Giuseppe Russo

Embryonal tumor with abundant neuropil and true rosettes. A new entity or only variations of a parent neoplasms (PNETs)? This is the dilemma

SummaryA rare embryonal brain tumor has been diagnosed in a 4-year-old boy. The mass, located at the pons and mesencephalon, has been histologically classified as an embryonal tumor containing abundant neuropil and true rosettes.After surgical complete removal of the neoplasia, the child received intensive combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy. He is alive and free of disease at 34xa0months from surgery.Difficulties in histological definition, possible suggestions for treatment proposals are discussed.

Spazi semiconnessi e spazi semiaperti

RiassuntoNel presente lavoro vengono introdotte e caratterizzate due nuove classi di spazi topologici, la classe degli spazisemiconnessi e quella degli spazisemiaperti.

Intelligent Agents supporting user interactions within self regulated learning processes

The paper focuses on the main advantages in the defnition and utilization of an open and modular e-learning software platform to support highly cognitive tasks performed by the main actors of the learning process. We present in detail the integration inside the platform of two intelligent agents devoted to talking with the student and to retrieving new information sources on the Web. The process is triggered as a reply to the system’s perception that the student feels discontented with the presented contents. The architecture is detailed, and some conclusions about the growth of the platform’s overall performance are expressed.

Learning path generation by domain ontology transformation

An approach to automated learning path generation inside a domain ontology supporting a web tutoring system is presented. Even if a terminological ontology definition is needed in real systems to enable reasoning and/or planning techniques, and to take into account the modern learning theories, the task to apply a planner to such an ontology is very hard because the definition of actions along with their preconditions and effects has to take into account the semantics of the relations among concepts, and it results in building an ontology of learning. The proposed methodology is inspired to the Knowledge Space Theory, and proposes some heuristics to transform the original ontology in a weighted graph where the A* algorithm is used to find the path. The proposed approach is applied to the implementation of a web based tutoring system about the Java programming language.

Exploitation of Mobile Access to Context-Based Information in Cultural Heritage Fruition

More than one billion smartphone users are estimated by 2014. With this in mind, visiting cultural heritage sites and exhibits may offer new level of engagement and entertainment just reaching down in our pockets. With orders of magnitude more computational horsepower than a five years-old desktop machine, stuffed with all sorts of sensors, these modern gizmos have a largely untapped potential to gain us access to personalized and on-demand information wherever it is needed. This paper is exactly about this, exploring with several case studies how these devices may become part of a memorable experience during a visit that one may want to share with friends and relatives. Specifically, the paper will focus on the definition of the user-experience (UX), on integration issues, and on context detection within augmented environments in cultural heritage sites, along with a discussion on the lessons learnt.

XML-Based Knowledge Discovery for the Linguistic Atlas of Sicily (ALS) Project

The identification of new useful patterns in data is a core process for intelligent systems. Information overflow is directly related to this problem. In this work we propose a knowledge discovery methodology to retrieve useful and novel information from raw data stored in a DBMS. We used ALSDB, a database that has been built suitably to access structured information obtained from the questionnaires produced in the Linguistic Atlas of Sicily (ALS) project. The ALS project is a decennal joint effort led by researchers at the Dipartimento di Scienze Filologiche e Linguistiche of the University of Palermo that has the purpose to track and study the geo-linguistic and lexicographic processes about the function and usage of the Sicilian dialect.The main goal of the work described in this paper is to develop an information retrieval methodology that incorporates the directions of linguistic investigation embedded into the ALS questionnaire into a querying tool abstracting away from the intricacies of SQL or XML query constructs. We do this setting up a methodology and data retrieval tool that is scalable and general enough to allow, firstly, evaluation of linguistics hypotheses about regional language and dialect evolution in space and time, and, secondly, to help discover new directions of investigation.This works presents the process of knowledge discovery. Starting from conceptualization of few basic ideas, concepts have been extracted from the DBMS through an XML-based mapping and used as building blocks forxa0xa0further investigations. The interaction with users is very intuitive, and the results are incrementally and automatically proposed to the researchers, who may determine to use them as new knowledge to maintain for further use or discard them.

GAIML: A New Language for Verbal and Graphical Interaction in Chatbots

One of the aims of the research in the field of the human-computer interaction is the design of a natural and intuitive interaction modalities. In particular, many efforts have been devoted in the development of systems able to interact with the user in natural language. Chatbots are the classical interfaces for natural language interaction. Such systems can be very sophisticated, including support for 3D avatars and speech analysis and synthesis. However, all of them present only a text area allowing the user to input her sentences. No doubt, an interaction involving also the natural language can increase the comfort of the user with respect to common interfaces using only graphical widgets. However, multi-modal communication must be preferred in all those situations when the user and the system have a tight interaction. Typical examples are cultural heritages applications (intelligent museum guides, picture browsing) or systems presenting to the user an information integrated from different sources as in the case of the iGoogle (TM) interface. In this work we present the Graphical Artificial Intelligence Markup Language, an extension of AIML allowing merging of verbal and graphical interaction modalities. A chatbot system, Graphbot, is also presented that is able to support this language. The language is able to define personalized interface patterns that are the most suitable ones in relation to the type of data exchanged between the user and the system during the dialogue.

GAIML: A new language for verbal and graphical interaction in chatbots

Natural and intuitive interaction between users and complex systems is a crucial research topic in human-computer interaction. A major direction is the definition and implementation of systems with natural language understanding capabilities. The interaction in natural language is often performed by means of systems called chatbots. A chatbot is a conversational agent with a proper knowledge base able to interact with users. Chatbots appearance can be very sophisticated with 3D avatars and speech processing modules. However the interaction between the system and the user is only performed through textual areas for inputs and replies. An interaction able to add to natural language also graphical widgets could be more effective. On the other side, a graphical interaction involving also the natural language can increase the comfort of the user instead of using only graphical widgets. In many applications multi-modal communication must be preferred when the user and the system have a tight and complex interaction. Typical examples are cultural heritages applications (intelligent museum guides, picture browsing) or systems providing the user with integrated information taken from different and heterogenous sources as in the case of the iGoogle™ interface. We propose to mix the two modalities (verbal and graphical) to build systems with a reconfigurable interface, which is able to change with respect to the particular application context. The result of this proposal is the Graphical Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (GAIML) an extension of AIML allowing merging both interaction modalities. In this context a suitable chatbot system called Graphbot is presented to support this language. With this language is possible to define personalized interface patterns that are the most suitable ones in relation to the data types exchanged between the user and the system according to the context of the dialogue.

VEBO: Validation of E-R Diagrams through Ontologies and WordNet

In the semantic web vision, ontologies are building blocks for providing applications with a high level description of the operating environment in support of interoperability and semantic capabilities. The importance of ontologies in this respect is clearly stated in many works. Another crucial issue to increase the semantic aspect of web is to enrich the level of expressivity of database related data. Nowadays, databases are the primary source of information for dynamical web sites. The linguistic data used to build the database structure could be relevant for extracting meaningful information. In most cases, this type of information is not used for information retrieval. The work presented in this paper deals with an attempt to enrich a database structure using linguistic information. The purpose is twofold: the proposed approach can be used either to validate the database structure linguistically or at least to enrich information retrieval with structural information. In this paper the first goal is pursued by the construction of the VEBO system that is used to validate database entity-relation diagrams through semi-automatic creation and enrichment of ontology.

A Multichannel Information System to Build and Deliver Rich User-Experiences in Exhibits and Museums

In this article a multichannel information system to build and deliver rich user experiences in exhibits and museums is presented. The system was designed to use information about a particular exhibit or museum while delivering a wide user experience based on different distribution channels. The overall information is used to build different solutions that can be delivered simultaneously on different media from touch-screen installations to portable devices like smart phones. Moreover, all the devices signed in the environment are able to communicate to each others to increase the level of the usability of the system. A case study and analysis of experimental results are also provided.