A spoof or fake is a counterfeit biometric that is used in an attempt to circumvent a biometric sensor Liveness detection distinguishes between live and fake biometric traits. Liveness detection is based on the principle that additional information can be garnered above and beyond the data procured by a standard verification system, and this additional data can be used to verify if a biometric measure is authentic. The Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet) goal is to compare both software-based (Part 1) and hardware-based (Part 2) fingerprint liveness detection methodologies and is open to all academic and industrial institutions. Submissions for the third edition were much more than in the previous editions of LivDet demonstrating a growing interest in the area. We had nine participants (with eleven algorithms) for Part 1 and two submissions for Part 2.

A spoof or fake is a counterfeit biometric that is used in an attempt to circumvent a biometric sensor. Liveness detection distinguishes between live and fake biometric traits. Liveness detection is based on the principle that additional information can be garnered above and beyond the data procured by a standard authentication system, and this additional data can be used to determine if a biometric measure is authentic. The Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet) goal is to compare both software-based and hardware-based fingerprint liveness detection methodologies. The competition is open to all academic and industrial institutions. The number of competitors grows at every LivDet edition demonstrating a growing interest in the area. In this edition eleven institutions have registered with twelve submissions for the software-based part and one for the hardware-based part.

Recent experiments, reported in the third edition of Fingerprint Liveness Detection competition (LivDet 2013), have clearly shown that fingerprint liveness detection is a very difficult and challenging task. Although the number of approaches is large, none of them can be claimed as able to detect liveness of fingerprint traits with an acceptable error rate. In our opinion, in order to investigate at which extent this error can be reduced, novel feature sets must be proposed, and, eventually, integrated with existing ones. In this paper, a novel fingerprint liveness descriptor named “BSIF” is described, which, similarly to Local Binary Pattern and Local Phase Quantization-based representations, encodes the local fingerprint texture on a feature vector. Experimental results on LivDet 2011 data sets appear to be encouraging and make this descriptor worth of further investigations.

New technologies for management, monitoring, and control of spatio-temporal crop variability in precision viticulture scenarios are numerous. Remote sensing relies on sensors able to provide useful data for the improvement of management efficiency and the optimization of inputs. unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are the newest and most versatile tools, characterized by high precision and accuracy, flexibility, and low operating costs. The work aims at providing a complete overview of the application of UASs in precision viticulture, focusing on the different application purposes, the applied equipment, the potential of technologies combined with UASs for identifying vineyards’ variability. The review discusses the potential of UASs in viticulture by distinguishing five areas of application: rows segmentation and crop features detection techniques; vineyard variability monitoring; estimation of row area and volume; disease detection; vigor and prescription maps creation. Technological innovation and low purchase costs make UASs the core tools for decision support in the customary use by winegrowers. The ability of the systems to respond to the current demands for the acquisition of digital technologies in agricultural fields makes UASs a candidate to play an increasingly important role in future scenarios of viticulture application.

Fingerprint Presentation Attack Detection (FPAD) deals with distinguishing images coming from artificial replicas of the fingerprint characteristic, made up of materials like silicone, gelatine or latex, and images coming from alive fingerprints. Images are captured by modern scanners, typically relying on solid-state or optical technologies. Since from 2009, the Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet) aims to assess the performance of the state-of-the-art algorithms according to a rigorous experimental protocol and, at the same time, a simple overview of the basic achievements. The competition is open to all academics research centers and all companies that work in this field. The positive, increasing trend of the participants number, which supports the success of this initiative, is confirmed even this year: 17 algorithms were submitted to the competition, with a larger involvement of companies and academies. This means that the topic is relevant for both sides, and points out that a lot of work must be done in terms of fundamental and applied research.