300 research outputs found
An evolution hypothesis of bacterial populations
No full textWe propose importing results from monotone game theory to model the evolution of a bacterial population under antibiotic attack. This allows considering the bacterium aging as a relevant phenomenon moving the evolution far away from the usual linear predator-prey paradigms. We obtain an almost nonparametric aging mechanism based on a thresholding operation, as an elementary intelligent operation, that may explain some typical patterns of the population evolution. In this paper we discuss both theoretical aspects and the results of a standardized procedure
Collaboration at the basis of sharing focused information: the opportunistic networks
No full textThere is no doubt that the sharing of information lies at the basis of any collaborative framework. While this is the keen contrivance of social computation paradigms such as ant colonies and neural networks, it also represented the Achilles’ heel of many parallel computation protocols of the eighties. In addition to computational overhead due to the transfer of the information in these protocols, a modern drawback is constituted by intrusions in the communication channels, e.g. spamming in the e-mails, injection of malicious programming codes, or in general attacks on the data communication.While swarm intelligence and connectionist paradigms overcome these drawbacks with a fault tolerant broadcasting of data - any agent has access massively to any message reaching him - in this chapter we discuss within the paradigm of opportunistic networks an automatically selective communication protocol particularly suited to set up a robust collaboration within a very local community of agents. Like medieval monks who escaped world chaos and violence by taking refuge in small and protected communities, modern people may escape the information avalanche by forming virtual communities that do not in any case relinquish most ITC (Information Technology Community) benefits. A communication middleware to obtain this result is represented by opportunistic networks
Revisiting design of learning and mobility services
No full textThree Business case studies in University Laboratories on learning and mobility allow experimenting new multidisciplinary expertise, multimedia data management, analysis, distributed collaboration. Software and Hardware
engineering practices, cloud technology-based, benefit from information acquired from the Web, increasing abilities in rapid prototyping, in satisfying the needs of customers, validation of
pricing policies, marketing strategies and the creation of new professional skills in line with recent trends.
As an alternative to standard software engineering programming, the cloud approach allows to specify the projects’ concepts by reaching stakeholders of needed ICT components to implement a
prototype relying on SW components available elsewhere. These sample cases refer to: 1) Program for Recovery Insufficient Grades in High-School (PRISC), focuses on the learner and on
how proficiency assessed through the grades could be improved;
2) Social Mobility (SM) to reduce dependence on owned cars to satisfy mobility needs exploiting the empty seats available in most cars in metropolitan cities with air pollution problems; 3) Innovative Technology Learning for Humanities at University level (I-DEAS) to create an innovative learning and teaching environment focused on a creative contamination among Humanities and Technology discipline
Displaced dental materials in the maxillary sinus: An original series analysis and definition of a surgical decision process.
No full textObjectives: Displacement of dental materials into the maxillary sinus occurs in daily dental practice; dental implants have become a new common foreign body (FB), as implantation has become routine. The main goal of the present study was to analyze an original series of patients consecutively treated for maxillary sinus FBs. A secondary goal was to propose a decision-making flowchart on the basis of the authors’ experience and a critical analysis of literature to select the most appropriate surgical approach.
Methods: Eleven consecutive patients evaluated for maxillary sinus FBs consisting of dental material were considered.
Results: For removal of the FBs, a nasal endoscopic approach was preferred in 5 cases, a nasal combined approach in 2 cases, an oronasal combined approach in 2 cases, and a lateral window approach in 2 cases. In 2 of 11 cases, complications were reported. A decision-making flowchart to select the best surgical approach is reported.
Conclusions: The correct choice and application of FB removal techniques allow minimization of unfavorable outcomes and creation of an appropriate environment for new dental treatment. Prospective, large series-based studies will be necessary to confirm the safety and clinical efficacy of the proposed decision-making flowchart
Loss of P2X7 receptor function dampens whole body energy expenditure and fatty acid oxidation
No full textThe established role of ATP-responsive P2X7 receptor in inflammatory, neurodegenerative, and immune diseases is now expanding to include several aspects of metabolic dysregulation. Indeed, P2X7 receptors are involved in β cell function, insulin secretion, and liability to diabetes, and loss of P2X7 function may increase the risk of hepatic steatosis and disrupt adipogenesis. Recently, body weight gain, abnormal lipid accumulation, adipocyte hyperplasia, increased fat mass, and ectopic fat distribution have been found in P2X7 KO mice. Here, we hypothesized that such clinical picture of dysregulated lipid metabolism might be the result of altered in vivo energy metabolism. By indirect calorimetry, we assessed 24 h of energy expenditure (EE) and respiratory exchange ratio (RER) as quotient of carbohydrate to fat oxidation in P2X7 KO mice. Moreover, we assessed the same parameters in aged-matched WT counterparts that underwent a 7-day treatment with the P2X7 antagonist A804598. We found that loss of P2X7 function elicits a severe decrease of EE that was less pronounced in A804598-treated mice. In parallel, P2X7KO mice show a drastic increase of RER, thus indicating the occurrence of a greater ratio of carbohydrate to fat oxidation. Decreased EE and fat oxidation is predictive of body weight gain, which was here confirmed. Taken together, our data provide evidence that P2X7 loss of function produces defective energy homeostasis that, together with disrupted adipogenesis, might help to explain accumulation of adipose tissue and contribute to disclose the potential role of P2X7 in metabolic diseases
An integrated symbolic/subsymbolic architecture for parsing Italian sentences containing PP-attachment ambiguities
No full textThis paper describes a hybrid (symbolic/connectionist) system that performs PP-attachment disambiguation by taking advantage of three distinguishing features of neutral networks: distributed representation, functional compositionality, and inductive learning. The connectionist part of the system follows all the steps performed by the symbolic parser, and drives the parser's behavior by inducing a bias towards the most semantically plausible attachment choices. The sentence to be parsed is read one word at a time. When the symbolic parser has more than one production to apply, the connectionist module has already developed an inner representation of the sentence and a distribution of probabilities over the possible choices. The parser continues its work according to such a distribution. Copyrigh
Learning fuzzy decision trees
No full textWe present a recurrent neural network which learns to suggest the next move during the descent along the branches of a decision tree. More precisely, given a decision instance represented by a node in the decision tree, the network provides the degree of membership of each possible move to the fuzzy set >. These fuzzy values constitute the core of the probability of selecting the move out of the set of the children of the current node. This results in a natural way for driving the sharp discrete- state process running along the decision tree by means of incremental methods on the continuous-valued parameters of the neural network. The bulk of the learning problem consists in stating useful links between the local decisions about the next move and the global decisions about the suitability of the final solution. The peculiarity of the learning task is that the network has to deal explicitly with the twofold charge of lighting up the best solution and generating the move sequence that leads to that solution. We tested various options for the learning procedure on the problem of disambiguating natural language sentences
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