, assembly (and disassembly) problems are considered. The a…
Did Brouwer’s Intuitionistic Analysis Satisfy Its Own Epistemological Standards?
2000
The aim of this essay is both historical and philosophical. On the histori. level, the following remarks are intended to contribute to a better understanding of the missing reception of the more advanced parts of Luitzen E. J. Brouwer’s intuitionistic mathematics. More precisely, I want to draw attention to a crucial technical difficulty in Brouwer’s treatment of the basic theorems of intuitionistic analysis. It concerns the (intuitionistic) proof of what Brouwer viewed as one of the cornerstones of intuitionistic set theory, the “fan theorem,” as it is often called today. This difficulty most probably presented a serious obstacle to contemporary attempts to understand Brouwer’s contributio…
Miti politici e attori collettivi. Orlando e lo spettacolo dell'antimafia
2022
From the 1980s to 2022, the role of mayor of Palermo is inextricably linked to the name of Leoluca Orlando. The hegemony of his political narrative is such that commissionerships and defeats are considered, in this period, mere parentheses in the history of the Municipality. In this contribution, we analyze the semantic device that, at the end of his first, glorious term as 'anti-mafia mayor', avoided Orlando’s discharge to be perceived as a defeat. A book-interview, in particular, had a strategic role in this resemantization. It’s a text by Michele Perriera (1988), journalist for L’Ora and theatre author, that operates a narrative shift of the political scene of Palermo from a fabulous to …
Accretion disk coronae of intermediate polar cataclysmic variables
2017
Context. Intermediate polar cataclysmic variables (IPCV) contain a magnetic, rotating white dwarf surrounded by a magnetically truncated accretion disk. To explain their strong flickering X-ray emission, accretion has been successfully taken into account. Nevertheless, observations suggest that accretion phenomena might not be the only process behind it. An intense flaring activity occurring on the surface of the disk may generate a corona, contribute to the thermal X-ray emission, and influence the system stability. Aims. Our purposes are: investigating the formation of an extended corona above the accretion disk, due to an intense flaring activity occurring on the disk surface; studying t…
Accretion disk coronae of Intermediate Polar Cataclysmic Variables: 3D MagnetoHydroDynamic modeling and thermal X-ray emission
Intermediate Polar Cataclysmic Variables (IPCVs), also known as DQ Her stars after their prototype, are cataclysmic variable stars characterized by the presence of an accreting, magnetic, rapidly rotating white dwarf surrounded by an accretion disk magnetically truncated by the inner magnetosphere of the star. These objects exhibit a magnetic field of the order of few MG, able to disrupt the inner part of the disk but not strong enough to inhibit the formation of a disk. These stars show a strong X-ray emission with a stochastic pulsation that in some cases arise in the inner part of the disk. However, the observations of the X-ray luminosity for these objects do not match the expected valu…
Fixation-free incisional hernia repair in the elderly: our experience with a tentacle-shaped implant.
2016
Background: Incisional hernia in aged patients represents a challenge even for experienced surgeons. Besides increased risk of complications due to comorbidities, mesh fixation and assuring a sufficient mesh overlap of the defect are the main issues in carrying out the repair. Aims: In order to assure broader coverage of the abdominal wall and a tension- and fixation-free repair, a specifically designed prosthesis was developed for the surgical treatment of incisional hernias. The results of a fixation-free incisional hernia repair carried out in elderly patients using a tentacle-shaped implant are reported herewith. Methods: A tentacle-shaped flat mesh with a large central body and integra…
Kinematics of obstacle clearance in the rat
2010
Although the rat has become the favourite animal model in preclinical research on locomotion, studies designed to assess the strategy used by rats to avoid obstacle are lacking. Using an optoelectronic 3D motion analysis system, we therefore, compared the step pattern, timing and length variables of locomotor cycles, trajectories and joint angles of limbs when rats step between and over obstacles (3 cm-high) fixed on a treadmill belt (25 cm/s). Motion in all four limbs of adult animals with an initial age of 11 weeks was serially recorded for a period of 10 weeks. The results showed that obstacle clearance is associated with the reorganization of the basic step pattern resulting in increase…