University of Catania

About: University of Catania is a education organization based out in Catania, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 14599 authors who have published 41195 publications receiving 1032705 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi di Catania & Universita degli Studi di Catania.

Automatic fish classification for underwater species behavior understanding

Abstract: The aim of this work is to propose an automatic fish classification system that operates in the natural underwater environment to assist marine biologists in understanding subehavior. Fish classification is performed by combining two types of features: 1) Texture features extracted by using statistical moments of the gray-level histogram, spatial Gabor filtering and properties of the co-occurrence matrix and 2) Shape Features extracted by using the Curvature Scale Space transform and the histogram of Fourier descriptors of boundaries. An affine transformation is also applied to the acquired images to represent fish in 3D by multiple views for the feature extraction. The system was tested on a database containing 360 images of ten different species achieving as average correct rate of about 92%. Then, fish trajectories extracted using the proposed fish classification combined with a tracking system, are analyzed in order to understand anomalous behavior. In detail, the tracking layer computer fish trajectories, the classification layer associates trajectories to fish species and then by clustering these trajectories we are able to detect unusual fish behaviors to be further investigated by marine biologists.

Trigger and aperture of the surface detector array of the pierre auger observatory

Abstract: The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory consists of 1600 water-Cherenkov detectors, for the study of extensive air showers (EAS) generated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. We describe the trigger hierarchy, from the identification of candidate showers at the level of a single detector, amongst a large background (mainly random single cosmic ray muons), up to the selection of real events and the rejection of random coincidences. Such trigger makes the surface detector array fully efficient for the detection of EAS with energy above 3 x 10(18) eV, for all zenith angles between 0 degrees and 60 degrees, independently of the position of the impact point and of the mass of the primary particle. In these range of energies and angles, the exposure of the surface array can be determined purely on the basis of the geometrical acceptance. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Measurement of the differential cross section for top quark pair production in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV

Abstract: The normalized differential cross section for top quark pair (tt) production is measured in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8TeV at the CERN LHC using the CMS detector in data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7fb^(−1). The measurements are performed in the lepton+jets (e/μ +jets) and in the dilepton (e^+e^−, μ^+μ^−, and e^±μ^∓) decay channels. The tt cross section is measured as a function of the kinematic properties of the charged leptons, the jets associated to b quarks, the top quarks, and the tt system. The data are compared with several predictions from perturbative quantum chromodynamic up to approximate next-to-next-to-leading-order precision. No significant deviations are observed relative to the standard model predictions.

Adequacy Evaluation of Distribution System Including Wind/Solar DG During Different Modes of Operation

Abstract: Keen interest in the development and utilization of renewable distributed generation (DG) has been currently observed worldwide. The reliability impact of this highly variable energy source is an important aspect that needs to be assessed as renewable power penetration becomes increasingly significant. Distribution system adequacy assessment including wind-based and solar DG units during different modes of operation is described in this paper. Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) and analytical technique are used in this work with a novel utilization of the clearness index probability density function (pdf) to model the solar irradiance using MCS. The results show that there is no significant difference between the outcomes of the two proposed techniques; however, MCS requires much longer computational time. The effect of islanding appears in the improvement of the loss of load expectation (LOLE) and loss of energy expectation (LOEE).