Publications by authors named "Antonio Scarfone"

Honeybees are insects very sensitive to environmental pollution and at the same time very good indicators of the pollution levels for certain types of pollutants. The morphology and ethology of these insects make them perfect vectors for dust and substances, including heavy metals produced by anthropic activities or naturally generated and deposited on foraged flora. When bees are raised to produce foods such as honey and pollen, they can easily transfer pollutants collected from contaminated flower affecting the quality of these products.

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It is known that Kaniadakis entropy, a generalization of the Shannon-Boltzmann-Gibbs entropic form, is always super-additive for any bipartite statistically independent distributions. In this paper, we show that when imposing a suitable constraint, there exist classes of maximal entropy distributions labeled by a positive real number ℵ>0 that makes Kaniadakis entropy multi-additive, i.e.

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Constitutive relations are fundamental and essential to characterize physical systems. By utilizing the κ-deformed functions, some constitutive relations are generalized. We here show some applications of the Kaniadakis distributions, based on the inverse hyperbolic sine function, to some topics belonging to the realm of statistical physics and natural science.

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The kinetics of adsorption phenomena are investigated in terms of local and non-local kinetic equations of the Langmuir type. The sample is assumed in the shape of a slab, limited by two homogeneous planar-parallel surfaces, in such a manner that the problem can be considered one-dimensional. The local kinetic equations in time are analyzed when both saturation and non-saturation regimes are considered.

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Nectar is a complex biochemical substance secreted with particular rhythm by flower nectaries. Nectar is the base of a mutualism in which pollinators consume nectar, as food source, and are involuntarily responsible for the transport of pollen and pollination. The dynamics and temporal patterns of nectar secretion are still not fully understood as well as the environmental and climatic factors influencing its production.

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As known, a method to introduce non-conventional statistics may be realized by modifying the number of possible combinations to put particles in a collection of single-particle states. In this paper, we assume that the weight factor of the possible configurations of a system of interacting particles can be obtained by generalizing opportunely the combinatorics, according to a certain analytical function f{π}(n) of the actual number of particles present in every energy level. Following this approach, the configurational Boltzmann entropy is revisited in a very general manner starting from a continuous deformation of the multinomial coefficients depending on a set of deformation parameters {π}.

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The present Special Issue, 'Entropy and Non-Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics', consists of seven original research papers [...

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A great variety of complex physical, natural and artificial systems are governed by statistical distributions, which often follow a standard exponential function in the bulk, while their tail obeys the Pareto power law. The recently introduced [Formula: see text]-statistics framework predicts distribution functions with this feature. A growing number of applications in different fields of investigation are beginning to prove the relevance and effectiveness of [Formula: see text]-statistics in fitting empirical data.

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The class of strongly pseudoadditive (SPA) entropies, which can be represented as an increasing continuous transformation of Shannon and Rényi entropies, have intensively been studied in previous decades. Although their mathematical structure has thoroughly been explored and established by generalized Shannon-Khinchin axioms, the analysis of their thermostatistical properties have mostly been limited to special cases which belong to two parameter Sharma-Mittal entropy class, such as Tsallis, Renyi and Gaussian entropies. In this paper we present a general analysis of the strongly pseudoadditive entropies thermostatistics by taking into account both linear and escort constraints on internal energy.

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A challenging frontier in physics concerns the study of complex and disordered systems. [..

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In this paper, we present a review of recent developments on the κ -deformed statistical mechanics in the framework of the information geometry. Three different geometric structures are introduced in the κ -formalism which are obtained starting from three, not equivalent, divergence functions, corresponding to the κ -deformed version of Kullback-Leibler, "Kerridge" and Brègman divergences. The first statistical manifold derived from the κ -Kullback-Leibler divergence form an invariant geometry with a positive curvature that vanishes in the κ → 0 limit.

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Negative contribution of entropy (negentropy) of a non-cahotic system, representing the potential of work, is a source of energy that can be transferred to an internal or inserted subsystem. In this case, the system loses order and its entropy increases. The subsystem increases its energy and can perform processes that otherwise would not happen, like, for instance, the nuclear fusion of inserted deuterons in liquid metal matrix, among many others.

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We investigate the cholesteric-nematic transition induced by an external bulk field in a sample of finite thickness ℓ. The analysis is performed by considering a tilted magnetic field with respect to the easy direction imposed by rigid boundary conditions inducing planar orientation. In the case of parallel orientation between the magnetic field and of the easy direction, in the limit of ℓ→∞ we reobtain the results of de Gennes where the effective pitch of the cholesteric is a continuous function of the magnetic field diverging at the critical field related to the cholesteric-nematic transition.

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Plasma leptin and growth hormone (GH) profile and pulsatility have been studied in morbidly obese subjects before and 14 months after bilio-pancreatic diversion (BPD), a bariatric technique producing massive lipid malabsorption. The maximum leptin diurnal variation (acrophase) decreased (10.27+/-1.

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Diurnal variations of adiponectin levels have been studied in normal-weight men and in diabetic and nondiabetic obese subjects, but no data have been reported in obese subjects after weight loss. We collected blood samples at 1-h intervals over 24 h from seven severely obese subjects before and after massive weight loss consequent to surgical operation (bilio-pancreatic diversion [BPD]) to measure adiponectin, insulin, glucose, and cortisol levels. Insulin sensitivity was assessed by euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp (M value).

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