A tiered approach to natural background level (nbl) assessment in groundwater under a non hazardous waste land fill in Latium region (Italy)

This paper deals with the results of investigation and monitoring activity on groundwater flowing under an area of a non hazardous waste landfill, placed in the Agro Romano, in the South Rome town area, near to Colli Albani Volcanic region. The geological framework is mainly dominated by pyroclastic deposits of Colli Albani Volcanic Complex named pozzolanelle and tufo lionato. The purpose of the study has been the investigation of the origin of concentration values referred to Arsenic, Manganese, and Fluoride, exceeding the European law limit values. In order to identify whether the observed concentrations represent a naturally-occurring condition or they are due to an anthropogenic source, it was applied a tiered up approach. As a matter of fact in the aim of following a tiered approach, they were analyzed, different aspects like: the impacts coming from anthropogenic activities, regional and site specific geology knowledge, the mineralogic properties of the geological outcrops, site specific geochemistry, statistical approach. Carrying on a background analysis early may become an important guideline for statutory requirements in the site assessment based on legal fixed concentrations

Target-adaptive CNN-based pansharpening

We recently proposed a convolutional neural network (CNN) for remote sensing image pansharpening obtaining a significant performance gain over the state of the art. In this paper, we explore a number of architectural and training variations to this baseline, achieving further performance gains with a lightweight network which trains very fast. Leveraging on this latter property, we propose a target-adaptive usage modality which ensures a very good performance also in the presence of a mismatch w.r.t. the training set, and even across different sensors. The proposed method, published online as an off-the-shelf software tool, allows users to perform fast and high-quality CNN-based pansharpening of their own target images on general-purpose hardware

Derivation based differential calculi for noncommutative algebras deforming a class of three dimensional spaces

We equip a family of algebras whose noncommutativity is of Lie type with a derivation based differential calculus obtained, upon suitably using both inner and outer derivations, as a reduction of a redundant calculus over the Moyal four dimensional space.Comment: 18 page

The snail lemma for internal groupoids

We establish a generalized form both of the Gabriel-Zisman exact sequence associated with a pointed functor between pointed groupoids, and of the Brown exact sequence associated with a fibration of pointed groupoids. Our generalization consists in replacing pointed groupoids with groupoids internal to a pointed regular category with reflexive coequalizer

Metric on the space of quantum states from relative entropy. Tomographic reconstruction

In the framework of quantum information geometry, we derive, from quantum relative Tsallis entropy, a family of quantum metrics on the space of full rank, N level quantum states, by means of a suitably defined coordinate free differential calculus. The cases N = 2, N = 3 are discussed in detail and notable limits are analyzed. The radial limit procedure has been used to recover quantum metrics for lower rank states, such as pure states. By using the tomographic picture of quantum mechanics we have obtained the Fisher- Rao metric for the space of quantum tomograms and derived a reconstruction formula of the quantum metric of density states out of the tomographic one. A new inequality obtained for probabilities of three spin-1/2 projections in three perpendicular directions is proposed to be checked in experiments with superconducting circuits.Comment: 31 pages. No figures. Abstract and Introduction rewritten. Minor corrections. References adde

Affective Facial Expression Processing via Simulation: A Probabilistic Model

Understanding the mental state of other people is an important skill for intelligent agents and robots to operate within social environments. However, the mental processes involved in `mind-reading' are complex. One explanation of such processes is Simulation Theory - it is supported by a large body of neuropsychological research. Yet, determining the best computational model or theory to use in simulation-style emotion detection, is far from being understood. In this work, we use Simulation Theory and neuroscience findings on Mirror-Neuron Systems as the basis for a novel computational model, as a way to handle affective facial expressions. The model is based on a probabilistic mapping of observations from multiple identities onto a single fixed identity (`internal transcoding of external stimuli'), and then onto a latent space (`phenomenological response'). Together with the proposed architecture we present some promising preliminary resultsComment: Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures - BICA 201

Heroin-piracetam mixture: suggested mechanisms of action and risks of misinterpretation for drug users

Piracetam is a positive allosteric modulator of the α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor that has been frequently used in the treatment of cognitive disorders. Press and internet reports indicate that the use of piracetam, as a heroin adulterant, has spread rapidly in some countries, especially in Asia and Europe. Its use, as adulterant, is believed to produce more profound desirable effects, while decreasing hangover. Recent surveys demonstrated that piracetam protects neurons from heroin-induced apoptosis. The protective role of this adulterating substance may be related to restoration of beta-endorphin levels and to its neuroprotective effects. The aim of this paper is to review the relevant literature and suggest the main hypothetical mechanisms that justify its use as a heroin adulterant, try to understand if its use could help people who want to come off heroin by reducing withdrawal symptoms and, finally, give useful information that permit us to understand why drug trafficking organisations started to use piracetam as heroin adulterant

Guided patch-wise nonlocal SAR despeckling

We propose a new method for SAR image despeckling which leverages information drawn from co-registered optical imagery. Filtering is performed by plain patch-wise nonlocal means, operating exclusively on SAR data. However, the filtering weights are computed by taking into account also the optical guide, which is much cleaner than the SAR data, and hence more discriminative. To avoid injecting optical-domain information into the filtered image, a SAR-domain statistical test is preliminarily performed to reject right away any risky predictor. Experiments on two SAR-optical datasets prove the proposed method to suppress very effectively the speckle, preserving structural details, and without introducing visible filtering artifacts. Overall, the proposed method compares favourably with all state-of-the-art despeckling filters, and also with our own previous optical-guided filter