Psycholinguistics meets Continual Learning: Measuring Catastrophic Forgetting in Visual Question Answering

We study the issue of catastrophic forgetting in the context of neural multimodal approaches to Visual Question Answering (VQA). Motivated by evidence from psycholinguistics, we devise a set of linguistically-informed VQA tasks, which differ by the types of questions involved (Wh-questions and polar questions). We test what impact task difficulty has on continual learning, and whether the order in which a child acquires question types facilitates computational models. Our results show that dramatic forgetting is at play and that task difficulty and order matter. Two well-known current continual learning methods mitigate the problem only to a limiting degree

La tutela del diritto alla salute ed i programmi di cooperazione internazionale. Il caso del programma Selo Unicef – Municipio Aprovado nella regione Nordest del Brasile.

La ricerca ha per oggetto il rapporto tra diritto alla salute e cooperazione internazionale. Cuore del lavoro è la tesi che la nozione di salute incentrata sul consenso del paziente e sulla sua auto-percezione del proprio stato psico-fisico, che si è sviluppata a partire dalla definizione datane dalla Costituzione dell’OMS e che ha trovato nella convenzione di Oviedo la sua massima espressione, ha sempre ceduto il passo, nell’ambito della cooperazione internazionale in materia di salute, ad una nozione più vicina al vecchio concetto paternalistico e funzionale allo sviluppo economico. Il campo teorico della ricerca definito dalla contrapposizione tra l’autonomia della nozione di salute, intesa come stato psico-fisico rimesso all’autovalutazione del soggetto sulla base delle informazioni mediche, e la nozione paternalistica di salute resa funzionale allo sviluppo economico di un determinato paese. I principali strumenti teorici della ricerca sono la nozione foucaultiana di biopolitica e la nozione parsonsiana di salute come dovere sociale del cittadino. Grazie a questi strumenti la ricerca si dipana attraverso la storia delle relazioni internazionali, che mostra come la cooperazione internazionale in materia di salute nasce per difendere i paesi coloniali dai morbi “esotici”, la storia delle istituzioni internazionali deputate a sviluppare la tutela della salute a livello mondiale, a partire dalla stessa Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità, e la sociologia etnografica su concreti programmi di intervento in campo della salute nel nord-est del Brasile

Transport Properties of Natural and Artificial Smart Fabrics Impregnated by Graphite Nanomaterial Stacks

none4noIn this work, we studied the transport properties (thermal and electrical conductivity) of smart fabric materials treated with graphite nanomaterial stacks–acetone suspensions. An innovative and easy method to produce graphite nanomaterial stacks–acetone-based formulations, starting from a low-cost expandable graphite, is proposed. An original, economical, fast, and easy method to increase the thermal and electrical conductivity of textile materials was also employed for the first time. The proposed method allows the impregnation of smart fabric materials, avoiding precoating of the fibers, thus reducing costs and processing time, while obtaining a great increase in the transport properties. Two kinds of textiles, cotton and Lycra®, were selected as they represent the most used natural and artificial fabrics, respectively. The impact of the dimensions of the produced graphite nanomaterial stacks–acetone-based suspensions on both the uniformity of the treatment and the transport properties of the selected textile materials was accurately evaluated using several experimental techniques. An empirical relationship between the two transport properties was also successfully identified. Finally, several theoretical models were applied to predict the transport properties of the developed smart fabric materials, evidencing a good agreement with the experimental data.openCarola Esposito Corcione; Francesca Ferrari; Raffaella Striani; Antonio GrecoESPOSITO CORCIONE, Carola; Ferrari, Francesca; Striani, Raffaella; Greco, ANTONIO STEFAN

Resistance traits and AFLP characterization of diploid primitive tuber-bearing potatoes.

ISSN: 0925-986

An Innovative Method for the Recycling of Waste Carbohydrate Based Flours

This work represents an innovative study that, for the first time, explores the possibility to use waste flours to produce thermoplastic polymeric bio-films. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that waste flours, derived from bakeries, pizzerias or pasta factories, have been proposed for the production of bio-polymers, as a replacement of neat starch. To this aim, durum waste flour derived from a pasta factory, soft waste flour derived from pizzerias and neat maize starch used as control material were firstly analyzed from dimensional, morphological and chemical points of view. Afterwards, waste flour films were produced by the addition of a nature-based plasticizer, glycerol. Mechanical characterization of the plasticized thermoplastic films, produced by compression molding, evidenced low performances, even in the case of the neat maize starch. In order to improve the mechanical properties, the possibility to include polylactic acid and cardanol based plasticizer was also investigated. Mass transport properties of all the produced bio-films were investigated by measuring their water vapor permeability and hygroscopic absorption. The durability properties of the bio-films were assessed by accelerated ageing tests, while the biodegradability of the waste-based films was evaluated by measuring the solubility and the degradation in water. The physicochemical analyses of the novel bio-films evidenced good mechanical properties; specifically, the waste-based films showed a lower hygroscopic absorption and water solubility than those of the blends containing neat starch

valorization of food industries wastes for the production of poly vinyl alcohol pva biodegradable composites

This work is aimed to the development of new green composite materials by the incorporation of natural additives into poly(vinyl) alcohol (PVA). Two additives, shredded walnut shells and organic fraction of municipal solid waste (MW), were used to improve the mechanical properties of PVA. Both additives, derived from food industry wastes, were added in a PVA/water solution, which allowed to produce samples by the use of a pressure free process. Rheological analysis was performed in order to study the evolution of the material viscosity during thermal treatment, aimed at water removal. Samples obtained were characterized by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), showing an improvement of the glass transition temperature brought by the addition of walnut shells. Finally, flexural tests were carried out on samples obtained after the incorporation of the different additives in PVA and compared with the mechanical properties of the neat matrix. Results obtained indicate the potential improvement brought by the addition of walnut shells, which allows increasing the flexural modulus of about 50%, at the expenses of a flexural strength reduction of about 30%. Also, at least for low amount of added water, the addition of MW was shown to provide an increase of the strain at break equal to 100%

Short wheat challenge is a reproducible in-vivo assay to detect immune response to gluten.

It has been reported that interferon (IFN)-γ-secreting T cells reactive to gluten can be detected in the peripheral blood of individuals with treated coeliac disease (CD) after a short consumption of wheat-containing food. By contrast, very little is known about the reproducibility of this in-vivo procedure in the same patient cohort which underwent two, or more, gluten consumptions. Fourteen coeliac patients in remission consumed wheat bread for 3 days; 13 underwent a second gluten challenge after a wash-out of 3-10 months on a strict gluten-free diet. Immune reactivity to gluten was analysed in peripheral blood by detecting IFN-γ before and 6 days after commencing a gluten diet. Gliadin-specific IFN-γ-secreting CD4(+) T cells increased significantly on day 6 of the first challenge. These cells resulted as prevalently human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-DQ restricted and with a phenotype of gut homing, as suggested by the expression of β7-integrin. Similarly, reactiveness to gliadin was observed after the second wheat consumption, although with an individual variability of responses at each challenge. Our findings confirmed that the short wheat challenge is a non-invasive approach to investigate the gluten-related immune response in peripheral blood of subjects intolerant to gluten. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the in-vivo procedure can be reproduced in the same subject cohort after a gluten wash-out of at least 3 months. Our study has important implications for the application of this procedure to clinical practice

Correlating electron trapping and structural defects in Al2O3 thin films deposited by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition

In this article, electron trapping in aluminum oxide (Al2O3) thin films grown by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition on AlGaN/GaN heterostructures has been studied and a correlation with the presence of oxygen defects in the film has been provided. Capacitance–voltage measurements revealed the occurrence of a negative charge trapping effect upon bias stress, able to fill an amount of charge traps in the bulk Al2O3 in the order of 5 × 1012 cm−2. A structural analysis based on electron energy-loss spectroscopy demonstrated the presence of low-coordinated Al cations in the Al2O3 film, which is an indication of oxygen vacancies, and can explain the electrical behavior of the film. These charge trapping effects were used for achieving thermally stable (up to 100 °C) enhancement mode operation in AlGaN/GaN transistors, by controlling the two-dimensional electron gas depletion