212 research outputs found
A Novel Approach to Multimedia Ontology Engineering for Automated Reasoning over Audiovisual LOD Datasets
Multimedia reasoning, which is suitable for, among others, multimedia content
analysis and high-level video scene interpretation, relies on the formal and
comprehensive conceptualization of the represented knowledge domain. However,
most multimedia ontologies are not exhaustive in terms of role definitions, and
do not incorporate complex role inclusions and role interdependencies. In fact,
most multimedia ontologies do not have a role box at all, and implement only a
basic subset of the available logical constructors. Consequently, their
application in multimedia reasoning is limited. To address the above issues,
VidOnt, the very first multimedia ontology with SROIQ(D) expressivity and a
DL-safe ruleset has been introduced for next-generation multimedia reasoning.
In contrast to the common practice, the formal grounding has been set in one of
the most expressive description logics, and the ontology validated with
industry-leading reasoners, namely HermiT and FaCT++. This paper also presents
best practices for developing multimedia ontologies, based on my ontology
engineering approach
How many Observations are Enough? Knowledge Distillation for Trajectory Forecasting
Accurate prediction of future human positions is an essential task for modern video-surveillance systems. Current state-of-the-art models usually rely on a "history" of past tracked locations (e.g., 3 to 5 seconds) to predict a plausible sequence of future locations (e.g., up to the next 5 seconds). We feel that this common schema neglects critical traits of realistic applications: as the collection of input trajectories involves machine perception (i.e., detection and tracking), incorrect detection and fragmentation errors may accumulate in crowded scenes, leading to tracking drifts. On this account, the model would be fed with corrupted and noisy input data, thus fatally affecting its prediction performance.In this regard, we focus on delivering accurate predictions when only few input observations are used, thus potentially lowering the risks associated with automatic perception. To this end, we conceive a novel distillation strategy that allows a knowledge transfer from a teacher network to a student one, the latter fed with fewer observations (just two ones). We show that a properly defined teacher supervision allows a student network to perform comparably to state-of-the-art approaches that demand more observations. Besides, extensive experiments on common trajectory forecasting datasets highlight that our student network better generalizes to unseen scenarios
Survey on Vision-based Path Prediction
Path prediction is a fundamental task for estimating how pedestrians or
vehicles are going to move in a scene. Because path prediction as a task of
computer vision uses video as input, various information used for prediction,
such as the environment surrounding the target and the internal state of the
target, need to be estimated from the video in addition to predicting paths.
Many prediction approaches that include understanding the environment and the
internal state have been proposed. In this survey, we systematically summarize
methods of path prediction that take video as input and and extract features
from the video. Moreover, we introduce datasets used to evaluate path
prediction methods quantitatively.Comment: DAPI 201
Salvia fruticosa Induces Vasorelaxation in Rat Isolated Thoracic Aorta: Role of the PI3K/Akt/eNOS/NO/cGMP Signaling Pathway
Salvia fruticosa (SF) Mill. is traditionally used for its antihypertensive actions. However, little is known about its pharmacologic and molecular mechanisms of action. Here we determined the effects of an ethanolic extract of SF leaves on rings of isolated thoracic aorta from Sprague-Dawley rats. Our results show that SF extract increased nitric oxide production and relaxed endothelium-intact rings in a dose-dependent (0.3â”g/mlâ1 mg/ml) manner, and the maximum arterial relaxation (Rmax) was significantly reduced with endothelium denudation. Pretreatment of endothelium-intact rings with L-NAME (a non-selective inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase, 100â”M), or ODQ (an inhibitor of soluble guanylyl cyclase, 10â”M) significantly diminished SF-mediated vasorelaxation. Furthermore, SF induced Akt phosphorylation as well as increased cGMP levels in rings treated with increasing doses of SF. Prior exposure to PI3K inhibitors, wortmannin (0.1â”M) or LY294002 (10â”M), decreased cGMP accumulation and attenuated the SF-induced vasorelaxation by approximately 50% (Rmax). SF-evoked relaxation was not affected by indomethacin, verapamil, glibenclamide, tetraethylammonium, pyrilamine or atropine. Taken together, our results indicate that SF induces endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation through the PI3K/Akt/eNOS/NO/sGC/cGMP signaling pathway. Our data illustrate the health-orientated benefits of consuming SF which may act as an antihypertensive agent to reduce the burden of cardiovascular complications.Scopu
CAR-Net: Clairvoyant Attentive Recurrent Network
We present an interpretable framework for path prediction that leverages
dependencies between agents' behaviors and their spatial navigation
environment. We exploit two sources of information: the past motion trajectory
of the agent of interest and a wide top-view image of the navigation scene. We
propose a Clairvoyant Attentive Recurrent Network (CAR-Net) that learns where
to look in a large image of the scene when solving the path prediction task.
Our method can attend to any area, or combination of areas, within the raw
image (e.g., road intersections) when predicting the trajectory of the agent.
This allows us to visualize fine-grained semantic elements of navigation scenes
that influence the prediction of trajectories. To study the impact of space on
agents' trajectories, we build a new dataset made of top-view images of
hundreds of scenes (Formula One racing tracks) where agents' behaviors are
heavily influenced by known areas in the images (e.g., upcoming turns). CAR-Net
successfully attends to these salient regions. Additionally, CAR-Net reaches
state-of-the-art accuracy on the standard trajectory forecasting benchmark,
Stanford Drone Dataset (SDD). Finally, we show CAR-Net's ability to generalize
to unseen scenes.Comment: The 2nd and 3rd authors contributed equall
Single-marker and haplotype-based genome-wide association studies for the number of teats in two heavy pig breeds
The number of teats is a reproductive-related trait of great economic relevance as it affects the mothering ability of the sows and thus the number of properly weaned piglets. Moreover, genetic improvement of this trait is fundamental to parallelly help the selection for increased litter size. We present the results of single-marker and haplotypes-based genome-wide association studies for the number of teats in two large cohorts of heavy pig breeds (Italian Large White and Italian Landrace) including 3990 animals genotyped with the 70K GGP Porcine BeadChip and other 1927 animals genotyped with the Illumina PorcineSNP60 BeadChip. In the Italian Large White population, genome scans identified three genome regions (SSC7, SSC10, and SSC12) that confirmed the involvement of the VRTN gene (as we previously reported) and highlighted additional loci known to affect teat counts, including the FRMD4A and HOXB1 gene regions. A different picture emerged in the Italian Landrace population, with a total of 12 genome regions in eight chromosomes (SSC3, SSC6, SSC8, SSC11, SSC13, SSC14, SSC15, and SSC16) mainly detected via the haplotype-based genome scan. The most relevant QTL was close to the ARL4C gene on SSC15. Markers in the VRTN gene region were not significant in the Italian Landrace breed. The use of both single-marker and haplotype-based genome-wide association analyses can be helpful to exploit and dissect the genome of the pigs of different populations. Overall, the obtained results supported the polygenic nature of the investigated trait and better elucidated its genetic architecture in Italian heavy pigs
the isolpharm project a new isol production method of high specific activity beta emitting radionuclides as radiopharmaceutical precursors
The ISOLPHARM project explores the feasibility of exploiting an innovative technology to produce extremely high specific activity beta-emitting radionuclides as radiopharmaceutical precursors. This technique is expected to produce radiopharmaceuticals that are virtually mainly impossible to obtain in standard production facilities, at lower cost and with less environmental impact than traditional techniques. The groundbreaking ISOLPHARM method investigated in this project has been granted an international patent (INFN). As a component of the SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species) project at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica NucleareâLaboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (INFNâLNL), a new facility will produce radioactive ion beams of neutron-rich nuclei with high purity and a mass range of 80â160 amu. The radioactive isotopes will result from nuclear reactions induced by accelerating 40 MeV protons in a cyclotron to collide on a target of UC[Formula: see text]. The uranium in the target material will be [Formula: see text]U, yielding radioactive isotopes that belong to elements with an atomic number between 28 and 57. Isotope separation on line (ISOL) is adopted in the ISOLPHARM project to obtain pure isobaric beams for radiopharmaceutical applications, with no isotopic contaminations in the beam or subsequent trapping substrate. Isobaric contaminations may potentially affect radiochemical and radionuclide purity, but proper methods to separate chemically different elements can be developed
Exploiting within-breed variability in the autochthonous Reggiana breed identified several candidate genes affecting pigmentation-related traits, stature and udder defects in cattle
Autochthonous cattle breeds constitute important reservoirs of genetic diversity. Reggiana is an Italian local cattle breed reared in the north of Italy for the production of a mono-breed ParmigianoâReggiano cheese. Reggiana cattle usually have a classical solid red coat colour and pale muzzle. As part of the strategies designed for the sustainable conservation of this genetic resource, we investigated at the genome-wise level the within-breed detected variability of three pigmentation-related traits (intensity of red coat colour, based on three classes â light/diluted, normal and dark; spotted patterns/piebaldism that sometime emerge in the breed; muzzle colour â pink/pale, grey and black), stature, presence/absence and number of supernumerary teats and teat length. A total of 1776 Reggiana cattle (about two-thirds of the extant breed population) were genotyped with the GeneSeek GGP Bovine 150k SNP array and single-marker and haplotype-based GWASs were carried out. The results indicated that two main groups of genetic factors affect the intensity of red coat colour: darkening genes (including EDN3 and a few other genes) and diluting genes (including PMEL and a few other genes). Muzzle colour was mainly determined by MC1R gene markers. Piebaldism was mainly associated with KIT gene markers. Stature was associated with BTA6 markers upstream of the NCAPGâLCORL genes. Teat defects were associated with TBX3/TBX5, MCC and LGR5 genes. Overall, the identified genomic regions not only can be directly used in selection plans in the Reggiana breed, but also contribute to clarifying the genetic mechanisms involved in determining exterior traits in cattle
The SPES exotic beam ISOL facility: Status of the project, technical challenges, instrumentation, scientiïŹc program
The SPES facility (Selective Production of Exotic Species), that is the INFN project for a Nuclear Physics facility with Radioactive Ion Beams (RIBs) is in advanced construction at the Legnaro National Laboratories. It will mostly provide neutron-rich exotic beams, through the production of ïŹssion fragments (1013 ïŹss/s) by an intense proton beam (200ÎŒA) on a direct UCx target. Several other targets will be developed, in order to provide users a large beam selection. Forefront research in nuclear structure and dynamics will be performed in the forthcoming years, studying a nuclear chart region far from stability. The expected beam intensities, their quality and their maximum available energies (up to 11MeV/n for A ïżœ 130) will provide the users with a modern and highly perfomant facility. Coordinated eïŹorts are being dedicated to the developments and upgrading of both the accelerator complex and of up-to-date experimental set-ups
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