Possible influence of natural events on heavy metals exposure from shellfish consumption: A case study in the north-east of Italy

open8noopenLosasso, Carmen; Bille, Laura; Patuzzi, Ilaria; Lorenzetto, Monica; Binato, Giovanni; Pozza, Manuela Dalla; Ferrè, Nicola; Ricci, AntoniaLosasso, Carmen; Bille, Laura; Patuzzi, Ilaria; Lorenzetto, Monica; Binato, Giovanni; Pozza, Manuela Dalla; Ferrè, Nicola; Ricci, Antoni

The Muslim conquest of Iberia: medieval Arabic narratives [Book Review]

This article reviews the book 'The Muslim conquest of Iberia: medieval Arabic narratives', by Nicola Clarke

Testing Reactive Probabilistic Processes

We define a testing equivalence in the spirit of De Nicola and Hennessy for reactive probabilistic processes, i.e. for processes where the internal nondeterminism is due to random behaviour. We characterize the testing equivalence in terms of ready-traces. From the characterization it follows that the equivalence is insensitive to the exact moment in time in which an internal probabilistic choice occurs, which is inherent from the original testing equivalence of De Nicola and Hennessy. We also show decidability of the testing equivalence for finite systems for which the complete model may not be known

Simvastatin Rapidly and Reversibly Inhibits Insulin Secretion in Intact Single-Islet Cultures

open10Epidemiological studies suggest that statins may promote the development or exacerbation of diabetes, but whether this occurs through inhibition of insulin secretion is unclear. This lack of understanding is partly due to the cellular models used to explore this phenomenon (cell lines or pooled islets), which are non-physiologic and have limited clinical transferability.openScattolini, Valentina; Luni, Camilla; Zambon, Alessandro; Galvanin, Silvia; Gagliano, Onelia; Ciubotaru, Catalin Dacian; Avogaro, Angelo; Mammano, Fabio; Elvassore, Nicola; Fadini, Gian PaoloScattolini, Valentina; Luni, Camilla; Zambon, Alessandro; Galvanin, Silvia; Gagliano, Onelia; Ciubotaru, CATALIN DACIAN; Avogaro, Angelo; Mammano, Fabio; Elvassore, Nicola; Fadini, GIAN PAOL

BFO and DOLCE: So Far, So Close…

A survey of the similarities and differences between BFO and DOLCE, and of the mutual interactions between Nicola Guarino and Barry Smit

Book Reviews

The Variational Auto-Encoder (VAE) is one of the most used unsupervised machine learning models. But although the default choice of a Gaussian distribution for both the prior and posterior represents a mathematically convenient distribution often leading to competitive results, we show that this parameterization fails to model data with a latent hyperspherical structure. To address this issue we propose using a von Mises-Fisher (vMF) distribution instead, leading to a hyperspherical latent space. Through a series of experiments we show how such a hyperspherical VAE, or $\mathcal{S}$-VAE, is more suitable for capturing data with a hyperspherical latent structure, while outperforming a normal, $\mathcal{N}$-VAE, in low dimensions on other data types.Comment: GitHub repository: http://github.com/nicola-decao/s-vae-tf, Blogpost: https://nicola-decao.github.io/s-va

Folk Theorems on the Correspondence between State-Based and Event-Based Systems

Kripke Structures and Labelled Transition Systems are the two most prominent semantic models used in concurrency theory. Both models are commonly believed to be equi-expressive. One can find many ad-hoc embeddings of one of these models into the other. We build upon the seminal work of De Nicola and Vaandrager that firmly established the correspondence between stuttering equivalence in Kripke Structures and divergence-sensitive branching bisimulation in Labelled Transition Systems. We show that their embeddings can also be used for a range of other equivalences of interest, such as strong bisimilarity, simulation equivalence, and trace equivalence. Furthermore, we extend the results by De Nicola and Vaandrager by showing that there are additional translations that allow one to use minimisation techniques in one semantic domain to obtain minimal representatives in the other semantic domain for these equivalences.Comment: Full version of SOFSEM 2011 pape

Determination of design-related properties of selected Irish potatoes varieties

The aim of this study was to determine some design-related properties of Irish potatoes commonly grown in Nigeria that may be useful in designing, handling and processing equipment of the product. Two varieties were selected: Nicola and Diamant. The measured properties were length, width, thickness, bulk density, solid density and angle of repose. Other parameters were arithmetic mean, geometric mean, surface area, volume, porosity and kernel weight. The mean length, width and thickness obtained for Nicola variety were 66.5, 37.3 and 32.4 mm respectively; while 57.4, 35.2, and 31.7 mm were obtained for Diamant, respectively. The mean angle of repose of Nicola and Diamant varieties were 27.20 and 26.40°, respectively. Mean roundness of Nicola and Diamant varieties were also obtained as 0.6 and 0.7 respectively. The mean surface area and volume of Nicola variety was determined to be 58.55 cm2 and 42.61 cm³ while that of Diamant variety was 50.31 cm² and 34.08 cm³, respectively. Moisture contents of Nicola and Diamant varieties used were obtained as 76.3 and 85.9%, respectively. Mean hardness of Nicola and Diamant varieties was 1.52 and 1.7 HV, respectively; indicating that Diamant is a harder variety than Nicola. These properties may be useful and serve as a guide on major engineering design of handling and processing equipment