Mapping and classification of ecologically sensitive marine habitats using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery and object-based image analysis (OBIA)

Nowadays, emerging technologies, such as long-range transmitters, increasingly miniaturized components for positioning, and enhanced imaging sensors, have led to an upsurge in the availability of new ecological applications for remote sensing based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sometimes referred to as “drones”. In fact, structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry coupled with imagery acquired by UAVs offers a rapid and inexpensive tool to produce high-resolution orthomosaics, giving ecologists a new way for responsive, timely, and cost-effective monitoring of ecological processes. Here, we adopted a lightweight quadcopter as an aerial survey tool and object-based image analysis (OBIA) workflow to demonstrate the strength of such methods in producing very high spatial resolution maps of sensitive marine habitats. Therefore, three different coastal environments were mapped using the autonomous flight capability of a lightweight UAV equipped with a fully stabilized consumer-grade RGB digital camera. In particular we investigated a Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadow, a rocky coast with nurseries for juvenile fish, and two sandy areas showing biogenic reefs of Sabelleria alveolata. We adopted, for the first time, UAV-based raster thematic maps of these key coastal habitats, produced after OBIA classification, as a new method for fine-scale, low-cost, and time saving characterization of sensitive marine environments which may lead to a more effective and efficient monitoring and management of natural resource

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) for Environmental Monitoring: A Review with Applications in Coastal Habitats

Nowadays the proliferation of small unmanned aerial systems or vehicles (UAS/Vs), formerly known as drones, coupled with an increasing interest in tools for environmental monitoring, have led to an exponential use of these unmanned aerial platforms for many applications in the most diverse fields of science. In particular, ecologists require data collected at appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions to describe ecological processes. For these reasons, we are witnessing the proliferation of UAV-based remote sensing techniques because they provide new perspectives on ecological phenomena that would otherwise be difficult to study. Therefore, we propose a brief review regarding the emerging applications of low-cost aerial platforms in the field of environmental sciences such as assessment of vegetation dynamics and forests biodiversity, wildlife research and management, map changes in freshwater marshes, river habitat mapping, and conservation and monitoring programs. In addition, we describe two applications of habitat mapping from UAS-based imagery, along the Central Mediterranean coasts, as study cases: (1) The upper limit of a Posidonia oceanica meadow was mapped to detect impacted areas, (2) high-resolution orthomosaic was used for supporting underwater visual census data in order to visualize juvenile fish densities and microhabitat use in four shallow coastal nurseries

Fusing novelty and surprise for evolving robot morphologies

Traditional evolutionary algorithms tend to converge to a single good solution, which can limit their chance of discovering more diverse and creative outcomes. Divergent search, on the other hand, aims to counter convergence to local optima by avoiding selection pressure towards the objective. Forms of divergent search such as novelty or surprise search have proven to be beneficial for both the efficiency and the variety of the solutions obtained in deceptive tasks. Importantly for this paper, early results in maze navigation have shown that combining novelty and surprise search yields an even more effective search strategy due to their orthogonal nature. Motivated by the largely unexplored potential of coupling novelty and surprise as a search strategy, in this paper we investigate how fusing the two can affect the evolution of soft robot morphologies. We test the capacity of the combined search strategy against objective, novelty, and surprise search, by comparing their efficiency and robustness, and the variety of robots they evolve. Our key results demonstrate that novelty-surprise search is generally more efficient and robust across eight different resolutions. Further, surprise search explores the space of robot morphologies more broadly than any other algorithm examined.peer-reviewe

Surprise search : beyond objectives and novelty

Grounded in the divergent search paradigm and inspired by the principle of surprise for unconventional discovery in computational creativity, this paper introduces surprise search as a new method of evolutionary divergent search. Surprise search is tested in two robot navigation tasks and compared against objective-based evolutionary search and novelty search. The key findings of this paper reveal that surprise search is advantageous compared to the other two search processes. It outperforms objective search and it is as efficient as novelty search in both tasks examined. Most importantly, surprise search is, on average, faster and more robust in solving the navigation problem compared to ob- jective and novelty search. Our analysis reveals that sur- prise search explores the behavioral space more extensively and yields higher population diversity compared to novelty search.This work has been supported in part by the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project AutoGameDesign (project no: 630665). The authors would also like to thank Dora Lee Borg for initial implementations of the algorithm.peer-reviewe

Biofouling Role in Mariculture Environment Restoration: An Example in the Mar Grande of Taranto (Mediterranean Sea)

none7The biodiversity of macrobenthic invertebrates of two artificial hard substrates close to a mariculture plant was assessed in order to understand the effect on the fouling community of an innovative Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) system. The examined hard substrates were (i) vertical bare collectors that are placed around the cages as new colonizable substrates, which were investigated from the early colonization and (ii) artificial hard substrates already present under the cages analyzed over time to observe changes due to the action on the water column by filter feeder organisms colonizing the above vertical collectors. Overall, 186 taxa were collected (both the substrates), of which 99 as sessile habitat-former or structuring macroinvertebrates and 87 as associated fauna, mostly vagile forms. On the vertical collectors 121 taxa were collected, among which 44 sessile structuring species and 77 vagile-associated taxa; on the artificial hard substrates under the cages, 124 taxa were identified, 95 belong to the first category and 29 as associated taxa. The two analyzed substrates shared 43% of sessile species (40) and 22% of associated species (19). At the end of the first year of experimentation, the study revealed Sabella spallanzanii and mussels as the most abundant taxa. Lastly, the communities under the cages showed an increase in biodiversity after the placement of collectors. The changes were attributed to the decrease in particulate matter originating as wastes from the breeding cage, which was intercepted by the filter feeder community developed on the vertical collectors.openDaniele Arduini, Jacopo Borghese, Maria Flavia Gravina, Roberta Trani, Caterina Longo, Cataldo Pierri, Adriana GiangrandeArduini, Daniele; Borghese, Jacopo; Flavia Gravina, Maria; Trani, Roberta; Longo, Caterina; Pierri, Cataldo; Giangrande, Adrian

Constrained surprise search for content generation

In procedural content generation, it is often desirable to create artifacts which not only fulfill certain playability constraints but are also able to surprise the player with unexpected potential uses. This paper applies a divergent evolutionary search method based on surprise to the constrained problem of generating balanced and efficient sets of weapons for the Unreal Tournament III shooter game. The proposed constrained surprise search algorithm ensures that pairs of weapons are sufficiently balanced and effective while also rewarding unexpected uses of these weapons during game simulations with artificial agents. Results in the paper demonstrate that searching for surprise can create functionally diverse weapons which require new gameplay patterns of weapon use in the game.This work has been supported, in part, by the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project AutoGameDesign (project no: 630665) and the Horizon 2020 project CrossCult (project no: 693150).peer-reviewe

Lifestyles and sexuality in men and women: the gender perspective in sexual medicine

Sexual health is strictly related with general health in both genders. In presence of a sexual dysfunction, the expert in sexual medicine aims to discover the specific weight of the physical and psychological factors can cause or con-cause the sexual problem. At the same time, a sexual dysfunction can represent a marker of the future development of a Non-communicable diseases (NCDss) as cardiovascular or metabolic diseases.In the evaluation phase, the sexual health specialist must focus on these aspects, focusing especially on the risk and protective factors that could impact on both male and female sexuality.This article presents a review of researches concerning healthy and unhealthy lifestyles and their contribute in the development of sexual quality of life in a gender-dependent manner.Among the unhealthy lifestyle, obesity contributes mostly to the development of sexual dysfunctions, due to its negative impact on cardiovascular and metabolic function. Tobacco smoking, alcohol - substance abuse and chronic stress lead to the development of sexual dysfunction in a med-long term.In order to guarantee a satisfying sexual quality of life, sexual health specialists have the responsibility to guide the patient through the adoption of healthy lifestyles, such as avoiding drugs, smoke and excessive alcohol, practicing a regular physical activity, following a balanced diet and use stress-management strategies, even before proposing both pharmaco- and/or psychotherapies