Performance and energy efficiency analysis of a Reversi player for FPGAs and General Purpose Processors

Board-game applications are frequently found in mobile devices where the computing performance and the energy budget are constrained. Since the Artificial Intelligence techniques applied in these games are computationally intensive, the applications developed for mobile systems are frequently simplistic, far from the level of equivalent applications developed for desktop computers. Currently board games are software applications executed on General Purpose Processors. However, they exhibit a medium degree of parallelism and a custom hardware accelerator implemented on an FPGA can take advantage of that. We have selected the well-known Reversi game as a case study because it is a very popular board game with simple rules but huge computational demands. We developed and optimized software and hardware designs for this game that apply the same classical Artificial Intelligence techniques. The applications have been executed on different representative platforms and the results demonstrate that the FPGAs implementations provide better performance, lower power consumption and, therefore, impressive energy savings. These results demonstrate that FPGAs can efficiently deal with this kind of problems

Preliminary study on a novel Optimal Placed Sensors method based on Genetic Algorithm

The safeguarding of the historical and cultural heritage is one of the main research topics that has been addressed in recent years. Particular attention was given to the development of structural health monitoring systems that allowed the real time acquisition of different physical quantities that are stored in a cloud and compared with the health limit values of the structures obtained from numerical analysis previously carried out. One of the major problems highlighted by the use of these systems is related to the position and quantity of smart sensors to be used within the structure to be monitored. To avoid this, in this paper an Optimal Sensors Placement method was applied to a case study located in China. In particular, the positioning of the sensors was identified through an optimization workflow that adopt a Multi Objective Optimization engine called "Octopus"in Grasshopper3D. The identified optimal solutions have made it possible to detect the areas of the structure that will be subject to collapse during a seismic event

Simulation and Fast vulnerability analysis of a Chinese masonry pagoda

As an important historical relic of human being, masonry pagoda is the great significance in the eastern and western architectural cultures. Most of the existing masonry pagodas in China which have been seriously damaged urgently need detailed structural safety assessment, repair and reinforcement. The paper choose a Chinese masonry pagoda as a case, conducted a series simulation analysis with Abauqs. Through numerical simulation, the seismic performance of the pagoda can be evaluated, which can not only predict the hidden danger and weak link in its structure, but also provide useful reference for the reinforcement and repair of the pagoda. It also adopts a very convenient 3D CAD method to quickly assess the seismic vulnerability of existing masonry pagoda according the reference

Theory of mind profile and cerebellar alterations in remitted bipolar disorder 1 and 2: a comparison study

The literature on social cognition abilities in bipolar disorder (BD) is controversial about the occurrence of theory of mind (ToM) alterations. In addition to other cerebral structures, such as the frontal and limbic areas, the processing of socially relevant stimuli has also been attributed to the cerebellum, which has been demonstrated to be involved in the abovementioned disorder. Nevertheless, the cerebellar contribution to ToM deficits in bipolar patients needs to be elucidated further. To this aim, two tests assessing different components of ToM were used to evaluate the ability to appreciate affective and mental states of others in 17 individuals with a diagnosis of BD type 1 (BD1) and 13 with BD type 2 (BD2), both in the euthymic phase, compared to healthy matched controls. Cerebellar grey matter (GM) volumes were extracted and compared between BD1 and controls and BD2 and controls by using voxel-based morphometry. The results showed that BD1 patients were compromised in the cognitive and advanced components of ToM, while the BD2 ToM profile resulted in a more widespread compromise, also involving affective and automatic components. Both overlapping and differing areas of cerebellar GM reduction were found. The two groups of patients presented a pattern of GM reduction in cerebellar portions that are known to be involved in the affective and social domains, such as the vermis and Crus I and Crus II. Interestingly, in both BD1 and BD2, positive correlations were detected between lower ToM scores and decreased volumes in the cerebellum. Overall, BD2 patients showed a more compromised ToM profile and greater cerebellar impairment than BD1 patients. The different pattern of structural abnormalities may account for the different ToM performances evidenced, thus leading to divergent profiles between BD1 and BD2

Comparison of cerebellar grey matter alterations in bipolar and cerebellar patients: evidence from Voxel-based analysis

The aim of this study was to compare the patterns of cerebellar alterations associated with bipolar disease with those induced by the presence of cerebellar neurodegenerative pathologies to clarify the potential cerebellar contribution to bipolar affective disturbance. Twenty-nine patients affected by bipolar disorder, 32 subjects affected by cerebellar neurodegenerative pathologies, and 37 age-matched healthy subjects underwent a 3T MRI protocol. A voxel-based morphometry analysis was used to show similarities and differences in cerebellar grey matter (GM) loss between the groups. We found a pattern of GM cerebellar alterations in both bipolar and cerebellar groups that involved the anterior and posterior cerebellar regions (p = 0.05). The direct comparison between bipolar and cerebellar patients demonstrated a significant difference in GM loss in cerebellar neurodegenerative patients in the bilateral anterior and posterior motor cerebellar regions, such as lobules I-IV, V, VI, VIIIa, VIIIb, IX, VIIb and vermis VI, while a pattern of overlapping GM loss was evident in right lobule V, right crus I and bilateral crus II. Our findings showed, for the first time, common and different alteration patterns of specific cerebellar lobules in bipolar and neurodegenerative cerebellar patients, which allows us to hypothesize a cerebellar role in cognitive and mood dysregulation symptoms that characterize bipolar disorde

Structural cerebellar correlates of cognitive functions in spinocerebellar ataxia type 2

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 (SCA2) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease involving the cerebellum and characterized by a typical motor syndrome. In addition, the presence of cognitive impairment is now widely acknowledged as a feature of SCA2. Given the extensive connections between the cerebellum and associative cerebral areas, it is reasonable to hypothesize that cerebellar neurodegeneration associated with SCA2 may impact on the cerebellar modulation of the cerebral cortex, thus resulting in functional impairment. The aim of the present study was to investigate and quantitatively map the pattern of cerebellar gray matter (GM) atrophy due to SCA2 neurodegeneration and to correlate that with patients' cognitive performances. Cerebellar GM maps were extracted and compared between SCA2 patients (n = 9) and controls (n = 33) by using voxel-based morphometry. Furthermore, the relationship between cerebellar GM atrophy and neuropsychological scores of the patients was assessed. Specific cerebellar GM regions were found to be affected in patients. Additionally, GM loss in cognitive posterior lobules (VI, Crus I, Crus II, VIIB, IX) correlated with visuospatial, verbal memory and executive tasks, while additional correlations with motor anterior (V) and posterior (VIIIA, VIIIB) lobules were found for the tasks engaging motor and planning components. Our results provide evidence that the SCA2 neurodegenerative process affects the cerebellar cortex and that MRI indices of atrophy in different cerebellar subregions may account for the specificity of cognitive symptomatology observed in patients, as result of a cerebello-cerebral dysregulation

Measurement of χ c1 and χ c2 production with s√ = 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the χ c1 and χ c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at s√ = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The χ c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay χ c → J/ψγ (with J/ψ → μ + μ −) where photons are reconstructed from γ → e + e − conversions. The production rate of the χ c2 state relative to the χ c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt χ c as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum. The prompt χ c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/ψ production to derive the fraction of prompt J/ψ produced in feed-down from χ c decays. The fractions of χ c1 and χ c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011