1,721,212 research outputs found
Role of abandoned grasslands in the conservation of spider communities across heterogeneous mountain landscapes
No full textIn the last decades, the transformation of agriculture and the associated decline in semi-natural grasslands have been major drivers of the loss of spider diversity across Europe, in particular in mountain regions. In the early stages of forest succession, abandoned grasslands exhibit a complex vegetation structure sharing environmental conditions with both open habitats and forests. At the landscape scale, the occurrence of abandoned patches can potentially provide novel habitats and niches for ground-dwelling spiders. Here, we used two complementary methods: traditional species diversity analyses and species-habitat networks to understand how abandoned grasslands can interact with the surrounding habitat mosaic in supporting spider communities. We selected six landscapes along an elevational gradient and sampled spiders in all the major agricultural and semi-natural habitats occurring across the landscapes. At all elevations, we found a similar species richness and activity density between agricultural habitats (i.e. meadows, pastures, and crop fields) and abandoned grasslands. On the contrary, we consistently found lower species richness and activity density in forests than in all open habitats. Despite the similar diversity between open habitats, most species-habitat networks exhibited a high and constant modularity, i.e. the same species tended to occur in a specific habitat type and not in the others. Only a few species were shared between abandoned and agricultural habitats, indicating that abandoned grasslands cannot support populations of most species typical of open managed habitats. Early abandoned patches increased landscape habitat heterogeneity providing unique niches to spider species that, however, rarely occur in other habitats. The maintenance of multiple habitat types across the landscape is expected to increase the regional species pool, while the role of abandoned patches as surrogate habitat for the conservation of spider species typical of semi-natural grasslands appeared limited. Similarly, abandoned patches are not expected to help maintaining the populations of spider species occurring in agricultural habitats
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The conometric concept: Coupling connection for immediately loaded titanium-reinforced provisional fixed partial dentures-a case series
No full textThe aim of this prospective study was to demonstrate the feasibility of the conic coupling connection as a novel approach for the retention of immediately loaded, titanium-reinforced, temporary fixed partial restorations. The patients received a fixed, immediate partial restoration, attached using the conic coupling connection to two implants placed in a fresh extraction socket. Changes in marginal peri-implant bone level or probing depth measurements, biologic or technical complications, and any other adverse event were recorded at yearly follow-ups up to 3 years after implantation. A total of 78 implants placed in 39 patients reached the 3-year follow-up. A trend of bone overgrowth over the implant platform (mean: 0.2 mm) and a complete fill of the vertical gap between the implant platform level and the first point of contact of the bone with the implant surface was seen after the 6-month follow-up. No disconnection of any prosthesis was noted during 3 years of full occlusal function. The results of this study suggest that titanium-reinforced, temporary partial restorations with conic coupling retention supported by immediate implants provide a successful, cost-effective treatment modality
A Preliminary Study on Virtual Reality Tools in Human-Robot Interaction
Full text linkChoosing the best interaction modalities and protocols in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is far from being straightforward, as it strictly depends on the application domain, the tasks to be executed, the types of robots and sensors involved. In the last years, a growing number of HRI researchers exploited Virtual Reality (VR) as a mean to evaluate proposed solutions, focusing in particular on safety and correctness of collaborative tasks. This allows to prove the effectiveness and robustness of a certain approach in a simulated environment, thus permitting to converge more easily to the best solution, also avoiding to experiment potentially harmful actions in a real scenario. In this paper, we aim at reviewing existing VR based approaches targeting or embodying HRI
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Simulation of near infrared sensor in unity for plant-weed segmentation classification
Full text linkWeed spotting through image classification is one of the methods applied in precision agriculture to increase efficiency in crop damage reduction. These classifications are nowadays typically based on deep machine learning with convolutional neural networks (CNN), where a main difficulty is gathering large amounts of labeled data required for the training of these networks. Thus, synthetic dataset sources have been developed including simulations based on graphic engines; however, some data inputs that can improve the performance of CNNs like the near infrared (NIR) have not been considered in these simulations. This paper presents a simulation in the Unity game engine that builds fields of sugar beets with weeds. Images are generated to create datasets that are ready to train CNNs for semantic segmentation. The dataset is tested by comparing classification results from the bonnet CNN network trained with synthetic images and trained with real images, both with RGB and RGBN (RGB+near infrared) as inputs. The preliminary results suggest that the addition of the NIR channel to the simulation for plant-weed segmentation can be effectively exploited. These show a difference of 5.75% for the global mean IoU over 820 classified images by including the NIR data in the unity generated dataset
A Discussion about Explainable Inference on Sequential Data via Memory-Tracking
No full textThe recent explosion of deep learning techniques boosted the application of Artificial Intelligence in a variety of domains, thanks to their high performance. However, performance comes at the cost of interpretability: deep models contain hundreds of nested non-linear operations that make it impossible to keep track of the chain of steps that bring to a given answer. In our recently published paper [1], we propose a method to improve the interpretability of a class of deep models, namely Memory Augmented Neural Networks (MANNs), when dealing with sequential data. Exploiting the capability of MANNs to store and access data in external memory, tracking the process, and connecting this information to the input sequence, our method extracts the most relevant sub-sequences that explain the answer. We evaluate our approach both on a modified T-maze [2, 3] and on the Story Cloze Test [4], obtaining promising results
Massive windfalls boost an ongoing spruce bark beetle outbreak in the Southern Alps
Full text linkEuropean coniferous forests are currently threatened by bark beetles (e.g. Ips typographus) because of an increasing incidence of triggering factors, such as drought and windstorms. Furthermore, such natural disturbances are expected to increase in terms of magnitude and frequency due to climate change, and thus interacting with each other. Here, we present a particular case study in the Southern Italian Alps (Gares, Canale d’Agordo, Belluno), in which wind disturbance interacts with an ongoing outbreak of I. typographus, probably associated with an extended drought in the previous three years. By combining remote sensing and field surveys, we spatially reconstructed the bark beetle attack in the period 2015-2021, which includes the Vaia windstorm in October 2018. Although the windstorm occurred in an expanding phase of the bark beetle outbreak, attacks on standing trees did not occur during the first year after the windstorm but were observed two years later. Our findings suggest that an overlap of a large availability of wind felled trees with an incipient outbreak of I. typographus resulted in an immediate decrease of standing trees mortality in the year following the storm. However, the fallen trees worked as a hidden sink for the beetle population, which in the following years massively attacked the standing trees that survived the storm
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