Cold winters vs long journeys : adaptations of primary moult and body mass to migration and wintering in the Grey Plover Pluvialis Squatarola

Includes bibliographical references.The Grey Plover Pluvialis squatarola is a circumpolar breeding wader with a cosmopolitan winter distribution. Primary moult generally starts only when potential wintering sites are reached. Across the Palearctic-African region Grey Plovers experience an enormous variety of ecological and climatic conditions, which determine the development of different moult patterns, according to local conditions and timing of migration

Composizione biochimica di quattro specie fitoplanctoniche impiegate in acquicoltura

The protein, lipid, carbohydrate, and amino acid content of four algae of the genus Chlorella, Dunaliella, Nannochloris and Tetraselmis was determined: each species was grown on Walne's media containig two different levels of nitrogen. The results show how tbe media influenced the biochemical composition of the algae

Mechanical characterization of sol–gel epoxy-silylatedhyperbranched poly(ethyleneimine) coatings by meansof Depth Sensing Indentation methods

A series of hybrid epoxy-silica coatings were prepared from a synthesized hyperbranched poly(ethyleneimine) with ethoxysilyl groups at the chain ends and diglycidylether of bisphenol A in different proportions. The curing procedure was based in a first sol-gel reaction performed at 80 °C in a humid chamber followed by the anionic homopolymerization of epoxides initiated by 1-methylimidazole in an oven at 180 °C. The prepared coatings were characterized mechanically by means of Depth Sensing Indentation technique. The influence of physical ageing on indentation hardness has been evaluated. The kinetic of the delayed depth recovery has been analyzed using the phenomenological so-called Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts relaxation function. It has been found that silylated hyperbranched poly(ethyleneimine) improves simultaneously the mechanical coating performance and the elastic recovery.Postprint (author's final draft

Species introductions through coconut fibre: Dactyloctenium aegyptium and Glinus oppositifolius, new records for the Balearic Islands, Spain

Based on plant material collected in the forest nursery of the Balearic Island Forestry Center (CEFOR) for autochthonous plant production and the University of the Balearic Islands experimental facilities, two new plant records are presented for the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. Dactyloctenium aegyptium, an invasive grass previously recorded in other areas of the Mediterranean basin, and Glinus oppositifolius, a new record for the European flora. In both cases the species are presumed to have arrived through contaminated batches of the coconut fibre substrate used in both facilities

Hand Segmentation for Gesture Recognition in EGO-Vision

Portable devices for first-person camera views will play a central role in future interactive systems. One necessary step for feasible human-computer guided activities is gesture recognition, preceded by a reliable hand segmentation from egocentric vision. In this work we provide a novel hand segmentation algorithm based on Random Forest superpixel classification that integrates light, time and space consistency. We also propose a gesture recognition method based Exemplar SVMs since it requires a only small set of positive samples, hence it is well suitable for the egocentric video applications. Furthermore, this method is enhanced by using segmented images instead of full frames during test phase. Experimental results show that our hand segmentation algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches and improves the gesture recognition accuracy on both the publicly available EDSH dataset and our dataset designed for cultural heritage applications

What an LSE-CBI survey reveals about net-zero action in UK firms

Sustainability is the focus of this second blog post about the survey of UK businesses carried out by LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance and the Confederation of British Industry. Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Bruno Serra-Lorenzo and Anna Valero analyse business responses to the ongoing climate crisis and net-zero targets

Solving the Set Covering Problem with Conflicts on Sets: A new parallel GRASP

In this paper, we analyze a new variant of the well-known NP-hard Set Covering Problem, characterized by pairwise conflicts among subsets of items. Two subsets in conflict can belong to a solution provided that a positive penalty is paid. The problem looks for the optimal collection of subsets representing a cover and minimizing the sum of covering and penalty costs. We introduce two integer linear programming formulations and a quadratic one for the problem and provide a parallel GRASP (Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure) that, during parallel executions of the same basic procedure, shares information among threads. We tailor such a parallel processing to address the specific problem in an innovative way that allows us to prevent redundant computations in different threads, ultimately saving time. To evaluate the performance of our algorithm, we conduct extensive experiments on a large set of new instances obtained by adapting existing instances for the Set Covering Problem. Computational results show that the proposed approach is extremely effective and efficient providing better results than Gurobi (tackling three alternative mathematical formulations of the problem) in less than 1/6 of the computational time

Local Pyramidal Descriptors for Image Recognition

In this paper, we present a novel method to improve the flexibility of descriptor matching for image recognition by using local multiresolution pyramids in feature space. We propose that image patches be represented at multiple levels of descriptor detail and that these levels be defined in terms of local spatial pooling resolution. Preserving multiple levels of detail in local descriptors is a way of hedging one's bets on which levels will most relevant for matching during learning and recognition. We introduce the Pyramid SIFT (P-SIFT) descriptor and show that its use in four state-of-the-art image recognition pipelines improves accuracy and yields state-of-the-art results. Our technique is applicable independently of spatial pyramid matching and we show that spatial pyramids can be combined with local pyramids to obtain further improvement. We achieve state-of-the-art results on Caltech-101 (80.1%) and Caltech-256 (52.6%) when compared to other approaches based on SIFT features over intensity images. Our technique is efficient and is extremely easy to integrate into image recognition pipelines

Use of FTA® classic cards for epigenetic analysis of sperm DNA

FTA® technologies provide the most reliable method for DNA extraction. Although FTA technologies have been widely used for genetic analysis, there is no literature on their use for epigenetic analysis yet. We present for the first time, a simple method for quantitative methylation assessment based on sperm cells stored on Whatman FTA classic cards. Specifically, elution of seminal DNA from FTA classic cards was successfully tested with an elution buffer and an incubation step in a thermocycler. The eluted DNA was bisulfite converted, amplified by PCR, and a region of interest was pyrosequenced

What an LSE-CBI survey found about AI adoption in UK firms

A survey conducted in May by LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance and the Confederation of British Industry asked firms about the use of artificial intelligence and the green transition. The results shed new light on how firms are using AI in the UK and the technology’s impacts on businesses. Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Bruno Serra-Lorenzo and Anna Valero explain the results