1435 research outputs found
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Radiofrequency applications in grapevine: From vineyard to web
No full textSUMMARY An experimental trial was commenced in January 2007 of a traceability system for grapevine plants produced in a nursery and for electronic management of vineyards. The main objective was producing grafted cuttings using common nursery procedures, but in which were internally installed Radio Frequency Identification chips. The trial used five common Tuscan grapevine clones. The modified plants were indistinguishable from unmarked plants, and will maintain this electronic feature throughout their life. The marked plants can be easily monitored, and will be able to supply various information, including identity, growth parameters, susceptibility to biotic stress factors, and productivity. All information is available by a website accessing a database, guaranteeing that users (e.g. nursery workers, grapevine growers, and plant pathologists) can use online access to retrieve information on every marked plant
Computational Methods in Systems Biology '09 -- Abstracts of the Posters
No full textThis note contains the abstracts of the seven posters presented the 7th Conference on Computational Methods in Systems Biology, CMSB 2009, held in Bologna, August 31st - September 1st, 2009
Minimizing Communications with Q-transformations in Uniform and Affine Stencils
No full textIn stencil based parallel applications, communications represent the main overhead, especially when targeting a fine grain parallelization in order to reduce the completion time. Techniques that minimize the number and the impact of communications are clearly relevant. In literature the best optimization reduces the number of communications per step from 3dim, featured by a naive implementation, to 2*dim, where dim is the number of the domain dimensions. To break down the previous bound, in the paper we introduce and formally prove Q-transformations, for stencils featuring data dependencies that can be expressed as geometric affine translations. Q-transformations, based on data dependencies orientations though space translations, lowers the number of communications per step to dim
Critical behavior and scaling in trapped systems
No full textWe study the scaling properties of critical particle systems confined by a
potential. Using renormalization-group arguments, we show that their critical
behavior can be cast in the form of a trap-size scaling, resembling finite-size
scaling theory, with a nontrivial trap critical exponent theta, which describes
how the correlation length scales with the trap size l, i.e., at the critical point. theta depends on the universality class of the
transition, the power law of the confining potential, and on the way it is
coupled to the critical modes. We present numerical results for two-dimensional
lattice gas (Ising) models with various types of harmonic traps, which support
the trap-size scaling scenario
Quasi-long-range order in the 2D XY model with random phase shifts
No full textWe study the square-lattice XY model in the presence of random phase shifts.
We consider two different disorder distributions with zero average shift and
investigate the low-temperature quasi-long-range order phase which occurs for
sufficiently low disorder. By means of Monte Carlo simulations we determine
several universal quantities which are then compared with the analytic
predictions of the random spin-wave theory. We observe a very good agreement
which indicates that the universal long-distance behavior in the whole
low-disorder low-temperature phase is fully described by the random spin-wave
theory
On the Predictive Effects of Markovian and Architectural Factors of Echo State Networks
No full textEcho State Networks (ESNs) represent an emerging paradigm for modeling Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs).In this report we try to identify and investigate some of the main aspects that can be accounted for the success and limitations of this class of models.Independently of the architectural design, we first show the effect on ESNs behavior due to the contractivity of the state transition function and the related Markovian bias.The purpose of our study is also to give an insight on how and why a larger reservoir may improve the predictive performance. We identify four key factors which can influence the performance of ESNs: input variability, multiple time-scales dynamics, non-linear interactions among units and regression in a high dimensional state space. Several variants of the basic ESN model are introduced in order to study these main factors. The proposed variants are tested on four datasets: the Mackey-Glass chaotic time series, the 10th order NARMA system, and two predictive tasks on a symbolic sequence domain with Markovian/anti-Markovian flavor. Experimental evidence shows that all the key identified factors have a major role in determining ESN performances
Minimal support and families for the semantics of calculi with structured resources
No full textCalculi that feature resource-allocating constructs (e.g. the pi-calculus or the fusion calculus) require special kinds of models. The best-known ones are presheaves and nominal sets. But named sets have the advantage of being finite in a wide range of cases where the other two are in finite. The three models are equivalent. Finiteness of named sets is strictly related to the notion of finite support in nominal sets and the corresponding presheaves. We generalise previous equivalence results by introducing a notion of minimal support in presheaf categories indexed over small categories of monos. We show that nominal sets are generalisd by families, that is, free coproduct completions, indexed by symmetries
Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) content of meat from three muscles of Massese suckling lambs slaughtered at different weights
No full textSUMMARY Eighteen Massese male lambs, fed mainly maternal milk were slaughtered at 11, 14 and 17 kg. Samples of Longissimus Dorsi (LD), Triceps Brachii (TB) and Semimembranosus (Sm) muscles were collected. Milk from the lamb’s dams was sampled weekly. Fatty acid composition of milk and meat was determined. TB was the fattest muscle, Sm the leanest one and LD showed an intermediate value of total lipids, while the weight at slaughter did not influence total intramuscular fat content in any muscle. Although slaughter weight slightly affected overall fatty acid composition of muscles, rumenic acid and total CLA content in TB and Sm, but not in LD, significantly increased with slaughter weight. As regard milk fatty acid composition, the contents of total CLA, RA and others minor CLA isomers decreased during the first four weeks after lambing and then increased at the last control (five weeks). The animals slaughtered at a live weight of 14 and 17 kg showed a greater SCD enzyme activity (estimated by product/substrate ratio) and a higher rumen activity (estimated by means of branched chain and odd chain fatty acid content in meat) than animals slaughtered at 11 kg. Cis-7, trans-9 CLA content significantly increased with the slaughter age in TB and SM, while trans-7, trans-9 CLA, only increased in TB, and cis-8, cis-10 CLA, only increased in SM. Further studies are needed in order to verify weather the different behaviour of RA in LD muscle may be due to differences in muscle metabolism or fatty acid utilisation
Ottimizzazione di lavorazioni per asportazione di truciolo
No full textRIASSUNTO: La funzione di ottimizzazione di lavorazioni per asportazione di truciolo contiene vincoli tecnologici e numerosi parametri da impostare sulla macchina e relativi all’utensile, in funzione dell’operazione da svolgere e del materiale da lavorare. Tale ottimizzazione multidimensionale ammette soluzioni numeriche (ad esempio basate su intelligenza artificiale) ancora poco impiegate industrialmente. Questo articolo esamina gli effetti economici (costo, produttività e profitto) della scelta di velocità di taglio e durata dell’utensile basandosi sul modello dell’usura descritto dalla legge di Taylor. Progetto sviluppato nell’ambito dell’insegnamento di Studi di Fabbricazione del Corso di Laurea Specialistica in Ingegneria Meccanica anno accademico 2007-08, presso la Facoltà di Ingegneria dell'Università di Pisa, con il supporto della Società Piaggio & C. S.p.A. (Sig. Raffaello Fontanini). Gli autori tengono ad esprimere i più sentiti ringraziamenti agli ingegneri del Manufacturing Guido Batoni, Maurizio Mancuso e al Direttore Carlo Coppola che hanno portato l’esperienza di una grande azienda metalmeccanica. Corresponding author's home page: http://www.lanzetta.it.tt SUMMARY: Discussion of different optimisation criteria (cost, productivity and profit) for the parameters of machining operations, based on the Taylor's law
Animal-sediment relationships: Evaluating the 'Pearson–Rosenberg paradigm' in Mediterranean coastal lagoons
No full textSUMMARY: We investigated the applicability of the Pearson–Rosenberg (P–R) conceptual model describing a generalized pattern of response of benthic communities in relation to organic enrichment to Mediterranean Sea coastal lagoons. Consistent with P–R model predictions, benthic diversity and abundance showed two different peaks at low (>2.5–5 mg g1) and high (>25–30 mg g1) total organic carbon (TOC) ranges, respectively. We identified TOC thresholds indicating that risks of reduced benthic diversity should be relatively low at TOC values about 28 mg g1, and intermediate at values in-between. Predictive ability within these ranges was high based on results of re-sampling simulation. While not a direct measure of causality, it is anticipated that these TOC thresholds should serve as a general screening-level indicator for evaluating the likelihood of reduced sediment quality and associated bioeffects in such eutrophic systems of the Mediterranean Sea