A baseline on continual learning methods for video action recognition

Continual learning has recently attracted attention from the research community, as it aims to solve long-standing limitations of classic supervisedly-trained models. However, most research on this subject has tackled continual learning in simple image classification scenarios. In this paper, we present a benchmark of state-of-the-art continual learning methods on video action recognition. Besides the increased complexity due to the temporal dimension, the video setting imposes stronger requirements on computing resources for top-performing rehearsal methods. To counteract the increased memory requirements, we present two method-agnostic variants for rehearsal methods, exploiting measures of either model confidence or data information to select memorable samples. Our experiments show that, as expected from the literature, rehearsal methods outperform other approaches; moreover, the proposed memory-efficient variants are shown to be effective at retaining a certain level of performance with a smaller buffer size

Cow Behavioural Activities in Extensive Farms: Challenges of Adopting Automatic Monitoring Systems

Animal welfare is becoming an increasingly important requirement in the livestock sector to improve, and therefore raise, the quality and healthiness of food production. By monitoring the behaviour of the animals, such as feeding, rumination, walking, and lying, it is possible to understand their physical and psychological status. Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) tools offer a good solution to assist the farmer in managing the herd, overcoming the limits of human control, and to react early in the case of animal health issues. The purpose of this review is to highlight a key concern that occurs in the design and validation of IoT-based systems created for monitoring grazing cows in extensive agricultural systems, since they have many more, and more complicated, problems than indoor farms. In this context, the most common concerns are related to the battery life of the devices, the sampling frequency to be used for data collection, the need for adequate service connection coverage and transmission range, the computational site, and the performance of the algorithm embedded in IoT-systems in terms of computational cost

LIDAL, a Time-of-Flight Radiation Detector for the International Space Station: Description and Ground Calibration

LIDAL (Light Ion Detector for ALTEA, Anomalous Long-Term Effects on Astronauts) is a radiation detector designed to measure the flux, the energy spectra and, for the first time, the time-of-flight of ions in a space habitat. It features a combination of striped silicon sensors for the measurement of deposited energy (using the ALTEA device, which operated from 2006 to 2012 in the International Space Station) and fast scintillators for the time-of-flight measurement. LIDAL was tested and calibrated using the proton beam line at TIFPA (Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics Application) and the carbon beam line at CNAO (National Center for Oncology Hadron-therapy) in 2019. The performance of the time-of-flight system featured a time resolution (sigma) less than 100 ps. Here, we describe the detector and the results of these tests, providing ground calibration curves along with the methodology established for processing the detector’s data. LIDAL was uploaded in the International Space Station in November 2019 and it has been operative in the Columbus module since January 2020

Digital Modernism Heritage Lexicon

The book investigates the theme of Modernism (1920-1960 and its epigones) as an integral part of tangible and intangible cultural heritage which contains the result of a whole range of disciplines whose aim is to identify, document and preserve the memory of the past and the value of the future. Including several chapters, it contains research results relating to cultural heritage, more specifically Modernism, and current digital technologies. This makes it possible to record and evaluate the changes that both undergo: the first one, from a material point of view, the second one from the research point of view, which integrates the traditional approach with an innovative one. The purpose of the publication is to show the most recent studies on the modernist lexicon 100 years after its birth, moving through different fields of cultural heritage: from different forms of art to architecture, from design to engineering, from literature to history, representation and restoration. The book appeals to scholars and professionals who are involved in the process of understanding, reading and comprehension the transformation that the places have undergone within the period under examination. It will certainly foster the international exchange of knowledge that characterized Modernism