University of Trento

About: University of Trento is a education organization based out in Trento, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 10527 authors who have published 30978 publications receiving 896614 citations. The organization is also known as: Universitá degli Studi di Trento & Universita degli Studi di Trento.

A new approach to business fluctuations: heterogeneous interacting agents, scaling laws and financial fragility

Abstract: In this paper we discuss a scaling approach to business fluctuations. Our starting point consists in recognizing that concepts and methods derived from physics have allowed economists to (re)discover a set of stylized facts which have to be satisfactorily accounted for in their models. Standard macroeconomics, based on a reductionist approach centered on the representative agent, is definitely badly equipped for this task. On the contrary, we show that a simple financial fragility agent-based model, based on complex interactions of heterogeneous agents, is able to replicate a large number of scaling type stylized facts with a remarkable high degree of statistical precision.

Reasoning with Goal Models

Abstract: Over the past decade, goal models have been used in Computer Science in order to represent software requirements, business objectives and design qualities. Such models extend traditional AI planning techniques for representing goals by allowing for partially defined and possibly inconsistent goals. This paper presents a formal framework for reasoning with such goal models. In particular, the paper proposes a qualitative and a numerical axiomatization for goal modeling primitives and introduces label propagation algorithms that are shown to be sound and complete with respect to their respective axiomatizations. In addition, the paper reports on preliminary experimental results on the propagation algorithms applied to a goal model for a US car manufacturer.

Structural Characterization and High‐Temperature Behavior of Silicon Oxycarbide Glasses Prepared from Sol‐Gel Precursors Containing Si‐H Bonds

Abstract: Silicon oxycarbide glasses have been synthesized by inert atmosphere pyrolysis at 1000°C of gel precursors obtained by cohydrolysis of triethoxysilane, HSi(OEt)3, and methyl-diethoxysilane, HMeSi(OEt)2. The oxycarbide structures have been carefully characterized by means of different techniques such as 29Si magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS-NMR) and Raman spectroscopies, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and chemical analysis. Experimental results clearly indicate that, depending on the composition of the starting gels, the resulting oxycarbide glass either is formed by a pure oxycarbide phase or contains an extra carbon or silicon phase. By increasing the temperature up to 1500°C, the oxycarbide glasses display compositional and weight stability; however, the amorphous network undergoes structural rearrangements that lead to the precipitation of nano-sized β-SiC crystallites into amorphous silica. Crystallization of metallic silicon is also clearly observed at 1500°C for the samples in which the presence of Si-Si bonds was postulated at 1000°C.

A Split-Based Approach to Unsupervised Change Detection in Large-Size Multitemporal Images: Application to Tsunami-Damage Assessment

Abstract: This paper presents a split-based approach (SBA) to automatic and unsupervised change detection in large-size multitemporal remote-sensing images. Unlike standard methods that are presented in the literature, the proposed approach can detect in a consistent and reliable way changes in images of large size also when the extension of the changed area is small (and, therefore, the prior probability of the class of changed pixels is very small). The method is based on the following: 1) a split of the large-size image into subimages; 2) an adaptive analysis of each subimage; and 3) an automatic split-based threshold-selection procedure. This general approach is used for defining a system for damage assessment in multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The proposed system has been developed to properly identify different levels of damages that are induced by tsunamis along coastal areas. Experimental results that are obtained on multitemporal RADARSAT-1 SAR images of the Sumatra Island, Indonesia, confirm the effectiveness of both the proposed SBA and the presented system for tsunami-damage assessment