Massimo Scalia

Nonlinear Time Series: Computations and Applications 2012

1 School of Information Science & Technology, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China 2 Department of Mathematics, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome, Italy 3 Department of Mathematics, University of Salerno, Via Ponte Don Melillo, 84084 Fisciano, Italy 4 Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University, 63100 Cyberjaya, Selanger, Malaysia 5 College of Computer Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China 6 Department of Electrical, Computer, Software, & Systems Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL 32114, USA

Correct light deflection in Weyl conformal gravity

The conformal gravity fit to observed galactic rotation curves requires {\gamma}>0. On the other hand, conventional method for light deflection by galaxies gives a negative contribution to Schwarzschild value for {\gamma}>0, which is contrary to observation. Thus, it is very important that the contribution to bending should in principle be positive, no matter how small its magnitude is. Here we show that the Rindler-Ishak method gives a positive contribution to Schwarzschild deflection for {\gamma}>0, as desired. We also obtain the exact local coupling term derived earlier by Sereno. These results indicate that conformal gravity can potentially test well against all astrophysical observations to date.

Analysis of Large-Amplitude Pulses in Short Time Intervals: Application to Neuron Interactions

This paper deals with the analysis of a nonlinear dynamical system which characterizes the axons interaction and is based on a generalization of FitzHugh-Nagumo system. The parametric domain of stability is investigated for both the linear and third-order approximation. A

Mixed Signature: An Invariant Descriptor for 3D Motion Trajectory Perception and Recognition

Motion trajectory contains plentiful motion information of moving objects, for example, human gestures and robot actions. Motion perception and recognition via trajectory are useful for characterizing them and a flexible descriptor of motion trajectory plays important role in motion analysis. However, in the existing tasks, trajectories were mostly used in raw data and effective descriptor is lacking. In this paper, we present a mixed invariant signature descriptor with global invariants for motion perception and recognition. The mixed signature is viewpoint invariant for local and global features. A reliable approximation of the mixed signature is proposed to reduce the noise in high-order derivatives. We use this descriptor for motion trajectory description and explore the motion perception with DTW algorithm for salient motion features. To achieve better accuracy, we modified the CDTW algorithm for trajectory matching in motion recognition. Furthermore, a controllable weight parameter is introduced to adjust the global features for tasks in different circumstances. The conducted experiments validated the proposed method.

Characteristic Roots of a Class of Fractional Oscillators

The fundamental theorem of algebra determines the number of characteristic roots of an ordinary differential equation of integer order. This may cease to be true for a differential equation of fractional order. The results given in this paper suggest that the number of the characteristic roots of a class of oscillators of fractional order may in general be infinitely great. Further, we infer that it may also be the case for the characteristic roots of a differential equation of fractional order greater than 1. The relationship between the range of the fractional order and the locations of characteristic roots of oscillators in the complex plane is considered.

A Novel Fractional-Discrete-Cosine-Transform-Based Reversible Watermarking for Healthcare Information Management Systems

Digital watermarking is a good tool for healthcare information management systems. The well-known quantization-index-modulation- (QIM-) based watermarking has its limitations as the host image will be destroyed; however, the recovery of medical image is essential to avoid misdiagnosis. A transparent yet reversible watermarking algorithm is required for medical image applications. In this paper, we propose a fractional-discrete-cosine-transform- (FDCT-) based watermarking to exactly reconstruct the host image. Experimental results show that the FDCT-based watermarking is preferable to the QIM-based watermarking for the medical image applications.

Light bending in the galactic halo by Rindler-Ishak method

After the work of Rindler and Ishak, it is now well established that the bending of light is influenced by the cosmological constant Λ appearing in the Schwarzschild-de Sitter spacetime. We show that their method, when applied to the exact Mannheim-Kazanas-de Sitter solution of the Weyl conformal gravity, nicely yields the expected answer together with several other physically interesting new terms. Apart from Λ, the solution is parametrized by a conformal parameter γ, which is known to play a dominant role in the galactic halo gravity. The application of the method yields exactly the same γ− correction to Schwarzschild bending as obtained by standard methods. Different cases are analyzed, which include some corrections to the special cases considered in the original paper by Rindler and Ishak.

Construction of Affine Invariant Functions in Spatial Domain

Affine invariant functions are constructed in spatial domain. Unlike the previous affine representation functions in transform domain, these functions are constructed directly on the object contour without any transformation. To eliminate the effect of the choice of points on the contour, an affine invariant function using seven points on the contour is constructed. For objects with several separable components, a closed curve is derived to construct the affine invariant functions. Several experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Experimental results show that the constructed affine invariant functions can be used for object classification.

Parallel Motion Simulation of Large-Scale Real-Time Crowd in a Hierarchical Environmental Model

This paper presents a parallel real-time crowd simulation method based on a hierarchical environmental model. A dynamical model of the complex environment should be constructed to simulate the state transition and propagation of individual motions. By modeling of a virtual environment where virtual crowds reside, we employ different parallel methods on a topological layer, a path layer and a perceptual layer. We propose a parallel motion path matching method based on the path layer and a parallel crowd simulation method based on the perceptual layer. The large-scale real-time crowd simulation becomes possible with these methods. Numerical experiments are carried out to demonstrate the methods and results.

Governance for sustainability: a triple-helix model

In the last decades much attention has been dedicated to the interpretation of relevant phenomena in the socio-economic field, highlighting the need of general frameworks of reference for the governance of sustainability and often recurring to the Elkington’s triple bottom line and the Etzkowitz’s triple-helix representations as reference models. In front of a massive scientific production that points out criteria and method of the model, the theory could seem less rich of applications and examples, especially in the field of the inquiry defined by sustainability. In this work, our aim is to provide a little contribution to cover this gap by (1) drawing a more general view from the triple bottom line; (2) highlighting a ‘triple-helix’ functioning in the triple bottom line as represented in the triple helix of sustainability; (3) providing an example, very actual and important, and some general reasoning related to the use of the model as a possible reference in the basic understanding of the complexity of governance for sustainability.