A deep learning pipeline for product recognition on store shelves

Recognition of grocery products in store shelves poses peculiar challenges. Firstly, the task mandates the recognition of an extremely high number of different items, in the order of several thousands for medium-small shops, with many of them featuring small inter and intra class variability. Then, available product databases usually include just one or a few studio-quality images per product (referred to herein as reference images), whilst at test time recognition is performed on pictures displaying a portion of a shelf containing several products and taken in the store by cheap cameras (referred to as query images). Moreover, as the items on sale in a store as well as their appearance change frequently over time, a practical recognition system should handle seamlessly new products/packages. Inspired by recent advances in object detection and image retrieval, we propose to leverage on state of the art object detectors based on deep learning to obtain an initial productagnostic item detection. Then, we pursue product recognition through a similarity search between global descriptors computed on reference and cropped query images. To maximize performance, we learn an ad-hoc global descriptor by a CNN trained on reference images based on an image embedding loss. Our system is computationally expensive at training time but can perform recognition rapidly and accurately at test time

Variations of biofouling communities in an off-shore fish cage farm from North-Western Sardinia = Variazioni del biofouling in un allevamento ittico in gabbie off-shore della Sardegna nord-occidentale

Biofouling variations were studied in a fish farming facility near Alghero (Italy) between November 2007 and November 2008. Net panels suitable for the settlement of encrusting organisms were immersed in cages in which large and small gilthead seabream specimens were reared. Significant differences in biofouling biomass and coverage were observed between cages containing fish and controls. The results obtained revealed that gilthead seabream can exert a crucial role in controlling biofouling growth, independently from its size

Il Capitale sociale nelle associazioni di volontariato in Sardegna

The idea of the research is based on the analysis of the social capital, its meaning, and more precisely its rule in the voluntary organizations. In this regard the research wants to investigate the role that the partecipation in voluntary organization has in terms of creation of different forms of social capital for the stakeolders involved. The voluntary organizations would have influence in a significant way on the opportunities of economical development of the territory, increasing its share capital level. The research wants to study if the no profit system utilizes the existence of a strong social capital for its own projects, in this way strengthening it and accumulating it for the benefits of the capital market itself. One of the most important aspects of the research is that the concentration of the social capital of the volunteers doesn't necessarily mean that the effect of the share capital reflects exclusively on the volunteers, main feature of this social capital is actually the externality they produce as economy. Secondly the study wants to understand the economical effects that the social capital, developed by the members of the associations, could have on individual and collective level. Particularly, the research will focus on the effects that relations and skills developed in the Associations could ease the success in the research of a job for the unemployed subjects or to facilitate the occupational improvements

Thermo-chromic glazing in buildings: a novel methodological framework for a multi-objective performance evaluation

Abstract Transparent adaptive facade components can improve the energy performance and the indoor environmental quality of buildings. Nevertheless, their utilization is not widespread, due also to the lack of a robust methodology to comprehensively evaluate their potentialities and find out their most suitable applications. The present paper introduces a novel methodology to characterize the behavior of a transparent adaptive facade component, a thermo-chromic glazing, and predict its effects, through numerical simulations, on energy performance and visual comfort aspects. An experimental characterization on the thermo-chromic glazing was performed to determine its optical properties at the variation of its surface temperature. The component was found to be able to switch its visible transmittance between 0.71 and 0.13, and its solar transmittance between 0.65 and 0.28. The experimental results were used to feed the numerical model created on purpose to describe the adaptive behavior of the component. Finally, a numerical simulation campaign was performed to assess the effects of the thermo-chromic glazing on energy and visual comfort aspects of an enclosed office located in Turin. It was found that the thermo-chromic glazing reduced the overall energy performance compared to a static selective glazing, but it allows improving the visual comfort conditions within the space considered

Classical flows of vector fields with exponential or sub-exponential summability

We show that vector fields $b$ whose spatial derivative $D_xb$ satisfies a Orlicz summability condition have a spatially continuous representative and are well-posed. For the case of sub-exponential summability, their flows satisfy a Lusin (N) condition in a quantitative form, too. Furthermore, we prove that if $D_xb$ satisfies a suitable exponential summability condition then the flow associated to $b$ has Sobolev regularity, without assuming boundedness of ${\rm div}_xb$. We then apply these results to the representation and Sobolev regularity of weak solutions of the Cauchy problem for the transport and continuity equations.Comment: 35 page

Trial on use of a complete pelleted feed (Unipellet) in lactating ewes: metabolic profile results

A trial was carried out to examine the metabolic and productive effects of a complete pelleted feed (Unipellet) in dairy ewes feeding. 24 Sardinian lactating ewes were divided in 3 groups (A, B, C) and fed with: group A = pasture + pelleted concentrate; group B = alternatively either pasture + Unipellet ad libitum or only Unipellet ad libitum; group C = pasture + Unipellet ad libitum. The intake of concentrate was 756 g/d in the group A, whereas the intake of Unipellet was 998 g/d in the group C and 858 g/d in the group B when the ewes grazed and 2277 g/d when the Unipellet was the only fed. The milk yie1d of the 3 groups did not differ significative1y (g/d 906 vs 1044 vs 975); the milk fat content was highest in the group B (6.42% vs 7.08% vs 6.33%); the milk protein content was highest in the group A and lowest in the group B (6.32% vs 5.55% vs 5.92%). The body weight increased more in the group B. The metabolic profile showed that the Unipellet did not seem to have an adverse effect on the alimentary canal, whereas the function of the liver appeared to be slight1y impaired

A novel methodology to spatially evaluate DGP classes by means of vertical illuminances. Preliminary results

A novel methodology to overcome the main limit of the Daylight Glare Probability DGP (i.e. the heavy computational time for an annual analysis of the DGP profile in one point) is presented. This uses a proxy based on the vertical illuminance (Ev) at the eye level. To do so, the most suitable value of Ev, to substitute DGP, is found by means of a comparison to the corresponding DGP value through a fault-detection diagnosis technique. The methodology was applied to a representative enclosed office with one South-facing window (Window-to-Wall Ratio of 50%) located in Turin. The glazing was assumed to have different transmission properties (specular and scattering) with different visible transmittances (in the range 3%-66%). The error in the estimation of the DGP classes calculated through the eye vertical illuminance was evaluated, for an analysis period of a whole year. The main advantages of the methodology proposed lie (i) in a significant reduction of the computational time required for its application and (ii) in the possibility of evaluating glare conditions not only for one or few points, but for a grid of points across a considered space. Its main limitation lies on its inability to quantify the exact DGP value, returning instead, at every time-step, the DGP class of performance

Light versus Energy Performance of Office Rooms with Curtain Walls: A Parametric Study

A parametric study aimed at identifying the best performing solution in terms of lighting, heating and cooling demand minimization for an office room is presented. Different orientations, room and façade lay-outs, glazing and lighting control systems have been combined and 192 configurations have been analysed through a two-step process: daylight factor and dynamic daylighting metrics and the corresponding energy demand for lighting were calculated in step 1 using Daysim; the energy demand for heating and cooling was determined in step 2 using a quasi-steady state approach, to verify whether the best configurations obtained in step 1 also resulted in the lowest global energy demand

Insights on Channel-Like Activity of Membrane Bound Alpha-Synuclein

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DOPAL derived alpha-synuclein oligomers impair synaptic vesicles physiological function

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the death of dopaminergic neurons and by accumulation of alpha-synuclein (aS) aggregates in the surviving neurons. The dopamine catabolite 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde (DOPAL) is a highly reactive and toxic molecule that leads to aS oligomerization by covalent modifications to lysine residues. Here we show that DOPAL-induced aS oligomer formation in neurons is associated with damage of synaptic vesicles, and with alterations in the synaptic vesicles pools. To investigate the molecular mechanism that leads to synaptic impairment, we first aimed to characterize the biochemical and biophysical properties of the aS-DOPAL oligomers; heterogeneous ensembles of macromolecules able to permeabilise cholesterol-containing lipid membranes. aS-DOPAL oligomers can induce dopamine leak in an in vitro model of synaptic vesicles and in cellular models. The dopamine released, after conversion to DOPAL in the cytoplasm, could trigger a noxious cycle that further fuels the formation of aS-DOPAL oligomers, inducing neurodegeneration