Task-oriented attributed network embedding by multi-view features

Network embedding, also known as network representation learning, aims at defining low-dimensional, continuous vector representation of nodes to maximally preserve the network structure. Recent efforts attempt to extend network embedding to attributed networks where nodes are enriched with descriptors, to enhance interpretability. However, most of these efforts seldom consider the additional knowledge relevant to the aim of the downstream network analysis, i.e. task-related information. When they do, they are analysis-specific and thus lack adaptability to alternative tasks.

ECOPOTENTIAL: Using Earth Observation to Protect Natural Ecosystems

Space exploration is revealing the abundance of other solar systems, but at the same time is showing the uniqueness of our Planet. Using sophisticated Earth Observation technologies such as the European "Sentinels", belonging to the greatest Earth Observation programme ever realised, Copernicus, we are now getting plenty of information at unprecedented high spatial and temporal resolution.

Data-driven simulation of contagions in public venues

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global research effort to define and assess timely and effective containment policies. Understanding the role that specific venues play in the dynamics of epidemic spread is critical to guide the implementation of fine-grained non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). In this paper, we present a new model of context-dependent interactions that integrates information about the surrounding territory and the social fabric.

A Model for Urban Social Networks

Defining accurate and flexible models for real-world networks of human beings is instrumental to understand the observed properties of phenomena taking place across those networks and to support computer simulations of dynamic processes of interest for several areas of research - including computational epidemiology, which is recently high on the agenda. In this paper we present a flexible model to generate age-stratified and geo-referenced synthetic social networks on the basis of widely available aggregated demographic data and, possibly, of estimated age-based social mixing patterns.

Table-top combined scanning X-ray small angle scattering and transmission microscopies of lipid vesicles dispersed in free-standing gel

A mm thick free-standing gel containing lipid vesicles made of 2-oleoyl-1-palmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) was studied by scanning Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) and X-ray Transmission (XT) microscopies. Raster scanning relatively large volumes, besides reducing the risk of radiation damage, allows signal integration, improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), as well as high statistical significance of the dataset. The persistence of lipid vesicles in gel was demonstrated, while mapping their spatial distribution and concentration gradients.

Why diffusion-based preconditioning of Richards equation works: spectral analysis and computational experiments at very large scale.

We consider here a cell-centered finite difference approximation of the Richards equation in three dimensions, averaging for interface values the hydraulic conductivity, a highly nonlinear function, by arithmetic, upstream and harmonic means. The nonlinearities in the equation can lead to changes in soil conductivity over several orders of magnitude and discretizations with respect to space variables often produce stiff systems of differential equations.

Emulating complex simulations by machine learning methods

Background: The aim of the present paper is to construct an emulator of a complex biological system simulator using a machine learning approach. More specifically, the simulator is a patient-specific model that integrates metabolic, nutritional, and lifestyle data to predict the metabolic and inflammatory processes underlying the development of type-2 diabetes in absence of familiarity. Given the very high incidence of type-2 diabetes, the implementation of this predictive model on mobile devices could provide a useful instrument to assess the risk of the disease for aware individuals.

The evolution of personalized healthcare and the pivotal role of European regions in its implementation

Personalized medicine (PM) moves at the same pace of data and technology and calls for important changes in healthcare. New players are participating, providing impulse to PM. We review the conceptual foundations for PM and personalized healthcare and their evolution through scientific publications where a clear definition and the features of the different formulations are identifiable. We then examined PM policy documents of the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine and related initiatives to understand how PM stakeholders have been changing.

The core-radius approach to supercritical fractional perimeters, curvatures and geometric flows

We consider a core-radius approach to nonlocal perimeters governed by isotropic kernels having critical and supercritical exponents, extending the nowadays classical notion of s-fractional perimeter, defined for 0<s<1, to the case s>=1. We show that, as the core-radius vanishes, such core-radius regularized s-fractional perimeters, suitably scaled, ?-converge to the standard Euclidean perimeter.