Mobile Interface for Content-Based Image Management

People make more and more use of digital image acquisition devices to capture screenshots of their everyday life. The growing number of personal pictures raise the problem of their classification. Some of the authors proposed an automatic technique for personal photo album management dealing with multiple aspects (i.e., people, time and background) in a homogenous way. In this paper we discuss a solution that allows mobile users to remotely access such technique by means of their mobile phones, almost from everywhere, in a pervasive fashion. This allows users to classify pictures they store on their devices. The whole solution is presented, with particular regard to the user interface implemented on the mobile phone, along with some experimental results

Smart assistance for students and people living in a campus

Being part of one of the fastest growing area in Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtual assistants are nowadays part of everyone's life being integrated in almost every smart device. Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana are just few examples of the most famous ones. Beyond these off-the-shelf solutions, different technologies which allow to create custom assistants are available. IBM Watson, for instance, is one of the most widely-adopted question-answering framework both because of its simplicity and accessibility through public APIs. In this work, we present a virtual assistant that exploits the Watson technology to support students and staff of a smart campus at the University of Palermo. Some in progress results show the effectiveness of the approach we propose

Distribution of dissolved green-house gases (CO2, CH4, N2O) in Lakes Edward and George: Results from the first field cruise of the HIPE project

Inland waters (streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs) are quantitatively important components of the global budgets of atmospheric emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs) (CO2, CH4, N2O). Available data indicate that a very large fraction of CO2 and CH4 emissions from rivers and reservoirs occurs at tropical latitudes. Data on GHGs at tropical latitudes from lakes however are much more scarse, and the relative importance of emissions, in particular in Africa, remains to be determined. Large tropical lakes are net autotrophic (hence potentially sinks for atmospheric CO2) due generally low dissolved organic carbon concentrations, seasonally near constant light and temperature conditions, and generally deep water columns favourable for export of organic matter to depth. This sharply contrasts with their much better documented temperate and boreal counterparts, usually considered as CO2 sources to the atmosphere sustained by net heterotrophy. Here, we report a data-set of issolved CO2, CH4, N2O obtained in October 2016 in Lakes Edward and George and adjacent streams and cater lakes in he frame of Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO) HIPE (Human impacts on ecosystem health and resources of ake Edward, http://www.co2.ulg.ac.be/hipe/) project. Lake George and part of Lake Edward were sinks for tmospheric CO2 and N2O due to high primary production and denitrification in sediments, respectively, and modest ources of CH4 to the atmosphere. Sampled rivers and streams were oversaturated in CO2 and CH4 and close to tmospheric equilibrium with regards to N2O. Spatial variations within rivers and streams were related to elevation and vegetation characteristics on the catchments (savannah versus forest). Levels of CO2, CH4, and N2O were within the range of those we reported in other African rivers. Crater lakes acted as sinks for atmospheric CO2 and N2O but were extremely over-saturated in CH4, due to intense primary production sustained by cyanobacteria. These CH4 levels were much higher than what we have reported in other lakes and reservoirs elsewhere in Sub- Saharan Africa

Role of magnetic resonance in characterising extrahepatic cholangiocarcinomas

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of magnetic resonance (MR) in correctly locating and characterising biliary strictures in patients affected by extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, identify findings suggestive of the disease, identify lesions with similar MR features and possible criteria for differential diagnosis and establish prospective MR accuracy in diagnosis of malignant obstruction of extrahepatic bile ducts. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the MR examinations of 39 patients affected by extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma confirmed by histology or cytology. The studies were evaluated for the following parameters: site of obstruction (hilar, proximal or distal), presence of intra- or extrahepatic dilation of bile ducts, morphology of ductal stenosis (gradual tapering or abrupt ending), morphology of the lesion (mass like or circumferential), dimension, signal intensity before contrast medium administration and lesion enhancement after administration of contrast medium. Finally, we assessed the most useful sequence for the diagnosis. In order to evaluate MR accuracy in the diagnosis of malignant obstruction of extrahepatic bile ducts, we prospectively reviewed MR examinations of 74 patients affected by obstructive jaundice (55 malignant lesions and 19 inflammatory lesions). MR diagnosis was compared with histology or cytology considered as the gold standard. RESULTS: MR allowed identification and localisation of 41/41 extrahepatic cholangiocarcinomas. Fifty-four percent of the lesions showed gradual duct tapering; the remaining lesions showed an abrupt ending. Fifty-six percent of the lesions appeared as a circumferential thickening (infiltrative growth); the remaining lesions had a mass-like appearance (expansile growth). Most lesions were hypo- (49%) or isointense (49%) in T1-weighted sequences and hyper- (49%) or isointense (51%) in T2-weighted sequences. Ninety-five percent of the lesions did not enhance significantly in the arterial phase while 98% showed late enhancement (10 min). The most diagnostic sequence (in 76% of cases) was the late-phase gradient-echo (GRE) T1 fat-saturated sequence. MR had good sensitivity (91%) but poor specificity (47%) in characterising stenosis as malignant, given the large number (10/19) of benign lesions evaluated as neoplastic lesions. CONCLUSIONS: MR almost always identified the cause of stenosis and suggested its neoplastic nature if it exhibited a mass-like appearance (extraductal or growing into the choledochus). On the other hand, lesions with parietal thickening, particularly if smaller than 1 cm, require endoscopic cytology or histology because of the high risk of unnecessary procedures for benign lesions

Carbon Cycling of Lake Kivu (East Africa): Net Autotrophy in the Epilimnion and Emission of CO2 to the Atmosphere Sustained by Geogenic Inputs

We report organic and inorganic carbon distributions and fluxes in a large (>2000 km2) oligotrophic, tropical lake (Lake Kivu, East Africa), acquired during four field surveys, that captured the seasonal variations (March 2007–mid rainy season, September 2007–late dry season, June 2008–early dry season, and April 2009–late rainy season). The partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) in surface waters of the main basin of Lake Kivu showed modest spatial (coefficient of variation between 3% and 6%), and seasonal variations with an amplitude of 163 ppm (between 579±23 ppm on average in March 2007 and 742±28 ppm on average in September 2007). The most prominent spatial feature of the pCO2 distribution was the very high pCO2 values in Kabuno Bay (a small sub-basin with little connection to the main lake) ranging between 11213 ppm and 14213 ppm (between 18 and 26 times higher than in the main basin). Surface waters of the main basin of Lake Kivu were a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere at an average rate of 10.8 mmol m−2 d−1, which is lower than the global average reported for freshwater, saline, and volcanic lakes. In Kabuno Bay, the CO2 emission to the atmosphere was on average 500.7 mmol m−2 d−1 (~46 times higher than in the main basin). Based on whole-lake mass balance of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) bulk concentrations and of its stable carbon isotope composition, we show that the epilimnion of Lake Kivu was net autotrophic. This is due to the modest river inputs of organic carbon owing to the small ratio of catchment area to lake surface area (2.15). The carbon budget implies that the CO2 emission to the atmosphere must be sustained by DIC inputs of geogenic origin from deep geothermal springs.AFRIVA

A Java-based Wrapper for Wireless Communications

The increasing number of new applications for mobile devices in pervasive environments, do not cope with changes in the wireless communications. Developers of such applications have to deal with problems arising from the available wireless connections in the given environment. A middleware is a solution that allows to overcome some of these problems. It provides to the applications a set of functions that facilitate their development. In this paper we present a Java-based communication wrapper, called SmartTraffic, which allows programmers to seamlessly use TCP or UDP protocols over Bluetooth or any IP-based wireless network. Developers can use SmartTraffic within their Java applications, thus focusing on the application goals, and leaving out details about how it should interact with the available wireless connection