Search results for "NS1"
showing 10 items of 222 documents
The janus face of NKT cell function in autoimmunity and infectious diseases
2018
Natural killer T cells (NKT) are a subset of T lymphocytes bridging innate and adaptive immunity. These cells recognize self and microbial glycolipids bound to non-polymorphic and highly conserved CD1d molecules. Three NKT cell subsets, type I, II and NKT-like expressing different antigen receptors (TCR) were described and TCR activation promotes intracellular events leading to specific functional activities. NKT can exhibit different functions depending on the secretion of soluble molecules and the interaction with other cell types. NKT cells act as regulatory cells in the defence against infections but, on the other hand, their effector functions can be involved in the pathogenesis of sev…
Automatic detection and measurement of nuchal translucency.
2017
In this paper we propose a new methodology to support the physician both to identify automatically the nuchal region and to obtain a correct thickness measurement of the nuchal translucency. The thickness of the nuchal translucency is one of the main markers for screening of chromosomal defects such as trisomy 13, 18 and 21. Its measurement is performed during ultrasound scanning in the first trimester of pregnancy. The proposed methodology is mainly based on wavelet and multi resolution analysis. The performance of our method was analysed on 382 random frames, representing mid-sagittal sections, uniformly extracted from real clinical ultrasound videos of 12 patients. According to the groun…
Designing the 5G network infrastructure: a flexible and reconfigurable architecture based on context and content information
2018
5G networks will have to offer extremely high volumes of content, compared to those of today’s. Moreover, they will have to support heterogeneous traffics, including machine-to-machine, generated by a massive volume of Internet-of-Things devices. Traffic demands will be variable in time and space. In this work, we argue that all this can be achieved in a cost-effective way if the network is flexible and reconfigurable. We present the Flex5Gware network architecture, designed to meet the above requirements. Moreover, we discuss the links between flexibility and reconfigurability, on the one side, and context awareness and content awareness, on the other; we show how two of the building…
An architecture for autonomous agents exploiting conceptual representations
1998
An architecture for autonomous agents is proposed that integrates the functional and the behavioral approaches to robotics. The integration is based on the introduction of a conceptual level, linking together a subconceptual, behavioral, level, and a linguistic level, encompassing symbolic representation and data processing. The proposed architecture is described with reference to an experimental setup, in which the robot task is that of building a significant description of its working environment. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Data-based modeling of vehicle crash using adaptive neural-fuzzy inference system
2014
Vehicle crashes are considered to be events that are extremely complex to be analyzed from the mathematical point of view. In order to establish a mathematical model of a vehicle crash, one needs to consider various areas of research. For this reason, to simplify the analysis and improve the modeling process, in this paper, a novel adaptive neurofuzzy inference system (ANFIS-based) approach to reconstruct kinematics of colliding vehicles is presented. A typical five-layered ANFIS structure is trained to reproduce kinematics (acceleration, velocity, and displacement) of a vehicle involved in an oblique barrier collision. Subsequently, the same ANFIS structure is applied to simulate different…
Assessing the Relationship Between Attitudinal and Perceptual Component of Body Image Disturbance Using Virtual Reality
2018
Body image disturbance (BID) affects quality of life even in the absence of clinically diagnosable eating pathology, and numerous studies have shown its crucial role in the emergence and maintenance of eating disorders. This study aimed at exploring attitudinal and perceptual components of BID using a novel virtual reality (VR)-based paradigm. A community sample of women (N = 27) recreated in VR their perceived body in both an allocentric (third-person view) and egocentric (first-person view) perspective. Specifically, women were able to choose between a wide range of three-dimensional bodies spanning body mass index 12.5-42.5 kg/m2. Attitudinal indexes of BID (body dissatisfaction, body un…
A robust aerial image registration method using Gaussian mixture models
2014
Aerial image registration is one of the bases in many aerospace applications, such as aerial reconnaissance and aerial mapping. In this paper, we propose a novel aerial image registration algorithm which is based on Gaussian mixture models. First of all, considering the characters of the aerial images, the work uses a shape feature detector which computes the boundaries of regions with nearly the same gray-value to extract invariant feature. Then, a Gaussian mixture models (GMM) based image registration model is built and solved to estimate the transformation matrix between two aerial images. Furthermore, the proposed method is applied on real aerial images, and the results demonstrate the …
The cryogenic anticoincidence detector for ATHENA-XMS: preliminary results from the new prototype
2012
ATHENA has been the re-scoped IXO mission, and one of the foreseen focal plane instrument was the X-ray Microcalorimeter Spectrometer (XMS) working in the energy range 0.3-10 keV, which was a kilo-pixel array based on TES (Transition Edge Sensor) detectors. The need of an anticoincidence (AC) detector is legitimated by the results performed with GEANT4 simulations about the impact of the non x-ray background onto XMS at L2 orbit (REQ. < 0.02 cts/cm2/s/keV). Our consortium has both developed and tested several samples, with increasing area, in order to match the large area of the XMS (64 mm2). Here we show the preliminary results from the last prototype. The results achieved in this work off…
A Hardware and Secure Pseudorandom Generator for Constrained Devices
2018
Hardware security for an Internet of Things or cyber physical system drives the need for ubiquitous cryptography to different sensing infrastructures in these fields. In particular, generating strong cryptographic keys on such resource-constrained device depends on a lightweight and cryptographically secure random number generator. In this research work, we have introduced a new hardware chaos-based pseudorandom number generator, which is mainly based on the deletion of an Hamilton cycle within the $N$ -cube (or on the vectorial negation), plus one single permutation. We have rigorously proven the chaotic behavior and cryptographically secure property of the whole proposal: the mid-term eff…
Asynchronous L1 control of delayed switched positive systems with mode-dependent average dwell time
2014
Abstract This paper investigates the stability and asynchronous L 1 control problems for a class of switched positive linear systems (SPLSs) with time-varying delays by using the mode-dependent average dwell time (MDADT) approach. By allowing the co-positive type Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional to increase during the running time of active subsystems, a new stability criterion for the underlying system with MDADT is first derived. Then, the obtained results are extended to study the issue of asynchronous L 1 control, where “asynchronous” means that the switching of the controllers has a lag with respect to that of system modes. Sufficient conditions are provided to guarantee that the resulti…