Representing User Navigation in XML Retrieval with Structural Summaries

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ali, M. S.; Consens, Mariano P.; Larsen, Birger

This poster presents a novel way to represent user navigation in XML retrieval using collection statistics from XML summaries. Currently, developing user navigation models in XML retrieval is costly and the models are specific to collected user assessments. We address this problem by proposing...

Inland Waterway Mile Markers

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — Contains 11,201 sequential mile positions of navigable inland waterways and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Records include eight fields; id, latitude, longitude,...

Dangerous goods regulations in Europe and worldwide inland navigation and other modes of transport

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ridder, K.

1993-01-01

Since, for historical reasons, separate dangerous goods regulations were developed for each mode of transport, there now exist several different regulatory regimes. For Europe, and indeed the whole world, these uncoordinated regulations pose a serious problem. In my paper I will show 1) which regulations are applicable in Europe, 2) which role international transport organizations play and 3) which role the European Community plays. Special emphasis will be placed on inland navigation, since it is this mode of transport that will experience extensive changes during 1992. (J.P.N.)

Exploring User Engagement in Information Networks: Behavioural – based Navigation Modelling, Ideas and Directions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vesna Kumbaroska

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Revealing an endless array of user behaviors in an online environment is a very good indicator of the user’s interests either in the process of browsing or in purchasing. One such behavior is the navigation behavior, so detected user navigation patterns are able to be used for practical purposes such as: improving user engagement, turning most browsers into buyers, personalize content or interface, etc. In this regard, our research represents a connection between navigation modelling and user engagement. A usage of the Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets concept for stochastic behavioral-based modelling of the navigation process is proposed for measuring user engagement components. Different types of users are automatically identified and clustered according to their navigation behaviors, thus the developed model gives great insight into the navigation process. As part of this study, Peterson’s model for measuring the user engagement is explored and a direct calculation of its components is illustrated. At the same time, asssuming that several user sessions/visits are initialized in a certain time frame, following the Petri Nets dynamics is indicating that the proposed behavioral – based model could be used for user engagement metrics calculation, thus some basic ideas are discussed, and initial directions are given.

Environmental Aspects of Transport in the Context of Development of Inland Navigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Galieriková Andrea

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Transport has an immense impact on the environment. The largest share of environmental pollution is caused by road transport. The atmosphere is threatened by fuel combustion of engines of road vehicles, thereby leading to the global warming of Earth. In addition to having an adverse impact on the environment, such as greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide emissions, road transport also leads to external effects such as noise pollution, vibration, congestion and traffic accidents. The volume of transport in the world, notably on the roads, is increasing day by day. We should take the necessary steps to move to more environmentally-friendly modes of transportation, such as rail and inland navigation. Rail transportation is currently the largest competitor of road transport. If the waterways infrastructure is improved, there would be a decrease in the traffic flow of motorways and thus, we can move to a more environmentally-friendly transportation.

Altimetry for inland water

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Karina; Stenseng, Lars; Villadsen, Heidi

2016-01-01

With the globally decreasing amount of in-situ stations, satellite altimetry based water levels are an important supplement to obtain continuous time series of the worlds inland water. In this study we demonstrate two new services, that are related to inland water and altimetry. The first...... is Altimetry for inland water (AltWater), which is a new open service, that provides altimetry based time series for inland water. Currently, the service includes data from cryoSat- 2, but we intend to add other missions in future versions. The second,tsHydro, is a software package, that is implemented...... in the open source environment "R". The package enables the user to easily construct water level time series for lakes and rivers based on along-track altimetry data....

The effect of egocentric body movements on users' navigation performance and spatial memory in zoomable user interfaces

OpenAIRE

Rädle, Roman; Jetter, Hans-Christian; Butscher, Simon; Reiterer, Harald

2013-01-01

We present two experiments examining the impact of navigation techniques on users’ navigation performance and spatial memory in a zoomable user interface (ZUI). The first experiment with 24 participants compared the effect of egocentric body movements with traditional multi-touch navigation. The results indicate a 47% decrease in path lengths and a 34% decrease in task time in favor of egocentric navigation, but no significant effect on users’ spatial memory immediately after a navigation tas...

Mobile Augmented Reality enhances indoor navigation for wheelchair users

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luciene Chagas de Oliveira

Full Text Available Introduction: Individuals with mobility impairments associated with lower limb disabilities often face enormous challenges to participate in routine activities and to move around various environments. For many, the use of wheelchairs is paramount to provide mobility and social inclusion. Nevertheless, they still face a number of challenges to properly function in our society. Among the many difficulties, one in particular stands out: navigating in complex internal environments (indoors. The main objective of this work is to propose an architecture based on Mobile Augmented Reality to support the development of indoor navigation systems dedicated to wheelchair users, that is also capable of recording CAD drawings of the buildings and dealing with accessibility issues for that population. Methods Overall, five main functional requirements are proposed: the ability to allow for indoor navigation by means of Mobile Augmented Reality techniques; the capacity to register and configure building CAD drawings and the position of fiducial markers, points of interest and obstacles to be avoided by the wheelchair user; the capacity to find the best route for wheelchair indoor navigation, taking stairs and other obstacles into account; allow for the visualization of virtual directional arrows in the smartphone displays; and incorporate touch or voice commands to interact with the application. The architecture is proposed as a combination of four layers: User interface; Control; Service; and Infrastructure. A proof-of-concept application was developed and tests were performed with disable volunteers operating manual and electric wheelchairs. Results The application was implemented in Java for the Android operational system. A local database was used to store the test building CAD drawings and the position of fiducial markers and points of interest. The Android Augmented Reality library was used to implement Augmented Reality and the Blender open source

Fusion of navigational data in River Information Services

Science.gov (United States)

Kazimierski, W.

2009-04-01

. Their main advantage over AIS is total independence from tracked target's facilities. For example, wrong indications of ship's GPS would affect AIS accuracy, but wouldn't have any impact on values estimated by radar. In addition to this in many times update rate for AIS data is longer than for radar. Thus, it can be noticed, that efficient tracking system introduced in RIS shall use both AIS receivers (based on satellite derived positions), and independent radar and camera sensors. This will however cause determining at least two different set of information about positions and movement parameters of targets. Doubled or multiplied vectors for single target are unacceptable, due to safety of navigation and traffic management. Hence the need of data fusion in RIS is obvious. The main goal is to develop unambiguous, clear and reliable information about ships' position and movement for all users in the system. Data fusion itself is not a new problem in maritime navigation. There are systems of Integrated Bridge on sea-going ships, which use information coming out from different sources. However the possibilities of integration of navigational information in the aspect of inland navigation, especially in River Information Services, still needs to be thoroughly surveyed. It is quite useful for simplifying the deduction, to introduce two data fusion levels. First of them is being done on board of the vessel. Its aim is to integrate all information coming from different sensors in the so called Integrated Navigational System. The other task of this fusion is to estimate reliable information about other objects based on AIS and radar. The second level is the integration of AIS, radar and closed-circuit television (CCTV) carried out in coastal station in order to determine Tactical and Strategic Traffic Image. The navigational information in RIS itself can be divided into two main groups. The first one is called static data and contains al basic information related to ship itself

77 FR 26522 - Inland Waterways Users Board

Science.gov (United States)

2012-05-04

...: June 6, 2012. Location: The OMNI William Penn Hotel, 530 William Penn Place, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 at... budget, an update of the Inland Marine Transportation System (IMTS) Capital Projects Business Model...

The Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) project

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stjernholm, M.; Wuertz, J.; Prunayre, F-X.

The report describe the developed software prototype for user access to inland water quality data through the EDEN-IW system......The report describe the developed software prototype for user access to inland water quality data through the EDEN-IW system...

The Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) project

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stjernholm, M.; Sortkjær, O.; Papageorgiou, A.

The final report describe development of the EDEN-IW prototype for user access to heterogenous databases of inland water quality data through the EDEN-IW system......The final report describe development of the EDEN-IW prototype for user access to heterogenous databases of inland water quality data through the EDEN-IW system...

The Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) Project

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Stjernholm, M.; Sortkjær, O.; Preux, D.

Project of the Information Societies Technology (IST) Programme. The report describe the funtional requirements for user access to inland water quality data through the EDEN-IW system.......Project of the Information Societies Technology (IST) Programme. The report describe the funtional requirements for user access to inland water quality data through the EDEN-IW system....

Monitoring Completed Navigation Projects Program

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Bottin, Jr., Robert R

2001-01-01

... (MCNP) Program. The program was formerly known as the Monitoring Completed Coastal Projects Program, but was modified in the late 1990s to include all navigation projects, inland as well as coastal...

The computer coordination method and research of inland river traffic based on ship database

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Shanshan; Li, Gen

2018-04-01

A computer coordinated management method for inland river ship traffic is proposed in this paper, Get the inland ship's position, speed and other navigation information by VTS, building ship's statics and dynamic data bases, writing a program of computer coordinated management of inland river traffic by VB software, Automatic simulation and calculation of the meeting states of ships, Providing ship's long-distance collision avoidance information. The long-distance collision avoidance of ships will be realized. The results show that, Ships avoid or reduce meetings, this method can effectively control the macro collision avoidance of ships.

Extraction of user's navigation commands from upper body force interaction in walker assisted gait.

Science.gov (United States)

Frizera Neto, Anselmo; Gallego, Juan A; Rocon, Eduardo; Pons, José L; Ceres, Ramón

2010-08-05

The advances in technology make possible the incorporation of sensors and actuators in rollators, building safer robots and extending the use of walkers to a more diverse population. This paper presents a new method for the extraction of navigation related components from upper-body force interaction data in walker assisted gait. A filtering architecture is designed to cancel: (i) the high-frequency noise caused by vibrations on the walker's structure due to irregularities on the terrain or walker's wheels and (ii) the cadence related force components caused by user's trunk oscillations during gait. As a result, a third component related to user's navigation commands is distinguished. For the cancelation of high-frequency noise, a Benedict-Bordner g-h filter was designed presenting very low values for Kinematic Tracking Error ((2.035 +/- 0.358).10(-2) kgf) and delay ((1.897 +/- 0.3697).10(1)ms). A Fourier Linear Combiner filtering architecture was implemented for the adaptive attenuation of about 80% of the cadence related components' energy from force data. This was done without compromising the information contained in the frequencies close to such notch filters. The presented methodology offers an effective cancelation of the undesired components from force data, allowing the system to extract in real-time voluntary user's navigation commands. Based on this real-time identification of voluntary user's commands, a classical approach to the control architecture of the robotic walker is being developed, in order to obtain stable and safe user assisted locomotion.

Extraction of user's navigation commands from upper body force interaction in walker assisted gait

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pons José L

2010-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The advances in technology make possible the incorporation of sensors and actuators in rollators, building safer robots and extending the use of walkers to a more diverse population. This paper presents a new method for the extraction of navigation related components from upper-body force interaction data in walker assisted gait. A filtering architecture is designed to cancel: (i the high-frequency noise caused by vibrations on the walker's structure due to irregularities on the terrain or walker's wheels and (ii the cadence related force components caused by user's trunk oscillations during gait. As a result, a third component related to user's navigation commands is distinguished. Results For the cancelation of high-frequency noise, a Benedict-Bordner g-h filter was designed presenting very low values for Kinematic Tracking Error ((2.035 ± 0.358·10-2 kgf and delay ((1.897 ± 0.3697·101ms. A Fourier Linear Combiner filtering architecture was implemented for the adaptive attenuation of about 80% of the cadence related components' energy from force data. This was done without compromising the information contained in the frequencies close to such notch filters. Conclusions The presented methodology offers an effective cancelation of the undesired components from force data, allowing the system to extract in real-time voluntary user's navigation commands. Based on this real-time identification of voluntary user's commands, a classical approach to the control architecture of the robotic walker is being developed, in order to obtain stable and safe user assisted locomotion.

An advanced traveler navigation system adapted to route choice preferences of the individual users

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mahyar Amirgholy

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The majority of existing navigation systems only account for a single aspect of the route choice, like travel time or distance, in finding the optimal route for the trips in the network. In this research, we first identify a range of diverse factors that travelers take into account in their route choice decision in the network. A stated preference survey is conducted to show the heterogeneity in the preferences of users and its dependence to the purpose of the trips over the weekdays and weekends. Interestingly, results of the survey show that road safety is the most influential factor in the route choice decision of the average participants over weekends, exceeding even the travel time, and participants give more importance to the scenic quality of the routes for their weekend trips in comparison to their weekday trips. The results of the second part of the survey also indicate that in 27% of the cases participants choose routes other than the ones suggested by navigation systems, and 33% of the times that they take the suggested routes, they modify these routes according to their own preferences. The partial inability of existing navigation systems to suggest the routes that match the preferences of users can be attributed to ignoring (1 the diversity in influential factors and (2 the heterogeneity in preferences of the users by these systems. We propose a dynamic mixed logit route choice model to include the effects of information and learning to estimate parameters of a multivariable utility function for individual users based on their own historical route choice data over time. Finally, we present the concept of a smart navigation system that can gather the required information from real-time and online sources to suggest the routes that best match the users’ own preferences.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE RISK MANAGEMENT IN SERBIAN INLAND WATERWAY TRANSPORT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Todor Backalic

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Climate changes require special attention and global monitoring. Impacts on nature and industry are increasingly evident. Water transport could be the backbone of the future European combined transport system. Unfortunately, risks in water transport are perhaps an under researched area and consequently, this article outlines a rationale, why it is necessary to develop competence about risk in water transport. The development of the cargo transport in river traffic depends directly on technical-exploitative characteristics of the network of inland waterways. Research of navigational abilities of inland waterways always comes before building ships or making a transport schedule. Navigation characteristics of rivers have to be determined as precise as possible, especially from the aspect of determination the possible draught of vessels. River transport due to their operational business and environmental conditions faced with several risks having different degrees of consequences. Current risk assessment methods for water transport just consider some dramatic events. We present a new method for the assessment of risk and vulnerability of water transport where river depth represents a crucial part. The analysis of water level changes on Serbian rivers during the last sixty years was done.

75 FR 49508 - Navigation Safety Advisory Council; Vacancies

Science.gov (United States)

2010-08-13

... Council; Vacancies AGENCY: Coast Guard, DHS. ACTION: Request for applications. SUMMARY: The Coast Guard seeks applications for membership on the Navigation Safety Advisory Council (NAVSAC). This Committee... prevention of collisions, rammings, and groundings. This includes, but is not limited to: Inland and...

Mooring Facility Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Landmark Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Railways - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

River Gauges - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Building Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Harbor Facility Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Landmark Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Shoreline Construction Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Overhead Pipeline Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Data Coverage Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Storage Tank or Silo Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Building Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Bridge Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Harbor Administrative Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Levee Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Lock Traffic Signal Stations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Dam Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Crane Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Lateral Beacons - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Caution Area Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Airports - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Land Region Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Harbor Facility Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Storage Tank or Silo Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Wrecks - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Shoreline Construction Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Small Craft Facility Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Pile Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Mooring Facility Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

River Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Pylon Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Dam Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Distance Marks - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Canal Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Roads - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Sea Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Special Purpose Buoys - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Ferry Routes - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Underwater Rocks - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Caution Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Recommended Tracks - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Lakes - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Floodwalls - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Administrative Areas where Vessels May Anchor - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Obstruction Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

River Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Canal Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Small Craft Facility Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Obstruction Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Hulke Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Land Surface Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Anchorages - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Levee Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Submarine Cable Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Depth Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Pylon Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Coastlines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Submarine Pipeline Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Overhead Cables - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Sea Area Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Shoreline Construction Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Floating Docks - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Dry Docks - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Land Region Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Lock Gate Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Data Quality Assessment Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Built Up Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Nautical Publication Information Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Obstruction Lines - USACE IENC

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Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Conveyor Lines - USACE IENC

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Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Sloped Ground Areas - USACE IENC

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Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Mooring Facility Areas - USACE IENC

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Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Conveyor Areas - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Crane Locations - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Sloped Ground Lines - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic Navigational charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of Navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be...

Lateral Buoys - USACE IENC

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Homeland Security — These inland electronic navigation charts (IENCs) were developed from available data used in maintenance of navigation channels. Users of these IENCs should be aware...

Study on the propagation and dissipation of inland ship congestion under different control strategies

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Yanyi; Wu, Hongyu; Wen, Zhe

2017-05-01

Inland waterway transportation is an important part of the comprehensive transportation system of sustainable development, and it is also a way of transportation which is restricted by natural conditions greatly. In recent years, the problems of insufficient traffic capacity of The Three Gorges become prominent due to the increasing in the number of ships. And the ship's detention caused by gale, frog, accident and one-way traffic in dry season has occurred, which not only increased the pressure of the navigable waterway but also seriously affected the safety of shipping. Based on the different types of ships, the Arena software was used to simulate the ship traffic flow. The paper analyzed the traffic congestion propagation and dissipation rule of the ship under different navigation control methods, and provided decision reference for the navigation management department to formulate the relevant navigation control strategy.

Inland Waters Night Lighting Configurations: A Navigation Rules Course for Coast Guard Auxiliarists.

Science.gov (United States)

Griffiths, Gregory Peter

A project developed a training program to teach boaters to recognize and interpret properly the lights of other vessels in nighttime or other reduced visibility conditions in the inland waters of the United States. The project followed the Instructional Systems Design model in the development of the course. The target population were members of…

75 FR 27353 - Navigation Safety Advisory Council; Meeting

Science.gov (United States)

2010-05-14

... meet at the Courtyard by Marriott Washington Capitol Hill/Navy Yard Hotel, Admiral I and II Conference... online docket, USCG-2010-0387, at http://www.regulations.gov . FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Mike... Installations (OREI) NVIC 02-07 review. (3) Designation of ``narrow channels'' for Inland Navigation Rule 9...

INTEGRITY ANALYSIS OF REAL-TIME PPP TECHNIQUE WITH IGS-RTS SERVICE FOR MARITIME NAVIGATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. El-Diasty

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Open sea and inland waterways are the most widely used mode for transporting goods worldwide. It is the International Maritime Organization (IMO that defines the requirements for position fixing equipment for a worldwide radio-navigation system, in terms of accuracy, integrity, continuity, availability and coverage for the various phases of navigation. Satellite positioning systems can contribute to meet these requirements, as well as optimize marine transportation. Marine navigation usually consists of three major phases identified as Ocean/Coastal/Port approach/Inland waterway, in port navigation and automatic docking with alert limit ranges from 25 m to 0.25 m. GPS positioning is widely used for many applications and is currently recognized by IMO for a future maritime navigation. With the advancement in autonomous GPS positioning techniques such as Precise Point Positioning (PPP and with the advent of new real-time GNSS correction services such as IGS-Real-Time-Service (RTS, it is necessary to investigate the integrity of the PPP-based positioning technique along with IGS-RTS service in terms of availability and reliability for safe navigation in maritime application. This paper monitors the integrity of an autonomous real-time PPP-based GPS positioning system using the IGS real-time service (RTS for maritime applications that require minimum availability of integrity of 99.8 % to fulfil the IMO integrity standards. To examine the integrity of the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based technique for maritime applications, kinematic data from a dual frequency GPS receiver is collected onboard a vessel and investigated with the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based GPS positioning technique. It is shown that the availability of integrity of the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based GPS solution is 100 % for all navigation phases and therefore fulfil the IMO integrity standards (99.8 % availability immediately (after 1 second, after 2 minutes and after 42 minutes

Integrity Analysis of Real-Time Ppp Technique with Igs-Rts Service for Maritime Navigation

Science.gov (United States)

El-Diasty, M.

2017-10-01

Open sea and inland waterways are the most widely used mode for transporting goods worldwide. It is the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that defines the requirements for position fixing equipment for a worldwide radio-navigation system, in terms of accuracy, integrity, continuity, availability and coverage for the various phases of navigation. Satellite positioning systems can contribute to meet these requirements, as well as optimize marine transportation. Marine navigation usually consists of three major phases identified as Ocean/Coastal/Port approach/Inland waterway, in port navigation and automatic docking with alert limit ranges from 25 m to 0.25 m. GPS positioning is widely used for many applications and is currently recognized by IMO for a future maritime navigation. With the advancement in autonomous GPS positioning techniques such as Precise Point Positioning (PPP) and with the advent of new real-time GNSS correction services such as IGS-Real-Time-Service (RTS), it is necessary to investigate the integrity of the PPP-based positioning technique along with IGS-RTS service in terms of availability and reliability for safe navigation in maritime application. This paper monitors the integrity of an autonomous real-time PPP-based GPS positioning system using the IGS real-time service (RTS) for maritime applications that require minimum availability of integrity of 99.8 % to fulfil the IMO integrity standards. To examine the integrity of the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based technique for maritime applications, kinematic data from a dual frequency GPS receiver is collected onboard a vessel and investigated with the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based GPS positioning technique. It is shown that the availability of integrity of the real-time IGS-RTS PPP-based GPS solution is 100 % for all navigation phases and therefore fulfil the IMO integrity standards (99.8 % availability) immediately (after 1 second), after 2 minutes and after 42 minutes of convergence

The social, economic, and environmental importance of inland fish and fisheries

Science.gov (United States)

Lynch, Abigail J.; Cooke, Steven J.; Deines, Andrew M.; Bower, Shannon D.; Bunnell, David B.; Cowx, Ian G.; Nguyen, Vivian M.; Nohner, Joel K.; Phouthavong, Kaviphone; Riley, Betsy; Rogers, Mark W.; Taylor, William W.; Woelmer, Whitney; Youn, So-Jung; Beard, T. Douglas

2016-01-01

Though reported capture fisheries are dominated by marine production, inland fish and fisheries make substantial contributions to meeting the challenges faced by individuals, society, and the environment in a changing global landscape. Inland capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute over 40% to the world’s reported finfish production from less than 0.01% of the total volume of water on earth. These fisheries provide food for billions and livelihoods for millions of people worldwide. Herein, using supporting evidence from the literature, we review 10 reasons why inland fish and fisheries are important to the individual (food security, economic security, empowerment), to society (cultural services, recreational services, human health and well-being, knowledge transfer and capacity building), and to the environment (ecosystem function and biodiversity, as aquatic “canaries”, the “green food” movement). However, the current limitations to valuing the services provided by inland fish and fisheries make comparison with other water resource users extremely difficult. This list can serve to demonstrate the importance of inland fish and fisheries, a necessary first step to better incorporating them into agriculture, land-use, and water resource planning, where they are currently often underappreciated or ignored.

Usability Testing of Two Ambulatory EHR Navigators.

Science.gov (United States)

Hultman, Gretchen; Marquard, Jenna; Arsoniadis, Elliot; Mink, Pamela; Rizvi, Rubina; Ramer, Tim; Khairat, Saif; Fickau, Keri; Melton, Genevieve B

2016-01-01

Despite widespread electronic health record (EHR) adoption, poor EHR system usability continues to be a significant barrier to effective system use for end users. One key to addressing usability problems is to employ user testing and user-centered design. To understand if redesigning an EHR-based navigation tool with clinician input improved user performance and satisfaction. A usability evaluation was conducted to compare two versions of a redesigned ambulatory navigator. Participants completed tasks for five patient cases using the navigators, while employing a think-aloud protocol. The tasks were based on Meaningful Use (MU) requirements. The version of navigator did not affect perceived workload, and time to complete tasks was longer in the redesigned navigator. A relatively small portion of navigator content was used to complete the MU-related tasks, though navigation patterns were highly variable across participants for both navigators. Preferences for EHR navigation structures appeared to be individualized. This study demonstrates the importance of EHR usability assessments to evaluate group and individual performance of different interfaces and preferences for each design.

Usability evaluation of augmented reality user interfaces in games and personal navigation assistants

OpenAIRE

Ivanec, Zorian

2017-01-01

This paper studies heuristic usability evaluation of user interfaces. The literature review distinguishes characteristics of augmented reality and smartphones, presents heuristic evaluation, PACMAD usability model, personal navigation assistants, video games, augmented reality and J. Nielsen usability heuristics. In research part, usability heuristics of related subject fields and design guidelines are combined. Created heuristics and control questionnaire are used for evaluation of augmented...

Navigating the massive world of reddit: using backbone networks to map user interests in social media

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Randal S. Olson

2015-05-01

Full Text Available In the massive online worlds of social media, users frequently rely on organizing themselves around specific topics of interest to find and engage with like-minded people. However, navigating these massive worlds and finding topics of specific interest often proves difficult because the worlds are mostly organized haphazardly, leaving users to find relevant interests by word of mouth or using a basic search feature. Here, we report on a method using the backbone of a network to create a map of the primary topics of interest in any social network. To demonstrate the method, we build an interest map for the social news web site reddit and show how such a map could be used to navigate a social media world. Moreover, we analyze the network properties of the reddit social network and find that it has a scale-free, small-world, and modular community structure, much like other online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. We suggest that the integration of interest maps into popular social media platforms will assist users in organizing themselves into more specific interest groups, which will help alleviate the overcrowding effect often observed in large online communities.

NFC Internal: An Indoor Navigation System

Science.gov (United States)

Ozdenizci, Busra; Coskun, Vedat; Ok, Kerem

2015-01-01

Indoor navigation systems have recently become a popular research field due to the lack of GPS signals indoors. Several indoors navigation systems have already been proposed in order to eliminate deficiencies; however each of them has several technical and usability limitations. In this study, we propose NFC Internal, a Near Field Communication (NFC)-based indoor navigation system, which enables users to navigate through a building or a complex by enabling a simple location update, simply by touching NFC tags those are spread around and orient users to the destination. In this paper, we initially present the system requirements, give the design details and study the viability of NFC Internal with a prototype application and a case study. Moreover, we evaluate the performance of the system and compare it with existing indoor navigation systems. It is seen that NFC Internal has considerable advantages and significant contributions to existing indoor navigation systems in terms of security and privacy, cost, performance, robustness, complexity, user preference and commercial availability. PMID:25825976

NFC Internal: An Indoor Navigation System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Busra Ozdenizci

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Indoor navigation systems have recently become a popular research field due to the lack of GPS signals indoors. Several indoors navigation systems have already been proposed in order to eliminate deficiencies; however each of them has several technical and usability limitations. In this study, we propose NFC Internal, a Near Field Communication (NFC-based indoor navigation system, which enables users to navigate through a building or a complex by enabling a simple location update, simply by touching NFC tags those are spread around and orient users to the destination. In this paper, we initially present the system requirements, give the design details and study the viability of NFC Internal with a prototype application and a case study. Moreover, we evaluate the performance of the system and compare it with existing indoor navigation systems. It is seen that NFC Internal has considerable advantages and significant contributions to existing indoor navigation systems in terms of security and privacy, cost, performance, robustness, complexity, user preference and commercial availability.

Indoor navigation by image recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Choi, Io Teng; Leong, Chi Chong; Hong, Ka Wo; Pun, Chi-Man

2017-07-01

With the progress of smartphones hardware, it is simple on smartphone using image recognition technique such as face detection. In addition, indoor navigation system development is much slower than outdoor navigation system. Hence, this research proves a usage of image recognition technique for navigation in indoor environment. In this paper, we introduced an indoor navigation application that uses the indoor environment features to locate user's location and a route calculating algorithm to generate an appropriate path for user. The application is implemented on Android smartphone rather than iPhone. Yet, the application design can also be applied on iOS because the design is implemented without using special features only for Android. We found that digital navigation system provides better and clearer location information than paper map. Also, the indoor environment is ideal for Image recognition processing. Hence, the results motivate us to design an indoor navigation system using image recognition.

How to design a cartographic continuum to help users to navigate between two topographic styles?

Science.gov (United States)

Ory, Jérémie; Touya, Guillaume; Hoarau, Charlotte; Christophe, Sidonie

2018-05-01

Geoportals and geovisualization tools provide to users various cartographic abstractions that describe differently a geographical space. Our purpose is to be able to design cartographic continuums, i.e. a set of in-between maps allowing users to navigate between two topographic styles. This paper addresses the problem of the interpolation between two topographic abstractions with different styles. We detail our approach in two steps. Firstly, we setup a comparison in order to identify which structural elements of a cartographic abstraction should be interpolated. Secondly, we propose an approach based on two design methods for maps interpolation.

Hydrographic and navigational analysis of Lower Oder shipping conditions – case study of the backflow occurrence

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Medyna Piotr

2017-01-01

Full Text Available One of the significant limitations of inland waterway transport on the Oder River is the water level. Its variability determines the minimum clearance under the bridges and thus the maximum drought of moving vessels. An important factor affecting the water level in the Oder River is the phenomenon of wind backwater. Certain pressure field distribution situations may affect in an increase of water level on the coast and thereby block the outflow of river waters. In this paper an example of the limitations of inland navigation in the estuarine part of the Lower Oder under the weather conditions on the southern Baltic Sea in autumn 2016 is presented. For the analysis area of Szczecin Waterway Node and section of Oder River from Szczecin to Gryfino was chosen. Based on data the weather and navigational conditions of the area of the Lower Oder were assessed. Occurring winds, currents and changes in water level has been analyzed. In the situations of unfavorable raise of the water level in the river, inland navigation is redirected to the section of Regalica River, and a section of the port of Szczecin region is closed. This causes obvious difficulties and results in prolonged ships routes. Additional obstacle that take place here is an arbitrarily determined time of railway bridge span lifting in Szczecin Podjuchy.

Navigating the fifth dimension: new concepts in interactive multimodality and multidimensional image navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Ratib, Osman; Rosset, Antoine; Dahlbom, Magnus; Czernin, Johannes

2005-04-01

Display and interpretation of multi dimensional data obtained from the combination of 3D data acquired from different modalities (such as PET-CT) require complex software tools allowing the user to navigate and modify the different image parameters. With faster scanners it is now possible to acquire dynamic images of a beating heart or the transit of a contrast agent adding a fifth dimension to the data. We developed a DICOM-compliant software for real time navigation in very large sets of 5 dimensional data based on an intuitive multidimensional jog-wheel widely used by the video-editing industry. The software, provided under open source licensing, allows interactive, single-handed, navigation through 3D images while adjusting blending of image modalities, image contrast and intensity and the rate of cine display of dynamic images. In this study we focused our effort on the user interface and means for interactively navigating in these large data sets while easily and rapidly changing multiple parameters such as image position, contrast, intensity, blending of colors, magnification etc. Conventional mouse-driven user interface requiring the user to manipulate cursors and sliders on the screen are too cumbersome and slow. We evaluated several hardware devices and identified a category of multipurpose jogwheel device that is used in the video-editing industry that is particularly suitable for rapidly navigating in five dimensions while adjusting several display parameters interactively. The application of this tool will be demonstrated in cardiac PET-CT imaging and functional cardiac MRI studies.

Safe Local Navigation for Visually Impaired Users With a Time-of-Flight and Haptic Feedback Device.

Science.gov (United States)

Katzschmann, Robert K; Araki, Brandon; Rus, Daniela

2018-03-01

This paper presents ALVU (Array of Lidars and Vibrotactile Units), a contactless, intuitive, hands-free, and discreet wearable device that allows visually impaired users to detect low- and high-hanging obstacles, as well as physical boundaries in their immediate environment. The solution allows for safe local navigation in both confined and open spaces by enabling the user to distinguish free space from obstacles. The device presented is composed of two parts: a sensor belt and a haptic strap. The sensor belt is an array of time-of-flight distance sensors worn around the front of a user's waist, and the pulses of infrared light provide reliable and accurate measurements of the distances between the user and surrounding obstacles or surfaces. The haptic strap communicates the measured distances through an array of vibratory motors worn around the user's upper abdomen, providing haptic feedback. The linear vibration motors are combined with a point-loaded pretensioned applicator to transmit isolated vibrations to the user. We validated the device's capability in an extensive user study entailing 162 trials with 12 blind users. Users wearing the device successfully walked through hallways, avoided obstacles, and detected staircases.

Designing a global assessment of climate change on inland fishes and fisheries: knowns and needs

Science.gov (United States)

Paukert, Craig P.; Lynch, Abigail J.; Beard, T. Douglas; Chen, Yushun; Cooke, Steven J.; Cooperman, Michael S.; Cowx, Ian G.; Infante, Dana M.; Ibengwe, Lilian; Myers, Bonnie; Nguyen, Phu Hoa; Winfield, Ian J.

2017-01-01

To date, there are few comprehensive assessments of how climate change affects inland finfish, fisheries, and aquaculture at a global scale, but one is necessary to identify research needs and commonalities across regions and to help guide decision making and funding priorities. Broadly, the consequences of climate change on inland fishes will impact global food security, the livelihoods of people who depend on inland capture and recreational fisheries. However, understanding how climate change will affect inland fishes and fisheries has lagged behind marine assessments. Building from a North American inland fisheries assessment, we convened an expert panel from seven countries to provide a first-step to a framework for determining how to approach an assessment of how climate change may affect inland fishes, capture fisheries, and aquaculture globally. Starting with the small group helped frame the key questions (e.g., who is the audience? What is the best approach and spatial scale?). Data gaps identified by the group include: the tolerances of inland fisheries to changes in temperature, stream flows, salinity, and other environmental factors linked to climate change, and the adaptive capacity of fishes and fisheries to adjust to these changes. These questions are difficult to address, but long-term and large-scale datasets are becoming more readily available as a means to test hypotheses related to climate change. We hope this perspective will help researchers and decision makers identify research priorities and provide a framework to help sustain inland fish populations and fisheries for the diversity of users around the globe.

IS INLAND SHIPPING NEEDED IN POLAND?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ryszard Rolbiecki

2014-06-01

Full Text Available In Poland, inland shipping plays only a mariginal role in transport needs fulfillment. Inland shipping has a share of mere 0,3% in goods transport modal split. The reason for this is poor and variable technical parameters of inland waterways together with adverse legal regulations. Different situation takes place in Western European countries, in which the development of this mode of transport is viewed as a way of road transport develop-ment restraint. In Poland, the need to move some of the volume from road transport to in-land shipping is specifically observed within marine ports surroundings. Because of their complex nature, the investments in inland shipping infrastructure would also be helpful in solving the current problems of water management. Inland waterways in Poland guaran-tee neither an adequate level of flood protection, nor the water needs fulfillment of do-mestic economy. When it comes to water reserves, Poland is one of the most deficient countries in Europe. Thus there is a need to invest in inland waterways in Poland.

VISION-AIDED CONTEXT-AWARE FRAMEWORK FOR PERSONAL NAVIGATION SERVICES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

S. Saeedi

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The ubiquity of mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablet-PCs has encouraged the use of location-based services (LBS that are relevant to the current location and context of a mobile user. The main challenge of LBS is to find a pervasive and accurate personal navigation system (PNS in different situations of a mobile user. In this paper, we propose a method of personal navigation for pedestrians that allows a user to freely move in outdoor environments. This system aims at detection of the context information which is useful for improving personal navigation. The context information for a PNS consists of user activity modes (e.g. walking, stationary, driving, and etc. and the mobile device orientation and placement with respect to the user. After detecting the context information, a low-cost integrated positioning algorithm has been employed to estimate pedestrian navigation parameters. The method is based on the integration of the relative user’s motion (changes of velocity and heading angle estimation based on the video image matching and absolute position information provided by GPS. A Kalman filter (KF has been used to improve the navigation solution when the user is walking and the phone is in his/her hand. The Experimental results demonstrate the capabilities of this method for outdoor personal navigation systems.

Carrying Position Independent User Heading Estimation for Indoor Pedestrian Navigation with Smartphones

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhi-An Deng

2016-05-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a novel heading estimation approach for indoor pedestrian navigation using the built-in inertial sensors on a smartphone. Unlike previous approaches constraining the carrying position of a smartphone on the user’s body, our approach gives the user a larger freedom by implementing automatic recognition of the device carrying position and subsequent selection of an optimal strategy for heading estimation. We firstly predetermine the motion state by a decision tree using an accelerometer and a barometer. Then, to enable accurate and computational lightweight carrying position recognition, we combine a position classifier with a novel position transition detection algorithm, which may also be used to avoid the confusion between position transition and user turn during pedestrian walking. For a device placed in the trouser pockets or held in a swinging hand, the heading estimation is achieved by deploying a principal component analysis (PCA-based approach. For a device held in the hand or against the ear during a phone call, user heading is directly estimated by adding the yaw angle of the device to the related heading offset. Experimental results show that our approach can automatically detect carrying positions with high accuracy, and outperforms previous heading estimation approaches in terms of accuracy and applicability.

Navigation Architecture for a Space Mobile Network

Science.gov (United States)

Valdez, Jennifer E.; Ashman, Benjamin; Gramling, Cheryl; Heckler, Gregory W.; Carpenter, Russell

2016-01-01

The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) Augmentation Service for Satellites (TASS) is a proposed beacon service to provide a global, space based GPS augmentation service based on the NASA Global Differential GPS (GDGPS) System. The TASS signal will be tied to the GPS time system and usable as an additional ranging and Doppler radiometric source. Additionally, it will provide data vital to autonomous navigation in the near Earth regime, including space weather information, TDRS ephemerides, Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP), and forward commanding capability. TASS benefits include enhancing situational awareness, enabling increased autonomy, and providing near real-time command access for user platforms. As NASA Headquarters' Space Communication and Navigation Office (SCaN) begins to move away from a centralized network architecture and towards a Space Mobile Network (SMN) that allows for user initiated services, autonomous navigation will be a key part of such a system. This paper explores how a TASS beacon service enables the Space Mobile Networking paradigm, what a typical user platform would require, and provides an in-depth analysis of several navigation scenarios and operations concepts. This paper provides an overview of the TASS beacon and its role within the SMN and user community. Supporting navigation analysis is presented for two user mission scenarios: an Earth observing spacecraft in low earth orbit (LEO), and a highly elliptical spacecraft in a lunar resonance orbit. These diverse flight scenarios indicate the breadth of applicability of the TASS beacon for upcoming users within the current network architecture and in the SMN.

A multicenter prospective cohort study on camera navigation training for key user groups in minimally invasive surgery.

Science.gov (United States)

Graafland, Maurits; Bok, Kiki; Schreuder, Henk W R; Schijven, Marlies P

2014-06-01

Untrained laparoscopic camera assistants in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) may cause suboptimal view of the operating field, thereby increasing risk for errors. Camera navigation is often performed by the least experienced member of the operating team, such as inexperienced surgical residents, operating room nurses, and medical students. The operating room nurses and medical students are currently not included as key user groups in structured laparoscopic training programs. A new virtual reality laparoscopic camera navigation (LCN) module was specifically developed for these key user groups. This multicenter prospective cohort study assesses face validity and construct validity of the LCN module on the Simendo virtual reality simulator. Face validity was assessed through a questionnaire on resemblance to reality and perceived usability of the instrument among experts and trainees. Construct validity was assessed by comparing scores of groups with different levels of experience on outcome parameters of speed and movement proficiency. The results obtained show uniform and positive evaluation of the LCN module among expert users and trainees, signifying face validity. Experts and intermediate experience groups performed significantly better in task time and camera stability during three repetitions, compared to the less experienced user groups (P < .007). Comparison of learning curves showed significant improvement of proficiency in time and camera stability for all groups during three repetitions (P < .007). The results of this study show face validity and construct validity of the LCN module. The module is suitable for use in training curricula for operating room nurses and novice surgical trainees, aimed at improving team performance in minimally invasive surgery. © The Author(s) 2013.

U.S. Navigated Waterway Mile Marker Locations from USCOE source data, Geographic NAD83, LOSCO (2000) [river_mile_markers_USACE_1994

Data.gov (United States)

Louisiana Geographic Information Center — This is a point dataset representing 10,044 sequential mile positions of navigable inland waterways and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. These data were developed as...

Considerations on an inland rectenna

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Itoh, Kiyohiko; Ogawa, Yasutaka

1988-01-01

An earth terminal 'rectenna' is one of the essential elements of a solar power satellite system. This paper considers, some aspects of an inland rectenna. First, we show that an inland rectenna has advantages over an offshore one. Then we describe the inland rectenna and an associated artificial city. Moreover, the hogline rectenna and modified hogline rectenna with circular microstrip antennae are discussed, and several expressions are obtained which will be useful for designing the hogline type rectenna.

Application of GIS tools in determining the navigability of waterways

Science.gov (United States)

Nadolny, Grzegorz; Rabant, Hubert; Szatten, Dawid

2017-11-01

This article presents the results of a research conducted on Lower Noteć river for the application of geographic information system (GIS) tools. The study consisted of longitudinal profile soundings of navigable route combined with statistical analysis of water levels. GIS software - ArcMap v. 10.0 was used to perform analysis of changes in waterway depth depending on hydrological conditions. A mileage of waterway sections was specified depending on whether they met or did not meet classification requirements in accordance with Polish law. The application of spatial data of Lower Noteć river developed for the purpose of the article is presented. Conducted analyses and obtained results demonstrate the importance of GIS tools in inland navigation studies.

Testing Two Tools for Multimodal Navigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mats Liljedahl

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The latest smartphones with GPS, electronic compasses, directional audio, touch screens, and so forth, hold a potential for location-based services that are easier to use and that let users focus on their activities and the environment around them. Rather than interpreting maps, users can search for information by pointing in a direction and database queries can be created from GPS location and compass data. Users can also get guidance to locations through point and sweep gestures, spatial sound, and simple graphics. This paper describes two studies testing two applications with multimodal user interfaces for navigation and information retrieval. The applications allow users to search for information and get navigation support using combinations of point and sweep gestures, nonspeech audio, graphics, and text. Tests show that users appreciated both applications for their ease of use and for allowing users to interact directly with the surrounding environment.

Image processing and applications based on visualizing navigation service

Science.gov (United States)

Hwang, Chyi-Wen

2015-07-01

When facing the "overabundant" of semantic web information, in this paper, the researcher proposes the hierarchical classification and visualizing RIA (Rich Internet Application) navigation system: Concept Map (CM) + Semantic Structure (SS) + the Knowledge on Demand (KOD) service. The aim of the Multimedia processing and empirical applications testing, was to investigating the utility and usability of this visualizing navigation strategy in web communication design, into whether it enables the user to retrieve and construct their personal knowledge or not. Furthermore, based on the segment markets theory in the Marketing model, to propose a User Interface (UI) classification strategy and formulate a set of hypermedia design principles for further UI strategy and e-learning resources in semantic web communication. These research findings: (1) Irrespective of whether the simple declarative knowledge or the complex declarative knowledge model is used, the "CM + SS + KOD navigation system" has a better cognition effect than the "Non CM + SS + KOD navigation system". However, for the" No web design experience user", the navigation system does not have an obvious cognition effect. (2) The essential of classification in semantic web communication design: Different groups of user have a diversity of preference needs and different cognitive styles in the CM + SS + KOD navigation system.

Integrating Communication and Navigation: Next Generation Broadcast Service (NGBS)

Science.gov (United States)

Donaldson, Jennifer

2017-01-01

NASA Goddard has been investing in technology demonstrations of a beacon service, now called Next Generation Broadcast Services (NGBS). NGBS is a global, space-based, communications and navigation service for users of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). NGBS will provide an S-band beacon messaging source and radio navigation available to users at orbital altitudes 1400 km and below, increasing the autonomy and resiliency of onboard communication and navigation. NGBS will deliver both one-way radiometric (Doppler and pseudorange) and fast forward data transport services to users. Portions of the overall forward data volume will be allocated for fixed message types while the remaining data volume will be left for user forward command data. The NGBS signal will reside within the 2106.43 MHz spectrum currently allocated for the Space Networks multiple access forward (MAF) service and a live service demonstration is currently being planned via the 2nd and 3rd generation TDRS satellites.

PRIVATE GRAPHS – ACCESS RIGHTS ON GRAPHS FOR SEAMLESS NAVIGATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

W. Dorner

2016-06-01

Full Text Available After the success of GNSS (Global Navigational Satellite Systems and navigation services for public streets, indoor seems to be the next big development in navigational services, relying on RTLS – Real Time Locating Services (e.g. WIFI and allowing seamless navigation. In contrast to navigation and routing services on public streets, seamless navigation will cause an additional challenge: how to make routing data accessible to defined users or restrict access rights for defined areas or only to parts of the graph to a defined user group? The paper will present case studies and data from literature, where seamless and especially indoor navigation solutions are presented (hospitals, industrial complexes, building sites, but the problem of restricted access rights was only touched from a real world, but not a technical perspective. The analysis of case studies will show, that the objective of navigation and the different target groups for navigation solutions will demand well defined access rights and require solutions, how to make only parts of a graph to a user or application available to solve a navigational task. The paper will therefore introduce the concept of private graphs, which is defined as a graph for navigational purposes covering the street, road or floor network of an area behind a public street and suggest different approaches how to make graph data for navigational purposes available considering access rights and data protection, privacy and security issues as well.

Navigating a Maze with Balance Board and Wiimote

Science.gov (United States)

Fikkert, Wim; Hoeijmakers, Niek; van der Vet, Paul; Nijholt, Anton

Input from the lower body in human-computer interfaces can be beneficial, enjoyable and even entertaining when users are expected to perform tasks simultaneously. Users can navigate a virtual (game) world or even an (empirical) dataset while having their hands free to issue commands. We compared the Wii Balance Board to a hand-held Wiimote for navigating a maze and found that users completed this task slower with the Balance Board. However, the Balance Board was considered more intuitive, easy to learn and ‘much fun’.

Evaluation of navigation interfaces in virtual environments

Science.gov (United States)

Mestre, Daniel R.

2014-02-01

When users are immersed in cave-like virtual reality systems, navigational interfaces have to be used when the size of the virtual environment becomes larger than the physical extent of the cave floor. However, using navigation interfaces, physically static users experience self-motion (visually-induced vection). As a consequence, sensorial incoherence between vision (indicating self-motion) and other proprioceptive inputs (indicating immobility) can make them feel dizzy and disoriented. We tested, in two experimental studies, different locomotion interfaces. The objective was twofold: testing spatial learning and cybersickness. In a first experiment, using first-person navigation with a flystick ®, we tested the effect of sensorial aids, a spatialized sound or guiding arrows on the ground, attracting the user toward the goal of the navigation task. Results revealed that sensorial aids tended to impact negatively spatial learning. Moreover, subjects reported significant levels of cybersickness. In a second experiment, we tested whether such negative effects could be due to poorly controlled rotational motion during simulated self-motion. Subjects used a gamepad, in which rotational and translational displacements were independently controlled by two joysticks. Furthermore, we tested first- versus third-person navigation. No significant difference was observed between these two conditions. Overall, cybersickness tended to be lower, as compared to experiment 1, but the difference was not significant. Future research should evaluate further the hypothesis of the role of passively perceived optical flow in cybersickness, but manipulating the virtual environment'sperrot structure. It also seems that video-gaming experience might be involved in the user's sensitivity to cybersickness.

From Resource-Adaptive Navigation Assistance to Augmented Cognition

Science.gov (United States)

Zimmer, Hubert D.; Münzer, Stefan; Baus, Jörg

In an assistance scenario, a computer provides purposive information supporting a human user in an everyday situation. Wayfinding with navigation assistance is a prototypical assistance scenario. The present chapter analyzes the interplay of the resources of the assistance system and the resources of the user. The navigation assistance system provides geographic knowledge, positioning information, route planning, spatial overview information, and route commands at decision points. The user's resources encompass spatial knowledge, spatial abilities and visuo-spatial working memory, orientation strategies, and cultural habit. Flexible adaptations of the assistance system to available resources of the user are described, taking different wayfinding goals, situational constraints, and individual differences into account. Throughout the chapter, the idea is pursued that the available resources of the user should be kept active.

Sustainable agricultural development in inland valleys

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zwart, S.J.

2018-01-01

The inland valley in Africa are common landscapes that have favorable conditions for agricultural production. Compared to the surrounding uplands they are characterized by a relatively high and secure water availability and high soil fertility levels. Inland valleys thus have a high agricultural

Inland sea as a unit for environmental history: East Asian inland seas from prehistory to future.

Science.gov (United States)

Lindstrom, Kati; Uchiyama, Junzo

2012-04-01

The boundaries of landscape policies often coincide with political or economic boundaries, thus creating a situation where a unit of landscape protection or management reflects more its present political status than its historico-geographical situation, its historical function and formation. At the same time, it is evident that no unit can exist independently of the context that has given birth to it and that environmental protection in isolated units cannot be very effective. The present paper will discuss inland sea as a landscape unit from prehistory to modern days and its implications for future landscape planning, using EastAsian inland sea (Japan Sea and East China Sea) rim as an example. Historically an area of active communication, EastAsian inland sea rim has become a politically very sharply divided area. The authors will bring examples to demonstrate how cultural communication on the inland sea level has influenced the formation of several landscape features that are now targets for local or national landscape protection programs, and how a unified view could benefit the future of landscape policies in the whole region.

Fault-tolerant and Diagnostic Methods for Navigation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blanke, Mogens

2003-01-01

to diagnose faults and autonomously provide valid navigation data, disregarding any faulty sensor data and use sensor fusion to obtain a best estimate for users. This paper discusses how diagnostic and fault-tolerant methods are applicable in marine systems. An example chosen is sensor fusion for navigation......Precise and reliable navigation is crucial, and for reasons of safety, essential navigation instruments are often duplicated. Hardware redundancy is mostly used to manually switch between instruments should faults occur. In contrast, diagnostic methods are available that can use analytic redundancy...

The usability issues of faceted navigation in digital libraries

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eliane Blumer

2014-05-01

For more than five years, the project ACCEPT, a subproject of a Swiss national project called e-lib.ch, analyzes the usability and usefulness of digital libraries, by using user oriented methods. Experience has shown that filters provided through faceted navigation are considered as positive and very useful by end users. Nevertheless, based on different test results, several returning mistakes have been detected and it turns out that there are some ‘unwritten standards’ concerning e.g. position, labelling or ranking which should be respected to fulfil the aim of a good usability which users do expect of such web services. In this poster we will first give an introduction to faceted navigation, actual design issues and their use in digital libraries and then present testing methods, which can be easily applied in a digital library context. Together with a list of best practices concerning faceted navigation drawn out of different test experiences, the paper should give the reader all important information to evaluate its current faceted navigation and see where improvements could be made.

An indoor navigation system for the visually impaired.

Science.gov (United States)

Guerrero, Luis A; Vasquez, Francisco; Ochoa, Sergio F

2012-01-01

Navigation in indoor environments is highly challenging for the severely visually impaired, particularly in spaces visited for the first time. Several solutions have been proposed to deal with this challenge. Although some of them have shown to be useful in real scenarios, they involve an important deployment effort or use artifacts that are not natural for blind users. This paper presents an indoor navigation system that was designed taking into consideration usability as the quality requirement to be maximized. This solution enables one to identify the position of a person and calculates the velocity and direction of his movements. Using this information, the system determines the user's trajectory, locates possible obstacles in that route, and offers navigation information to the user. The solution has been evaluated using two experimental scenarios. Although the results are still not enough to provide strong conclusions, they indicate that the system is suitable to guide visually impaired people through an unknown built environment.

The impact of navigation systems on traffic safety

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rooijen, T. van; Vonk, T.

2007-01-01

This paper studies the impact of navigation systems on traffic safety in the Netherlands. This study consists of four analyses: a literature survey, a database analysis, a user survey and an instrumented vehicle study. The results of the four sections show that navigation systems have a positive

The impact of navigation systems on traffic safety

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rooijen, T. van; Vonk, T.

2008-01-01

This paper studies the impact of navigation systems on traffic safety in the Netherlands. This study consists of four analyses: a literature survey, a database analysis, a user survey and an instrumented vehicle study. The results of the four sections show that navigation systems have a positive

Safety And Reduce In Pollution Issues For Inland Waterway Transportation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Van Huong Dong

2017-04-01

Full Text Available According to the Ministry of Transport inland water transport is one of the five modes of transport in our country play a very important role. Inland waterway transport not only plays a major role in transporting large volumes of goods and passengers but also creates millions of jobs contributing to ensuring social security and national defense and security. However there are still many inadequacies in waterway transportation such as unequal waterway traffic The phenomenon of exploitation of river resources as planned or Process technology is not as planned exploitation of sand gravel etc. are common in most rivers and canals in the country. The signaling system is not synchronized between the signal of the inland waterway management unit and the signal of the owner The handling of domestic goods transportation and inland port management is inadequate The force of the means of development is fast uneven but concentrated in some urban areas and industrial parks. Therefore the Ministry of Transport has proposed a scheme to facilitate the development of a synchronized inland waterway infrastructure linking with other modes of transport To improve the capacity of the crew and the inland waterway transport crews. To create favorable conditions for inland waterway transportation business with reasonable transportation costs Improve the quality of water transport services Ensure safety and environmental friendliness Make a distinct advantage over other modes of transport. Specifically will develop promulgate mechanisms The policy is to facilitate the development of inland waterway infrastructure Build and promulgate mechanism The policy of supporting the development of the fleet has a reasonable structure with a fleet of about 30 self-propelled ships accounting for about 70 of the total number of inland waterway vessels To prioritize the development of the container fleet Inland waterway transportation and training retraining of human resources for

Incorporation of formal safety assessment and Bayesian network in navigational risk estimation of the Yangtze River

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang, D.; Yan, X.P.; Yang, Z.L.; Wall, A.; Wang, J.

2013-01-01

Formal safety assessment (FSA), as a structured and systematic risk evaluation methodology, has been increasingly and broadly used in the shipping industry around the world. Concerns have been raised as to navigational safety of the Yangtze River, China's largest and the world's busiest inland waterway. Over the last few decades, the throughput of ships in the Yangtze River has increased rapidly due to the national development of the Middle and Western parts of China. Accidents such as collisions, groundings, contacts, oil-spills and fires occur repeatedly, often causing serious consequences. In order to improve the navigational safety in the Yangtze River, this paper estimates the navigational risk of the Yangtze River using the FSA concept and a Bayesian network (BN) technique. The navigational risk model is established by considering both probability and consequences of accidents with respect to a risk matrix method, followed by a scenario analysis to demonstrate the application of the proposed model

An Outdoor Navigation System for Blind Pedestrians Using GPS and Tactile-Foot Feedback

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ramiro Velázquez

2018-04-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a novel, wearable navigation system for visually impaired and blind pedestrians that combines a global positioning system (GPS for user outdoor localization and tactile-foot stimulation for information presentation. Real-time GPS data provided by a smartphone are processed by dedicated navigation software to determine the directions to a destination. Navigational directions are then encoded as vibrations and conveyed to the user via a tactile display that inserts into the shoe. The experimental results showed that users were capable of recognizing with high accuracy the tactile feedback provided to their feet. The preliminary tests conducted in outdoor locations involved two blind users who were guided along 380–420 m predetermined pathways, while sharing the space with other pedestrians and facing typical urban obstacles. The subjects successfully reached the target destinations. The results suggest that the proposed system enhances independent, safe navigation of blind pedestrians and show the potential of tactile-foot stimulation in assistive devices.

Screen Miniatures as Icons for Backward Navigation in Content-Based Software.

Science.gov (United States)

Boling, Elizabeth; Ma, Guoping; Tao, Chia-Wen; Askun, Cengiz; Green, Tim; Frick, Theodore; Schaumburg, Heike

Users of content-based software programs, including hypertexts and instructional multimedia, rely on the navigation functions provided by the designers of those program. Typical navigation schemes use abstract symbols (arrows) to label basic navigational functions like moving forward or backward through screen displays. In a previous study, the…

Instrument-mounted displays for reducing cognitive load during surgical navigation.

Science.gov (United States)

Herrlich, Marc; Tavakol, Parnian; Black, David; Wenig, Dirk; Rieder, Christian; Malaka, Rainer; Kikinis, Ron

2017-09-01

Surgical navigation systems rely on a monitor placed in the operating room to relay information. Optimal monitor placement can be challenging in crowded rooms, and it is often not possible to place the monitor directly beside the situs. The operator must split attention between the navigation system and the situs. We present an approach for needle-based interventions to provide navigational feedback directly on the instrument and close to the situs by mounting a small display onto the needle. By mounting a small and lightweight smartwatch display directly onto the instrument, we are able to provide navigational guidance close to the situs and directly in the operator's field of view, thereby reducing the need to switch the focus of view between the situs and the navigation system. We devise a specific variant of the established crosshair metaphor suitable for the very limited screen space. We conduct an empirical user study comparing our approach to using a monitor and a combination of both. Results from the empirical user study show significant benefits for cognitive load, user preference, and general usability for the instrument-mounted display, while achieving the same level of performance in terms of time and accuracy compared to using a monitor. We successfully demonstrate the feasibility of our approach and potential benefits. With ongoing technological advancements, instrument-mounted displays might complement standard monitor setups for surgical navigation in order to lower cognitive demands and for improved usability of such systems.

Exploitation of Semantic Building Model in Indoor Navigation Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Anjomshoaa, A.; Shayeganfar, F.; Tjoa, A. Min

2009-04-01

There are many types of indoor and outdoor navigation tools and methodologies available. A majority of these solutions are based on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and instant video and image processing. These approaches are ideal for open world environments where very few information about the target location is available, but for large scale building environments such as hospitals, governmental offices, etc the end-user will need more detailed information about the surrounding context which is especially important in case of people with special needs. This paper presents a smart indoor navigation solution that is based on Semantic Web technologies and Building Information Model (BIM). The proposed solution is also aligned with Google Android's concepts to enlighten the realization of results. Keywords: IAI IFCXML, Building Information Model, Indoor Navigation, Semantic Web, Google Android, People with Special Needs 1 Introduction Built environment is a central factor in our daily life and a big portion of human life is spent inside buildings. Traditionally the buildings are documented using building maps and plans by utilization of IT tools such as computer-aided design (CAD) applications. Documenting the maps in an electronic way is already pervasive but CAD drawings do not suffice the requirements regarding effective building models that can be shared with other building-related applications such as indoor navigation systems. The navigation in built environment is not a new issue, however with the advances in emerging technologies like GPS, mobile and networked environments, and Semantic Web new solutions have been suggested to enrich the traditional building maps and convert them to smart information resources that can be reused in other applications and improve the interpretability with building inhabitants and building visitors. Other important issues that should be addressed in building navigation scenarios are location tagging and end-user communication

Simulation of traffic capacity of inland waterway network

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chen, L.; Mou, J.; Ligteringen, H.

2013-01-01

The inland waterborne transportation is viewed as an economic, safe and environmentally friendly alternative to the congested road network. The traffic capacity are the critical indicator of the inland shipping performance. Actually, interacted under the complicated factors, it is challenging to

Inland Ports in the Republic of Croatia: Approvals for Port Activities instead of Concessions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Goran Vojković

2008-11-01

Full Text Available According to the 1998 Act on Inland Ports, the right to performall port activities within inland ports of the Republic ofCroatia is given on the basis of concession, obtained throughbidding. It has been noticed in practice that modem businessprocesses and traffic flows are more dynamic than before whenclassic concession relations were created. Also, types andamounts of cargo are changing every couple of years, which isfollowed by quick adjustments, instead of working according torigid and long-term defined decisions and concession contracts.Furthermore, the practice has shown for some activitiesthat the number of port providers (such as ship suppliers,port-agency and freight forwarders should not be limited. Thismeans that the system of a limited number of port providers isimportant only for the activities that require location within aport, as the port area is physically limited. Therefore, the newAct on Navigation and Inland Ports from 2007, whose framehas been completed by sub-law acts during 2008, has replacedthe complex concession system for performing activities in inlandports by a more liberal approval system. On the basis ofthese, higher dynamics of work of port providers is enabled aswell as easier adjustment to market conditions. Furthermore,the main limitation factor that determines the number of portusers becomes the available physical space within a port, whichprovides undisturbed competition, along with larger offer ofport services that do not require that space. It is also importantto point out that the new Act specifically includes distributionand cargo logistics, also processing and improvement of goodsas well as industrial activities including production that enablecomplete economic utilization of port capacities into the existingport activities, thus significantly changing the role of the portitself as a logistic centre.

A navigational evaluation model for content management systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gilani, S.; Majeed, A.

2016-01-01

Web applications are widely used world-wide, however it is important that the navigation of these websites is effective, to enhance usability. Navigation is not limited to links between pages, it is also how we complete a task. Navigational structure presented as hypertext is one of the most important component of the Web application besides content and presentation. The main objective of this paper is to explore the navigational structure of various open source Content Management Systems from the developer's perspective. For this purpose three CMS are chosen which are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Objective of the research is to identify the important navigational aspects present in these CMSs. Moreover, a comparative study of these CMSs in terms of navigational support is required. For this purpose an industrial survey is conducted based on our proposed navigational evaluation model. The results shows that there exist correlation between the identified factors and these CMSs provide helpful and effective navigational support to their users. (author)

Users expect interfaces to behave like the physical world

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nørager, Rune

2006-01-01

Navigation in folder structures is an essential part of most window based user interfaces. Basic human navigation strategies rely on stable properties of the physical world, which are not by default present in windows style user interfaces. According to the theoretical framework Ecological Cognit...

New Navigation Post-Processing Tools for Oceanographic Submersibles

Science.gov (United States)

Kinsey, J. C.; Whitcomb, L. L.; Yoerger, D. R.; Howland, J. C.; Ferrini, V. L.; Hegrenas, O.

2006-12-01

We report the development of Navproc, a new set of software tools for post-processing oceanographic submersible navigation data that exploits previously reported improvements in navigation sensing and estimation (e.g. Eos Trans. AGU, 84(46), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract OS32A- 0225, 2003). The development of these tools is motivated by the need to have post-processing software that allows users to compensate for errors in vehicle navigation, recompute the vehicle position, and then save the results for use with quantitative science data (e.g. bathymetric sonar data) obtained during the mission. Navproc does not provide real-time navigation or display of data nor is it capable of high-resolution, three dimensional (3D) data display. Navproc supports the ASCII data formats employed by the vehicles of the National Deep Submergence Facility (NDSF) operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Post-processing of navigation data with Navproc is comprised of three tasks. First, data is converted from the logged ASCII file to a binary Matlab file. When loaded into Matlab, each sensor has a data structure containing the time stamped data sampled at the native update rate of the sensor. An additional structure contains the real-time vehicle navigation data. Second, the data can be displayed using a Graphical User Interface (GUI), allowing users to visually inspect the quality of the data and graphically extract portions of the data. Third, users can compensate for errors in the real-time vehicle navigation. Corrections include: (i) manual filtering and median filtering of long baseline (LBL) ranges; (ii) estimation of the Doppler/gyro alignment using previously reported methodologies; and (iii) sound velocity, tide, and LBL transponder corrections. Using these corrections, the Doppler and LBL positions can be recomputed to provide improved estimates of the vehicle position compared to those computed in real-time. The data can be saved in either binary or ASCII

33 CFR 90.3 - Pushing vessel and vessel being pushed: Composite unit.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Pushing vessel and vessel being... HOMELAND SECURITY INLAND NAVIGATION RULES INLAND RULES: INTERPRETATIVE RULES § 90.3 Pushing vessel and vessel being pushed: Composite unit. Rule 24(b) of the Inland Rules states that when a pushing vessel and...

Navigating a Maze with Balance Board and Wiimote

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Fikkert, F.W.; Hoeijmakers, Niek; van der Vet, P.E.; Nijholt, A.; Nijholt, Antinus; Reidsma, D.; Reidsma, Dennis; Hondorp, G.H.W.

2009-01-01

Input from the lower body in human-computer interfaces can be beneficial, enjoyable and even entertaining when users are expected to perform tasks simultaneously. Users can navigate a virtual (game) world or even an (empirical) dataset while having their hands free to issue commands. We compared the

Navigating nuclear science: Enhancing analysis through visualization

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Irwin, N.H.; Berkel, J. van; Johnson, D.K.; Wylie, B.N.

1997-09-01

Data visualization is an emerging technology with high potential for addressing the information overload problem. This project extends the data visualization work of the Navigating Science project by coupling it with more traditional information retrieval methods. A citation-derived landscape was augmented with documents using a text-based similarity measure to show viability of extension into datasets where citation lists do not exist. Landscapes, showing hills where clusters of similar documents occur, can be navigated, manipulated and queried in this environment. The capabilities of this tool provide users with an intuitive explore-by-navigation method not currently available in today`s retrieval systems.

The Programmer's Guide to iSeries Navigator

CERN Document Server

Touhy, Paul

2012-01-01

iSeries Navigator is a favorite tool of operators and administrators-who use it with great success-but many programmers have missed the great programming tools that is provides! This book introduces you to iSeries Navigator along with all the powerful tools and interfaces that will expand your programming horizons. As iSeries applications continue to move toward a graphical user interface (GUI), so does the development environment. Programs such as CODE and WDSC may fill the need for the programming environment, but iSeries Navigator fills the programmer's need for general system access as wel

Visual Navigation of Complex Information Spaces

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sarah North

1995-11-01

Full Text Available The authors lay the foundation for the introduction of visual navigation aid to assist computer users in direct manipulation of the complex information spaces. By exploring present research on scientific data visualisation and creating a case for improved information visualisation tools, they introduce the design of an improved information visualisation interface utilizing dynamic slider, called Visual-X, incorporating icons with bindable attributes (glyphs. Exploring the improvement that these data visualisations, make to a computing environment, the authors conduct an experiment to compare the performance of subjects who use traditional interfaces and Visual-X. Methodology is presented and conclusions reveal that the use of Visual-X appears to be a promising approach in providing users with a navigation tool that does not overload their cognitive processes.

On the sustainability of inland fisheries: Finding a future for the forgotten

Science.gov (United States)

Cooke, Steven J.; Allison, Edward H.; Beard, Douglas; Arlinghaus, Robert; Arthington, Angela; Bartley, Devin; Cowx, Ian G.; Fuentevilla, Carlos; Léonard, Nancy J.; Lorenzen, Kai; Lynch, Abigail; Nguyen, Vivian M.; Youn, So-Jung; Tayor, William W.; Welcomme, Robin

2016-01-01

At present, inland fisheries are not often a national or regional governance priority and as a result, inland capture fisheries are undervalued and largely overlooked. As such they are threatened in both developing and developed countries. Indeed, due to lack of reliable data, inland fisheries have never been part of any high profile global fisheries assessment and are notably absent from the Sustainable Development Goals. The general public and policy makers are largely ignorant of the plight of freshwater ecosystems and the fish they support, as well as the ecosystem services generated by inland fisheries. This ignorance is particularly salient given that the current emphasis on the food-water-energy nexus often fails to include the important role that inland fish and fisheries play in food security and supporting livelihoods in low-income food deficit countries. Developing countries in Africa and Asia produce about 11 million tonnes of inland fish annually, 90 % of the global total. The role of inland fisheries goes beyond just kilocalories; fish provide important micronutrients and essentially fatty acids. In some regions, inland recreational fisheries are important, generating much wealth and supporting livelihoods. The following three key recommendations are necessary for action if inland fisheries are to become a part of the food-water-energy discussion: invest in improved valuation and assessment methods, build better methods to effectively govern inland fisheries (requires capacity building and incentives), and develop approaches to managing waters across sectors and scales. Moreover, if inland fisheries are recognized as important to food security, livelihoods, and human well-being, they can be more easily incorporated in regional, national, and global policies and agreements on water issues. Through these approaches, inland fisheries can be better evaluated and be more fully recognized in broader water resource and aquatic ecosystem planning and decision

46 CFR 11.430 - Endorsements for the Great Lakes and inland waters.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 46 Shipping 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Endorsements for the Great Lakes and inland waters. 11... Endorsements for the Great Lakes and inland waters. Any license or MMC endorsement issued for service on the Great Lakes and inland waters is valid on all of the inland waters of the United States as defined in...

Instruments to reduce pollutant emissions of the existing inland vessel fleet. Position paper for international workshop 'Emissions from the Legacy Fleet'

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Den Boer, E.

2011-11-15

that improve the environmental performance of inland navigation and provides an overview of suitable policy instruments to improve the environmental performance of inland shipping.

Research Trends of Inland Terminals: A Literature Review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomislav Rožić

2016-10-01

and revised. The review will summarize the literature related to development, classification, technological processes and location of inland terminals. In the end, the paper identifies a new proposition for further research based on the current trends and developments in inland terminals as an important factor of intermodal transport.

A building cost estimation method for inland ships

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hekkenberg, R.G.

2014-01-01

There is very little publicly available data about the building cost of inland ships, especially for ships that have dimensions that differ significantly from those of common ships. Also, no methods to determine the building cost of inland ships are described in literature. In this paper, a method

NAVIGATION IN LARGE-FORMAT BUILDINGS BASED ON RFID SENSORS AND QR AND AR MARKERS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomasz Szymczyk

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The authors address the problem of passive navigation in large buildings. Based on the example of several interconnected buildings housing departments of the Lublin University of Technology, as well as the conceptual navigation system, the paper presents one of the possible ways of leading the user from the entrance of the building to a particular room. An analysis of different types of users is made and different (best for them ways of navigating the intricate corridors are proposed. Three ways of user localisation are suggested: RFID, AR and QR markers. A graph of connections between specific rooms was made and weights proposed, representing “the difficulty of covering a given distance”. In the process of navigation Dijkstra’s algorithm was used. The road is indicated as multimedia information: a voice-over or animated arrow showing the direction displayed on the smart phone screen with proprietary software installed. It is also possible to inform the user of the position of the location in which he currently is, based on the static information stored in the QR code.

An Analysis of Video Navigation Behavior for Web Leisure

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ying-Han Chang

2012-12-01

Full Text Available People nowadays put much emphasis on leisure activities, and web video has gradually become one of the main sources for popular leisure. This article introduces the related concepts of leisure and navigation behavior as well as some recent research topics. Moreover, using YouTube as an experimental setting, the authors invited some experienced web video users and conducted an empirical study on their navigating the web videos for leisure purpose. The study used questionnaires, navigation logs, diaries, and interviews to collect data. Major results show: the subjects watched a variety of video content on the web either from traditional media or user-generated video; these videos can meet their leisure needs of both the broad and personal interests; during the navigation process, each subject quite focuses on video leisure, and is willingly to explore unknown videos; however, within a limited amount of time for leisure, a balance between leisure and rest becomes an issue of achieving real relaxation, which is worth of further attention. [Article content in Chinese

A 3D Model Based Imdoor Navigation System for Hubei Provincial Museum

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, W.; Kruminaite, M.; Onrust, B.; Liu, H.; Xiong, Q.; Zlatanova, S.

2013-11-01

3D models are more powerful than 2D maps for indoor navigation in a complicate space like Hubei Provincial Museum because they can provide accurate descriptions of locations of indoor objects (e.g., doors, windows, tables) and context information of these objects. In addition, the 3D model is the preferred navigation environment by the user according to the survey. Therefore a 3D model based indoor navigation system is developed for Hubei Provincial Museum to guide the visitors of museum. The system consists of three layers: application, web service and navigation, which is built to support localization, navigation and visualization functions of the system. There are three main strengths of this system: it stores all data needed in one database and processes most calculations on the webserver which make the mobile client very lightweight, the network used for navigation is extracted semi-automatically and renewable, the graphic user interface (GUI), which is based on a game engine, has high performance of visualizing 3D model on a mobile display.

Agents for navigating virtual reality E-commerce environments

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Nijholt, Anton; van Dijk, Betsy; Sebaaly, Milad Fares

2001-01-01

We report about work in progress on capabilities of navigation agents in virtual environments. These agents may help a user to explore the environment: where to go, where to buy, where to find, etc. The agents may make suggestions based on a user profile, earlier visits and earlier given advice and

An Indoor Navigation System for the Visually Impaired

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis A. Guerrero

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Navigation in indoor environments is highly challenging for the severely visually impaired, particularly in spaces visited for the first time. Several solutions have been proposed to deal with this challenge. Although some of them have shown to be useful in real scenarios, they involve an important deployment effort or use artifacts that are not natural for blind users. This paper presents an indoor navigation system that was designed taking into consideration usability as the quality requirement to be maximized. This solution enables one to identify the position of a person and calculates the velocity and direction of his movements. Using this information, the system determines the user’s trajectory, locates possible obstacles in that route, and offers navigation information to the user. The solution has been evaluated using two experimental scenarios. Although the results are still not enough to provide strong conclusions, they indicate that the system is suitable to guide visually impaired people through an unknown built environment.

Advanced Navigation Aids System based on Augmented Reality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jaeyong OH

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Many maritime accidents have been caused by human-error including such things as inadequate watch keeping and/or mistakes in ship handling. Also, new navigational equipment has been developed using Information Technology (IT technology to provide various kinds of information for safe navigation. Despite these efforts, the reduction of maritime accidents has not occurred to the degree expected because, navigational equipment provides too much information, and this information is not well organized, such that users feel it to be complicated rather than helpful. In this point of view, the method of representation of navigational information is more important than the quantity of that information and research is required on the representation of information to make that information more easily understood and to allow decisions to be made correctly and promptly. In this paper, we adopt Augmented Reality (AR technologies for the representation of information. AR is a 3D computer graphics technology that blends virtual reality and the real world. Recently, this technology has been widely applied in our daily lives because it can provide information more effectively to users. Therefore, we propose a new concept, a navigational system based on AR technology; we review experimental results from a ship-handling simulator and from an open sea test to verify the efficiency of the proposed system.

Ecosystem approach to inland fisheries: research needs and implementation strategies

Science.gov (United States)

Beard, T. Douglas; Arlinghaus, Robert; Cooke, Steven J.; McIntyre, Peter B.; De Silva, Sena; Bartley, Devin M.; Cowx, Ian G.

2011-01-01

Inland fisheries are a vital component in the livelihoods and food security of people throughout the world, as well as contributing huge recreational and economic benefits. These valuable assets are jeopardized by lack of research-based understanding of the impacts of fisheries on inland ecosystems, and similarly the impact of human activities associated with inland waters on fisheries and aquatic biodiversity. To explore this topic, an international workshop was organized in order to examine strategies to incorporate fisheries into ecosystem approaches for management of inland waters. To achieve this goal, a new research agenda is needed that focuses on: quantifying the ecosystem services provided by fresh waters; quantifying the economic, social and nutritional benefits of inland fisheries; improving assessments designed to evaluate fisheries exploitation potential; and examining feedbacks between fisheries, ecosystem productivity and aquatic biodiversity. Accomplishing these objectives will require merging natural and social science approaches to address coupled social–ecological system dynamics.

MONTE: the next generation of mission design and navigation software

Science.gov (United States)

Evans, Scott; Taber, William; Drain, Theodore; Smith, Jonathon; Wu, Hsi-Cheng; Guevara, Michelle; Sunseri, Richard; Evans, James

2018-03-01

The Mission analysis, Operations and Navigation Toolkit Environment (MONTE) (Sunseri et al. in NASA Tech Briefs 36(9), 2012) is an astrodynamic toolkit produced by the Mission Design and Navigation Software Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It provides a single integrated environment for all phases of deep space and Earth orbiting missions. Capabilities include: trajectory optimization and analysis, operational orbit determination, flight path control, and 2D/3D visualization. MONTE is presented to the user as an importable Python language module. This allows a simple but powerful user interface via CLUI or script. In addition, the Python interface allows MONTE to be used seamlessly with other canonical scientific programming tools such as SciPy, NumPy, and Matplotlib. MONTE is the prime operational orbit determination software for all JPL navigated missions.

Model Basis for the Navigation Aid Analysis Tool

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Morris, Peter

1999-01-01

...), a self-contained software product that computes the probability of being in a given system state, most commonly, the incident state, for a user-constructed scenario of surface marine navigation...

Inland drift sand landscapes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Fanta, J.; Siepel, H.

2010-01-01

Man has had a complex relationship with inland drift sands through the ages. For some centuries these landscapes were seen as a threat to society, especially agriculture and housing. At present we conserve these landscapes as important Natura 2000 priority habitats. In this book you may find these

Gamifying Navigation in Location-Based Applications

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nadarajah, Stephanie Githa; Overgaard, Benjamin Nicholas; Pedersen, Peder Walz

2017-01-01

Location-based games entertain players usually by interactions at points of interest (POIs). Navigation between POIs often involve the use of either a physical or digital map, not taking advantage of the opportunity available to engage users in activities between POIs. The paper presents riddle s...

Virtual Patients in a Behavioral Medicine Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): A Case-Based Analysis of Technical Capacity and User Navigation Pathways.

Science.gov (United States)

Kononowicz, Andrzej A; Berman, Anne H; Stathakarou, Natalia; McGrath, Cormac; Bartyński, Tomasz; Nowakowski, Piotr; Malawski, Maciej; Zary, Nabil

2015-09-10

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been criticized for focusing on presentation of short video clip lectures and asking theoretical multiple-choice questions. A potential way of vitalizing these educational activities in the health sciences is to introduce virtual patients. Experiences from such extensions in MOOCs have not previously been reported in the literature. This study analyzes technical challenges and solutions for offering virtual patients in health-related MOOCs and describes patterns of virtual patient use in one such course. Our aims are to reduce the technical uncertainty related to these extensions, point to aspects that could be optimized for a better learner experience, and raise prospective research questions by describing indicators of virtual patient use on a massive scale. The Behavioral Medicine MOOC was offered by Karolinska Institutet, a medical university, on the EdX platform in the autumn of 2014. Course content was enhanced by two virtual patient scenarios presented in the OpenLabyrinth system and hosted on the VPH-Share cloud infrastructure. We analyzed web server and session logs and a participant satisfaction survey. Navigation pathways were summarized using a visual analytics tool developed for the purpose of this study. The number of course enrollments reached 19,236. At the official closing date, 2317 participants (12.1% of total enrollment) had declared completing the first virtual patient assignment and 1640 (8.5%) participants confirmed completion of the second virtual patient assignment. Peak activity involved 359 user sessions per day. The OpenLabyrinth system, deployed on four virtual servers, coped well with the workload. Participant survey respondents (n=479) regarded the activity as a helpful exercise in the course (83.1%). Technical challenges reported involved poor or restricted access to videos in certain areas of the world and occasional problems with lost sessions. The visual analyses of user pathways display

Supporting inland waterway transport on German waterways by operational forecasting services - water-levels, discharges, river ice

Science.gov (United States)

Meißner, Dennis; Klein, Bastian; Ionita, Monica; Hemri, Stephan; Rademacher, Silke

2017-04-01

Inland waterway transport (IWT) is an important commercial sector significantly vulnerable to hydrological impacts. River ice and floods limit the availability of the waterway network and may cause considerable damages to waterway infrastructure. Low flows significantly affect IWT's operation efficiency usually several months a year due to the close correlation of (low) water levels / water depths and (high) transport costs. Therefore "navigation-related" hydrological forecasts focussing on the specific requirements of water-bound transport (relevant forecast locations, target parameters, skill characteristics etc.) play a major role in order to mitigate IWT's vulnerability to hydro-meteorological impacts. In light of continuing transport growth within the European Union, hydrological forecasts for the waterways are essential to stimulate the use of the free capacity IWT still offers more consequently. An overview of the current operational and pre-operational forecasting systems for the German waterways predicting water levels, discharges and river ice thickness on various time-scales will be presented. While short-term (deterministic) forecasts have a long tradition in navigation-related forecasting, (probabilistic) forecasting services offering extended lead-times are not yet well-established and are still subject to current research and development activities (e.g. within the EU-projects EUPORIAS and IMPREX). The focus is on improving technical aspects as well as on exploring adequate ways of disseminating and communicating probabilistic forecast information. For the German stretch of the River Rhine, one of the most frequented inland waterways worldwide, the existing deterministic forecast scheme has been extended by ensemble forecasts combined with statistical post-processing modules applying EMOS (Ensemble Model Output Statistics) and ECC (Ensemble Copula Coupling) in order to generate water level predictions up to 10 days and to estimate its predictive

Addressing the Influence of Space Weather on Airline Navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Sparks, Lawrence

2012-01-01

The advent of satellite-based augmentation systems has made it possible to navigate aircraft safely using radio signals emitted by global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as the Global Positioning System. As a signal propagates through the earth's ionosphere, it suffers delay that is proportional to the total electron content encountered along the raypath. Since the magnitude of this total electron content is strongly influenced by space weather, the safety and reliability of GNSS for airline navigation requires continual monitoring of the state of the ionosphere and calibration of ionospheric delay. This paper examines the impact of space weather on GNSS-based navigation and provides an overview of how the Wide Area Augmentation System protects its users from positioning error due to ionospheric disturbances

Enabling Communication and Navigation Technologies for Future Near Earth Science Missions

Science.gov (United States)

Israel, David J.; Heckler, Gregory; Menrad, Robert; Hudiburg, John; Boroson, Don; Robinson, Bryan; Cornwell, Donald

2016-01-01

In 2015, the Earth Regimes Network Evolution Study (ERNESt) proposed an architectural concept and technologies that evolve to enable space science and exploration missions out to the 2040 timeframe. The architectural concept evolves the current instantiations of the Near Earth Network and Space Network with new technologies to provide a global communication and navigation network that provides communication and navigation services to a wide range of space users in the near Earth domain. The technologies included High Rate Optical Communications, Optical Multiple Access (OMA), Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN), User Initiated Services (UIS), and advanced Position, Navigation, and Timing technology. This paper describes the key technologies and their current technology readiness levels. Examples of science missions that could be enabled by the technologies and the projected operational benefits of the architecture concept to missions are also described.

Climate change effects on North American inland fish populations and assemblages

Science.gov (United States)

Lynch, Abigail J.; Myers, Bonnie; Chu, Cindy; Eby, Lisa A.; Falke, Jeffrey A.; Kovach, Ryan P.; Krabbenhoft, Trevor J.; Kwak, Thomas J.; Lyons, John; Paukert, Craig P.; Whitney, James E.

2016-01-01

Climate is a critical driver of many fish populations, assemblages, and aquatic communities. However, direct observational studies of climate change impacts on North American inland fishes are rare. In this synthesis, we (1) summarize climate trends that may influence North American inland fish populations and assemblages, (2) compile 31 peer-reviewed studies of documented climate change effects on North American inland fish populations and assemblages, and (3) highlight four case studies representing a variety of observed responses ranging from warmwater systems in the southwestern and southeastern United States to coldwater systems along the Pacific Coast and Canadian Shield. We conclude by identifying key data gaps and research needs to inform adaptive, ecosystem-based approaches to managing North American inland fishes and fisheries in a changing climate.

Looking Good, Feeling Good – Tac Map: a navigation system for the blind

OpenAIRE

Chamberlain, Paul; Dieng, Patricia

2011-01-01

This paper describes the research and development of a navigation system for the blind that provides a tactile and visual language that can be understood by both sighted and blind users. It describes key work and issues in the development of graphical symbols and in particular the pioneering work of Neurath‟s ISOTYPES, as well as more specific communication systems for blind people. The paper focuses on the development of "TacMap‟, a navigation system for the blind. User engagement has been f...

Longitudinal navigation log data on a large web domain

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verberne, S.; Arends, B.; Kraaij, W.; Vries, A. de

2016-01-01

We have collected the access logs for our university's web domain over a time span of 4.5 years. We now release the pre-processed data of a 3-month period for research into user navigation behavior. We preprocessed the data so that only successful GET requests of web pages by non-bot users are kept.

Forstering cooperation in inland waterway networks : a gaming and simulation approach (chapter 23)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Veenstra, A.W.; Meijeren, van J.; Harmsen, J.M.A.; Verbraeck, A.; Negenborn, R.R.; Ocampa-Martinez, C.

2015-01-01

Inland waterway transport is an important economic activity in the Netherlands and in Europe. Especially in the hinterland transport of containers, inland shipping is expected to form the backbone of a multimodal transport system. To support and strengthen the inland waterway industry in the

Diversity of inland valleys and opportunities for agricultural development in Sierra Leone.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elliott Ronald Dossou-Yovo

Full Text Available Inland valleys are becoming increasingly important agricultural production areas for rural households in sub-Saharan Africa due to their relative high and secure water availability and soil fertility. In addition, inland valleys are important as water buffer and biodiversity hot spots and they provide local communities with forest, forage, and fishing resources. As different inland-valley ecosystem functions may conflict with agricultural objectives, indiscriminate development should be avoided. This study aims to analyze the diversity of inland valleys in Sierra Leone and to develop guidelines for more precise interventions. Land use, biophysical and socio-economic data were analyzed on 257 inland valleys using spatial and multivariate techniques. Five cluster groups of inland valleys were identified: (i semi-permanently flooded with high soil organic carbon (4.2% and moderate available phosphorus (10.2 ppm, mostly under natural vegetation; (ii semi-permanently flooded with low soil organic carbon (1.5% and very low available phosphorus (3.1 ppm, abandoned by farmers; (iii seasonally flooded with moderate soil organic carbon (3.1% and low available phosphorus (8.3 ppm, used for rainfed rice and off-season vegetables produced without fertilizer application for household consumption and market; (iv well drained with moderate soil organic carbon (3.8% and moderate available phosphorus (10.0 ppm, used for rainfed rice and off-season vegetables produced with fertilizer application for household consumption and market; and (v well drained with moderate soil organic carbon (3.6% and moderate available phosphorus (11 ppm, used for household consumption without fertilizer application. Soil organic carbon, available phosphorus, hydrological regime, physical accessibility and market opportunity were the major factors affecting agricultural intensification of inland valleys. Opening up the areas in which inland valleys occur through improved roads and

Navigation of robotic system using cricket motes

Science.gov (United States)

Patil, Yogendra J.; Baine, Nicholas A.; Rattan, Kuldip S.

2011-06-01

This paper presents a novel algorithm for self-mapping of the cricket motes that can be used for indoor navigation of autonomous robotic systems. The cricket system is a wireless sensor network that can provide indoor localization service to its user via acoustic ranging techniques. The behavior of the ultrasonic transducer on the cricket mote is studied and the regions where satisfactorily distance measurements can be obtained are recorded. Placing the motes in these regions results fine-grain mapping of the cricket motes. Trilateration is used to obtain a rigid coordinate system, but is insufficient if the network is to be used for navigation. A modified SLAM algorithm is applied to overcome the shortcomings of trilateration. Finally, the self-mapped cricket motes can be used for navigation of autonomous robotic systems in an indoor location.

Icelandic Inland Wetlands: Characteristics and Extent of Draining

OpenAIRE

Gudmundsson, Jon; Brink, Sigmundur H.; Arnalds, Olafur; Gisladottir, Fanney O.; Oskarsson, Hlynur

2016-01-01

Iceland has inland wetland areas with soils exhibiting both Andosol and Histosol properties which are uncommon elsewhere on Earth. They are generally fertile, with higher bird-nest densities than in similar wetlands in the neighboring countries, with nutrients released by rapid weathering of aeolian materials of basaltic nature. Icelandic inland wetlands cover about 9000 km2 constituting 19.4 % of the vegetated surfaces of the island. The wetland soils are often 1–3 m thick and store 33 to >1...

A process mining approach to analyse user behaviour

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Maruster, Laura; Faber, Niels R.; Jorna, Rene J.; van Haren, Rob J. F.; Cordeiro, J; Filipe, J; Hammoudi, S

2008-01-01

Designing and personalising systems for specific user groups encompasses a lot of effort with respect to analysing and understanding user behaviour. The goal of our paper is to provide a new methodology for determining navigational patterns of behaviour of specific user groups. We consider

Several issues related to regional environmental investigation to inland nuclear power plant

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tian Xinshan; Zhang Xiaofeng

2010-01-01

Based on the goal of carrying out regional environmental investigation and review of recent environmental investigations toward inland nuclear power plant(NPP) site, and combined with the characteristics between inland and coastal sites, this paper is to make deeply analysis on population distribution, environmental characteristics, feasibility of performing emergency plan, characteristics of received water and external human-induced incident of NPP vicinity, then advance several significant issues related regional environmental investigation to inland sites, and make comparison with the investigation to coastal sites. Meantime, on guarantee of the integrity of collected materials during investigation, this paper also makes several proposals to provide reference for carrying out regional environmental investigation to inland NPP site. (authors)

Policies for Positioning Empty Containers in an Inland Multi-depot System

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dang, Vinh Quang; Nielsen, Izabela Ewa; Yun, Won-Young

2011-01-01

-container management are as follows: a coordinated (s, S) inventory policy for overseas positioning, (ri, Ri) policy at each depot for inland positioning; and a simple leasing policy with zero lead-time. For inland positioning policy, four different methods are proposed to reposition empty containers between depots....... Customer demands and returning containers in depots and lead-time for positioning from overseas are considered as uncertain factors. The objective is to obtain the optimal policy in order to minimize the expected total cost including inventory holding, overseas positioning, inland positioning and leasing...

Review of available data for a South African Inventory of Inland ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Review of available data for a South African Inventory of Inland Aquatic ... for the third National Biodiversity Assessment of 2018, a review was undertaken to ... the extent of inland wetlands mapped by remote sensing at a country-wide scale.

Studies on environment safety and application of advanced reactor for inland nuclear power plants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wei, L.; Jie, L.

2014-01-01

To study environment safety assessment of inland nuclear power plants (NPPs), the impact of environment safety under the normal operation was researched and the environment risk of serious accidents was analyzed. Moreover, the requirements and relevant provisions of site selection between international nuclear power plant and China's are comparatively studied. The conclusion was that the environment safety assessment of inland and coastal nuclear power plant have no essential difference; the advanced reactor can meet with high criteria of environment safety of inland nuclear power plants. In this way, China is safe and feasible to develop inland nuclear power plant. China's inland nuclear power plants will be as big market for advanced reactor. (author)

Internet-Based Indoor Navigation Services

OpenAIRE

Zeinalipour-Yazti, Demetrios; Laoudias, Christos; Georgiou, Kyriakos

2017-01-01

Smartphone advances are leading to a class of Internet-based Indoor Navigation services. IIN services rely on geolocation databases that store indoor models, comprising floor maps and points of interest, along with wireless, light, and magnetic signals for localizing users. Developing IIN services creates new information management challenges - such as crowdsourcing indoor models, acquiring and fusing big data velocity signals, localization algorithms, and custodians' location privacy. Here, ...

The coordinated development of China＇ s inland water transport%The coordinated development of China' s inland water transport

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Deng Aimin; Tian Feng; Haasis H.D; Mao Lang; Cai Jia

2012-01-01

The coordinated development is the core of sustainable development and the hot issue of international research. Inland water transport (IWT) is an important part of the water resources exploiting system and comprehensive transport system under socio-economic context of river basin, and also the country' s sustainable development priorities to achieve resource-conserving and environment-friendly strategy. Based on the coordinated development content, the paper combined Germany' s successful development experience, explored the elements and problem of the coordinated development of IWT system of China' s national economic strategy and basin economy, water resourse system, comprehensive transport system, and system itself, and their countermeasures and suggestions, in order to facilitate rapid and coordinated development of China' s inland water transport.

PeptideNavigator: An interactive tool for exploring large and complex data sets generated during peptide-based drug design projects.

Science.gov (United States)

Diller, Kyle I; Bayden, Alexander S; Audie, Joseph; Diller, David J

2018-01-01

There is growing interest in peptide-based drug design and discovery. Due to their relatively large size, polymeric nature, and chemical complexity, the design of peptide-based drugs presents an interesting "big data" challenge. Here, we describe an interactive computational environment, PeptideNavigator, for naturally exploring the tremendous amount of information generated during a peptide drug design project. The purpose of PeptideNavigator is the presentation of large and complex experimental and computational data sets, particularly 3D data, so as to enable multidisciplinary scientists to make optimal decisions during a peptide drug discovery project. PeptideNavigator provides users with numerous viewing options, such as scatter plots, sequence views, and sequence frequency diagrams. These views allow for the collective visualization and exploration of many peptides and their properties, ultimately enabling the user to focus on a small number of peptides of interest. To drill down into the details of individual peptides, PeptideNavigator provides users with a Ramachandran plot viewer and a fully featured 3D visualization tool. Each view is linked, allowing the user to seamlessly navigate from collective views of large peptide data sets to the details of individual peptides with promising property profiles. Two case studies, based on MHC-1A activating peptides and MDM2 scaffold design, are presented to demonstrate the utility of PeptideNavigator in the context of disparate peptide-design projects. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

CRUCIAL: Cryosat-2 Success over Inland Water and Land

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Moore, Philip; Berry, Philippa; Balmbra, Robert

2014-01-01

CRUCIAL is an ESA/STSE funded project investigating innovative land and inland water applications from Cryosat-2 with a forward-look component to the future Sentinel-3 mission. The fact that the Earth’s land surface is, in general, a relatively poor reflector of Ku band energy, with the exceptions...... of inland water, salar and ice surfaces has enabled Earth-orbiting satellite radar altimeters to be used for land surface applications including mapping and measurement of river and lake systems. Research with EnviSat Burst Echoes has shown that substantial high frequency information content is present...... of Cryosat-2 altimeter in SAR mode (I8 KHz) offers the opportunity to recover high frequency signals over much of the Earth’s land surface, enhancing the inland water height retrieval capability. Constraining this application is the limited availability of SAR Full Bit Rate (FBR) data from Cryosat-2 over...

LOG: Analyzing navigation trough a tutorial of Radiation Protection

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vega, J. M.; Pena, J. J.; Rossell, M. A.; Calvo, J. L.

2003-01-01

Every day, the number of didactic materials presented through Internet, is greater. However, we have not effective tools to obtain the potential academic yield of such a media. The complexity of the Internet protocols, in spite of the easy handling, makes it almost impossible. In this work, a didactic tool to analyse graphically the navigation through a tutorial on radiation protection is presented. For its visualisation, some subjects related with the biogical effects of radiation and with radiological quantities and units have been selected. The graphical representation shows the tour travelled by the user, in our case students of Medicine, and the time employed in eyeing each one of the nodes. The answers to problems about the contents of each node and its graphical representation in the navigation map allow us to follow the learning progress of the students as well as their standard of navigation. The graphical representation analysis of multiple users permits to detect some of the mistakes in the design of the tutorial and to suggest to the author a method for amending these mistakes. The system is developed on LINEX, but it is easily adaptable to other operating systems. (Author) 7 refs

Enriching location-based games with navigational game activities

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nadarajah, Stephanie Githa; Overgaard, Benjamin Nicholas; Pedersen, Peder Walz

2016-01-01

Mobile location-based games are experiences that entertain its players by requiring interactions mainly at points of interest (POIs). Navigation between POIs often involve the use of either a physical or digital map, not taking advantage of the opportunity available to engage users in activities...

Proximity and physical navigation in collaborative work with a multi-touch wall-display

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jakobsen, Mikkel Rønne; Hornbæk, Kasper

2012-01-01

Multi-touch, wall-sized displays afford new forms of collaboration. Yet, most data on collaboration with multi-touch displays come from tabletop settings, where users often sit and where space is a limited resource. We study how two-person groups navigate in relation to a 2.8m!1.2m multi-touch di......-touch display with 24.8 megapixels and to each other when solving a sensemaking task on a document collection. The results show that users physically navigate to shift fluently among different parts of the display and between parallel and joint group work....

Inland empire logistics GIS mapping project.

Science.gov (United States)

2009-01-01

The Inland Empire has experienced exponential growth in the area of warehousing and distribution facilities within the last decade and it seems that it will continue way into the future. Where are these facilities located? How large are the facilitie...

IMPLEMENTATION OF INTERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM MODEL DURING AIRCRAFT TESTING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The flight subset control is required during the aviation equipment test flights. In order to achieve this objective the complex consisting of strap down inertial navigation system (SINS and user equipment of satellite navigation systems (SNS can be used. Such combination needs to be used for error correction in positioning which is accumulated in SINS with time. This article shows the research results of the inertial navigation system (INS model. The results of the position- ing error calculation for various INS classes are given. Each of the examined INS has a different accumulated error for the same time lag. The methods of combining information of INS and SRNS are covered. The results obtained can be applied for upgrading the aircraft flight and navigation complexes. In particular, they can allow to continuously determine speed, coordinates, angular situation and repositioning rate of change of axes of the instrument frame.

The contribution of lakes to global inland fisheries harvest

Science.gov (United States)

Deines, Andrew M.; Bunnell, David B.; Rogers, Mark W.; Bennion, David; Woelmer, Whitney; Sayers, Michael J.; Grimm, Amanda G.; Shuchman, Robert A.; Raymer, Zachary B.; Brooks, Colin N.; Mychek-Londer, Justin G.; Taylor, William W.; Beard, Douglas

2017-01-01

Freshwater ecosystems provide numerous services for communities worldwide, including irrigation, hydropower, and municipal water; however, the services provided by inland fisheries – nourishment, employment, and recreational opportunities – are often comparatively undervalued. We provide an independent estimate of global lake harvest to improve biological and socioeconomic assessments of inland fisheries. On the basis of satellite-derived estimates of chlorophyll concentration from 80,012 globally distributed lakes, lake-specific fishing effort based on human population, and output from a Bayesian hierarchical model, we estimated that the global lake fishery harvest in the year 2011 was 8.4 million tons (mt). Our calculations excluded harvests from highly productive rivers, wetlands, and very small lakes; therefore, the true cumulative global fishery harvest from all freshwater sources likely exceeded 11 mt as reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This putative underestimate by the FAO could diminish the perceived importance of inland fisheries and perpetuate decisions that adversely affect these fisheries and millions of people.

Bulgarin ja muud vene teemad ajakirjas Inland / Bulgarin und andere Russische Themen in der Zeitschrift Das Inland

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Malle Salupere

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Das Inland (1836–1863 war meist für auswärtige Autoren und Materialien geschlossen, die wenigen Aufsätze und Referate über russische Autoren und Journalistik drehen sich hauptsächlich um den berüchtigten russischen Schriftsteller und Journalisten polnischer Herkunft Faddei Bulgarin (1789–1859, Gründer und Herausgeber der Tageszeitung Сeвeрнaя пчeлa (Nordische Biene – NB, Autor von vielgelesenen Romanen und Erzählungen und unzähliger Feuilletons, seit 1828 Besitzer des Gutes Karlowa an der Stadtgrenze Tartu, wo er die Sommerferien, zuweilen ganze Jahre verbrachte und auch begraben ist. Er wusste sich überall mehr Feinde als Freunde zu verschaffen, aber nicht wegen seiner angeblichen Denunziationen – das blieb ihm fremd, – sondern weil seine Meinung über Autoren, Künstler usw. nicht immer schmeichelnd war. Das Publikum vertraute ihm, was sich im Absatz der gelobten oder getadelten Werke wiederspiegelte. Daran liegt auch der Grund seines Streits mit Puschkin 1830 (den er früher und später immer hochgepriesen hat, worauf Letzterer mit bekannten bissigen Pamphlets antwortete, die anderthalb Jahrhunderte lang als die vertrauenswürdigste Quelle für Bulgarins Tätigkeit galten. Seit 1844 werden im Inland Referate aus der NB, meist mit Bulgarins Nachrichten aus Livland in seinen Sommerbriefen mit allerlei Beobachtungen und Meinungen über örtliche Geschichte und Verhältnisse, gebracht. Es war bekannt, dass die „Biene“ im Winterpalast vom Kaiser gelesen wurde, deshalb waren alle Behörden daran interessiert, dass ja nichts Ungünstiges unter des Allerhöchsten Augen komme. Bulgarin aber benutzte die Sonderstellung der Ostseeprovinzen dazu, um in maßlosen Lobliedern der deutschen Bildung und hiesiger Universität oder der blühenden Gutswirtschaft nach Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft seine Ansichten und Vorschläge zu verstecken, soweit das bei der scharfen Zensuraufsicht möglich war. Russische Schriftsteller kommen

The Environmental Data Exchange Network for Inland Water (EDEN-IW) project

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wuertz, J.; Haastrup, P.; Stjernholm, M.

The report summarizes the outcome of the EDEN -IW project. The project demonstrates access to heterogenous databases of inland water quality data using a system of software agents. The system include use of semantic web technologies to provide the use with a rich multilingual web interface...... to select, access, aggregate and visualize inland water data....

Novel cemented cup-holding technique while performing total hip arthroplasty with navigation system.

Science.gov (United States)

Takai, Hirokazu; Takahashi, Tomoki

2017-09-01

Recently, navigation systems have been more widely utilized in total hip arthroplasty. However, almost all of these systems have been developed for cementless cups. In the case of cemented total hip arthroplasty using a navigation system, a special-ordered cemented holder is needed. We propose a novel cemented cup-holding technique for navigation systems using readily available articles. We combine a cementless cup holder with an inverted cementless trial cup. The resulting apparatus is used as a cemented cup holder. The upside-down cup-holding technique is useful and permits cemented cup users to utilize a navigation system for placement of the acetabular component.

Novel cemented cup-holding technique while performing total hip arthroplasty with navigation system

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hirokazu Takai, MD

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Recently, navigation systems have been more widely utilized in total hip arthroplasty. However, almost all of these systems have been developed for cementless cups. In the case of cemented total hip arthroplasty using a navigation system, a special-ordered cemented holder is needed. We propose a novel cemented cup-holding technique for navigation systems using readily available articles. We combine a cementless cup holder with an inverted cementless trial cup. The resulting apparatus is used as a cemented cup holder. The upside-down cup-holding technique is useful and permits cemented cup users to utilize a navigation system for placement of the acetabular component.

Inland Waters and the North American Carbon Cycle

Science.gov (United States)

Butman, D. E.; Striegl, R. G.; Stackpoole, S. M.; del Giorgio, P.; Prairie, Y.; Pilcher, D.; Raymond, P. A.; Alcocer, J.; Paz, F.

2016-12-01

Inland aquatic ecosystems process, store, and release carbon to the atmosphere and coastal margins. The form of this carbon is a function of terrestrial and aquatic primary and secondary production, the weathering of materials in soils and subsurface environments, the hydrologic controls on the movement of carbon from land to inland waters, and the connectivity between streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs and groundwater. The 2007 1st State of the Carbon Cycle reported fluxes for the continental United States (CONUS) only. Streams and rivers exported 30-40 Tg C yr-1 to coastal environments, and 17-25 Tg C yr-1 were buried in lake and reservoir sediments. Remarkably, the 2007 report did not quantify gas emissions, which represent over half of the total carbon fluxes through inland water in the US. Current research has shown that 71-149 Tg C yr-1 exits freshwater systems either through atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide or as inorganic and organic carbon fluxes to the coast from the CONUS. These estimates did not include the Laurentian Great Lakes. Variation in the magnitude of these fluxes across regions of the CONUS has been linked to differences in precipitation and terrestrial net ecosystem production. Similar comprehensive assessments have not been done for Canada or Mexico. Here we provide, as part of the 2nd State of the Carbon Cycle report, estimates for the river coastal export and vertical emissions of carbon from inland waters of North America, and report major data gaps, and weaknesses in methodologies. These findings stress that strong international partnerships are needed to improve assessment, monitoring, and modeling of human impacts on the magnitude and timing of aquatic fluxes in the future.

Blind's Eye: Employing Google Directions API for Outdoor Navigation of Visually Impaired Pedestrians

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

SABA FEROZMEMON

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Vision plays a paramount role in our everyday life and assists human in almost every walk of life. The people lacking vision sense require assistance to move freely. The inability of unassisted navigation and orientation in outdoor environments is one of the most important constraints for people with visual impairment. Motivated by this problem, we developed a simplified and user friendly navigation system that allows visually impaired pedestrians to reach their desired outdoor location. We designed a Braille keyboard to allow the blind user to input their destination. The proposed system makes use of Google Directions API (Application Program Interface to generate the right path to a destination. The visually impaired pedestrians have to wear a vibration belt to keep them on the track. The evaluation exposes shortcomings of Google Directions API when used for navigating the visually impaired pedestrians in an outdoor environment.

Inland valley research in sub-Saharan Africa; priorities for a regional consortium

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jamin, J.Y.; Andriesse, W.; Thiombiano, L.; Windmeijer, P.N.

1996-01-01

These proceedings are an account of an international workshop in support of research strategy development for the Inland Valley Consortium in sub-Saharan Africa. This consortium aims at concerted research planning for rice-based cropping systems in the lower parts of inland valleys. The Consortium

PandaEPL: a library for programming spatial navigation experiments.

Science.gov (United States)

Solway, Alec; Miller, Jonathan F; Kahana, Michael J

2013-12-01

Recent advances in neuroimaging and neural recording techniques have enabled researchers to make significant progress in understanding the neural mechanisms underlying human spatial navigation. Because these techniques generally require participants to remain stationary, computer-generated virtual environments are used. We introduce PandaEPL, a programming library for the Python language designed to simplify the creation of computer-controlled spatial-navigation experiments. PandaEPL is built on top of Panda3D, a modern open-source game engine. It allows users to construct three-dimensional environments that participants can navigate from a first-person perspective. Sound playback and recording and also joystick support are provided through the use of additional optional libraries. PandaEPL also handles many tasks common to all cognitive experiments, including managing configuration files, logging all internal and participant-generated events, and keeping track of the experiment state. We describe how PandaEPL compares with other software for building spatial-navigation experiments and walk the reader through the process of creating a fully functional experiment.

'Outsmarting Traffic, Together': Driving as Social Navigation

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Sam Hind

2014-04-01

Full Text Available The automotive world is evolving. Ten years ago Nigel Thrift (2004: 41 made the claim that the experience of driving was slipping into our 'technological unconscious'. Only recently the New York Times suggested that with the rise of automated driving, standalone navigation tools as we know them would cease to exist, instead being 'fully absorbed into the machine' (Fisher, 2013. But in order to bridge the gap between past and future driving worlds, another technological evolution is emerging. This short, critical piece charts the rise of what has been called 'social navigation' in the industry; the development of digital mapping platforms designed to foster automotive sociality. It makes two provisional points. Firstly, that 'ludic' conceptualisations can shed light on the ongoing reconfiguration of drivers, vehicles, roads and technological aids such as touch-screen satellite navigation platforms. And secondly, that as a result of this, there is a coming-into-being of a new kind of driving politics; a 'casual politicking' centred on an engagement with digital interfaces. We explicate both by turning our attention towards Waze; a social navigation application that encourages users to interact with various driving dynamics.

Autonomous Unmanned Merchant Vessel and its Contribution towards the e-Navigation Implementation: The MUNIN Perspective

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Hans-Christoph Burmeister

2014-12-01

Full Text Available While IMO's e-Navigation project's scope is to enhance safety of navigation by improved ship-to-shore-cooperation, the EU's FP7 project MUNIN's aim is to develop a concept for an autonomous dry bulk carrier, that is at least as safe as a manned vessel. As e-Navigation has a strong focus on improving the human element in shipping and MUNIN tends towards an unmanned bridge, a common baseline might look quite contradictory at first, but they share the need to ensure and enhance the safety of navigation. After an introduction into e-Navigation and the MUNIN project, this paper will demonstrate with two examples, how MUNIN's results address identified e-Navigation's gaps and addresses e-Navigation's user needs. Thus, MUNIN contributes to the development and implementation of the prioritized e-Navigation solutions.

Practical web analytics for user experience how analytics can help you understand your users

CERN Document Server

Beasley, Michael

2013-01-01

Practical Web Analytics for User Experience teaches you how to use web analytics to help answer the complicated questions facing UX professionals. Within this book, you'll find a quantitative approach for measuring a website's effectiveness and the methods for posing and answering specific questions about how users navigate a website. The book is organized according to the concerns UX practitioners face. Chapters are devoted to traffic, clickpath, and content use analysis, measuring the effectiveness of design changes, including A/B testing, building user profiles based on search hab

Fisheries management in inland and coastal waters in Denmark from 1987 to 1999

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Gorm; Geertz-Hansen, Peter

2001-01-01

Fishing is a major recreational activity in Denmark, involving both inland and coastal waters. Anglers, aged 18-67, and amateur fishermen, aged 12-67, must hold a valid fishing pen- nit. Fees are used for stocking, river restoration and fisheries research. All proposals for stocking inland waters...... for several generations. Stocking is also subject to genetic guidelines. This paper reviews the status of fisheries in Danish inland waters, their regulation, socio-economic aspects, stocking, aquaculture and the main problems and trends....

SLAM algorithm applied to robotics assistance for navigation in unknown environments

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Lobo Pereira Fernando

2010-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The combination of robotic tools with assistance technology determines a slightly explored area of applications and advantages for disability or elder people in their daily tasks. Autonomous motorized wheelchair navigation inside an environment, behaviour based control of orthopaedic arms or user's preference learning from a friendly interface are some examples of this new field. In this paper, a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM algorithm is implemented to allow the environmental learning by a mobile robot while its navigation is governed by electromyographic signals. The entire system is part autonomous and part user-decision dependent (semi-autonomous. The environmental learning executed by the SLAM algorithm and the low level behaviour-based reactions of the mobile robot are robotic autonomous tasks, whereas the mobile robot navigation inside an environment is commanded by a Muscle-Computer Interface (MCI. Methods In this paper, a sequential Extended Kalman Filter (EKF feature-based SLAM algorithm is implemented. The features correspond to lines and corners -concave and convex- of the environment. From the SLAM architecture, a global metric map of the environment is derived. The electromyographic signals that command the robot's movements can be adapted to the patient's disabilities. For mobile robot navigation purposes, five commands were obtained from the MCI: turn to the left, turn to the right, stop, start and exit. A kinematic controller to control the mobile robot was implemented. A low level behavior strategy was also implemented to avoid robot's collisions with the environment and moving agents. Results The entire system was tested in a population of seven volunteers: three elder, two below-elbow amputees and two young normally limbed patients. The experiments were performed within a closed low dynamic environment. Subjects took an average time of 35 minutes to navigate the environment and to learn how

User involvement competence for radical innovation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lettl, Christopher

2007-01-01

-assisted navigation systems. The case study analysis reveals that firms who closely interact with specific users benefit significantly for their radical innovation work. These users have a high motivation toward new solutions, are open to new technologies, possess diverse competencies, and are embedded into a very......One important market related capability for firms which seek to develop radical innovations is the competence to involve the 'right' users at the 'right' time in the 'right' form. While former studies have identified a rather passive role of users in the radical innovation process, this paper...

User involvement competence for radical innovation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lettl, Christopher

2007-01-01

One important market related capability for firms which seek to develop radical innovations is the competence to involve the 'right' users at the 'right' time in the 'right' form. While former studies have identified a rather passive role of users in the radical innovation process, this paper......-assisted navigation systems. The case study analysis reveals that firms who closely interact with specific users benefit significantly for their radical innovation work. These users have a high motivation toward new solutions, are open to new technologies, possess diverse competencies, and are embedded into a very...

Space Mobile Network: A Near Earth Communication and Navigation Architecture

Science.gov (United States)

Israel, Dave J.; Heckler, Greg; Menrad, Robert J.

2016-01-01

This paper describes a Space Mobile Network architecture, the result of a recently completed NASA study exploring architectural concepts to produce a vision for the future Near Earth communications and navigation systems. The Space Mobile Network (SMN) incorporates technologies, such as Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) and optical communications, and new operations concepts, such as User Initiated Services, to provide user services analogous to a terrestrial smartphone user. The paper will describe the SMN Architecture, envisioned future operations concepts, opportunities for industry and international collaboration and interoperability, and technology development areas and goals.

Indoor Semantic Modelling for Routing: The Two-Level Routing Approach for Indoor Navigation

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Liu Liu

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Humans perform many activities indoors and they show a growing need for indoor navigation, especially in unfamiliar buildings such as airports, museums and hospitals. Complexity of such buildings poses many challenges for building managers and visitors. Indoor navigation services play an important role in supporting these indoor activities. Indoor navigation covers extensive topics such as: 1 indoor positioning and localization; 2 indoor space representation for navigation model generation; 3 indoor routing computation; 4 human wayfinding behaviours; and 5 indoor guidance (e.g., textual directories. So far, a large number of studies of pedestrian indoor navigation have presented diverse navigation models and routing algorithms/methods. However, the major challenge is rarely referred to: how to represent the complex indoor environment for pedestrians and conduct routing according to the different roles and sizes of users. Such complex buildings contain irregular shapes, large open spaces, complicated obstacles and different types of passages. A navigation model can be very complicated if the indoors are accurately represented. Although most research demonstrates feasible indoor navigation models and related routing methods in regular buildings, the focus is still on a general navigation model for pedestrians who are simplified as circles. In fact, pedestrians represent different sizes, motion abilities and preferences (e.g., described in user profiles, which should be reflected in navigation models and be considered for indoor routing (e.g., relevant Spaces of Interest and Points of Interest. In order to address this challenge, this thesis proposes an innovative indoor modelling and routing approach – two-level routing. It specially targets the case of routing in complex buildings for distinct users. The conceptual (first level uses general free indoor spaces: this is represented by the logical network whose nodes represent the spaces and edges

User-Adapted Recommendation of Content on Mobile Devices Using Bayesian Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Iwasaki, Hirotoshi; Mizuno, Nobuhiro; Hara, Kousuke; Motomura, Yoichi

Mobile devices, such as cellular phones and car navigation systems, are essential to daily life. People acquire necessary information and preferred content over communication networks anywhere, anytime. However, usability issues arise from the simplicity of user interfaces themselves. Thus, a recommendation of content that is adapted to a user's preference and situation will help the user select content. In this paper, we describe a method to realize such a system using Bayesian networks. This user-adapted mobile system is based on a user model that provides recommendation of content (i.e., restaurants, shops, and music that are suitable to the user and situation) and that learns incrementally based on accumulated usage history data. However, sufficient samples are not always guaranteed, since a user model would require combined dependency among users, situations, and contents. Therefore, we propose the LK method for modeling, which complements incomplete and insufficient samples using knowledge data, and CPT incremental learning for adaptation based on a small number of samples. In order to evaluate the methods proposed, we applied them to restaurant recommendations made on car navigation systems. The evaluation results confirmed that our model based on the LK method can be expected to provide better generalization performance than that of the conventional method. Furthermore, our system would require much less operation than current car navigation systems from the beginning of use. Our evaluation results also indicate that learning a user's individual preference through CPT incremental learning would be beneficial to many users, even with only a few samples. As a result, we have developed the technology of a system that becomes more adapted to a user the more it is used.

A model for an inland port in Australia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. T.K. Toh

2008-11-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the role of an inland port particular to the outer regions of Melbourne, Australia. In this study, it has been experienced that the broad use of terminology, in the Melbourne context, has been a stumbling block. In its particular context, this has provided the impetus for the development of a model for an inland port that is unambiguous. It is clear from international examples that such a development acts as a significant potential nucleus for regional economic growth, but the lack of a facilitated discussion is an impediment. This model is offered as a facilitator and a useful tool in the construction of a common understanding.

COMMERCIAL FISH HARVEST IN INLAND WATER BODIES OF GERMANY (A REVIEW

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А. Didenko

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Purpose. To analyze scientific and statistical sources on commercial fishery in inland water bodies of Germany. To summarize German experience and identify specific features of this sector. Findings. Commercial fishery in Germany is carried out on 30% (≈250 000 hectares of inland water bodies of Germany. The main fishing regions are prealpine lakes in Bavaria, Lake Constance, lakes in Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania federal states as well as lakes and rivers of Brandenburg and Berlin. Commercial fishing on rivers usually has a local importance and is practiced in regions with poorly developed industry. There were 670 commercial fishing organizations in 2014, where 932 people were employed. Each fishing license owner is allowed deploying simultaneously a clearly defined number of fishing gears depending on season. In addition, fishing nets are regulated not only based on their mesh size and length, but also height and the minimum thread diameter. The cardinal difference of German inland fishing is the absence of the periods of total ban on commercial fishing. There are only ban periods for fishing on certain fish species during their spawning seasons. These periods differ for federal states and are listed in the relevant regional fishing rules. The total fish catch in inland waters of Germany by commercial fishermen in 2014 was 3132 tons, much lower than the catches of anglers who caught 18 450 tons at the same year. Most of fish were caught by fishing organizations in the Brandenburg Federal State. Average fish productivity in 2014 was approx. 13 kg/ha (ranging from 10 to 20 kg/ha. Whitefish was the dominant species in catches in the Lake Constance and prealpine lakes of Bavaria, while cyprinids (roach, bream, silver bream, blue bream, etc. dominated in Northern Germany. The profit of commercial fish catch in 2014 was about 12.5 million euros. Among numerous activities aimed at preserving commercial fish populations, Germans

Disentangling multiple pressures on fish assemblages in large rivers.

Science.gov (United States)

Zajicek, Petr; Radinger, Johannes; Wolter, Christian

2018-06-15

European large rivers are exposed to multiple human pressures and maintained as waterways for inland navigation. However, little is known on the dominance and interactions of multiple pressures in large rivers and in particular inland navigation has been ignored in multi-pressure analyzes so far. We determined the response of ten fish population metrics (FPM, related to densities of diagnostic guilds and biodiversity) to 11 prevailing pressures including navigation intensity at 76 sites in eight European large rivers. Thereby, we aimed to derive indicative FPM for the most influential pressures that can serve for fish-based assessments. Pressures' influences, impacts and interactions were determined for each FPM using bootstrapped regression tree models. Increased flow velocity, navigation intensity and the loss of floodplains had the highest influences on guild densities and biodiversity. Interactions between navigation intensity and loss of floodplains and between navigation intensity and increased flow velocity were most frequent, each affecting 80% of the FPM. Further, increased sedimentation, channelization, organic siltation, the presence of artificial embankments and the presence of barriers had strong influences on at least one FPM. Thereby, each FPM was influenced by up to five pressures. However, some diagnostic FPM could be derived: Species richness, Shannon and Simpson Indices, the Fish Region Index and lithophilic and psammophilic guilds specifically indicate rhithralisation of the potamal region of large rivers. Lithophilic, phytophilic and psammophilic guilds indicate disturbance of shoreline habitats through both (i) wave action induced by passing vessels and (ii) hydromorphological degradation of the river channel that comes along with inland navigation. In European large rivers, inland navigation constitutes a highly influential pressure that adds on top of the prevailing hydromorphological degradation. Therefore, river management has to consider

Design Issues for MEMS-Based Pedestrian Inertial Navigation Systems

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P. S. Marinushkin

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The paper describes design issues for MEMS-based pedestrian inertial navigation systems. By now the algorithms to estimate navigation parameters for strap-down inertial navigation systems on the basis of plural observations have been already well developed. At the same time mathematical and software processing of information in the case of pedestrian inertial navigation systems has its specificity, due to the peculiarities of their functioning and exploitation. Therefore, there is an urgent task to enhance existing fusion algorithms for use in pedestrian navigation systems. For this purpose the article analyzes the characteristics of the hardware composition and configuration of existing systems of this class. The paper shows advantages of various technical solutions. Relying on their main features it justifies a choice of the navigation system architecture and hardware composition enabling improvement of the estimation accuracy of user position as compared to the systems using only inertial sensors. The next point concerns the development of algorithms for complex processing of heterogeneous information. To increase an accuracy of the free running pedestrian inertial navigation system we propose an adaptive algorithm for joint processing of heterogeneous information based on the fusion of inertial info rmation with magnetometer measurements using EKF approach. Modeling of the algorithm was carried out using a specially developed functional prototype of pedestrian inertial navigation system, implemented as a hardware/software complex in Matlab environment. The functional prototype tests of the developed system demonstrated an improvement of the navigation parameters estimation compared to the systems based on inertial sensors only. It enables to draw a conclusion that the synthesized algorithm provides satisfactory accuracy for calculating the trajectory of motion even when using low-grade inertial MEMS sensors. The developed algorithm can be

Evaluating gaze-driven power wheelchair with navigation support for persons with disabilities.

Science.gov (United States)

Wästlund, Erik; Sponseller, Kay; Pettersson, Ola; Bared, Anders

2015-01-01

This article describes a novel add-on for powered wheelchairs that is composed of a gaze-driven control system and a navigation support system. The add-on was tested by three users. All of the users were individuals with severe disabilities and no possibility of moving independently. The system is an add-on to a standard power wheelchair and can be customized for different levels of support according to the cognitive level, motor control, perceptual skills, and specific needs of the user. The primary aim of this study was to test the functionality and safety of the system in the user's home environment. The secondary aim was to evaluate whether access to a gaze-driven powered wheelchair with navigation support is perceived as meaningful in terms of independence and participation. The results show that the system has the potential to provide safe, independent indoor mobility and that the users perceive doing so as fun, meaningful, and a way to reduce dependency on others. Independent mobility has numerous benefits in addition to psychological and emotional well-being. By observing users' actions, caregivers and healthcare professionals can assess the individual's capabilities, which was not previously possible. Rehabilitation can be better adapted to the individual's specific needs, and driving a wheelchair independently can be a valuable, motivating training tool.

Image-based path planning for automated virtual colonoscopy navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Hong, Wei

2008-03-01

Virtual colonoscopy (VC) is a noninvasive method for colonic polyp screening, by reconstructing three-dimensional models of the colon using computerized tomography (CT). In virtual colonoscopy fly-through navigation, it is crucial to generate an optimal camera path for efficient clinical examination. In conventional methods, the centerline of the colon lumen is usually used as the camera path. In order to extract colon centerline, some time consuming pre-processing algorithms must be performed before the fly-through navigation, such as colon segmentation, distance transformation, or topological thinning. In this paper, we present an efficient image-based path planning algorithm for automated virtual colonoscopy fly-through navigation without the requirement of any pre-processing. Our algorithm only needs the physician to provide a seed point as the starting camera position using 2D axial CT images. A wide angle fisheye camera model is used to generate a depth image from the current camera position. Two types of navigational landmarks, safe regions and target regions are extracted from the depth images. Camera position and its corresponding view direction are then determined using these landmarks. The experimental results show that the generated paths are accurate and increase the user comfort during the fly-through navigation. Moreover, because of the efficiency of our path planning algorithm and rendering algorithm, our VC fly-through navigation system can still guarantee 30 FPS.

CPM Signals for Satellite Navigation in the S and C Bands.

Science.gov (United States)

Xue, Rui; Sun, Yanbo; Zhao, Danfeng

2015-06-05

Frequency allocations in the L band suitable for global navigation satellite system (GNSS) services are getting crowded and system providers face an ever tougher job when they try to bring in new signals and services while maintaining radio frequency compatibility. With the successive opening of the S and C bands to GNSS service, the multi-band combined navigation is predicted to become a key technology for future high-precision positioning navigation systems, and a single modulation scheme satisfying the requirements in each band is a promising solution for reducing user terminal complexity. A universal modulation scheme based on the continuous phase modulation (CPM) family suitable for the above bands' demands is proposed. Moreover, this paper has put forward two specific CPM signals for the S and C bands, respectively. Then the proposed modulation schemes, together with existing candidates, are comprehensively evaluated. Simulation results show that the proposed CPM signals can not only satisfy the constraint condition of compatibility in different bands well and reduce user terminal complexity, but also provide superior performance in terms of tracking accuracy, multi-path mitigation and anti-jamming compared to other candidate modulation schemes.

Subtle Gardeners: Inland Predators Enrich Local Topsoils and Enhance Plant Growth.

Science.gov (United States)

Fedriani, José M; Garrote, Pedro José; Delgado, María del Mar; Penteriani, Vincenzo

2015-01-01

Inland vertebrate predators could enrich of nutrients the local top soils in the area surrounding their nests and dens by depositing faeces, urine, and prey remains and, thus, alter the dynamics of plant populations. Surprisingly, and in contrast with convincing evidence from coastal habitats, whether and how this phenomenon occurs in inland habitats is largely uncertain even though these habitats represent a major fraction of the earth's surface. We investigated during two consecutive breeding seasons the potential enrichment of the top-soils associated with inland ground-nesting eagle owls Bubo bubo, as well as its possible consequences in the growth of two common annual grasses in southern Spain. Top-soils associated with owl nests differed strongly and significantly from control top-soils in chemical parameters, mainly fertility-related properties. Specifically, levels of available phosphorus, total nitrogen, organic matter, and available potassium were 49.1, 5.6, 3.1, and 2.7 times higher, respectively, in top-soils associated with owl nests as compared to control top-soils. Germination experiments in chambers indicated that nutrient enrichment by nesting owls enhanced seedling growth in both annual grasses (Phalaris canariensis and Avena sativa), with seedling size being 1.4-1.3 times higher in owl nest top-soils than in control top-soils. Our experimental study revealed that pervasive inland, predatory birds can profoundly enrich the topsoil around their nests and, thus, potentially enhance local vegetation growth. Because diverse inland vertebrate predators are widespread in most habitats they have a strong potential to enhance spatial heterogeneity, impinge on plant communities, and exert an overlooked effect on primary productivity worldwide.

Subtle Gardeners: Inland Predators Enrich Local Topsoils and Enhance Plant Growth.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

José M Fedriani

Full Text Available Inland vertebrate predators could enrich of nutrients the local top soils in the area surrounding their nests and dens by depositing faeces, urine, and prey remains and, thus, alter the dynamics of plant populations. Surprisingly, and in contrast with convincing evidence from coastal habitats, whether and how this phenomenon occurs in inland habitats is largely uncertain even though these habitats represent a major fraction of the earth's surface. We investigated during two consecutive breeding seasons the potential enrichment of the top-soils associated with inland ground-nesting eagle owls Bubo bubo, as well as its possible consequences in the growth of two common annual grasses in southern Spain. Top-soils associated with owl nests differed strongly and significantly from control top-soils in chemical parameters, mainly fertility-related properties. Specifically, levels of available phosphorus, total nitrogen, organic matter, and available potassium were 49.1, 5.6, 3.1, and 2.7 times higher, respectively, in top-soils associated with owl nests as compared to control top-soils. Germination experiments in chambers indicated that nutrient enrichment by nesting owls enhanced seedling growth in both annual grasses (Phalaris canariensis and Avena sativa, with seedling size being 1.4-1.3 times higher in owl nest top-soils than in control top-soils. Our experimental study revealed that pervasive inland, predatory birds can profoundly enrich the topsoil around their nests and, thus, potentially enhance local vegetation growth. Because diverse inland vertebrate predators are widespread in most habitats they have a strong potential to enhance spatial heterogeneity, impinge on plant communities, and exert an overlooked effect on primary productivity worldwide.

Towards Safe Navigation by Formalizing Navigation Rules

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arne Kreutzmann

2013-06-01

Full Text Available One crucial aspect of safe navigation is to obey all navigation regulations applicable, in particular the collision regulations issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO Colregs. Therefore, decision support systems for navigation need to respect Colregs and this feature should be verifiably correct. We tackle compliancy of navigation regulations from a perspective of software verification. One common approach is to use formal logic, but it requires to bridge a wide gap between navigation concepts and simple logic. We introduce a novel domain specification language based on a spatio-temporal logic that allows us to overcome this gap. We are able to capture complex navigation concepts in an easily comprehensible representation that can direcly be utilized by various bridge systems and that allows for software verification.

Needle and catheter navigation using electromagnetic tracking for computer-assisted C-arm CT interventions

Science.gov (United States)

Nagel, Markus; Hoheisel, Martin; Petzold, Ralf; Kalender, Willi A.; Krause, Ulrich H. W.

2007-03-01

Integrated solutions for navigation systems with CT, MR or US systems become more and more popular for medical products. Such solutions improve the medical workflow, reduce hardware, space and costs requirements. The purpose of our project was to develop a new electromagnetic navigation system for interventional radiology which is integrated into C-arm CT systems. The application is focused on minimally invasive percutaneous interventions performed under local anaesthesia. Together with a vacuum-based patient immobilization device and newly developed navigation tools (needles, panels) we developed a safe and fully automatic navigation system. The radiologist can directly start with navigated interventions after loading images without any prior user interaction. The complete system is adapted to the requirements of the radiologist and to the clinical workflow. For evaluation of the navigation system we performed different phantom studies and achieved an average accuracy of better than 2.0 mm.

Introduction to inland nuclear power abroad and issues to be solved in China

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Shaowei; Chen Haiying; Lin Quanyi; Xiong Wenbin; Yue Huiguo

2013-01-01

All operating nuclear power units in China located at coast, but half of operating nuclear power units in the world located at inland. The principle of inland site and coastal site is consistent both in France and USA. The long practice in these two great nuclear power countries proves that, the inland nuclear power is credible on the aspect of security and acceptable on the aspect of environment. Based on the existing research results, the experiences of choosing power sites, the related rules of law on nuclear safe and environment protection in China, the following issues should be given more research, including the relationship between inland power site and distribution of population, the eco-environmental effect caused by radioactive effluents, the problems on earthquake and beyond design basis flood, the nuclear power water consumption conflict with water resources carrying capacity, the nuclide transfer effected by hydrogeology condition, the popularization of nuclear culture and the emergency response on water resources. (authors)

Effects of demurrage and detention regimes on dry-port-based inland container transport

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Fazi, Stefano; Roodbergen, Kees Jan

2018-01-01

Increase of congestion at container deep seaports and shortage of capacity has led inland transport systems worldwide to rely more and more on inland terminals, and on the use of high capacity modes of transport to generate economies of scale and reduce negative effects of trucking. In this setting,

Conditions of using floating cranes for lifting sunken objects on inland waterways

OpenAIRE

Slobodan M. Radojević

2012-01-01

This paper presents the conditions for using floating cranes for lifting sunken vessels and other objects on inland waterways. Basic technical data are given together with technical details for the usage of floa ting cranes for lifting sunken objects. The paper points to the importance of lifting sunken objects and their removal from inland waterways in the Republic of Serbia.

Conditions of using floating cranes for lifting sunken objects on inland waterways

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Slobodan M. Radojević

2012-04-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the conditions for using floating cranes for lifting sunken vessels and other objects on inland waterways. Basic technical data are given together with technical details for the usage of floa ting cranes for lifting sunken objects. The paper points to the importance of lifting sunken objects and their removal from inland waterways in the Republic of Serbia.

Intelligent navigation to improve obstetrical sonography.

Science.gov (United States)

Yeo, Lami; Romero, Roberto

2016-04-01

use of software to perform manual navigation of volume datasets. Diagnostic planes and VIS-Assistance videoclips can be transmitted by telemedicine so that expert consultants can evaluate the images to provide an opinion. The end result is a user-friendly, simple, fast and consistent method of obtaining sonographic images with decreased operator dependency. Intelligent navigation is one approach to improve obstetrical sonography. Published 2015. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. Published 2015. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Sources of Error in Satellite Navigation Positioning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jacek Januszewski

2017-09-01

Full Text Available An uninterrupted information about the user’s position can be obtained generally from satellite navigation system (SNS. At the time of this writing (January 2017 currently two global SNSs, GPS and GLONASS, are fully operational, two next, also global, Galileo and BeiDou are under construction. In each SNS the accuracy of the user’s position is affected by the three main factors: accuracy of each satellite position, accuracy of pseudorange measurement and satellite geometry. The user’s position error is a function of both the pseudorange error called UERE (User Equivalent Range Error and user/satellite geometry expressed by right Dilution Of Precision (DOP coefficient. This error is decomposed into two types of errors: the signal in space ranging error called URE (User Range Error and the user equipment error UEE. The detailed analyses of URE, UEE, UERE and DOP coefficients, and the changes of DOP coefficients in different days are presented in this paper.

Drivers and synergies in the management of inland fisheries: Searching for sustainable solutions

Science.gov (United States)

Lynch, Abigail; Beard, Douglas

2015-01-01

Freshwater is a shared resource.  Water challenges (i.e., too much, too little, too dirty) are recognized to have global implications.  Many sectors rely upon water and, in some cases, the limited availability of water leads to tough decisions.  Though inland fish and fisheries play important roles in providing food security, human well-being, and ecosystem productivity, this sector is often underappreciated in water resource planning because valuation is difficult and governance is complex, unclear, or non-existent.  Additionally, inland fisheries are an economically small sector and, in most cases, the value of inland fisheries will never be the main driver of decision making.

Visual map and instruction-based bicycle navigation: a comparison of effects on behaviour.

Science.gov (United States)

de Waard, Dick; Westerhuis, Frank; Joling, Danielle; Weiland, Stella; Stadtbäumer, Ronja; Kaltofen, Leonie

2017-09-01

Cycling with a classic paper map was compared with navigating with a moving map displayed on a smartphone, and with auditory, and visual turn-by-turn route guidance. Spatial skills were found to be related to navigation performance, however only when navigating from a paper or electronic map, not with turn-by-turn (instruction based) navigation. While navigating, 25% of the time cyclists fixated at the devices that present visual information. Navigating from a paper map required most mental effort and both young and older cyclists preferred electronic over paper map navigation. In particular a turn-by-turn dedicated guidance device was favoured. Visual maps are in particular useful for cyclists with higher spatial skills. Turn-by-turn information is used by all cyclists, and it is useful to make these directions available in all devices. Practitioner Summary: Electronic navigation devices are preferred over a paper map. People with lower spatial skills benefit most from turn-by-turn guidance information, presented either auditory or on a dedicated device. People with higher spatial skills perform well with all devices. It is advised to keep in mind that all users benefit from turn-by-turn information when developing a navigation device for cyclists.

Inland Water Temperature: An Ideal Indicator for the National Climate Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Hook, S. J.; Lenters, J. D.; O'Reilly, C.; Healey, N. C.

2014-12-01

NASA is a significant contributor to the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is a central component of the 2012-2022 U.S. Global Change Research Program Strategic Plan. The NCA has identified the need for indicators that provide a clear, concise way of communicating to NCA audiences about not only the status and trends of physical drivers of the climate system, but also the ecological and socioeconomic impacts, vulnerabilities, and responses to those drivers. We are using thermal infrared satellite data in conjunction with in situ measurements to produce water temperatures for all the large inland water bodies in North America for potential use as an indicator for the NCA. Recent studies have revealed significant warming of inland waters throughout the world. The observed rate of warming is - in many cases - greater than that of the ambient air temperature. These rapid, unprecedented changes in inland water temperatures have profound implications for lake hydrodynamics, productivity, and biotic communities. Scientists are just beginning to understand the global extent, regional patterns, physical mechanisms, and ecological consequences of lake warming. As part of our earlier studies we have collected thermal infrared satellite data from those satellite sensors that provide long-term and frequent spaceborne thermal infrared measurements of inland waters including ATSR, AVHRR, and MODIS and used these to examine trends in water surface temperature for approximately 100 of the largest inland water bodies in the world. We are now extending this work to generate temperature time-series of all North American inland water bodies that are sufficiently large to be studied using 1km resolution satellite data for the last 3 decades. These data are then being related to changes in the surface air temperature and compared with regional trends in water surface temperature derived from CMIP5/IPCC model simulations/projections to better predict future temperature changes

Mission Analysis, Operations, and Navigation Toolkit Environment (Monte) Version 040

Science.gov (United States)

Sunseri, Richard F.; Wu, Hsi-Cheng; Evans, Scott E.; Evans, James R.; Drain, Theodore R.; Guevara, Michelle M.

2012-01-01

Monte is a software set designed for use in mission design and spacecraft navigation operations. The system can process measurement data, design optimal trajectories and maneuvers, and do orbit determination, all in one application. For the first time, a single software set can be used for mission design and navigation operations. This eliminates problems due to different models and fidelities used in legacy mission design and navigation software. The unique features of Monte 040 include a blowdown thruster model for GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) with associated pressure models, as well as an updated, optimalsearch capability (COSMIC) that facilitated mission design for ARTEMIS. Existing legacy software lacked the capabilities necessary for these two missions. There is also a mean orbital element propagator and an osculating to mean element converter that allows long-term orbital stability analysis for the first time in compiled code. The optimized trajectory search tool COSMIC allows users to place constraints and controls on their searches without any restrictions. Constraints may be user-defined and depend on trajectory information either forward or backwards in time. In addition, a long-term orbit stability analysis tool (morbiter) existed previously as a set of scripts on top of Monte. Monte is becoming the primary tool for navigation operations, a core competency at JPL. The mission design capabilities in Monte are becoming mature enough for use in project proposals as well as post-phase A mission design. Monte has three distinct advantages over existing software. First, it is being developed in a modern paradigm: object- oriented C++ and Python. Second, the software has been developed as a toolkit, which allows users to customize their own applications and allows the development team to implement requirements quickly, efficiently, and with minimal bugs. Finally, the software is managed in accordance with the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model

Intelligent personal navigator supported by knowledge-based systems for estimating dead reckoning navigation parameters

Science.gov (United States)

Moafipoor, Shahram

two-stage Kalman Filter approach. The performance comparison of the algorithm based on different field and simulated datasets, with varying levels of sensor errors, showed that 90 per cent success rate was achieved in detection of outliers for SL and 80 per cent for SD. The SL is predicted for both KBS-based ANN and FL approaches with an average accumulated error of 2 per cent, observed for the total distance traveled, which is generally an improvement over most of the existing pedometry systems. The target accuracy of the system is +/-(3-5)m CEP50 (circular error, probable 50%). This dissertation provides a performance analysis in the outdoor and indoor environments for different operators. Another objective of this dissertation is to test the system's navigation limitation in DR mode in terms of time and trajectory length in order to determine the upper limit of indoor operations. It was determined that for more than four indoor loops, where the user walked 261m in about 6.5 minutes, the DR performance met the required accuracy specifications. However, these results are only relevant to the existing data. Future studies should consider more comprehensive performance analysis for longer trajectories in challenging environments and possible extension to image-based navigation to expand the indoor capability of the system.

Reasons and remedies of inland passenger vessels accidents in Bangladesh

Science.gov (United States)

Rashid, Cdr Kaosar; Islam, Muhammad Rabiul

2017-12-01

The waterways are very important means of communication in Bangladesh. Every year over 95 million passengers are carried through this route. But, this important mode of transport is ridden with tragic disasters every year, incurring a heavy toll of human lives. In last twenty years (1994 to 2014), around 5,500 people have died and 1,500 gone missing in 658 launch disasters. The inland routes of Barisal, Bhola, Chandpur and Patuakhali and their connected water ways to Dhaka and Chittagong are found to be more accident prone. Lack of Awareness, boundless operation of unfit vessels, overloading of passengers, recruitment of unskilled crews, poor capacity of relevant bodies and low standard maintenance of Inland Water Transport (IWT) channels, poor weather forecasting, profit centered attitude of vessel owners and corruption are initiating these deadly accidents. Despite of a number of initiatives by the government, concerned departments and foreign consultants, the safety aspect of the inland passenger vessels still remains in dark. Combined effort of Department of Shipping, BIWTA, and the attitude of vessels owners as well as passengers are very essential in this respect.

Navigation To and From a Page: Which Links Get Clicked From Where

Science.gov (United States)

Use Google Analytics navigation summary data to find out what page users most frequently click your Contact Us link from (Previous Page Path), or which links on your homepage are popular or unpopular (Next Page Path).

In-plane user positioning indoors

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jovanovic, N.; Özçelebi, T.; Lukkien, J.J.; Skoric, B.; Ignatenko, T.

2014-01-01

Indoor positioning is a service required by many smart environment applications for various purposes, such as activity classification, indoor navigation and context awareness. In this paper, we present a novel approach to the user positioning problem based on in-plane detection enabled by a set of

1 characteristics, classification and management of inland valley

African Journals Online (AJOL)

OLUWOLE AKINNAGBE

adopting the rice culture, or adopting a system of shallow drain-ditches with mound-tillage to ... Keywords: Inland valley soils, Drainage, Tillage, Soil management and conservation, Crop ..... This indicates that much of rainwater runs off.

Hazardous substances shipping at inland water harbors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Benkovic, Z.

2009-01-01

Safety measures and regulations system covering the aspects of fire protection, professional and ecological safety are aimed to create a safe working environment, by detection and remedy of conditions that are potentially hazardous for the well-being of the employees or are leading to certain undesired events. Such unwanted incidents may result in different consequences: operating person's injury, environment pollution or material damage. This study attempts to illustrate the organization of work during hazardous matter loading and unloading at inland water harbors, based on legal provisions and decrees involving safety precautions, and in order to achieve constant enhancement of operating procedure, decreasing thereby the number of work-related injuries and various accidental situations. Fundamental precondition required to prevent possible accidents and to optimize general safety policy is to recognize and control any danger or potential hazard, as well as to be familiar with the legal provisions covering the inland waterway transport of harmful substances.(author)

LNG as a marine and inland waterway fuel. Contribution of AFG (French gas association) to the national policy framework for the deployment of alternative fuel infrastructures (AFNPF)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2016-06-01

Here in the early 21. Century, the environmental footprint of marine and inland waterway transport is a major concern on a global scale. Under the authority of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), regulations on atmospheric emissions are becoming increasingly tighter. The European Union (EU) is deeply committed to this endeavour and in particular has adopted Directive 2014/94/EU which aims to facilitate the deployment of an alternative fuels infrastructure. The Directive calls upon Member States to develop by 18 November 2016, national policy frameworks for the deployment of alternative fuel infrastructures (AFNPF) that must designate an appropriate number of LNG refuelling points in maritime and inland ports for maritime and inland waterway transport purposes. In light of this, the French Gas Association (AFG), in cooperation with all affected stakeholders and interested parties, has discussed the role of LNG as a marine and inland waterway fuel in the energy transition toward green growth, in order to contribute to the development of France's 'national policy framework' (AFNPF) under the Directive mentioned above. To assess the prospects of the LNG bunkering market in France, as well as the implementation of the corresponding infrastructures, the AFG adopted a scenario-based approach from the user's perspective. Considering that we are in an early stage, the study focuses on the types of ships that are most likely to use LNG, and it examines their traffic in France's major metropolitan ports, along with forecasted activity based on the strategic plans for those ports. Two scenarios - one being rather conservative (baseline) and the other being more optimistic - were examined over three timelines: 2020, 2025 and 2030. The scenarios lead to a gradual implementation of LNG fuel in French ports, on the three coastlines and along the five inland waterway corridors. They show LNG fuel needs in all the ports of the central TEN

C-TIC Console Operator's User Manual

Science.gov (United States)

1996-07-01

The C-TIC Console Operator's User Manual is designed to assist the operator at : the Corridor Transportation Information Center with the navigation and use of : the application programs in the C-TIC. This document will concentrate solely on : the ext...

Pareto navigation-algorithmic foundation of interactive multi-criteria IMRT planning

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Monz, M; Kuefer, K H; Bortfeld, T R; Thieke, C

2008-01-01

Inherently, IMRT treatment planning involves compromising between different planning goals. Multi-criteria IMRT planning directly addresses this compromising and thus makes it more systematic. Usually, several plans are computed from which the planner selects the most promising following a certain procedure. Applying Pareto navigation for this selection step simultaneously increases the variety of planning options and eases the identification of the most promising plan. Pareto navigation is an interactive multi-criteria optimization method that consists of the two navigation mechanisms 'selection' and 'restriction'. The former allows the formulation of wishes whereas the latter allows the exclusion of unwanted plans. They are realized as optimization problems on the so-called plan bundle-a set constructed from pre-computed plans. They can be approximately reformulated so that their solution time is a small fraction of a second. Thus, the user can be provided with immediate feedback regarding his or her decisions. Pareto navigation was implemented in the MIRA navigator software and allows real-time manipulation of the current plan and the set of considered plans. The changes are triggered by simple mouse operations on the so-called navigation star and lead to real-time updates of the navigation star and the dose visualizations. Since any Pareto-optimal plan in the plan bundle can be found with just a few navigation operations the MIRA navigator allows a fast and directed plan determination. Besides, the concept allows for a refinement of the plan bundle, thus offering a middle course between single plan computation and multi-criteria optimization. Pareto navigation offers so far unmatched real-time interactions, ease of use and plan variety, setting it apart from the multi-criteria IMRT planning methods proposed so far

Pareto navigation: algorithmic foundation of interactive multi-criteria IMRT planning.

Science.gov (United States)

Monz, M; Küfer, K H; Bortfeld, T R; Thieke, C

2008-02-21

Inherently, IMRT treatment planning involves compromising between different planning goals. Multi-criteria IMRT planning directly addresses this compromising and thus makes it more systematic. Usually, several plans are computed from which the planner selects the most promising following a certain procedure. Applying Pareto navigation for this selection step simultaneously increases the variety of planning options and eases the identification of the most promising plan. Pareto navigation is an interactive multi-criteria optimization method that consists of the two navigation mechanisms 'selection' and 'restriction'. The former allows the formulation of wishes whereas the latter allows the exclusion of unwanted plans. They are realized as optimization problems on the so-called plan bundle -- a set constructed from pre-computed plans. They can be approximately reformulated so that their solution time is a small fraction of a second. Thus, the user can be provided with immediate feedback regarding his or her decisions. Pareto navigation was implemented in the MIRA navigator software and allows real-time manipulation of the current plan and the set of considered plans. The changes are triggered by simple mouse operations on the so-called navigation star and lead to real-time updates of the navigation star and the dose visualizations. Since any Pareto-optimal plan in the plan bundle can be found with just a few navigation operations the MIRA navigator allows a fast and directed plan determination. Besides, the concept allows for a refinement of the plan bundle, thus offering a middle course between single plan computation and multi-criteria optimization. Pareto navigation offers so far unmatched real-time interactions, ease of use and plan variety, setting it apart from the multi-criteria IMRT planning methods proposed so far.

Visual tables of contents: structure and navigation of digital video material

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Janse, M.D.; Das, D.A.D.; Tang, H.K.; Paassen, van R.L.F.

1997-01-01

This paper presents a study that was initiated to address the relationship between visualization of content information, the structure of this information and the effective traversal and navigation for users of digital video storage systems in domestic environments. Preliminary results in two topic

Hydrological functioning of West-African inland valleys explored with a critical zone model

Science.gov (United States)

Hector, B.; Cohard, J. M.; Séguis, L.; Peugeot, C.; Galle, S.

2017-12-01

In west Africa, recurrent floods are still a major issue, and hydropower has been recognized as an important development pathway. Furthermore, inland valleys carry an important agronomic potential, which could meet the necessary increase of the crop production associated with the strong demographic rates of the region. This can lead to land cover and subsequent hydrologic changes. However, the hydrological role of the inland valleys in the humid, hard rock-dominated Sudanian area is not yet well understood, specifically for streamflow (Q) generation processes. We address both the questions of the hydrological functioning of inland valleys in the Sudanian area of West-Africa and the impact of land cover changes on these systems through deterministic sensitivity experiments using a physically-based critical zone model (ParFlow-CLM) applied on a synthetic catchment which comprises an inland valley. The conceptual lithological/pedological model for the catchment includes the main features of such a hydrological elementary unit derived from the literature and from a previously published model based on data from a highly instrumented elementary catchment. Model forcings and parameters are based on data from the AMMA-CATCH observation service and multiple field experiments. We found yearly water budgets were much more sensitive to vegetation distribution than lithology features of the inland valley (presence of the low permeability layer commonly found below the inland valley and the hydrodynamic properties of upstream and lateral areas). Yearly evapotranspiration budget between a fully tree-covered and an herbaceous-covered catchment increases between 6 and 21% of the precipitation of the year (depending on the tested cases) which reduces considerably the yearly streamflow budgets ( 30%). On the other hand, the lithology distribution has clear impacts on the spatial distribution of water storage dynamics.

Taxonomies, Folksonomies, and Semantics: Establishing Functional Meaning in Navigational Structures

Science.gov (United States)

Bacha, Jeffrey A.

2012-01-01

This article argues for the establishment of a usability process that incorporates the study of "words" and "word phrases." It demonstrates how semantically mapping a navigational taxonomy can help the developers of digital environments establish a more focused sense of functional meaning for the users of their digital designs.

Navigating cross-media news use

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Swart, Joëlle; Peters, Chris; Broersma, Marcel

2017-01-01

distinctive cross-media repertoires, and what makes these compositions meaningful. This article analyzes the value of different platforms, genres and practices in everyday life by mapping patterns of cross-media news use. Combining Q methodology with think-aloud protocols and day-in-the-life-interviews, five...... distinct news media repertoires are identified: 1) regionally-oriented 2) background-oriented 3) digital 4) laid-back and 5) nationally-oriented news use. Our findings indicate that users do not always use what they prefer, nor do they prefer what they use. Moreover, the boundaries they draw between news......The current news media landscape is characterized by an abundance of digital outlets and increased opportunities for users to navigate news themselves. Yet, it is still unclear how people negotiate this fluctuating environment to decide which news media to select or ignore, how they assemble...

Globally significant greenhouse-gas emissions from African inland waters

Science.gov (United States)

Borges, Alberto V.; Bouillon, Steven

2017-04-01

The relevance of inland waters to global biogeochemical cycles is increasingly recognized, and of particular importance is their contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The latter remain largely unreported in African inland waters. Here we report dissolved CO2, CH4 and N2O from 12 rivers in Sub-Saharan Africa acquired during >30 field expeditions and additional seasonally resolved sampling at >30 sites between 2006 and 2014. Fluxes were calculated from reported gas transfer velocity values, and upscaled using available spatial datasets, with an estimated uncertainty of about ±19%. CO2 equivalent emissions ( 0.4±0.1 PgC yr-1) match 2/3 of the overall net carbon sink previously reported for Africa. Including emissions from wetlands of the Congo, the putative total emission ( 0.9±0.1 PgC yr-1) is about half of the global oceanic or land carbon sinks. In-situ respiration supported <14% of riverine CO2 emissions, which must therefore largely be driven by mineralization in wetlands or uplands. Riverine CO2 and CH4 emissions were directly correlated to wetland coverage and aboveground vegetation biomass, implying that future changes in wetland and upland vegetation cover will strongly impact GHG emissions from African inland waters.

Identifying User Interaction Patterns in E-Textbooks.

Science.gov (United States)

Saarinen, Santeri; Heimonen, Tomi; Turunen, Markku; Mikkilä-Erdmann, Mirjamaija; Raisamo, Roope; Erdmann, Norbert; Yrjänäinen, Sari; Keskinen, Tuuli

2015-01-01

We introduce a new architecture for e-textbooks which contains two navigational aids: an index and a concept map. We report results from an evaluation in a university setting with 99 students. The interaction sequences of the users were captured during the user study. We found several clusters of user interaction types in our data. Three separate user types were identified based on the interaction sequences: passive user, term clicker, and concept map user. We also discovered that with the concept map interface users started to interact with the application significantly sooner than with the index interface. Overall, our findings suggest that analysis of interaction patterns allows deeper insights into the use of e-textbooks than is afforded by summative evaluation.

Important wheelchair skills for new manual wheelchair users: health care professional and wheelchair user perspectives.

Science.gov (United States)

Morgan, Kerri A; Engsberg, Jack R; Gray, David B

2017-01-01

The purpose of this project was to identify wheelchair skills currently being taught to new manual wheelchair users, identify areas of importance for manual wheelchair skills' training during initial rehabilitation, identify similarities and differences between the perspectives of health care professionals and manual wheelchair users and use the ICF to organize themes related to rehabilitation and learning how to use a manual wheelchair. Focus groups were conducted with health care professionals and experienced manual wheelchair users. ICF codes were used to identify focus group themes. The Activities and Participation codes were more frequently used than Structure, Function and Environment codes. Wheelchair skills identified as important for new manual wheelchair users included propulsion techniques, transfers in an out of the wheelchair, providing maintenance to the wheelchair and navigating barriers such as curbs, ramps and rough terrain. Health care professionals and manual wheelchair users identified the need to incorporate the environment (home and community) into the wheelchair training program. Identifying essential components for training the proper propulsion mechanics and wheelchair skills in new manual wheelchair users is an important step in preventing future health and participation restrictions. Implications for Rehabilitation Wheelchair skills are being addressed frequently during rehabilitation at the activity-dependent level. Propulsion techniques, transfers in an out of the wheelchair, providing maintenance to the wheelchair and navigating barriers such as curbs, ramps and rough terrain are important skills to address during wheelchair training. Environment factors (in the home and community) are important to incorporate into wheelchair training to maximize safe and multiple-environmental-setting uses of manual wheelchairs. The ICF has application to understanding manual wheelchair rehabilitation for wheelchair users and therapists for improving

Long-Term Structural Solution for the Mouth of Colorado River Navigation Channel, Texas

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Kraus, Nicholas C; Lin, Lihwa; Smith, Ernest R; Heilman, Daniel J; Thomas, Robert C

2008-01-01

... in support of a reliable shallow-draft channel at the Mouth of the Colorado River (MCR), Texas. The site has experienced excessive sediment shoaling that has denied full project features to navigation channel users...

Determining tropical cyclone inland flooding loss on a large scale through a new flood peak ratio-based methodology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Czajkowski, Jeffrey; Michel-Kerjan, Erwann; Villarini, Gabriele; Smith, James A

2013-01-01

In recent years, the United States has been severely affected by numerous tropical cyclones (TCs) which have caused massive damages. While media attention mainly focuses on coastal losses from storm surge, these TCs have inflicted significant devastation inland as well. Yet, little is known about the relationship between TC-related inland flooding and economic losses. Here we introduce a novel methodology that first successfully characterizes the spatial extent of inland flooding, and then quantifies its relationship with flood insurance claims. Hurricane Ivan in 2004 is used as illustration. We empirically demonstrate in a number of ways that our quantified inland flood magnitude produces a very good representation of the number of inland flood insurance claims experienced. These results highlight the new technological capabilities that can lead to a better risk assessment of inland TC flood. This new capacity will be of tremendous value to a number of public and private sector stakeholders dealing with disaster preparedness. (letter)

Maps managing interface design for a mobile robot navigation governed by a BCI

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Auat Cheein, Fernando A; Carelli, Ricardo; Celeste, Wanderley Cardoso; Freire Bastos, Teodiano; Di Sciascio, Fernando

2007-01-01

In this paper, a maps managing interface is proposed. This interface is governed by a Brain Computer Interface (BCI), which also governs a mobile robot's movements. If a robot is inside a known environment, the user can load a map from the maps managing interface in order to navigate it. Otherwise, if the robot is in an unknown environment, a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm is released in order to obtain a probabilistic grid map of that environment. Then, that map is loaded into the map database for future navigations. While slamming, the user has a direct control of the robot's movements via the BCI. The complete system is applied to a mobile robot and can be also applied to an autonomous wheelchair, which has the same kinematics. Experimental results are also shown

Solar Water Heating as a Potential Source for Inland Norway Energy Mix

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dejene Assefa Hagos

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to assess solar potential and investigate the possibility of using solar water heating for residential application in Inland Norway. Solar potential based on observation and satellite-derived data for four typical populous locations has been assessed and used to estimate energy yield using two types of solar collectors for a technoeconomic performance comparison. Based on the results, solar energy use for water heating is competitive and viable even in low solar potential areas. In this study it was shown that a typical tubular collector in Inland Norway could supply 62% of annual water heating energy demand for a single residential household, while glazed flat plates of the same size were able to supply 48%. For a given energy demand in Inland Norway, tubular collectors are preferred to flat plate collectors for performance and cost reasons. This was shown by break-even capital cost for a series of collector specifications. Deployment of solar water heating in all detached dwellings in Inland could have the potential to save 182 GWh of electrical energy, equivalent to a reduction of 15,690 tonnes of oil energy and 48.6 ktCO2 emissions, and contributes greatly to Norway 67.5% renewable share target by 2020.

Does intraoperative navigation improve the accuracy of mandibular angle osteotomy: Comparison between augmented reality navigation, individualised templates and free-hand techniques.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhu, Ming; Liu, Fei; Zhou, Chaozheng; Lin, Li; Zhang, Yan; Chai, Gang; Xie, Le; Qi, Fazhi; Li, Qingfeng

2018-04-11

Augmented reality (AR)-based navigation surgery has evolved to be an advanced assisted technology. The aim of this study is to manifest the accuracy of AR navigation for the intraoperative mandibular angle osteotomy by comparing the navigation with other interventional techniques. A retrospective study was conducted with 93 post-surgical patients with mandibular angle hypertrophy admitted at our plastic and reconstructive surgery department between September 2011 and June 2016. Thirty-one patients received osteotomy conducted using a navigation system based on augmented reality (AR group), 28 patients received osteotomy conducted using individualised templates (IT group) and the remaining 34 patients received osteotomy performed by free hand (free-hand group). The post-operative computed tomography (CT) images were reviewed and analysed by comparing with pre-surgical planning generated by three-dimensional (3D) software. The preparation time, cutting time, whole operating time and discrepancy in osteotomy lines were measured. The preparation time was much shorter for the free-hand group than that for the AR group and the IT group (P  0.05). In addition, the discrepancy in osteotomy lines was lower for the AR group and in the IT group than for the free-hand group (P < 0.01). The navigation system based on AR has a higher accuracy, more reliability and better user friendliness for some particular clinical procedures than for other techniques, which has a promising clinical prospect. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Endangered fish species of Kenya's inland waters with emphasis on Labeo spp

OpenAIRE

Kibaara, D.

1986-01-01

The importance of water masses, natural or otherwise, in supporting fisheries, and the importance of fish as human food, cannot be overemphasized. The inland waters of Kenya act as habitats for fish, harbouring many different fish species. It has been observed with interest that certain fish species have decreased in numbers over the years within the inland waters. The decline has been at a rate which, if left unchecked, will eventually cause total di...

Programming the iPhone User Experience

CERN Document Server

Boudreaux, Toby

2009-01-01

Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch not only feature the world's most powerful mobile operating system, they also usher in a new standard of human-computer interaction through gestural interfaces and multi-touch navigation. This book provides you with a hands-on, example-driven tour of UIKit, Apple's user interface toolkit, and includes common design patterns to help you create new iPhone and iPod Touch user experiences. Using Apple's Cocoa Touch framework, you'll learn how to build applications that respond in unique ways when users tap, slide, swipe, tilt, shake, or pinch the screen. Programmin

Inland Waters - Navigation Distance Mark - Minnesota River (Non-Navigable)

Data.gov (United States)

Army Corps of Engineers, Department of the Army, Department of Defense — A distance mark indicates the distance measured from an origin and consists of a distinct location without special installation, used to serve as a reference along...

Origins of Phosphorus and Nitrogen in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan

OpenAIRE

Yanagi, Tetsuo; Tanaka, Tsuyoshi; 柳, 哲雄; 田中, 剛

2013-01-01

Origins of total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) were investigated in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, using the unit response function method. About 58 % of TP and TN in the Seto Inland Sea were found to have originated from the open ocean, 9 % of TP and 14 % of TN originate from rivers, 33 % of TP and 29 % of TN originate from bottom sediments. We consequently suggest that it would be very difficult to prevent the occurrence of red tides and oxygen deficient water masses in the Seto Inla...

Ocean waves monitor system by inland microseisms

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, L. C.; Bouchette, F.; Chang, E. T. Y.

2016-12-01

Microseisms are continuous ground oscillations which have been wildly introduced for decades. It is well known that the microseismicity in the frequency band from 0.05 to about 1 Hz partly results from ocean waves, which has been first explained by Longuet-Higgins [1950]. The generation mechanism for such a microseismicity is based on nonlinear wave-wave interactions which drive pressure pulses within the seafloor. The resulting ground pressure fluctuations yield ground oscillations at a double frequency (DF) with respect to that of current ocean waves. In order to understand the characteristics of DF microseisms associated with different wave sources, we aim to analyze and interpret the spectra of DF microseisms by using the simple spectrum method [Rabinovich, 1997] at various inland seismometer along the Taiwan coast. This is the first monitoring system of ocean waves observed by inland seismometers in Taiwan. The method is applied to identify wave sources by estimating the spectral ratios of wave induced microseisms associated with local winds and typhoons to background spectra. Microseism amplitudes above 0.2 Hz show a good correlation with wind-driven waves near the coast. Comparison of microseism band between 0.1 and 0.2 Hz with buoys in the deep sea shows a strong correlation of seismic amplitude with storm generated waves, implying that such energy portion originates in remote regions. Results indicate that microseisms observed at inland sites can be a potential tool for the tracking of typhoon displacements and the monitoring of extreme ocean waves in real time. Real- time Microseism-Ocean Waves Monitoring Website (http://mwave.droppages.com/) Reference Rabinovich, A. B. (1997) "Spectral analysis of tsunami waves: Separation of source and topography effects," J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 102, p. 12,663-12,676. Longuet-Higgins, M.S. (1950) "A theory of origin of microseisms," Philos. Trans. R. Soc., A. 243, pp. 1-35.

Study on collaborative operation in Xi'an international inland port and airport

Science.gov (United States)

Jia, Guoling

2017-10-01

Xi 'an international inland port and airport are the important fulcrums for Shaanxi province to implement the strategy of "One Belt One Road" and to develop its export-oriented economy. Based on the general development situation of Xi 'an international inland port and airport and analyzing their similarities and differences, the external cause and internal cause of synergy are discussed. The contents of synergy from the strategy level, tactics level and business level are explained respectively.

Analysis of inland crude oil spill threats, vulnerabilities, and emergency response in the midwest United States.

Science.gov (United States)

Brody, Thomas M; Di Bianca, Paisly; Krysa, Jan

2012-10-01

Although coastal oil spills tend to be highly publicized, crude oil spills in the United States affect inland areas relatively often. Spills to inland areas often affect sensitive environments and can have greater impacts to health and welfare than spills to coastal areas. For these reasons, the authors investigated inland crude oil spill threats, vulnerabilities, and emergency response in the midwestern U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. These states work with the Region 5 Offices of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Region 5's geospatial data in the Inland Sensitivity Atlas were turned into metrics indicating inland crude oil spill threats and vulnerabilities among the Region's sub-watersheds. These threats and vulnerabilities were weighted using data from the National Response Center and the Department of Energy's Environmental Restoration Priority System. The locations of the Region's emergency responders were geocoded in GIS. The GIS calculated the emergency response times to the Region's sub-watersheds. The resulting scatter plots are connected to the sub-watersheds in the map so stakeholders can (1) see the outlying sub-watersheds of concern and (2) better understand how reducing threats and better response time can reduce the risk of inland crude oil spills. Published 2012. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the U.S.A.

Anticipated water quality changes in response to climate change and potential consequences for inland fishes

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Yushun; Todd, Andrew S.; Murphy, Margaret H.; Lomnicky, Gregg

2016-01-01

Healthy freshwater ecosystems are a critical component of the world's economy, with a critical role in maintaining public health, inland biological diversity, and overall quality of life. Globally, our climate is changing, with air temperature and precipitation regimes deviating significantly from historical patterns. Healthy freshwater ecosystems are a critical component of the world's economy, with a critical role in maintaining public health, inland biological diversity, and overall quality of life. Globally, our climate is changing, with air temperature and precipitation regimes deviating significantly from historical patterns. Changes anticipated with climate change in the future are likely to have a profound effect on inland aquatic ecosystems through diverse pathways, including changes in water quality. In this brief article, we present an initial discussion of several of the water quality responses that can be anticipated to occur within inland water bodies with climate change and how those changes are likely to impact fishes.

Demarcation of inland vessels' limit off Mormugao port region, India: A pilot study for the safety of inland vessels using wave modelling

Digital Repository Service at National Institute of Oceanography (India)

Vethamony, P.; Aboobacker, V.M.; Sudheesh, K.; Babu, M.T.; AshokKumar, A.

The Ministry of Shipping desires to revise the inland vessels' limit (IVL) notification based on scientific rationale to improve the safety of vessels and onboard personnel. The Mormugao port region extending up to the Panaji was considered...

A Navigation Analysis Tool (NAT) to assess spatial behavior in open-field and structured mazes.

Science.gov (United States)

Jarlier, Frédéric; Arleo, Angelo; Petit, Géraldine H; Lefort, Julie M; Fouquet, Céline; Burguière, Eric; Rondi-Reig, Laure

2013-05-15

Spatial navigation calls upon mnemonic capabilities (e.g. remembering the location of a rewarding site) as well as adaptive motor control (e.g. fine tuning of the trajectory according to the ongoing sensory context). To study this complex process by means of behavioral measurements it is necessary to quantify a large set of meaningful parameters on multiple time scales (from milliseconds to several minutes), and to compare them across different paradigms. Moreover, the issue of automating the behavioral analysis is critical to cope with the consequent computational load and the sophistication of the measurements. We developed a general purpose Navigation Analysis Tool (NAT) that provides an integrated architecture consisting of a data management system (implemented in MySQL), a core analysis toolbox (in MATLAB), and a graphical user interface (in JAVA). Its extensive characterization of trajectories over time, from exploratory behavior to goal-oriented navigation with decision points using a wide range of parameters, makes NAT a powerful analysis tool. In particular, NAT supplies a new set of specific measurements assessing performances in multiple intersection mazes and allowing navigation strategies to be discriminated (e.g. in the starmaze). Its user interface enables easy use while its modular organization provides many opportunities of extension and customization. Importantly, the portability of NAT to any type of maze and environment extends its exploitation far beyond the field of spatial navigation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Maps managing interface design for a mobile robot navigation governed by a BCI

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Auat Cheein, Fernando A [Institute of Automatic, National University of San Juan. San Martin, 1109 - Oeste 5400 San Juan (Argentina); Carelli, Ricardo [Institute of Automatic, National University of San Juan. San Martin, 1109 - Oeste 5400 San Juan (Argentina); Celeste, Wanderley Cardoso [Electrical Engineering Department, Federal University of Espirito Santo. Fernando Ferrari, 514 29075-910 Vitoria-ES (Brazil); Freire Bastos, Teodiano [Electrical Engineering Department, Federal University of Espirito Santo. Fernando Ferrari, 514 29075-910 Vitoria-ES (Brazil); Di Sciascio, Fernando [Institute of Automatic, National University of San Juan. San Martin, 1109 - Oeste 5400 San Juan (Argentina)

2007-11-15

In this paper, a maps managing interface is proposed. This interface is governed by a Brain Computer Interface (BCI), which also governs a mobile robot's movements. If a robot is inside a known environment, the user can load a map from the maps managing interface in order to navigate it. Otherwise, if the robot is in an unknown environment, a Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm is released in order to obtain a probabilistic grid map of that environment. Then, that map is loaded into the map database for future navigations. While slamming, the user has a direct control of the robot's movements via the BCI. The complete system is applied to a mobile robot and can be also applied to an autonomous wheelchair, which has the same kinematics. Experimental results are also shown.

[Comparison of cardiopulmonary endurance and muscular fitness in teenagers between Hong Kong and inland cities].

Science.gov (United States)

Hong, Y; Chan, K; Wang, Y

1997-01-01

A study on the data of the physique investigated in teenagers was carried out between Hong Kong and inland cities to compare their cardiopulmonary endurance and muscular fitness. Results revealed that cardiopulmonary endurance in school teenagers of both sex at different ages in inland cities was better than that in Hong Kong. Muscular strength and endurance of sports performance of teenagers, except for standing long jump, in Hong Kong were weaker than that in inland cities. It suggests that attention should be paid to the involvement of teenagers in physical education with the increase of people's living standard.

Design and Evaluation of Shape-Changing Haptic Interfaces for Pedestrian Navigation Assistance.

Science.gov (United States)

Spiers, Adam J; Dollar, Aaron M

2017-01-01

Shape-changing interfaces are a category of device capable of altering their form in order to facilitate communication of information. In this work, we present a shape-changing device that has been designed for navigation assistance. 'The Animotus' (previously, 'The Haptic Sandwich' ), resembles a cube with an articulated upper half that is able to rotate and extend (translate) relative to the bottom half, which is fixed in the user's grasp. This rotation and extension, generally felt via the user's fingers, is used to represent heading and proximity to navigational targets. The device is intended to provide an alternative to screen or audio based interfaces for visually impaired, hearing impaired, deafblind, and sighted pedestrians. The motivation and design of the haptic device is presented, followed by the results of a navigation experiment that aimed to determine the role of each device DOF, in terms of facilitating guidance. An additional device, 'The Haptic Taco', which modulated its volume in response to target proximity (negating directional feedback), was also compared. Results indicate that while the heading (rotational) DOF benefited motion efficiency, the proximity (translational) DOF benefited velocity. Combination of the two DOF improved overall performance. The volumetric Taco performed comparably to the Animotus' extension DOF.

Towards a Sign-Based Indoor Navigation System for People with Visual Impairments.

Science.gov (United States)

Rituerto, Alejandro; Fusco, Giovanni; Coughlan, James M

2016-10-01

Navigation is a challenging task for many travelers with visual impairments. While a variety of GPS-enabled tools can provide wayfinding assistance in outdoor settings, GPS provides no useful localization information indoors. A variety of indoor navigation tools are being developed, but most of them require potentially costly physical infrastructure to be installed and maintained, or else the creation of detailed visual models of the environment. We report development of a new smartphone-based navigation aid, which combines inertial sensing, computer vision and floor plan information to estimate the user's location with no additional physical infrastructure and requiring only the locations of signs relative to the floor plan. A formative study was conducted with three blind volunteer participants demonstrating the feasibility of the approach and highlighting the areas needing improvement.

Precise Point Positioning with the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Min Li

2014-01-01

Full Text Available By the end of 2012, China had launched 16 BeiDou-2 navigation satellites that include six GEOs, five IGSOs and five MEOs. This has provided initial navigation and precise pointing services ability in the Asia-Pacific regions. In order to assess the navigation and positioning performance of the BeiDou-2 system, Wuhan University has built up a network of BeiDou Experimental Tracking Stations (BETS around the World. The Position and Navigation Data Analyst (PANDA software was modified to determine the orbits of BeiDou satellites and provide precise orbit and satellite clock bias products from the BeiDou satellite system for user applications. This article uses the BeiDou/GPS observations of the BeiDou Experimental Tracking Stations to realize the BeiDou and BeiDou/GPS static and kinematic precise point positioning (PPP. The result indicates that the precision of BeiDou static and kinematic PPP reaches centimeter level. The precision of BeiDou/GPS kinematic PPP solutions is improved significantly compared to that of BeiDou-only or GPS-only kinematic PPP solutions. The PPP convergence time also decreases with the use of combined BeiDou/GPS systems.

Precise point positioning with the BeiDou navigation satellite system.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Min; Qu, Lizhong; Zhao, Qile; Guo, Jing; Su, Xing; Li, Xiaotao

2014-01-08

By the end of 2012, China had launched 16 BeiDou-2 navigation satellites that include six GEOs, five IGSOs and five MEOs. This has provided initial navigation and precise pointing services ability in the Asia-Pacific regions. In order to assess the navigation and positioning performance of the BeiDou-2 system, Wuhan University has built up a network of BeiDou Experimental Tracking Stations (BETS) around the World. The Position and Navigation Data Analyst (PANDA) software was modified to determine the orbits of BeiDou satellites and provide precise orbit and satellite clock bias products from the BeiDou satellite system for user applications. This article uses the BeiDou/GPS observations of the BeiDou Experimental Tracking Stations to realize the BeiDou and BeiDou/GPS static and kinematic precise point positioning (PPP). The result indicates that the precision of BeiDou static and kinematic PPP reaches centimeter level. The precision of BeiDou/GPS kinematic PPP solutions is improved significantly compared to that of BeiDou-only or GPS-only kinematic PPP solutions. The PPP convergence time also decreases with the use of combined BeiDou/GPS systems.

Space transportation. [user needs met by information derived from satellites and the interface with space transportation systems

Science.gov (United States)

1975-01-01

User-oriented panels were formed to examine practical applications of information or services derived from earth orbiting satellites. Topics discussed include: weather and climate; uses of communication; land use planning; agriculture, forest, and range; inland water resources; retractable resources; environmental quality; marine and maritime uses; and materials processing in space. Emphasis was placed on the interface of the space transportation system (STS) with the applications envisioned by the user panels. User requirements were compared with expected STS capabilities in terms of availability, carrying payload to orbit, and estimated costs per launch. Conclusions and recommendations were reported.

Intelligence Context Aware Mobile Navigation using Augmented Reality Technology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ahmad Hoirul Basori

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Most of the technologies of today’s world, which are enriched with various powerful features and amazing quality characteristics, enables software developers to come up with best possible software solutions, no matter what the context of the particular issue. Technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR, is utilized almost every kind of fields in today’s society. As computers become more advanced through mobile devices and wearable technology, augmented reality will become a seamless experience that is a part of our everyday lives. In the context of this work, an Intelligence mobile navigation application for the King Abdul Aziz University Rabigh is developed enabling the user to find specific locations on campus and offers the ability to explore the campus environment via AR. Furthermore, the system, Mobile Campus Navigation with Augmented Reality application is capable of giving guidance in outdoor location navigating and retrieving details of campus officials and lecturers. With the proposed system, it is expected to serve as a useful and informative navigate helper for both students of King Abdul Aziz University and for the visitors, at outdoor locations and to use as an application to check officials and lecturer availability and retrieve detail about them when they are not available at the office at any time.

HMM based automated wheelchair navigation using EOG traces in EEG

Science.gov (United States)

Aziz, Fayeem; Arof, Hamzah; Mokhtar, Norrima; Mubin, Marizan

2014-10-01

This paper presents a wheelchair navigation system based on a hidden Markov model (HMM), which we developed to assist those with restricted mobility. The semi-autonomous system is equipped with obstacle/collision avoidance sensors and it takes the electrooculography (EOG) signal traces from the user as commands to maneuver the wheelchair. The EOG traces originate from eyeball and eyelid movements and they are embedded in EEG signals collected from the scalp of the user at three different locations. Features extracted from the EOG traces are used to determine whether the eyes are open or closed, and whether the eyes are gazing to the right, center, or left. These features are utilized as inputs to a few support vector machine (SVM) classifiers, whose outputs are regarded as observations to an HMM. The HMM determines the state of the system and generates commands for navigating the wheelchair accordingly. The use of simple features and the implementation of a sliding window that captures important signatures in the EOG traces result in a fast execution time and high classification rates. The wheelchair is equipped with a proximity sensor and it can move forward and backward in three directions. The asynchronous system achieved an average classification rate of 98% when tested with online data while its average execution time was less than 1 s. It was also tested in a navigation experiment where all of the participants managed to complete the tasks successfully without collisions.

Collaborative filtering to improve navigation of large radiology knowledge resources.

Science.gov (United States)

Kahn, Charles E

2005-06-01

Collaborative filtering is a knowledge-discovery technique that can help guide readers to items of potential interest based on the experience of prior users. This study sought to determine the impact of collaborative filtering on navigation of a large, Web-based radiology knowledge resource. Collaborative filtering was applied to a collection of 1,168 radiology hypertext documents available via the Internet. An item-based collaborative filtering algorithm identified each document's six most closely related documents based on 248,304 page views in an 18-day period. Documents were amended to include links to their related documents, and use was analyzed over the next 5 days. The mean number of documents viewed per visit increased from 1.57 to 1.74 (P Collaborative filtering can increase a radiology information resource's utilization and can improve its usefulness and ease of navigation. The technique holds promise for improving navigation of large Internet-based radiology knowledge resources.

Mapping and navigational control for a “smart” wheelchair.

Science.gov (United States)

Schultz, Dana L; Shea, Kathleen M; Barrett, Steven F

2012-01-01

A “smart” wheelchair is in development to provide mobility to those unable to control a traditional wheelchair. A “smart” wheelchair is an autonomous machine with the ability to navigate a mapped environment while avoiding obstacles. The flexibility and complex design of “smart” wheelchairs have made those currently available expensive. Ongoing research at the University of Wyoming has been aimed at designing a cheaper, alternative control system that could be interfaced with a typical powered wheelchair. The goal of this project is to determine methods for mapping and navigational control for the wheelchair. The control system acquires data from eighteen sensors and uses the data to navigate around a pre-programmed map which is stored on a micro SD card. The control system also provides a user interface in the form of a touchscreen LCD. The designed system will be an easy-to-use and cost effective alternative to current “smart” wheelchair technology.

Improving Canada's Marine Navigation System through e-Navigation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Breton

2016-06-01

The conclusion proposed is that on-going work with key partners and stakeholders can be used as the primary mechanism to identify e-Navigation related innovation and needs, and to prioritize next steps. Moving forward in Canada, implementation of new e-navigation services will continue to be stakeholder driven, and used to drive improvements to Canada's marine navigation system.

Forest ecosystem health in the inland west

Science.gov (United States)

R. Neil Sampson; Lance R. Clark; Lynnette Z. Morelan

1995-01-01

For the past four years, American Forests has focused much of its policy attention on forest health, highlighted by a forest health partnership in southern Idaho. The partnership has been hard at work trying to better understand the forests of the Inland West. Our goal has been to identify what is affecting these forests, why they are responding differently to climate...

Navigating on handheld displays: Dynamic versus Static Keyhole Navigation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mehra, S.; Werkhoven, P.; Worring, M.

2006-01-01

Handheld displays leave little space for the visualization and navigation of spatial layouts representing rich information spaces. The most common navigation method for handheld displays is static peephole navigation: The peephole is static and we move the spatial layout behind it (scrolling). A

Development and formative evaluation of a visual e-tool to help decision makers navigate the evidence around health financing.

Science.gov (United States)

Skordis-Worrall, Jolene; Pulkki-Brännström, Anni-Maria; Utley, Martin; Kembhavi, Gayatri; Bricki, Nouria; Dutoit, Xavier; Rosato, Mikey; Pagel, Christina

2012-12-21

There are calls for low and middle income countries to develop robust health financing policies to increase service coverage. However, existing evidence around financing options is complex and often difficult for policy makers to access. To summarize the evidence on the impact of financing health systems and develop an e-tool to help decision makers navigate the findings. After reviewing the literature, we used thematic analysis to summarize the impact of 7 common health financing mechanisms on 5 common health system goals. Information on the relevance of each study to a user's context was provided by 11 country indicators. A Web-based e-tool was then developed to assist users in navigating the literature review. This tool was evaluated using feedback from early users, collected using an online survey and in-depth interviews with key informants. The e-tool provides graphical summaries that allow a user to assess the following parameters with a single snapshot: the number of relevant studies available in the literature, the heterogeneity of evidence, where key evidence is lacking, and how closely the evidence matches their own context. Users particularly liked the visual display and found navigating the tool intuitive. However there was concern that a lack of evidence on positive impact might be construed as evidence against a financing option and that the tool might over-simplify the available financing options. Complex evidence can be made more easily accessible and potentially more understandable using basic Web-based technology and innovative graphical representations that match findings to the users' goals and context.

INLAND DUNE VEGETATION OF THE NETHERLANDS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

R. HAVEMAN

2003-01-01

Full Text Available Drifting sands in the Netherlands are the result of human over-exploitation (sod-cutting, over-grazing of woodlands and heathlands. The most important association of inland sand dune areas is the Spergulo-Corynephoretum (Corynephorion canescentis, which is poor in vascular plants, but in it older stager rich in mosses and especially lichens. In the Netherlands, the area of drifting sand is reduced dramatically in the last 70 years. mainly by afforestation and spontaneous succession.

Interactive navigation and bronchial tube tracking in virtual bronchoscopy.

Science.gov (United States)

Heng, P A; Fung, P F; Wong, T T; Siu, Y H; Sun, H

1999-01-01

An interactive virtual environment for simulation of bronchoscopy is developed. Medical doctor can safely plan their surgical bronchoscopy using the virtual environment without any invasive diagnosis which may risk the patient's health. The 3D pen input device of the system allows the doctor to navigate and visualize the bronchial tree of the patient naturally and interactively. To navigate the patient's bronchial tree, a vessel tracking process is required. While manual tracking is tedious and labor-intensive, fully automatic tracking may not be reliable. We propose a semi-automatic tracking technique called Intelligent Path Tracker which provides automation and enough user control during the vessel tracking. To support an interactive frame rate, we also introduce a new volume rendering acceleration technique, named as IsoRegion Leaping. The volume rendering is further accelerated by distributed rendering on a TCP/IP-based network of low-cost PCs. With these approaches, a 256 x 256 x 256 volume data of human lung, can be navigated and visualized at a frame rate of over 10 Hz in our virtual bronchoscopy system.

Evaluating integration of inland bathymetry in the U.S. Geological Survey 3D Elevation Program, 2014

Science.gov (United States)

Miller-Corbett, Cynthia

2016-09-01

Inland bathymetry survey collections, survey data types, features, sources, availability, and the effort required to integrate inland bathymetric data into the U.S. Geological Survey 3D Elevation Program are assessed to help determine the feasibility of integrating three-dimensional water feature elevation data into The National Map. Available data from wading, acoustic, light detection and ranging, and combined technique surveys are provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and other sources. Inland bathymetric data accessed through Web-hosted resources or contacts provide useful baseline parameters for evaluating survey types and techniques used for collection and processing, and serve as a basis for comparing survey methods and the quality of results. Historically, boat-mounted acoustic surveys have provided most inland bathymetry data. Light detection and ranging techniques that are beneficial in areas hard to reach by boat, that can collect dense data in shallow water to provide comprehensive coverage, and that can be cost effective for surveying large areas with good water clarity are becoming more common; however, optimal conditions and techniques for collecting and processing light detection and ranging inland bathymetry surveys are not yet well defined.Assessment of site condition parameters important for understanding inland bathymetry survey issues and results, and an evaluation of existing inland bathymetry survey coverage are proposed as steps to develop criteria for implementing a useful and successful inland bathymetry survey plan in the 3D Elevation Program. These survey parameters would also serve as input for an inland bathymetry survey data baseline. Integration and interpolation techniques are important factors to consider in developing a robust plan; however, available survey data are usually in a triangulated irregular network format or other format compatible with

Web GIS in practice X: a Microsoft Kinect natural user interface for Google Earth navigation.

Science.gov (United States)

Boulos, Maged N Kamel; Blanchard, Bryan J; Walker, Cory; Montero, Julio; Tripathy, Aalap; Gutierrez-Osuna, Ricardo

2011-07-26

This paper covers the use of depth sensors such as Microsoft Kinect and ASUS Xtion to provide a natural user interface (NUI) for controlling 3-D (three-dimensional) virtual globes such as Google Earth (including its Street View mode), Bing Maps 3D, and NASA World Wind. The paper introduces the Microsoft Kinect device, briefly describing how it works (the underlying technology by PrimeSense), as well as its market uptake and application potential beyond its original intended purpose as a home entertainment and video game controller. The different software drivers available for connecting the Kinect device to a PC (Personal Computer) are also covered, and their comparative pros and cons briefly discussed. We survey a number of approaches and application examples for controlling 3-D virtual globes using the Kinect sensor, then describe Kinoogle, a Kinect interface for natural interaction with Google Earth, developed by students at Texas A&M University. Readers interested in trying out the application on their own hardware can download a Zip archive (included with the manuscript as additional files 1, 2, &3) that contains a 'Kinnogle installation package for Windows PCs'. Finally, we discuss some usability aspects of Kinoogle and similar NUIs for controlling 3-D virtual globes (including possible future improvements), and propose a number of unique, practical 'use scenarios' where such NUIs could prove useful in navigating a 3-D virtual globe, compared to conventional mouse/3-D mouse and keyboard-based interfaces.

The inland boundary layer at low latitudes: II Sea-breeze influences

Science.gov (United States)

Garratt, J. R.; Physick, W. L.

1985-11-01

Two-dimensional mesoscale model results support the claim of evening sea-breeze activity at Daly Waters, 280 km inland from the coast in northern Australia, the site of the Koorin boundary-layer experiment. The sea breeze occurs in conditions of strong onshore and alongshore geostrophic winds, not normally associated with such activity. It manifests itself at Daly Waters and in the model as a cooling in a layer 500 1000 m deep, as an associated surface pressure jump, as strong backing of the wind and, when an offshore low-level wind is present, as a collapse in the inland nocturnal jet. Both observational analysis and model results illustrate the rotational aspects of the deeply penetrating sea breeze; in our analysis this is represented in terms of a surge vector — the vector difference between the post- and pre-frontal low-level winds. There is further evidence to support earlier work that the sea breeze during the afternoon and well into the night — at least for these low-latitude experiments — behaves in many ways as an atmospheric gravity current, and that inland penetrations up to 500 km occur.

Decision Usefulness Approach to Financial Reporting: A Case for Malaysian Inland Revenue Board

OpenAIRE

Kabiru Isa Dandago

2013-01-01

This paper aims at determining whether or not financial reporting of companies in Malaysia provides useful information to Inland Revenue Board for income tax determination. The respondents in this study were staff of the Inland Revenue Board, Jalan Duta, Kuala Lumpur, and, for the purpose of the study, copies of questionnaire were distributed to them to illicit their responses. The data collected were analyzed, using SPSS. Most of the respondents are satisfied that companies’ financial report...

Theoretical Limits of Lunar Vision Aided Navigation with Inertial Navigation System

Science.gov (United States)

2015-03-26

THEORETICAL LIMITS OF LUNAR VISION AIDED NAVIGATION WITH INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM THESIS David W. Jones, Capt, USAF AFIT-ENG-MS-15-M-020 DEPARTMENT...Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. AFIT-ENG-MS-15-M-020 THEORETICAL LIMITS OF LUNAR VISION AIDED NAVIGATION WITH...DISTRIBUTION UNLIMITED. AFIT-ENG-MS-15-M-020 THEORETICAL LIMITS OF LUNAR VISION AIDED NAVIGATION WITH INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM THESIS David W. Jones

75 FR 19544 - Inland Navigation Rules

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-15

... be deemed to exist if the compass bearing of an approaching vessel does not appreciably change; and (2) Such risk may sometimes exist even when an appreciable bearing change is evident, particularly... alteration of the bearing between the two vessels shall not make the overtaking vessel a crossing vessel...

Goal-recognition-based adaptive brain-computer interface for navigating immersive robotic systems

Science.gov (United States)

Abu-Alqumsan, Mohammad; Ebert, Felix; Peer, Angelika

2017-06-01

Objective. This work proposes principled strategies for self-adaptations in EEG-based Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) as a way out of the bandwidth bottleneck resulting from the considerable mismatch between the low-bandwidth interface and the bandwidth-hungry application, and a way to enable fluent and intuitive interaction in embodiment systems. The main focus is laid upon inferring the hidden target goals of users while navigating in a remote environment as a basis for possible adaptations. Approach. To reason about possible user goals, a general user-agnostic Bayesian update rule is devised to be recursively applied upon the arrival of evidences, i.e. user input and user gaze. Experiments were conducted with healthy subjects within robotic embodiment settings to evaluate the proposed method. These experiments varied along three factors: the type of the robot/environment (simulated and physical), the type of the interface (keyboard or BCI), and the way goal recognition (GR) is used to guide a simple shared control (SC) driving scheme. Main results. Our results show that the proposed GR algorithm is able to track and infer the hidden user goals with relatively high precision and recall. Further, the realized SC driving scheme benefits from the output of the GR system and is able to reduce the user effort needed to accomplish the assigned tasks. Despite the fact that the BCI requires higher effort compared to the keyboard conditions, most subjects were able to complete the assigned tasks, and the proposed GR system is additionally shown able to handle the uncertainty in user input during SSVEP-based interaction. The SC application of the belief vector indicates that the benefits of the GR module are more pronounced for BCIs, compared to the keyboard interface. Significance. Being based on intuitive heuristics that model the behavior of the general population during the execution of navigation tasks, the proposed GR method can be used without prior tuning for the

33 CFR 86.23 - Construction.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Construction. 86.23 Section 86.23 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY INLAND NAVIGATION RULES ANNEX III: TECHNICAL DETAILS OF SOUND SIGNAL APPLIANCES Bell or Gong § 86.23 Construction. Bells and gongs...

NaviSE: superenhancer navigator integrating epigenomics signal algebra.

Science.gov (United States)

Ascensión, Alex M; Arrospide-Elgarresta, Mikel; Izeta, Ander; Araúzo-Bravo, Marcos J

2017-06-06

Superenhancers are crucial structural genomic elements determining cell fate, and they are also involved in the determination of several diseases, such as cancer or neurodegeneration. Although there are pipelines which use independent pieces of software to predict the presence of superenhancers from genome-wide chromatin marks or DNA-interaction protein binding sites, there is not yet an integrated software tool that processes automatically algebra combinations of raw data sequencing into a comprehensive final annotated report of predicted superenhancers. We have developed NaviSE, a user-friendly streamlined tool which performs a fully-automated parallel processing of genome-wide epigenomics data from sequencing files into a final report, built with a comprehensive set of annotated files that are navigated through a graphic user interface dynamically generated by NaviSE. NaviSE also implements an 'epigenomics signal algebra' that allows the combination of multiple activation and repression epigenomics signals. NaviSE provides an interactive chromosomal landscaping of the locations of superenhancers, which can be navigated to obtain annotated information about superenhancer signal profile, associated genes, gene ontology enrichment analysis, motifs of transcription factor binding sites enriched in superenhancers, graphs of the metrics evaluating the superenhancers quality, protein-protein interaction networks and enriched metabolic pathways among other features. We have parallelised the most time-consuming tasks achieving a reduction up to 30% for a 15 CPUs machine. We have optimized the default parameters of NaviSE to facilitate its use. NaviSE allows different entry levels of data processing, from sra-fastq files to bed files; and unifies the processing of multiple replicates. NaviSE outperforms the more time-consuming processes required in a non-integrated pipeline. Alongside its high performance, NaviSE is able to provide biological insights, predicting cell

OSIRIX: open source multimodality image navigation software

Science.gov (United States)

Rosset, Antoine; Pysher, Lance; Spadola, Luca; Ratib, Osman

2005-04-01

The goal of our project is to develop a completely new software platform that will allow users to efficiently and conveniently navigate through large sets of multidimensional data without the need of high-end expensive hardware or software. We also elected to develop our system on new open source software libraries allowing other institutions and developers to contribute to this project. OsiriX is a free and open-source imaging software designed manipulate and visualize large sets of medical images: http://homepage.mac.com/rossetantoine/osirix/

Modeling user navigation behavior in web by colored Petri nets to determine the user's interest in recommending web pages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mehdi Sadeghzadeh

2013-01-01

Full Text Available One of existing challenges in personalization of the web is increasing the efficiency of a web in meeting the users' requirements for the contents they require in an optimal state. All the information associated with the current user behavior following in web and data obtained from pervious users’ interaction in web can provide some necessary keys to recommend presentation of services, productions, and the required information of the users. This study aims at presenting a formal model based on colored Petri nets to identify the present user's interest, which is utilized to recommend the most appropriate pages ahead. In the proposed design, recommendation of the pages is considered with respect to information obtained from pervious users' profile as well as the current session of the present user. This model offers the updated proposed pages to the user by clicking on the web pages. Moreover, an example of web is modeled using CPN Tools. The results of the simulation show that this design improves the precision factor. We explain, through evaluation where the results of this method are more objective and the dynamic recommendations demonstrate that the results of the recommended method improve the precision criterion 15% more than the static method.

Applying Cognitive Psychology to User Interfaces

Science.gov (United States)

Durrani, Sabeen; Durrani, Qaiser S.

This paper explores some key aspects of cognitive psychology that may be mapped onto user interfaces. Major focus in existing user interface guidelines is on consistency, simplicity, feedback, system messages, display issues, navigation, colors, graphics, visibility and error prevention [8-10]. These guidelines are effective indesigning user interfaces. However, these guidelines do not handle the issues that may arise due to the innate structure of human brain and human limitations. For example, where to place graphics on the screen so that user can easily process them and what kind of background should be given on the screen according to the limitation of human motor system. In this paper we have collected some available guidelines from the area of cognitive psychology [1, 5, 7]. In addition, we have extracted few guidelines from theories and studies of cognitive psychology [3, 11] which may be mapped to user interfaces.

The development of a classification system for inland aquatic ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

A classification system is described that was developed for inland aquatic ecosystems in South Africa, including wetlands. The six-tiered classification system is based on a top-down, hierarchical classification of aquatic ecosystems, following the functionally-oriented hydrogeomorphic (HGM) approach to classification but ...

Hearing the way: requirements and preferences for technology-supported navigation aids.

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Laura; Sharples, Sarah; Chandler, Ed; Worsfold, John

2015-05-01

Many systems have been developed to assist wayfinding for people with sight problems. There is a need for user requirements for such systems to be defined. This paper presents a study which aimed to determine such user requirements. An experiment was also conducted to establish the best way of guiding users between locations. The focus group results indicated that users require systems to provide them with information about their surroundings, to guide them along their route and to provide progress information. They also showed that users with sight conditions interact with systems differently to sighted users, thereby highlighting the importance of designing systems for the needs of these users. Results of the experiment found that the preferred method of guiding users was a notification when they were both on and off track. However, performance was best when only provided with the off track notification, implying that this cue is particularly important. Technology has the potential to support navigation for people with sight problems. Users should have control over cues provided and for these cues should supplement environmental cues rather than replacing them. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Columbia River System Operation Review final environmental impact statement. Appendix H: Navigation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-11-01

The System Operation Review (SOR) is a study and environmental compliance process being used by the three Federal agencies to analyze future operations of the system and river use issues. The goal of the SOR is to achieve a coordinated system operation strategy for the river that better meets the needs of all river users. This technical appendix addresses only the effects of alternative system operating strategies for managing the Columbia River system. The Navigation Technical Appendix presents the analysis of the various SOR alternatives in terms of their potential affects on the congressionally authorized navigation system within the Columbia and Snake river waterways. The focus of the study, impacts to the authorized navigation, improvements/developments, reflects on one of the continuing historical missions of the US Army Corps of Engineers: to promote safe commercial navigation of the nation's waterways benefiting the development of commerce within the US. The study and evaluation process involved Scoping, Screening and Full Scale Evaluation. During screening two models were developed; one was used to evaluate the effects of the various alternatives on navigation through the Snake River Projects and the other the effects on the Dworshak Pool. Full Scale Analysis was expanded to included a study of effects throughout the system

Conceptual Design of Haptic-Feedback Navigation Device for Individuals with Alzheimer's Disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Che Me, Rosalam; Biamonti, Alessandro; Mohd Saad, Mohd Rashid

2015-01-01

Wayfinding ability in older adults with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is progressively impaired due to ageing and deterioration of cognitive domains. Usually, the sense of direction is deteriorated as visuospatial and spatial cognition are associated with the sensory acuity. Therefore, navigation systems that support only visual interactions may not be appropriate in case of AD. This paper presents a concept of wearable navigation device that integrates the haptic-feedback technology to facilitate the wayfinding of individuals with AD. The system provides the simplest instructions; left/right using haptic signals, as to avoid users' distraction during navigation. The advantages of haptic/tactile modality for wayfinding purpose based on several significant studies are presented. As preliminary assessment, a survey is conducted to understand the potential of this design concept in terms of (1) acceptability, (2) practicality, (3) wearability, and (4) environmental settings. Results indicate that the concept is highly acceptable and commercially implementable. A working prototype will be developed based on the results of the preliminary assessment. Introducing a new method of navigation should be followed by continuous practices for familiarization purpose. Improved navigability allows the good performance of activities of daily living (ADLs) hence maintain the good quality of life in older adults with AD.

Prediction of User Preference over Shared Control Paradigms for a Robotic Wheelchair

Science.gov (United States)

2017-07-20

were mostly naive to wheelchair driving . The overall experiment was divided into four phases, each of which started two meters away from a door (t = t0...effective and efficient navigation assistance. Significantly less attention has been given to the end-user’s preference between different assistance...wheelchairs has traditionally focused heavily on providing effective and efficient navigation assistance. Significantly less attention has been given to

Determination of selected heavy metals in inland fresh water of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Agadaga

Key words: Heavy metals, freshwater, concentrations, quality, variation, distribution. ... prevalence of heavy metals in inland water of lower River. Niger drain are scarce ..... Niger waters at Ajaokuta were found to be low and within guideline.

Flood control design requirements and flood evaluation methods of inland nuclear power plant

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Ailing; Wang Ping; Zhu Jingxing

2011-01-01

Effect of flooding is one of the key safety factors and environmental factors in inland nuclear power plant sitting. Up to now, the rule of law and standard systems are established for the selection of nuclear power plant location and flood control requirements in China. In this paper flood control standards of China and other countries are introduced. Several inland nuclear power plants are taken as examples to thoroughly discuss the related flood evaluation methods. The suggestions are also put forward in the paper. (authors)

The development of a classification system for inland aquatic ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2015-10-05

Oct 5, 2015 ... 6Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Qwaqwa Campus, Private .... classification systems for wetlands and other inland aquatic ... of vegetation, soil, inundation and landform features that are ... nised as the fundamental drivers that determine the existence ...... Earth Obs. Remote Sens.

Development of a monthly to seasonal forecast framework tailored to inland waterway transport in central Europe

Science.gov (United States)

Meißner, Dennis; Klein, Bastian; Ionita, Monica

2017-12-01

Traditionally, navigation-related forecasts in central Europe cover short- to medium-range lead times linked to the travel times of vessels to pass the main waterway bottlenecks leaving the loading ports. Without doubt, this aspect is still essential for navigational users, but in light of the growing political intention to use the free capacity of the inland waterway transport in Europe, additional lead time supporting strategic decisions is more and more in demand. However, no such predictions offering extended lead times of several weeks up to several months currently exist for considerable parts of the European waterway network. This paper describes the set-up of a monthly to seasonal forecasting system for the German stretches of the international waterways of the Rhine, Danube and Elbe rivers. Two competitive forecast approaches have been implemented: the dynamical set-up forces a hydrological model with post-processed outputs from ECMWF general circulation model System 4, whereas the statistical approach is based on the empirical relationship (teleconnection) of global oceanic, climate and regional hydro-meteorological data with river flows. The performance of both forecast methods is evaluated in relation to the climatological forecast (ensemble of historical streamflow) and the well-known ensemble streamflow prediction approach (ESP, ensemble based on historical meteorology) using common performance indicators (correlation coefficient; mean absolute error, skill score; mean squared error, skill score; and continuous ranked probability, skill score) and an impact-based evaluation quantifying the potential economic gain. The following four key findings result from this study: (1) as former studies for other regions of central Europe indicate, the accuracy and/or skill of the meteorological forcing used has a larger effect than the quality of initial hydrological conditions for relevant stations along the German waterways. (2) Despite the predictive

Tracking human footprints in Antarctica through passive sampling of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in inland lakes.

Science.gov (United States)

Yao, Yao; Meng, Xiang-Zhou; Wu, Chen-Chou; Bao, Lian-Jun; Wang, Feng; Wu, Feng-Chang; Zeng, Eddy Y

2016-06-01

Freely dissolved polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were monitored in seven inland lakes of Antarctica by a polyethylene (PE)-based passive sampling technique, with the objective of tracking human footprints. The measured concentrations of PAHs were in the range of 14-360 ng L(-1) with the highest values concentrated around the Russian Progress II Station, indicating the significance of human activities to the loading of PAHs in Antarctica. The concentrations of PAHs in the inland lakes were in the upper part of the PAHs levels in aquatic environments from remote and background regions across the globe. The composition profiles of PAHs indicated that PAHs in the inland lakes were derived mainly from local oil spills, which was corroborated by a large number of fuel spillage reports from ship and plane crash incidents in Antarctica during recent years. Clearly, local human activities, rather than long-range transport, are the dominant sources of PAH contamination to the inland lakes. Finally, the present study demonstrates the efficacy of PE-based passive samplers for investigating PAHs in the aquatic environment of Antarctica under complex field conditions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Assessing Topographical Orientation Skills in Cannabis Users

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liana Palermo

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The long-term effects of cannabis on human cognition are still unclear, but, considering that cannabis is a widely used substance and, overall, its potential use in therapeutic interventions, it is important to evaluate them. We hypothesize that the discrepancies among studies could be attributed to the specific cognitive function investigated and that skills subserved by the hippocampus, such as the spatial orientation abilities and, specifically, the ability to form and use cognitive maps, should be more compromised than others. Indeed it has been showed that cannabis users have a reduced hippocampus and that the hippocampus is the brain region in which cannabis has the greatest effect since it contains the highest concentration of cannabinoid receptors. To test this hypothesis we asked 15 heavy cannabis users and 19 nonusers to perform a virtual navigational test, the CMT, that assesses the ability to form and use cognitive maps. We found that using cannabis has no effect on these hippocampus-dependent orientation skills. We discuss the implications of our findings and how they relate to evidence reported in the literature that the intervention of functional reorganization mechanisms in cannabis user allows them to cope with the cognitive demands of navigational tasks.

Method of recommending items to a user based on user interest

Science.gov (United States)

Bollen, John; Van De Sompel, Herbert

2013-11-05

Although recording of usage data is common in scholarly information services, its exploitation for the creation of value-added services remains limited due to concerns regarding, among others, user privacy, data validity, and the lack of accepted standards for the representation, sharing and aggregation of usage data. A technical, standards-based architecture for sharing usage information is presented. In this architecture, OpenURL-compliant linking servers aggregate usage information of a specific user community as it navigates the distributed information environment that it has access to. This usage information is made OAI-PMH harvestable so that usage information exposed by many linking servers can be aggregated to facilitate the creation of value-added services with a reach beyond that of a single community or a single information service.

A novel navigation system for maxillary positioning in orthognathic surgery: Preclinical evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Lutz, Jean-Christophe; Nicolau, Stéphane; Agnus, Vincent; Bodin, Frédéric; Wilk, Astrid; Bruant-Rodier, Catherine; Rémond, Yves; Soler, Luc

2015-11-01

Appropriate positioning of the maxilla is critical in orthognathic surgery. As opposed to splint-based positioning, navigation systems are versatile and appropriate in assessing the vertical dimension. Bulk and disruption to the line of sight are drawbacks of optical navigation systems. Our aim was to develop and assess a novel navigation system based on electromagnetic tracking of the maxilla, including real-time registration of head movements. Since the software interface has proved to greatly influence the accuracy of the procedure, we purposely designed and evaluated an original, user-friendly interface. A sample of 12 surgeons had to navigate the phantom osteotomized maxilla to eight given target positions using the software we have developed. Time and accuracy (translational error and angular error) were compared between a conventional and a navigated session. A questionnaire provided qualitative evaluation. Our system definitely allows a reduction in variability of time and accuracy among different operators. Accuracy was improved in all surgeons (mean terror difference = 1.11 mm, mean aerror difference = 1.32°). Operative time was decreased in trainees. Therefore, they would benefit from such a system that could also serve for educational purposes. The majority of surgeons who strongly agreed that such a navigation system would prove very helpful in complex deformities, also stated that it would be helpful in everyday orthognathic procedures. Copyright © 2015 European Association for Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

33 CFR 2.36 - Navigable waters of the United States, navigable waters, and territorial waters.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Navigable waters of the United States, navigable waters, and territorial waters. 2.36 Section 2.36 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY GENERAL JURISDICTION Jurisdictional Terms § 2.36 Navigable waters...

Planning for prescribed burning in the inland northwest.

Science.gov (United States)

Robert E. Martin; John D. Dell

1978-01-01

Fire has historically played a role in forests and ranges of the inland Northwest. This guide has been prepared to help managers understand the role of fire and the potential uses of fire and to plan for fire use in managing these lands. Sections deal with these topics, and steps in planning a prescribed burn are outlined. A sample burning situation illustrates the...

Location of navigation menus in websites: an experimental study with Arabic users.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Salmerón, Ladislao; Abu Mallouh, Reem; Kammerer, Yvonne

2018-01-01

While Arabic users represent by far the fastest growing language population on the Internet, research about how the peculiarities of Arabic language may shape users’ web interactions is still scarce. The preferences of Arabic users for menu location in websites have been studied. Two competing

33 CFR 162.125 - Sturgeon Bay and the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, Wisc.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Sturgeon Bay and the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, Wisc. 162.125 Section 162.125 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (CONTINUED) PORTS AND WATERWAYS SAFETY INLAND WATERWAYS NAVIGATION REGULATIONS § 162.125 Sturgeon Bay and the Sturgeon Bay Ship...

Determinants of user acceptance of a specific social platform for older adults: An empirical examination of user interface characteristics and behavioral intention.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tsai-Hsuan Tsai

Full Text Available The use of the Internet and social applications has many benefits for the elderly, but numerous investigations have shown that the elderly do not perceive online social networks as a friendly social environment. Therefore, TreeIt, a social application specifically designed for the elderly, was developed for this study. In the TreeIt application, seven mechanisms promoting social interaction were designed to allow older adults to use social networking sites (SNSs to increase social connection, maintain the intensity of social connections and strengthen social experience. This study's main objective was to investigate how user interface design affects older people's intention and attitude related to using SNSs. Fourteen user interface evaluation heuristics proposed by Zhang et al. were adopted as the criteria to assess user interface usability and further grouped into three categories: system support, user interface design and navigation. The technology acceptance model was adopted to assess older people's intention and attitude related to using SNSs. One hundred and one elderly persons were enrolled in this study as subjects, and the results showed that all of the hypotheses proposed in this study were valid: system support and perceived usefulness had a significant effect on behavioral intention; user interface design and perceived ease of use were positively correlated with perceived usefulness; and navigation exerted an influence on perceived ease of use. The results of this study are valuable for the future development of social applications for the elderly.

Determinants of user acceptance of a specific social platform for older adults: An empirical examination of user interface characteristics and behavioral intention.

Science.gov (United States)

Tsai, Tsai-Hsuan; Chang, Hsien-Tsung; Chen, Yan-Jiun; Chang, Yung-Sheng

2017-01-01

The use of the Internet and social applications has many benefits for the elderly, but numerous investigations have shown that the elderly do not perceive online social networks as a friendly social environment. Therefore, TreeIt, a social application specifically designed for the elderly, was developed for this study. In the TreeIt application, seven mechanisms promoting social interaction were designed to allow older adults to use social networking sites (SNSs) to increase social connection, maintain the intensity of social connections and strengthen social experience. This study's main objective was to investigate how user interface design affects older people's intention and attitude related to using SNSs. Fourteen user interface evaluation heuristics proposed by Zhang et al. were adopted as the criteria to assess user interface usability and further grouped into three categories: system support, user interface design and navigation. The technology acceptance model was adopted to assess older people's intention and attitude related to using SNSs. One hundred and one elderly persons were enrolled in this study as subjects, and the results showed that all of the hypotheses proposed in this study were valid: system support and perceived usefulness had a significant effect on behavioral intention; user interface design and perceived ease of use were positively correlated with perceived usefulness; and navigation exerted an influence on perceived ease of use. The results of this study are valuable for the future development of social applications for the elderly.

Determinants of user acceptance of a specific social platform for older adults: An empirical examination of user interface characteristics and behavioral intention

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Hsien-Tsung; Chen, Yan-Jiun; Chang, Yung-Sheng

2017-01-01

The use of the Internet and social applications has many benefits for the elderly, but numerous investigations have shown that the elderly do not perceive online social networks as a friendly social environment. Therefore, TreeIt, a social application specifically designed for the elderly, was developed for this study. In the TreeIt application, seven mechanisms promoting social interaction were designed to allow older adults to use social networking sites (SNSs) to increase social connection, maintain the intensity of social connections and strengthen social experience. This study’s main objective was to investigate how user interface design affects older people’s intention and attitude related to using SNSs. Fourteen user interface evaluation heuristics proposed by Zhang et al. were adopted as the criteria to assess user interface usability and further grouped into three categories: system support, user interface design and navigation. The technology acceptance model was adopted to assess older people’s intention and attitude related to using SNSs. One hundred and one elderly persons were enrolled in this study as subjects, and the results showed that all of the hypotheses proposed in this study were valid: system support and perceived usefulness had a significant effect on behavioral intention; user interface design and perceived ease of use were positively correlated with perceived usefulness; and navigation exerted an influence on perceived ease of use. The results of this study are valuable for the future development of social applications for the elderly. PMID:28837566

An improved rank based disease prediction using web navigation patterns on bio-medical databases

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

P. Dhanalakshmi

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Applying machine learning techniques to on-line biomedical databases is a challenging task, as this data is collected from large number of sources and it is multi-dimensional. Also retrieval of relevant document from large repository such as gene document takes more processing time and an increased false positive rate. Generally, the extraction of biomedical document is based on the stream of prior observations of gene parameters taken at different time periods. Traditional web usage models such as Markov, Bayesian and Clustering models are sensitive to analyze the user navigation patterns and session identification in online biomedical database. Moreover, most of the document ranking models on biomedical database are sensitive to sparsity and outliers. In this paper, a novel user recommendation system was implemented to predict the top ranked biomedical documents using the disease type, gene entities and user navigation patterns. In this recommendation system, dynamic session identification, dynamic user identification and document ranking techniques were used to extract the highly relevant disease documents on the online PubMed repository. To verify the performance of the proposed model, the true positive rate and runtime of the model was compared with that of traditional static models such as Bayesian and Fuzzy rank. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed ranking model is better than the traditional models.

Controls on the inland propagation of terminus-driven speedups at Helheim Glacier, SE Greenland

Science.gov (United States)

Kehrl, L. M.; Joughin, I. R.; Smith, B.

2017-12-01

Tidewater glaciers are very sensitive to changes in the stress balance near their termini. When submarine melt or iceberg calving reduce lateral or basal resistance near the terminus, the glacier typically must speed up to produce the additional longitudinal and lateral stress gradients necessary to restore stress balance. Once speedup near the terminus is initiated, it can propagate inland through longitudinal stress coupling, thinning-induced changes in the effective pressure, and/or a steepening of surface slopes. The controls on these processes and the timing and spatial extent of the inland response, however, remain poorly understood. In this study, we use a three-dimensional, Full Stokes model (Elmer/Ice) to investigate the effects of different ice rheology and basal sliding parameterizations on the inland propagation of speedups at Helheim Glacier, SE Greenland. Using satellite observations of terminus position, we force the model with the observed 3-km, 2013/14 retreat history and allow the model to evolve in response to this retreat. We run a set of simulations that vary the ice rheology (constant or spatially variable ice temperature) and basal sliding law (linear, nonlinear, and effective-pressure-dependent). Our results show that the choice of parameterizations affect the timing and spatial extent of the inland response, but that the range of acceptable parameters can be constrained by comparing the model results to satellite observations of surface velocity and elevation.

TARDIS: An Automation Framework for JPL Mission Design and Navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Roundhill, Ian M.; Kelly, Richard M.

2014-01-01

Mission Design and Navigation at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has implemented an automation framework tool to assist in orbit determination and maneuver design analysis. This paper describes the lessons learned from previous automation tools and how they have been implemented in this tool. In addition this tool has revealed challenges in software implementation, testing, and user education. This paper describes some of these challenges and invites others to share their experiences.

Navigation-synchronized multimodal control wheelchair from brain to alternative assistive technologies for persons with severe disabilities.

Science.gov (United States)

Puanhvuan, Dilok; Khemmachotikun, Sarawin; Wechakarn, Pongsakorn; Wijarn, Boonyanuch; Wongsawat, Yodchanan

2017-04-01

Currently, electric wheelchairs are commonly used to improve mobility in disabled people. In severe cases, the user is unable to control the wheelchair by themselves because his/her motor functions are disabled. To restore mobility function, a brain-controlled wheelchair (BCW) would be a promising system that would allow the patient to control the wheelchair by their thoughts. P300 is a reliable brain electrical signal, a component of visual event-related potentials (ERPs), that could be used for interpreting user commands. This research aimed to propose a prototype BCW to allowed severe motor disabled patients to practically control a wheelchair for use in their home environment. The users were able to select from 9 possible destination commands in the automatic mode and from 4 directional commands (forward, backward, turn left and right) in the shared-control mode. These commands were selected via the designed P300 processing system. The wheelchair was steered to the desired location by the implemented navigation system. Safety of the user was ensured during wheelchair navigation due to the included obstacle detection and avoidance features. A combination of P300 and EOG was used as a hybrid BCW system. The user could fully operate the system such as enabling P300 detection system, mode shifting and stop/cancelation command by performing a different consecutive blinks to generate eye blinking patterns. The results revealed that the prototype BCW could be operated in either of the proposed modes. With the new design of the LED-based P300 stimulator, the average accuracies of the P300 detection algorithm in the shared-control and automatic modes were 95.31 and 83.42% with 3.09 and 3.79 bits/min, respectively. The P300 classification error was acceptable, as the user could cancel an incorrect command by blinking 2 times. Moreover, the proposed navigation system had a flexible design that could be interfaced with other assistive technologies. This research developed

PER Estimation of AIS in Inland Rivers based on Three Dimensional Ray Tracking

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Ma

2014-03-01

Full Text Available The Automatic Identification System (AIS is an important maritime safety device, which is populous in inland rivers. Compared with that in open sea, the Package Error Rate (PER of AIS in inland river has increased sharply due to its complex environment. With the help of hardware in loop simulation, it is possible to make statistical calculation on the PER under a given field strength and describe the data by quadratic rational fraction. Meanwhile, in the three dimensional software environments, the signal field strength is able to be calculated by the ray tracking method, which exhausts all the possible propagation paths, including direct way, reflection, diffractions, and the other medium attenuation matters. Beyond that, in the model, the propagation geography information in inland rivers is required to be simplified in some way, or the computation of the ray tracking is too hard to get. The paper set the Changjiang Wuhan channel as the field testing region, and all the deviations are less than 5% in sunny weather, which proves the method accurate and effective.

The Danish digitalized Cultural Heritage and its users

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fransson, Jonas

2011-01-01

In this Ph.D. project three different cultural heritage resources on the web are studied with a triangulation of methods. 1) The users’ navigational strategies to reach the resources and their usage of them are examined by web log analysis. 2) User attitude and experiences are collected through...

Establishment of high-precision navigation system in the Republic of Armenia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manukyan Larisa Vladimirovna

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Medium-Earth orbit satellite systems make it possible to provide services on time coordination and navigation support for a wide range of consumers. At present, there are global navigation satellite systems GLONASS (Russia and GPS (USA. Users of these systems have an opportunity to determine their location accurately with the given characteristics of their navigation devices. In all developed countries the progress of geodesy and cartography is closely related to the implementation of advanced new technologies in both scientific and industrial areas. The introduction of new technologies and equipment in production is essential for the development of geodesy and cartography, bringing the existing geodetic networks and cartographic materials to modern condition. In the Republic of Armenia there are also plans on introduction of the systems for monitoring and management of vehicles for various purposes, as well as it is proposed to establish and implement an effective satellite navigation system to monitor and control traffic on the basis of advanced satellite technology. The article describes the basic steps to create the network of reference stations, GPS, aerial photography of much of the territory of Armenia, the creation of digital terrain model and the new maps by orthophotoplans. The analysis of the materials were carried out, on the basis of which in the Republic in 2015 a high-precision navigation system will be created. Due to the hard work of surveyors, cartographers and topographers the Republic was brought to European states level.

77 FR 42637 - Navigation and Navigable Waters; Technical, Organizational, and Conforming Amendments; Corrections

Science.gov (United States)

2012-07-20

... DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Coast Guard 33 CFR Parts 84 and 115 [Docket No. USCG-2012-0306] RIN 1625-AB86 Navigation and Navigable Waters; Technical, Organizational, and Conforming Amendments...), the Coast Guard published a final rule entitled ``Navigation and Navigable Waters; Technical...

Camera Based Navigation System with Augmented Reality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Marcu

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Nowadays smart mobile devices have enough processing power, memory, storage and always connected wireless communication bandwidth that makes them available for any type of application. Augmented reality (AR proposes a new type of applications that tries to enhance the real world by superimposing or combining virtual objects or computer generated information with it. In this paper we present a camera based navigation system with augmented reality integration. The proposed system aims to the following: the user points the camera of the smartphone towards a point of interest, like a building or any other place, and the application searches for relevant information about that specific place and superimposes the data over the video feed on the display. When the user moves the camera away, changing its orientation, the data changes as well, in real-time, with the proper information about the place that is now in the camera view.

Topographically-controlled site conditions drive vegetation pattern on inland dunes in Poland

Science.gov (United States)

Sewerniak, Piotr; Jankowski, Michał

2017-07-01

The inland dunes of Central Europe are commonly overplanted by Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) monocultures in which the primary occurrence of the natural vegetation pattern is obliterated. We hypothesize that on naturally revegetated inland dunes the pattern is clear and driven by topographically-controlled site conditions. To test this hypothesis, we addressed the following research questions: (1) Does topography drive vegetation patterns on inland dunes and if so, what are main differences between vegetation in varying relief positions? (2) To what extent does topography involve the variability of microclimates and of soil properties, and how does the topographically-induced differentiation of these site conditions control vegetation patterns? We conducted interdisciplinary studies (applying floristic, pedological and microclimatic research techniques) on a naturally revegetated inland dune area situated on a military artillery training ground near Toruń, northern Poland. We investigated vegetation patterns with reference to three topographical position variants (north-facing slopes, south-facing slopes, and intra-dune depressions). We found distinct differences in vegetation characteristics covering the aforementioned topographical positions. This primarily concerned species composition of ground vegetation: Calluna vulgaris was dominant species on north-facing slopes, Corynephorus canescens on south-facing slopes, while Calamagrostis epigejos in intra-dune depressions. In comparison to dune slopes, the depressions were characterized by much higher biodiversity of vascular plant species. This followed the most favorable soil conditions for the existence of plants (higher moisture and nutrient pools) occurring in low topographical positions. However, tree succession was most advanced not in depressions, where the competitive impact of tall grasses on seedlings was recognized, but on north-facing slopes. Based on our results, we formulated some suggestions, which

Navigating Cross-Media News Use : Media repertoires and the value of news in everyday life.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Swart, Joelle; Peters, Chris; Broersma, Marcel

2017-01-01

The current news media landscape is characterized by an abundance of digital outlets and increased opportunities for users to navigate news themselves. Yet, it is still unclear how people negotiate this fluctuating environment to decide which news media to select or ignore, how they assemble

Classification of inland Bolboschoenus-dominated vegetation in Central Europe

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hroudová, Zdenka; Hrivnák, R.; Chytrý, M.

2009-01-01

Roč. 39, č. 2 (2009), s. 205-215 ISSN 0340-269X R&D Projects: GA AV ČR IAA6005905; GA ČR GA521/04/0997 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z60050516 Keywords : vegetation classification * saline vegetation * freshwater inland communities Subject RIV: EF - Botanics Impact factor: 0.674, year: 2009

Radar and electronic navigation

CERN Document Server

Sonnenberg, G J

2013-01-01

Radar and Electronic Navigation, Sixth Edition discusses radar in marine navigation, underwater navigational aids, direction finding, the Decca navigator system, and the Omega system. The book also describes the Loran system for position fixing, the navy navigation satellite system, and the global positioning system (GPS). It reviews the principles, operation, presentations, specifications, and uses of radar. It also describes GPS, a real time position-fixing system in three dimensions (longitude, latitude, altitude), plus velocity information with Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). It is accur

Monitoring Inland Storm Surge and Flooding from Hurricane Rita

Science.gov (United States)

McGee, Benton D.; Tollett, Roland W.; Mason, Jr., Robert R.

2006-01-01

Pressure transducers (sensors) and high-water marks were used to document the inland water levels related to storm surge generated by Hurricane Rita in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas. On September 22-23, 2005, an experimental monitoring network of sensors was deployed at 33 sites over an area of about 4,000 square miles to record the timing, extent, and magnitude of inland hurricane storm surge and coastal flooding. Sensors were programmed to record date and time, temperature, and barometric or water pressure. Water pressure was corrected for changes in barometric pressure and salinity. Elevation surveys using global-positioning systems and differential levels were used to relate all storm-surge water-level data, reference marks, benchmarks, sensor measuring points, and high-water marks to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). The resulting data indicated that storm-surge water levels over 14 feet above NAVD 88 occurred at three locations, and rates of water-level rise greater than 5 feet per hour occurred at three locations near the Louisiana coast.

Investigations of Fusarium diseases within Inland Pacific Northwest forest nurseries

Science.gov (United States)

Robert L. James; R. Kasten Dumroese

2007-01-01

Fusarium spp. cause important diseases that limit production of seedlings in forest nurseries worldwide. Several aspects of these diseases have been investigated for many years within Inland Pacific Northwest nurseries to better understand disease etiology, pathogen inoculum sources, and epidemiology. Investigations have also involved improving...

Malodorous volatile organic sulfur compounds: Sources, sinks and significance in inland waters.

Science.gov (United States)

Watson, Susan B; Jüttner, Friedrich

2017-03-01

Volatile Organic Sulfur Compounds (VOSCs) are instrumental in global S-cycling and greenhouse gas production. VOSCs occur across a diversity of inland waters, and with widespread eutrophication and climate change, are increasingly linked with malodours in organic-rich waterbodies and drinking-water supplies. Compared with marine systems, the role of VOSCs in biogeochemical processes is far less well characterized for inland waters, and often involves different physicochemical and biological processes. This review provides an updated synthesis of VOSCs in inland waters, focusing on compounds known to cause malodours. We examine the major limnological and biochemical processes involved in the formation and degradation of alkylthiols, dialkylsulfides, dialkylpolysulfides, and other organosulfur compounds under different oxygen, salinity and mixing regimes, and key phototropic and heterotrophic microbial producers and degraders (bacteria, cyanobacteria, and algae) in these environs. The data show VOSC levels which vary significantly, sometimes far exceeding human odor thresholds, generated by a diversity of biota, biochemical pathways, enzymes and precursors. We also draw attention to major issues in sampling and analytical artifacts which bias and preclude comparisons among studies, and highlight significant knowledge gaps that need addressing with careful, appropriate methods to provide a more robust understanding of the potential effects of continued global development.

Evaluating environmental policy integration and policy coherence across service sectors: The case of South Africa’s inland water biodiversity

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Funke, Nicola S

2009-01-01

Full Text Available the inclusion of the systematic conservation of inland water ecosystems in the strategic planning processes of several sectors impacting on South Africa’s inland water biodiversity. The authors use environmental policy integration (EPI) research approach...

Individual Global Navigation Satellite Systems in the Space Service Volume

Science.gov (United States)

Force, Dale A.

2015-01-01

Besides providing position, navigation, and timing (PNT) to terrestrial users, GPS is currently used to provide for precision orbit determination, precise time synchronization, real-time spacecraft navigation, and three-axis control of Earth orbiting satellites. With additional Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) coming into service (GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo), it will be possible to provide these services by using other GNSS constellations. The paper, "GPS in the Space Service Volume," presented at the ION GNSS 19th International Technical Meeting in 2006 (Ref. 1), defined the Space Service Volume, and analyzed the performance of GPS out to 70,000 km. This paper will report a similar analysis of the performance of each of the additional GNSS and compare them with GPS alone. The Space Service Volume, defined as the volume between 3,000 km altitude and geosynchronous altitude, as compared with the Terrestrial Service Volume between the surface and 3,000 km. In the Terrestrial Service Volume, GNSS performance will be similar to performance on the Earth's surface. The GPS system has established signal requirements for the Space Service Volume. A separate paper presented at the conference covers the use of multiple GNSS in the Space Service Volume.

Characterization And Classification Of The Inland Valley Soils Of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Six profiles located in the inland valley soils of central Cross River State were studied. The surface horizon colour of the first four were either dark Grey or dark brown. The last two profiles were grey. All subsurface horizons were either greyish or brownish and highly mottled. The structure of all the profiles were either blocky ...

Tillage techniques to reactivate aeolian erosion on inland drift-sand

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Riksen, M.J.P.M.; Goossens, D.

2005-01-01

The inland drift-sand areas in northern Europe are characterised by a rapid decline in both aeolian activity and areal size. Many former drift-sand surfaces have become immobilised by natural or man-induced processes, such as conversion into forest or other terrain for agricultural, economic or

The history of South African inland fisheries policy with governance ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The governance of South Africa's inland fishery resources in the democratic era has lacked a guiding policy, supporting legislation and government capacity based on the social, economic and environmental objectives defined in constitutional legislation. This is ironic, as during the colonial and apartheid eras South Africa ...

Foot clearance and variability in mono- and multifocal intraocular lens users during stair navigation.

Science.gov (United States)

Renz, Erik; Hackney, Madeleine; Hall, Courtney

2016-01-01

Intraocular lenses (IOLs) provide distance and near refraction and are becoming the standard for cataract surgery. Multifocal glasses increase variability of toe clearance in older adults navigating stairs and increase fall risk; however, little is known about the biomechanics of stair navigation in individuals with multifocal IOLs. This study compared clearance while ascending and descending stairs in individuals with monofocal versus multifocal IOLs. Eight participants with multifocal IOLs (4 men, 4 women; mean age = 66.5 yr, standard deviation [SD] = 6.26) and fifteen male participants with monofocal IOLs (mean age = 69.9 yr, SD = 6.9) underwent vision and mobility testing. Motion analysis recorded kinematic and custom software-calculated clearances in three-dimensional space. No significant differences were found between groups on minimum clearance or variability. Clearance differed for ascending versus descending stairs: the first step onto the stair had the greatest toe clearance during ascent, whereas the final step to the floor had the greatest heel clearance during descent. This preliminary study indicates that multifocal IOLs have similar biomechanic characteristics to monofocal IOLs. Given that step characteristics are related to fall risk, we can tentatively speculate that multifocal IOLs may carry no additional fall risk.

CryoSat-2 SAR and SARin Inland Water Heights from the CRUCIAL project

Science.gov (United States)

Benveniste, J.; Restano, M.; Ambrózio, A.; Moore, P.; Birkinshaw, S.

2017-12-01

CRUCIAL was an ESA/STSE funded project investigating innovative land and inland water applications from CryoSat-2 with a forward-look component to the Sentinel-3 and Jason-CS/Sentinel-6 missions. The high along-track sampling of CryoSat-2 in its SAR and SARin modes offers the opportunity to recover high frequency signals over inland waters. A methodology was developed to process the FBR L1A Doppler beams to form a waveform product using ground cell gridding, beam steering and beam stacking. Inland water heights from CryoSat-2 are derived by using a set of empirical retrackers formulated for inland water applications. Results of the processing strategy include a comparison of waveforms and heights from the burst echoes (80 m along-track) and from multi-look waveforms (320 m along-track). SAR and SARin FBR data are available for the Amazon, Brahmaputra and Mekong for 2011-2015. FBR SAR results are compared against stage data from the nearest gauge. Heights from Tonlé Sap are also compared against Jason-2 data from the United States Department of Agriculture. A strategy to select the number of multi-looks over rivers was designed based on the rms of heights across Tonlé Sap. Comparisons include results from the empirical retrackers and from waveforms and heights obtained via ESA's Grid Processing on Demand (G-POD/SARvatore) using the SAMOSA2 retracker. Results of FBR SARin processing for the Amazon and Brahmaputra are presented including comparison of heights from the two antennae, extraction of slope of the ground surface and validation against ground data where appropriate.

Monocular Camera/IMU/GNSS Integration for Ground Vehicle Navigation in Challenging GNSS Environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dennis Akos

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Low-cost MEMS-based IMUs, video cameras and portable GNSS devices are commercially available for automotive applications and some manufacturers have already integrated such facilities into their vehicle systems. GNSS provides positioning, navigation and timing solutions to users worldwide. However, signal attenuation, reflections or blockages may give rise to positioning difficulties. As opposed to GNSS, a generic IMU, which is independent of electromagnetic wave reception, can calculate a high-bandwidth navigation solution, however the output from a self-contained IMU accumulates errors over time. In addition, video cameras also possess great potential as alternate sensors in the navigation community, particularly in challenging GNSS environments and are becoming more common as options in vehicles. Aiming at taking advantage of these existing onboard technologies for ground vehicle navigation in challenging environments, this paper develops an integrated camera/IMU/GNSS system based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF. Our proposed integration architecture is examined using a live dataset collected in an operational traffic environment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed integrated system provides accurate estimations and potentially outperforms the tightly coupled GNSS/IMU integration in challenging environments with sparse GNSS observations.

Monocular camera/IMU/GNSS integration for ground vehicle navigation in challenging GNSS environments.

Science.gov (United States)

Chu, Tianxing; Guo, Ningyan; Backén, Staffan; Akos, Dennis

2012-01-01

Low-cost MEMS-based IMUs, video cameras and portable GNSS devices are commercially available for automotive applications and some manufacturers have already integrated such facilities into their vehicle systems. GNSS provides positioning, navigation and timing solutions to users worldwide. However, signal attenuation, reflections or blockages may give rise to positioning difficulties. As opposed to GNSS, a generic IMU, which is independent of electromagnetic wave reception, can calculate a high-bandwidth navigation solution, however the output from a self-contained IMU accumulates errors over time. In addition, video cameras also possess great potential as alternate sensors in the navigation community, particularly in challenging GNSS environments and are becoming more common as options in vehicles. Aiming at taking advantage of these existing onboard technologies for ground vehicle navigation in challenging environments, this paper develops an integrated camera/IMU/GNSS system based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF). Our proposed integration architecture is examined using a live dataset collected in an operational traffic environment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed integrated system provides accurate estimations and potentially outperforms the tightly coupled GNSS/IMU integration in challenging environments with sparse GNSS observations.

Monocular Camera/IMU/GNSS Integration for Ground Vehicle Navigation in Challenging GNSS Environments

Science.gov (United States)

Chu, Tianxing; Guo, Ningyan; Backén, Staffan; Akos, Dennis

2012-01-01

Low-cost MEMS-based IMUs, video cameras and portable GNSS devices are commercially available for automotive applications and some manufacturers have already integrated such facilities into their vehicle systems. GNSS provides positioning, navigation and timing solutions to users worldwide. However, signal attenuation, reflections or blockages may give rise to positioning difficulties. As opposed to GNSS, a generic IMU, which is independent of electromagnetic wave reception, can calculate a high-bandwidth navigation solution, however the output from a self-contained IMU accumulates errors over time. In addition, video cameras also possess great potential as alternate sensors in the navigation community, particularly in challenging GNSS environments and are becoming more common as options in vehicles. Aiming at taking advantage of these existing onboard technologies for ground vehicle navigation in challenging environments, this paper develops an integrated camera/IMU/GNSS system based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF). Our proposed integration architecture is examined using a live dataset collected in an operational traffic environment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed integrated system provides accurate estimations and potentially outperforms the tightly coupled GNSS/IMU integration in challenging environments with sparse GNSS observations. PMID:22736999

Evaluation of Inland Maritime Use of LNG in UTC Region 3

Science.gov (United States)

2015-07-31

This work assesses the characteristics of the market for natural gas and alternative vehicles within Region 3 and explores applications to inland maritime within the region. This work includes a summary of existing research outlining the market condi...

Retrofit solutions for inland ships : The MoVe IT! approach

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hekkenberg, R.G.; Thill, C.

2014-01-01

In MoVe IT!, a project in the European 7th framework package, it is investigated how existing European inland cargo ships can be retrofitted in order to improve their economic and environmental performance. In the project, experts from academia worked closely together with five ship owners to

Dredging of the inland waters and sustainable management of the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Nigerian Journal of Technological Research ... Inland waterways transportation is a key component of the intermodal transportation network and is essential to Nigeria's economy, environment and quality of life. IWT has a significant part to play in the states of Niger, Kogi, Anambra, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Benue, ...

Some Environmental Issues of Inland Valleys: A Case Study | Asiam ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The study concluded that inland valleys can be real environmental liability because produce from such valleys can be polluted and hence can be a source of social conflict particularly when they fringe mineral concessions as the adverse impacts could be unfortunately attributed to mining activity and similar land uses.

Assessing environmental impacts of inland sand mining in parts of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Sand is a valuable resource for construction and other purposes, however sand mining often result in serious environmental problems such as land degradation, loss of agricultural lands and biodiversity, as well increased poverty among people. This study assessed the environmental impacts of inland sand mining in six ...

OsiriX: an open-source software for navigating in multidimensional DICOM images.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosset, Antoine; Spadola, Luca; Ratib, Osman

2004-09-01

A multidimensional image navigation and display software was designed for display and interpretation of large sets of multidimensional and multimodality images such as combined PET-CT studies. The software is developed in Objective-C on a Macintosh platform under the MacOS X operating system using the GNUstep development environment. It also benefits from the extremely fast and optimized 3D graphic capabilities of the OpenGL graphic standard widely used for computer games optimized for taking advantage of any hardware graphic accelerator boards available. In the design of the software special attention was given to adapt the user interface to the specific and complex tasks of navigating through large sets of image data. An interactive jog-wheel device widely used in the video and movie industry was implemented to allow users to navigate in the different dimensions of an image set much faster than with a traditional mouse or on-screen cursors and sliders. The program can easily be adapted for very specific tasks that require a limited number of functions, by adding and removing tools from the program's toolbar and avoiding an overwhelming number of unnecessary tools and functions. The processing and image rendering tools of the software are based on the open-source libraries ITK and VTK. This ensures that all new developments in image processing that could emerge from other academic institutions using these libraries can be directly ported to the OsiriX program. OsiriX is provided free of charge under the GNU open-source licensing agreement at http://homepage.mac.com/rossetantoine/osirix.

The design of a visual history tool to help users refind information within a website

OpenAIRE

Do, TV; Ruddle, RA

2012-01-01

On the WWW users frequently revisit information they have previously seen, but "keeping found things found" is difficult when the information has not been visited frequently or recently, even if a user knows which website contained the information. This paper describes the design of a tool to help users refind information within a given website. The tool encodes data about a user's interest in webpages (measured by dwell time), the frequency and recency of visits, and navigational association...

Microplastic pollution in China's inland water systems: A review of findings, methods, characteristics, effects, and management.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Kai; Shi, Huahong; Peng, Jinping; Wang, Yinghui; Xiong, Xiong; Wu, Chenxi; Lam, Paul K S

2018-07-15

The pollution of marine environments and inland waters by plastic debris has raised increasing concerns worldwide in recent years. China is the world's largest developing country and the largest plastic producer. In this review, we gather available information on microplastic pollution in China's inland water systems. The results show that microplastics are ubiquitous in the investigated inland water systems, and high microplastic abundances were observed in developed areas. Although similar sampling and analytical methods were used for microplastic research in inland water and marine systems, methods of investigation should be standardized in the future. The characteristics of the detected microplastics suggest secondary sources as their major sources. The biological and ecological effects of microplastics have been demonstrated, but their risks are difficult to determine at this stage due to the discrepancy between the field-collected microplastics and microplastics used in ecotoxicological studies. Although many laws and regulations have already been established to manage and control plastic waste in China, the implementation of these laws and regulations has been ineffective and sometimes difficult. Several research priorities are identified, and we suggest that the Chinese government should be more proactive in tackling plastic pollution problems to protect the environment and fulfill international responsibilities. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

33 CFR 66.05-100 - Designation of navigable waters as State waters for private aids to navigation.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... as State waters for private aids to navigation. 66.05-100 Section 66.05-100 Navigation and Navigable Waters COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AIDS TO NAVIGATION PRIVATE AIDS TO NAVIGATION State Aids to Navigation § 66.05-100 Designation of navigable waters as State waters for private aids to...

Transboundary fisheries science: Meeting the challenges of inland fisheries management in the 21st century

Science.gov (United States)

Midway, Stephen R.; Wagner, Tyler; Zydlewski, Joseph D.; Irwin, Brian J.; Paukert, Craig P.

2016-01-01

Managing inland fisheries in the 21st century presents several obstacles, including the need to view fisheries from multiple spatial and temporal scales, which usually involves populations and resources spanning sociopolitical boundaries. Though collaboration is not new to fisheries science, inland aquatic systems have historically been managed at local scales and present different challenges than in marine or large freshwater systems like the Laurentian Great Lakes. Therefore, we outline a flexible strategy that highlights organization, cooperation, analytics, and implementation as building blocks toward effectively addressing transboundary fisheries issues. Additionally, we discuss the use of Bayesian hierarchical models (within the analytical stage), due to their flexibility in dealing with the variability present in data from multiple scales. With growing recognition of both ecological drivers that span spatial and temporal scales and the subsequent need for collaboration to effectively manage heterogeneous resources, we expect implementation of transboundary approaches to become increasingly critical for effective inland fisheries management.

Biological conservation of aquatic inland habitats: these are better days

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ian J. Winfield

2013-08-01

Full Text Available The biodiversity of aquatic inland habitats currently faces unprecedented threats from human activities. At the same time, although much is known about the functioning of freshwater ecosystems the successful transfer of such knowledge to practical conservation has not been universal. Global awareness of aquatic conservation issues is also hampered by the fact that conditions under the water surface are largely hidden from the direct experience of most members of society. Connectivity, or lack of it, is another challenge to the conservation of freshwater habitats, while urban areas can play a perhaps unexpectedly important positive role. Freshwater habitats frequently enjoy benefits accruing from a sense of ownership or stewardship by local inhabitants, which has led to the development of conservation movements which commonly started life centred on the aquatic inland habitat itself but of which many have now matured into wider catchment-based conservation programmes. A demonstrable need for evidence-based conservation management in turn requires scientific assessments to be increasingly robust and standardised, while at the same time remaining open to the adoption of technological advances and welcoming the rapidly developing citizen science movement. There is evidence of real progress in this context and conservation scientists are now communicating their findings to environmental managers in a way and on a scale that was rarely seen a couple of decades ago. It is only in this way that scientific knowledge can be efficiently transferred to conservation planning, prioritisation and ultimately management in an increasingly scaled-up, joined-up and resource-limited world. The principle of ‘prevention is better than cure’ is particularly appropriate to most biological conservation issues in aquatic inland habitats and is inextricably linked to educating and/or nudging appropriate human behaviours. When prevention fails, some form of emergency

An assessment method of long-term radiation impacts to environment and public individual from tritium discharged by inland NPP

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shangguan Zhihong; Huang Yanjun; Tao Yunliang

2012-01-01

In this paper, an assessment method of environmental impacts from long-term releases of tritium of inland nuclear power plant is proposed; the tritium concentrations in different environmental materials, including the two main chemical form HTO and OBT. and the radiation dose to public individuals including drinking water, food, inhalation. skin adsorption, are estimated based on the method and environmental parameters from typical inland NPP. The two discharge pathways, gaseous and liquid, are considered with particular concerns to drinking and irrigation ascribed to liquid discharge. This study would contribute to the assessment techniques of environmental impacts and safety of inland NPP. (authors)

Navigation Problems in Blind-to-Blind Pedestrians Tele-assistance Navigation

OpenAIRE

Balata , Jan; Mikovec , Zdenek; Maly , Ivo

2015-01-01

International audience; We raise a question whether it is possible to build a large-scale navigation system for blind pedestrians where a blind person navigates another blind person remotely by mobile phone. We have conducted an experiment, in which we observed blind people navigating each other in a city center in 19 sessions. We focused on problems in the navigator’s attempts to direct the traveler to the destination. We observed 96 problems in total, classified them on the basis of the typ...

ECO: A Framework for Entity Co-Occurrence Exploration with Faceted Navigation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Halliday, K. D. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

2010-08-20

Even as highly structured databases and semantic knowledge bases become more prevalent, a substantial amount of human knowledge is reported as written prose. Typical textual reports, such as news articles, contain information about entities (people, organizations, and locations) and their relationships. Automatically extracting such relationships from large text corpora is a key component of corporate and government knowledge bases. The primary goal of the ECO project is to develop a scalable framework for extracting and presenting these relationships for exploration using an easily navigable faceted user interface. ECO uses entity co-occurrence relationships to identify related entities. The system aggregates and indexes information on each entity pair, allowing the user to rapidly discover and mine relational information.

Vision/INS Integrated Navigation System for Poor Vision Navigation Environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Youngsun Kim

2016-10-01

Full Text Available In order to improve the performance of an inertial navigation system, many aiding sensors can be used. Among these aiding sensors, a vision sensor is of particular note due to its benefits in terms of weight, cost, and power consumption. This paper proposes an inertial and vision integrated navigation method for poor vision navigation environments. The proposed method uses focal plane measurements of landmarks in order to provide position, velocity and attitude outputs even when the number of landmarks on the focal plane is not enough for navigation. In order to verify the proposed method, computer simulations and van tests are carried out. The results show that the proposed method gives accurate and reliable position, velocity and attitude outputs when the number of landmarks is insufficient.

Efficient dredging strategies for improving transportation infrastructure resilience : August 1, 2014 - December 31, 2016 : final research report.

Science.gov (United States)

2017-02-01

The inland navigation system is highly dependent on uncertain natural factors such as shoaling that can render waterways unnavigable. In order to ensure waterway navigability, maintenance dredging must be completed. We consider the problem of selecti...

Inland Waterway Environmental Safety

Science.gov (United States)

Reshnyak, Valery; Sokolov, Sergey; Nyrkov, Anatoliy; Budnik, Vlad

2018-05-01

The article presents the results of development of the main components of the environmental safety when operating vessels on inland waterways, which include strategy selection ensuring the environmental safety of vessels, the selection and justification of a complex of environmental technical means, activities to ensure operation of vessels taking into account the environmental technical means. Measures to ensure environmental safety are developed on the basis of the principles aimed at ensuring environmental safety of vessels. They include the development of strategies for the use of environmental protection equipment, which are determined by the conditions for wastewater treatment of purified sewage and oily bilge water as well as technical characteristics of the vessels, the introduction of the process of the out-of-the-vessel processing of ship pollution as a technology for their movement. This must take into account the operating conditions of vessels on different sections of waterways. An algorithm of actions aimed at ensuring ecological safety of operated vessels is proposed.

33 CFR 83.36 - Signals to attract attention (Rule 36).

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Signals to attract attention... SECURITY INLAND NAVIGATION RULES RULES Sound and Light Signals § 83.36 Signals to attract attention (Rule 36). If necessary to attract the attention of another vessel, any vessel may make light or sound...

Analyzing the User Behavior toward Electronic Commerce Stimuli.

Science.gov (United States)

Lorenzo-Romero, Carlota; Alarcón-Del-Amo, María-Del-Carmen; Gómez-Borja, Miguel-Ángel

2016-01-01

Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm this research analyzes the main differences between the effects of two types of web technologies: Verbal web technology (i.e., navigational structure as utilitarian stimulus) versus non-verbal web technology (music and presentation of products as hedonic stimuli). Specific webmosphere stimuli have not been examined yet as separate variables and their impact on internal and behavioral responses seems unknown. Therefore, the objective of this research consists in analyzing the impact of these web technologies -which constitute the web atmosphere or webmosphere of a website- on shopping human behavior (i.e., users' internal states -affective, cognitive, and satisfaction- and behavioral responses - approach responses, and real shopping outcomes-) within the retail online store created by computer, taking into account some mediator variables (i.e., involvement, atmospheric responsiveness, and perceived risk). A 2 ("free" versus "hierarchical" navigational structure) × 2 ("on" versus "off" music) × 2 ("moving" versus "static" images) between-subjects computer experimental design is used to test empirically this research. In addition, an integrated methodology was developed allowing the simulation, tracking and recording of virtual user behavior within an online shopping environment. As main conclusion, this study suggests that the positive responses of online consumers might increase when they are allowed to freely navigate the online stores and their experience is enriched by animate gifts and music background. The effect caused by mediator variables modifies relatively the final shopping human behavior.

Three approaches to the classification of inland wetlands. [Dismal Swamp, Tennessee, and Florida

Science.gov (United States)

Gammon, P. T.; Malone, D.; Brooks, P. D.; Carter, V.

1977-01-01

In the Dismal Swamp project, seasonal, color-infrared aerial photographs and LANDSAT digital data were interpreted for a detailed analysis of the vegetative communities in a large, highly altered wetland. In Western Tennessee, seasonal high altitude color-infrared aerial photographs provided the hydrologic and vegetative information needed to map inland wetlands, using a classification system developed for the Tennessee Valley Region. In Florida, color-infrared aerial photographs were analyzed to produce wetland maps using three existing classification systems to evaluate the information content and mappability of each system. The methods used in each of the three projects can be extended or modified for use in the mapping of inland wetlands in other parts of the United States.

An approach towards context-sensitive and user-adapted access to heterogeneous data sources, illustrated in the television domain

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bellekens, P.A.E.

2010-01-01

In a variety of domains, developers nowadays are struggling with the dilemma of how they can provide a more personal service to their users. A more personal service can for example be facilitated by offering user-adapted search, generating recommendations, personalized content navigation,

Here's an idea: ask the users! Young people's views on navigation, design and content of a health information website.

Science.gov (United States)

Franck, Linda S; Noble, Genevieve

2007-12-01

Use of the internet to provide health information to young people is a relatively recent development. Few studies have explored young people's views on how they use internet health websites. This study investigated the navigation, design and content preferences of young people using the Children First for Health (CFfH) website. Young people from five secondary schools completed an internet site navigation exercise, website evaluation questionnaire and participated in informal discussions. Of the participants, 45 percent visited the website section aimed at older adolescents within their first two clicks, regardless of their age. There were conflicting preferences for design and strong preference for gender-specific information on topics such as appearance, relationships, fitness and sexual health. The findings indicate the importance of gaining young people's views to ensure that health information websites meet the needs of their intended audience. Cooperation from schools can facilitate the process of gaining young people's views on internet website navigation, design and content.

User Interface Technology Survey.

Science.gov (United States)

1987-04-01

Menu entries may be grouped and orgered Into menu hierarchies. AN levels of a hirarchy may be visible at once, or they may have to be navigated with...s t Xerox aw systemflla3. Ti ft"s lb m"k t system leble , ba it ls effective tis of1 iy some User 9101" SWsuc kaybosrdoeute usersome ssteMIS ( Apple Ma...r~stMiTemidndanodApple we tadaml no d Muaioh Isa tadsm macesd to Apple - ,pfr ftc ParSomPT In a beadue-nu of Adobe System lnooporstsd. Scdlbs Is a

Atmospheric nitrogen inputs to the Delaware Inland Bays: the role of ammonia

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Scudlark, Joseph R.; Jennings, Jennifer A.; Roadman, Megan J.; Savidge, Karen B.; Ullman, William J.

2005-01-01

A previous assessment of nitrogen loading to the Delaware Inland Bays indicates that atmospheric deposition provides 15-25% of the total, annual N input to these estuaries. A large and increasing fraction of the atmospheric wet flux is NH 4 + , which for most aquatic organisms represents the most readily assimilated form of this nutrient. Particularly noteworthy is a 60% increase in the precipitation NH 4 + concentration at Lewes, DE over the past 20 years, which parallels the increase in poultry production on the Delmarva Peninsula over this period (currently standing at nearly 585 million birds annually). To further examine the relationship between local NH 3 emissions and deposition, biweekly-integrated gaseous NH 3 concentrations were determined using Ogawa passive samplers deployed at 13 sampling sites throughout the Inland Bays watershed over a one-year period. Annual mean concentrations at the 13 sites ranged from 3 m -3 to >6 μg NH 3 m -3 , with a mean of 1.6 ± 1.0 μg NH 3 m -3 . At most sites, highest NH 3 concentrations were evident during spring and summer, when fertilizer application and poultry house ventilation rates are greatest, and seasonally elevated temperatures induce increased rates of microbial activity and volatilization from soils and animal wastes. The observed north-to-south concentration gradient across the watershed is consistent with the spatial distribution of poultry houses, as revealed by a GIS analysis of aerial photographs. Based on the average measured NH 3 concentration and published NH 3 deposition rates to water surfaces (5-8 mm s -1 ), the direct atmospheric deposition of gaseous NH 3 to the Inland Bays is 3.0-4.8 kg ha -1 yr -1 . This input, not accounted for in previous assessments of atmospheric loading to the Inland Bays, would effectively double the estimated direct dry deposition rate, and is on par with the NO 3 - and NH 4 + wet fluxes. A second component of this study examined spatial differences in NO 3 - and NH 4

EYE TRACKING TO EXPLORE THE IMPACTS OF PHOTOREALISTIC 3D REPRESENTATIONS IN PEDSTRIAN NAVIGATION PERFORMANCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

W. Dong

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Despite the now-ubiquitous two-dimensional (2D maps, photorealistic three-dimensional (3D representations of cities (e.g., Google Earth have gained much attention by scientists and public users as another option. However, there is no consistent evidence on the influences of 3D photorealism on pedestrian navigation. Whether 3D photorealism can communicate cartographic information for navigation with higher effectiveness and efficiency and lower cognitive workload compared to the traditional symbolic 2D maps remains unknown. This study aims to explore whether the photorealistic 3D representation can facilitate processes of map reading and navigation in digital environments using a lab-based eye tracking approach. Here we show the differences of symbolic 2D maps versus photorealistic 3D representations depending on users’ eye-movement and navigation behaviour data. We found that the participants using the 3D representation were less effective, less efficient and were required higher cognitive workload than using the 2D map for map reading. However, participants using the 3D representation performed more efficiently in self-localization and orientation at the complex decision points. The empirical results can be helpful to improve the usability of pedestrian navigation maps in future designs.

137Cs uptake by sheep grazing tidally-inundated and inland pastures near the Sellafield reprocessing plant

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Howard, B.J.

1987-01-01

Field investigations into the transfer of 137 Cs from pasture to sheep tissues have been made at two contrasting sites in west Cumbria, close to the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield. These were a saltmarsh bordering on the Esk estuary in 1982 and inland pastures close to the perimeter of the works in 1984. 137 Cs concentrations of sampled vegetation from the saltmarsh were generally two orders of magnitude greater than from the inland pasture due to its inundation with 137 Cs associated with silt. The relatively high 137 Cs content of soil/silt compared to that of vegetation at each site meant that soil contamination of vegetation sometimes accounted for a substantial proportion of its 137 Cs activity (up to 99% on the saltmarsh and 67% on the inland pastures). Considerable seasonal changes occurred in the extent of 137 Cs contamination on the inland pastures, with late winter and early spring levels being up to 20-fold higher than those of the summer. 137 Cs concentrations in tissues of lambs from the saltmarsh were consistently higher than for ewes; this was not true for sheep from the inland pastures. 137 Cs concentrations in kidney were found to be higher than in all other tissues, both in the study flocks and in one of the controls. Transfer coefficients (calculated by dividing the 137 Cs concentration of fresh tissue by the daily intake of 137 Cs) were significantly (P 137 Cs activity due to soil/silt contamination was removed from the estimates of daily intake leaving 137 Cs associated with the vegetation only to contribute to the transfer coefficients. Further studies are required to determine the availability of 137 Cs associated with soil/silt particles which are ingested by animals. (author)

Order of 21 May 1979 on Transport of Radioactive Materials by Road or by Inland Waterway (Dangerous Goods 1979, No.5)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1979-01-01

This Order lays down in connection with radioactive materials (class IVb) to be carried by road or inland waterway that Section 32 of the Order of 15 April 1945 approving the transport of dangerous goods by rail, land or inland waterway will come into force on 1 October 1980. The Order prescribes that drivers of land vehicles and on inland waterways, persons responsible on board must carry a certificate concerning their cargo in accordance with the above Section. (NEA) [fr

2008 Northwest Florida Water Management District (NWFWMD) LiDAR: Inland Okaloosa County

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) LAS dataset is a survey of inland Okaloosa County, Florida not covered in the 2008 Florida Department of Emergency...

77 FR 62435 - Inland Waterways Navigation Regulations

Science.gov (United States)

2012-10-15

...: This rule redefines the geographical points described in our regulations, which demarcate an area of... approximately 2.5 statute miles to the north at the D33 stationary light. The reasoning for the Ninth District...

77 FR 27007 - Inland Waterways Navigation Regulations

Science.gov (United States)

2012-05-08

... inches, suitable for copying and electronic filing. If you submit them by mail and would like to know... to limit wake damage to vessels and shore structures (see 60 FR 35701-01). Because the Detroit River... that limiting speed south of the D33 stationary light is not necessary to prevent wake damage or to...

Supporting Indoor Navigation Using Access Rights to Spaces Based on Combined Use of IndoorGML and LADM Models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdullah Alattas

2017-11-01

Full Text Available The aim of this research is to investigate the combined use of IndoorGML and the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM to define the accessibility of the indoor spaces based on the ownership and/or the functional right for use. The users of the indoor spaces create a relationship with the space depending on the type of the building and the function of the spaces. The indoor spaces of each building have different usage functions and associated users. By defining the user types of the indoor spaces, LADM makes it possible to establish a relationship between the indoor spaces and the users. LADM assigns rights, restrictions, and responsibilities to each indoor space, which indicates the accessible spaces for each type of user. The three-dimensional (3D geometry of the building will be impacted by assigning such functional rights, and will provide additional knowledge to path computation for an individual or a group of users. As a result, the navigation process will be more appropriate and simpler because the navigation path will avoid all of the non-accessible spaces based on the rights of the party. The combined use of IndoorGML and LADM covers a broad range of information classes: (indoor 3D cell spaces, connectivity, spatial units/boundaries, (access/use rights and restrictions, parties/persons/actors, and groups of them. The new specialized classes for individual students, individual staff members, groups of students, groups of staff members are able to represent cohorts of education programmes and the organizational structure (organogram: faculty, department, group. The model is capable to represent the access times to lecture rooms (based on education/teaching schedules, use rights of meeting rooms, opening hours of offices, etc. The two original standard models remain independent in our approach, we do not propose yet another model, but applications can fully benefit of the potential of the combined use, which is an important contribution

Mixed-effects height–diameter models for ten conifers in the inland ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

To demonstrate the utility of mixed-effects height–diameter models when conducting forest inventories, mixedeffects height–diameter models are presented for several commercially and ecologically important conifers in the inland Northwest of the USA. After obtaining height–diameter measurements from a plot/stand of ...

A Case of Lionfish Envenomation Presenting to an Inland Emergency Department.

Science.gov (United States)

Schult, Rachel F; Acquisto, Nicole M; Stair, Crystal K; Wiegand, Timothy J

2017-01-01

Lionfish envenomation can cause erythema, edema, necrosis, and severe pain at the exposed site. Treatment often includes supportive wound care, pain management, and hot water immersion. We report a case of lionfish exposure presenting to an inland emergency department treated successfully with these measures.

A Case of Lionfish Envenomation Presenting to an Inland Emergency Department

OpenAIRE

Schult, Rachel F.; Acquisto, Nicole M.; Stair, Crystal K.; Wiegand, Timothy J.

2017-01-01

Lionfish envenomation can cause erythema, edema, necrosis, and severe pain at the exposed site. Treatment often includes supportive wound care, pain management, and hot water immersion. We report a case of lionfish exposure presenting to an inland emergency department treated successfully with these measures.

Replenishment policies for Empty Containers in an Inland Multi-depot System

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dang, Quang-Vinh; Nielsen, Izabela Ewa; Yun, W. Y.

2013-01-01

. The objective is to obtain the optimal policy in order to minimize the expected total cost consisting of: inventory holding, overseas positioning, inland positioning and leasing costs. A simulation-based genetic algorithm is developed to find near-optimal policies. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate...

Ionosphere Delay Calibration and Calibration Errors for Satellite Navigation of Aircraft

Science.gov (United States)

Harris, Ian; Manucci, Anthony; Iijima, Byron; Lindqwister, Ulf; Muna, Demitri; Pi, Xiaoqing; Wilson, Brian

2000-01-01

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is implementing a satellite-based navigation system for aircraft using the Global Positioning System (GPS). Positioning accuracy of a few meters will be achieved by broadcasting corrections to the direct GPS signal. These corrections are derived using the wide-area augmentation system (WAAS), which includes a ground network of at least 24 GPS receivers across the Continental US (CONUS). WAAS will provide real-time total electron content (TEC) measurements that can be mapped to fixed grid points using a real-time mapping algorithm. These TECs will be converted into vertical delay corrections for the GPS L1 frequency and broadcast to users every five minutes via geosynchronous satellite. Users will convert these delays to slant calibrations along their own lines-of-sight (LOS) to GPS satellites. Uncertainties in the delay calibrations will also be broadcast, allowing users to estimate the uncertainty of their position. To maintain user safety without reverting to excessive safety margins an empirical model of user calibration errors has been developed. WAAS performance depends on factors that include geographic location (errors increase near WAAS borders), and ionospheric conditions, such as the enhanced spatial electron density gradients found during ionospheric storms.

Indoor wayfinding and navigation

CERN Document Server

2015-01-01

Due to the widespread use of navigation systems for wayfinding and navigation in the outdoors, researchers have devoted their efforts in recent years to designing navigation systems that can be used indoors. This book is a comprehensive guide to designing and building indoor wayfinding and navigation systems. It covers all types of feasible sensors (for example, Wi-Fi, A-GPS), discussing the level of accuracy, the types of map data needed, the data sources, and the techniques for providing routes and directions within structures.

Control algorithms for autonomous robot navigation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jorgensen, C.C.

1985-01-01

This paper examines control algorithm requirements for autonomous robot navigation outside laboratory environments. Three aspects of navigation are considered: navigation control in explored terrain, environment interactions with robot sensors, and navigation control in unanticipated situations. Major navigation methods are presented and relevance of traditional human learning theory is discussed. A new navigation technique linking graph theory and incidental learning is introduced

A new visual navigation system for exploring biomedical Open Educational Resource (OER) videos.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Baoquan; Xu, Songhua; Lin, Shujin; Luo, Xiaonan; Duan, Lian

2016-04-01

Biomedical videos as open educational resources (OERs) are increasingly proliferating on the Internet. Unfortunately, seeking personally valuable content from among the vast corpus of quality yet diverse OER videos is nontrivial due to limitations of today's keyword- and content-based video retrieval techniques. To address this need, this study introduces a novel visual navigation system that facilitates users' information seeking from biomedical OER videos in mass quantity by interactively offering visual and textual navigational clues that are both semantically revealing and user-friendly. The authors collected and processed around 25 000 YouTube videos, which collectively last for a total length of about 4000 h, in the broad field of biomedical sciences for our experiment. For each video, its semantic clues are first extracted automatically through computationally analyzing audio and visual signals, as well as text either accompanying or embedded in the video. These extracted clues are subsequently stored in a metadata database and indexed by a high-performance text search engine. During the online retrieval stage, the system renders video search results as dynamic web pages using a JavaScript library that allows users to interactively and intuitively explore video content both efficiently and effectively.ResultsThe authors produced a prototype implementation of the proposed system, which is publicly accessible athttps://patentq.njit.edu/oer To examine the overall advantage of the proposed system for exploring biomedical OER videos, the authors further conducted a user study of a modest scale. The study results encouragingly demonstrate the functional effectiveness and user-friendliness of the new system for facilitating information seeking from and content exploration among massive biomedical OER videos. Using the proposed tool, users can efficiently and effectively find videos of interest, precisely locate video segments delivering personally valuable

Navigation with ECDIS: Choosing the Proper Secondary Positioning Source

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

D. Brčic

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The completion of ECDIS mandatory implementation period on-board SOLAS vessels requires certain operational, functional and educational gaping holes to be solved. It especially refers to positioning and its redundancy, which represents fundamental safety factor on-board navigating vessels. The proposed paper deals with primary and secondary positioning used in ECDIS system. Standard positioning methods are described, discussing possibilities of obtained positions’ automatic and manual implementation in ECDIS, beside default methods. With the aim of emphasizing the need and importance of using secondary positioning source in ECDIS, positioning issue from the standpoint of end-users was elaborated, representing a practical feedback of elaborated topic. The survey was conducted in the form of international questionnaire placed among OOWs, ranging from apprentice officers to captains. The result answers and discussion regarding (nonusage of secondary positioning sources in ECDIS were analysed and presented. Answers and statements were elaborated focusing not only in usage of the secondary positioning system in ECDIS, but in navigation in general. The study revealed potential risks arising from the lack of knowledge and even negligence. The paper concludes with summary of findings related to discrepancies between theoretical background, good seamanship practice and real actions taken by OOWs. Further research activities are pointed out, together with planned practical actions in raising awareness regarding navigation with ECDIS.

Selecting the Best Mobile Information Service with Natural Language User Input

Science.gov (United States)

Feng, Qiangze; Qi, Hongwei; Fukushima, Toshikazu

Information services accessed via mobile phones provide information directly relevant to subscribers’ daily lives and are an area of dynamic market growth worldwide. Although many information services are currently offered by mobile operators, many of the existing solutions require a unique gateway for each service, and it is inconvenient for users to have to remember a large number of such gateways. Furthermore, the Short Message Service (SMS) is very popular in China and Chinese users would prefer to access these services in natural language via SMS. This chapter describes a Natural Language Based Service Selection System (NL3S) for use with a large number of mobile information services. The system can accept user queries in natural language and navigate it to the required service. Since it is difficult for existing methods to achieve high accuracy and high coverage and anticipate which other services a user might want to query, the NL3S is developed based on a Multi-service Ontology (MO) and Multi-service Query Language (MQL). The MO and MQL provide semantic and linguistic knowledge, respectively, to facilitate service selection for a user query and to provide adaptive service recommendations. Experiments show that the NL3S can achieve 75-95% accuracies and 85-95% satisfactions for processing various styles of natural language queries. A trial involving navigation of 30 different mobile services shows that the NL3S can provide a viable commercial solution for mobile operators.

A new intelligent algorithm to create a profile for user based on web interactions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zeinab khademali

2013-04-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a method to classify the web user’s navigation patterns automatically. The proposed model of this paper classifies user’s navigation patterns and predicts his/her upcoming requirements. To create users’ profile, a new method is introduced by recording user’s settings active and user’s similarity measurement with neighboring users. The proposed model is capable of creating the profile implicitly. Besides, it updates the profile based on created changes. In fact, we try to improve the function of recommender engine using user’s navigation patterns and clustering. The method is based on user’s navigation patterns and is able to present the result of recommender engine based on user’s requirement and interest. In addition, this method has the ability to help customize websites, more efficiently.

Analysis of adaptability of radioactive liquid effluent discharge under normal condition of inland nuclear power plant

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xu Yueping; Zhang Bing; Chen Yang; Zhu Lingqing; Tao Yunliang; Shangguan Zhihong

2011-01-01

The discharge of radioactive liquid effluent from inland nuclear power plant under normal operation is an important part to be considered in environmental impact assessment. Requirements of newly revised and upcoming standards GB 6249 and GB 14587 are introduced in this paper. Through an example of an inland NPP siting in the preliminary feasibility study phase, the adaptability to the relevant regulations in the site selection is analyzed. Also, the concerned problems in the design of AP1000 units are addressed. (authors)

A Case of Lionfish Envenomation Presenting to an Inland Emergency Department

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rachel F. Schult

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Lionfish envenomation can cause erythema, edema, necrosis, and severe pain at the exposed site. Treatment often includes supportive wound care, pain management, and hot water immersion. We report a case of lionfish exposure presenting to an inland emergency department treated successfully with these measures.

KIN-Nav navigation system for kinematic assessment in anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: features, use, and perspectives.

Science.gov (United States)

Martelli, S; Zaffagnini, S; Bignozzi, S; Lopomo, N F; Iacono, F; Marcacci, M

2007-10-01

In this paper a new navigation system, KIN-Nav, developed for research and used during 80 anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstructions is described. KIN-Nav is a user-friendly navigation system for flexible intraoperative acquisitions of anatomical and kinematic data, suitable for validation of biomechanical hypotheses. It performs real-time quantitative evaluation of antero-posterior, internal-external, and varus-valgus knee laxity at any degree of flexion and provides a new interface for this task, suitable also for comparison of pre-operative and post-operative knee laxity and surgical documentation. In this paper the concept and features of KIN-Nav, which represents a new approach to navigation and allows the investigation of new quantitative measurements in ACL reconstruction, are described. Two clinical studies are reported, as examples of clinical potentiality and correct use of this methodology. In this paper a preliminary analysis of KIN-Nav's reliability and clinical efficacy, performed during blinded repeated measures by three independent examiners, is also given. This analysis is the first assessment of the potential of navigation systems for evaluating knee kinematics.

Economic feasibility of products from inland West small-diameter timber

Science.gov (United States)

Spelter Henry; Rong Wang; Peter Ince

1996-01-01

A large part of the forests located in the Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. West (inland West) is characterized by densely packed, small-diameter stands. The purpose of this study was to examine the economic feasibility of using small-diameter material from this resource to manufacture various wood products: oriented strandboard (OSB), stud lumber, random-length...

Identifying alternate pathways for climate change to impact inland recreational fishers

Science.gov (United States)

Hunt, Len M.; Fenichel, Eli P.; Fulton, David C.; Mendelsohn, Robert; Smith, Jordan W.; Tunney, Tyler D.; Lynch, Abigail J.; Paukert, Craig P.; Whitney, James E.

2016-01-01

Fisheries and human dimensions literature suggests that climate change influences inland recreational fishers in North America through three major pathways. The most widely recognized pathway suggests that climate change impacts habitat and fish populations (e.g., water temperature impacting fish survival) and cascades to impact fishers. Climate change also impacts recreational fishers by influencing environmental conditions that directly affect fishers (e.g., increased temperatures in northern climates resulting in extended open water fishing seasons and increased fishing effort). The final pathway occurs from climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts (e.g., refined energy policies result in higher fuel costs, making distant trips more expensive). To address limitations of past research (e.g., assessing climate change impacts for only one pathway at a time and not accounting for climate variability, extreme weather events, or heterogeneity among fishers), we encourage researchers to refocus their efforts to understand and document climate change impacts to inland fishers.

Comparing rapid and culture indicator bacteria methods at inland lake beaches

Science.gov (United States)

Francy, Donna S.; Bushon, Rebecca N.; Brady, Amie M.G.; Kephart, Christopher M.

2013-01-01

A rapid method, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), for quantifying indicator bacteria in recreational waters is desirable for public health protection. We report that replacing current Escherichia coli standards with new US Environmental Protection Agency beach action values (BAVs) for enterococci by culture or qPCR may result in more advisories being posted at inland recreational lakes. In this study, concentrations of E. coli and enterococci by culture methods were compared to concentrations of Enterococcus spp. by qPCR at 3 inland lake beaches in Ohio. The E. coli and enterococci culture results were significantly related at all beaches; however, the relations between culture results and Enterococcus spp. qPCR results were not always significant and differed among beaches. All the qPCR results exceeded the new BAV for Enterococcus spp. by qPCR, whereas only 23.7% of culture results for E. coli and 79% of culture results for enterococci exceeded the current standard for E. coli or BAV for enterococci.

Extraction of inland Nypa fruticans (Nipa Palm) using Support Vector Machine

Science.gov (United States)

Alberto, R. T.; Serrano, S. C.; Damian, G. B.; Camaso, E. E.; Biagtan, A. R.; Panuyas, N. Z.; Quibuyen, J. S.

2017-09-01

Mangroves are considered as one of the major habitats in coastal ecosystem, providing a lot of economic and ecological services in human society. Nypa fruticans (Nipa palm) is one of the important species of mangroves because of its versatility and uniqueness as halophytic palm. However, nipas are not only adaptable in saline areas, they can also managed to thrive away from the coastline depending on the favorable soil types available in the area. Because of this, mapping of this species are not limited alone in the near shore areas, but in areas where this species are present as well. The extraction process of Nypa fruticans were carried out using the available LiDAR data. Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification process was used to extract nipas in inland areas. The SVM classification process in mapping Nypa fruticans produced high accuracy of 95+%. The Support Vector Machine classification process to extract inland nipas was proven to be effective by utilizing different terrain derivatives from LiDAR data.

A Leapfrog Navigation System

Science.gov (United States)

Opshaug, Guttorm Ringstad

There are times and places where conventional navigation systems, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), are unavailable due to anything from temporary signal occultations to lack of navigation system infrastructure altogether. The goal of the Leapfrog Navigation System (LNS) is to provide localized positioning services for such cases. The concept behind leapfrog navigation is to advance a group of navigation units teamwise into an area of interest. In a practical 2-D case, leapfrogging assumes known initial positions of at least two currently stationary navigation units. Two or more mobile units can then start to advance into the area of interest. The positions of the mobiles are constantly being calculated based on cross-range distance measurements to the stationary units, as well as cross-ranges among the mobiles themselves. At some point the mobile units stop, and the stationary units are released to move. This second team of units (now mobile) can then overtake the first team (now stationary) and travel even further towards the common goal of the group. Since there always is one stationary team, the position of any unit can be referenced back to the initial positions. Thus, LNS provides absolute positioning. I developed navigation algorithms needed to solve leapfrog positions based on cross-range measurements. I used statistical tools to predict how position errors would grow as a function of navigation unit geometry, cross-range measurement accuracy and previous position errors. Using this knowledge I predicted that a 4-unit Leapfrog Navigation System using 100 m baselines and 200 m leap distances could travel almost 15 km before accumulating absolute position errors of 10 m (1sigma). Finally, I built a prototype leapfrog navigation system using 4 GPS transceiver ranging units. I placed the 4 units in the vertices a 10m x 10m square, and leapfrogged the group 20 meters forwards, and then back again (40 m total travel). Average horizontal RMS position

Design and Application of a Novel Virtual Reality Navigational Technology (VRNChair).

Science.gov (United States)

Byagowi, Ahmad; Mohaddes, Danyal; Moussavi, Zahra

2014-01-01

This paper presents a novel virtual reality navigation (VRN) input device, called the VRNChair, offering an intuitive and natural way to interact with virtual reality (VR) environments. Traditionally, VR navigation tests are performed using stationary input devices such as keyboards or joysticks. However, in case of immersive VR environment experiments, such as our recent VRN assessment, the user may feel kinetosis (motion sickness) as a result of the disagreement between vestibular response and the optical flow. In addition, experience in using a joystick or any of the existing computer input devices may cause a bias in the accuracy of participant performance in VR environment experiments. Therefore, we have designed a VR navigational environment that is operated using a wheelchair (VRNChair). The VRNChair translates the movement of a manual wheelchair to feed any VR environment. We evaluated the VRNChair by testing on 34 young individuals in two groups performing the same navigational task with either the VRNChair or a joystick; also one older individual (55 years) performed the same experiment with both a joystick and the VRNChair. The results indicate that the VRNChair does not change the accuracy of the performance; thus removing the plausible bias of having experience using a joystick. More importantly, it significantly reduces the effect of kinetosis. While we developed VRNChair for our spatial cognition study, its application can be in many other studies involving neuroscience, neurorehabilitation, physiotherapy, and/or simply the gaming industry.

Design and Application of a Novel Virtual Reality Navigational Technology (VRNChair

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ahmad Byagowi

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a novel virtual reality navigation (VRN input device, called the VRNChair, offering an intuitive and natural way to interact with virtual reality (VR environments. Traditionally, VR navigation tests are performed using stationary input devices such as keyboards or joysticks. However, in case of immersive VR environment experiments, such as our recent VRN assessment, the user may feel kinetosis (motion sickness as a result of the disagreement between vestibular response and the optical flow. In addition, experience in using a joystick or any of the existing computer input devices may cause a bias in the accuracy of participant performance in VR environment experiments. Therefore, we have designed a VR navigational environment that is operated using a wheelchair (VRNChair. The VRNChair translates the movement of a manual wheelchair to feed any VR environment. We evaluated the VRNChair by testing on 34 young individuals in two groups performing the same navigational task with either the VRNChair or a joystick; also one older individual (55 years performed the same experiment with both a joystick and the VRNChair. The results indicate that the VRNChair does not change the accuracy of the performance; thus removing the plausible bias of having experience using a joystick. More importantly, it significantly reduces the effect of kinetosis. While we developed VRNChair for our spatial cognition study, its application can be in many other studies involving neuroscience, neurorehabilitation, physiotherapy, and/or simply the gaming industry.

Archive of post-Hurricane Isabel coastal oblique aerial photographs collected during U.S. Geological Survey Field Activity 03CCH01 from Ocean City, Maryland, to Fort Caswell, North Carolina and Inland from Waynesboro to Redwood, Virginia, September 21 - 23, 2003

Science.gov (United States)

Subino, Janice A.; Morgan, Karen L.M.; Krohn, M. Dennis; Dadisman, Shawn V.

2013-01-01

On September 21 - 23, 2003, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) conducted an oblique aerial photographic survey along the Atlantic coast from Ocean City, Md., to Fort Caswell, N.C., and inland oblique aerial photographic survey from Waynesboro to Redwood, Va., aboard a Navajo Piper twin-engine airplane. The coastal survey was conducted at an altitude of 500 feet (ft) and approximately 1,000 ft offshore. For the inland photos, the aircraft tried to stay approximately 500 ft above the terrain. These coastal photos were used to document coastal changes like beach erosion and overwash caused by Hurricane Isabel, while the inland photos looked for potential landslides caused by heavy rains. The photos may also be used as baseline data for future coastal change analysis. The USGS and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) surveyed the impact zone of Hurricane Isabel to better understand the changes in vulnerability of the Nation’s coasts to extreme storms (Morgan, 2009). This report serves as an archive of photographs collected during the September 21 - 23, 2003, post-Hurricane Isabel coastal and inland oblique aerial survey along with associated survey maps, KML files, navigation files, digital Field Activity Collection System (FACS) logs, and Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata. Refer to the Acronyms page for expansions of all acronyms and abbreviations used in this report. The USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center (SPCMSC) assigns a unique identifier to each cruise or field activity. For example, 03CCH01 tells us the data were collected in 2003 for the Coastal Change Hazards (CCH) study and the data were collected during the first field activity for that project in that calendar year. Refer to http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/programs/html/definition/activity.html for a detailed description of the method used to assign the ID number. The photographs provided here are Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG

Optimal motion planning using navigation measure

Science.gov (United States)

Vaidya, Umesh

2018-05-01

We introduce navigation measure as a new tool to solve the motion planning problem in the presence of static obstacles. Existence of navigation measure guarantees collision-free convergence at the final destination set beginning with almost every initial condition with respect to the Lebesgue measure. Navigation measure can be viewed as a dual to the navigation function. While the navigation function has its minimum at the final destination set and peaks at the obstacle set, navigation measure takes the maximum value at the destination set and is zero at the obstacle set. A linear programming formalism is proposed for the construction of navigation measure. Set-oriented numerical methods are utilised to obtain finite dimensional approximation of this navigation measure. Application of the proposed navigation measure-based theoretical and computational framework is demonstrated for a motion planning problem in a complex fluid flow.

Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People.

Science.gov (United States)

Martinez-Sala, Alejandro Santos; Losilla, Fernando; Sánchez-Aarnoutse, Juan Carlos; García-Haro, Joan

2015-12-21

Indoor navigation is a challenging task for visually impaired people. Although there are guidance systems available for such purposes, they have some drawbacks that hamper their direct application in real-life situations. These systems are either too complex, inaccurate, or require very special conditions (i.e., rare in everyday life) to operate. In this regard, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology has been shown to be effective for indoor positioning, providing a high level of accuracy and low installation complexity. This paper presents SUGAR, an indoor navigation system for visually impaired people which uses UWB for positioning, a spatial database of the environment for pathfinding through the application of the A* algorithm, and a guidance module. The interaction with the user takes place using acoustic signals and voice commands played through headphones. The suitability of the system for indoor navigation has been verified by means of a functional and usable prototype through a field test with a blind person. In addition, other tests have been conducted in order to show the accuracy of different relevant parts of the system.

Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alejandro Santos Martinez-Sala

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Indoor navigation is a challenging task for visually impaired people. Although there are guidance systems available for such purposes, they have some drawbacks that hamper their direct application in real-life situations. These systems are either too complex, inaccurate, or require very special conditions (i.e., rare in everyday life to operate. In this regard, Ultra-Wideband (UWB technology has been shown to be effective for indoor positioning, providing a high level of accuracy and low installation complexity. This paper presents SUGAR, an indoor navigation system for visually impaired people which uses UWB for positioning, a spatial database of the environment for pathfinding through the application of the A* algorithm, and a guidance module. The interaction with the user takes place using acoustic signals and voice commands played through headphones. The suitability of the system for indoor navigation has been verified by means of a functional and usable prototype through a field test with a blind person. In addition, other tests have been conducted in order to show the accuracy of different relevant parts of the system.

Investigation of geochemical indicators to evaluate the connection between inland and coastal groundwater systems near Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park, Hawai‘i

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tillman, Fred D; Oki, Delwyn S.; Johnson, Adam G.; Barber, Larry B.; Beisner, Kimberly R.

2014-01-01

Highlights: • The connection between inland and coastal aquifers near Kona, Hawai‘i is uncertain. • If connected, increased inland groundwater pumping may threaten coastal ecosystems. • Connection of inland and coastal aquifers was investigated using geochemical data. • Stable isotope results provide strong evidence of a connection between the systems. • Other geochemical data suggest a connection but are not conclusive. - Abstract: Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park (KAHO) is a coastal sanctuary on the western side of the Island of Hawai‘i that was established in 1978 to preserve, interpret, and perpetuate traditional Native Hawaiian culture and activities. KAHO contains a variety of culturally and ecologically significant water resources and water-related habitat for species that have been declared as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or are candidate threatened or endangered species. These habitats are dependent on coastal unconfined groundwater in a freshwater-lens system. The coastal unconfined-groundwater system is recharged by local infiltration of rainfall but also may receive recharge from an inland groundwater system containing groundwater impounded to high altitudes. The area inland of and near KAHO is being rapidly urbanized and increased groundwater withdrawals from the inland impounded-groundwater system may affect habitat and water quality in KAHO, depending on the extent of connection between the coastal unconfined groundwater and inland impounded-groundwater. An investigation of the geochemistry of surface-water and groundwater samples in and near KAHO was performed to evaluate the presence or absence of a connection between the inland impounded- and coastal unconfined-groundwater systems in the area. Analyses of major ions, selected trace elements, rare-earth elements, and strontium-isotope ratio results from ocean, fishpond, anchialine pool, and groundwater samples were consistent with a linear

Integrated navigation method of a marine strapdown inertial navigation system using a star sensor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang, Qiuying; Diao, Ming; Gao, Wei; Zhu, Minghong; Xiao, Shu

2015-01-01

This paper presents an integrated navigation method of the strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) using a star sensor. According to the principle of SINS, its own navigation information contains an error that increases with time. Hence, the inertial attitude matrix from the star sensor is introduced as the reference information to correct the SINS increases error. For the integrated navigation method, the vehicle’s attitude can be obtained in two ways: one is calculated from SINS; the other, which we have called star sensor attitude, is obtained as the product between the SINS position and the inertial attitude matrix from the star sensor. Therefore, the SINS position error is introduced in the star sensor attitude error. Based on the characteristics of star sensor attitude error and the mathematical derivation, the SINS navigation errors can be obtained by the coupling calculation between the SINS attitude and the star sensor attitude. Unlike several current techniques, the navigation process of this method is non-radiating and invulnerable to jamming. The effectiveness of this approach was demonstrated by simulation and experimental study. The results show that this integrated navigation method can estimate the attitude error and the position error of SINS. Therefore, the SINS navigation accuracy is improved. (paper)

Perceived Case Management Needs and Service Preferences of Frequent Emergency Department Users: Lessons Learned in a Large Urban Centre.

Science.gov (United States)

Kahan, Deborah; Poremski, Daniel; Wise-Harris, Deborah; Pauly, Daniel; Leszcz, Molyn; Wasylenki, Donald; Stergiopoulos, Vicky

2016-01-01

This study aimed to explore the service needs and preferences of frequent emergency department users with mental health and addictions concerns who participated in a brief intensive case management intervention. We conducted semi-structured individual interviews with 20 frequent emergency department users with mental health and addictions challenges, 13 service providers involved in the delivery of a brief case management intervention, and a focus group with intervention case managers. Thematic analysis was used to explore perceived service user profiles, service needs and preferences of care. Service users experienced complex health and social needs and social isolation, while exhibiting resilience and the desire to contribute. They described multiple instances of stigmatization in interactions with healthcare professionals. Components of the brief intensive case management intervention perceived to be helpful included system navigation, advocacy, intermediation, and practical needs assistance. Frequent service users valued relational responsiveness, a non-judgmental stance, and a recovery orientation in case managers. Interventions for frequent service users in mental health may be enhanced by focusing on the engagement of formal and informal social supports, practical needs assistance, system navigation, advocacy and intermediation, and attention to the recovery goals of service users.

Perceived Case Management Needs and Service Preferences of Frequent Emergency Department Users: Lessons Learned in a Large Urban Centre.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Deborah Kahan

Full Text Available This study aimed to explore the service needs and preferences of frequent emergency department users with mental health and addictions concerns who participated in a brief intensive case management intervention.We conducted semi-structured individual interviews with 20 frequent emergency department users with mental health and addictions challenges, 13 service providers involved in the delivery of a brief case management intervention, and a focus group with intervention case managers. Thematic analysis was used to explore perceived service user profiles, service needs and preferences of care.Service users experienced complex health and social needs and social isolation, while exhibiting resilience and the desire to contribute. They described multiple instances of stigmatization in interactions with healthcare professionals. Components of the brief intensive case management intervention perceived to be helpful included system navigation, advocacy, intermediation, and practical needs assistance. Frequent service users valued relational responsiveness, a non-judgmental stance, and a recovery orientation in case managers.Interventions for frequent service users in mental health may be enhanced by focusing on the engagement of formal and informal social supports, practical needs assistance, system navigation, advocacy and intermediation, and attention to the recovery goals of service users.

The utilization of cranial models created using rapid prototyping techniques in the development of models for navigation training.

Science.gov (United States)

Waran, V; Pancharatnam, Devaraj; Thambinayagam, Hari Chandran; Raman, Rajagopal; Rathinam, Alwin Kumar; Balakrishnan, Yuwaraj Kumar; Tung, Tan Su; Rahman, Z A

2014-01-01

Navigation in neurosurgery has expanded rapidly; however, suitable models to train end users to use the myriad software and hardware that come with these systems are lacking. Utilizing three-dimensional (3D) industrial rapid prototyping processes, we have been able to create models using actual computed tomography (CT) data from patients with pathology and use these models to simulate a variety of commonly performed neurosurgical procedures with navigation systems. To assess the possibility of utilizing models created from CT scan dataset obtained from patients with cranial pathology to simulate common neurosurgical procedures using navigation systems. Three patients with pathology were selected (hydrocephalus, right frontal cortical lesion, and midline clival meningioma). CT scan data following an image-guidance surgery protocol in DIACOM format and a Rapid Prototyping Machine were taken to create the necessary printed model with the corresponding pathology embedded. The ability in registration, planning, and navigation of two navigation systems using a variety of software and hardware provided by these platforms was assessed. We were able to register all models accurately using both navigation systems and perform the necessary simulations as planned. Models with pathology utilizing 3D rapid prototyping techniques accurately reflect data of actual patients and can be used in the simulation of neurosurgical operations using navigation systems. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Space Mobile Network: A Near Earth Communications and Navigation Architecture

Science.gov (United States)

Israel, David J.; Heckler, Gregory W.; Menrad, Robert J.

2016-01-01

This paper shares key findings of NASA's Earth Regime Network Evolution Study (ERNESt) team resulting from its 18-month effort to define a wholly new architecture-level paradigm for the exploitation of space by civil space and commercial sector organizations. Since the launch of Sputnik in October 1957 spaceflight missions have remained highly scripted activities from launch through disposal. The utilization of computer technology has enabled dramatic increases in mission complexity; but, the underlying premise that the diverse actions necessary to meet mission goals requires minute-by-minute scripting, defined weeks in advance of execution, for the life of the mission has remained. This archetype was appropriate for a "new frontier" but now risks overtly constraining the potential market-based opportunities for the innovation considered necessary to efficiently address the complexities associated with meeting communications and navigation requirements projected to be characteristics of the next era of space exploration: a growing number of missions in simultaneous execution, increased variance of mission types and growth in location/orbital regime diversity. The resulting ERNESt architectural cornerstone - the Space Mobile Network (SMN) - was envisioned as critical to creating an environment essential to meeting these future challenges in political, programmatic, technological and budgetary terms. The SMN incorporates technologies such as: Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) and optical communications, as well as new operations concepts such as User Initiated Services (UIS) to provide user services analogous to today's terrestrial mobile network user. Results developed in collaboration with NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Division and field centers are reported on. Findings have been validated via briefings to external focus groups and initial ground-based demonstrations. The SMN opens new niches for exploitation by the marketplace of mission

Health Websites: Accessibility and Usability for American Sign Language Users

Science.gov (United States)

Kushalnagar, Poorna; Naturale, Joan; Paludneviciene, Raylene; Smith, Scott R.; Werfel, Emily; Doolittle, Richard; Jacobs, Stephen; DeCaro, James

2015-01-01

To date, there have been efforts towards creating better health information access for Deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users. However, the usability of websites with access to health information in ASL has not been evaluated. Our paper focuses on the usability of four health websites that include ASL videos. We seek to obtain ASL users’ perspectives on the navigation of these ASL-accessible websites, finding the health information that they needed, and perceived ease of understanding ASL video content. ASL users (N=32) were instructed to find specific information on four ASL-accessible websites, and answered questions related to: 1) navigation to find the task, 2) website usability, and 3) ease of understanding ASL video content for each of the four websites. Participants also gave feedback on what they would like to see in an ASL health library website, including the benefit of added captioning and/or signer model to medical illustration of health videos. Participants who had lower health literacy had greater difficulty in finding information on ASL-accessible health websites. This paper also describes the participants’ preferences for an ideal ASL-accessible health website, and concludes with a discussion on the role of accessible websites in promoting health literacy in ASL users. PMID:24901350

Detecting memory and structure in human navigation patterns using Markov chain models of varying order.

Science.gov (United States)

Singer, Philipp; Helic, Denis; Taraghi, Behnam; Strohmaier, Markus

2014-01-01

One of the most frequently used models for understanding human navigation on the Web is the Markov chain model, where Web pages are represented as states and hyperlinks as probabilities of navigating from one page to another. Predominantly, human navigation on the Web has been thought to satisfy the memoryless Markov property stating that the next page a user visits only depends on her current page and not on previously visited ones. This idea has found its way in numerous applications such as Google's PageRank algorithm and others. Recently, new studies suggested that human navigation may better be modeled using higher order Markov chain models, i.e., the next page depends on a longer history of past clicks. Yet, this finding is preliminary and does not account for the higher complexity of higher order Markov chain models which is why the memoryless model is still widely used. In this work we thoroughly present a diverse array of advanced inference methods for determining the appropriate Markov chain order. We highlight strengths and weaknesses of each method and apply them for investigating memory and structure of human navigation on the Web. Our experiments reveal that the complexity of higher order models grows faster than their utility, and thus we confirm that the memoryless model represents a quite practical model for human navigation on a page level. However, when we expand our analysis to a topical level, where we abstract away from specific page transitions to transitions between topics, we find that the memoryless assumption is violated and specific regularities can be observed. We report results from experiments with two types of navigational datasets (goal-oriented vs. free form) and observe interesting structural differences that make a strong argument for more contextual studies of human navigation in future work.

Detecting memory and structure in human navigation patterns using Markov chain models of varying order.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Philipp Singer

Full Text Available One of the most frequently used models for understanding human navigation on the Web is the Markov chain model, where Web pages are represented as states and hyperlinks as probabilities of navigating from one page to another. Predominantly, human navigation on the Web has been thought to satisfy the memoryless Markov property stating that the next page a user visits only depends on her current page and not on previously visited ones. This idea has found its way in numerous applications such as Google's PageRank algorithm and others. Recently, new studies suggested that human navigation may better be modeled using higher order Markov chain models, i.e., the next page depends on a longer history of past clicks. Yet, this finding is preliminary and does not account for the higher complexity of higher order Markov chain models which is why the memoryless model is still widely used. In this work we thoroughly present a diverse array of advanced inference methods for determining the appropriate Markov chain order. We highlight strengths and weaknesses of each method and apply them for investigating memory and structure of human navigation on the Web. Our experiments reveal that the complexity of higher order models grows faster than their utility, and thus we confirm that the memoryless model represents a quite practical model for human navigation on a page level. However, when we expand our analysis to a topical level, where we abstract away from specific page transitions to transitions between topics, we find that the memoryless assumption is violated and specific regularities can be observed. We report results from experiments with two types of navigational datasets (goal-oriented vs. free form and observe interesting structural differences that make a strong argument for more contextual studies of human navigation in future work.

Dental health and alimentation among the Quintana Roo Mayas: coastal and inland sites of the classic-postclassic periods.

Science.gov (United States)

Ortega-Muñoz, Allan

2015-01-01

The goal of this study is to compare both dental and skeletal stress indicators of the Classic and Postclassic coastal and inland sites of the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The hypothesis is that coastal populations will show osteo and dental pathologies characteristic of a primarily marine food source combined with a diet of horticultural resources. This kind of alimentation provides people with less environmental stress and therefore a better health status. However, over time, in the Postclassic period, the health conditions deteriorated among both coastal and inland inhabitants, according to the hierarchization of the society, militarization, and commercial activities of all the coastal sites. The sample was drawn from 19 sites (196 individuals of both sexes) from the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, as well as from inland localities within the boundaries of Quintana Roo. Both dental and osteological stress indicators were analyzed, and crosstabs were applied for absolute and relative frequencies and their corresponding χ(2) and F Fisher analyses. The osteopathological index of the coastal and inland sites of the Classic period were compared over time between the Classic coastal inhabitants and the Postclassic coastal inhabitants so as to understand how life conditions changed over time. The Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio, with the crosstabs controlling for sex (males and females), was also carried out. There are low frequencies of dental pathologies and anemia present in both the coastal and inland populations of Quintana Roo in the Classic and Postclassic times. Only the presence of periostitis is highly common in both types of site, and this is the only indicator with significant differences. The dental pathologies, anemia and periostitis, in general, present a slight upward trend in both the coastal and inland populations over time. The coastal populations have fewer frequencies of the above than the inland sites whilst, in the Postclassic period, both the

Maize yield response to residual soil moisture In inland valley of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Two sets of experiments were conducted in three replicates each on both upper and lower fringes of Minna inland valley, Niger State, Nigeria. While the upper fringe was subjected to surface irrigation the residual moisture in the lower fringe provided the maize crop with all water requirements from planting to maturity.

Review of available data for a South African Inventory of Inland ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2018-04-02

Apr 2, 2018 ... Inland aquatic ecosystems support a high diversity of aquatic species which .... National Department of Rural Development and Land Reform: Directorate .... provide access to fish, bird and frog data for South Africa. (Minter et al., 2004; ... whereas the distribution of the habitat of these invertebrates has been ...

Annual methane and nitrous oxide emissions from rice paddies and inland fish aquaculture wetlands in southeast China

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Shuang; Hu, Zhiqiang; Hu, Tao; Chen, Jie; Yu, Kai; Zou, Jianwen; Liu, Shuwei

2018-02-01

Inland aquaculture ponds have been documented as important sources of atmospheric methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), while their regional or global source strength remains unclear due to lack of direct flux measurements by covering more typical habitat-specific aquaculture environments. In this study, we compared the CH4 and N2O fluxes from rice paddies and nearby inland fish aquaculture wetlands that were converted from rice paddies in southeast China. Both CH4 and N2O fluxes were positively related to water temperature and sediment dissolved organic carbon, but negatively related to water dissolved oxygen concentration. More robust response of N2O fluxes to water mineral N was observed than to sediment mineral N. Annual CH4 and N2O fluxes from inland fish aquaculture averaged 0.51 mg m-2 h-1 and 54.78 μg m-2 h-1, amounting to 42.31 kg CH4 ha-1 and 2.99 kg N2O-N ha-1, respectively. The conversion of rice paddies to conventional fish aquaculture significantly reduced CH4 and N2O emissions by 23% and 66%, respectively. The emission factor for N2O was estimated to be 0.46% of total N input in the feed or 1.23 g N2O-N kg-1 aquaculture production. The estimate of sustained-flux global warming potential of annual CH4 and N2O emissions and the net economic profit suggested that such conversion of rice paddies to inland fish aquaculture would help to reconcile the dilemma for simultaneously achieving both low climatic impacts and high economic benefits in China. More solid direct field measurements from inland aquaculture are in urgent need to direct the overall budget of national or global CH4 and N2O fluxes.

Structure and navigation for electronic publishing

Science.gov (United States)

Tillinghast, John; Beretta, Giordano B.

1998-01-01

The sudden explosion of the World Wide Web as a new publication medium has given a dramatic boost to the electronic publishing industry, which previously was a limited market centered around CD-ROMs and on-line databases. While the phenomenon has parallels to the advent of the tabloid press in the middle of last century, the electronic nature of the medium brings with it the typical characteristic of 4th wave media, namely the acceleration in its propagation speed and the volume of information. Consequently, e-publications are even flatter than print media; Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet share the same computer screen with a home-made plagiarized copy of Deep Throat. The most touted tool for locating useful information on the World Wide Web is the search engine. However, due to the medium's flatness, sought information is drowned in a sea of useless information. A better solution is to build tools that allow authors to structure information so that it can easily be navigated. We experimented with the use of ontologies as a tool to formulate structures for information about a specific topic, so that related concepts are placed in adjacent locations and can easily be navigated using simple and ergonomic user models. We describe our effort in building a World Wide Web based photo album that is shared among a small network of people.

A multicenter prospective cohort study on camera navigation training for key user groups in minimally invasive surgery

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Graafland, Maurits; Bok, Kiki; Schreuder, Henk W. R.; Schijven, Marlies P.

2014-01-01

Untrained laparoscopic camera assistants in minimally invasive surgery (MIS) may cause suboptimal view of the operating field, thereby increasing risk for errors. Camera navigation is often performed by the least experienced member of the operating team, such as inexperienced surgical residents,

Lunar Navigation Architecture Design Considerations

Science.gov (United States)

D'Souza, Christopher; Getchius, Joel; Holt, Greg; Moreau, Michael

2009-01-01

The NASA Constellation Program is aiming to establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface. The Constellation elements (Orion, Altair, Earth Departure Stage, and Ares launch vehicles) will require a lunar navigation architecture for navigation state updates during lunar-class missions. Orion in particular has baselined earth-based ground direct tracking as the primary source for much of its absolute navigation needs. However, due to the uncertainty in the lunar navigation architecture, the Orion program has had to make certain assumptions on the capabilities of such architectures in order to adequately scale the vehicle design trade space. The following paper outlines lunar navigation requirements, the Orion program assumptions, and the impacts of these assumptions to the lunar navigation architecture design. The selection of potential sites was based upon geometric baselines, logistical feasibility, redundancy, and abort support capability. Simulated navigation covariances mapped to entry interface flightpath- angle uncertainties were used to evaluate knowledge errors. A minimum ground station architecture was identified consisting of Goldstone, Madrid, Canberra, Santiago, Hartebeeshoek, Dongora, Hawaii, Guam, and Ascension Island (or the geometric equivalent).

The characteristics of hydrogeochemical zonation of groundwater in inland plain

Science.gov (United States)

Xin-yu, HOU; Li-ting, XING; Yi, YANG; Wen-jing, ZHANG; Guang-yao, CHI

2018-05-01

To find out the hydrochemical zoning of groundwaterin the inland plain, taking Jiyang plain as an example, based on mathematical statistics, ion ratio coefficient and isotopic analysis method, the characteristics of water chemical composition and its zoning at different depths of 500m were studied. The result shows: ①The groundwater flow system in the study area can be divided into local flow system, intermediate flow system and regional flow system. ②The hydrochemical type of shallow groundwater is complex. The hydrochemical types of middle confined water are mainly ClṡSO4—MgṡNa and SO4ṡCl—NaṡMg. The deep confined water is mainly HCO3. ③The TDS of shallow groundwater increases gradually along the direction of groundwater flow. ④The shallow saltwater and freshwater are alternately distributed in horizontal direction, and saltwater is distributed sporadically in the interfluve area with sporadic punctate or banded, and hydrochemical types are mainly ClṡSO4—NaṡMgṡCa. Conclusion: Groundwater in the study area is affected by complicated hydrogeochemical action, mainly in the form of filtration, cation exchange and evaporation. The inland plain area is characterized by hydrogeochemical zonation in horizontal and vertical.

Inland excess water mapping using hyperspectral imagery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Csendes Bálint

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Hyperspectral imaging combined with the potentials of airborne scanning is a powerful tool to monitor environmental processes. The aim of this research was to use high resolution remotely sensed data to map the spatial extent of inland excess water patches in a Hungarian study area that is known for its oil and gas production facilities. Periodic floodings show high spatial and temporal variability, nevertheless, former studies have proven that the affected soil surfaces can be accurately identified. Besides separability measurements, we performed spectral angle classification, which gave a result of 85% overall accuracy and we also compared the generated land cover map with LIDAR elevation data.

DNA Compass: a secure, client-side site for navigating personal genetic information.

Science.gov (United States)

Curnin, Charles; Gordon, Assaf; Erlich, Yaniv

2017-07-15

Millions of individuals have access to raw genomic data using direct-to-consumer companies. The advent of large-scale sequencing projects, such as the Precision Medicine Initiative, will further increase the number of individuals with access to their own genomic information. However, querying genomic data requires a computer terminal and computational skill to analyze the data-an impediment for the general public. DNA Compass is a website designed to empower the public by enabling simple navigation of personal genomic data. Users can query the status of their genomic variants for over 1658 markers or tens of millions of documented single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). DNA Compass presents the relevant genotypes of the user side-by-side with explanatory scientific resources. The genotype data never leaves the user's computer, a feature that provides improved security and performance. More than 12 000 unique users, mainly from the general genetic genealogy community, have already used DNA Compass, demonstrating its utility. DNA Compass is freely available on https://compass.dna.land . yaniv@cs.columbia.edu. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

E-navigation Services for Non-SOLAS Ships

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kwang An

2016-06-01

Full Text Available It is clearly understood that the main benefits of e-navigation are improved safety and better protection of the environment through the promotion of standards of navigational system and a reduction in human error. In order to meet the expectations on the benefit of e-navigation, e-navigation services should be more focused on non-SOLAS ships. The purpose of this paper is to present necessary e-navigation services for non-SOLAS ships in order to prevent marine accidents in Korean coastal waters. To meet the objectives of the study, an examination on the present navigation and communication system for non-SOLAS ships was performed. Based on the IMO's e-navigation Strategy Implementation Plan (SIP and Korea's national SIP for e-navigation, future trends for the development and implementation of e-navigation were discussed. Consequently, Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC download and ENC up-date service, ENC streaming service, route support service and communication support service based on Maritime Cloud were presented as essential e-navigation services for non-SOLAS ships. This study will help for the planning and designing of the Korean e-navigation system. It is expected that the further researches on the navigation support systems based on e-navigation will be carried out in order to implement the essential e-navigation services for non-SOLAS ships.

Identification and classification of inland wetlands in Tamaulipas through remote sensing and geographic information systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wilver Enrique Salinas Castillo

2012-03-01

Full Text Available This work aimed to identify and classify artificial and natural inland wetlands in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, important for migratory aquatic birds. Historically, efforts nave been focused on natural coastal wetlands or specific water bodies located in highlands; however, these surveys have not reflected the dramatic changes in landscape due to farming development in northem Mexico in the Iatest decades. Agricultural fieids and dams associated to them provide food, water and shelterto many migratory birds and other species, a fact not well documented. Factors that may influence the use of wetlands were analyzed, including surface area, associated vegetation and proximity to agricultural fieids. The inventory of inland wetlands was based on the analysis of seven 2000 Landsat ETM satellite imagery and field data gathered from 261 sites surveyed in 2001. Baseline maps were created and GIS analyses were undertaken to classify these water bodies. More than 23 000 inland wetlands were identified, and the information derived from this study will be assist in the development of programs to manage and protect wetlands of importance for migratory aquatic birds in Tamaulipas.

A User-Centered Framework for Deriving A Conceptual Design From User Experiences: Leveraging Personas and Patterns to Create Usable Designs

Science.gov (United States)

Javahery, Homa; Deichman, Alexander; Seffah, Ahmed; Taleb, Mohamed

Patterns are a design tool to capture best practices, tackling problems that occur in different contexts. A user interface (UI) design pattern spans several levels of design abstraction ranging from high-level navigation to low-level idioms detailing a screen layout. One challenge is to combine a set of patterns to create a conceptual design that reflects user experiences. In this chapter, we detail a user-centered design (UCD) framework that exploits the novel idea of using personas and patterns together. Personas are used initially to collect and model user experiences. UI patterns are selected based on personas pecifications; these patterns are then used as building blocks for constructing conceptual designs. Through the use of a case study, we illustrate how personas and patterns can act as complementary techniques in narrowing the gap between two major steps in UCD: capturing users and their experiences, and building an early design based on that information. As a result of lessons learned from the study and by refining our framework, we define a more systematic process called UX-P (User Experiences to Pattern), with a supporting tool. The process introduces intermediate analytical steps and supports designers in creating usable designs.

Evaluating CoLiDeS + Pic: The Role of Relevance of Pictures in User Navigation Behaviour

Science.gov (United States)

Karanam, Saraschandra; van Oostendorp, Herre; Indurkhya, Bipin

2012-01-01

CoLiDeS + Pic is a cognitive model of web-navigation that incorporates semantic information from pictures into CoLiDeS. In our earlier research, we have demonstrated that by incorporating semantic information from pictures, CoLiDeS + Pic can predict the hyperlinks on the shortest path more frequently, and also with greater information scent,…

Facebook as a Surveillance Tool: From the Perspective of the User

OpenAIRE

Ekaterina Petrovna Netchitailova

2012-01-01

With the increasing use of online social networks such as Facebook in recent years, a lot of research has been focussing on the privacy issue of the network. The main question being asked is: how do users navigate their privacy on Facebook? While this research has been very important for the understanding of the privacy issue on Facebook, it also has the tendency to focus entirely on the user and look at personal information revelation, ignoring societal aspects, such as capitalism and the ch...

Surface navigation on Mars with a Navigation Satellite

Science.gov (United States)

Vijayaraghavan, A.; Thurman, Sam W.; Kahn, Robert D.; Hastrup, Rolf C.

Radiometric navigation data from the Deep Space Network (DSN) stations on the earth to transponders and other surface elements such as rovers and landers on Mars, can determine their positions to only within a kilometer in inertial space. The positional error is mostly in the z-component of the surface element parallel to the Martian spin-axis. However, with Doppler and differenced-Doppler data from a Navigation Satellite in orbit around Mars to two or more of such transponders on the planetary surface, their positions can be determined to within 15 meters (or 20 meters for one-way Doppler beacons on Mars) in inertial space. In this case, the transponders (or other vehicles) on Mars need not even be capable of directly communicating to the earth. When the Navigation Satellite data is complemented by radiometric observations from the DSN stations also, directly to the surface elements on Mars, their positions can be determined to within 3 meters in inertial space. The relative positions of such surface elements on Mars (relative to one another) in Mars-fixed coordinates, however, can be determined to within 5 meters from simply range and Doppler data from the DSN stations to the surface elements. These results are obtained from covariance studies assuming X-band data noise levels and data-arcs not exceeding 10 days. They are significant in the planning and deployment of a Mars-based navigation network necessary to support real-time operations during critical phases of manned exploration of Mars.

Electronic Library of Embrapa Cerrados: user study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Elisabeth Salviati

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Introduction: This paper presents the results of research conducted with Electronic Library users – website, created in 2004 by Embrapa Cerrados, that organizes, stores, and provides full text of the technical scientific production published by the Institution. Objective: To explore the user profile and to make an accurate assessment of the website. Methodology: Data collection of demographic aspects; habits; and search features: navigation, loading time of pages, help, layout and terminology by an online survey. Analysis by SPSS software - Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Results: The main users are students and agronomists, young people up to 30 years old, coming from the Federal District, belonging to universities and high schools wishing to update knowledge. After, appear the users of public agencies; private companies; Embrapa; agribusiness; federal government; schools; associations and non-governmental organizations; rural extension; cooperatives and syndicates. These users have no difficulties to use the service. Conclusions: The service works well, but some suggestions are useful to improve it. In addition, little demand coming from farms, ranches, rural extension services, cooperatives and syndicates indicates the need to design new products and services oriented to such public.

Users’ Expectation from the User Interface Screen of an Academic Digital Library

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Akbar Majidi

2010-09-01

Full Text Available The present paper investigates the E-learner’s expectations concerning the features incorporated within the user interface screen of an academic digital library. A researcher-made questionnaire was used for the survey. The sample was taken from the E-learners using this technology in Iranian universities. 200 questionnaires were distributed. The data analysis showed a general consensus about the priority of comprehensibility of the terms used in the User Interface Screen (uis as well as the display features and clarity of the navigational functions as the usability criteria for UIS. ANOVA analysis indicated that, with the exception of navigation and guidance functions, there was no significance with respect to three categories of students. In other words, all students had similar expectations and their ICT skill is not a factor influencing the prioritization of these criteria. The results further indicated that except for the browsing page, there is no significant difference between novice, intermediate and advanced students with respect to search screen features.

Coastal and Inland Aquatic Data Products for the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI)

Science.gov (United States)

Abelev, Andrei; Babin, Marcel; Bachmann, Charles; Bell, Thomas; Brando, Vittorio; Byrd, Kristin; Dekker , Arnold; Devred, Emmanuel; Forget, Marie-Helene; Goodman, James;

Dynamic Use of Digital Library Material - Supporting Users with Typed Links in Open Hypermedia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Grønbæk, Kaj; Hansen, Klaus Marius; Yndigegn, Christian

1999-01-01

This paper introduces a novel approach to supporting digital library users in organising and annotating material. We have extended the concept of open hypermedia by introducing typed links, which support: addition of (user-defined) semantics to hypertexts, user navigation, and machine supported...... analysis and synthesis of hypermedia structures. The Webvise open hypermedia system is integrated with the World Wide Web, and has been augmented with a type system. We illustrate the potential use in the context of digital libraries with a scenario of teachers jointly preparing a course based on digital...... library material....

Semiotic resources for navigation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Due, Brian Lystgaard; Lange, Simon Bierring

2018-01-01

This paper describes two typical semiotic resources blind people use when navigating in urban areas. Everyone makes use of a variety of interpretive semiotic resources and senses when navigating. For sighted individuals, this especially involves sight. Blind people, however, must rely on everything...... else than sight, thereby substituting sight with other modalities and distributing the navigational work to other semiotic resources. Based on a large corpus of fieldwork among blind people in Denmark, undertaking observations, interviews, and video recordings of their naturally occurring practices...... of walking and navigating, this paper shows how two prototypical types of semiotic resources function as helpful cognitive extensions: the guide dog and the white cane. This paper takes its theoretical and methodological perspective from EMCA multimodal interaction analysis....

Upload of Dead Reckoning Measurements for Improved Navigational Efficiency on Embedded Robotics

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tickle, Andrew J; Harvey, Paul K, E-mail: prouction_leader@hotmail.com [School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GJ (United Kingdom)

2011-08-17

The process behind Dead Reckoning (DR) is simple in that a robot can know its current location via a record of its starting position, direction and speed without the need to look for landmarks or follow lines. This process allows a robot to drive around a known environment such as indoors and heavy urban areas where traditional GPS navigation would not be an option. Discussed in this paper is an improvement of a previously designed DR mechanism in DSP Builder where now the user enters the DR measurements and commands as a sequence via a keypad. This replaces the need for user to programme the details into the system by altering numerous value tags within the design one-by-one, thus making it more user-independent and easier to alter for different environments. The paper shows updated simulations for repeatability, how the keypad links to the system and where this work will lead.

Creating Accessible Science Museums with User-Activated Environmental Audio Beacons (Ping!)

Science.gov (United States)

Landau, Steven; Wiener, William; Naghshineh, Koorosh; Giusti, Ellen

2005-01-01

In 2003, Touch Graphics Company carried out research on a new invention that promises to improve accessibility to science museums for visitors who are visually impaired. The system, nicknamed Ping!, allows users to navigate an exhibit area, listen to audio descriptions, and interact with exhibits using a cell phone-based interface. The system…

33 CFR 401.54 - Interference with navigation aids.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Interference with navigation aids. 401.54 Section 401.54 Navigation and Navigable Waters SAINT LAWRENCE SEAWAY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION... with navigation aids. (a) Aids to navigation shall not be interfered with or used as moorings. (b) No...

Inland-strayed Long-tailed Skua Stercorarius longicaudus victim of Goshawk Accipiter gentilis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kranenbarg, S.

1997-01-01

Long-tailed Jaeger Stercorarius longicaudus Northern Goshawk Accipiter gentilis Pluckings of a juvenile Long-tailed Skua Stercorarius longicaudus were found near Wekerom (52?06'N, 5?42'E), Netherlands, some 80 km inland, on 2 and 6 October 1996. The two pluckings, about 150 m apart, consisted of

RINAC, The Future Bridge to Operate with RIS

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Heijden, W.F.M. van der; Kerstjens, W.O.M.

1999-01-01

To operate in a RIS (River Information Services) environment certain 'tools' will be needed. RINAC deals with a concept of the bridge (wheel-house) of an inland navigation vessel, to operate in an RIS environment. RINAC stands for River Information, Navigation And Communication system, and describes

Folk pharmaceutical knowledge in the territory of the Dolomiti Lucane, inland southern Italy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieroni, A.; Quave, C.L.; Santoro, R.F.

2004-01-01

An ethnopharmacognostic survey on the traditional pharmaceutical knowledge (TPhK) of old and newly introduced natural remedies used for healing humans in a small mountainous area in Central Lucania, inland southern Italy, was carried out using classical ethnographical and ethnobiological methods.

Stygofauna of the Canary Islands, 8 Amphipoda (Crustacea) from inland groundwaters of Fuerteventura

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Stock, Jan H.

1988-01-01

New material of Bogidiella from Fuenteventura (Canary Islands) provided evidence that the specimens of the genus previously recorded from inland groundwaters belong to a species new to science: B. (Stygogidiella) purpuriae, closely related to the thalassostygobiont, B. (S.) uniramosa from Lanzarote.

Global, real-time ionosphere specification for end-user communication and navigation products

Science.gov (United States)

Tobiska, W.; Carlson, H. C.; Schunk, R. W.; Thompson, D. C.; Sojka, J. J.; Scherliess, L.; Zhu, L.; Gardner, L. C.

2010-12-01

Space weather’s effects upon the near-Earth environment are due to dynamic changes in the energy transfer processes from the Sun’s photons, particles, and fields. Of the space environment domains that are affected by space weather, the ionosphere is the key region that affects communication and navigation systems. The Utah State University (USU) Space Weather Center (SWC) is a developer and producer of commercial space weather applications. A key system-level component for providing timely information about the effects of space weather is the Global Assimilation of Ionospheric Measurements (GAIM) system. GAIM, operated by SWC, improves real-time communication and navigation systems by continuously ingesting up to 10,000 slant TEC measurements every 15-minutes from approximately 500 stations. Using a Kalman filter, the background output from the physics-based Ionosphere Forecast Model (IFM) is adjusted to more accurately represent the actual ionosphere. An improved ionosphere leads to more useful derivative products. For example, SWC runs operational code, using GAIM, to calculate and report the global radio high frequency (HF) signal strengths for 24 world cities. This product is updated every 15 minutes at http://spaceweather.usu.edu and used by amateur radio operators. SWC also developed and provides through Apple iTunes the widely used real-time space weather iPhone app called SpaceWx for public space weather education. SpaceWx displays the real-time solar, heliosphere, magnetosphere, thermosphere, and ionosphere drivers to changes in the total electron content, for example. This smart phone app is tip of the “iceberg” of automated systems that provide space weather data; it permits instant understanding of the environment surrounding Earth as it dynamically changes. SpaceWx depends upon a distributed network that connects satellite and ground-based data streams with algorithms to quickly process the measurements into geophysical data, incorporate those

Can Dissimilar Users Contribute to Accuracy and Diversity of Personalized Recommendation?

Science.gov (United States)

Zeng, Wei; Shang, Ming-Sheng; Zhang, Qian-Ming; Lü, Linyuan; Zhou, Tao

Recommender systems are becoming a popular and important set of personalization techniques that assist individual users with navigating through the rapidly growing amount of information. A good recommender system should be able to not only find out the objects preferred by users, but also help users in discovering their personalized tastes. The former corresponds to high accuracy of the recommendation, while the latter to high diversity. A big challenge is to design an algorithm that provides both highly accurate and diverse recommendation. Traditional recommendation algorithms only take into account the contributions of similar users, thus, they tend to recommend popular items for users ignoring the diversity of recommendations. In this paper, we propose a recommendation algorithm by considering both the effects of similar and dissimilar users under the framework of collaborative filtering. Extensive analyses on three datasets, namely MovieLens, Netflix and Amazon, show that our method performs much better than the standard collaborative filtering algorithm for both accuracy and diversity.

Finding and Exploring Health Information with a Slider-Based User Interface.

Science.gov (United States)

Pang, Patrick Cheong-Iao; Verspoor, Karin; Pearce, Jon; Chang, Shanton

2016-01-01

Despite the fact that search engines are the primary channel to access online health information, there are better ways to find and explore health information on the web. Search engines are prone to problems when they are used to find health information. For instance, users have difficulties in expressing health scenarios with appropriate search keywords, search results are not optimised for medical queries, and the search process does not account for users' literacy levels and reading preferences. In this paper, we describe our approach to addressing these problems by introducing a novel design using a slider-based user interface for discovering health information without the need for precise search keywords. The user evaluation suggests that the interface is easy to use and able to assist users in the process of discovering new information. This study demonstrates the potential value of adopting slider controls in the user interface of health websites for navigation and information discovery.

Ecology of common bully (Gobiomorphus cotidianus) in the Tarawera and Rangitiki rivers : isolation by inland distance or anthropogenic discharge?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bleackley, N.A.; Landman, M.J.; Ling, N.

2009-01-01

Previous research has identified distinct genetic, life-history and reproductive differences between populations of common bully (Gobiomorphus cotidianus) upstream and downstream of a pulp and paper mill outfall on the Tarawera River in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. This study investigated the distribution of common bully in the Tarawera River by examining fish collected from upstream (37 km inland) and downstream (20 km inland) locations and comparing them to fish from similar inland locations (40 km and 17 km inland, respectively) in the nearby Rangitaiki River. Reproductive divergence was observed between upstream and downstream sites of both rivers by differing annual trends in gonadosomatic index. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes confirmed residency at each sampling site and otolith microchemistry demonstrated different life-history strategies between upstream and downstream populations. Diadromous recruits dominated in both downstream river populations, with a general disappearance of diadromy upstream. A mixture of diadromous and non-diadromous fish were found in the upstream Rangitaiki River, whereas diadromous recruits were absent in the upstream Tarawera River. A reduction in oculoscapular canal structures also coincided with loss of diadromy in fish from both rivers. A behavioural study to determine whether pulp and paper mill effluent may deter fish migration within the Tarawera River demonstrated a strong avoidance of effluent, but only at concentrations (>25%) greater than those that naturally occur in the river (<15%). The results of this study suggest that combinations of influences coupled with inland distance are likely to be responsible for the isolation of common bully subpopulations within the Tarawera River. (author). 51 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab.

The Weatherization Assistant User's Manual (Version 8.9)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gettings, Michael B. [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Malhotra, Mini [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Ternes, Mark P. [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

2015-01-01

The Weatherization Assistant is a Windows-based energy audit software tool that was developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to help states and their local weatherization agencies implement the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Weatherization Assistance Program. The Weatherization Assistant is an umbrella program for two individual energy audits or measure selection programs: the National Energy Audit Tool (NEAT) for site-built single-family homes and the Manufactured Home Energy Audit (MHEA) for mobile homes. The Weatherization Assistant User's Manual documents the operation of the user interface for Version 8.9 of the software. This includes how to install and setup the software, navigate through the program, and initiate an energy audit. All of the user interface forms associated with the software and the data fields on these forms are described in detail. The manual is intended to be a training manual for new users of the Weatherization Assistant and as a reference manual for experienced users.

Inland Waters - Navigation Distance Mark - Red River of the North (Non-Navigable)

Data.gov (United States)

Army Corps of Engineers, Department of the Army, Department of Defense — A distance mark indicates the distance measured from an origin and consists of a distinct location without special installation, used to serve as a reference along...

A Literature Review: Website Design and User Engagement.

Science.gov (United States)

Garett, Renee; Chiu, Jason; Zhang, Ly; Young, Sean D

2016-07-01

Proper design has become a critical element needed to engage website and mobile application users. However, little research has been conducted to define the specific elements used in effective website and mobile application design. We attempt to review and consolidate research on effective design and to define a short list of elements frequently used in research. The design elements mentioned most frequently in the reviewed literature were navigation, graphical representation, organization, content utility, purpose, simplicity, and readability. We discuss how previous studies define and evaluate these seven elements. This review and the resulting short list of design elements may be used to help designers and researchers to operationalize best practices for facilitating and predicting user engagement.

Adapting a historical dictionary for the modern online user: The case ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Apart from this, the general layout of the dic-tionary is also being re-evaluated and redesigned to make it more usable on online platforms. To accommodate new users and to bring the DSAEHist into the digital era (with regard to standard web and mobile practices) stylistic, navigational and functional changes are being ...

HyMoTrack: A Mobile AR Navigation System for Complex Indoor Environments.

Science.gov (United States)

Gerstweiler, Georg; Vonach, Emanuel; Kaufmann, Hannes

2015-12-24

Navigating in unknown big indoor environments with static 2D maps is a challenge, especially when time is a critical factor. In order to provide a mobile assistant, capable of supporting people while navigating in indoor locations, an accurate and reliable localization system is required in almost every corner of the building. We present a solution to this problem through a hybrid tracking system specifically designed for complex indoor spaces, which runs on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. The developed algorithm only uses the available sensors built into standard mobile devices, especially the inertial sensors and the RGB camera. The combination of multiple optical tracking technologies, such as 2D natural features and features of more complex three-dimensional structures guarantees the robustness of the system. All processing is done locally and no network connection is needed. State-of-the-art indoor tracking approaches use mainly radio-frequency signals like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for localizing a user. In contrast to these approaches, the main advantage of the developed system is the capability of delivering a continuous 3D position and orientation of the mobile device with centimeter accuracy. This makes it usable for localization and 3D augmentation purposes, e.g. navigation tasks or location-based information visualization.

HyMoTrack: A Mobile AR Navigation System for Complex Indoor Environments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Georg Gerstweiler

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Navigating in unknown big indoor environments with static 2D maps is a challenge, especially when time is a critical factor. In order to provide a mobile assistant, capable of supporting people while navigating in indoor locations, an accurate and reliable localization system is required in almost every corner of the building. We present a solution to this problem through a hybrid tracking system specifically designed for complex indoor spaces, which runs on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. The developed algorithm only uses the available sensors built into standard mobile devices, especially the inertial sensors and the RGB camera. The combination of multiple optical tracking technologies, such as 2D natural features and features of more complex three-dimensional structures guarantees the robustness of the system. All processing is done locally and no network connection is needed. State-of-the-art indoor tracking approaches use mainly radio-frequency signals like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for localizing a user. In contrast to these approaches, the main advantage of the developed system is the capability of delivering a continuous 3D position and orientation of the mobile device with centimeter accuracy. This makes it usable for localization and 3D augmentation purposes, e.g. navigation tasks or location-based information visualization.

Plumbing the global carbon cycle: Integrating inland waters into the terrestrial carbon budget

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cole, J.; Prairie, Y.T.; Caraco, N.; McDowell, W.H.; Tranvil, L.; Striegl, R.G.; Duarte, C.M.; Kortelainen, P.; Downing, J.A.; Middelburg, J.J.; Melack, J.

2007-01-01

Because freshwater covers such a small fraction of the Earth’s surface area, inland freshwater ecosystems (particularly lakes, rivers, and reservoirs) have rarely been considered as potentially important quantitative components of the carbon cycle at either global or regional scales. By taking

Effects of offshore wind energy developments on navigation and commercial shipping

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Petts, J W

1999-07-01

This report summarises the findings of a study examining the impact of the development of offshore wind farms on commercial shipping and navigation in the area of the UK continental shelf. The study methodology is described, and a review of previous studies is carried out. Technological and current developments, wind farm layout and physical limitations, interaction with marine users, and a quantitative assessment are examined, and the protection of offshore wind farms is considered. Appendices give details of admiralty charts and publications, maps, and chart markings for wind turbines. (UK)

Hydrological Process Simulation of Inland River Watershed: A Case Study of the Heihe River Basin with Multiple Hydrological Models

OpenAIRE

Lili Wang; Zhonggen Wang; Jingjie Yu; Yichi Zhang; Suzhen Dang

2018-01-01

Simulating the hydrological processes of an inland river basin can help provide the scientific guidance to the policies of water allocation among different subbasins and water resource management groups within the subbasins. However, it is difficult to simulate the hydrological processes of an inland river basin with hydrological models due to the non-consistent hydrological characteristics of the entire basin. This study presents a solution to this problem with a case study about the hydrolo...

Outer navigation of a inspection robot by means of feedback of global guidance

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Segovia de los R, A.; Bucio V, F.; Garduno G, M.

2008-01-01

The objective of this article is the presentation of an inspection system to mobile robot navigating in exteriors by means of the employment of a feedback of instantaneous guidance with respect to a global reference throughout moment of the displacement. The robot evolves obeying the commands coming from the one tele operator which indicates the diverse addresses by means of the operation console that the robot should take using for it information provided by an electronic compass. The mobile robot employee in the experimentations is a Pioneer 3-AT, which counts with a sensor series required to obtain an operation of more autonomy. The electronic compass offers geographical information coded in a format SPI, reason for which a micro controller (μC) economic of general use has been an employee for to transfer the information to the format RS-232, originally used by the Pioneer 3-AT. The orientation information received by the robot by means of their serial port RS-232 secondary it is forwarded to the computer hostess in the one which a program Java is used to generate the commands for the robot navigation control and to deploy one graphic interface user utilized to receive the order of the operator. This research is part of an ambitious project in which it is tried to count on an inspection system and monitoring of sites in which risks of high radiation levels could exist, thus a navigation systems in exteriors could be very useful. The complete system will count besides the own sensors of the robot, with certain numbers of agree sensors to the variables that are desired to monitor. The resulting values of such measurements will be visualized in real time in the graphic interface user, thanks to a bidirectional wireless communication among the station of operation and the mobile robot. (Author)

Squeezeposenet: Image Based Pose Regression with Small Convolutional Neural Networks for Real Time Uas Navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Müller, M. S.; Urban, S.; Jutzi, B.

2017-08-01

The number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is increasing since low-cost airborne systems are available for a wide range of users. The outdoor navigation of such vehicles is mostly based on global navigation satellite system (GNSS) methods to gain the vehicles trajectory. The drawback of satellite-based navigation are failures caused by occlusions and multi-path interferences. Beside this, local image-based solutions like Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) and Visual Odometry (VO) can e.g. be used to support the GNSS solution by closing trajectory gaps but are computationally expensive. However, if the trajectory estimation is interrupted or not available a re-localization is mandatory. In this paper we will provide a novel method for a GNSS-free and fast image-based pose regression in a known area by utilizing a small convolutional neural network (CNN). With on-board processing in mind, we employ a lightweight CNN called SqueezeNet and use transfer learning to adapt the network to pose regression. Our experiments show promising results for GNSS-free and fast localization.

Interior lives : the age and interpretation of perishable artefacts from Maori rockshelter sites in inland Otago, New Zealand

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anderson, A.; White, M.; Petchey, F.

2015-01-01

Rockshelter and similar sites in inland Otago have produced a relatively large number of M?ori artefacts made in readily perishable materials such as flax leaves and fibre, tussock grass or tapa (bark) cloth. Regional preservation is clearly related broadly to the relatively arid climate. However, AMS radiocarbon dates on 11 samples from 10 sites shows that while a few date to the 17th century or earlier, the ages of most cluster in the 18th to early 19th centuries. We argue that this represents a phase of accelerated deposition in which material was left behind deliberately, as logistically-determined storage for future use in a strategic plan for exploiting inland resources. We propose that such a process of 'furnishing the landscape' with useful artefacts and stored raw materials became possible when territorial security was achieved by the extension of immigrant tribal authority over the inland region. (author).

Experience with CANDID: Comparison algorithm for navigating digital image databases

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kelly, P.; Cannon, M.

1994-10-01

This paper presents results from the authors experience with CANDID (Comparison Algorithm for Navigating Digital Image Databases), which was designed to facilitate image retrieval by content using a query-by-example methodology. A global signature describing the texture, shape, or color content is first computed for every image stored in a database, and a normalized similarity measure between probability density functions of feature vectors is used to match signatures. This method can be used to retrieve images from a database that are similar to a user-provided example image. Results for three test applications are included.

Biological conservation of aquatic inland habitats: these are better days

OpenAIRE

Ian J. Winfield

2013-01-01

The biodiversity of aquatic inland habitats currently faces unprecedented threats from human activities. At the same time, although much is known about the functioning of freshwater ecosystems the successful transfer of such knowledge to practical conservation has not been universal. Global awareness of aquatic conservation issues is also hampered by the fact that conditions under the water surface are largely hidden from the direct experience of most members of society. Connectivity, or lack...

A Literature Review: Website Design and User Engagement.

OpenAIRE

Garett, R; Chiu, J; Zhang, L; Young, SD

2016-01-01

Proper design has become a critical element needed to engage website and mobile application users. However, little research has been conducted to define the specific elements used in effective website and mobile application design. We attempt to review and consolidate research on effective design and to define a short list of elements frequently used in research. The design elements mentioned most frequently in the reviewed literature were navigation, graphical representation, organization, c...

Real-time precision pedestrian navigation solution using Inertial Navigation System and Global Positioning System

OpenAIRE

Yong-Jin Yoon; King Ho Holden Li; Jiahe Steven Lee; Woo-Tae Park

2015-01-01

Global Positioning System and Inertial Navigation System can be used to determine position and velocity. A Global Positioning System module is able to accurately determine position without sensor drift, but its usage is limited in heavily urbanized environments and heavy vegetation. While high-cost tactical-grade Inertial Navigation System can determine position accurately, low-cost micro-electro-mechanical system Inertial Navigation System sensors are plagued by significant errors. Global Po...

Simulating Navigation with Virtual 3d Geovisualizations - a Focus on Memory Related Factors

Science.gov (United States)

Lokka, I.; Çöltekin, A.

2016-06-01

The use of virtual environments (VE) for navigation-related studies, such as spatial cognition and path retrieval has been widely adopted in cognitive psychology and related fields. What motivates the use of VEs for such studies is that, as opposed to real-world, we can control for the confounding variables in simulated VEs. When simulating a geographic environment as a virtual world with the intention to train navigational memory in humans, an effective and efficient visual design is important to facilitate the amount of recall. However, it is not yet clear what amount of information should be included in such visual designs intended to facilitate remembering: there can be too little or too much of it. Besides the amount of information or level of detail, the types of visual features (`elements' in a visual scene) that should be included in the representations to create memorable scenes and paths must be defined. We analyzed the literature in cognitive psychology, geovisualization and information visualization, and identified the key factors for studying and evaluating geovisualization designs for their function to support and strengthen human navigational memory. The key factors we identified are: i) the individual abilities and age of the users, ii) the level of realism (LOR) included in the representations and iii) the context in which the navigation is performed, thus specific tasks within a case scenario. Here we present a concise literature review and our conceptual development for follow-up experiments.

Incentive-Rewarding Mechanism for User-position Control in Mobile Services

Science.gov (United States)

Yoshino, Makoto; Sato, Kenichiro; Shinkuma, Ryoichi; Takahashi, Tatsuro

When the number of users in a service area increases in mobile multimedia services, no individual user can obtain satisfactory radio resources such as bandwidth and signal power because the resources are limited and shared. A solution for such a problem is user-position control. In the user-position control, the operator informs users of better communication areas (or spots) and navigates them to these positions. However, because of subjective costs caused by subjects moving from their original to a new position, they do not always attempt to move. To motivate users to contribute their resources in network services that require resource contributions for users, incentive-rewarding mechanisms have been proposed. However, there are no mechanisms that distribute rewards appropriately according to various subjective factors involving users. Furthermore, since the conventional mechanisms limit how rewards are paid, they are applicable only for the network service they targeted. In this paper, we propose a novel incentive-rewarding mechanism to solve these problems, using an external evaluator and interactive learning agents. We also investigated ways of appropriately controlling rewards based on user contributions and system service quality. We applied the proposed mechanism and reward control to the user-position control, and demonstrated its validity.

Advances in understanding phosphorus cycling in inland waters - Their significance for South African limnology

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Twinch, AJ

1980-02-01

Full Text Available The definitions of the different phosphorus compound fractions present in inland waters are reviewed and the limitations of the definitions discussed. The development of models of phosphorus cycling is summarized. Attempts to establish...

Navigating oceans and cultures: Polynesian and European navigation systems in the late eighteenth century

Science.gov (United States)

Walker, M.

2012-05-01

Significant differences in the rotation of the celestial dome between the tropical and temperate zones did not stop the peoples of either the tropical Pacific or temperate Europe from using geocentric astronomy to guide exploration of the oceans. Although the differences in the night sky contributed to differences between the Pacific Island and European systems for navigation at sea, the two navigation systems exhibit substantial similarities. Both systems define positions on the surface of the Earth using two coordinates that vary at right angles to each other and use stars, and to a lesser extent the sun, to determine directions. This essay explores similarities and differences in the use of geocentric astronomy for navigation at sea by the peoples of Polynesia and Europe in the late eighteenth century. Captain Cook's orders to discover the unknown southern continent after observing the transit of Venus combined with differences in language and culture to obscure the deeper similarities between the navigation systems used by Cook and the Polynesians. Although it was a further 200 years before anthropologists studied Pacific navigation, collaborations in voyaging with communities in Oceania demonstrated the effectiveness of Pacific navigation systems, revived interest in traditional voyaging in island communities around the Pacific, and potentially open the way for further collaborations in other areas.

Grand Fir Nutrient Management in the Inland Northwestern USA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dennis R. Parent

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Grand fir (Abies grandis (Douglas ex D. Don Lindley is widely distributed in the moist forests of the Inland Northwest. It has high potential productivity, its growth being nearly equal to western white pine, the most productive species in the region. There are large standing volumes of grand fir in the region. Nutritionally, the species has higher foliage cation concentrations than associated conifers, especially potassium (K and calcium (Ca. In contrast, it has lower nitrogen (N foliage concentrations, which creates favorable nutrient balance on N-limited sites. Despite concentration differences, grand fir stores proportionally more nutrients per tree than associated species because of greater crown biomass. Although few fertilization trials have examined grand fir specifically, its response is inferred from its occurrence in many monitored mixed conifer stands. Fertilization trials including grand fir either as a major or minor component show that it has a strong diameter and height growth response ranging from 15% to 50% depending in part on site moisture availability and soil geology. Grand fir tends to have a longer response duration than other inland conifers. When executed concurrently with thinning, fertilization often increases the total response. Late rotation application of N provides solid investment returns in carefully selected stands. Although there are still challenges with the post-fertilization effects on tree mortality, grand fir will continue to be an important species with good economic values and beneficial responses to fertilization and nutrient management.

Multi-Flight-Phase GPS Navigation Filter Applications to Terrestrial Vehicle Navigation and Positioning

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Young W.; Montez, Moises N.

1994-01-01

A candidate onboard space navigation filter demonstrated excellent performance (less than 8 meter level RMS semi-major axis accuracy) in performing orbit determination of a low-Earth orbit Explorer satellite using single-frequency real GPS data. This performance is significantly better than predicted by other simulation studies using dual-frequency GPS data. The study results revealed the significance of two new modeling approaches evaluated in the work. One approach introduces a single-frequency ionospheric correction through pseudo-range and phase range averaging implementation. The other approach demonstrates a precise axis-dependent characterization of dynamic sample space uncertainty to compute a more accurate Kalman filter gain. Additionally, this navigation filter demonstrates a flexibility to accommodate both perturbational dynamic and observational biases required for multi-flight phase and inhomogeneous application environments. This paper reviews the potential application of these methods and the filter structure to terrestrial vehicle and positioning applications. Both the single-frequency ionospheric correction method and the axis-dependent state noise modeling approach offer valuable contributions in cost and accuracy improvements for terrestrial GPS receivers. With a modular design approach to either 'plug-in' or 'unplug' various force models, this multi-flight phase navigation filter design structure also provides a versatile GPS navigation software engine for both atmospheric and exo-atmospheric navigation or positioning use, thereby streamlining the flight phase or application-dependent software requirements. Thus, a standardized GPS navigation software engine that can reduce the development and maintenance cost of commercial GPS receivers is now possible.

Spatial issues in user interface design from a graphic design perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Marcus, Aaron

1989-01-01

The user interface of a computer system is a visual display that provides information about the status of operations on data within the computer and control options to the user that enable adjustments to these operations. From the very beginning of computer technology the user interface was a spatial display, although its spatial features were not necessarily complex or explicitly recognized by the users. All text and nonverbal signs appeared in a virtual space generally thought of as a single flat plane of symbols. Current technology of high performance workstations permits any element of the display to appear as dynamic, multicolor, 3-D signs in a virtual 3-D space. The complexity of appearance and the user's interaction with the display provide significant challenges to the graphic designer of current and future user interfaces. In particular, spatial depiction provides many opportunities for effective communication of objects, structures, processes, navigation, selection, and manipulation. Issues are presented that are relevant to the graphic designer seeking to optimize the user interface's spatial attributes for effective visual communication.

THE BRAZILIAN SUPREME COURT'S PRECEDENTS AND THE CURIOUS TAXING DIFFERENCE ON THE AIR AND INLAND PASSENGER TRANSPORT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marciano Seabra de Godoi

2016-07-01

Full Text Available The study aims to the taxing of transport service provision, particularly the passenger transport, as well as the odd difference of treatment created directly by the Brazilian Supreme Court’s precedents, applying distinguished regimes for air passenger and inland. It discusses the evolution of legislation on the subject and, specially, it examines critically how the Supreme Court’s case law stood on the issue, through the judgment of many direct actions of unconstitutionality (ADI. The study considers legally inconsistent these precedents, in which is unconstitutional the tax collection over the air transport, but constitutional over the inland one.

Methane and Nitrous Oxide Emissions Reduced Following Conversion of Rice Paddies to Inland Crab-Fish Aquaculture in Southeast China.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Shuwei; Hu, Zhiqiang; Wu, Shuang; Li, Shuqing; Li, Zhaofu; Zou, Jianwen

2016-01-19

Aquaculture is an important source of atmospheric methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), while few direct flux measurements are available for their regional and global source strength estimates. A parallel field experiment was performed to measure annual CH4 and N2O fluxes from rice paddies and rice paddy-converted inland crab-fish aquaculture wetlands in southeast China. Besides N2O fluxes dependent on water/sediment mineral N and CH4 fluxes related to water chemical oxygen demand, both CH4 and N2O fluxes from aquaculture were related to water/sediment temperature, sediment dissolved organic carbon, and water dissolved oxygen concentration. Annual CH4 and N2O fluxes from inland aquaculture averaged 0.37 mg m(-2) h(-1) and 48.1 μg m(-2) h(-1), yielding 32.57 kg ha(-1) and 2.69 kg N2O-N ha(-1), respectively. The conversion of rice paddies to aquaculture significantly reduced CH4 and N2O emissions by 48% and 56%, respectively. The emission factor for N2O was estimated to be 0.66% of total N input in the feed or 1.64 g N2O-N kg(-1) aquaculture production in aquaculture. The conversion of rice paddies to inland aquaculture would benefit for reconciling greenhouse gas mitigation and agricultural income increase as far as global warming potentials and net ecosystem economic profits are of concomitant concern. Some agricultural practices such as better aeration and feeding, and fallow season dredging would help to lower CH4 and N2O emissions from inland aquaculture. More field measurements from inland aquaculture are highly needed to gain an insight into national and global accounting of CH4 and N2O emissions.

Overview of the Inland California Translational Consortium

Science.gov (United States)

Malkas, Linda H.

2017-05-01

The mission of the Inland California Translational Consortium (ICTC), an independent research consortium comprising a unique hub of regional institutions (City of Hope [COH], California Institute of Technology [Caltech], Jet Propulsion Laboratory [JPL], University of California Riverside [UCR], and Claremont Colleges Keck Graduate Institute [KGI], is to institute a new paradigm within the academic culture to accelerate translation of innovative biomedical discoveries into clinical applications that positively affect human health and life. The ICTC actively supports clinical translational research as well as the implementation and advancement of novel education and training models for the translation of basic discoveries into workable products and practices that preserve and improve human health while training and educating at all levels of the workforce using innovative forward-thinking approaches.

Infection with Devriesea agamarum and Chrysosporium guarroi in an inland bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps).

Science.gov (United States)

Schmidt-Ukaj, Silvana; Loncaric, Igor; Klang, Andrea; Spergser, Joachim; Häbich, Annett-Carolin; Knotek, Zdenek

2014-12-01

Description of clinical, microbiological and histopathological findings in a case of deep dermatitis in an inland bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) caused by Devriesea agamarum and Chrysosporium guarroi. A 4-year-old male inland bearded dragon, weighing 497 g, was presented at the clinic because the animal was suffering from dysecdysis and chronic skin lesions. Large numbers of bacilli, cocci and hyphal elements were diagnosed during the microscopic examination of the wound exudate. Microbiological analysis of a skin specimen revealed a moderate growth of Enterococcus sp. and D. agamarum. The condition of the bearded dragon improved with combined therapy consisting of ceftiofur hydrochloride, voriconazole and meloxicam. However, 3 months later recrudescence was observed. This time, Clostridium sp. and Chrysosporium sp. were isolated in large numbers. The bearded dragon was euthanized. Histopathology confirmed a severe granulomatous dermatitis with associated fungal hyphae and a severe granulomatous hepatitis with intralesional hyphae. Chrysosporium guarroi was identified by PCR and sequencing in two organs (skin and liver). This is the first case of an infection with D. agamarum and C. guarroi in an inland bearded dragon (P. vitticeps). It emphasizes the importance of mycological cultures and specific treatment. Samples of suspected Chrysosporium sp. should be cultured at 30°C for 10-14 days. Early antifungal treatment is necessary to prevent systemic and potentially fatal infection with C. guarroi. © 2014 ESVD and ACVD.

75 FR 50884 - Navigation and Navigable Waters; Technical, Organizational, and Conforming Amendments, Sector...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-08-18

... 3 and 165 to reflect changes in Coast Guard internal organizational structure. Sector Portland and... 1625-ZA25 Navigation and Navigable Waters; Technical, Organizational, and Conforming Amendments, Sector... Waters; Technical, Organizational, and Conforming Amendments, Sector Columbia River.'' 2. On page 48564...

DEVELOPMENT OF A PEDESTRIAN INDOOR NAVIGATION SYSTEM BASED ON MULTI-SENSOR FUSION AND FUZZY LOGIC ESTIMATION ALGORITHMS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Y. C. Lai

2015-05-01

Full Text Available This paper presents a pedestrian indoor navigation system based on the multi-sensor fusion and fuzzy logic estimation algorithms. The proposed navigation system is a self-contained dead reckoning navigation that means no other outside signal is demanded. In order to achieve the self-contained capability, a portable and wearable inertial measure unit (IMU has been developed. Its adopted sensors are the low-cost inertial sensors, accelerometer and gyroscope, based on the micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS. There are two types of the IMU modules, handheld and waist-mounted. The low-cost MEMS sensors suffer from various errors due to the results of manufacturing imperfections and other effects. Therefore, a sensor calibration procedure based on the scalar calibration and the least squares methods has been induced in this study to improve the accuracy of the inertial sensors. With the calibrated data acquired from the inertial sensors, the step length and strength of the pedestrian are estimated by multi-sensor fusion and fuzzy logic estimation algorithms. The developed multi-sensor fusion algorithm provides the amount of the walking steps and the strength of each steps in real-time. Consequently, the estimated walking amount and strength per step are taken into the proposed fuzzy logic estimation algorithm to estimates the step lengths of the user. Since the walking length and direction are both the required information of the dead reckoning navigation, the walking direction is calculated by integrating the angular rate acquired by the gyroscope of the developed IMU module. Both the walking length and direction are calculated on the IMU module and transmit to a smartphone with Bluetooth to perform the dead reckoning navigation which is run on a self-developed APP. Due to the error accumulating of dead reckoning navigation, a particle filter and a pre-loaded map of indoor environment have been applied to the APP of the proposed navigation system

Development of a Pedestrian Indoor Navigation System Based on Multi-Sensor Fusion and Fuzzy Logic Estimation Algorithms

Science.gov (United States)

Lai, Y. C.; Chang, C. C.; Tsai, C. M.; Lin, S. Y.; Huang, S. C.

2015-05-01

This paper presents a pedestrian indoor navigation system based on the multi-sensor fusion and fuzzy logic estimation algorithms. The proposed navigation system is a self-contained dead reckoning navigation that means no other outside signal is demanded. In order to achieve the self-contained capability, a portable and wearable inertial measure unit (IMU) has been developed. Its adopted sensors are the low-cost inertial sensors, accelerometer and gyroscope, based on the micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS). There are two types of the IMU modules, handheld and waist-mounted. The low-cost MEMS sensors suffer from various errors due to the results of manufacturing imperfections and other effects. Therefore, a sensor calibration procedure based on the scalar calibration and the least squares methods has been induced in this study to improve the accuracy of the inertial sensors. With the calibrated data acquired from the inertial sensors, the step length and strength of the pedestrian are estimated by multi-sensor fusion and fuzzy logic estimation algorithms. The developed multi-sensor fusion algorithm provides the amount of the walking steps and the strength of each steps in real-time. Consequently, the estimated walking amount and strength per step are taken into the proposed fuzzy logic estimation algorithm to estimates the step lengths of the user. Since the walking length and direction are both the required information of the dead reckoning navigation, the walking direction is calculated by integrating the angular rate acquired by the gyroscope of the developed IMU module. Both the walking length and direction are calculated on the IMU module and transmit to a smartphone with Bluetooth to perform the dead reckoning navigation which is run on a self-developed APP. Due to the error accumulating of dead reckoning navigation, a particle filter and a pre-loaded map of indoor environment have been applied to the APP of the proposed navigation system to extend its