The single currency and European citizenship

We could expect that the introduction of the single currency had been accompanied by a significant share of studies and researches about the implications and impacts of such a watershed event on European citizenship. On the contrary, we soon discover to be facing a paradox, which could be phrased as follows: while the purpose of building European citizenship is the very rationale for the project of the single currency, the Scholars – but also the policy community – have mostly underestimated if not neglected this relation, both in terms of public policy making and discourse and of interpretation and forecasting. As a consequence of all of that, relevant features of the single currency happened to remain hidden, poorly considered and almost not thematized. In order to fill this gap, the first part of this article will present the main findings emerged from a documentary research conducted by FONDACA between 2010 and 2011, aimed at mapping the existing academic and policy thematizations about the hidden dimensions of the euro. The second part will be devoted to define “the other side of the coin” as an empirical phenomenon

Imaging Spectropolarimetry with IBIS: Evolution of Bright Points in the Quiet Sun

We present the results from first spectropolarimetric observations of the solar photosphere acquired at the Dunn Solar Telescope with the Interferometric Bidimensional Spectrometer. Full Stokes profiles were measured in the Fe I 630.15 nm and Fe I 630.25 nm lines with high spatial and spectral resolutions for 53 minutes, with a Stokes V noise of 0.003 the continuum intensity level. The dataset allows us to study the evolution of several magnetic features associated with G-band bright points in the quiet Sun. Here we focus on the analysis of three distinct processes, namely the coalescence, fragmentation and cancellation of G-band bright points. Our analysis is based on a SIR inversion of the Stokes I and V profiles of both Fe I lines. The high spatial resolution of the G-band images combined with the inversion results helps to interpret the undergoing physical processes. The appearance (dissolution) of high-contrast G-band bright points is found to be related to the local increase (decrease) of the magnetic filling factor, without appreciable changes in the field strength. The cancellation of opposite-polarity bright points can be the signature of either magnetic reconnection or the emergence/submergence of magnetic loops.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Accurate high-resolution depth profiling of magnetron sputtered transition metal alloy films containing light species: A multi-method approach

We present an assessment of a multi-method approach based on ion beam analysis to obtain high-resolution depth profiles of the total chemical composition of complex alloy systems. As a model system we employ an alloy based on several transition metals and containing light species. Samples have been investigated by a number of different ion-beam based techniques, i.e., Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry, Particle-Induced X-ray Emission, Elastic Backscattering Spectrometry and Time-of-Flight/Energy Elastic Recoil Detection Analysis. Sets of spectra obtained from these different techniques were analyzed both independently and following an iterative and self-consistent approach yielding a more accurate depth profile of the sample, including both metallic heavy constituents (Cr, Fe and Ni) as well as the rather reactive light species (C, O) in the alloy. A quantitative comparison in terms of achievable precision and accuracy is made and the limitations of the single method approach are discussed for the different techniques. The multi-method approach is shown to yield significantly improved and accurate information on stoichiometry, depth distribution, and thickness of the alloy with the improvements being decisive for a detailed correlation of composition to the material properties such as corrosion strength. The study also shows the increased relative importance of experimental statistics for the achievable accuracy in the multi-method approach.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures and 1 tabl

Finding Person Relations in Image Data of the Internet Archive

The multimedia content in the World Wide Web is rapidly growing and contains valuable information for many applications in different domains. For this reason, the Internet Archive initiative has been gathering billions of time-versioned web pages since the mid-nineties. However, the huge amount of data is rarely labeled with appropriate metadata and automatic approaches are required to enable semantic search. Normally, the textual content of the Internet Archive is used to extract entities and their possible relations across domains such as politics and entertainment, whereas image and video content is usually neglected. In this paper, we introduce a system for person recognition in image content of web news stored in the Internet Archive. Thus, the system complements entity recognition in text and allows researchers and analysts to track media coverage and relations of persons more precisely. Based on a deep learning face recognition approach, we suggest a system that automatically detects persons of interest and gathers sample material, which is subsequently used to identify them in the image data of the Internet Archive. We evaluate the performance of the face recognition system on an appropriate standard benchmark dataset and demonstrate the feasibility of the approach with two use cases

Risk management in solitary agricultural work: new technologies for handling emergency and falls from great heights (SHADE)

Solitary work and agricultural activities are the scenarios of a large number of severe injuries and deaths, also because first aid may be difficult to achieve in isolated locations. This work proposes a technology available on smartphones that allows triggering an emergency call when a fall from height or an unconsciousness state is detected. The results of several tests, which include different detection algorithms and scenarios, are reported in this work. Tests performed with the aid of a dummy have allowed developing a reliable algorithm for the detection of dangerous situations. This system is available as an Android application

Dynamic renormalization group study of a generalized continuum model of crystalline surfaces

We apply the Nozieres-Gallet dynamic renormalization group (RG) scheme to a continuum equilibrium model of a d-dimensional surface relaxing by linear surface tension and linear surface diffusion, and which is subject to a lattice potential favoring discrete values of the height variable. The model thus interpolates between the overdamped sine-Gordon model and a related continuum model of crystalline tensionless surfaces. The RG flow predicts the existence of an equilibrium roughening transition only for d = 2 dimensional surfaces, between a flat low-temperature phase and a rough high-temperature phase in the Edwards-Wilkinson (EW) universality class. The surface is always in the flat phase for any other substrate dimensions d > 2. For any value of d, the linear surface diffusion mechanism is an irrelevant perturbation of the linear surface tension mechanism, but may induce long crossovers within which the scaling properties of the linear molecular-beam epitaxy equation are observed, thus increasing the value of the sine-Gordon roughening temperature. This phenomenon originates in the non-linear lattice potential, and is seen to occur even in the absence of a bare surface tension term. An important consequence of this is that a crystalline tensionless surface is asymptotically described at high temperatures by the EW universality class.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Lattice Gauge Fixing for Parameter Dependent Covariant Gauges

We propose a non-perturbative procedure to fix generic covariant gauges on the lattice. Varying the gauge parameter, this gauge fixing provides a concrete method to check numerically the gauge dependence of correlators measured on the lattice. The new algorithm turns out to converge with a good efficiency. As a preliminary physical result, we find a sensitive dependence of the gluon propagator on the gauge parameter.Comment: 10 pages (LaTeX2e), 5 eps figure