Search results for "IFA"
showing 10 items of 620 documents
BiodiverCity: a first investigation on bird communities in two urban green areas of Palermo, Sicily
2019
Since the 1980s, there has been a growing worldwide interest on urban bird diversity. The avifauna of Mediterranean cities has been however poorly investigated with standardized methods. Accordingly, our investigation aimed to record breeding and migrating species in two XVIII-century green areas of Palermo town: Villa Trabia (8 ha) and the Botanical Garden (10 ha). Starting from spring 2019, we carried 15 census sessions by point-counts, during the morning hours (10 points at Villa Trabia and 11 at the Botanical Garden, set with a minimum distance of 50 m) by recording, in each point, all the birds seen or heard within 10 min. Our preliminary results show that the study sites are mainly vi…
Immunological Aspects of Von Hippel-Lindau Disease: A Focus on Neuro-Oncology and Myasthenia Gravis
2022
Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease is an autosomal dominant condition that predisposes affected individuals to a variety of malignant and benign neoplasms. The pathogenetic turning point of this illness is the accumulation of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α, a transcription factor of several genes involved in oncogenesis, angiogenesis, tissue regeneration, metabolic regulation, hematopoiesis, and inflammatory responses. From an oncological perspective, increased awareness of the molecular pathways underlying this disease is bringing us closer to the development of specific and targeted therapies. Meanwhile, on the surgical side, improved understanding can help to better identify the patients…
Zinc isotope variations in archeological human teeth (Lapa do Santo, Brazil) reveal dietary transitions in childhood and no contamination from gloves
2020
International audience; Zinc (Zn) isotope ratios of dental enamel are a promising tracer for dietary reconstruction in archeology, but its use is still in its infancy. A recent study demonstrated a high risk of Zn contamination from nitrile, and latex gloves used during chemical sample preparation. Here we assess the potential impact of the use of such gloves during enamel sampling on the Zn isotope composition of teeth from a population of early Holocene hunter gatherers from Lapa do Santo, Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We first examined the amount of Zn and its isotopic composition released from the gloves used in this study by soaking them in weak nitric acid and water. We compared …
Locally constrained synthetic LoDs generation for natural terrain meshes
2004
Terrain representation is a basic topic in the field of interactive graphics. The amount of data required for a good quality of the terrain offers an important challenge to developers of such systems. For users of these applications, the accuracy of geographical data is generally less important than its natural visual appearance. This makes it possible to maintain a limited geographical database for the system and to extend it generating synthetic data. The evaluation of the intrinsic properties of the terrain (i.e. fractal dimension, roughness, etc.) may be used as the basis for generating extra data accomplishing the same patterns discovered in the actual information. However, it is also …
Power estimation for non-standardized multisite studies
2016
A concern for researchers planning multisite studies is that scanner and T1-weighted sequence-related biases on regional volumes could overshadow true effects, especially for studies with a heterogeneous set of scanners and sequences. Current approaches attempt to harmonize data by standardizing hardware, pulse sequences, and protocols, or by calibrating across sites using phantom-based corrections to ensure the same raw image intensities. We propose to avoid harmonization and phantom-based correction entirely. We hypothesized that the bias of estimated regional volumes is scaled between sites due to the contrast and gradient distortion differences between scanners and sequences. Given this…
Tractional Motion Machines: Tangent-Managing Planar Mechanisms as Analog Computers and Educational Artifacts
2012
Concrete and virtual machines play a central role in the both Unconventional Computing (machines as computers) and in Math Education (influence of artifacts on reaching/producing abstract thought). Here we will examine some fallouts in these fields for the Tractional Motion Machines, planar mechanisms based on some devices used to plot the solutions of differential equations by the management of the tangent since the late 17th century.
Characterization of entropy measures against data loss: Application to EEG records
2012
This study is aimed at characterizing three signal entropy measures, Approximate Entropy (ApEn), Sample Entropy (SampEn) and Multiscale Entropy (MSE) over real EEG signals when a number of samples are randomly lost due to, for example, wireless data transmission. The experimental EEG database comprises two main signal groups: control EEGs and epileptic EEGs. Results show that both SampEn and ApEn enable a clear distinction between control and epileptic signals, but SampEn shows a more robust performance over a wide range of sample loss ratios. MSE exhibits a poor behavior for ratios over a 40% of sample loss. The EEG non-stationary and random trends are kept even when a great number of samp…
Bias artifact suppression on MR volumes.
2007
RF-Inhomogeneity correction is a relevant research topic in the field of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). A volume corrupted by this artifact exhibits nonuni- form illumination both inside a single slice and between adjacent ones. In this work a bias correction technique is presented, which suppresses this artifact on MR vol- umes scanned from different body parts without any a-priori hypothesis on the artifact model. Theoretical foundations of the method are reported together with experimental results and a comparison is presented with both the 2D version of the algorithm and other techniques that are widely used in MRI literature.
Genotoxicity investigations on nanomaterials: methods, preparation and characterization of test material, potential artifacts and limitations--many q…
2008
Nanomaterials display novel properties to which most toxicologists have not consciously been exposed before the advent of their practical use. The same properties, small size and particular shape, large surface area and surface activity, which make nanomaterials attractive in many applications, may contribute to their toxicological profile. This review describes what is known about genotoxicity investigations on nanomaterials published in the openly available scientific literature to-date. The most frequently used test was the Comet assay: 19 studies, 14 with positive outcome. The second most frequently used test was the micronucleus test: 14 studies, 12 of them with positive outcome. The A…
Seam-Based Edge Blending for Multi-Projection Systems
2016
Perceptual seamlessness of large-scale tiled displays is still a challenge. One way to avoid Bezel effects from contiguous displays is to blend superimposed parts of the image over the edges. This work proposes a new approach for edge blending. It is based on intensity edge blending adapted on the seam description of the image content. The main advantage of this method is to reduce visual artifacts thanks to context adaptation and smooth transitions. We evaluate the quality of the method with a perceptual experiment where it is compared with state-of-the-art methods. The new method shows most improvement in low frequency areas compared to the other techniques. This method can be inserted in…