Monitoring forest conditions in a protected Mediterranean coastal area by the analysis of multiyear NDVI data

The operational utilization of remote sensing techniques for monitoring terrestrial ecosystems is often constrained by problems of under-sampling in space and time, particularly in heterogeneous and unstable Mediterranean environments. The current work deals with the use of the NOAA-AVHRR and Landsat-TM/ETM+ images to produce long-term NDVI data series characterising coniferous and broadleaved forests in a protected coastal area in Tuscany (Central Italy). Two methods to extract NDVI values of relatively small vegetated areas from NOAA-AVHRR data were first evaluated by comparison to estimates from higher resolution Landsat-TM/ETM+images. The optimal method was then applied to multitemporal AVHRR data series to derive 10-day NDVI profiles of coniferous and broadleaved forests over a 15-year period (1986-2000). Trend analyses performed on these data series showed that notable NDVI decreases occurred during the study period, particularly for the coniferous forest in summer and early fall. Further analysis carried out on local meteorological measurements led to identify the likely causes of these negative trends in contemporaneous winter rainfall decreases which were significantly correlated with the found NDVI variations.     

Vacuum properties of palladium thin film coatings

A recent development, carried out at CERN for particle accelerator applications, showed that a vacuum chamber coated with a thin getter film and then exposed to ambient air may be transformed into a pump by “in situ” heating at temperatures as low as 180°C.Heating activates the diffusion into the film of the oxygen present in the surface passivation layer. Repeated air exposure-activation cycles progressively enrich the film with oxygen, reducing its performance and shortening its operating life. To overcome this inconvenience, noble metal coatings were considered. At distinction with getters, noble metals may release all the pumped gases by heating, resulting in a practically unlimited life.Thin film coatings of palladium were studied by surface analysis, electron stimulated desorption and pumping speed measurements. These coatings were found to pump H₂ and CO, even without activation by heating, but not N₂ or CO₂. Thin Pd and Pd-Ag films were also used as overlayers for protecting a getter film from oxidation while not impairing its H₂ pumping.The result of these studies are presented and discussed.     

Notes on theory and experimental conditions behind two-photon excitation microscopy

This report deals with the fundamental quantum physics behind two-photon excitation also providing a link to the experimental consequences exploited in microscopy. The optical sectioning effect is demonstrated as well as the distribution of excitation and of fluorescence emission.     

Assay of Sudan I contamination of foodstuff by atmospheric pressure chemical ionization tandem mass spectrometry and isotope dilution

Food safety represents one of the main issues of national and international agencies appointed to health control. In April 2003, a French agency disclosed that powdered or smashed hot chili pepper imported from India and Pakistan was heavily contaminated with a carcinogenic azo dye known as Sudan I. This paper deals with a modern approach for assaying the content of this colorant in foodstuff down to a limit of a few tens of parts per billion. The isotope dilution method combined with APCI tandem mass spectrometry was used. The internal standard, 1-(d5-phenylazo)-2-naphthalenol, was obtained by simple chemistry, and its structure was determined by 1H NMR spectroscopy. The mass spectrometric method is more sensitive than the HPLC approach by a factor of 20.     

A note on the identification of Rupicapra rupicapra species by polymerase chain reaction product sequencing

To identify meat samples suspected of containing a protected game species (Chamois-Rupicapra rupicapra) Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) product sequencing was performed. The amplicon was obtained with a pair of "universal" primers. The results confirm those of Isoelectric Focusing (IEF) on the same samples.     

Measurements of OH radicals in a low-power atmospheric inductively coupled plasma by cavity ringdown spectroscopy

Cavity ringdown spectroscopy is applied to line-of-sight measurements of OH radicals in an atmospheric-pressure argon inductively coupled plasma, operating at low power (200 W) and low gas flows (approximately 18 liters/min). Density populations of the single S21(1) rotational line in the OH A2sigma(+)-X2Pi (0-0) band are extracted from the measured line-of-sight absorbance. Plasma gas kinetic temperatures, derived from the recorded line shapes of the S21(1) line, ranged from 1858 to 2000 K with an average uncertainty of 10%. Assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium, an assumption supported by the comparison of the experimental and simulated spectra, the spatially averaged total OH number density at different observation heights was determined to be in the range of 1.7 x 10(20)-8.5 x 10(20) (m(-3)) with the highest OH density in the plasma tail. This work demonstrates that ringdown spectra of the OH radical may be used both as a thermometer for high-temperature environments and as a diagnostic tool to probe the thermodynamic properties of plasmas.     

Fusion of appearance-based face recognition algorithms

Although many algorithms have been proposed, face recognition and verification systems can guarantee a good level of performances only for controlled environments. In order to improve the performance and robustness of face recognition and verification systems, multi-modal and mono-modal systems based on the fusion of multiple recognisers using different or similar biometrics have been proposed, especially for verification purposes. In this paper, a recognition and verification system based on the combination of two well-known appearance-based representations of the face, namely, principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), is proposed. Both PCA and LDA are used as feature extractors from frontal view images. The benefits of such a fusion are shown for different environmental conditions, namely, ideal conditions, characterised by a very limited variability of environmental parameters, and real conditions with a large variability of lighting, scale and facial expression.     

Automated analysis of timed security: a case study on web privacy

This paper presents a case study on an automated analysis of real-time security models. The case study on a web system (originally proposed by Felten and Schneider) is presented that shows a timing attack on the privacy of browser users. Three different approaches are followed: LH-Timed Automata (analyzed using the model checker HyTech), finite-state automata (analyzed using the model checker NuSMV), and process algebras (analyzed using the model checker CWB-NC ). A comparative analysis of these three approaches is given.     

Termination Criteria for Bounded Model Checking: Extensions and Comparison

Increasing attention has been paid recently to criteria that allow one to conclude that a structure models a linear-time property from the knowledge that no counterexamples exist up to a certain length. These termination criteria effectively turn Bounded Model Checking into a full-fledged verification technique and sometimes result in considerable time savings. In [M. Awedh and F. Somenzi. Proving more properties with bounded model checking. In R. Alur and D. Peled, editors, Sixteenth Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV'04), pages 96–108. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, July 2004. LNCS 3114] we presented a criterion based on the translation of the linear-time specification into a Büchi automaton. BMC can be terminated if no fair cycle is found up to a given length, and one can prove that no fair cycle exists beyond that length. The maximum length for which counterexamples are explicitly checked is called the termination length; it obviously depends on the model, the property, and the termination criterion. In this paper we improve the criterion of [M. Awedh and F. Somenzi. Proving more properties with bounded model checking. In R. Alur and D. Peled, editors, Sixteenth Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV'04), pages 96–108. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, July 2004. LNCS 3114] by adding a check that often substantially reduces termination length. Our previous work employed translation to a non-generalized Büchi automaton. Though a well-known technique converts a generalized automaton into that form by composing it with a counter, it has the undesirable effect of considerably lengthening the cycles in the graph to be searched. We propose several alternatives to that approach and compare them experimentally. The translation to automata can be accomplished in more than one way, and in this paper we contrast two of them: one based on the algorithms of [F. Somenzi and R. Bloem. Efficient Büchi automata from LTL formulae. In E. A. Emerson and A. P. Sistla, editors, Twelfth Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV'00), pages 248–263. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, July 2000. LNCS 1855], and one based on the notion of tight automaton of [E. Clarke, O. Grumberg, and K. Hamaguchi. Another look at LTL model checking. In D. L. Dill, editor, Sixth Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV'94), pages 415–427. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1994. LNCS 818]. The latter yields shorter counterexamples, but the former often leads to earlier termination. In addition, it can help in identifying safety properties, for which termination checks are much more efficient than for the general case. We finally present results on comparing techniques based on cycle detection to the technique of [V. Schuppan and A. Biere. Efficient reduction of finite state model checking to reachability analysis. Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 5(2–3):185–204, Mar. 2004], which converts liveness properties into safety properties by augmentation of the model.