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This paper conducts a comparative evaluation between Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and photogrammetry for 3D reconstruction in the cultural heritage domain. Focusing on three case studies, of which the Terpsichore statue serves as a pilot case, the research assesses the quality, consistency, and efficiency of both methods. The results indicate that, under conditions of reduced input data or lower resolution, NeRF outperforms photogrammetry in preserving completeness and material description for the same set of input images (with known camera poses). The study recommends NeRF for scenarios requiring extensive area mapping with limited images, particularly in emergency situations. Despite NeRF’s developmental stage compared to photogrammetry, the findings demonstrate higher potential for describing material characteristics and rendering homogeneous textures with enhanced visual fidelity and accuracy; however, NeRF seems more prone to noise effects. The paper advocates for the future integration of NeRF with photogrammetry to address respective limitations, offering more comprehensive representation for cultural heritage preservation tasks. Future developments include extending applications to planar surfaces and exploring NeRF in virtual and augmented reality, as well as studying NeRF evolution in line with emerging trends in semantic segmentation and in-the-wild scene reconstruction.

Abstract Electronics cooling by direct immersion of the components in a dielectric liquid to obtain pool boiling is a valuable solution to dissipate the high heat fluxes of latest and increasingly challenging requirements. In the last decades, perfluorocarbons such as FC-72 were intensively studied and used. However, such fluids will be replaced by other refrigerants with lower Global Warming Potential. The Novec 649 is a suitable alternative to FC-72 as most of the thermophysical properties are similar. Enhanced boiling of FC-72 due to electric fields has been a subject of studies in the past years, for ground and space applications. The aim of this work is to compare the boiling performances of the two fluids in the presence of a DC electric field. Boiling curves were obtained at ambient pressure with fully degassed fluids and at different subcooling levels. Results showed that the performances of the two fluids are comparable in the absence of the electric field, but there are some differences when the electric field is on: electric field enhances the heat transfer coefficient of Novec 649 at low heat fluxes and the Critical Heat Flux at high subcooling. Boiling patterns and bubbles dynamics appear quite different between the two fluids in the presence of the electric field. These observations are explained with the fact that while FC-72 behaves as an electric insulator, while Novec 649 is a leaky-dielectric in the examined conditions. Thus, Novec 649 is a valid replacement of FC-72 and further investigations are needed to better quantify its boiling performances under the action of an electric field.

Abstract The safety of a fusion reactor like ITER relies on the reliability of the pressure suppression system (for keeping pressure below 0.15 MPa during accidental scenarios), and, in turn, on the efficiency of Direct Contact Condensation (DCC). In this study, the role played by the distribution of the condensation energy in the water is analysed considering the experimental results of temperature and pressure recorded during steam condensation tests in a closed volume at sub-atmospheric conditions. The investigation of the mechanisms involved in the condensation at the water-steam interface is fundamental to verify that the subcooled water mass fully participates into the steam condensation for all the foreseen condensation regimes. Particularly, the paper analyses the distribution of the condensation energy in a water pool for different test conditions and with reference to the large-scale facility under operation at the DICI-University of Pisa. The subcooled water volume of the condensation tank in this system was assumed subdivided in 104 annular discrete volumes corresponding to the location of temperature and pressure sensors (testing monitoring points). Moreover, this discretization was used to implement a model to visualize the experimental data and in particular the accumulation of the condensation energy in the different part of the water pool and of the vacuum space. The experimental results showed that most of the tests had a participating fraction of water mass greater than 50%. Nevertheless, the non-uniformity and stratification of the temperature in the water pool requires a greater water mass for condensing a given steam mass. The analyses of steady state pure steam condensation tests determined that it needs to increase 1.39 times the water mass respect to the case of full participation of the water at the steam condensation.

The 2022 edition of NL4AI was co-located with the 21st International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA 2022) and took place on November 30th in Udine, Italy. The call for papers attracted 17 submissions by 52 different authors from Italy (44), the UK (2), Algeria (4), and Germany (2). After the review process, 13 of 17 papers were accepted for publication (acceptance rate 76.47%). In terms of topics, the contributions to the workshop span from pure NLP works to broader proposals bridging NLP with other AI applications. Among the accepted articles, we selected two that we considered the most relevant and inspiring for the Italian Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence communities. The authors of these papers have been invited to extend their contribution to this volume, creating an exclusive venue to provide visibility to their egregious work.

AbstractThe 1st millennium BCE in Italy was a time of agricultural intensification of staple cereal production which shaped sociocultural, political, and economic spheres of pre-Roman groups. The lifeways and foodways of the Etruscans, the greatest civilization in western Europe before Roman hegemony, are traditionally inferred from secondary written sources, funerary archaeology, archaeobotany, and zooarchaeology. However, no direct data extrapolated from the study of human skeletal remains are available to evaluate the extent to which agricultural intensification and decreased dietary diversity impacted health and the expression of skeletal indicators of metabolic disease. Macroscopic and radiological analyses were conducted on an archaeological skeletal sample of non-adults (n = 29) recovered from Pontecagnano (southern Italy) dating to the Orientalizing period (730–580 BCE). This allowed us to identify five cases of scorbutic non-adults and to assign diagnostic values to skeletal lesions of scurvy that have not been previously described in the literature. The onset of scurvy in the examined sample is related to the increased reliance of Etruscans on crops lacking vitamin C in this period of agricultural intensification. The skeletal expression of scurvy varied among the non-adults, with differences in location and disease severity; these were interpreted considering the age-at-death of the individuals coupled with feeding behaviors and interindividual variability.

Abstract The effective storage of hydrogen is a critical challenge that needs to be overcome for it to become a widely used and clean energy source. Various methods exist for storing hydrogen, including compression at high pressures, liquefaction through extreme cooling (i.e. -253 °C), and storage with chemical compounds. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. MAST3RBoost (Maturing the Production Standards of Ultraporous Structures for High Density Hydrogen Storage Bank Operating on Swinging Temperatures and Low Compression) is a European funded Project aiming to establish a reliable benchmark for cold-adsorbed H2 storage (CAH2) at low compression levels (100 bar or below). This is achieved through the development of advanced ultraporous materials suitable for mobility applications, such as hydrogen-powered vehicles used in road, railway, air, and water transportation. The MAST3RBoost Project utilizes cutting-edge materials, including Activated Carbons (ACs) and high-density MOFs (Metal-organic Frameworks), which are enhanced by Machine Learning techniques. By harnessing these materials, the project seeks to create a groundbreaking path towards meeting industry goals. The project aims to develop the world’s first adsorption-based demonstrator at a significant kg-scale. To support the design of the storage tank, the project employs Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software, which allows for numerical investigations. In this paper, a preliminary analysis of the tank refilling process is presented, with a focus on the impact of the effect of the tank and hydrogen temperatures on quantity of hydrogen adsorbed.

Samuelson commented several times on Sraffa’s 1926 Economic Journal paper, while for presumably linguistic reasons he never commented on the 1925 Italian article, which was translated into English only in 1998 (Sraffa [1925] 1998). He eventually consid ered the conclusion Sraffa reached in the first part of his 1926 Economic Journal paper an error (see Samuelson 1987, 1990a, 1990b, 1991) and did not change his view even when Eatwell (1990), Garegnani (1990), Schefold (1990), and Panico (1991) brought to his attention the fact that his and Sraffa’s analyses were quite similar. In this article we pursue the following aims. We 1. highlight similarities and differences between Sraffa 1925 and Samuelson 1971, 2. reconstruct the evolution of Samuelson’s thought concerning Sraffa’s 1926 critique of Marshallian economics, 3. obtain new insights from Sraffa’s unpublished manuscripts about Sraffa’s thought on the role and signif­i­cance of the constant costs case within Marshallian economics, 4. take account of a change in Sraffa’s assessment of Marshallian par tial equilibrium methodology that took place in the second half of the 1920s,1 and 5. reconsider the previous debate on these issues in the light of unpub lished documents that were not available at the time of the debate.