Accurate estimation of building heights using very high resolution (VHR) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is crucial for various urban applications. This paper introduces a Deep Learning (DL)-based methodology for automated building height estimation from single VHR COSMO-SkyMed images: an object-based regression approach based on bounding box detection followed by height estimation. This model was trained and evaluated on a unique multi-continental dataset comprising eight geographically diverse cities across Europe, North and South America, and Asia, employing a cross-validation strategy to explicitly assess out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization. The results demonstrate highly promising performance, particularly on European cities where the model achieves a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of approximately one building story (2.20 m in Munich), significantly outperforming recent state-of-the-art methods in similar OOD scenarios. Despite the increased variability observed when generalizing to cities in other continents, particularly in Asia with its distinct urban typologies and prevalence of high-rise structures, this study underscores the significant potential of DL for robust cross-city and cross-continental transfer learning in building height estimation from single VHR SAR data.

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) affects 12-18% of individuals over 60. MCI patients exhibit cognitive dysfunctions without significant daily functional loss. While MCI may progress to dementia, predicting this transition remains a clinical challenge due to limited and unreliable indicators. Behavioral changes, like in the execution of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), can signal such progression. Sensorized smart homes and wearable devices offer an innovative solution for continuous, non-intrusive monitoring ADLs for MCI patients. However, current machine learning models for detecting behavioral changes lack transparency, hindering clinicians' trust. This paper introduces the SERENADE project, a European Union-funded initiative that aims to detect and explain behavioral changes associated with cognitive decline using explainable AI methods. SERENADE aims at collecting one year of data from 30 MCI patients living alone, leveraging AI to support clinical decision-making and offering a new approach to early dementia detection.

First formulated by Sir Isaac Newton in his work "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica", the concept of the Three-Body Problem was put forth as a study of the motion of the three celestial bodies within the Earth-Sun-Moon system. In a generalized definition, it seeks to predict the motion for an isolated system composed of three point masses freely interacting under Newton's law of universal attraction. This proves to be analogous to a multitude of interactions between celestial bodies, and thus, the problem finds applicability within the studies of celestial mechanics. Despite numerous attempts by renowned physicists to solve it throughout the last three centuries, no general closed-form solutions have been reached due to its inherently chaotic nature for most initial conditions. Current state-of-the-art solutions are based on two approaches, either numerical high-precision integration or machine learning-based. Notwithstanding the breakthroughs of neural networks, these present a significant limitation, which is their ignorance of any prior knowledge of the chaotic systems presented. Thus, in this work, we propose a novel method that utilizes Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs). These deep neural networks are able to incorporate any prior system knowledge expressible as an Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) into their learning processes as a regularizing agent. Our findings showcase that PINNs surpass current state-of-the-art machine learning methods with comparable prediction quality. Despite a better prediction quality, the usability of numerical integrators suffers due to their prohibitively high computational cost. These findings confirm that PINNs are both effective and time-efficient open-form solvers of the Three-Body Problem that capitalize on the extensive knowledge we hold of classical mechanics.

Context. As software systems become more integrated into society's infrastructure, the responsibility of software professionals to ensure compliance with various non-functional requirements increases. These requirements include security, safety, privacy, and, increasingly, non-discrimination. Motivation. Fairness in pricing algorithms grants equitable access to basic services without discriminating on the basis of protected attributes. Method. We replicate a previous empirical study that used black box testing to audit pricing algorithms used by Italian car insurance companies, accessible through a popular online system. With respect to the previous study, we enlarged the number of tests and the number of demographic variables under analysis. Results. Our work confirms and extends previous findings, highlighting the problematic permanence of discrimination across time: demographic variables significantly impact pricing to this day, with birthplace remaining the main discriminatory factor against individuals not born in Italian cities. We also found that driver profiles can determine the number of quotes available to the user, denying equal opportunities to all. Conclusion. The study underscores the importance of testing for non-discrimination in software systems that affect people's everyday lives. Performing algorithmic audits over time makes it possible to evaluate the evolution of such algorithms. It also demonstrates the role that empirical software engineering can play in making software systems more accountable.

As humanity prepares for new missions to the Moon and Mars, astronauts will need to operate with greater autonomy, given the communication delays that make real-time support from Earth difficult. For instance, messages between Mars and Earth can take up to 24 minutes, making quick responses impossible. This limitation poses a challenge for astronauts who must rely on in-situ tools to access the large volume of data from spacecraft sensors, rovers, and satellites, data that is often fragmented and difficult to use. To bridge this gap, systems like the Mars Exploration Telemetry-Driven Information System (METIS) are being developed. METIS is an AI assistant designed to handle routine tasks, monitor spacecraft systems, and detect anomalies, all while reducing the reliance on mission control. Current Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) Models, while powerful, struggle in safety-critical environments. They can generate plausible but incorrect responses, a phenomenon known as "hallucination," which could endanger astronauts. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes enhancing systems like METIS by integrating GPTs, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Knowledge Graphs (KGs), and Augmented Reality (AR). The idea is to allow astronauts to interact with their data more intuitively, using natural language queries and visualizing real-time information through AR. KGs will be used to easily access live telemetry and multimodal data, ensuring that astronauts have the right information at the right time. By combining AI, KGs, and AR, this new system will empower astronauts to work more autonomously, safely, and efficiently during future space missions.

The emergence of modular satellites marks a significant transformation in spacecraft engineering, introducing a new paradigm of flexibility, resilience, and scalability in space exploration endeavors. In addressing complex challenges such as attitude control, both the satellite's morphological architecture and the controller are crucial for optimizing performance. Despite substantial research on optimal control, there remains a significant gap in developing optimized and practical assembly strategies for modular satellites tailored to specific mission constraints. This research gap primarily arises from the inherently complex nature of co-optimizing design and control, a process known for its notorious bi-level optimization loop. Conventionally tackled through artificial evolution, this issue involves optimizing the morphology based on the fitness of individual controllers, which is sample-inefficient and computationally expensive. In this paper, we introduce a novel gradient-based approach to simultaneously optimize both morphology and control for modular satellites, enhancing their performance and efficiency in attitude control missions. Our Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that this co-optimization approach results in modular satellites with better mission performance compared to those designed by evolution-based approaches. Furthermore, this study discusses potential avenues for future research.

In this study, we aim to determine if generalized sounds and music can share a common emotional space, improving predictions of emotion in terms of arousal and valence. We propose the use of multiple datasets as a multi-domain learning technique. Our approach involves creating a common space encompassing features that characterize both generalized sounds and music, as they can evoke emotions in a similar manner. To achieve this, we utilized two publicly available datasets, namely IADS-E and PMEmo, following a standardized experimental protocol. We employed a wide variety of features that capture diverse aspects of the audio structure including key parameters of spectrum, energy, and voicing. Subsequently, we performed joint learning on the common feature space, leveraging heterogeneous model architectures. Interestingly, this synergistic scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art in both sound and music emotion prediction. The code enabling full replication of the presented experimental pipeline is available at https://github.com/LIMUNIMI/MusicSoundEmotions.

The proliferation of human-AI ecosystems involving human interaction with algorithms, such as assistants and recommenders, raises concerns about large-scale social behaviour. Despite evidence of such phenomena across several contexts, the collective impact of GPS navigation services remains unclear: while beneficial to the user, they can also cause chaos if too many vehicles are driven through the same few roads. Our study employs a simulation framework to assess navigation services' influence on road network usage and CO2 emissions. The results demonstrate a universal pattern of amplified conformity: increasing adoption rates of navigation services cause a reduction of route diversity of mobile travellers and increased concentration of traffic and emissions on fewer roads, thus exacerbating an unequal distribution of negative externalities on selected neighbourhoods. Although navigation services recommendations can help reduce CO2 emissions when their adoption rate is low, these benefits diminish or even disappear when the adoption rate is high and exceeds a certain city- and service-dependent threshold. We summarize these discoveries in a non-linear function that connects the marginal increase of conformity with the marginal reduction in CO2 emissions. Our simulation approach addresses the challenges posed by the complexity of transportation systems and the lack of data and algorithmic transparency.

Alternative routing is crucial to minimize the environmental impact of urban transportation while enhancing road network efficiency and reducing traffic congestion. Existing methods neglect information about road popularity, possibly leading to unintended consequences such as increasing emissions and congestion. This paper introduces Polaris, an alternative routing algorithm that exploits road popularity to optimize traffic distribution and reduce CO2 emissions. Polaris leverages the novel concept of K-road layers, which mitigates the feedback loop effect where redirecting vehicles to less popular roads could increase their popularity in the future. We conduct experiments in three cities to evaluate Polaris against state-of-the-art alternative routing algorithms. Our results demonstrate that Polaris significantly reduces the overuse of highly popular road edges and traversed regulated intersections, showcasing its ability to generate efficient routes and distribute traffic more evenly. Furthermore, Polaris achieves substantial CO2 reductions, outperforming existing alternative routing strategies. Finally, we compare Polaris to an algorithm that coordinates vehicles centrally to distribute them more evenly on the road network. Our findings reveal that Polaris performs comparably well, even with much less information, highlighting its potential as an efficient and sustainable solution for urban traffic management.

The Latin language has received attention from the computational linguistics research community, which has built, over the years, several valuable resources, ranging from detailed annotated corpora to sophisticated tools for linguistic analysis. With the recent advent of large language models, researchers have also started developing models capable of generating vector representations of Latin texts. The performances of such models remain behind the ones for modern languages, given the disparity in available data. In this paper, we present the LiMe dataset, a corpus of 325 documents extracted from a series of medieval manuscripts called Libri sententiarum potestatis Mediolani, and thoroughly annotated by experts, in order to be employed for masked language model, as well as supervised natural language processing tasks.