Several Central American species of Piper sect. Macrostachys have obligate associations with ants, in which the ant partner derives food and shelter from modified plant structures and, in turn, protects the plant against fungal infection and herbivory. In addition to these obligate ant-plants (i.e. myrmecophytes), several other species in Piper have resident ants only sometimes (facultative), a...

This paper presents an approach to multi-object image segmentation based on object motion using Markov Random Fields. To support the information gained from motion and to achieve robustness, several additional visual cues extracted from the image data are integrated. Depth information gained from stereo disparity is included to maintain segmentation in case an segmented object stops moving. Mot...

Polystichum has often been treated as a sub-cosmopolitan genus of 180-230 species (i.e., Polystichum s.l.), but several segregate genera, such as Cyrtogonellum, Cyrtomidictyum, Cyrtomium, Phanerophlebia, and Sorolepidium, have been recognized in various treatments. Together, these genera constitute the polystichoid ferns. We used a data set of 47 species of the polystichoid ferns and three outg...

Architecture Description Languages (ADL) are a major research theme in the software architecture community. Although many interesting proposals have been made, they don’t seem to influence the daily industrial practice. In this paper, we report on an attempt to define an ADL that fits the needs of a specific company: Dassault Systèmes. This company maintains and develops a large body of softwar...

Linaria Mill. (Plantaginaceae) with about 160 spp. is the largest genus of the tribe Antirrhineae. We conducted phylogenetic analyses of nuclear ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) and chloroplast DNA (rpl32-trnL) sequence data to test the monophyly of currently recognized sections in Linaria. For this purpose 86 species representing seven sections of Linaria and one species ...

Segmentation is one of the key tools in medical image analysis. The objective of segmentation is to provide reliable, fast, and effective organ delineation. While traditionally, particularly in computer vision, segmentation is seen as an early vision tool used for subsequent recognition, in medical imaging the opposite is often true. Recognition can be performed interactively by clinicians or a...

Hyperalgesia and allodynia are frequent symptoms of disease and may be useful adaptations to protect vulnerable tissues. Both may, however, also emerge as diseases in their own right. Considerable progress has been made in developing clinically relevant animal models for identifying the most significant underlying mechanisms. This review deals with experimental models that are currently used to...

The Northern Cross radiotelescope in Medicina is being used by the Basic Element for SKA Training project (BEST, Montebugnoli et al. 2006) as test bed for technological developments aimed at the Square Kilometer Array (SKA),within the SKA-Design Studies (SKA-DS) programme. In the framework of these activities, 6 of the 24 East-West arm sections of the original telescope will be refurbished, alo...

Nucleotide sequences of Rubisco Large Subunit (rbcL) and the internal transcribed spacers (ITS) of nrDNA were obtained for the five species of Larrea and one species each of Bulnesia (ITS only) and Plectrocarpa (rbcL only). Parsimony analyses were conducted, including sequences from seven genera of Zygophyllaceae reported by other authors-Kallstroemia, Zygophyllum, Augea, Fagonia, Pintoa, Guaia...

The closed-loop product lifecycle management (PLM) system focuses on tracking and managing the information of the whole product lifecycle, with possible feedback of information to product lifecycle phases. It provides opportunities to reduce the inefficiency of lifecycle operations and gain competitiveness. Thanks to the advent of hardware and software related to product identification technolo...