Cybersecurity and Privacy in Smart Cities for Citizen Welfare

In smart cities, technologies and systems of various types, from manual sensors to data collection devices, cooperate to improve citizens' wellbeing. They take advantage of information technologies and the internet of things (IoT) to increase citizens' welfare through the implementation of services with distinct objectives, like reducing energy consumption and improving transport routes and health services. Due to their functionalities and characteristics, IoT devices work interconnectedly and collect large amounts of data. In this context, cybersecurity and privacy arise as topics of central interest, as security breaches can lead to personal data exposure and service interruptions and malfunctions, thus directly affecting citizens' welfare and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter discusses how cybersecurity risks affect smart cities' operations and citizens' welfare. It presents some current cybersecurity techniques and how to apply them in the smart city context. It also reviews some open issues and future directions.

Implementation Science and Implementation Science Communications: a refreshed description of the journals’ scope and expectations

This editorial provides a comprehensive consolidated overview of the scope and expectations of Implementation Science and Implementation Science Communications. We remain most interested in rigorous empirical studies of the implementation of evidence-based healthcare practices (including interventions, technologies, and policies) and the de-implementation of practices that are demonstrated to be of low or no benefit. Implementation strategies (e.g., continuing professional education, organizational changes, and financial incentives to enhance the uptake of evidence-based practices) are of central interest to the journals. We see the field as large and complex, with a wide literature that is published in many venues. We urge people for whom it is new to spend some time reading the existing literature, and learning the scope of the work that has already been done, and published, in our journals and in an increasing number of other journals in the field.

“We-Diseases” and Dyadic Decision-Making Processes: A Critical Perspective

This is a critical perspective paper discussing the theoretical bases and methodological issues regarding dyadic decision-making processes in the oncological domain. Decision-making processes are of a central interest when one partner in a couple has cancer, and patients and partners make decisions together under an interactive and dynamic process. Given that, the attention in research is progressively shifting from patient and partner considered as individuals to a more holistic view of patient-partner considered as a dyad. The consideration of the dyadic nature of the decision-making represents a challenge from a theoretical and methodological point of view. The Interdependence Theory and the Dyadic Model of decision-making provide the theoretical bases to consider, respectively, the interdependence of the dyadic decision-making and the mechanisms affecting the couple-based decision-making. Dyadic processes require also an appropriate data analysis strategy that is discussed in the study as well. Conclusions of the present critical review suggest to develop a new line of research on dyadic decision-making in the oncological domain, testing the Dyadic Model presented in the study and considering the interdependence of the data with appropriate levels of analysis.

Negotiating anthropomorphism in the Ai-Da robot

The central interest of this paper is the anthropomorphic social robot Ai-Da (Aidan Meller Gallery/Oxford University), perceived as an actor in the interplay of cultural and representational gestures. These gestures determine how this robot is presented—that is, how its activities are articulated, interpreted and promoted. This paper criticises the use of a transhistorical discourse in the presentational strategies around this robot, since this discourse reinforces the so-called “myth of a machine”. The discussion focuses on the individuation and embodiment of this drawing robot. It is argued that the choice to provide Ai-Da with an evocative silicone face, coupled with an anthropomorphic body, is a socio-political decision that shapes public imaginaries about social robots in general.

Mereology

Mereology is the formal theory of parthood relations. Mereological theories—have become a chapter of central interest in metaphysics, but also with applications in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science. This book provides a critical survey and an up-to-date assessment of the main results in this area, with an eye to both their philosophical underpinnings and their formal properties. In doing so, it also aims to investigate the varieties of formal systems currently available. After a brief history of the development of mereology, introductions to different axiomatizations of so-called classical mereology, alongside set-theoretic and algebraic models, are presented in a clear and accessible manner. The book addresses formal and philosophical issues surrounding the notions of parthood, identity, decomposition, atomism, composition, and more. As a result, the book, provides resources to aide the development of new, non-classical theories of parthood (such as non-well-founded mereologies, non-transitive mereologies, non-extensional mereologies, and more). Consideration is devoted to impact that the logical background has on mereological results (including higher-order, temporal, modal, non-classical logics). A detailed index, appendices, and a comprehensive bibliography makes this book an indispensable resource to researchers in every field where part-whole theorizing plays a fundamental role.

The Fortress Beneath: Ground Penetrating Radar Imaging of the Citadel at Alcatraz: 1. A Guide for Interpretation

Ground-penetrating radar has emerged as a prominent non-destructive evaluation tool for the study of inaccessible subsurface elements of cultural heritage structures. Often of central interest is the desire to image the remains of a pre-existing historic structure that is located directly beneath a more recently built one. The interpretation of GPR images in such cases is usually difficult due to ambiguities caused by the presence of pervasive clutter, environmental noise, and overlapping target signatures. Sites with abundant ground truth allow for more confident interpretations and serve as a useful testbed to assist similar studies at other places, where little or no ground truth is available. This study reports GPR interpretations of structures belonging to the 19th century Citadel beneath the main prison cellhouse at Alcatraz. At this site, lidar scans, direct observations, and historical documents are available to facilitate identification of radar target signatures. A general interpretation of the acquired radargrams is made in this paper, while the companion paper presents more advanced analysis of target signatures based on curvelet image processing. This study points to the development of a radar facies classification scheme that is specific to cultural heritage investigations.

The nationwide ‘ZNIEFF’ inventory in France: a free dataset of more than one million synthesised species data in zones of high ecological value

In France, a ‘natural zone of ecological, faunistic or floristic value’ (Zone Naturelle d'Intérêt Écologique, Faunistique et Floristique - ZNIEFF) is a natural area regionally known for its remarkable ecological characteristics. The ZNIEFF inventory is a naturalist and scientific survey program launched in 1982 by the Ecology Ministry, with support from the French National Museum of Natural History (MNHN). This paper describes the ZNIEFF national dataset, which comprises 1 013 25 synthesised data for various animal (38%), vegetal (59%) and fungus (2%) species in terrestrial and marine zones (the last download took place on 26 May 2020). A total of 19 842 sites throughout continental France as well as in the overseas departments and territories (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, La Réunion, French Guiana, Saint-Martin, Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon) are included in the ZNIEFF dataset (last download: 26 May 2020). This dataset is now available in open access. All data were collected by skilled naturalists using professional protocols over almost 40 years. They consist mainly of observations of rare, threatened or endemic species, all validated by regional experts. Data is updated twice a year after national validation. Some of the observed of species, the so-called ‘trigger species’ or ‘determinant’ species, are of central interest for a site to be considered a ZNIEFF (zone of high ecological value). This concerns more than 35 000 taxa, mainly angiosperms, insects, fungi, birds and fish.

LES 3

Set similarity search is a problem of central interest to a wide variety of applications such as data cleaning and web search. Past approaches on set similarity search utilize either heavy indexing structures, incurring large search costs or indexes that produce large candidate sets. In this paper, we design a learning-based exact set similarity search approach, LES 3 . Our approach first partitions sets into groups, and then utilizes a light-weight bitmap-like indexing structure, called token-group matrix (TGM), to organize groups and prune out candidates given a query set. In order to optimize pruning using the TGM, we analytically investigate the optimal partitioning strategy under certain distributional assumptions. Using these results, we then design a learning-based partitioning approach called L2P and an associated data representation encoding, PTR, to identify the partitions. We conduct extensive experiments on real and synthetic datasets to fully study LES 3 , establishing the effectiveness and superiority over other applicable approaches.

From Endoderm to Progenitors: An Update on the Early Steps of Thyroid Morphogenesis in the Zebrafish

The mechanisms underlying thyroid gland development have a central interest in biology and this review is aimed to provide an update on the recent advancements on the early steps of thyroid differentiation that were obtained in the zebrafish, because this teleost fish revealed to be a suitable organism to study the early developmental stages. Physiologically, the thyroid precursors fate is delineated by the appearance among the endoderm cells of the foregut of a restricted cell population expressing specific transcription factors, including pax2a, nkx2.4b, and hhex. The committed thyroid primordium first appears as a thickening of the pharyngeal floor of the anterior endoderm, that subsequently detaches from the floor and migrates to its final location where it gives rise to the thyroid hormone-producing follicles. At variance with mammalian models, thyroid precursor differentiation in zebrafish occurs early during the developmental process before the dislocation to the eutopic positioning of thyroid follicles. Several pathways have been implicated in these early events and nowadays there is evidence of a complex crosstalk between intrinsic (coming from the endoderm and thyroid precursors) and extrinsic factors (coming from surrounding tissues, as the cardiac mesoderm) whose organization in time and space is probably required for the proper thyroid development. In particular, Notch, Shh, Fgf, Bmp, and Wnt signaling seems to be required for the commitment of endodermal cells to a thyroid fate at specific developmental windows of zebrafish embryo. Here, we summarize the recent findings produced in the various zebrafish experimental models with the aim to define a comprehensive picture of such complicated puzzle.

Stability of a Nonequilibrium Biochemical Cycle Revealed by Single-Molecule Spectroscopy

Biological machinery relies on nonequilibrium dynamics to maintain stable directional fluxes through complex reaction cycles. In stabilizing the reaction cycle, the role of microscopic irreversibility of elementary transitions, and the accompanying entropy production, is of central interest. Here, we use multidimensional single-molecule spectroscopy to demonstrate that the reaction cycle of bacteriorhodopsin is coupled through both reversible and irreversible transitions, with directionality of trans-membrane H+ transport being ensured by the entropy production of irreversible transitions. We observe that thermal destabilization of the process is the result of diminishing thermodynamic driving force for irreversible transitions, leading to an exponentially increasing variance of flux through the transitions. We show that the thermal stability of the reaction cycle can be predicted from the Gibbs-Helmholtz relation.