PPG and EDA dataset collected with Empatica E4 for stress assessment.

In response to challenging circumstances, the human body can experience marked levels of anxiety and distress. Wearable devices offer a means of real-time and ongoing data collection, facilitating personalized stress monitoring. Therefore, we collected physiological signals (blood pressure volume and electrodermal activities), using Empatica E4, from 29 subjects. A personalized protocol was developed to cause cognitive, mental, and psychological stressors since they are the ones that can be experienced in working or academic environment. We also propose a pipeline to clean and process these two signals to maximize the quality of further analysis. This study aids in the comprehension of the complex connection between stress and working situations by offering a sizable dataset made up of different physiological data. It additionally enables them to create cutting-edge stress-reduction techniques and improving professional achievement while lessening the negative impact of stress on welfare.

A Method for Stress Detection Using Empatica E4 Bracelet and Machine-Learning Techniques.

In response to challenging circumstances, the human body can experience marked levels of anxiety and distress. To prevent stress-related complications, timely identification of stress symptoms is crucial, necessitating the need for continuous stress monitoring. Wearable devices offer a means of real-time and ongoing data collection, facilitating personalized stress monitoring. Based on our protocol for data pre-processing, this study proposes to analyze signals obtained from the Empatica E4 bracelet using machine-learning algorithms (Random Forest, SVM, and Logistic Regression) to determine the efficacy of the abovementioned techniques in differentiating between stressful and non-stressful situations. Photoplethysmographic and electrodermal activity signals were collected from 29 subjects to extract 27 features which were then fed into three different machine-learning algorithms for binary classification. Using MATLAB after applying the chi-square test and Pearson's correlation coefficient on WEKA for features' importance ranking, the results demonstrated that the Random Forest model has the highest stability (accuracy of 76.5%) using all the features. Moreover, the Random Forest applying the chi-test for feature selection reached consistent results in terms of stress evaluation based on precision, recall, and F1-measure (71%, 60%, 65%, respectively).

[Constructing resonance in a polluted area: the case of 'Rolando da Piazzola' (Veneto Region, Northern Italy)]. / Costruire risonanza in un sito inquinato: il caso dell'Istituto "Rolando da Piazzola" (Piazzola sul Brenta, Padova).

Environmental pollution in the site of the high school 'Rolando da Piazzola' in Piazzola sul Brenta (Padua, Veneto Region, Northern Italy) was discovered by chance in 2020. Since then, investigations on the environmental damage have been ongoing, while the school is anyway working. The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, to narrate the stratification uses in the area from 1891 to nowadays: a story accounting for both the processing of chemical fertilizers at the origin of pollution and its oblivion between the 1960s and 1980s. On the other hand, to shed light on such forgotten memories by recovering last-century narratives and current voices on the past, thus providing a first assessment of a work in progress. The industrial legacy and the sudden change of use of the area itself exhibit a 'cognitive dissonance' between the harmfulness of the place, known to the population since the factory was active, and the inertia of top-down projects, passed in the name of interests and variously conceived notion of development. Such dissonance is now to be grasped by the school, in the light of an ecological view. The participatory reasoning on the environmental and health risks alludes to the civic mission of the school and calls for a syntonic relationship with the territory. These operations require a resonance inside and outside the institute, which has still not been found. What is at stake is the need to reconnect the memory between generations and the relationships between human and non-human entities (i.e., the environment). On these basis, it would be possible to build some scientific citizenship that can face uncertainty without paralyzing effect, but in a new, transparent, and horizontal narrative about the sense of a place and of itself.

The "Abyssal Society". François-Alphonse Forel and the Case of Deep Fauna in Late 19th Century.

Ichthyological investigations and technological advancements, such as the laying of submarine telegraph cables, promoted new dredging methods in the second half of the 19th century. In contrast to the idea of a lifeless deep ocean (Edward Forbes' azoic hypothesis), the discovery of deep water fauna and the challenge of defining its systematics opened up new theoretical perspectives. In this frame, which was already marked by the impact of Darwin's theory, naturalistic surveys in freshwater environments in western Switzerland intertwined with those of oceanographic expeditions. The study of the fauna in the depths of subalpine lakes by the Swiss savant François-Alphonse Forel was one of the most striking examples of this turning point, because the relatively recently evolution of its freshwater fauna allowed him to investigate: (a) the role of isolation, (b) the progressive differentiation of species from a common ancestor, and (c) the constitution of a species-specific category in form transition, from a genealogical viewpoint to an ecological one.

As the environment becomes organism. About the Darwin-Wagner debate.

The 'provisional hypothesis' of pangenesis seems to be associated with a reduction of the role of geographical isolation as a factor of speciation or novelty in Darwinian thinking. On the one hand, this fact draws the attention on the interacting processes concerning the internal dynamics of organisms' development together with their effects on evolution and, on the other, the defense of the gradual action of natural selection in changing living forms. Nevertheless, these ways reveal an intimate contrast which brings to a missed synthesis. Our purpose is to show how the pangenesis could be the compromise between environment's action and the constitution of specific adaptive traits, without resorting to the idea of environment as something which gives instructions or to the idea of the organism as a vehicle. To this purpose it seems interesting to start from the speciation's problem and the origin of adaptive traits at the heart of Wagner-Darwin debate.