WorldWideScience

Sample records for model real-world situations

  1. Understanding Use Situated in Real-world Mobile Contexts

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Korn, Matthias

    where the activity is happening) by leveraging three keyenablers: (1) the high penetration of smart phones, (2) their easy programmability and (3) the large-scale distribution channels for mobile applications that come with the platforms. My approach suggests a triggered response solicitation, which......  Our understanding of users' everyday practices in their natural contexts is still very limited. Insights are often only available from studies conducted outside of the context itself. I propose a new approach to study use situated in real-world everyday mobile contexts (at the time and place...

  2. Application Exercises Improve Transfer of Statistical Knowledge in Real-World Situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daniel, Frances; Braasch, Jason L. G.

    2013-01-01

    The present research investigated whether real-world application exercises promoted students' abilities to spontaneously transfer statistical knowledge and to recognize the use of statistics in real-world contexts. Over the course of a semester of psychological statistics, two classes completed multiple application exercises designed to mimic…

  3. Using mathematics to solve real world problems: the role of enablers

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Niss, Mogens Allan; Geiger, Vincent; Stillman, Gloria

    2018-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to report on a newly funded research project in which we will investigate how secondary students apply mathematical modelling to effectively address real world situations. Through this study, we will identify factors, mathematical, cognitive, social and environmenta...

  4. Using mathematics to solve real world problems: the role of enablers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Geiger, Vincent; Stillman, Gloria; Brown, Jill; Galbriath, Peter; Niss, Mogens

    2018-03-01

    The purpose of this article is to report on a newly funded research project in which we will investigate how secondary students apply mathematical modelling to effectively address real world situations. Through this study, we will identify factors, mathematical, cognitive, social and environmental that "enable" year 10/11 students to successfully begin the modelling process, that is, formulate and mathematise a real world problem. The 3-year study will take a design research approach in working intensively with six schools across two educational jurisdictions. It is anticipated that this research will generate new theoretical and practical insights into the role of "enablers" within the process of mathematisation, leading to the development of principles for the design and implementation for tasks that support students' development as modellers.

  5. Modeling Interdependent and Periodic Real-World Action Sequences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kurashima, Takeshi; Althoff, Tim; Leskovec, Jure

    2018-01-01

    Mobile health applications, including those that track activities such as exercise, sleep, and diet, are becoming widely used. Accurately predicting human actions in the real world is essential for targeted recommendations that could improve our health and for personalization of these applications. However, making such predictions is extremely difficult due to the complexities of human behavior, which consists of a large number of potential actions that vary over time, depend on each other, and are periodic. Previous work has not jointly modeled these dynamics and has largely focused on item consumption patterns instead of broader types of behaviors such as eating, commuting or exercising. In this work, we develop a novel statistical model, called TIPAS, for Time-varying, Interdependent, and Periodic Action Sequences. Our approach is based on personalized, multivariate temporal point processes that model time-varying action propensities through a mixture of Gaussian intensities. Our model captures short-term and long-term periodic interdependencies between actions through Hawkes process-based self-excitations. We evaluate our approach on two activity logging datasets comprising 12 million real-world actions (e.g., eating, sleep, and exercise) taken by 20 thousand users over 17 months. We demonstrate that our approach allows us to make successful predictions of future user actions and their timing. Specifically, TIPAS improves predictions of actions, and their timing, over existing methods across multiple datasets by up to 156%, and up to 37%, respectively. Performance improvements are particularly large for relatively rare and periodic actions such as walking and biking, improving over baselines by up to 256%. This demonstrates that explicit modeling of dependencies and periodicities in real-world behavior enables successful predictions of future actions, with implications for modeling human behavior, app personalization, and targeting of health interventions. PMID

  6. Towards a conceptual framework for identifying student difficulties with solving Real-World Problems in Physics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Niss, Martin

    2012-01-01

    This paper develops a conceptual framework for identifying the challenges and obstacles university students encounter when solving real-world problems involving Physics. The framework is based on viewing problem solving as a modelling process. In order to solve a real-world problem, the problem...... solver has to go through the steps and do the tasks of such a process. The paper presents a theoretical analysis of what it takes to solve three real-world problems, demonstrating how the framework presented captures the essential aspects of solving them. Moreover, it is argued that three steps critical...... for real-world problem solving – initial analysis of the problem situation, choice of relevant physical theory (the so-called paradigmatic choice) and mathematization – are not covered by existing models of problem solving in Physics. Finally, the existing research on student difficulties with problem...

  7. Real-world outcomes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Holmgreen, Lise-Lotte

    -down model of feeding back research findings to subjects” (Roberts and Sarangi 2003, 340) although, arguably, making results applicable to a real-world context ought to be an essential goal of researcher-practitioner studies. This issue forms the background of the presentation, in which it will be discussed...... how the dissemination of research findings may take place to ensure the creation of real-world outcomes for practitioners (cf. e.g. Nørreklit et al. 1987; Puchta & Potter 2004). The presentation will be centered around the interview study of the discursive constructions of culture in a Danish cross...

  8. The perception of spatial layout in real and virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arthur, E J; Hancock, P A; Chrysler, S T

    1997-01-01

    As human-machine interfaces grow more immersive and graphically-oriented, virtual environment systems become more prominent as the medium for human-machine communication. Often, virtual environments (VE) are built to provide exact metrical representations of existing or proposed physical spaces. However, it is not known how individuals develop representational models of these spaces in which they are immersed and how those models may be distorted with respect to both the virtual and real-world equivalents. To evaluate the process of model development, the present experiment examined participant's ability to reproduce a complex spatial layout of objects having experienced them previously under different viewing conditions. The layout consisted of nine common objects arranged on a flat plane. These objects could be viewed in a free binocular virtual condition, a free binocular real-world condition, and in a static monocular view of the real world. The first two allowed active exploration of the environment while the latter condition allowed the participant only a passive opportunity to observe from a single viewpoint. Viewing conditions were a between-subject variable with 10 participants randomly assigned to each condition. Performance was assessed using mapping accuracy and triadic comparisons of relative inter-object distances. Mapping results showed a significant effect of viewing condition where, interestingly, the static monocular condition was superior to both the active virtual and real binocular conditions. Results for the triadic comparisons showed a significant interaction for gender by viewing condition in which males were more accurate than females. These results suggest that the situation model resulting from interaction with a virtual environment was indistinguishable from interaction with real objects at least within the constraints of the present procedure.

  9. On-Road Validation of a Simplified Model for Estimating Real-World Fuel Economy: Preprint

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wood, Eric; Gonder, Jeff; Jehlik, Forrest

    2017-01-01

    On-road fuel economy is known to vary significantly between individual trips in real-world driving conditions. This work introduces a methodology for rapidly simulating a specific vehicle's fuel economy over the wide range of real-world conditions experienced across the country. On-road test data collected using a highly instrumented vehicle is used to refine and validate this modeling approach. Model accuracy relative to on-road data collection is relevant to the estimation of 'off-cycle credits' that compensate for real-world fuel economy benefits that are not observed during certification testing on a chassis dynamometer.

  10. Properties of four real world collaboration--competition networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fu, Chun-Hua; Xu, Xiu-Lian; He, Da-Ren

    2009-03-01

    Our research group has empirically investigated 9 real world collaboration networks and 25 real world cooperation-competition networks. Among the 34 real world systems, all the 9 real world collaboration networks and 6 real world cooperation-competition networks show the unimodal act-size distribution and the shifted power law distribution of degree and act-degree. We have proposed a collaboration network evolution model for an explanation of the rules [1]. The other 14 real world cooperation-competition networks show that the act-size distributions are not unimodal; instead, they take qualitatively the same shifted power law forms as the degree and act-degree distributions. The properties of four systems (the main land movie film network, Beijing restaurant network, 2004 Olympic network, and Tao-Bao notebook computer sale network) are reported in detail as examples. Via a numerical simulation, we show that the new rule can still be explained by the above-mentioned model. [1] H. Chang, B. B. Su, et al. Phsica A, 2007, 383: 687-702.

  11. Expanding the Reach of Physics-Engaging Students in Interdisciplinary Research Involving complex, real-world situation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bililign, Solomon

    2014-03-01

    Physics plays a very important role in most interdisciplinary efforts and can provide a solid foundation for students. Retention of students in STEM areas can be facilitated by enhanced interdisciplinary education and research since students are strongly attracted to research with societal relevance and show increasing enthusiasm about problems that have practical consequences. One such area of research is a collaborative Earth System Science. The Earth System is dynamic and complex. It is comprised of diverse components that interact. By providing students the opportunities to work in interdisciplinary groups on a problem that reflects a complex, real-world situation they can see the linkages between components of the Earth system that encompass climate and all its components (weather precipitation, temperature, etc.) and technology development and deployment of sensors and sensor networks and social impacts. By involving students in the creation of their own personalized professional development plan, students are more focused and engaged and are more likely to remain in the program.

  12. Semantic guidance of eye movements in real-world scenes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hwang, Alex D; Wang, Hsueh-Cheng; Pomplun, Marc

    2011-05-25

    The perception of objects in our visual world is influenced by not only their low-level visual features such as shape and color, but also their high-level features such as meaning and semantic relations among them. While it has been shown that low-level features in real-world scenes guide eye movements during scene inspection and search, the influence of semantic similarity among scene objects on eye movements in such situations has not been investigated. Here we study guidance of eye movements by semantic similarity among objects during real-world scene inspection and search. By selecting scenes from the LabelMe object-annotated image database and applying latent semantic analysis (LSA) to the object labels, we generated semantic saliency maps of real-world scenes based on the semantic similarity of scene objects to the currently fixated object or the search target. An ROC analysis of these maps as predictors of subjects' gaze transitions between objects during scene inspection revealed a preference for transitions to objects that were semantically similar to the currently inspected one. Furthermore, during the course of a scene search, subjects' eye movements were progressively guided toward objects that were semantically similar to the search target. These findings demonstrate substantial semantic guidance of eye movements in real-world scenes and show its importance for understanding real-world attentional control. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Multiplicative Attribute Graph Model of Real-World Networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kim, Myunghwan [Stanford Univ., CA (United States); Leskovec, Jure [Stanford Univ., CA (United States)

    2010-10-20

    Large scale real-world network data, such as social networks, Internet andWeb graphs, is ubiquitous in a variety of scientific domains. The study of such social and information networks commonly finds patterns and explain their emergence through tractable models. In most networks, especially in social networks, nodes also have a rich set of attributes (e.g., age, gender) associatedwith them. However, most of the existing network models focus only on modeling the network structure while ignoring the features of nodes in the network. Here we present a class of network models that we refer to as the Multiplicative Attribute Graphs (MAG), which naturally captures the interactions between the network structure and node attributes. We consider a model where each node has a vector of categorical features associated with it. The probability of an edge between a pair of nodes then depends on the product of individual attributeattribute similarities. The model yields itself to mathematical analysis as well as fit to real data. We derive thresholds for the connectivity, the emergence of the giant connected component, and show that the model gives rise to graphs with a constant diameter. Moreover, we analyze the degree distribution to show that the model can produce networks with either lognormal or power-law degree distribution depending on certain conditions.

  14. The Real World.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tanner, John Sears

    1981-01-01

    Relates personal experiences about what constitutes the "real world." Shows how experiences from philosophy, history, literature, art, and the movies add meaning to "reality." Stresses a compromise of imagination and sensation to make the real world palatable. (RL)

  15. Situated learning in virtual simulations: Researching the authentic dimension in virtual worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Falconer, L.

    2013-01-01

    This paper describes and discusses a case study of postgraduate students undertaking accident investigation and risk assessment exercises in an online virtual world as part of their course curriculum. These exercises were constructed to overcome the ethical and practical barriers inherent in real-world exercises. In particular this paper focusses upon the potential of such exercises to facilitate the authentic dimension of situated learning and identifies some of the factors that affect the s...

  16. Data Modeling for Mobile Services in the Real World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Christian Søndergaard; Pedersen, Torben Bach; Speicys, L.

    2003-01-01

    Research contributions on data modeling, data structures, query processing, and indexing for mobile services may have an impact in the longer term, but each contribution typically offers an isolated solution to one small part of the practical problem of delivering mobile services in the real world....... In contrast, this paper describes holistic concepts and techniques for mobile data modeling that are readily applicable in practice. Focus is on services to be delivered to mobile users, such as route guidance, point-of-interest search, road pricing, parking payment, traffic monitoring, etc. While geo...

  17. Semantic guidance of eye movements in real-world scenes

    OpenAIRE

    Hwang, Alex D.; Wang, Hsueh-Cheng; Pomplun, Marc

    2011-01-01

    The perception of objects in our visual world is influenced by not only their low-level visual features such as shape and color, but also their high-level features such as meaning and semantic relations among them. While it has been shown that low-level features in real-world scenes guide eye movements during scene inspection and search, the influence of semantic similarity among scene objects on eye movements in such situations has not been investigated. Here we study guidance of eye movemen...

  18. Impact Of Real-World Driving Characteristics On Vehicular Emissions

    OpenAIRE

    Nesamani, K S; Subramanian, K. P.

    2005-01-01

    With increase in traffic volume and change in travel related characteristics, vehicular emissions and energy consumption have increased significantly since two decades in India. Current models are not capable of estimating vehicular emissions accurately due to inadequate representation of real-world driving. The focus of this paper is to understand the level of Indian Driving cycle (IDC) in representing the real-world driving and to assess the impact of real-world driving on vehicular emissio...

  19. Effective pollutant emission heights for atmospheric transport modelling based on real-world information

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pregger, Thomas; Friedrich, Rainer

    2009-01-01

    Emission data needed as input for the operation of atmospheric models should not only be spatially and temporally resolved. Another important feature is the effective emission height which significantly influences modelled concentration values. Unfortunately this information, which is especially relevant for large point sources, is usually not available and simple assumptions are often used in atmospheric models. As a contribution to improve knowledge on emission heights this paper provides typical default values for the driving parameters stack height and flue gas temperature, velocity and flow rate for different industrial sources. The results were derived from an analysis of the probably most comprehensive database of real-world stack information existing in Europe based on German industrial data. A bottom-up calculation of effective emission heights applying equations used for Gaussian dispersion models shows significant differences depending on source and air pollutant and compared to approaches currently used for atmospheric transport modelling. - The comprehensive analysis of real-world stack data provides detailed default parameter values for improving vertical emission distribution in atmospheric modelling

  20. Studying Real-World Perceptual Expertise

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jianhong eShen

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available Significant insights into visual cognition have come from studying real-world perceptual expertise. Many have previously reviewed empirical findings and theoretical developments from this work. Here we instead provide a brief perspective on approaches, considerations, and challenges to studying real-world perceptual expertise. We discuss factors like choosing to use real-world versus artificial object domains of expertise, selecting a target domain of real-world perceptual expertise, recruiting experts, evaluating their level of expertise, and experimentally testing experts in the lab and online. Throughout our perspective, we highlight expert birding (also called birdwatching as an example, as it has been used as a target domain for over two decades in the perceptual expertise literature.

  1. Digital representations of the real world how to capture, model, and render visual reality

    CERN Document Server

    Magnor, Marcus A; Sorkine-Hornung, Olga; Theobalt, Christian

    2015-01-01

    Create Genuine Visual Realism in Computer Graphics Digital Representations of the Real World: How to Capture, Model, and Render Visual Reality explains how to portray visual worlds with a high degree of realism using the latest video acquisition technology, computer graphics methods, and computer vision algorithms. It explores the integration of new capture modalities, reconstruction approaches, and visual perception into the computer graphics pipeline.Understand the Entire Pipeline from Acquisition, Reconstruction, and Modeling to Realistic Rendering and ApplicationsThe book covers sensors fo

  2. Development of database of real-world diesel vehicle emission factors for China.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shen, Xianbao; Yao, Zhiliang; Zhang, Qiang; Wagner, David Vance; Huo, Hong; Zhang, Yingzhi; Zheng, Bo; He, Kebin

    2015-05-01

    A database of real-world diesel vehicle emission factors, based on type and technology, has been developed following tests on more than 300 diesel vehicles in China using a portable emission measurement system. The database provides better understanding of diesel vehicle emissions under actual driving conditions. We found that although new regulations have reduced real-world emission levels of diesel trucks and buses significantly for most pollutants in China, NOx emissions have been inadequately controlled by the current standards, especially for diesel buses, because of bad driving conditions in the real world. We also compared the emission factors in the database with those calculated by emission factor models and used in inventory studies. The emission factors derived from COPERT (Computer Programmer to calculate Emissions from Road Transport) and MOBILE may both underestimate real emission factors, whereas the updated COPERT and PART5 (Highway Vehicle Particulate Emission Modeling Software) models may overestimate emission factors in China. Real-world measurement results and emission factors used in recent emission inventory studies are inconsistent, which has led to inaccurate estimates of emissions from diesel trucks and buses over recent years. This suggests that emission factors derived from European or US-based models will not truly represent real-world emissions in China. Therefore, it is useful and necessary to conduct systematic real-world measurements of vehicle emissions in China in order to obtain the optimum inputs for emission inventory models. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  3. Analyzing Real-World Light Duty Vehicle Efficiency Benefits

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Gonder, Jeffrey; Wood, Eric; Chaney, Larry; Holden, Jacob; Jeffers, Matthew; Wang, Lijuan

    2016-06-08

    Off-cycle technologies represent an important pathway to achieve real-world fuel savings, through which OEMs can potentially receive credit toward CAFE compliance. DOE national labs such as NREL are well positioned to provide objective input on these technologies using large, national data sets in conjunction with OEM- and technology-specific testing. This project demonstrates an approach that combines vehicle testing (dynamometer and on-road) with powertrain modeling and simulation over large, representative datasets to quantify real-world fuel economy. The approach can be applied to specific off-cycle technologies (engine encapsulation, start/stop, connected vehicle, etc.) in A/B comparisons to support calculation of realistic real-world impacts. Future work will focus on testing-based A/B technology comparisons that demonstrate the significance of this approach.

  4. The independent effects of personality and situations on real-time expressions of behavior and emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sherman, Ryne A; Rauthmann, John F; Brown, Nicolas A; Serfass, David G; Jones, Ashley Bell

    2015-11-01

    The joint influence of persons and situations on behavior has long been posited by personality and social psychological theory (Funder, 2006; Lewin, 1951). However, a lack of tools for real-time behavioral and situation assessment has left direct investigations of this sort immobilized. This study combines recent advances in situation assessment and experience sampling methodology to examine the simultaneous effects of personality traits and situation characteristics on real-time expressions of behavior and emotion in N = 210 participants. The results support an additive model such that both personality traits and situation characteristics independently predict real-time expressions of behavior and emotion. These results have implications for several prominent theoretical perspectives in personality, including both trait and cognitive theories. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  5. Hop, Step, Step and Jump : Towards Real-World Complexity @ Delft University of Technology

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pruyt, E.; Slinger, J.H.; Van Daalen, C.; Yucel, G.; Thissen, W.A.H.

    2009-01-01

    This paper deals with System Dynamics education at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. It focuses more specifically on the quadruple jump approach towards dealing with real-world dynamic complexity. The paper starts with an overview of the System Dynamics courses, situated within the

  6. Development of the Real Time Situation Identification Model for Adaptive Service Support in Vehicular Communication Networks Domain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mindaugas Kurmis

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The article discusses analyses and assesses the key proposals how to deal with the situation identification for the heterogeneous service support in vehicular cooperation environment. This is one of the most important topics of the pervasive computing. Without the solution it is impossible to adequately respond to the user's needs and to provide needed services in the right place at the right moment and in the right way. In this work we present our developed real time situation identification model for adaptive service support in vehicular communication networks domain. Our solution is different from the others as it uses additional virtual context information source - information from other vehicles which for our knowledge is not addressed in the past. The simulation results show the promising context exchange rate between vehicles. The other vehicles provided additional context source in our developed model helps to increase situations identification level.

  7. Further support for the role of dysfunctional attitudes in models of real-world functioning in schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Horan, William P; Rassovsky, Yuri; Kern, Robert S; Lee, Junghee; Wynn, Jonathan K; Green, Michael F

    2010-06-01

    According to A.T. Beck and colleagues' cognitive formulation of poor functioning in schizophrenia, maladaptive cognitive appraisals play a key role in the expression and persistence of negative symptoms and associated real-world functioning deficits. They provided initial support for this model by showing that dysfunctional attitudes are elevated in schizophrenia and account for significant variance in negative symptoms and subjective quality of life. The current study used structural equation modeling to further evaluate the contribution of dysfunctional attitudes to outcome in schizophrenia. One hundred eleven outpatients and 67 healthy controls completed a Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale, and patients completed a competence measure of functional capacity, clinical ratings of negative symptoms, and interview-based ratings of real-world functioning. Patients reported higher defeatist performance beliefs than controls and these were significantly related to lower functional capacity, higher negative symptoms, and worse community functioning. Consistent with Beck and colleagues' formulation, modeling analyses indicated a significant indirect pathway from functional capacity-->dysfunctional attitudes-->negative symptoms-->real-world functioning. These findings support the value of dysfunctional attitudes for understanding the determinants of outcome in schizophrenia and suggest that therapeutic interventions targeting these attitudes may facilitate functional recovery. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Real-time emergency forecasting technique for situation management systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kopytov, V. V.; Kharechkin, P. V.; Naumenko, V. V.; Tretyak, R. S.; Tebueva, F. B.

    2018-05-01

    The article describes the real-time emergency forecasting technique that allows increasing accuracy and reliability of forecasting results of any emergency computational model applied for decision making in situation management systems. Computational models are improved by the Improved Brown’s method applying fractal dimension to forecast short time series data being received from sensors and control systems. Reliability of emergency forecasting results is ensured by the invalid sensed data filtering according to the methods of correlation analysis.

  9. 3D printed simulation models based on real patient situations for hands-on practice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kröger, E; Dekiff, M; Dirksen, D

    2017-11-01

    During the last few years, the curriculum of many dentistry schools in Germany has been reorganised. Two key aspects of the applied changes are the integration of up-to-date teaching methods and the promotion of interdisciplinarity. To support these efforts, an approach to fabricating individualised simulation models for hands-on courses employing 3D printing is presented. The models are based on real patients, thus providing students a more realistic preparation for real clinical situations. As a wide variety of dental procedures can be implemented, the simulation models can also contribute to a more interdisciplinary dental education. The data used for the construction of the models were acquired by 3D surface scanning. The data were further processed with 3D modelling software. Afterwards, the models were fabricated by 3D printing with the PolyJet technique. Three models serve as examples: a prosthodontic model for training veneer preparation, a conservative model for practicing dental bonding and an interdisciplinary model featuring carious teeth and an insufficient crown. The third model was evaluated in a hands-on course with 22 fourth-year dental students. The students answered a questionnaire and gave their personal opinion. Whilst the concept of the model received very positive feedback, some aspects of the implementation were criticised. We discuss these observations and suggest ways for further improvement. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  10. Unified underpinning of human mobility in the real world and cyberspace

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Yi-Ming; Zeng, An; Yan, Xiao-Yong; Wang, Wen-Xu; Lai, Ying-Cheng

    2016-05-01

    Human movements in the real world and in cyberspace affect not only dynamical processes such as epidemic spreading and information diffusion but also social and economical activities such as urban planning and personalized recommendation in online shopping. Despite recent efforts in characterizing and modeling human behaviors in both the real and cyber worlds, the fundamental dynamics underlying human mobility have not been well understood. We develop a minimal, memory-based random walk model in limited space for reproducing, with a single parameter, the key statistical behaviors characterizing human movements in both cases. The model is validated using relatively big data from mobile phone and online commerce, suggesting memory-based random walk dynamics as the unified underpinning for human mobility, regardless of whether it occurs in the real world or in cyberspace.

  11. Rapid world modeling

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Little, Charles; Jensen, Ken

    2002-01-01

    Sandia National Laboratories has designed and developed systems capable of large-scale, three-dimensional mapping of unstructured environments in near real time. This mapping technique is called rapid world modeling and has proven invaluable when used by prototype systems consisting of sensory detection devices mounted on mobile platforms. These systems can be deployed into previously unmapped environments and transmit real-time 3-D visual images to operators located remotely. This paper covers a brief history of the rapid world modeling system, its implementation on mobile platforms, and the current state of the technology. Applications to the nuclear power industry are discussed. (author)

  12. Evaluation of human fitness for duty in a real working situation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Skof, M.M.

    1994-01-01

    According to the results of root causes analyzes in the complex highly atomized systems almost 80% of reported events and scrams are due to the human error or malfunction. Nowadays scrams are mostly consequences of human mistakes. Human mistakes are according to the results of root cause analyses consequences of unfitness or inability to perform demanded task. Most of the workers in the system have adequate psychophysiological abilities and basic knowledge. So their performance in a real working situation depends on their fitness for duty or actual availability. Actual availability and consequently human performance depends on: Human abilities (basic human traits); human knowledge (knowledge received in education process and in special training); human motivation (willingness to take part in the activity). Actual availability is the interference of abilities, knowledge and motivation in the real situation and it shapes human performance. Workers are able to self estimate their fitness for duty. On these estimations modelling of human performance in a real situation is possible. By the level of human performance system's performance should be predicted. We have developed questionnaire VTP for self estimations of well-being, mood, fatigue, arousal level, stress and motivation. At the same time data indicating human performance have been collected. Indicators of human performance have been the results on dual task and effectiveness in primary task. Connections between human fitness for duty and human performance have been modelled. Developed model explain the impacts of particular factors of fitness for duty on systems performance. (author). 5 refs, 1 tab

  13. Numerical simulation of real-world flows

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hayase, Toshiyuki, E-mail: hayase@ifs.tohoku.ac.jp [Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8577 (Japan)

    2015-10-15

    Obtaining real flow information is important in various fields, but is a difficult issue because measurement data are usually limited in time and space, and computational results usually do not represent the exact state of real flows. Problems inherent in the realization of numerical simulation of real-world flows include the difficulty in representing exact initial and boundary conditions and the difficulty in representing unstable flow characteristics. This article reviews studies dealing with these problems. First, an overview of basic flow measurement methodologies and measurement data interpolation/approximation techniques is presented. Then, studies on methods of integrating numerical simulation and measurement, namely, four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4D-Var), Kalman filters (KFs), state observers, etc are discussed. The first problem is properly solved by these integration methodologies. The second problem can be partially solved with 4D-Var in which only initial and boundary conditions are control parameters. If an appropriate control parameter capable of modifying the dynamical structure of the model is included in the formulation of 4D-Var, unstable modes are properly suppressed and the second problem is solved. The state observer and KFs also solve the second problem by modifying mathematical models to stabilize the unstable modes of the original dynamical system by applying feedback signals. These integration methodologies are now applied in simulation of real-world flows in a wide variety of research fields. Examples are presented for basic fluid dynamics and applications in meteorology, aerospace, medicine, etc. (topical review)

  14. Can We Model Driver Perceptions? An In-Situ Experiment in Real-World Conditions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aly M. Tawfik, PhD

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available It is clear that perceptions play a significant role in traveler decisions. Consequently, traveler perceptions are a corner stone in the feasibility of traveler information systems; for traveler information systems are only valuable if the drivers are incapable of accurately acquiring the provided information on their own, and if the provided information is relevant for the drivers' decision criteria. Accuracy of traveler perceptions has been repeatedly researched in public transportation, and has been found to vary according to different reasons. However, in spite of the clear significance of traveler perceptions, minimal effort has been put into modeling it. Almost all travel behavior models are based on traveler experiences, which are assumed to reflect traveler perceptions via the addition of some random error component. This works introduces an alternative approach: instead of adding an error component to represent driver perceptions, it proposes to model driver perceptions. This work is based on a real-world route choice experiment of a sample of 20 drivers who made more than 2,000 real-world route choices. Each of the drivers' experiences, perceptions, and choices were recorded, analyzed and cross examined. The paper demonstrates that: i driver experiences are different from driver perceptions, ii driver perceptions explain driver choices better than driver experiences, iii it is possible to model and predict driver perceptions of travel distance, time and speed.

  15. Teaching Basic Science Content via Real-World Applications: A College-Level Summer Course in Veterinary Anatomy and Physiology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maza, Paul; Miller, Allison; Carson, Brian; Hermanson, John

    2018-01-01

    Learning and retaining science content may be increased by applying the basic science material to real-world situations. Discussing cases with students during lectures and having them participate in laboratory exercises where they apply the science content to practical situations increases students' interest and enthusiasm. A summer course in…

  16. Experiences in Automation and Control in Engineering Education with Real-world Based Educational Kits

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Filomena SOARES

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available The well-known paradigm learning by doing is particularly important in engineering courses. Still, in some situations, there is a lack of real-world didactic workbenches due to the absence of financial support, human resources or maintenances restrictions. The authors of this paper have been overcome this difficulty by designing and implementing virtual and remote laboratories in Process Monitoring, Control and Automation teaching applied to Mechanical, Electronics and Biomedical Engineering. The goal of this paper is to present the work developed regarding the real-world workbenches to be used in automation and control practical classes as an integrated virtual and remote laboratory. Some important points include the modelling and control of Discrete Event Systems, Continuous Systems and Real-Time Systems as well as Industrial Control Networks. The physical parts were developed and connected, in a closed-loop configuration, with the respective controllers. The developed kits and systems were geared towards the engineering students’ needs. This integrated approach is very useful for providing students with a global set of skills in this domain. Quantitative and qualitative studies are continuously applied not only for obtaining students feedback but also to gather information to devise strategies for future virtual and remote laboratory applications development suitable for the target public. The positive results achieved so far are very encouraging attesting its efficiency not only in terms of students’ learning but also as a first contact to face real-world problems. The less positive identified point is concerned with technical aspects.

  17. [Real world instantaneous emission simulation for light-duty diesel vehicle].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Cheng; Chen, Chang-Hong; Dai, Pu; Li, Li; Huang, Hai-Ying; Cheng, Zhen; Jia, Ji-Hong

    2008-10-01

    Core architecture and input parameters of CMEM model were introduced to simulation the second by second vehicle emission rate on real world by taking a light-duty diesel car as a case. On-board test data by a portable emission measurement system were then used to validate the simulation results. Test emission factors of CO, THC, NO(x) and CO2 were respectively 0.81, 0.61, 2.09, and 193 g x km(-1), while calculated emission factors were 0.75, 0.47, 2.47, and 212 g x km(-1). The correlation coefficients reached 0.69, 0.69, 0.75, and 0.72. Simulated instantaneous emissions of the light duty diesel vehicle by CMEM model were strongly coherent with the transient driving cycle. By analysis, CO, THC, NO(x), and CO2 emissions would be reduced by 50%, 47%, 45%, and 44% after improving the traffic situation at the intersection. The result indicated that it is necessary and feasible to simulate the instantaneous emissions of mixed vehicle fleet in some typical traffic areas by the micro-scale vehicle emission model.

  18. Informing Architecture and Urban Modeling with Real-world Data on 3D Tangible Interfaces and Augmented Displays

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Banke, Tore; Salim, Flora; Jaworski, Przemyslaw

    2011-01-01

    The proliferation of online and digital data in our world yields unprecedented opportunities for connecting physical and digital parametric models with live data input and feedback. Tangible interfaces and augmented displays provide theatrical settings for designers to visualize real-world data a...... detection, and multi-touch techniques, multidimensional tangible interfaces and augmented displays presented in this paper demonstrate a powerful new approach for designing and interacting with physical models, materials, and environmental data....

  19. Reflections on "Real-World" Community Psychology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wolff, Tom; Swift, Carolyn

    2008-01-01

    Reflections on the history of real-world (applied) community psychologists trace their participation in the field's official guild, the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA), beginning with the Swampscott Conference in 1965 through the current date. Four benchmarks are examined. The issues these real-world psychologists bring to the…

  20. Fairer machine learning in the real world: Mitigating discrimination without collecting sensitive data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michael Veale

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Decisions based on algorithmic, machine learning models can be unfair, reproducing biases in historical data used to train them. While computational techniques are emerging to address aspects of these concerns through communities such as discrimination-aware data mining (DADM and fairness, accountability and transparency machine learning (FATML, their practical implementation faces real-world challenges. For legal, institutional or commercial reasons, organisations might not hold the data on sensitive attributes such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality or disability needed to diagnose and mitigate emergent indirect discrimination-by-proxy, such as redlining. Such organisations might also lack the knowledge and capacity to identify and manage fairness issues that are emergent properties of complex sociotechnical systems. This paper presents and discusses three potential approaches to deal with such knowledge and information deficits in the context of fairer machine learning. Trusted third parties could selectively store data necessary for performing discrimination discovery and incorporating fairness constraints into model-building in a privacy-preserving manner. Collaborative online platforms would allow diverse organisations to record, share and access contextual and experiential knowledge to promote fairness in machine learning systems. Finally, unsupervised learning and pedagogically interpretable algorithms might allow fairness hypotheses to be built for further selective testing and exploration. Real-world fairness challenges in machine learning are not abstract, constrained optimisation problems, but are institutionally and contextually grounded. Computational fairness tools are useful, but must be researched and developed in and with the messy contexts that will shape their deployment, rather than just for imagined situations. Not doing so risks real, near-term algorithmic harm.

  1. Fuel consumption rates of passenger cars in China: Labels versus real-world

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Huo Hong; Yao Zhiliang; He Kebin; Yu Xin

    2011-01-01

    Recently, China has implemented many policy measures to control the oil demand of on-road vehicles. In 2010, China started to report the fuel consumption rates of light-duty vehicles tested in laboratory and to require new vehicles to show the rates on window labels. In this study, we examined the differences between the test and real-world fuel consumption of Chinese passenger cars by using the data reported by real-world drivers on the internet voluntarily. The sales-weighted average fuel consumption of new cars in China in 2009 was 7.80 L/100 km in laboratory and 9.02 L/100 km in real-world, representing a difference of 15.5%. For the 153 individual car models examined, the real-world fuel consumption rates were -8 to 60% different from the test values. The simulation results of the International Vehicle Emission model show that the real-world driving cycles in 22 selected Chinese cities could result in -8 to 34% of changes in fuel consumption compared to the laboratory driving cycle. Further government effort on fuel consumption estimates adjustment, local driving cycle development, and real-world data accumulation through communication with the public is needed to improve the accuracy of the labeling policy. - Research highlights: → China requires new cars sold to show the test fuel use levels on window labels. → Real-world fuel consumption rates of cars are 15.5% higher than the label values. → Discrepancy between the test cycle and real conditions is a major cause for the gap. → China should adjust the estimates, collect fuel use data, and develop driving cycles. → More official and academic efforts are needed to improve the labeling policy.

  2. Autonomous social gaze model for an interactive virtual character in real-life settings

    OpenAIRE

    Yumak, Zerrin; van den Brink, Bram; Egges, Arjan

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents a gaze behavior model for an interactive virtual character situated in the real world. We are interested in estimating which user has an intention to interact, in other words which user is engaged with the virtual character. The model takes into account behavioral cues such as proximity, velocity, posture and sound, estimates an engagement score and drives the gaze behavior of the virtual character. Initially, we assign equal weights to these fea...

  3. PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF THE WORLD FOOD SITUATION

    OpenAIRE

    Gebremedhin, Tesfa G.

    2000-01-01

    Although world food and agricultural production, based on current trends, will be sufficient to meet demand in the decades ahead, the world still faces a serious food crisis, at least as perilous and life-threatening for millions of poor people as those of the past. To this end, the main objective of this paper is to illuminate the world food situation and to provide a critical analysis of the core causes of world food insecurity by identifying the various misconceptions surrounding our under...

  4. VACCINES AND IMMUNIZATION: WORLD SITUATION

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    G.H. Brundtland

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available The last issue of the report «vaccines and immunization: world situation» stresses considerable success in immunization at the global level since the mid 90 s — completely total eradication of poliomyelitis across the world, as well as the drastic reduction of the new measles and tetanus cases among mothers and newborns in some poor countries. The report also briefly describes the progress in the development and implementation of the new life saving vaccines, which may save millions of lives annually. The authors have explained some of the reasons, why the global community should invest in immunization, as well as the perspectives for the use of vaccines and immunization in future.Key words: vaccine, immunization, children.

  5. The Design of an Instructional Model Based on Connectivism and Constructivism to Create Innovation in Real World Experience

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jirasatjanukul, Kanokrat; Jeerungsuwan, Namon

    2018-01-01

    The objectives of the research were to (1) design an instructional model based on Connectivism and Constructivism to create innovation in real world experience, (2) assess the model designed--the designed instructional model. The research involved 2 stages: (1) the instructional model design and (2) the instructional model rating. The sample…

  6. Pattern theory the stochastic analysis of real-world signals

    CERN Document Server

    Mumford, David

    2010-01-01

    Pattern theory is a distinctive approach to the analysis of all forms of real-world signals. At its core is the design of a large variety of probabilistic models whose samples reproduce the look and feel of the real signals, their patterns, and their variability. Bayesian statistical inference then allows you to apply these models in the analysis of new signals. This book treats the mathematical tools, the models themselves, and the computational algorithms for applying statistics to analyze six representative classes of signals of increasing complexity. The book covers patterns in text, sound

  7. Real World Connections in High School Mathematics Curriculum and Teaching

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gökhan Karakoç

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Making real world connections in mathematics curricula and in teaching mathematics is generally viewed favorably within the educational community, however, little empirical research has examined how and why to use real world connections in mathematics education based on the views of experts. This study describes the feasibility of the use of real world connections according to high school mathematics teachers and academicians of mathematics education. Opinions of high school mathematics teachers (n=16 and academicians (n=8 about advantages, disadvantages, and examples of real world connections are elicited and reported. Teachers and academicians report several advantages of the use of real world connections in teaching mathematics as well as its disadvantages and limitations. Suggestions about dealing with limiting factors for using real world connections are also reported. Keywords: Mathematics curriculum, real world connections, mathematics teaching

  8. Learning from Dealing with Real World Problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Akcay, Hakan

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to provide an example of using real world issues as tools for science teaching and learning. Using real world issues provides students with experiences in learning in problem-based environments and encourages them to apply their content knowledge to solving current and local problems.

  9. Bringing real-world problems into the classroom

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Enserink, B.; De Haan, A.R.C.; Hermans, L.M.

    2012-01-01

    Real world problems are a challenge and a motivator for students to learn understanding and using the concepts of systems and actors. But using real world problems in the classroom is not without challenges and dilemmas. In the paper we explicitly address the issue of the need for quite intense

  10. Comparison and Extension of Existing 3D Propagation Models with Real-World Effects Based on Ray-tracing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kifle, Dereje W.; Gimenez, Lucas Chavarria; Wegmann, Bernhard

    2014-01-01

    antenna beam orientation like antenna tilting or when users are distributed in the third dimension (height) in multi-floor scenarios. Ray tracing based generated propagation maps that show the realistic propagation effect are used as 3D real world reference for investigation and model approval....

  11. Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Probabilistic Graphical Model with Multiple Feature Fusion for Binary Facial Attribute Classification in Real-World Face Videos.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demirkus, Meltem; Precup, Doina; Clark, James J; Arbel, Tal

    2016-06-01

    Recent literature shows that facial attributes, i.e., contextual facial information, can be beneficial for improving the performance of real-world applications, such as face verification, face recognition, and image search. Examples of face attributes include gender, skin color, facial hair, etc. How to robustly obtain these facial attributes (traits) is still an open problem, especially in the presence of the challenges of real-world environments: non-uniform illumination conditions, arbitrary occlusions, motion blur and background clutter. What makes this problem even more difficult is the enormous variability presented by the same subject, due to arbitrary face scales, head poses, and facial expressions. In this paper, we focus on the problem of facial trait classification in real-world face videos. We have developed a fully automatic hierarchical and probabilistic framework that models the collective set of frame class distributions and feature spatial information over a video sequence. The experiments are conducted on a large real-world face video database that we have collected, labelled and made publicly available. The proposed method is flexible enough to be applied to any facial classification problem. Experiments on a large, real-world video database McGillFaces [1] of 18,000 video frames reveal that the proposed framework outperforms alternative approaches, by up to 16.96 and 10.13%, for the facial attributes of gender and facial hair, respectively.

  12. Alice in the Real World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Parker, Tom

    2012-01-01

    As a fifth-grade mathematics teacher, the author tries to create authentic problem-solving activities that connect to the world in which his students live. He discovered a natural connection to his students' real world at a computer camp. A friend introduced him to Alice, a computer application developed at Carnegie Mellon, under the leadership of…

  13. Real world evidence (RWE - Are we (RWE ready?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Viraj Ramesh Suvarna

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Real world evidence is important as it complements data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs. Both have limitations in design, interpretation, and extrapolatability. It is imperative one designs real world studies in the right way, else it can be misleading. An RCT is always considered higher in the evidence ladder and when there is discordance between a real world study and an RCT, it is the latter which is always considered pristine because of the way it is conducted, e.g., randomization, prospective, double-blind, etc. A real world study can also be done prospectively, and propensity score matching can be used to construct comparable cohorts but may not be able to account for certain biases or confounding factors the way an RCT can do. Nevertheless, comparative effectiveness research in the real world is being resorted to, especially for efficiency studies or pharmacoeconomic analyses, and with the advent of machine learning, the electronic healthcare database mining can result in algorithms that help doctors identify clinical characteristics that correlate with optimal response of a patient to a drug/regimen, thus helping him/her select the right patient for the right drug.

  14. Effective pollutant emission heights for atmospheric transport modelling based on real-world information.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pregger, Thomas; Friedrich, Rainer

    2009-02-01

    Emission data needed as input for the operation of atmospheric models should not only be spatially and temporally resolved. Another important feature is the effective emission height which significantly influences modelled concentration values. Unfortunately this information, which is especially relevant for large point sources, is usually not available and simple assumptions are often used in atmospheric models. As a contribution to improve knowledge on emission heights this paper provides typical default values for the driving parameters stack height and flue gas temperature, velocity and flow rate for different industrial sources. The results were derived from an analysis of the probably most comprehensive database of real-world stack information existing in Europe based on German industrial data. A bottom-up calculation of effective emission heights applying equations used for Gaussian dispersion models shows significant differences depending on source and air pollutant and compared to approaches currently used for atmospheric transport modelling.

  15. From laboratory to road: Modeling the divergence between official and real-world fuel consumption and CO_2 emission values in the German passenger car market for the years 2001–2014

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tietge, Uwe; Mock, Peter; Franco, Vicente; Zacharof, Nikiforos

    2017-01-01

    Official fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO_2) emission values of European passenger cars are widely recognized to be unrepresentative of real-world driving. The divergence between official and real-world values undermines national vehicle taxation schemes and EU-wide CO_2 standards for passenger cars, particularly since the divergence increases with new model generations. This study examines real-world fuel consumption data from more than 130,000 vehicles to investigate the development of the divergence. The analysis validates and refines a regression model developed by , which estimates real-world fuel consumption of cars based on readily available vehicle characteristics, namely official fuel consumption values, vehicle mass, and engine capacity. The regression model yielded coefficients of determination of 0.87 or higher, but was found to underestimate fuel consumption of newer vehicles and company cars. This study proposes to add vehicle build year as a regressor to account for the increasing divergence between official and real-world fuel consumption figures. - Highlights: • Real-world fuel consumption of new cars in Germany is 36% higher than official values. • The divergence between official and real-world fuel consumption has grown over time. • A simple regression accounts for ≥87% of the variance in real-world fuel consumption values. • Vehicle age must be included in the model to account for the growing divergence.

  16. Tracking the reading eye: towards a model of real-world reading

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Jarodzka, Halszka; Brand-Gruwel, Saskia

    2018-01-01

    Eye tracking has helped to understand the process of reading a word or a sentence, and this research has been very fruitful over the past decades. However, everyday real-world reading dramatically differs from this scenario: we read a newspaper on the bus, surf the Internet for movie reviews or

  17. Real-world driving behaviour

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rijkeboer, R.C.; Hendriksen, P.; Gense, N.L.J.

    2001-01-01

    With increasing complexity of engine management system there is a tendency for traditional driving cyles to become further and further removed from reality. So for a sensible evaluation of emissions and fuel consumption of road vehicles in the field there is an urgent need for 'real-world' driving

  18. Real-World Evidence, Public Participation, and the FDA.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwartz, Jason L

    2017-11-01

    For observers of pharmaceutical regulation and the Food and Drug Administration, these are uncertain times. Events in late 2016 raised concerns that the FDA's evidentiary standards were being weakened, compromising the agency's ability to adequately perform its regulatory and public health responsibilities. Two developments most directly contributed to these fears-the approval of eteplirsen, a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, against the recommendations of both FDA staff and an advisory committee and the December 2016 signing of the 21st Century Cures Act, which encouraged greater use by the FDA of "real-world" evidence not obtained through randomized controlled trials. The arrival of the Trump administration-with its deregulatory, industry-friendly approach-has only amplified concerns over the future of the FDA. It is too early to know whether the recent developments are truly harbingers of an FDA less likely to prevent unsafe or ineffective products from reaching the market. But elements in the two events-the role of patient narratives in deliberations regarding eteplirsen and the enthusiasm for real-world evidence in the 21st Century Cures Act-raise critical issues for the future of evidence in the FDA's work. The rigorous, inclusive approach under way to consider issues related to real-world evidence provides a model for a similarly needed inquiry regarding public participation in FDA decision-making. © 2017 The Hastings Center.

  19. Comparison between Euro NCAP test results and real-world crash data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kullgren, Anders; Lie, Anders; Tingvall, Claes

    2010-12-01

    The objective of this study was 2-fold: first, to compare Euro NCAP safety ratings of cars with those published by the Folksam real-world injury ratings; and second, to compare injury risk measures between Euro NCAP 2 and 5 Star cars with real-world injury and disability outcomes using police and insurance injury data. Car models were grouped according to the Euro NCAP star rating scores. Folksam risk of injury ratings come from statistical analysis of real-world crashes using police and insurance databases. The paired comparison method using 2-car crashes was used to control for crash speed and the mass differences between cars of different weights were normalized. For all comparisons, 5-star rated Euro NCAP cars were found to have a lower risk of injury compared to 2-star rated cars (5-star cars were 10% ± 2.5% lower risk than 2-star cars). For fatal and serious injuries, the difference was 23 ± 8 percent, and for fatal injuries alone the difference was 68 ± 32 percent. By comparison, the Folksam 5-star rated cars had a relative risk of 0.020 ± 0.0024, whereas 2-star rated car risk was 0.028 ± 0.0016, corresponding to a 27 percent difference in risk between 5- and 2-star cars. Good correlation was found between Euro NCAP test results and real-world injury outcomes. The largest difference in injury risk between 2- and 5-star rated cars in Euro NCAP was found for risk of fatality, confirming that car manufacturers have focused their safety performance on serious crash outcomes. In addition, Euro NCAP crash tests were shown to be highly correlated with serious crash performance, confirming their relevance for evaluating real-world crash performance. Good concordance was found between Euro NCAP and Folksam real-world crash and injury ratings.

  20. The realism project reconciling nuclear power and radiation policies with the real world

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Theodore Rockwell

    2006-01-01

    Let's get real. It is crazy to fear that one's health and life are threatened by entities known to be harmless, whether those entities are goblins under the bed or trivial levels of radiation from non-existent radiological catastrophes. The nuclear community is in that paranoid state, and no advice from public relations experts can cure it. Some people claim that overstating risk is a prudent thing to do, but in practice it may do harm. Let us recall what we have said and done to create this situation. Then let us look at what the real world tells us about those risks. And then we will consider what might be done to return to reason. (author)

  1. Augmented Virtuality: A Real-time Process for Presenting Real-world Visual Sensory Information in an Immersive Virtual Environment for Planetary Exploration

    Science.gov (United States)

    McFadden, D.; Tavakkoli, A.; Regenbrecht, J.; Wilson, B.

    2017-12-01

    Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications have recently seen an impressive growth, thanks to the advent of commercial Head Mounted Displays (HMDs). This new visualization era has opened the possibility of presenting researchers from multiple disciplines with data visualization techniques not possible via traditional 2D screens. In a purely VR environment researchers are presented with the visual data in a virtual environment, whereas in a purely AR application, a piece of virtual object is projected into the real world with which researchers could interact. There are several limitations to the purely VR or AR application when taken within the context of remote planetary exploration. For example, in a purely VR environment, contents of the planet surface (e.g. rocks, terrain, or other features) should be created off-line from a multitude of images using image processing techniques to generate 3D mesh data that will populate the virtual surface of the planet. This process usually takes a tremendous amount of computational resources and cannot be delivered in real-time. As an alternative, video frames may be superimposed on the virtual environment to save processing time. However, such rendered video frames will lack 3D visual information -i.e. depth information. In this paper, we present a technique to utilize a remotely situated robot's stereoscopic cameras to provide a live visual feed from the real world into the virtual environment in which planetary scientists are immersed. Moreover, the proposed technique will blend the virtual environment with the real world in such a way as to preserve both the depth and visual information from the real world while allowing for the sensation of immersion when the entire sequence is viewed via an HMD such as Oculus Rift. The figure shows the virtual environment with an overlay of the real-world stereoscopic video being presented in real-time into the virtual environment. Notice the preservation of the object

  2. Rapid world modelling for robotics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Littile, C.Q.; Wilson, C.W.

    1996-01-01

    The ability to use an interactive world model, whether it is for robotics simulation or most other virtual graphical environments, relies on the users ability to create an accurate world model. Typically this is a tedious process, requiring many hours to create 3-D CAD models of the surfaces within a workspace. The goal of this ongoing project is to develop usable methods to rapidly build world models of real world workspaces. This brings structure to an unstructured environment and allows graphical based robotics control to be accomplished in a reasonable time frame when traditional CAD modelling is not enough. To accomplish this, 3D range sensors are deployed to capture surface data within the workspace. This data is then transformed into surface maps, or models. A 3D world model of the workspace is built quickly and accurately, without ever having to put people in the environment

  3. Real-world scenarios help improve selection of radiology employees.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kline, C L; Groff, K; Phillips, M

    1998-01-01

    Choosing the right candidate through the interview process is critical, particularly in light of rapidly changing skills in various technologies. The authors have changed the interviewing process at Jeanes Hospital in Philadelphia in order to examine and evaluate multiple objectives simultaneously. To do this, they created an instrument that elicits impromptu responses to real-world radiology situations. Such responses help assess a potential candidate's training, emotional strength, technical experience and growth potential. They also determine how much additional training the potential candidate will need to be effective in the department. Using the instrument helps sharpen the assessment of candidate traits such as face-to-face communication skills and response time. The impact on hiring is positive. Quality staff, improved patient care and improved patient safety are only some of the results. Many of the questions included on the instrument come from past problem situations and help the interviewers to determine whether a candidate understands underlying issues and the seriousness of situations. The goal is to ensure that patient care and productivity are not hampered by unusual situations. When a concrete difference is detected between a candidate's response and the department's needs, it is possible to assess the cost-effectiveness of training for the discrepancy. For entry-level candidates, the question is whether the person is trainable. Consistently using this interview document forces hiring managers to identify specific abilities, traits and experience desirable in the workplace.

  4. A local-world evolving hypernetwork model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yang Guang-Yong; Liu Jian-Guo

    2014-01-01

    Complex hypernetworks are ubiquitous in the real system. It is very important to investigate the evolution mechanisms. In this paper, we present a local-world evolving hypernetwork model by taking into account the hyperedge growth and local-world hyperedge preferential attachment mechanisms. At each time step, a newly added hyperedge encircles a new coming node and a number of nodes from a randomly selected local world. The number of the selected nodes from the local world obeys the uniform distribution and its mean value is m. The analytical and simulation results show that the hyperdegree approximately obeys the power-law form and the exponent of hyperdegree distribution is γ = 2 + 1/m. Furthermore, we numerically investigate the node degree, hyperedge degree, clustering coefficient, as well as the average distance, and find that the hypernetwork model shares the scale-free and small-world properties, which shed some light for deeply understanding the evolution mechanism of the real systems. (interdisciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology)

  5. A Dynamic Speech Comprehension Test for Assessing Real-World Listening Ability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Best, Virginia; Keidser, Gitte; Freeston, Katrina; Buchholz, Jörg M

    2016-07-01

    Many listeners with hearing loss report particular difficulties with multitalker communication situations, but these difficulties are not well predicted using current clinical and laboratory assessment tools. The overall aim of this work is to create new speech tests that capture key aspects of multitalker communication situations and ultimately provide better predictions of real-world communication abilities and the effect of hearing aids. A test of ongoing speech comprehension introduced previously was extended to include naturalistic conversations between multiple talkers as targets, and a reverberant background environment containing competing conversations. In this article, we describe the development of this test and present a validation study. Thirty listeners with normal hearing participated in this study. Speech comprehension was measured for one-, two-, and three-talker passages at three different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), and working memory ability was measured using the reading span test. Analyses were conducted to examine passage equivalence, learning effects, and test-retest reliability, and to characterize the effects of number of talkers and SNR. Although we observed differences in difficulty across passages, it was possible to group the passages into four equivalent sets. Using this grouping, we achieved good test-retest reliability and observed no significant learning effects. Comprehension performance was sensitive to the SNR but did not decrease as the number of talkers increased. Individual performance showed associations with age and reading span score. This new dynamic speech comprehension test appears to be valid and suitable for experimental purposes. Further work will explore its utility as a tool for predicting real-world communication ability and hearing aid benefit. American Academy of Audiology.

  6. The Real (Porn) World: The Politics and Aesthetics of the New Reality Porn

    OpenAIRE

    Moorman, Jennifer

    2007-01-01

    It may at first seem perfectly selfevident that a porn filmmaker would want to borrow from the conventions of reality TV. Cinematic pornography has, as Linda Williams suggests, concerned itself with proving its own authenticity since its inception.1 And reality TV attempts to depict “the real world,” right? In fact, generally speaking, it doesn’t. A closer look at reality TV reveals its patently “false settings [and] contrived situations,” and we should not make the mistake of assuming that i...

  7. Rendezvous with IQ: Metacognition in Real-Life Situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al-Hilawani, Yasser A.

    2018-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between metacognition as measured in real-life situations and IQ scores as reflected by performance on the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices Scale. It is also intended in this study to report on whether or not there were significant differences in performance on the metacognitive…

  8. Resources and needs: assessment of the world water situation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    1977-01-01

    The global water situation is assessed. Movement and distribution of water in the hydrologic cycle is described. Methods of appraising surface water, precipitation, evapotranspiration, groundwater, and water quality are reviewed. The reliability of such appraisals depends greatly on the adequacy of national water observation networks. Global water supplies and quality of lakes, reservoirs, and groundwater are estimated. The effects of runoff, climate, and human activities on supplies are briefly discussed. The use and demand of water for domestic, industrial, agricultural, hydroelectric, transportation, and recreational needs are assessed. Methods of projecting water demand and quality are reviewed. Demand and supply relationships for various regions of the world are presented. Socioeconomic, financial, technical, administrative, legal, and environmental considerations of these relationships are examined. By using available technology and institutional devices, the world water situation can be improved. (1 diagram, 3 graphs, 8 tables)

  9. EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON DIFFICULTY OF EVACUATION FROM UNDERGROUND SPACES UNDER INUNDATED SITUATIONS USING REAL SCALE MODELS

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baba, Yasuyuki; Ishigaki, Taisuke; Toda, Keiichi; Nakagawa, Hajime

    Many urbanized cities in Japan are located in alluvial plains, and the vulnerability of urbanized areas to flood disaster is highlighted by flood attacks due to heavy rain fall or typhoons. Underground spaces located in the urbanized area are flood-prone areas, and the intrusion of flood watar into underground space inflicted severe damages on urban functions and infrastructures. In a similar way, low-lying areas like "bowl-shaped" depression and underpasses under highway and railroad bridges are also prone to floods. The underpasses are common sites of accidents of submerged vehicles, and severe damage including human damage occasionally occurs under flooding conditions. To reduce the damage due to inundation in underground space, needless to say, early evacuation is one of the most important countermeasures. This paper shows some experimental results of evacuation tests from underground spaces under inundated situations. The difficulities of the evacuation from underground space has been investigated by using real scale models (door, staircase and vehicle), and the limit for safety evacuation is discussed. From the results, it is found that water depth of 0.3 - 0.4m would be a critical situation for the evacuation from underground space through staircases and door and that 0.7 - 0.8m deep on the ground would be also a critical situation for safety evacuation though the doors of the vehicle. These criteria have some possibility to vary according to different inundated situations, and they are also influenced by the individual variation like the difference of physical strength. This means that these criteria requires cautious stance to use although they show a sort of an index of the limitation for saftty evacuation from underground space.

  10. Simulated Real-World Energy Impacts of a Thermally Sensitive Powertrain Considering Viscous Losses and Enrichment: Preprint

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wood, E.; Gonder, J.; Lopp, S.; Jehlik, F.

    2015-02-01

    It is widely understood that cold ambient temperatures increase vehicle fuel consumption due to heat transfer losses, increased friction (increased viscosity lubricants), and enrichment strategies (accelerated catalyst heating). However, relatively little effort has been dedicated to thoroughly quantifying these impacts across a large set of real world drive cycle data and ambient conditions. This work leverages experimental dynamometer vehicle data collected under various drive cycles and ambient conditions to develop a simplified modeling framework for quantifying thermal effects on vehicle energy consumption. These models are applied over a wide array of real-world usage profiles and typical meteorological data to develop estimates of in-use fuel economy. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this integrated testing/modeling approach may be applied to quantify real-world, off-cycle fuel economy benefits of various technologies.

  11. The situation of nuclear power in the world

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1995-03-01

    This report presents a world panorama of nuclear power for electricity generation purposes. The economic aspects, the fuel cycle market, the reactor technology development, as well as environmental aspects are presented. This report is updated annually and the present issue covers the situation up to December 1993. (F.E.). 196 refs, 23 figs, 28 tabs

  12. An abnormal situation modeling method to assist operators in safety-critical systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Naderpour, Mohsen; Lu, Jie; Zhang, Guangquan

    2015-01-01

    One of the main causes of accidents in safety-critical systems is human error. In order to reduce human errors in the process of handling abnormal situations that are highly complex and mentally taxing activities, operators need to be supported, from a cognitive perspective, in order to reduce their workload, stress, and the consequent error rate. Of the various cognitive activities, a correct understanding of the situation, i.e. situation awareness (SA), is a crucial factor in improving performance and reducing errors. Despite the importance of SA in decision-making in time- and safety-critical situations, the difficulty of SA modeling and assessment means that very few methods have as yet been developed. This study confronts this challenge, and develops an innovative abnormal situation modeling (ASM) method that exploits the capabilities of risk indicators, Bayesian networks and fuzzy logic systems. The risk indicators are used to identify abnormal situations, Bayesian networks are utilized to model them and a fuzzy logic system is developed to assess them. The ASM method can be used in the development of situation assessment decision support systems that underlie the achievement of SA. The performance of the ASM method is tested through a real case study at a chemical plant. - Highlights: • Bayesian networks are applied to represent operators’ mental models when confront with abnormal situations. • A fuzzy logic system is used to resemble operators’ generating assessment results for every abnormal situation. • A virtual plant user interface and a prototype based on proposed method are developed to simulate a real case

  13. Mathematics in the Real World.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Borenstein, Matt

    1997-01-01

    The abstract nature of algebra causes difficulties for many students. Describes "Real-World Data," an algebra course designed for students with low grades in algebra and provides multidisciplinary experiments (linear functions and variations; quadratic, square-root, and inverse relations; and exponential and periodic variation)…

  14. Microinverter Thermal Performance in the Real-World: Measurements and Modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hossain, Mohammad Akram; Xu, Yifan; Peshek, Timothy J.; Ji, Liang; Abramson, Alexis R.; French, Roger H.

    2015-01-01

    Real-world performance, durability and reliability of microinverters are critical concerns for microinverter-equipped photovoltaic systems. We conducted a data-driven study of the thermal performance of 24 new microinverters (Enphase M215) connected to 8 different brands of PV modules on dual-axis trackers at the Solar Durability and Lifetime Extension (SDLE) SunFarm at Case Western Reserve University, based on minute by minute power and thermal data from the microinverters and PV modules along with insolation and environmental data from July through October 2013. The analysis shows the strengths of the associations of microinverter temperature with ambient temperature, PV module temperature, irradiance and AC power of the PV systems. The importance of the covariates are rank ordered. A multiple regression model was developed and tested based on stable solar noon-time data, which gives both an overall function that predicts the temperature of microinverters under typical local conditions, and coefficients adjustments reecting refined prediction of the microinverter temperature connected to the 8 brands of PV modules in the study. The model allows for prediction of internal temperature for the Enphase M215 given similar climatic condition and can be expanded to predict microinverter temperature in fixed-rack and roof-top PV systems. This study is foundational in that similar models built on later stage data in the life of a device could reveal potential influencing factors in performance degradation. PMID:26147339

  15. Understanding the Value of Real-World Evidence

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Camm, A John; Coleman, Craig I; Larsen, Torben Bjerregaard

    2018-01-01

    importance, there may be challenges in understanding the relevance of the differing study designs, endpoints and populations. Here, we summarize the value of real-world evidence and considerations pertinent to their use in clinical research. Owing to the variety of analyses being conducted using real...

  16. Disruption in neural phase synchrony is related to identification of inattentional deafness in real-world setting

    OpenAIRE

    Callan , Daniel E.; Gateau , Thibault; Durantin , Gautier; Gonthier , Nicolas; Dehais , Frédéric

    2018-01-01

    International audience; Individuals often have reduced ability to hear alarms in real world situations (e.g., anesthesia monitoring, flying airplanes) when attention is focused on another task, sometimes with devastating consequences. This phenomenon is called inattentional deafness and usually occurs under critical high workload conditions. It is difficult to simulate the critical nature of these tasks in the laboratory. In this study, dry electroencephalography is used to investigate inatte...

  17. Expansion of the Real-Time SPoRT-Land Information System for NOAA/National Weather Service Situational Awareness and Local Modeling Applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Case, Jonathan L; White, Kristopher D.

    2014-01-01

    The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center in Huntsville, AL is running a real-time configuration of the Noah land surface model (LSM) within the NASA Land Information System (LIS) framework (hereafter referred to as the "SPoRT-LIS"). Output from the real-time SPoRT-LIS is used for (1) initializing land surface variables for local modeling applications, and (2) displaying in decision support systems for situational awareness and drought monitoring at select NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS) partner offices. The experimental CONUS run incorporates hourly quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) from the National Severe Storms Laboratory Multi- Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) which will be transitioned into operations at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in Fall 2014.This paper describes the current and experimental SPoRT-LIS configurations, and documents some of the limitations still remaining through the advent of MRMS precipitation analyses in the SPoRT-LIS land surface model (LSM) simulations.

  18. The real meaning of complex Minkowski-space world-lines

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Adamo, T M [University of Oxford, Mathematical Institute, 24-29 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LB (United Kingdom); Newman, E T, E-mail: newman@pitt.ed [University of Pittsburgh, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (United States)

    2010-04-07

    In connection with the study of shear-free null geodesics in Minkowski space, we investigate the real geometric effects in real Minkowski space that are induced by and associated with complex world-lines in complex Minkowski space. It was already known, in a formal manner, that complex analytic curves in complex Minkowski space induce shear-free null geodesic congruences. Here we look at the direct geometric connections of the complex line and the real structures. Among other items, we show, in particular, how a complex world-line projects into the real Minkowski space in the form of a real shear-free null geodesic congruence.

  19. The real meaning of complex Minkowski-space world-lines

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Adamo, T M; Newman, E T

    2010-01-01

    In connection with the study of shear-free null geodesics in Minkowski space, we investigate the real geometric effects in real Minkowski space that are induced by and associated with complex world-lines in complex Minkowski space. It was already known, in a formal manner, that complex analytic curves in complex Minkowski space induce shear-free null geodesic congruences. Here we look at the direct geometric connections of the complex line and the real structures. Among other items, we show, in particular, how a complex world-line projects into the real Minkowski space in the form of a real shear-free null geodesic congruence.

  20. Applying Cognitive Fusion to Space Situational Awareness

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ingram, S.; Shaw, M.; Chan, M.

    With recent increases in capability and frequency of rocket launches from countries across the world, maintaining a state-of-the-art Space Situational Awareness model is all the more necessary. We propose a fusion of real-time, natural language processing capability provided by IBM cognitive services with ground-based sensor data of positions and trajectories of satellites in all earth orbits. We believe such insight provided by cognitive services could help determine context to missile launches, help predict when a satellite of interest could be in danger, either by accident or by intent, and could alert interested parties to the perceived threat. We seek to implement an improved Space Situational Awareness model by developing a dynamic factor graph model informed by the fusion of ground-based ”structured” sensor data with ”unstructured” data from the public domain, such as news articles, blogs, and social media, in real time. To this end, we employ IBM’s Cognitive services, specifically, Watson Discovery. Watson Discovery allows real-time natural language processing of text including entity extraction, keyword search, taxonomy classification, concept tagging, relation extraction, sentiment analysis, and emotion analysis. We present various scenarios that demonstrate the utility of this new Space Situational Awareness model, each of which combine past structured information with related open source data. We demonstrate that should the model come to estimate a satellite is ”of interest”, it will indicate it as so, based on the most pertinent data, such as a reading from a sensor or by information available online. We present and discuss the most recent iterations of the model for satellites currently available on Space-Track.org.

  1. Cellphones and Real-World Communication

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bugeja, Michael

    2004-01-01

    In this article, the author shares his views on cellphones and real-world communication. He claims that the cellphone has changed society more than the home computer, which it has assimilated. Cellphones sound during worship, wakes, births, graduations, hearings, trials, and accreditation meetings--interrupting life-changing spiritual or secular…

  2. 3D Interactions between Virtual Worlds and Real Life in an E-Learning Community

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ulrike Lucke

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Virtual worlds became an appealing and fascinating component of today's internet. In particular, the number of educational providers that see a potential for E-Learning in such new platforms increases. Unfortunately, most of the environments and processes implemented up to now do not exceed a virtual modelling of real-world scenarios. In particular, this paper shows that Second Life can be more than just another learning platform. A flexible and bidirectional link between the reality and the virtual world enables synchronous and seamless interaction between users and devices across both worlds. The primary advantages of this interconnection are a spatial extension of face-to-face and online learning scenarios and a closer relationship between virtual learners and the real world.

  3. The Geometric Construction Abilities Of Gifted Students In Solving Real - World Problems: A Case From Turkey

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Avni YILDIZ

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Geometric constructions have already been of interest to mathematicians. However, studies on geometric construction are not adequate in the relevant literature. Moreover, these studies generally focus on how secondary school gifted students solve non-routine mathematical problems. The present study aims to examine the geometric construction abilities of ninth-grade (15 years old gifted students in solving real-world geometry problems; thus a case study was conducted. Six gifted students participated in the study. The data consisted of voice records, solutions, and models made by the students on the GeoGebra screen. Results indicate that gifted students use their previous knowledge effectively during the process of geometric construction. They modeled the situations available in the problems through using mathematical concepts and the software in coordination. Therefore, it is evident that gifted students think more creatively while solving problems using GeoGebra.

  4. Variants of Evolutionary Algorithms for Real-World Applications

    CERN Document Server

    Weise, Thomas; Michalewicz, Zbigniew

    2012-01-01

    Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are population-based, stochastic search algorithms that mimic natural evolution. Due to their ability to find excellent solutions for conventionally hard and dynamic problems within acceptable time, EAs have attracted interest from many researchers and practitioners in recent years. This book “Variants of Evolutionary Algorithms for Real-World Applications” aims to promote the practitioner’s view on EAs by providing a comprehensive discussion of how EAs can be adapted to the requirements of various applications in the real-world domains. It comprises 14 chapters, including an introductory chapter re-visiting the fundamental question of what an EA is and other chapters addressing a range of real-world problems such as production process planning, inventory system and supply chain network optimisation, task-based jobs assignment, planning for CNC-based work piece construction, mechanical/ship design tasks that involve runtime-intense simulations, data mining for the predictio...

  5. RTMOD: Real-Time MODel evaluation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Graziani, G; Galmarini, S.; Mikkelsen, T.

    2000-01-01

    The 1998 - 1999 RTMOD project is a system based on an automated statistical evaluation for the inter-comparison of real-time forecasts produced by long-range atmospheric dispersion models for national nuclear emergency predictions of cross-boundary consequences. The background of RTMOD was the 1994 ETEX project that involved about 50 models run in several Institutes around the world to simulate two real tracer releases involving a large part of the European territory. In the preliminary phase of ETEX, three dry runs (i.e. simulations in real-time of fictitious releases) were carried out. At that time, the World Wide Web was not available to all the exercise participants, and plume predictions were therefore submitted to JRC-Ispra by fax and regular mail for subsequent processing. The rapid development of the World Wide Web in the second half of the nineties, together with the experience gained during the ETEX exercises suggested the development of this project. RTMOD featured a web-based user-friendly interface for data submission and an interactive program module for displaying, intercomparison and analysis of the forecasts. RTMOD has focussed on model intercomparison of concentration predictions at the nodes of a regular grid with 0.5 degrees of resolution both in latitude and in longitude, the domain grid extending from 5W to 40E and 40N to 65N. Hypothetical releases were notified around the world to the 28 model forecasters via the web on a one-day warning in advance. They then accessed the RTMOD web page for detailed information on the actual release, and as soon as possible they then uploaded their predictions to the RTMOD server and could soon after start their inter-comparison analysis with other modelers. When additional forecast data arrived, already existing statistical results would be recalculated to include the influence by all available predictions. The new web-based RTMOD concept has proven useful as a practical decision-making tool for realtime

  6. Uncertainty in the Real World

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    Home; Journals; Resonance – Journal of Science Education; Volume 4; Issue 2. Uncertainty in the Real World - Fuzzy Sets. Satish Kumar. General Article Volume 4 Issue 2 February 1999 pp 37-47. Fulltext. Click here to view fulltext PDF. Permanent link: https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/reso/004/02/0037-0047 ...

  7. Parameterizing unresolved obstacles with source terms in wave modeling: A real-world application

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mentaschi, Lorenzo; Kakoulaki, Georgia; Vousdoukas, Michalis; Voukouvalas, Evangelos; Feyen, Luc; Besio, Giovanni

    2018-06-01

    Parameterizing the dissipative effects of small, unresolved coastal features, is fundamental to improve the skills of wave models. The established technique to deal with this problem consists in reducing the amount of energy advected within the propagation scheme, and is currently available only for regular grids. To find a more general approach, Mentaschi et al., 2015b formulated a technique based on source terms, and validated it on synthetic case studies. This technique separates the parameterization of the unresolved features from the energy advection, and can therefore be applied to any numerical scheme and to any type of mesh. Here we developed an open-source library for the estimation of the transparency coefficients needed by this approach, from bathymetric data and for any type of mesh. The spectral wave model WAVEWATCH III was used to show that in a real-world domain, such as the Caribbean Sea, the proposed approach has skills comparable and sometimes better than the established propagation-based technique.

  8. A situation-response model for intelligent pilot aiding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schudy, Robert; Corker, Kevin

    1987-01-01

    An intelligent pilot aiding system needs models of the pilot information processing to provide the computational basis for successful cooperation between the pilot and the aiding system. By combining artificial intelligence concepts with the human information processing model of Rasmussen, an abstraction hierarchy of states of knowledge, processing functions, and shortcuts are developed, which is useful for characterizing the information processing both of the pilot and of the aiding system. This approach is used in the conceptual design of a real time intelligent aiding system for flight crews of transport aircraft. One promising result was the tentative identification of a particular class of information processing shortcuts, from situation characterizations to appropriate responses, as the most important reliable pathway for dealing with complex time critical situations.

  9. Suitability of Synthetic Driving Profiles from Traffic Micro-Simulation for Real-World Energy Analysis: Preprint

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hou, Yunfei; Wood, Eric; Burton, Evan; Gonder, Jeffrey

    2015-10-14

    A shift towards increased levels of driving automation is generally expected to result in improved safety and traffic congestion outcomes. However, little empirical data exists to estimate the impact that automated driving could have on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In the absence of empirical data on differences between drive cycles from present day vehicles (primarily operated by humans) and future vehicles (partially or fully operated by computers) one approach is to model both situations over identical traffic conditions. Such an exercise requires traffic micro-simulation to not only accurately model vehicle operation under high levels of automation, but also (and potentially more challenging) vehicle operation under present day human drivers. This work seeks to quantify the ability of a commercial traffic micro-simulation program to accurately model real-world drive cycles in vehicles operated primarily by humans in terms of driving speed, acceleration, and simulated fuel economy. Synthetic profiles from models of freeway and arterial facilities near Atlanta, Georgia, are compared to empirical data collected from real-world drivers on the same facilities. Empirical and synthetic drive cycles are then simulated in a powertrain efficiency model to enable comparison on the basis of fuel economy. Synthetic profiles from traffic micro-simulation were found to exhibit low levels of transient behavior relative to the empirical data. Even with these differences, the synthetic and empirical data in this study agree well in terms of driving speed and simulated fuel economy. The differences in transient behavior between simulated and empirical data suggest that larger stochastic contributions in traffic micro-simulation (relative to those present in the traffic micro-simulation tool used in this study) are required to fully capture the arbitrary elements of human driving. Interestingly, the lack of stochastic contributions from models of human drivers

  10. A System for Automatic Detection of Partially Occluded Objects from Real-World Images

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Neskovic, Predrag; Wu, Liang; Cooper, Leon N

    2006-01-01

    In this work we consider the Bayesian Integrate And Shift (BIAS) model for learning object categories and test its performance on learning and recognizing different object categories from real-world images...

  11. You Do Not Talk about Fight Club if You Do Not Notice Fight Club: Inattentional Blindness for a Simulated Real-World Assault

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christopher F Chabris

    2011-02-01

    Full Text Available Inattentional blindness—the failure to see visible and otherwise salient events when one is paying attention to something else—has been proposed as an explanation for various real-world events. In one such event, a Boston police officer chasing a suspect ran past a brutal assault and was prosecuted for perjury when he claimed not to have seen it. However, there have been no experimental studies of inattentional blindness in real-world conditions. We simulated the Boston incident by having subjects run after a confederate along a route near which three other confederates staged a fight. At night only 35% of subjects noticed the fight; during the day 56% noticed. We manipulated the attentional load on the subjects and found that increasing the load significantly decreased noticing. These results provide evidence that inattentional blindness can occur during real-world situations, including the Boston case.

  12. You do not talk about Fight Club if you do not notice Fight Club: Inattentional blindness for a simulated real-world assault.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chabris, Christopher F; Weinberger, Adam; Fontaine, Matthew; Simons, Daniel J

    2011-01-01

    Inattentional blindness-the failure to see visible and otherwise salient events when one is paying attention to something else-has been proposed as an explanation for various real-world events. In one such event, a Boston police officer chasing a suspect ran past a brutal assault and was prosecuted for perjury when he claimed not to have seen it. However, there have been no experimental studies of inattentional blindness in real-world conditions. We simulated the Boston incident by having subjects run after a confederate along a route near which three other confederates staged a fight. At night only 35% of subjects noticed the fight; during the day 56% noticed. We manipulated the attentional load on the subjects and found that increasing the load significantly decreased noticing. These results provide evidence that inattentional blindness can occur during real-world situations, including the Boston case.

  13. [Discussion on solutions to ethical issues of clinical researches in a real world].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Si-Cheng; Liu, Bao-Yan; Xiong, Ning-Ning; Xie, Qi; Zhang, Run-Shun; Zhou, Xue-Zhong; Qiao, Jie

    2013-04-01

    The paradigm of a real world study has become the frontiers of clinical researches, especially in the field of Chinese medicine, all over the world in recent years. In this paper, ethical issues which probably exist in real-world studies are raised and reviewed. Moreover, some preliminary solutions to these issues such as protecting subjects during the process of real-world studies and performing ethical review are raised based on recent years' practices to enhance the scientificity and ethical level of real-world studies.

  14. StoryTrek: Experiencing Stories in the Real World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Khaled, Rilla; Barr, Pippin James; Greenspan, Brian

    2011-01-01

    world experience. In early tests we observed the emergence of a number of recurrent themes in participants’ experiences which are characteristic of the StoryTrek system, but which also help us to understand locative media storytelling affordances more generally. In this paper we present the system......In this paper we introduce StoryTrek, a locative hypernarrative system developed to generate stories based on a reader’s location and specific movements in the real world. This creates, for readers, an interplay between navigation, narrative, and agency, as well as between the fictional and real...

  15. StoryTrek: Experiencing Stories in the Real World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Khaled, Rilla; Barr, Pippin James; Greenspan, Brian

    2011-01-01

    In this paper we introduce StoryTrek, a locative hypernarrative system developed to generate stories based on a reader’s location and specific movements in the real world. This creates, for readers, an interplay between navigation, narrative, and agency, as well as between the fictional and real...... world experience. In early tests we observed the emergence of a number of recurrent themes in participants’ experiences which are characteristic of the StoryTrek system, but which also help us to understand locative media storytelling affordances more generally. In this paper we present the system...

  16. Managing Uncertainty in the Real World

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    Home; Journals; Resonance – Journal of Science Education; Volume 4; Issue 4. Managing Uncertainty in the Real World - Fuzzy Systems. Satish Kumar. General Article ... Author Affiliations. Satish Kumar1. Department of Physics and Computer Science, Dayalbagh Educational Institute Dayalbagh, Agra 282005, India.

  17. Real change in the real world: an achievable goal.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Friedman, Robert M

    2010-03-01

    This commentary builds on the papers presented at the Vanderbilt Conference by emphasizing the importance of better understanding the process of change-making if real change in the real world is to be achieved. The commentary reviews several frameworks and research findings related to achieving large-scale sustainable change that benefits children and families. It calls for the application of systems thinking as a complement to the more micro-level research that was presented at the Vanderbilt conference. Such an approach would have implications for framing of the issue, for the strategies that are taken to try to achieve change, and for research/evaluation methods for studying complex, dynamic, nonlinear systems.

  18. LabVIEW A Developer's Guide to Real World Integration

    CERN Document Server

    Fairweather, Ian

    2011-01-01

    LabVIEW(t) has become one of the preeminent platforms for the development of data acquisition and data analysis programs. LabVIEW(t): A Developer's Guide to Real World Integration explains how to integrate LabVIEW into real-life applications. Written by experienced LabVIEW developers and engineers, the book describes how LabVIEW has been pivotal in solving real-world challenges. Each chapter is self-contained and demonstrates the power and simplicity of LabVIEW in various applications, from image processing to solar tracking systems. Many of the chapters explore how exciting new technologies c

  19. Designing design exercises – from theory to creativity and real-world use

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Kotze, P

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses a framework for design exercises for interaction design and HCI based on two theoretical frameworks and a set of knowledge transformers. The model scope design exercises on a continuum ranging from creativity to real-world use...

  20. Probabilistic Elastic Part Model: A Pose-Invariant Representation for Real-World Face Verification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Haoxiang; Hua, Gang

    2018-04-01

    Pose variation remains to be a major challenge for real-world face recognition. We approach this problem through a probabilistic elastic part model. We extract local descriptors (e.g., LBP or SIFT) from densely sampled multi-scale image patches. By augmenting each descriptor with its location, a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is trained to capture the spatial-appearance distribution of the face parts of all face images in the training corpus, namely the probabilistic elastic part (PEP) model. Each mixture component of the GMM is confined to be a spherical Gaussian to balance the influence of the appearance and the location terms, which naturally defines a part. Given one or multiple face images of the same subject, the PEP-model builds its PEP representation by sequentially concatenating descriptors identified by each Gaussian component in a maximum likelihood sense. We further propose a joint Bayesian adaptation algorithm to adapt the universally trained GMM to better model the pose variations between the target pair of faces/face tracks, which consistently improves face verification accuracy. Our experiments show that we achieve state-of-the-art face verification accuracy with the proposed representations on the Labeled Face in the Wild (LFW) dataset, the YouTube video face database, and the CMU MultiPIE dataset.

  1. Multi-robot team design for real-world applications

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Parker, L.E.

    1996-10-01

    Many of these applications are in dynamic environments requiring capabilities distributed in functionality, space, or time, and therefore often require teams of robots to work together. While much research has been done in recent years, current robotics technology is still far from achieving many of the real world applications. Two primary reasons for this technology gap are that (1) previous work has not adequately addressed the issues of fault tolerance and adaptivity in multi-robot teams, and (2) existing robotics research is often geared at specific applications and is not easily generalized to different, but related, applications. This paper addresses these issues by first describing the design issues of key importance in these real-world cooperative robotics applications: fault tolerance, reliability, adaptivity, and coherence. We then present a general architecture addressing these design issues (called ALLIANCE) that facilities multi-robot cooperation of small- to medium-sized teams in dynamic environments, performing missions composed of loosely coupled subtasks. We illustrate an implementation of ALLIANCE in a real-world application, called Bounding Overwatch, and then discuss how this architecture addresses our key design issues.

  2. A Dynamic Optimization Method of Indoor Fire Evacuation Route Based on Real-time Situation Awareness

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    DING Yulin

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available How to provide safe and effective evacuation routes is an important safeguard to correctly guide evacuation and reduce the casualties during the fire situation rapidly evolving in complex indoor environment. The traditional static path finding method is difficult to adjust the path adaptively according to the changing fire situation, which lead to the evacuation decision-making blindness and hysteresis. This paper proposes a dynamic method which can dynamically optimize the indoor evacuation routes based on the real-time situation awareness. According to the real-time perception of fire situation parameters and the changing indoor environment information, the evacuation route is optimized dynamically. The integrated representation of multisource indoor fire monitoring sensor observations oriented fire emergency evacuation is presented at first, real-time fire threat situation information inside building is then extracted from the observation data of multi-source sensors, which is used to constrain the dynamical optimization of the topology of the evacuation route. Finally, the simulation experiments prove that this method can improve the accuracy and efficiency of indoor evacuation routing.

  3. One in the Dance: Musical Correlates of Group Synchrony in a Real-World Club Environment.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Melissa Ellamil

    Full Text Available Previous research on interpersonal synchrony has mainly investigated small groups in isolated laboratory settings, which may not fully reflect the complex and dynamic interactions of real-life social situations. The present study expands on this by examining group synchrony across a large number of individuals in a naturalistic environment. Smartphone acceleration measures were recorded from participants during a music set in a dance club and assessed to identify how group movement synchrony covaried with various features of the music. In an evaluation of different preprocessing and analysis methods, giving more weight to front-back movement provided the most sensitive and reliable measure of group synchrony. During the club music set, group synchrony of torso movement was most strongly associated with pulsations that approximate walking rhythm (100-150 beats per minute. Songs with higher real-world play counts were also correlated with greater group synchrony. Group synchrony thus appears to be constrained by familiarity of the movement (walking action and rhythm and of the music (song popularity. These findings from a real-world, large-scale social and musical setting can guide the development of methods for capturing and examining collective experiences in the laboratory and for effectively linking them to synchrony across people in daily life.

  4. One in the Dance: Musical Correlates of Group Synchrony in a Real-World Club Environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ellamil, Melissa; Berson, Joshua; Wong, Jen; Buckley, Louis; Margulies, Daniel S

    2016-01-01

    Previous research on interpersonal synchrony has mainly investigated small groups in isolated laboratory settings, which may not fully reflect the complex and dynamic interactions of real-life social situations. The present study expands on this by examining group synchrony across a large number of individuals in a naturalistic environment. Smartphone acceleration measures were recorded from participants during a music set in a dance club and assessed to identify how group movement synchrony covaried with various features of the music. In an evaluation of different preprocessing and analysis methods, giving more weight to front-back movement provided the most sensitive and reliable measure of group synchrony. During the club music set, group synchrony of torso movement was most strongly associated with pulsations that approximate walking rhythm (100-150 beats per minute). Songs with higher real-world play counts were also correlated with greater group synchrony. Group synchrony thus appears to be constrained by familiarity of the movement (walking action and rhythm) and of the music (song popularity). These findings from a real-world, large-scale social and musical setting can guide the development of methods for capturing and examining collective experiences in the laboratory and for effectively linking them to synchrony across people in daily life.

  5. Study of emissions and fuel economy for parallel hybrid versus conventional vehicles on real world and standard driving cycles

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ahmed Al-Samari

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Parallel hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs increasing rapidly in the automobile markets. However, the benefits out of using this kind of vehicles are still concerned a lot of costumers. This work investigated the expected benefits (such as decreasing emissions and increasing fuel economy from using the parallel HEV in comparison to the conventional vehicle model of the real-world and standard driving cycles. The software Autonomie used in this study to simulate the parallel HEV and conventional models on these driving cycles.The results show that the fuel economy (FE can be improved significantly up to 68% on real-world driving cycle, which is represented mostly city activities. However, the FE improvement was limited (10% on the highway driving cycle, and this is expected since the using of brake system was infrequent. Moreover, the emissions from parallel HEV decreased about 40% on the real-world driving cycle, and decreased 11% on the highway driving cycle. Finally, the engine efficiency, improved about 12% on the real-world driving cycle, and about 7% on highway driving cycle. Keywords: Emissions, Hybrid electric vehicles, Fuel economy, Real-world driving cycle

  6. A Human Sensor Network Framework in Support of Near Real Time Situational Geophysical Modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aulov, O.; Price, A.; Smith, J. A.; Halem, M.

    2013-12-01

    The area of Disaster Management is well established among Federal Agencies such as FEMA, EPA, NOAA and NASA. These agencies have well formulated frameworks for response and mitigation based on near real time satellite and conventional observing networks for assimilation into geophysical models. Forecasts from these models are used to communicate with emergency responders and the general public. More recently, agencies have started using social media to broadcast warnings and alerts to potentially affected communities. In this presentation, we demonstrate the added benefits of mining and assimilating the vast amounts of social media data available from heterogeneous hand held devices and social networks into established operational geophysical modeling frameworks as they apply to the five cornerstones of disaster management - Prevention, Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery. Often, in situations of extreme events, social media provide the earliest notification of adverse extreme events. However, various forms of social media data also can provide useful geolocated and time stamped in situ observations, complementary to directly sensed conventional observations. We use the concept of a Human Sensor Network where one views social media users as carrying field deployed "sensors" whose posts are the remotely "sensed instrument measurements.' These measurements can act as 'station data' providing the resolution and coverage needed for extreme event specific modeling and validation. Here, we explore the use of social media through the use of a Human Sensor Network (HSN) approach as another data input source for assimilation into geophysical models. Employing the HSN paradigm can provide useful feedback in near real-time, but presents software challenges for rapid access, quality filtering and transforming massive social media data into formats consistent with the operational models. As a use case scenario, we demonstrate the value of HSN for disaster management

  7. A Comprehensive Review of Low-Speed Rear Impact Volunteer Studies and a Comparison to Real-World Outcomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cormier, Joseph; Gwin, Lisa; Reinhart, Lars; Wood, Rawson; Bain, Charles

    2018-02-27

    This study combined all prior research involving human volunteers in low-speed rear-end impacts and performed a comparative analysis of real-world crashes using the National Automotive Sampling System - Crashworthiness Data System. The aim of this study was to assess the rates of neck pain between volunteer and real-world collisions as well as the likelihood of an injury beyond symptoms as a function of impact severity and occupant characteristics in real-world collisions. A total of 51 human volunteer studies were identified that produced a dataset of 1984 volunteer impacts along with a separate dataset of 515,601 weighted occupants in real-world rear impacts. Operating-characteristic curves were created to assess the utility of the volunteer dataset in making predictions regarding the overall population. Change in speed or delta-V was used to model the likelihood of reporting symptoms in both real-world and volunteer exposures and more severe injuries using real-world data. Logistic regression models were created for the volunteer data and survey techniques were used to analyze the weighted sampling scheme with the National Automotive Sampling System database. Symptom reporting rates were not different between males and females and were nearly identical between laboratory and real-world exposures. The minimal risk of injury predicted by real-world exposure is consistent with the statistical power of the large number of volunteer studies without any injury beyond the reporting of neck pain. This study shows that volunteer studies do not under-report symptoms and are sufficient in number to conclude that the risk of injury beyond neck strain under similar conditions is essentially zero. The real-world injury analyses demonstrate that rear impacts do not produce meaningful risks of cervical injury at impacts of similar and greater severity to those of the volunteer research. Future work concerning the mechanism of whiplash-related trauma should focus on impacts of

  8. A comprehensive multi-local-world model for complex networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fan Zhengping; Chen Guanrong; Zhang Yunong

    2009-01-01

    The nodes in a community within a network are much more connected to each other than to the others outside the community in the same network. This phenomenon has been commonly observed from many real-world networks, ranging from social to biological even to technical networks. Meanwhile, the number of communities in some real-world networks, such as the Internet and most social networks, are evolving with time. To model this kind of networks, the present Letter proposes a multi-local-world (MLW) model to capture and describe their essential topological properties. Based on the mean-field theory, the degree distribution of this model is obtained analytically, showing that the generated network has a novel topological feature as being not completely random nor completely scale-free but behaving somewhere between them. As a typical application, the MLW model is applied to characterize the Internet against some other models such as the BA, GBA, Fitness and HOT models, demonstrating the superiority of the new model.

  9. Symbolic Victimization and Real World Fear.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morgan, Michael

    1983-01-01

    Examines the relationship between victimization of characters in television drama and susceptibility to the viewers' cultivation of a sense of personal risk in the real world. Found that viewers whose fictional counterparts are more likely to be shown as victims show stronger associations between viewing and perceived vulnerability. (PD)

  10. The world at 7:00 : Comparing the experience of situations across 20 countries

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Guillaume, Esther; Baranski, Erica; Todd, Elysia; Bastian, Brock; Bronin, Igor; Ivanova, Christina; Cheng, Joey T.; de Kock, Francois S.; Denissen, J. J.A.; Gallardo-Pujol, David; Halama, Peter; Han, Gyuseog Q.; Bae, Jaechang; Moon, Jungsoon; Hong, Ryan Y.; Hrebickova, Martina; Graf, Sylvie; Izdebski, Pawel; Lundmann, Lars; Penke, Lars; Perugini, Marco; Costantini, Giulio; Rauthmann, John; Ziegler, Matthias; Realo, Anu; Elme, Liisalotte; Sato, Tatsuya; Kawamoto, Shizuka; Szarota, Piotr; Tracy, Jessica L.; van Aken, Marcel A. G.; Yang, Yu; Funder, David C.

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q-sort

  11. Sunitinib in mRCC: A systematic review of UK Real World Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David Andrew Montgomery

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available BackgroundReal world data are increasingly used to inform drug reimbursement decisions, but it is unclear how well outcomes from real world studies compare to those of clinical trials. This systematic review seeks to compare outcomes for sunitinib in routine UK clinical practice with the sunitinib registrational and expanded access program clinical trials. MethodSystematic review of the real world published literature was undertaken. UK observational studies recording first or second line sunitinib efficacy were included. A qualitative summary of the results and comparison to the controlled clinical trials was conducted. 15 real world studies were included, 14 of which were only available as posters/presentations. ResultsReal world study reporting quality was generally low, making comparisons with the clinical trials difficult. Practice relating to starting dose, dose modification, timing of therapy initiation and other factors varied between centres. Median progression free survival and adverse events were generally comparable to the clinical trial outcomes, but overall survival was not. ConclusionsThere are few published data on sunitinib use in UK clinical practice. Studies are characterised by lack of peer reviewed publication and heterogeneity in design, reporting and analysis. For use of real world data in the reimbursement setting, data collection and reporting will need to improve.

  12. Multitasking capacities in persons diagnosed with schizophrenia: a preliminary examination of their neurocognitive underpinnings and ability to predict real world functioning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laloyaux, Julien; Van der Linden, Martial; Levaux, Marie-Noëlle; Mourad, Haitham; Pirri, Anthony; Bertrand, Hervé; Domken, Marc-André; Adam, Stéphane; Larøi, Frank

    2014-07-30

    Difficulties in everyday life activities are core features of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia and in particular during multitasking activities. However, at present, patients׳ multitasking capacities have not been adequately examined in the literature due to the absence of suitable assessment strategies. We thus recently developed a computerized real-life activity task designed to take into account the complex and multitasking nature of certain everyday life activities where participants are required to prepare a room for a meeting. Twenty-one individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and 20 matched healthy controls completed the computerized task. Patients were also evaluated with a cognitive battery, measures of symptomatology and real world functioning. To examine the ecological validity, 14 other patients were recruited and were given the computerized version and a real version of the meeting preparation task. Results showed that performance on the computerized task was significantly correlated with executive functioning, pointing to the major implication of these cognitive processes in multitasking situations. Performance on the computerized task also significantly predicted up to 50% of real world functioning. Moreover, the computerized task demonstrated good ecological validity. These findings suggest the importance of evaluating multitasking capacities in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia in order to predict real world functioning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Radioactive waste disposal in the world and situation in our country

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Plecas, I.; Pavlovic, R.

    2003-01-01

    Situation of status, type and number of radioactive waste disposal facility for LILW in the world, but also data of solid and liquid radioactive waste materials temporary stored in Vinca Institute is given in this paper (author)

  14. Worldwide status of long range atmospheric transportation models for use in emergency situations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tveten, U.

    1992-02-01

    This report contains the results of the work of a working group put together in order to summarize the status of long range atmospheric transportation models for use in an emergency situation in real-time mode. The most important characteristics of the various models are summarized. The models in use in the Nordic countries as well as a couple of non-Nordic models are presented in more detail. A discussion of the desired characteristics of real-time models (also referred to as Emergency Response Assisting Systems) is included

  15. Exploring Non-Traditional Learning Methods in Virtual and Real-World Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lukman, Rebeka; Krajnc, Majda

    2012-01-01

    This paper identifies the commonalities and differences within non-traditional learning methods regarding virtual and real-world environments. The non-traditional learning methods in real-world have been introduced within the following courses: Process Balances, Process Calculation, and Process Synthesis, and within the virtual environment through…

  16. Harvesting Social Media for Generation of Near Real-time Flood Maps

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Eilander, Dirk; Trambauer, Patricia; Wagemaker, Jurjen; Van Loenen, Arnejan

    2016-01-01

    Social media are a new, big and exciting source of data. Rather than from traditional sensors and models, this data is from local people experiencing real-world phenomena, such as flood events. During floods, disaster managers often have trouble getting an accurate overview of the current situation.

  17. Prospects of uranium supply-demand situation in world nuclear power development

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chen Zuyi; Wang Xingwu

    2010-01-01

    Based on the newest materials and data published by authoritative organizations, this paper introduces the near-term and medium to long-term development situation of world nuclear power, summarizes the main characteristics of recent world uranium production, preliminarily analyses the relationship between uranium supply and demand to 2030. It is suggested that from the view-point of whole world, uranium resources are fully sufficient for the near-term and medium to long-term world uranium production and uranium demand of nuclear power. World uranium production can meet the near-term uranium demand for nuclear power. However, a big supply-demand gap may exist after 2015 as world nuclear power will be developed with high speed. In case if all const ruction plans of new uranium mines and production- expansion plans of existing uranium mines will be completed on time, it is quite possible for the world uranium production to meet the long-term uranium demand of nuclear power development. (authors)

  18. Real-world objects are more memorable than photographs of objects

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jacqueline C Snow

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Research studies in psychology typically use two-dimensional (2D images of objects as proxies for real-world three-dimensional (3D stimuli. There are, however, a number of important differences between real objects and images that could influence cognition and behavior. Although human memory has been studied extensively, only a handful of studies have used real objects in the context of memory and virtually none have directly compared memory for real objects versus their 2D counterparts. Here we examined whether or not episodic memory is influenced by the format in which objects are displayed. We conducted two experiments asking participants to freely recall, and to recognize, a set of 44 common household objects. Critically, the exemplars were displayed to observers in one of three viewing conditions: real-world objects, colored photographs, or black and white line drawings. Stimuli were closely matched across conditions for size, orientation, and illumination. Surprisingly, recall and recognition performance was significantly better for real objects compared to colored photographs or line drawings (for which memory performance was equivalent. We replicated this pattern in a second experiment comparing memory for real objects versus color photos, when the stimuli were matched for viewing angle across conditions. Again, recall and recognition performance was significantly better for the real objects than matched color photos of the same items. Taken together, our data suggest that real objects are more memorable than pictorial stimuli. Our results highlight the importance of studying real-world object cognition and raise the potential for applied use in developing effective strategies for education, marketing, and further research on object-related cognition.

  19. A path model investigation of neurocognition, theory of mind, social competence, negative symptoms and real-world functioning in schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Couture, Shannon M; Granholm, Eric L; Fish, Scott C

    2011-02-01

    Problems in real-world functioning are pervasive in schizophrenia and much recent effort has been devoted to uncovering factors which contribute to poor functioning. The goal of this study was to examine the role of four such factors: social cognition (theory of mind), neurocognition, negative symptoms, and functional capacity (social competence). 178 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder completed measures of theory of mind, neurocognition, negative symptoms, social competence, and self-reported functioning. Path models sought to determine the relationships among these variables. Theory of mind as indexed by the Hinting Task partially mediated the relationship between neurocognition and social competence, and negative symptoms and social competence demonstrated significant direct paths with self-reported functioning. Study results suggest theory of mind serves as an important mediator in addition to previously investigated social cognitive domains of emotional and social perception. The current study also highlights the need to determine variables which mediate the relationship between functional capacity and real-world functioning. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. Comparison of real-world and certification emission rates for light duty gasoline vehicles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khan, Tanzila; Frey, H Christopher

    2018-05-01

    U.S. light duty vehicles are subject to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emission standards. Emission compliance is determined by certification testing of selected emissions from representative vehicles on standard driving cycles using chassis dynamometers. Test results are also used in many emission inventories. The dynamometer based emission rates are adjusted to provide the certification levels (CL), which must be lower than the standards for compliance. Although standard driving cycles are based on specific observations of real-world driving, they are not necessarily real-world representative. A systematic comparison of the real-world emission rates of U.S. light duty gasoline vehicles (LDGVs) versus CL, and emission standards has not been previously reported. The purpose of this work is to compare regulatory limits (both CLs and emission standards) and the real-world emissions of LDGVs. The sensitivity of the comparisons to cold start emission was assessed. Portable Emission Measurement Systems (PEMS) were used to measure hot stabilized exhaust emissions of 122 LDGVs on a specified 110 mile test route. Cold start emissions were measured with PEMS for a selected vehicle sample of 32 vehicles. Emissions were measured for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HC) and nitrogen oxides (NO x ). For each vehicle, a Vehicle Specific Power (VSP) modal emission rate model was developed. The VSP modal rates were weighted by the standard driving cycles and real-world driving cycles to estimate the respective cycle average emission rates (CAERs). Measured vehicles were matched with certification test vehicles for comparison. For systematic trends in comparison, vehicles were classified into four groups based on the Tier 1 and Tier 2 emission regulation, and the vehicle type such as passenger car and passenger truck. Depending on the cycle-pollutant and the vehicle groups, hot stabilized CAERs are on average either statistically

  1. Noise-robust cortical tracking of attended speech in real-world acoustic scenes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Fuglsang, Søren; Dau, Torsten; Hjortkjær, Jens

    2017-01-01

    Selectively attending to one speaker in a multi-speaker scenario is thought to synchronize low-frequency cortical activity to the attended speech signal. In recent studies, reconstruction of speech from single-trial electroencephalogram (EEG) data has been used to decode which talker a listener...... is attending to in a two-talker situation. It is currently unclear how this generalizes to more complex sound environments. Behaviorally, speech perception is robust to the acoustic distortions that listeners typically encounter in everyday life, but it is unknown whether this is mirrored by a noise......-robust neural tracking of attended speech. Here we used advanced acoustic simulations to recreate real-world acoustic scenes in the laboratory. In virtual acoustic realities with varying amounts of reverberation and number of interfering talkers, listeners selectively attended to the speech stream...

  2. Assessing the Value of Real-life Brands in Virtual Worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mattsson, Jan; Barnes, Stuart; Hartley, Nicole

    2015-01-01

    World. A key finding is the difficulty in creating emotional brand value in Second Life which has serious implications for the sustainability of current real-life brands in Virtual Worlds. The paper rounds off with conclusions and implications for future research and practice in this very new area.......Virtual Worlds are a significant new market environment for brand-building through experiential customer service interactions. Using value theory, this paper aims to assess the experiential brand value of real-life brands that have moved to the Virtual World of Second Life. A key premise...... is that current brand offerings in Virtual Worlds do not offer consumers adequate experiential value. The results demonstrate both the validity of an axiological approach to examining brand value, and highlight significant problems in consumer perceptions of the experiential value of brands within the Virtual...

  3. The world energy situation and the response of the European Community

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Williams, L.

    1980-01-01

    In reviewing the World energy situation the lecturer points out that there is trouble over oil supplies earlier than was expected and that large sections of the public and parliaments do not yet appreciate the implications of this on the rest of the energy policy, especially with reference to the nuclear option. Subjects considered include; oil market situation, public education, transfer of wealth, limitation of oil imports, Community energy policy, future Community policy, economics, nuclear policies and the effect of the Harrisburg accident. The ensuing discussion is reported. (UK)

  4. Fitness networks for real world systems via modified preferential attachment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shang, Ke-ke; Small, Michael; Yan, Wei-sheng

    2017-05-01

    Complex networks are virtually ubiquitous, and the Barabási and Albert model (BA model) has became an acknowledged standard for the modelling of these systems. The so-called BA model is a kind of preferential attachment growth model based on the intuitive premise that popularity is attractive. However, preferential attachment alone is insufficient to describe the diversity of complex networks observed in the real world. In this paper we first use the accuracy of a link prediction method, as a metric for network fitness. The link prediction method predicts the occurrence of links consistent with preferential attachment, the performance of this link prediction scheme is then a natural measure of the ;preferential-attachment-likeness; of a given network. We then propose several modification methods and modified BA models to construct networks which more accurately describe the fitness properties of real networks. We find that all features assortativity, degree distribution and rich-club formation can play significant roles for the network construction and eventual structure. Moreover, link sparsity and the size of a network are key factors for network reconstruction. In addition, we find that the structure of the network which is limited by geographic location (nodes are embedded in a Euclidean space and connectivity is correlated with distances) differs from other typical networks. In social networks, we observe that the high school contact network has similar structure as the friends network and so we speculate that the contact behaviours can reflect real friendships.

  5. The world food situation: New driving forces and required actions [In Chinese

    OpenAIRE

    von Braun, Joachim

    2008-01-01

    "The world food situation is currently being rapidly redefined by new driving forces. Income growth, climate change, high energy prices, globalization, and urbanization are transforming food consumption, production, and markets. The influence of the private sector in the world food system, especially the leverage of food retailers, is also rapidly increasing. Changes in food availability, rising commodity prices, and new producer–consumer linkages have crucial implications for the livelihoods...

  6. 5th International Workshop on Real-World Wireless Sensor Networks

    CERN Document Server

    Hu, Wen; Ferrari, Federico; Zimmerling, Marco; Mottola, Luca

    2014-01-01

    This edited book presents the results of the 5th Workshop on Real-world Wireless Sensor Networks (REALWSN). The purpose of this workshop  was to bring together researchers and practitioners working in the area of sensor networks, with focus on real-world experiments or deployments of wireless sensor networks. Included were, nonetheless, emerging forms of sensing such as those that leverage smart phones, Internet of Things, RFIDs, and robots. Indeed, when working with real-world experiments or deployments, many new or unforeseen issues may arise: the network environment may be composed of a variety of different technologies, leading to very heterogeneous network structures; software development for large scale networks poses new types of problems; the performance of prototype networks may differ significantly from the deployed system; whereas actual sensor network deployments may need a complex combination of autonomous and manual configuration. Furthermore, results obtained through simulation are typically n...

  7. Learning about the "Real World" in an Urban Arts Youth Program

    Science.gov (United States)

    Larson, Reed W.; Walker, Kathrin C.

    2006-01-01

    To make the transition to adulthood, youth must learn to function in the complex and unpredictable "real world" of adult life. This is an intensive case study of an urban arts program that sought to provide youth with experiences that prepared them for the real world of arts careers. We conducted 75 interviews with 12 youth and their adult leader…

  8. World petroleum refining capacity: Present and forecasted situation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tabarelli, D.

    1991-01-01

    World petroleum demand is expected to increase from about 15 million barrels to 80 million after the year 2000. The resulting necessity to increase the currently over-extended global refining capacity will put a significant burden on financial resources within the industry. This article examines the developments, after a decade of restructuring, which have led to the present situation of the petroleum industry described as having greatly improved operational conditions but beset by worrisome problems with regard not only to capacity, but also to the costly constraints being imposed by new air pollution regulations, especially those relevant to desulfurization in refinery processes

  9. Prospects and requirements for an operational modelling unit in flood crisis situations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anders Katharina

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Dike failure events pose severe flood crisis situations on areas in the hinterland of dikes. In recent decades the importance of being prepared for dike breaches has been increasingly recognized. However, the pre-assessment of inundation resulting from dike breaches is possible only based on scenarios, which might not reflect the situation of a real event. This paper presents a setup and workflow that allows to model dike breachinduced inundation operationally, i.e. when an event is imminent or occurring. A comprehensive system setup of an operational modelling unit has been developed and implemented in the frame of a federal project in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The modelling unit setup comprises a powerful methodology of flood modelling and elaborated operational guidelines for crisis situations. Nevertheless, it is of fundamental importance that the modelling unit is instated prior to flood events as a permanent system. Moreover the unit needs to be fully integrated in flood crisis management. If these crucial requirements are met, a modelling unit is capable of fundamentally supporting flood management with operational prognoses of adequate quality even in the limited timeframe of crisis situations.

  10. Contribution of Road Grade to the Energy Use of Modern Automobiles Across Large Datasets of Real-World Drive Cycles: Preprint

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wood, E.; Burton, E.; Duran, A.; Gonder, J.

    2014-01-01

    Understanding the real-world power demand of modern automobiles is of critical importance to engineers using modeling and simulation to inform the intelligent design of increasingly efficient powertrains. Increased use of global positioning system (GPS) devices has made large scale data collection of vehicle speed (and associated power demand) a reality. While the availability of real-world GPS data has improved the industry's understanding of in-use vehicle power demand, relatively little attention has been paid to the incremental power requirements imposed by road grade. This analysis quantifies the incremental efficiency impacts of real-world road grade by appending high fidelity elevation profiles to GPS speed traces and performing a large simulation study. Employing a large real-world dataset from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Transportation Secure Data Center, vehicle powertrain simulations are performed with and without road grade under five vehicle models. Aggregate results of this study suggest that road grade could be responsible for 1% to 3% of fuel use in light-duty automobiles.

  11. A Situational Maintenance Model

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Luxhoj, James T.; Thorsteinsson, Uffe; Riis, Jens Ove

    1997-01-01

    An overview of trend in maintenance management and presentation of a situational model and an analytical tools for identification of managerial efforts in maintenance.......An overview of trend in maintenance management and presentation of a situational model and an analytical tools for identification of managerial efforts in maintenance....

  12. Halting HIV/AIDS with avatars and havatars: a virtual world approach to modelling epidemics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Smith? Robert J

    2009-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background A major deficit of all approaches to epidemic modelling to date has been the need to approximate or guess at human behaviour in disease-transmission-related contexts. Avatars are generally human-like figures in virtual computer worlds controlled by human individuals. Methods We introduce the concept of a "havatar", which is a (human, avatar pairing. Evidence is mounting that this pairing behaves in virtual contexts much like the human in the pairing might behave in analogous real-world contexts. Results We propose that studies of havatars, in a virtual world, may give a realistic approximation of human behaviour in real-world contexts. If the virtual world approximates the real world in relevant details (geography, transportation, etc., virtual epidemics in that world could accurately simulate real-world epidemics. Havatar modelling of epidemics therefore offers a complementary tool for tackling how best to halt epidemics, including perhaps HIV/AIDS, since sexual behaviour is a significant component of some virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Conclusion Havatars place the control parameters of an epidemic in the hands of each individual. By providing tools that everyone can understand and use, we could democratise epidemiology.

  13. Infusing Real World Experiences into Engineering Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    National Academies Press, 2012

    2012-01-01

    The aim of this report is to encourage enhanced richness and relevance of the undergraduate engineering education experience, and thus produce better-prepared and more globally competitive graduates, by providing practical guidance for incorporating real world experience in US engineering programs. The report, a collaborative effort of the…

  14. Making the Most of Modeling Tasks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wernet, Jamie L.; Lawrence, Kevin A.; Gilbertson, Nicholas J.

    2015-01-01

    While there is disagreement among mathematics educators about some aspects of its meaning, mathematical modeling generally involves taking a real-world scenario and translating it into the mathematical world (Niss, Blum, and Galbraith 2007). The complete modeling process involves describing situations posed in problems with mathematical concepts,…

  15. Modelling a real-world buried valley system with vertical non-stationarity using multiple-point statistics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    He, Xiulan; Sonnenborg, Torben; Jørgensen, Flemming

    2017-01-01

    -stationary geological system characterized by a network of connected buried valleys that incise deeply into layered Miocene sediments (case study in Denmark). The results show that, based on fragmented information of the formation boundaries, the MPS partition method is able to simulate a non-stationary system......Stationarity has traditionally been a requirement of geostatistical simulations. A common way to deal with non-stationarity is to divide the system into stationary sub-regions and subsequently merge the realizations for each region. Recently, the so-called partition approach that has...... the flexibility to model non-stationary systems directly was developed for multiple-point statistics simulation (MPS). The objective of this study is to apply the MPS partition method with conventional borehole logs and high-resolution airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data, for simulation of a real-world non...

  16. Modeling of Communication in a Computational Situation Assessment Model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Hyun Chul; Seong, Poong Hyun

    2009-01-01

    Operators in nuclear power plants have to acquire information from human system interfaces (HSIs) and the environment in order to create, update, and confirm their understanding of a plant state, or situation awareness, because failures of situation assessment may result in wrong decisions for process control and finally errors of commission in nuclear power plants. Quantitative or prescriptive models to predict operator's situation assessment in a situation, the results of situation assessment, provide many benefits such as HSI design solutions, human performance data, and human reliability. Unfortunately, a few computational situation assessment models for NPP operators have been proposed and those insufficiently embed human cognitive characteristics. Thus we proposed a new computational situation assessment model of nuclear power plant operators. The proposed model incorporating significant cognitive factors uses a Bayesian belief network (BBN) as model architecture. It is believed that communication between nuclear power plant operators affects operators' situation assessment and its result, situation awareness. We tried to verify that the proposed model represent the effects of communication on situation assessment. As the result, the proposed model succeeded in representing the operators' behavior and this paper shows the details

  17. Interacting complex systems: Theory and application to real-world situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Piccinini, Nicola

    The interest in complex systems has increased exponentially during the past years because it was found helpful in addressing many of today's challenges. The study of the brain, biology, earthquakes, markets and social sciences are only a few examples of the fields that have benefited from the investigation of complex systems. Internet, the increased mobility of people and the raising energy demand are among the factors that brought in contact complex systems that were isolated till a few years ago. A theory for the interaction between complex systems is becoming more and more urgent to help mankind in this transition. The present work builds upon the most recent results in this field by solving a theoretical problem that prevented previous work to be applied to important complex systems, like the brain. It also shows preliminary laboratory results of perturbation of in vitro neural networks that were done to test the theory. Finally, it gives a preview of the studies that are being done to create a theory that is even closer to the interaction between real complex systems.

  18. Discussion of solutions to ethical issues in real-world study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Sicheng; Liu, Baoyan; Xiong, Ningning; Xie, Qi; Zhang, Runshun; Zhou, Xuezhong; Qiao, Jie

    2014-09-01

    In recent years, the paradigm of real-world study (RWS) has been at the forefront of clinical research worldwide, particularly in the field of traditional Chinese medicine. In this paper, basic features and nature of real-world clinical studies are discussed, and ethical issues in different stages of RWS are raised and reviewed. Moreover, some preliminary solutions to these issues, such as protecting subjects during the process of RWS and performing ethical review, are presented based on recent practices and basic ethical rules to improve the scientific validity and ethical level of RWS.

  19. Brazilian science teachers conceptions about the world situation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maria Lúcia Vital dos Santos Abib

    2000-09-01

    Full Text Available Recognizing the urgent need of a scientific education thet would provide for citizen participation in decision making regarding problems that affect our survival, this paper reports teachers perceptions about problems that affect the future of human kind and life in our planet. Taking as reference recent studies which approach this issue globally, we analyse science teachers conceptions concerning the present world situation. Results show a fragmentary character and an insufficient conscientization of the extent and serioussness of the problems. This finding points at the need of formative actions that would provide teachers with a more adequate perspection of those problems and of possible solutions.

  20. Agile science: creating useful products for behavior change in the real world.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hekler, Eric B; Klasnja, Predrag; Riley, William T; Buman, Matthew P; Huberty, Jennifer; Rivera, Daniel E; Martin, Cesar A

    2016-06-01

    Evidence-based practice is important for behavioral interventions but there is debate on how best to support real-world behavior change. The purpose of this paper is to define products and a preliminary process for efficiently and adaptively creating and curating a knowledge base for behavior change for real-world implementation. We look to evidence-based practice suggestions and draw parallels to software development. We argue to target three products: (1) the smallest, meaningful, self-contained, and repurposable behavior change modules of an intervention; (2) "computational models" that define the interaction between modules, individuals, and context; and (3) "personalization" algorithms, which are decision rules for intervention adaptation. The "agile science" process includes a generation phase whereby contender operational definitions and constructs of the three products are created and assessed for feasibility and an evaluation phase, whereby effect size estimates/casual inferences are created. The process emphasizes early-and-often sharing. If correct, agile science could enable a more robust knowledge base for behavior change.

  1. Virtual plagues and real-world pandemics: reflecting on the potential for online computer role-playing games to inform real world epidemic research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oultram, Stuart

    2013-12-01

    In the wake of the Corrupted Blood incident, which afflicted the massively multiplayer online computer role-playing game World of Warcraft in 2005, it has been suggested that both, the incident itself and massively multiplayer online computer role-playing games in general, can be utilised to inform and assist real-world epidemic and public health research. In this paper, I engage critically with these claims.

  2. Applications of Temporal Graph Metrics to Real-World Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tang, John; Leontiadis, Ilias; Scellato, Salvatore; Nicosia, Vincenzo; Mascolo, Cecilia; Musolesi, Mirco; Latora, Vito

    Real world networks exhibit rich temporal information: friends are added and removed over time in online social networks; the seasons dictate the predator-prey relationship in food webs; and the propagation of a virus depends on the network of human contacts throughout the day. Recent studies have demonstrated that static network analysis is perhaps unsuitable in the study of real world network since static paths ignore time order, which, in turn, results in static shortest paths overestimating available links and underestimating their true corresponding lengths. Temporal extensions to centrality and efficiency metrics based on temporal shortest paths have also been proposed. Firstly, we analyse the roles of key individuals of a corporate network ranked according to temporal centrality within the context of a bankruptcy scandal; secondly, we present how such temporal metrics can be used to study the robustness of temporal networks in presence of random errors and intelligent attacks; thirdly, we study containment schemes for mobile phone malware which can spread via short range radio, similar to biological viruses; finally, we study how the temporal network structure of human interactions can be exploited to effectively immunise human populations. Through these applications we demonstrate that temporal metrics provide a more accurate and effective analysis of real-world networks compared to their static counterparts.

  3. Matching rendered and real world images by digital image processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mitjà, Carles; Bover, Toni; Bigas, Miquel; Escofet, Jaume

    2010-05-01

    Recent advances in computer-generated images (CGI) have been used in commercial and industrial photography providing a broad scope in product advertising. Mixing real world images with those rendered from virtual space software shows a more or less visible mismatching between corresponding image quality performance. Rendered images are produced by software which quality performance is only limited by the resolution output. Real world images are taken with cameras with some amount of image degradation factors as lens residual aberrations, diffraction, sensor low pass anti aliasing filters, color pattern demosaicing, etc. The effect of all those image quality degradation factors can be characterized by the system Point Spread Function (PSF). Because the image is the convolution of the object by the system PSF, its characterization shows the amount of image degradation added to any taken picture. This work explores the use of image processing to degrade the rendered images following the parameters indicated by the real system PSF, attempting to match both virtual and real world image qualities. The system MTF is determined by the slanted edge method both in laboratory conditions and in the real picture environment in order to compare the influence of the working conditions on the device performance; an approximation to the system PSF is derived from the two measurements. The rendered images are filtered through a Gaussian filter obtained from the taking system PSF. Results with and without filtering are shown and compared measuring the contrast achieved in different final image regions.

  4. Situations of car-to-pedestrian contact.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matsui, Yasuhiro; Hitosugi, Masahito; Takahashi, Kunio; Doi, Tsutomu

    2013-01-01

    To reduce the severity of injuries and the number of pedestrian deaths in traffic accidents, active safety devices providing pedestrian detection are considered effective countermeasures. The features of car-to-pedestrian collisions need to be known in detail to develop such safety devices. Because information on real-world accidents is limited, this study investigated near-miss situations captured by drive recorders installed in passenger cars. We showed similarities of the contact situation between near-miss incidents and real-world fatal pedestrian accidents in Japan. We analyzed the near-miss incident data via video capturing pedestrians crossing the road in front of forward-moving cars. Using a video frame captured by a drive recorder, the time to collision (TTC) was calculated from the car velocity and the distance between the car and pedestrian at the moment that the pedestrian initially appeared. The average TTC in the cases where pedestrians were not using a pedestrian crossing was shorter than that in the cases where pedestrians were using a pedestrian crossing. The average TTC in the cases where pedestrians emerged from behind obstructions was shorter than that in the cases where drivers had unobstructed views of the pedestrians. We propose that the specifications of the safety device for pedestrian detection and automatic braking should reflect the severe approach situation for a pedestrian and car including the TTC observed for near-miss incidents.

  5. iSTEM: Promoting Fifth Graders' Mathematical Modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yanik, H. Bahadir; Karabas, Celil

    2014-01-01

    Modeling requires that people develop representations or procedures to address particular problem situations (Lesh et al. 2000). Mathematical modeling is used to describe essential characteristics of a phenomenon or a situation that one intends to study in the real world through building mathematical objects. This article describes how fifth-grade…

  6. CODA Performance in the Real World

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    D.J. Abbott; W.G. Heyes; E. Jastrzembski; R. W. MacLeod; C. Timmer; E. Wolin

    2000-01-01

    The most ambitious implementation of the Jefferson Lab data acquisition system (CODA) to date is for the CLAS spectrometer in Experimental Hall B. CLAS has over 40,000 instrumented channels and uses up to 30 front-end (FASTBUS/VME) crates in the DAQ subsystem. During the initial experiments we found that performance of the fully instrumented DAQ system did not scale as expected based on single point to point benchmarks. Over the past year we have been able to study various performance bottlenecks in the CLAS DAQ system including front-end real time performance, switched 100BaseT Ethernet data transport, and online data distribution and recording. Performance tuning was necessary for components on both real time (VxWorks) and UNIX (Solaris) operating systems. In addition, a new efficient Event Transfer System (ET) was developed to provide faster online monitoring while having minimal impact on data throughput to storage. We discuss these issues and efforts to overcome the real world problems associated with running a high performance DAQ system on a variety of commercial hardware and software

  7. CODA performance in the real world

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Abbott, D.J.; Heyes, W.G.; Jastrzembski, E.; MacLeod, R.W.; Timmer, C.; Wolin, E.

    1999-01-01

    The most ambitious implementation of the Jefferson Lab data acquisition system (CODA) to date is for the CLAS spectrometer in Experimental Hall B. CLAS has over 40,000 instrumented channels and uses up to 30 front-end (FASTBUS/VME) crates in the DAQ subsystem. During the initial experiments the authors found that performance of the fully instrumented DAQ system did not scale as expected based on single point to point benchmarks. Over the past year the authors have been able to study various performance bottlenecks in the CLAS DAQ system including front-end real time performance, switched 100BaseT Ethernet data transport, and online data distribution and recording. Performance tuning was necessary for components on both real time (VxWorks) and UNIX (Solaris) operating systems. In addition, a new efficient Event Transfer System (ET) was developed to provide faster online monitoring while having minimal impact on data throughput to storage. They discuss these issues and efforts to overcome the real world problems associated with running a high performance DAQ system on a variety of commercial hardware and software

  8. Interreality in practice: bridging virtual and real worlds in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Riva, Giuseppe; Raspelli, Simona; Algeri, Davide; Pallavicini, Federica; Gorini, Alessandra; Wiederhold, Brenda K; Gaggioli, Andrea

    2010-02-01

    The use of new technologies, particularly virtual reality, is not new in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD): VR is used to facilitate the activation of the traumatic event during exposure therapy. However, during the therapy, VR is a new and distinct realm, separate from the emotions and behaviors experienced by the patient in the real world: the behavior of the patient in VR has no direct effects on the real-life experience; the emotions and problems experienced by the patient in the real world are not directly addressed in the VR exposure. In this article, we suggest that the use of a new technological paradigm, Interreality, may improve the clinical outcome of PTSD. The main feature of Interreality is a twofold link between the virtual and real worlds: (a) behavior in the physical world influences the experience in the virtual one; (b) behavior in the virtual world influences the experience in the real one. This is achieved through 3D shared virtual worlds; biosensors and activity sensors (from the real to the virtual world); and personal digital assistants and/or mobile phones (from the virtual world to the real one). We describe different technologies that are involved in the Interreality vision and its clinical rationale. To illustrate the concept of Interreality in practice, a clinical scenario is also presented and discussed: Rosa, a 55-year-old nurse, involved in a major car accident.

  9. Modeling real-world fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions with high resolution for light-duty passenger vehicles in a traffic populated city

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhang, Shaojun; Wu, Ye; Un, Puikei; Fu, Lixin; Hao, Jiming

    2016-01-01

    Modeling fuel consumption of light-duty passenger vehicles has created substantial concerns due to the uncertainty from real-world operating conditions. Macao is world-renowned for its tourism industry and high population density. An empirical model is developed to estimate real-world fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions for gasoline-powered light-duty passenger vehicles in Macao by considering local fleet configuration and operating conditions. Thanks to increasingly stringent fuel consumption limits in vehicle manufacturing countries, estimated type-approval fuel consumption for light-duty passenger vehicles in Macao by model year was reduced from 7.4 L/100 km in 1995 to 5.9 L/100 km in 2012, although a significant upsizing trend has considerably offset potential energy-saving benefit. However, lower driving speed and the air-conditioning usage tend to raise fleet-average fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emission factors, which are estimated to be 10.1 L/100 km and 240 g/km in 2010. Fleet-total fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions are modeled through registered vehicle population-based and link-level traffic demand approaches and the results satisfactorily coincide with the historical record of fuel sales in Macao. Temporal and spatial variations in fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from light-duty passenger vehicles further highlight the importance of effective traffic management in congested areas of Macao. - Highlights: • A fuel consumption model is developed for Macao's light-duty passenger cars. • Increased vehicle size partially offset energy benefit from tightened fuel consumption standard. • Lower speed and use of air-conditioning greatly increase fuel use of Macao light-duty passenger cars. • A high resolution inventory of fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions is built with link-level traffic data. • Policy suggestions are provided to mitigate fuel use in a traffic populated city.

  10. Wars, Revolutions and the First Real World Revolution

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Petri Minkkinen

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available El objetivo de este artículo es promover la discusión conceptual para una publicación más amplia “Los Ciclos del Imperialismo, Guerra, y Revolución”. Empieza desde una presuposición que nuestro mundo común esta atravesando una transición desde un contexto histórico amplio eurocéntrico hacia un contexto histórico amplio non-eurocéntrico. Continua con la discusión histórica de los conceptos relacionados con la guerra, la reforma y la revolución y explica porque, en el contexto de la fase actual de la transición mundial y la Primera Verdadera Guerra Mundial, a pesar de la discusión anterior acerca de las revoluciones y revoluciones mundiales, es razonable sugerir que nuestro mundo común esta atravesando la Primera Verdadera Revolución Mundial._____________________ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to engage in a conceptual discussion for a broader publication on “The Cycles of Imperialism, War and Revolution”. It departs from a presupposition that our common world is experiencing a transition from a broad Eurocentric historical context into a non-Eurocentric broad historical context. It proceeds by a historical discussion on the concepts related to wars, reforms and revolutions and explains why, in the context of the actual phase of global transition and the First Real World War, it is, despite earlier discussions on revolutions and world revolutions, meaningful to suggest that our common world is experiencing a First Real World Revolution.

  11. Argus developer in practice real estate development modeling in the real world

    CERN Document Server

    Havard, Tim M

    2014-01-01

    First ""missing manual"" for Argus Developer--case studies show readers how to analyze a development, something Argus manuals don't do. Argus Developer is by far the leading program for real estate developers worldwide The book is an education in real estate finance as well as the program Author teaches seminars and consults with people using the program--back of room sales likely Author has three other books on real estate development Possibility that Argus gets behind the project The book will contain dozens of screenshots

  12. Extending MAM5 Meta-Model and JaCalIV E Framework to Integrate Smart Devices from Real Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents the extension of a meta-model (MAM5) and a framework based on the model (JaCalIVE) for developing intelligent virtual environments. The goal of this extension is to develop augmented mirror worlds that represent a real and virtual world coupled, so that the virtual world not only reflects the real one, but also complements it. A new component called a smart resource artifact, that enables modelling and developing devices to access the real physical world, and a human in the loop agent to place a human in the system have been included in the meta-model and framework. The proposed extension of MAM5 has been tested by simulating a light control system where agents can access both virtual and real sensor/actuators through the smart resources developed. The results show that the use of real environment interactive elements (smart resource artifacts) in agent-based simulations allows to minimize the error between simulated and real system. PMID:26926691

  13. Extending MAM5 Meta-Model and JaCalIV E Framework to Integrate Smart Devices from Real Environments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rincon, J A; Poza-Lujan, Jose-Luis; Julian, V; Posadas-Yagüe, Juan-Luis; Carrascosa, C

    2016-01-01

    This paper presents the extension of a meta-model (MAM5) and a framework based on the model (JaCalIVE) for developing intelligent virtual environments. The goal of this extension is to develop augmented mirror worlds that represent a real and virtual world coupled, so that the virtual world not only reflects the real one, but also complements it. A new component called a smart resource artifact, that enables modelling and developing devices to access the real physical world, and a human in the loop agent to place a human in the system have been included in the meta-model and framework. The proposed extension of MAM5 has been tested by simulating a light control system where agents can access both virtual and real sensor/actuators through the smart resources developed. The results show that the use of real environment interactive elements (smart resource artifacts) in agent-based simulations allows to minimize the error between simulated and real system.

  14. A step function model to evaluate the real monetary value of man-sievert with real GDP

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Na, Seong H.; Kim, Sun G.

    2009-01-01

    For use in a cost-benefit analysis to establish optimum levels of radiation protection in Korea under the ALARA principle, we introduce a discrete step function model to evaluate man-sievert monetary value in the real economic value. The model formula, which is unique and country-specific, is composed of real GDP, the nominal risk coefficient for cancer and hereditary effects, the aversion factor against radiation exposure, and average life expectancy. Unlike previous researches on alpha-value assessment, we show different alpha values in the real term, differentiated with respect to the range of individual doses, which would be more realistic and informative for application to the radiation protection practices. GDP deflators of economy can reflect the society's situations. Finally, we suggest that the Korean model can be generalized simply to other countries without normalizing any country-specific factors.

  15. A step function model to evaluate the real monetary value of man-sievert with real GDP

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Na, Seong H. [Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, 19 Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-338 (Korea, Republic of)], E-mail: shna@kins.re.kr; Kim, Sun G. [School of Business, Daejeon University, Yong Woon-dong, Dong-gu, Daejeon 300-716 (Korea, Republic of)], E-mail: sunkim@dju.ac.kr

    2009-07-15

    For use in a cost-benefit analysis to establish optimum levels of radiation protection in Korea under the ALARA principle, we introduce a discrete step function model to evaluate man-sievert monetary value in the real economic value. The model formula, which is unique and country-specific, is composed of real GDP, the nominal risk coefficient for cancer and hereditary effects, the aversion factor against radiation exposure, and average life expectancy. Unlike previous researches on alpha-value assessment, we show different alpha values in the real term, differentiated with respect to the range of individual doses, which would be more realistic and informative for application to the radiation protection practices. GDP deflators of economy can reflect the society's situations. Finally, we suggest that the Korean model can be generalized simply to other countries without normalizing any country-specific factors.

  16. A step function model to evaluate the real monetary value of man-sievert with real GDP.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Na, Seong H; Kim, Sun G

    2009-01-01

    For use in a cost-benefit analysis to establish optimum levels of radiation protection in Korea under the ALARA principle, we introduce a discrete step function model to evaluate man-sievert monetary value in the real economic value. The model formula, which is unique and country-specific, is composed of real GDP, the nominal risk coefficient for cancer and hereditary effects, the aversion factor against radiation exposure, and average life expectancy. Unlike previous researches on alpha-value assessment, we show different alpha values in the real term, differentiated with respect to the range of individual doses, which would be more realistic and informative for application to the radiation protection practices. GDP deflators of economy can reflect the society's situations. Finally, we suggest that the Korean model can be generalized simply to other countries without normalizing any country-specific factors.

  17. The real-world safety potential of connected vehicle technology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doecke, Sam; Grant, Alex; Anderson, Robert W G

    2015-01-01

    This article estimates the safety potential of a current commercially available connected vehicle technology in real-world crashes. Data from the Centre for Automotive Safety Research's at-scene in-depth crash investigations in South Australia were used to simulate the circumstances of real-world crashes. A total of 89 crashes were selected for inclusion in the study. The crashes were selected as representative of the most prevalent crash types for injury or fatal crashes and had potential to be mitigated by connected vehicle technology. The trajectory, speeds, braking, and impact configuration of the selected in-depth cases were replicated in a software package and converted to a file format allowing "replay" of the scenario in real time as input to 2 Cohda Wireless MK2 onboard units. The Cohda Wireless onboard units are a mature connected vehicle technology that has been used in both the German simTD field trial and the U.S. Department of Transport's Safety Pilot project and have been tuned for low false alarm rates when used in the real world. The crash replay was achieved by replacing each of the onboard unit Global Positioning System (GPS) inputs with the simulated data of each of the involved vehicles. The time at which the Cohda Wireless threat detection software issued an elevated warning was used to calculate a new impact speed using 3 different reaction scenarios and 2 levels of braking. It was found that between 37 and 86% of the simulated crashes could be avoided, with highest percentage due a fully autonomous system braking at 0.7 g. The same system also reduced the impact speed relative to the actual crash in all cases. Even when a human reaction time of 1.2 s and moderate braking of 0.4 g was assumed, the impact speed was reduced in 78% of the crashes. Crash types that proved difficult for the threat detection engine were head-on crashes where the approach angle was low and right turn-opposite crashes. These results indicate that connected vehicle

  18. Working memory is not fixed-capacity: More active storage capacity for real-world objects than for simple stimuli.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brady, Timothy F; Störmer, Viola S; Alvarez, George A

    2016-07-05

    Visual working memory is the cognitive system that holds visual information active to make it resistant to interference from new perceptual input. Information about simple stimuli-colors and orientations-is encoded into working memory rapidly: In under 100 ms, working memory ‟fills up," revealing a stark capacity limit. However, for real-world objects, the same behavioral limits do not hold: With increasing encoding time, people store more real-world objects and do so with more detail. This boost in performance for real-world objects is generally assumed to reflect the use of a separate episodic long-term memory system, rather than working memory. Here we show that this behavioral increase in capacity with real-world objects is not solely due to the use of separate episodic long-term memory systems. In particular, we show that this increase is a result of active storage in working memory, as shown by directly measuring neural activity during the delay period of a working memory task using EEG. These data challenge fixed-capacity working memory models and demonstrate that working memory and its capacity limitations are dependent upon our existing knowledge.

  19. An assessment of the real-world driving gaseous emissions from a Euro 6 light-duty diesel vehicle using a portable emissions measurement system (PEMS)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luján, José M.; Bermúdez, Vicente; Dolz, Vicente; Monsalve-Serrano, Javier

    2018-02-01

    Recent investigations demonstrated that real-world emissions usually exceed the levels achieved in the laboratory based type approval processes. By means of on-board emissions measurements, it has been shown that nitrogen oxides emitted by diesel engines substantially exceed the limit imposed by the Euro 6 regulation. Thus, with the aim of complementing the worldwide harmonized light vehicles test cycle, the real driving emissions cycle will be introduced after 1 September 2017 to regulate the vehicle emissions in real-world driving situations. This paper presents on-board gaseous emissions measurements from a Euro 6 light-duty diesel vehicle in a real-world driving route using a portable emissions measurement system. The test route characteristics follow the requirements imposed by the RDE regulation. The analysis of the raw emissions results suggests that the greatest amount of nitrogen oxides and nitrogen dioxide are emitted during the urban section of the test route, confirming that lower speeds with more accelerations and decelerations lead to higher nitrogen oxides emissions levels than constant high speeds. Moreover, the comparison of the two calculation methods proposed by the real driving emissions regulation has revealed emissions rates differences ranging from 10% to 45% depending on the pollutant emission and the trip section considered (urban or total). Thus, the nitrogen oxides emissions conformity factor slightly varies from one method to the other.

  20. Learning situation models in a smart home.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brdiczka, Oliver; Crowley, James L; Reignier, Patrick

    2009-02-01

    This paper addresses the problem of learning situation models for providing context-aware services. Context for modeling human behavior in a smart environment is represented by a situation model describing environment, users, and their activities. A framework for acquiring and evolving different layers of a situation model in a smart environment is proposed. Different learning methods are presented as part of this framework: role detection per entity, unsupervised extraction of situations from multimodal data, supervised learning of situation representations, and evolution of a predefined situation model with feedback. The situation model serves as frame and support for the different methods, permitting to stay in an intuitive declarative framework. The proposed methods have been integrated into a whole system for smart home environment. The implementation is detailed, and two evaluations are conducted in the smart home environment. The obtained results validate the proposed approach.

  1. Features of microscopic pedestrian movement in a panic situation based on cellular automata model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ibrahim, Najihah; Hassan, Fadratul Hafinaz

    2017-10-01

    Pedestrian movement is the one of the subset for the crowd management under simulation objective. During panic situation, pedestrian usually will create a microscopic movement that lead towards the self-organization. During self-organizing, the behavioral and physical factors had caused the mass effect on the pedestrian movement. The basic CA model will create a movement path for each pedestrian over a time step. However, due to the factors immerge, the CA model needs some enhancement that will establish a real simulation state. Hence, this concept paper will discuss on the enhanced features of CA model for microscopic pedestrian movement during panic situation for a better pedestrian simulation.

  2. Expansion of the Real-time Sport-land Information System for NOAA/National Weather Service Situational Awareness and Local Modeling Applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Case, Jonathan L.

    2014-01-01

    The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center has been running a real-time version of the Land Information System (LIS) since summer 2010 (hereafter, SPoRTLIS). The real-time SPoRT-LIS runs the Noah land surface model (LSM) in an offline capacity apart from a numerical weather prediction model, using input atmospheric and precipitation analyses (i.e., "forcings") to drive the Noah LSM integration at 3-km resolution. Its objectives are to (1) produce local-scale information about the soil state for NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS) situational awareness applications such as drought monitoring and assessing flood potential, and (2) provide land surface initialization fields for local modeling initiatives. The current domain extent has been limited by the input atmospheric analyses that drive the Noah LSM integration within SPoRT-LIS, specifically the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Stage IV precipitation analyses. Due to the nature of the geographical edges of the Stage IV precipitation grid and its limitations in the western U.S., the SPoRT-LIS was originally confined to a domain fully nested within the Stage IV grid, over the southeastern half of the Conterminous United States (CONUS). In order to expand the real-time SPoRT-LIS to a full CONUS domain, alternative precipitation forcing datasets were explored in year-long, offline comparison runs of the Noah LSM. Based on results of these comparison simulations, we chose to implement the radar/gauge-based precipitation analyses from the National Severe Storms Laboratory as a replacement to the Stage IV product. The Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS; formerly known as the National Mosaic and multi-sensor Quantitative precipitation estimate) product has full CONUS coverage at higher-resolution, thereby providing better coverage and greater detail than that of the Stage IV product. This paper will describe the expanded/upgraded SPoRT-LIS, present comparisons between the

  3. Getting Real Results with Ohio State University Extension’s Real Money. Real World. Program

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Theresa M. Ferrari

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available Youth development organizations have a unique opportunity to offer programs that help young people develop financial skills they need to become successful adults. This article describes Ohio State University Extension’s Real Money. Real World. (RMRW and the systematic approach used to evaluate its effectiveness. The RMRW curriculum includes an active, hands-on experience that gives young people the opportunity to make lifestyle and budget choices similar to those they will make as adults. The realistic simulation creates a teachable moment. The outcomes of the statewide evaluation clearly indicate the curriculum accomplishes its goals of raising awareness, changing attitudes, and motivating students to plan for behavior changes concerning financial management, education, and career choices. The article concludes with a discussion of the organizational outcomes of conducting the evaluation.

  4. Partnering for Real World Learning, Sustainability, Tourism Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jennings, Gayle; Cater, Carl I.; Hales, Rob; Kensbock, Sandra; Hornby, Glen

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this article is to study how real world learning was used to engender and enhance sustainability principles and practices with 11 micro-, small- and medium-tourism business enterprises and 101 university tourism students enrolled across three university courses. Design/methodology/approach: Action research processes were…

  5. Practical Implications of Using Real-World Evidence (RWE) in Comparative Effectiveness Research : Learnings from IMI-GetReal

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Makady, Amr; Stegenga, Heather; Ciaglia, Antonio; Debray, Thomas Pa; Lees, Michael; Happich, Michael; Ryll, Bettina; Abrams, Keith; Thwaites, Rob; Garner, Sarah; Jonsson, Páll; Goettsch, Wim G.

    In light of increasing attention towards the use of real-world evidence (RWE) in decision making in recent years, this commentary aims to reflect on the experiences gained in accessing and using RWE for comparative effectiveness research as a part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative GetReal

  6. Treatment of allergic rhinitis using mobile technology with real world data

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bousquet, J; Arnavielhe, S; Bedbrook, A

    2018-01-01

    BACKGROUND: Large observational implementation studies are needed to triangulate the findings from randomized control trials (RCTs) as they reflect "real world" everyday practice. In a pilot study, we attempted to provide additional and complementary insights on the real life treatment of allergi...

  7. Real World Learning: toward a differentiated framework for outdoor learning for sustainability

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lewis Winks

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The Real World Learning network (RWLn set out in 2011 to explore elements which contribute to a ‘deep and meaningful’ outdoor education experience. Following three years of work, the RWLn developed the ‘Hand Model’, a learning model designed to support educators in the development of Outdoor Learning for Sustainability (OLfS. Since its launch in early 2014, the model has been used for planning, delivering and reflecting upon OLfS experiences. Making use of the comments made in Činčera’s (2015 Real World Learning: a critical analysis which highlights inconsistencies existent within the model’s internal logic, this paper considers the perceived contradiction between emancipatory and instrumental approaches to learning. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction to the Hand model, this paper goes on to discuss the theoretical divide which the model spans between a goal-led, knowledge based approach promoted by the model’s focus upon understanding and values, and a pluralistic and exploratory approach typified by aspects of educational empowerment and experience. In response to this and augmented by examples, a differentiated conceptual framework is presented to facilitate a pragmatic application of the model from a practice perspective, making use of what has been termed a ‘blended approach’, whilst acknowledging degrees of inconsistency and dissonance from a theoretical perspective. Additionally, the model is viewed from a context perspective where questions are asked regarding the appropriateness of particular approaches depending upon the setting in which learning takes place. It is hoped that by moving beyond theoretically entrenched positions a mediated middle ground for the model’s application may be established.

  8. Using real-worldness and cultural difference to enhance student ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    differences, influences the quality of students' learning in a Life Skills module ... Studies reveal that real-world experiences will allow students to activate .... comprised 78 female students of whom 69 were Afrikaans-speaking and nine English-.

  9. Fairer machine learning in the real world: Mitigating discrimination without collecting sensitive data

    OpenAIRE

    Veale, M; Binns, RDP

    2017-01-01

    Decisions based on algorithmic, machine learning models can be unfair, reproducing biases in historical data used to train them. While computational techniques are emerging to address aspects of these concerns through communities such as discrimination-aware data mining (DADM) and fairness, accountability and transparency machine learning (FATML), their practical implementation faces real-world challenges. For legal, institutional or commercial reasons, organisations might not hold the data o...

  10. Network Coding Designs Suited for the Real World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pedersen, Morten Videbæk; Roetter, Daniel Enrique Lucani; Fitzek, Frank

    2013-01-01

    design have produced a large influx of new ideas and approaches to harness the power of NC. But, which of these designs are truly successful in practice? and which designs will not live up to their promised theoretical gains due to real-world constraints? Without attempting a comprehensive view of all...

  11. Primary care clinicians' recognition and management of depression: a model of depression care in real-world primary care practice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baik, Seong-Yi; Crabtree, Benjamin F; Gonzales, Junius J

    2013-11-01

    Depression is prevalent in primary care (PC) practices and poses a considerable public health burden in the United States. Despite nearly four decades of efforts to improve depression care quality in PC practices, a gap remains between desired treatment outcomes and the reality of how depression care is delivered. This article presents a real-world PC practice model of depression care, elucidating the processes and their influencing conditions. Grounded theory methodology was used for the data collection and analysis to develop a depression care model. Data were collected from 70 individual interviews (60 to 70 min each), three focus group interviews (n = 24, 2 h each), two surveys per clinician, and investigators' field notes on practice environments. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis. Surveys and field notes complemented interview data. Seventy primary care clinicians from 52 PC offices in the Midwest: 28 general internists, 28 family physicians, and 14 nurse practitioners. A depression care model was developed that illustrates how real-world conditions infuse complexity into each step of the depression care process. Depression care in PC settings is mediated through clinicians' interactions with patients, practice, and the local community. A clinician's interactional familiarity ("familiarity capital") was a powerful facilitator for depression care. For the recognition of depression, three previously reported processes and three conditions were confirmed. For the management of depression, 13 processes and 11 conditions were identified. Empowering the patient was a parallel process to the management of depression. The clinician's ability to develop and utilize interactional relationships and resources needed to recognize and treat a person with depression is key to depression care in primary care settings. The interactional context of depression care makes empowering the patient central to depression care delivery.

  12. Pre-Service Teachers' Modelling Processes through Engagement with Model Eliciting Activities with a Technological Tool

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daher, Wajeeh M.; Shahbari, Juhaina Awawdeh

    2015-01-01

    Engaging mathematics students with modelling activities helps them learn mathematics meaningfully. This engagement, in the case of model eliciting activities, helps the students elicit mathematical models by interpreting real-world situation in mathematical ways. This is especially true when the students utilize technology to build the models.…

  13. Evidence-Based Occupational Hearing Screening I: Modeling the Effects of Real-World Noise Environments on the Likelihood of Effective Speech Communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Soli, Sigfrid D; Giguère, Christian; Laroche, Chantal; Vaillancourt, Véronique; Dreschler, Wouter A; Rhebergen, Koenraad S; Harkins, Kevin; Ruckstuhl, Mark; Ramulu, Pradeep; Meyers, Lawrence S

    corrections environments. The likelihood of effective speech communication at communication distances of 0.5 and 1 m was often less than 0.50 for normal vocal effort. Likelihood values often increased to 0.80 or more when raised or loud vocal effort was used. Effective speech communication at and beyond 5 m was often unlikely, regardless of vocal effort. ESII modeling of nonstationary real-world noise environments may prove an objective means of characterizing their impact on the likelihood of effective speech communication. The normative reference provided by these measures predicts the extent to which hearing impairments that increase the ESII value required for effective speech communication also decrease the likelihood of effective speech communication. These predictions may provide an objective evidence-based link between the essential hearing-critical job task requirements of public safety and law enforcement personnel and ESII-based hearing assessment of individuals who seek to perform these jobs.

  14. Bringing the Real World into the Biology Curriculum

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lewis, Jenny

    2006-01-01

    This study followed a small but diverse group of biology teachers through the first two years of the pilot for a new Advanced Level Biology course--Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology. SNAB aims to modernise A-level Biology using real world contexts and examples as the starting point, promoting conceptual understanding rather than factual recall,…

  15. Real-Time Corrected Traffic Correlation Model for Traffic Flow Forecasting

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hua-pu Lu

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper focuses on the problems of short-term traffic flow forecasting. The main goal is to put forward traffic correlation model and real-time correction algorithm for traffic flow forecasting. Traffic correlation model is established based on the temporal-spatial-historical correlation characteristic of traffic big data. In order to simplify the traffic correlation model, this paper presents correction coefficients optimization algorithm. Considering multistate characteristic of traffic big data, a dynamic part is added to traffic correlation model. Real-time correction algorithm based on Fuzzy Neural Network is presented to overcome the nonlinear mapping problems. A case study based on a real-world road network in Beijing, China, is implemented to test the efficiency and applicability of the proposed modeling methods.

  16. Dengue outlook for the World Cup in Brazil: an early warning model framework driven by real-time seasonal climate forecasts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lowe, Rachel; Barcellos, Christovam; Coelho, Caio A S; Bailey, Trevor C; Coelho, Giovanini Evelim; Graham, Richard; Jupp, Tim; Ramalho, Walter Massa; Carvalho, Marilia Sá; Stephenson, David B; Rodó, Xavier

    2014-07-01

    With more than a million spectators expected to travel among 12 different cities in Brazil during the football World Cup, June 12-July 13, 2014, the risk of the mosquito-transmitted disease dengue fever is a concern. We addressed the potential for a dengue epidemic during the tournament, using a probabilistic forecast of dengue risk for the 553 microregions of Brazil, with risk level warnings for the 12 cities where matches will be played. We obtained real-time seasonal climate forecasts from several international sources (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts [ECMWF], Met Office, Meteo-France and Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos [CPTEC]) and the observed dengue epidemiological situation in Brazil at the forecast issue date as provided by the Ministry of Health. Using this information we devised a spatiotemporal hierarchical Bayesian modelling framework that enabled dengue warnings to be made 3 months ahead. By assessing the past performance of the forecasting system using observed dengue incidence rates for June, 2000-2013, we identified optimum trigger alert thresholds for scenarios of medium-risk and high-risk of dengue. Our forecasts for June, 2014, showed that dengue risk was likely to be low in the host cities Brasília, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, and São Paulo. The risk was medium in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, and Manaus. High-risk alerts were triggered for the northeastern cities of Recife (p(high)=19%), Fortaleza (p(high)=46%), and Natal (p(high)=48%). For these high-risk areas, particularly Natal, the forecasting system did well for previous years (in June, 2000-13). This timely dengue early warning permits the Ministry of Health and local authorities to implement appropriate, city-specific mitigation and control actions ahead of the World Cup. European Commission's Seventh Framework Research Programme projects DENFREE, EUPORIAS, and SPECS; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnol

  17. Circular contour retrieval in real-world conditions by higher order statistics and an alternating-least squares algorithm

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Haiping; Marot, Julien; Fossati, Caroline; Bourennane, Salah

    2011-12-01

    In real-world conditions, contours are most often blurred in digital images because of acquisition conditions such as movement, light transmission environment, and defocus. Among image segmentation methods, Hough transform requires a computational load which increases with the number of noise pixels, level set methods also require a high computational load, and some other methods assume that the contours are one-pixel wide. For the first time, we retrieve the characteristics of multiple possibly concentric blurred circles. We face correlated noise environment, to get closer to real-world conditions. For this, we model a blurred circle by a few parameters--center coordinates, radius, and spread--which characterize its mean position and gray level variations. We derive the signal model which results from signal generation on circular antenna. Linear antennas provide the center coordinates. To retrieve the circle radii, we adapt the second-order statistics TLS-ESPRIT method for non-correlated noise environment, and propose a novel version of TLS-ESPRIT based on higher-order statistics for correlated noise environment. Then, we derive a least-squares criterion and propose an alternating least-squares algorithm to retrieve simultaneously all spread values of concentric circles. Experiments performed on hand-made and real-world images show that the proposed methods outperform the Hough transform and a level set method dedicated to blurred contours in terms of computational load. Moreover, the proposed model and optimization method provide the information of the contour grey level variations.

  18. Processing speed and executive functions predict real-world everyday living skills in adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Puig, O; Penadés, R; Baeza, I; Sánchez-Gistau, V; De la Serna, E; Fonrodona, L; Andrés-Perpiñá, S; Bernardo, M; Castro-Fornieles, J

    2012-06-01

    Cognition and clinical variables are known to be among the most predictive factors of real-world social functioning and daily living skills in adult-onset schizophrenia. Fewer studies have focused on their impact in adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia (EOS). The aim of this study is to examine the relationships and the predictive value of cognition and clinical variables on real-world daily living skills in a sample of adolescents with EOS. Cognitive, clinical and real-world everyday living skills measures were administered to 45 clinically and pharmacologically stabilized adolescent outpatients with EOS and 45 healthy control subjects matched by age and sex. Multi-variant analyses to compare cognitive and real-world functioning profiles between patients and controls and regression analysis to identify predictors of real-world functioning scores in patients were used. Adolescents with EOS showed a generalized cognitive and real-world daily living skills dysfunction. Several cognitive and clinical variables significantly correlated with real-world daily living skills functioning but only the processing speed and executive functions emerged as independent predictors of everyday living skills scores, explaining 25.1% of the variance. Slowness in processing information and executive dysfunction showed a significant impact on real-world daily living skills in EOS, independently from clinical symptoms and other cognitive variables. Nevertheless, much of the variance in the daily living skills measure remained unaccounted for, suggesting that other factors were involved as well in this young population.

  19. A Coding of Real Null Four-Momenta into World-Sheet Coordinates

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David B. Fairlie

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The results of minimizing the action for string-like systems on a simply connected world sheet are shown to encode the Cartesian components of real null momentum four-vectors into coordinates on the world sheet. This identification arises consistently from different approaches to the problem.

  20. Integrating a virtual agent into the real world

    OpenAIRE

    André, Elisabeth

    2007-01-01

    Integrating a virtual agent into the real world : the virtual anatomy assistant ritchie / K. Dorfmüller-Ulhaas ... - In: Intelligent virtual agents : 7th international conference, IVA 2007, Paris, France, September 17-19, 2007 ; proceedings / Catherine Pelachaud ... (eds.). - Berlin [u.a.] : Springer, 2007. - S. 211-224. - (Lecture notes in computer science ; 4722 : Lecture notes in artificial intelligence)

  1. Mood effects on memory and executive control in a real-life situation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lagner, Prune; Kliegel, Matthias; Phillips, Louise H; Ihle, Andreas; Hering, Alexandra; Ballhausen, Nicola; Schnitzspahn, Katharina M

    2015-01-01

    In the laboratory, studies have shown an inconsistent pattern of whether, and how, mood may affect cognitive functions indicating both mood-related enhancement as well as decline. Surprisingly, little is known about whether there are similar effects in everyday life. Hence, the present study aimed to investigate possible mood effects on memory and executive control in a real-life situation. Mood effects were examined in the context of winning in a sports competition. Sixty-one male handball players were tested with an extensive cognitive test battery (comprising memory and executive control) both after winning a match and after training as neutral baseline. Mood differed significantly between the two testing situations, while physiological arousal and motivation were comparable. Results showed lowered performance after the win compared with training in selected cognitive measures. Specifically, short-term and episodic memory performance was poorer following a win, whereas executive control performance was unaffected by condition. Differences in memory disappeared when emotional states after the match were entered as covariates into the initial analyses. Thus, findings suggest mood-related impairments in memory, but not in executive control processes after a positive real-life event.

  2. Designing Inclusive Systems Designing Inclusion for Real-world Applications

    CERN Document Server

    Clarkson, John; Robinson, Peter; Lazar, Jonathan; Heylighen, Ann

    2012-01-01

    The Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT) are a series of workshops held at a Cambridge University College every two years. The workshop theme: “Designing inclusion for real-world applications” refers to the emerging potential and relevance of the latest generations of inclusive design thinking, tools, techniques, and data, to mainstream project applications such as healthcare and the design of working environments. Inclusive Design Research involves developing tools and guidance enabling product designers to design for the widest possible population, for a given range of capabilities. There are five main themes: •Designing for the Real-World •Measuring Demand And Capabilities •Designing Cognitive Interaction with Emerging Technologies •Design for Inclusion •Designing Inclusive Architecture In the tradition of CWUAAT, we have solicited and accepted contributions over a wide range of topics, both within individual themes and also across the workshop’s scope. ...

  3. Trip Energy Estimation Methodology and Model Based on Real-World Driving Data for Green Routing Applications: Preprint

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Holden, Jacob [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Van Til, Harrison J [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Wood, Eric W [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Gonder, Jeffrey D [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Zhu, Lei [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

    2018-02-09

    A data-informed model to predict energy use for a proposed vehicle trip has been developed in this paper. The methodology leverages nearly 1 million miles of real-world driving data to generate the estimation model. Driving is categorized at the sub-trip level by average speed, road gradient, and road network geometry, then aggregated by category. An average energy consumption rate is determined for each category, creating an energy rates look-up table. Proposed vehicle trips are then categorized in the same manner, and estimated energy rates are appended from the look-up table. The methodology is robust and applicable to almost any type of driving data. The model has been trained on vehicle global positioning system data from the Transportation Secure Data Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and validated against on-road fuel consumption data from testing in Phoenix, Arizona. The estimation model has demonstrated an error range of 8.6% to 13.8%. The model results can be used to inform control strategies in routing tools, such as change in departure time, alternate routing, and alternate destinations to reduce energy consumption. This work provides a highly extensible framework that allows the model to be tuned to a specific driver or vehicle type.

  4. Learning from Mistakes --- A Comprehensive Study on Real World Concurrency Bug Characteristics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shan Lu; Soyeon Park; Eunsoo Seo; Yuanyuan Zhou

    2008-01-01

    The reality of multi-core hardware has made concurrent programs pervasive. Unfortunately, writing correct concurrent programs is difficult. Addressing this challenge requires advances in multiple directions, including concurrency bug detection, concurrent program testing, concurrent programming model design, etc. Designing effective techniques in all these directions will significantly benefit from a deep understanding of real world concurrency bug characteristics. This paper provides the first (to the best of our knowledge) comprehensive real world concurrency bug characteristic study. Specifically, we have carefully examined concurrency bug patterns, manifestation, and fix strategies of 105 randomly selected real world concurrency bugs from 4 representative server and client opensource applications (MySQL, Apache, Mozilla and OpenOffice). Our study reveals several interesting findings and provides useful guidance for concurrency bug detection, testing, and concurrent programming language design. Some of our findings are as follows: (1) Around one third of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs are caused by violation to programmers order intentions, which may not be easily expressed via synchronization primitives like locks and transactional memories; (2) Around 34% of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs involve multiple variables, which are not well addressed by existing bug detection tools; (3) About 92% of the examined concurrency bugs can be reliably triggered by enforcing certain orders among no more than 4 memory accesses. This indicates that testing concurrent programs can target at exploring possible orders among every small groups of memory accesses, instead of among all memory accesses; (4) About 73% of the examined non-deadlock concurrency bugs were not fixed by simply adding or changing locks, and many of the fixes were not correct at the first try, indicating the difficulty of reasoning concurrent execution by programmers.

  5. Emissions During and Real-world Frequency of Heavy-duty Diesel Particulate Filter Regeneration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruehl, Chris; Smith, Jeremy D; Ma, Yilin; Shields, Jennifer Erin; Burnitzki, Mark; Sobieralski, Wayne; Ianni, Robert; Chernich, Donald J; Chang, M-C Oliver; Collins, John Francis; Yoon, Seungju; Quiros, David; Hu, Shaohua; Dwyer, Harry

    2018-05-15

    Recent tightening of particulate matter (PM) emission standards for heavy-duty engines has spurred the widespread adoption of diesel particulate filters (DPFs), which need to be regenerated periodically to remove trapped PM. The total impact of DPFs therefore depends not only on their filtering efficiency during normal operation, but also on the emissions during and the frequency of regeneration events. We performed active (parked and driving) and passive regenerations on two heavy-duty diesel vehicles (HDDVs), and report the chemical composition of emissions during these events, as well as the efficiency with which trapped PM is converted to gas-phase products. We also collected activity data from 85 HDDVs to determine how often regeneration occurs during real-world operation. PM emitted during regeneration ranged from 0.2 to 16.3 g, and the average time and distance between real-world active regenerations was 28.0 h and 599 miles. These results indicate that regeneration of real-world DPFs does not substantially offset the reduction of PM by DPFs during normal operation. The broad ranges of regeneration frequency per truck (3-100 h and 23-4078 miles) underscore the challenges in designing engines and associated aftertreatments that reduce emissions for all real-world duty cycles.

  6. Medical Science Liaisons in Real-World Evidence Studies: Experience of AstraZeneca Russia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suvorov, Nikolay; Karaseva, Vera; Stukalina, Ekaterina; Sanay, Elkhan; Petrakovskaya, Vera; Bulatov, Vladimir

    2018-01-01

    There is no doubt that real-world evidence studies have the potential to improve and accelerate the development and delivery of safe and cost-effective innovative medicines to patients as well as influence the way we approach health and health care. Real-world evidence studies are a great challenge in terms of development and conduct, so there should be a good collaboration between the study team and clinical sites at all times, resulting eventually in timely and efficient enrollment. Engaging the sites and key external experts as early as possible during feasibility and routine visits, as well as highlighting the science rationale behind AstraZeneca's portfolio at investigator meetings and during medical science liaison (MSL) interactions, can create a positive impact on physician perception of a particular study and prioritization of patient recruitment in such studies. Therefore, we would like to underline the important role of MSLs in the risk-based monitoring setting of real-world evidence studies, with special attention to the studies with complicated patient profiles, tough timelines, and/or seasonal factors. This approach will be used further for other real world evidence projects of AstraZeneca Russia MC to ensure timelines and budget deliverables are met for the generation of high-quality evidence and eventually better health care for all of us.

  7. Physical Analytics: An emerging field with real-world applications and impact

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hamann, Hendrik

    2015-03-01

    In the past most information on the internet has been originated by humans or computers. However with the emergence of cyber-physical systems, vast amount of data is now being created by sensors from devices, machines etc digitizing the physical world. While cyber-physical systems are subject to active research around the world, the vast amount of actual data generated from the physical world has attracted so far little attention from the engineering and physics community. In this presentation we use examples to highlight the opportunities in this new subject of ``Physical Analytics'' for highly inter-disciplinary research (including physics, engineering and computer science), which aims understanding real-world physical systems by leveraging cyber-physical technologies. More specifically, the convergence of the physical world with the digital domain allows applying physical principles to everyday problems in a much more effective and informed way than what was possible in the past. Very much like traditional applied physics and engineering has made enormous advances and changed our lives by making detailed measurements to understand the physics of an engineered device, we can now apply the same rigor and principles to understand large-scale physical systems. In the talk we first present a set of ``configurable'' enabling technologies for Physical Analytics including ultralow power sensing and communication technologies, physical big data management technologies, numerical modeling for physical systems, machine learning based physical model blending, and physical analytics based automation and control. Then we discuss in detail several concrete applications of Physical Analytics ranging from energy management in buildings and data centers, environmental sensing and controls, precision agriculture to renewable energy forecasting and management.

  8. Current situation of wind energy in the world and Turkey

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Alper Kaplan, Yusuf; San, Ismail [Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Anadolu University (Turkey)], email: yakaplan@anadolu.edu.tr, email: isan@anadolu.edu.tr

    2011-07-01

    This paper gives an overview of the current situation of wind power in Turkey and in the world by evaluating installed wind power using current data. It also looks at the political conditions of Turkey in relation to the current installed wind energy power in Turkey compared with that of certain developed countries. The problems encountered are also illustrated as a basis for proposing solutions. Turkey's wind energy potential is 48,000 MW but installed wind power was only 1,329 MW as of 2011. Wind energy is at present one of the most cost-competitive renewable energy technologies in the world when technical, geographical and social issues are taken into consideration. Economic sources should be researched. The development of current potential and the market entry of renewable energy resources requires a legal and regulatory framework that support suitable mechanisms. Local support is recommended together with tax exemptions. Long-term fixed-price guarantees should also be considered by government.

  9. Caffeine Enhances Real-World Language Processing: Evidence from a Proofreading Task

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brunye, Tad T.; Mahoney, Caroline R.; Rapp, David N.; Ditman, Tali; Taylor, Holly A.

    2012-01-01

    Caffeine has become the most prevalently consumed psychostimulant in the world, but its influences on daily real-world functioning are relatively unknown. The present work investigated the effects of caffeine (0 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg, 400 mg) on a commonplace language task that required readers to identify and correct 4 error types in extended…

  10. Hybrid-Electric Passenger Car Carbon Dioxide and Fuel Consumption Benefits Based on Real-World Driving.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holmén, Britt A; Sentoff, Karen M

    2015-08-18

    Hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) have lower fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions than conventional vehicles (CVs), on average, based on laboratory tests, but there is a paucity of real-world, on-road HEV emissions and performance data needed to assess energy use and emissions associated with real-world driving, including the effects of road grade. This need is especially great as the electrification of the passenger vehicle fleet (from HEVs to PHEVs to BEVs) increases in response to climate and energy concerns. We compared tailpipe CO2 emissions and fuel consumption of an HEV passenger car to a CV of the same make and model during real-world, on-the-road network driving to quantify the in-use benefit of one popular full HEV technology. Using vehicle specific power (VSP) assignments that account for measured road grade, the mean CV/HEV ratios of CO2 tailpipe emissions or fuel consumption defined the corresponding HEV "benefit" factor for each VSP class (1 kW/ton resolution). Averaging over all VSP classes for driving in all seasons, including temperatures from -13 to +35 °C in relatively steep (-13.2 to +11.5% grade), hilly terrain, mean (±SD) CO2 emission benefit factors were 4.5 ± 3.6, 2.5 ± 1.7, and 1.4 ± 0.5 for city, exurban/suburban arterial and highway driving, respectively. Benefit factor magnitude corresponded to the frequency of electric-drive-only (EDO) operation, which was modeled as a logarithmic function of VSP. A combined model explained 95% of the variance in HEV benefit for city, 75% for arterial and 57% for highway driving. Benefit factors consistently exceeded 2 for VSP classes with greater than 50% EDO (i.e., only city and arterial driving). The reported HEV benefits account for real-world road grade that is often neglected in regulatory emissions and fuel economy tests. Fuel use HEV benefit factors were 1.3 and 2 for the regulatory highway (HWFET) and city (FTP) cycles, respectively, 18% and 31% higher than the EPA adjusted

  11. External Prior Guided Internal Prior Learning for Real-World Noisy Image Denoising

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Jun; Zhang, Lei; Zhang, David

    2018-06-01

    Most of existing image denoising methods learn image priors from either external data or the noisy image itself to remove noise. However, priors learned from external data may not be adaptive to the image to be denoised, while priors learned from the given noisy image may not be accurate due to the interference of corrupted noise. Meanwhile, the noise in real-world noisy images is very complex, which is hard to be described by simple distributions such as Gaussian distribution, making real noisy image denoising a very challenging problem. We propose to exploit the information in both external data and the given noisy image, and develop an external prior guided internal prior learning method for real noisy image denoising. We first learn external priors from an independent set of clean natural images. With the aid of learned external priors, we then learn internal priors from the given noisy image to refine the prior model. The external and internal priors are formulated as a set of orthogonal dictionaries to efficiently reconstruct the desired image. Extensive experiments are performed on several real noisy image datasets. The proposed method demonstrates highly competitive denoising performance, outperforming state-of-the-art denoising methods including those designed for real noisy images.

  12. Hyperbolicity measures democracy in real-world networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Borassi, Michele; Chessa, Alessandro; Caldarelli, Guido

    2015-09-01

    In this work, we analyze the hyperbolicity of real-world networks, a geometric quantity that measures if a space is negatively curved. We provide two improvements in our understanding of this quantity: first of all, in our interpretation, a hyperbolic network is "aristocratic", since few elements "connect" the system, while a non-hyperbolic network has a more "democratic" structure with a larger number of crucial elements. The second contribution is the introduction of the average hyperbolicity of the neighbors of a given node. Through this definition, we outline an "influence area" for the vertices in the graph. We show that in real networks the influence area of the highest degree vertex is small in what we define "local" networks (i.e., social or peer-to-peer networks), and large in "global" networks (i.e., power grid, metabolic networks, or autonomous system networks).

  13. Real-world innovation in rural South Africa

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Mulder, I

    2008-08-01

    Full Text Available stream_source_info Mulder_2008.pdf.txt stream_content_type text/plain stream_size 46126 Content-Encoding UTF-8 stream_name Mulder_2008.pdf.txt Content-Type text/plain; charset=UTF-8 The Electronic Journal for Virtual... Organizations and Networks Volume 10, “Special Issue on Living Labs”, August 2008 REAL-WORLD INNOVATION IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA Ingrid Mulder1,2, Walter Bohle3, Shela Boshomane4, Chris Morris4, Hugo Tempelman5, & Daan Velthausz1,6 1Telematica Instituut...

  14. Validating agent based models through virtual worlds.

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Lakkaraju, Kiran; Whetzel, Jonathan H.; Lee, Jina; Bier, Asmeret Brooke; Cardona-Rivera, Rogelio E.; Bernstein, Jeremy Ray Rhythm

    2014-01-01

    As the US continues its vigilance against distributed, embedded threats, understanding the political and social structure of these groups becomes paramount for predicting and dis- rupting their attacks. Agent-based models (ABMs) serve as a powerful tool to study these groups. While the popularity of social network tools (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) has provided extensive communication data, there is a lack of ne-grained behavioral data with which to inform and validate existing ABMs. Virtual worlds, in particular massively multiplayer online games (MMOG), where large numbers of people interact within a complex environ- ment for long periods of time provide an alternative source of data. These environments provide a rich social environment where players engage in a variety of activities observed between real-world groups: collaborating and/or competing with other groups, conducting battles for scarce resources, and trading in a market economy. Strategies employed by player groups surprisingly re ect those seen in present-day con icts, where players use diplomacy or espionage as their means for accomplishing their goals. In this project, we propose to address the need for ne-grained behavioral data by acquiring and analyzing game data a commercial MMOG, referred to within this report as Game X. The goals of this research were: (1) devising toolsets for analyzing virtual world data to better inform the rules that govern a social ABM and (2) exploring how virtual worlds could serve as a source of data to validate ABMs established for analogous real-world phenomena. During this research, we studied certain patterns of group behavior to compliment social modeling e orts where a signi cant lack of detailed examples of observed phenomena exists. This report outlines our work examining group behaviors that underly what we have termed the Expression-To-Action (E2A) problem: determining the changes in social contact that lead individuals/groups to engage in a particular behavior

  15. Possible world based consistency learning model for clustering and classifying uncertain data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Han; Zhang, Xianchao; Zhang, Xiaotong

    2018-06-01

    Possible world has shown to be effective for handling various types of data uncertainty in uncertain data management. However, few uncertain data clustering and classification algorithms are proposed based on possible world. Moreover, existing possible world based algorithms suffer from the following issues: (1) they deal with each possible world independently and ignore the consistency principle across different possible worlds; (2) they require the extra post-processing procedure to obtain the final result, which causes that the effectiveness highly relies on the post-processing method and the efficiency is also not very good. In this paper, we propose a novel possible world based consistency learning model for uncertain data, which can be extended both for clustering and classifying uncertain data. This model utilizes the consistency principle to learn a consensus affinity matrix for uncertain data, which can make full use of the information across different possible worlds and then improve the clustering and classification performance. Meanwhile, this model imposes a new rank constraint on the Laplacian matrix of the consensus affinity matrix, thereby ensuring that the number of connected components in the consensus affinity matrix is exactly equal to the number of classes. This also means that the clustering and classification results can be directly obtained without any post-processing procedure. Furthermore, for the clustering and classification tasks, we respectively derive the efficient optimization methods to solve the proposed model. Experimental results on real benchmark datasets and real world uncertain datasets show that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art uncertain data clustering and classification algorithms in effectiveness and performs competitively in efficiency. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Cross-Situational Learning with Bayesian Generative Models for Multimodal Category and Word Learning in Robots

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Akira Taniguchi

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we propose a Bayesian generative model that can form multiple categories based on each sensory-channel and can associate words with any of the four sensory-channels (action, position, object, and color. This paper focuses on cross-situational learning using the co-occurrence between words and information of sensory-channels in complex situations rather than conventional situations of cross-situational learning. We conducted a learning scenario using a simulator and a real humanoid iCub robot. In the scenario, a human tutor provided a sentence that describes an object of visual attention and an accompanying action to the robot. The scenario was set as follows: the number of words per sensory-channel was three or four, and the number of trials for learning was 20 and 40 for the simulator and 25 and 40 for the real robot. The experimental results showed that the proposed method was able to estimate the multiple categorizations and to learn the relationships between multiple sensory-channels and words accurately. In addition, we conducted an action generation task and an action description task based on word meanings learned in the cross-situational learning scenario. The experimental results showed that the robot could successfully use the word meanings learned by using the proposed method.

  17. The patient registry: a high-impact tool for real world evidence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    BarickUttam, MohantyRituraj, GowdaArun

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Background: In this world of seemingly infinite data across domains, one strives to acquire better tools and methodologies to fully exploit available data. This process begins with meticulous planning to gather relevant information and continues until there is an output in the form of credible evidence. The ability to generate real-world evidence would take such a process to new level: the factors that influence these processes under real-world conditions are varied, unpredictable, and unregulated. Results obtained in highly regulated or controlled conditions are universally accepted and sought after for regulatory approvals, but performance indicators in the real world will set the tone for the future. Hence, the demands for very reliant and robust tools and mechanisms for gathering evidence are all the more prominent and necessary. Patient registries fill this gap and stand tall among the various tools that could deliver the desired end results with acceptable accuracy. Over the years, pharmaceutical companies, along with policymakers and other stakeholders, have been actively involved in the development of such registries. Aims: Here we provide an overview of the usefulness of registries for the various stakeholders in healthcare in terms of conduct, approach, and barriers to initiating such studies. Conclusion: One of the impediments for the wider appeal and utility of registries is low awareness among the public and policymakers. Incorporating them as a part of the standard global healthcare system would involve setting up a regulatory framework.

  18. Switching performance of OBS network model under prefetched real traffic

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Zhenhua; Xu, Du; Lei, Wen

    2005-11-01

    Optical Burst Switching (OBS) [1] is now widely considered as an efficient switching technique in building the next generation optical Internet .So it's very important to precisely evaluate the performance of the OBS network model. The performance of the OBS network model is variable in different condition, but the most important thing is that how it works under real traffic load. In the traditional simulation models, uniform traffics are usually generated by simulation software to imitate the data source of the edge node in the OBS network model, and through which the performance of the OBS network is evaluated. Unfortunately, without being simulated by real traffic, the traditional simulation models have several problems and their results are doubtable. To deal with this problem, we present a new simulation model for analysis and performance evaluation of the OBS network, which uses prefetched IP traffic to be data source of the OBS network model. The prefetched IP traffic can be considered as real IP source of the OBS edge node and the OBS network model has the same clock rate with a real OBS system. So it's easy to conclude that this model is closer to the real OBS system than the traditional ones. The simulation results also indicate that this model is more accurate to evaluate the performance of the OBS network system and the results of this model are closer to the actual situation.

  19. Multi-perspective workflow modeling for online surgical situation models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Franke, Stefan; Meixensberger, Jürgen; Neumuth, Thomas

    2015-04-01

    Surgical workflow management is expected to enable situation-aware adaptation and intelligent systems behavior in an integrated operating room (OR). The overall aim is to unburden the surgeon and OR staff from both manual maintenance and information seeking tasks. A major step toward intelligent systems behavior is a stable classification of the surgical situation from multiple perspectives based on performed low-level tasks. The present work proposes a method for the classification of surgical situations based on multi-perspective workflow modeling. A model network that interconnects different types of surgical process models is described. Various aspects of a surgical situation description were considered: low-level tasks, high-level tasks, patient status, and the use of medical devices. A study with sixty neurosurgical interventions was conducted to evaluate the performance of our approach and its robustness against incomplete workflow recognition input. A correct classification rate of over 90% was measured for high-level tasks and patient status. The device usage models for navigation and neurophysiology classified over 95% of the situations correctly, whereas the ultrasound usage was more difficult to predict. Overall, the classification rate decreased with an increasing level of input distortion. Autonomous adaptation of medical devices and intelligent systems behavior do not currently depend solely on low-level tasks. Instead, they require a more general type of understanding of the surgical condition. The integration of various surgical process models in a network provided a comprehensive representation of the interventions and allowed for the generation of extensive situation descriptions. Multi-perspective surgical workflow modeling and online situation models will be a significant pre-requisite for reliable and intelligent systems behavior. Hence, they will contribute to a cooperative OR environment. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. OCA Oracle Database 11g database administration I : a real-world certification guide

    CERN Document Server

    Ries, Steve

    2013-01-01

    Developed as a practical book, ""Oracle Database 11g Administration I Certification Guide"" will show you all you need to know to effectively excel at being an Oracle DBA, for both examinations and the real world. This book is for anyone who needs the essential skills to become an Oracle DBA, pass the Oracle Database Administration I exam, and use those skills in the real world to manage secure, high performance, and highly available Oracle databases.

  1. Real-world and specific to vehicle driving cycles for measuring car pollutant emissions

    OpenAIRE

    ANDRE, M; JOUMARD, R

    2004-01-01

    In the frame of the European research project ARTEMIS, a set of representative real-world driving cycles has been developed, to ensure a coherency between the pollutant emissions measurements conducted in the frame of the ARTEMIS project and of on-going national campaigns and to enable the integration of all the resulting emission data in the European systems of emission inventory. The 3 real-world ARTEMIS driving cycles (urban, rural road and motorway) represent the observed European drivi...

  2. On the agreement between small-world-like OFC model and real earthquakes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ferreira, Douglas S.R.; Papa, Andrés R.R.; Menezes, Ronaldo

    2015-01-01

    In this article we implemented simulations of the OFC model for earthquakes for two different topologies: regular and small-world, where in the latter the links are randomly rewired with probability p. In both topologies, we have studied the distribution of time intervals between consecutive earthquakes and the border effects present in each one. In addition, we also have characterized the influence that the probability p produces in certain characteristics of the lattice and in the intensity of border effects. From the two topologies, networks of consecutive epicenters were constructed, that allowed us to analyze the distribution of connectivities of each one. In our results distributions arise belonging to a family of non-traditional distributions functions, which agrees with previous studies using data from actual earthquakes. Our results reinforce the idea that the Earth is in a critical self-organized state and furthermore point towards temporal and spatial correlations between earthquakes in different places. - Highlights: • OFC model simulations for regular and small-world topologies. • For small-world topology distributions agree remarkably well with actual earthquakes. • Reinforce the idea of a critical self-organized state for the Earth's crust. • Point towards temporal and spatial correlations between far earthquakes in far places

  3. On the agreement between small-world-like OFC model and real earthquakes

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ferreira, Douglas S.R., E-mail: douglas.ferreira@ifrj.edu.br [Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio de Janeiro, Paracambi, RJ (Brazil); Geophysics Department, Observatório Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil); Papa, Andrés R.R., E-mail: papa@on.br [Geophysics Department, Observatório Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil); Instituto de Física, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil); Menezes, Ronaldo, E-mail: rmenezes@cs.fit.edu [BioComplex Laboratory, Computer Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne (United States)

    2015-03-20

    In this article we implemented simulations of the OFC model for earthquakes for two different topologies: regular and small-world, where in the latter the links are randomly rewired with probability p. In both topologies, we have studied the distribution of time intervals between consecutive earthquakes and the border effects present in each one. In addition, we also have characterized the influence that the probability p produces in certain characteristics of the lattice and in the intensity of border effects. From the two topologies, networks of consecutive epicenters were constructed, that allowed us to analyze the distribution of connectivities of each one. In our results distributions arise belonging to a family of non-traditional distributions functions, which agrees with previous studies using data from actual earthquakes. Our results reinforce the idea that the Earth is in a critical self-organized state and furthermore point towards temporal and spatial correlations between earthquakes in different places. - Highlights: • OFC model simulations for regular and small-world topologies. • For small-world topology distributions agree remarkably well with actual earthquakes. • Reinforce the idea of a critical self-organized state for the Earth's crust. • Point towards temporal and spatial correlations between far earthquakes in far places.

  4. Situated learning in the mobile age: mobile devices on a field trip to the sea

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vanessa D.I. Pfeiffer

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available This study focuses on learning about fish biodiversity via mobile devices in a situated learning scenario. Mobile devices do not only facilitate relating the presented information to the real world in a direct way; they also allow the provision of dynamic representations on demand. This study asks whether mobile devices are suited to support knowledge acquisition in a situated learning scenario and whether providing dynamic content is an additional benefit of mobile devices in combination with a real-world experience. The study was conducted during a regular university course at the Mediterranean Sea. Students had to acquire knowledge on 18 Mediterranean fish species by using either static (n = 16 or dynamic learning materials (n = 17. An initial classroom activity was followed by a real-world experience with mobile devices (snorkelling activity. Learning outcomes were measured before and after snorkelling. A 2×2 mixed ANOVA revealed that students performed better after than before the mobile learning experience, whereas no main effect for learning material could be found. However, an interaction between both factors indicated that the knowledge gain in the dynamic group exceeded the knowledge gain in the static group. These results indicate that mobile devices are helpful to unfold the potential of dynamic visualisations for learning biodiversity in a situated learning scenario.

  5. How Symmetric Are Real-World Graphs? A Large-Scale Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fabian Ball

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available The analysis of symmetry is a main principle in natural sciences, especially physics. For network sciences, for example, in social sciences, computer science and data science, only a few small-scale studies of the symmetry of complex real-world graphs exist. Graph symmetry is a topic rooted in mathematics and is not yet well-received and applied in practice. This article underlines the importance of analyzing symmetry by showing the existence of symmetry in real-world graphs. An analysis of over 1500 graph datasets from the meta-repository networkrepository.com is carried out and a normalized version of the “network redundancy” measure is presented. It quantifies graph symmetry in terms of the number of orbits of the symmetry group from zero (no symmetries to one (completely symmetric, and improves the recognition of asymmetric graphs. Over 70% of the analyzed graphs contain symmetries (i.e., graph automorphisms, independent of size and modularity. Therefore, we conclude that real-world graphs are likely to contain symmetries. This contribution is the first larger-scale study of symmetry in graphs and it shows the necessity of handling symmetry in data analysis: The existence of symmetries in graphs is the cause of two problems in graph clustering we are aware of, namely, the existence of multiple equivalent solutions with the same value of the clustering criterion and, secondly, the inability of all standard partition-comparison measures of cluster analysis to identify automorphic partitions as equivalent.

  6. FMEA and consideration of real work situations for safer design of production systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lux, Aurélien; Mawo De Bikond, Johann; Etienne, Alain; Quillerou-Grivot, Edwige

    2016-12-01

    Production equipment designers must ensure the health and safety of future users; in this regard, they augment requirements for standardizing and controlling operator work. This contrasts with the ergonomic view of the activity, which recommends leaving operators leeway (margins for manoeuvre) in performing their task, while safeguarding their health. Following a brief analysis of design practices in the car industry, we detail how the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) approach is implemented in this sector. We then suggest an adaptation that enables designers to consider real work situations. This new protocol, namely, work situation FMEA, allows experience feedback to be used to defend the health standpoint during designer project reviews, which usually only address quality and performance issues. We subsequently illustrate the advantage of this approach using two examples of work situations at car parts manufacturers: the first from the literature and the second from an in-company industrial project.

  7. A Coding of Real Null Four-Momenta into World-Sheet Co-ordinates

    OpenAIRE

    Fairlie, David B.

    2008-01-01

    The results of minimizing the action for string-like systems on a simply-connected world sheet are shown to encode the Cartesian components of real null momentum four-vectors into co-ordinates on the world sheet. This identification arises consistently from different approaches to the problem.

  8. Spacio-temporal situation assessment for mobile robots

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Beck, Anders Billesø; Risager, Claus; Andersen, Nils Axel

    2011-01-01

    chains are used to model the situation states and sequence, where stream clustering is used for state matching and dealing with noise. In experiments using simulated and real data, we show that we are able to learn a situation sequence for a mobile robot passing through a narrow passage. After learning......In this paper, we present a framework for situation modeling and assessment for mobile robot applications. We consider situations as data patterns that characterize unique circumstances for the robot, and represented not only by the data but also its temporal and spacial sequence. Dynamic Markov...

  9. Personality and Behavior in Social Dilemmas: Testing the Situational Strength Hypothesis and the Role of Hypothetical Versus Real Incentives.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lozano, José H

    2016-02-01

    Previous research aimed at testing the situational strength hypothesis suffers from serious limitations regarding the conceptualization of strength. In order to overcome these limitations, the present study attempts to test the situational strength hypothesis based on the operationalization of strength as reinforcement contingencies. One dispositional factor of proven effect on cooperative behavior, social value orientation (SVO), was used as a predictor of behavior in four social dilemmas with varying degree of situational strength. The moderating role of incentive condition (hypothetical vs. real) on the relationship between SVO and behavior was also tested. One hundred undergraduates were presented with the four social dilemmas and the Social Value Orientation Scale. One-half of the sample played the social dilemmas using real incentives, whereas the other half used hypothetical incentives. Results supported the situational strength hypothesis in that no behavioral variability and no effect of SVO on behavior were found in the strongest situation. However, situational strength did not moderate the effect of SVO on behavior in situations where behavior showed variability. No moderating effect was found for incentive condition either. The implications of these results for personality theory and assessment are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  10. Sharing skills and knowledge to confront real-world problems | CRDI ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    Sharing skills and knowledge to confront real-world problems ... because 1.3 billion people cannot read English, and only 163 million people (a fraction ... childhood obesity in urban areas, caused by increases in junk food and lack of exercise.

  11. Community Action Projects: Applying Biotechnology in the Real World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nguyen, Phuong D.; Siegel, Marcelle A.

    2015-01-01

    Project-based learning and action research are powerful pedagogies in improving science education. We implemented a semester-long course using project-based action research to help students apply biotechnology knowledge learned in the classroom to the real world. Students had several choices to make in the project: working individually or as a…

  12. Metacognition in Real Life Situations and Study Skills and Habits: Two Types of Processes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al-Hilawani, Yasser A.

    2016-01-01

    The relationship between metacognition in real life situations and study skills and habits was examined using a sample of college students. Results showed no significant relationship between these two variables nor was there a significant relationship between study skills and reaction time as measured on the metacognitive test. However, there was…

  13. Assessing the real-world cost-effectiveness of adjuvant trastuzumab in HER-2/neu positive breast cancer.

    LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

    Hedden, Lindsay

    2012-01-01

    Among women with surgically removed, high-risk HER-2\\/neu-positive breast cancer, trastuzumab has demonstrated significant improvements in disease-free and overall survival. The objective of this study is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the currently recommended 12-month adjuvant protocol of trastuzumab using a Markov modeling approach and real-world cost data.

  14. A robust optimization model for blood supply chain in emergency situations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Meysam Fereiduni

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, a multi-period model for blood supply chain in emergency situation is presented to optimize decisions related to locate blood facilities and distribute blood products after natural disasters. In disastrous situations, uncertainty is an inseparable part of humanitarian logistics and blood supply chain as well. This paper proposes a robust network to capture the uncertain nature of blood supply chain during and after disasters. This study considers donor points, blood facilities, processing and testing labs, and hospitals as the components of blood supply chain. In addition, this paper makes location and allocation decisions for multiple post disaster periods through real data. The study compares the performances of “p-robust optimization” approach and “robust optimization” approach and the results are discussed.

  15. Investigating Comprehension in Real World Tasks: Understanding Jury Instructions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Charrow, Veda R.; Charrow, Robert

    This paper discusses the results of part of an ongoing project studying an aspect of real world language usage, the comprehension of standard jury instructions. Problems in the comprehension of these instructions include the memory load that they impose, the fact that most instructions are read only once, and the fact that instructions are written…

  16. Cardioversion of atrial fibrillation in a real-world setting

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Frederiksen, Anne Sofie; Albertsen, Andi Eie; Christesen, Amanda Marie Somer

    2017-01-01

    .10-11.81). Major bleeding events occurred in four patients (0.58%) in the NOAC group and 11 patients (0.75%) in the warfarin group (RR 0.78; 95% CI 0.25-2.43). Conclusion: In a real-world clinical setting with anticoagulation handled in a structured multidisciplinary AF clinic, the waiting time to cardioversion...

  17. Exploring Yellowstone National Park with Mathematical Modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wickstrom, Megan H.; Carr, Ruth; Lackey, Dacia

    2017-01-01

    Mathematical modeling, a practice standard in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010), is a process by which students develop and use mathematics as a tool to make sense of the world around them. Students investigate a real-world situation by asking mathematical questions; along the way, they need to decide how to use…

  18. RealWorld evaluation: working under budget, time, data, and political constraints

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Bamberger, Michael; Rugh, Jim; Mabry, Linda

    2012-01-01

    This book addresses the challenges of conducting program evaluations in real-world contexts where evaluators and their clients face budget and time constraints and where critical data may be missing...

  19. TRAX - Real-World Tracking of Moving Objects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Christian Søndergaard; Pakalnis, Stardas

    2007-01-01

    accuracy. This paper presents the TRAX tracking system that supports several techniques capable of tracking the current positions of moving objects with guaranteed accuracies at low update and communication costs in real-world settings. The techniques are readily relevant for practical applications......, but they also have implications for continued research. The tracking techniques offer a realistic setting for existing query processing techniques that assume that it is possible to always know the exact positions of moving objects. The techniques enable studies of trade-offs between querying and update...

  20. [Current situation of the most frequent zoonosis in the world].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Flores Castro, Ricardo

    2010-01-01

    Zoonoses are at the present time more important than ever due to their magnitude and impact. The international trade in animals, products and sub products, as well as the intense travel of people around the world, represent risks of dissemination of infectious diseases, and are the reason for a new age of emerging and reemerging zoonotic diseases. Under these conditions, public health and animal health authorities are obliged to work together in order to get more efficient control programs. In this paper the actual situation of some important emerging and reemerging zoonoses is analyzed, including: anthrax, rabies, tuberculosis, brucellosis, cysticercosis, echinococcosis, hanta virus, Hendra and Nipah virus. Particular attention is given to leptospirosis, due to the fact that it is considered by WHO and OIE as the widest spread zoonotic disease in the world. Zoonoses caused by ingestion of animal food products are discussed. They are responsible for the death of almost 2.2 million people. Bacteria of genus salmonella and campylobacter are considered. Some recommendations are given for the control and prevention of zoonoses, emphasizing the "One Health" concept.

  1. Situated cognition and the phenomenology of place: lifeworld, environmental embodiment, and immersion-in-world.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seamon, David

    2015-09-01

    This article makes use of a passage from novelist Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to illustrate Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the lived body and to consider what the related phenomenological concepts of place, environmental embodiment, and immersion-in-world might offer research in situated cognition.

  2. Disruption in neural phase synchrony is related to identification of inattentional deafness in real-world setting.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Callan, Daniel E; Gateau, Thibault; Durantin, Gautier; Gonthier, Nicolas; Dehais, Frédéric

    2018-06-01

    Individuals often have reduced ability to hear alarms in real world situations (e.g., anesthesia monitoring, flying airplanes) when attention is focused on another task, sometimes with devastating consequences. This phenomenon is called inattentional deafness and usually occurs under critical high workload conditions. It is difficult to simulate the critical nature of these tasks in the laboratory. In this study, dry electroencephalography is used to investigate inattentional deafness in real flight while piloting an airplane. The pilots participating in the experiment responded to audio alarms while experiencing critical high workload situations. It was found that missed relative to detected alarms were marked by reduced stimulus evoked phase synchrony in theta and alpha frequencies (6-14 Hz) from 120 to 230 ms poststimulus onset. Correlation of alarm detection performance with intertrial coherence measures of neural phase synchrony showed different frequency and time ranges for detected and missed alarms. These results are consistent with selective attentional processes actively disrupting oscillatory coherence in sensory networks not involved with the primary task (piloting in this case) under critical high load conditions. This hypothesis is corroborated by analyses of flight parameters showing greater maneuvering associated with difficult phases of flight occurring during missed alarms. Our results suggest modulation of neural oscillation is a general mechanism of attention utilizing enhancement of phase synchrony to sharpen alarm perception during successful divided attention, and disruption of phase synchrony in brain networks when attentional demands of the primary task are great, such as in the case of inattentional deafness. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  3. BMI and risk of serious upper body injury following motor vehicle crashes: concordance of real-world and computer-simulated observations.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shankuan Zhu

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Men tend to have more upper body mass and fat than women, a physical characteristic that may predispose them to severe motor vehicle crash (MVC injuries, particularly in certain body regions. This study examined MVC-related regional body injury and its association with the presence of driver obesity using both real-world data and computer crash simulation.Real-world data were from the 2001 to 2005 National Automotive Sampling System Crashworthiness Data System. A total of 10,941 drivers who were aged 18 years or older involved in frontal collision crashes were eligible for the study. Sex-specific logistic regression models were developed to analyze the associations between MVC injury and the presence of driver obesity. In order to confirm the findings from real-world data, computer models of obese subjects were constructed and crash simulations were performed. According to real-world data, obese men had a substantially higher risk of injury, especially serious injury, to the upper body regions including head, face, thorax, and spine than normal weight men (all p<0.05. A U-shaped relation was found between body mass index (BMI and serious injury in the abdominal region for both men and women (p<0.05 for both BMI and BMI(2. In the high-BMI range, men were more likely to be seriously injured than were women for all body regions except the extremities and abdominal region (all p<0.05 for interaction between BMI and sex. The findings from the computer simulation were generally consistent with the real-world results in the present study.Obese men endured a much higher risk of injury to upper body regions during MVCs. This higher risk may be attributed to differences in body shape, fat distribution, and center of gravity between obese and normal-weight subjects, and between men and women. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

  4. The Salford Lung Study protocol: a pragmatic, randomised phase III real-world effectiveness trial in asthma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woodcock, Ashley; Bakerly, Nawar Diar; New, John P; Gibson, J Martin; Wu, Wei; Vestbo, Jørgen; Leather, David

    2015-12-10

    Novel therapies need to be evaluated in normal clinical practice to allow a true representation of the treatment effectiveness in real-world settings. The Salford Lung Study is a pragmatic randomised controlled trial in adult asthma, evaluating the clinical effectiveness and safety of once-daily fluticasone furoate (100 μg or 200 μg)/vilanterol 25 μg in a novel dry-powder inhaler, versus existing asthma maintenance therapy. The study was initiated before this investigational treatment was licensed and conducted in real-world clinical practice to consider adherence, co-morbidities, polypharmacy, and real-world factors. Asthma Control Test at week 24; safety endpoints include the incidence of serious pneumonias. The study utilises the Salford electronic medical record, which allows near to real-time collection and monitoring of safety data. The Salford Lung Study is the world's first pragmatic randomised controlled trial of a pre-licensed medication in asthma. Use of patients' linked electronic health records to collect clinical endpoints offers minimal disruption to patients and investigators, and also ensures patient safety. This highly innovative study will complement standard double-blind randomised controlled trials in order to improve our understanding of the risk/benefit profile of fluticasone furoate/vilanterol in patients with asthma in real-world settings. Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT01706198; 04 October 2012.

  5. Importance of leadership in cardiac arrest situations: from simulation to real life and back.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hunziker, Sabnina; Tschan, Franziska; Semmer, Norbert K; Marsch, Stephan

    2013-04-18

    The 2010 American Heart Association guidelines now recommend leadership training in Advanced Cardiac Life Support courses. In this review we provide a comprehensive summary of data derived from clinical studies that investigated the importance of leadership in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Only a few, mostly observational, studies have been conducted under real-life conditions because of the high heterogeneity of the situations, difficulties in capturing the initial phase of CPR, and ethical issues. Well-controlled studies in the human simulator can fill existing gaps and provide important insights. High-fidelity video-assisted simulator studies from different research groups have shown that a prolonged process of teambuilding is associated with significant shortcomings in CPR, whereas effective leadership improves team performance. In addition, randomised controlled studies have provided evidence that medical students receiving leadership training subsequently showed improved CPR performance, which was sustained after a follow up of 4 months. In addition, leadership is influenced by gender and other factors such as emotional stress. Future studies are needed to investigate cultural differences and how findings from the simulator can be transferred to real-life situations.

  6. Rapid world modeling: Fitting range data to geometric primitives

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Feddema, J.; Little, C.

    1996-01-01

    For the past seven years, Sandia National Laboratories has been active in the development of robotic systems to help remediate DOE's waste sites and decommissioned facilities. Some of these facilities have high levels of radioactivity which prevent manual clean-up. Tele-operated and autonomous robotic systems have been envisioned as the only suitable means of removing the radioactive elements. World modeling is defined as the process of creating a numerical geometric model of a real world environment or workspace. This model is often used in robotics to plan robot motions which perform a task while avoiding obstacles. In many applications where the world model does not exist ahead of time, structured lighting, laser range finders, and even acoustical sensors have been used to create three dimensional maps of the environment. These maps consist of thousands of range points which are difficult to handle and interpret. This paper presents a least squares technique for fitting range data to planar and quadric surfaces, including cylinders and ellipsoids. Once fit to these primitive surfaces, the amount of data associated with a surface is greatly reduced up to three orders of magnitude, thus allowing for more rapid handling and analysis of world data

  7. Text World Theory and real world readers: From literature to life in a Belfast prison.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Canning, Patricia

    2017-05-01

    Cognitive stylistics offers a range of frameworks for understanding (amongst other things) what producers of literary texts 'do' with language and how they 'do' it. Less prevalent, however, is an understanding of the ways in which these same frameworks offer insights into what readers 'do' (and how they 'do' it). Text World Theory (Werth, 1999; Gavins, 2007; Whiteley, 2011) has proved useful for understanding how and why readers construct mental representations engendered by the act of reading. However, research on readers' responses to literature has largely focused on an 'idealised' reader or an 'experimental' subject-reader often derived from within the academy and conducted using contrived or amended literary fiction. Moreover, the format of traditional book groups (participants read texts privately and discuss them at a later date) as well as online community forums such as Goodreads, means that such studies derive data from post-hoc, rather than real-time textual encounters and discussions. The current study is the first of its kind in analysing real-time reading contexts with real readers during a researcher-led literary project ('read.live.learn') in Northern Ireland's only female prison. In doing so, the study is unique in addressing experimental and post hoc bias. Using Text World Theory, the paper considers the personal and social impact of reader engagement in the talk of the participants. As such, it has three interrelated aims: to argue for the social and personal benefits of reading stylistically rich literature in real-time reading groups; to demonstrate the efficacy of stylistics for understanding how those benefits come about, and to demonstrate the inter-disciplinary value of stylistics, particularly its potential for traversing traditional research parameters.

  8. Bringing Real World Underwater Science, Engineering and Technology in Tomorrow's Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Livingston, C.

    2012-04-01

    What do Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), Ocean Science, Engineering and Technology have in common with science education in today's classroom? They all meet the growing demand for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals in tomorrow's U.S. workforce. Engaging students in real world science experiences will help them develop skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, communication, innovation, and creativity. These skills are crucial to building a strong, competitive workforce in an integrated global economy. Fifth grade students from St. Andrew's School of Math and Science in Charleston, SC, USA science classes were introduced to engineering and robotics by using a combination of two underwater ROVs programs from the Office of Naval Research (SeaPerch) and Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE). Students were grouped in teams as "real scientists" to design and construct a ROV. Students selected their role from a list of engineering positions, and researched how to construct the best ROV. Students created blueprints and models of their ROV design. Scientists/engineers from various local agencies were scheduled to come and share their expertise with the students. On World Ocean Day, a presentation was planned for fifth grade students to work closely with kindergarten through fourth grade students. The purpose of the day was two-fold; it provided students the opportunity to peer teach and the opportunity to present their experiences to a wide audience. All students presented their designs and demonstrated their ROV's movement capabilities in child size pools. They also modeled how submersible pilots communicate with scientists and other researchers while operating their newly designed ROV. As a culminating event, students visited a local marine science high school class with similar ROVs and evaluated their engineering designs in a fresh water pond.

  9. Towards the development of a 3D digital city model as a real extension of public urban spaces

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tournay, Bruno

    ; it only serves as a tool in the analogue world. The model is a passive picture for contemplation.   Another way of looking at a digital 3D model is to see it not as a virtual model of reality but as a real model that must fulfil real functions and to design it as a space of transition between the local...... new approaches to communication and participation. Who controls the Electronic Neighbourhood? Just as in the analogue world, control of central places in the digital world is power.   Finally, based on the experience gained in relation to the project, the paper will outline some guidelines for better...

  10. Size-resolved particle number emission patterns under real-world driving conditions using positive matrix factorization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Domínguez-Sáez, Aida; Viana, Mar; Barrios, Carmen C; Rubio, Jose R; Amato, Fulvio; Pujadas, Manuel; Querol, Xavier

    2012-10-16

    A novel on-board system was tested to characterize size-resolved particle number emission patterns under real-world driving conditions, running in a EURO4 diesel vehicle and in a typical urban circuit in Madrid (Spain). Emission profiles were determined as a function of driving conditions. Source apportionment by Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) was carried out to interpret the real-world driving conditions. Three emission patterns were identified: (F1) cruise conditions, with medium-high speeds, contributing in this circuit with 60% of total particle number and a particle size distribution dominated by particles >52 nm and around 60 nm; (F2) transient conditions, stop-and-go conditions at medium-high speed, contributing with 25% of the particle number and mainly emitting particles in the nucleation mode; and (F3) creep-idle conditions, representing traffic congestion and frequent idling periods, contributing with 14% to the total particle number and with particles in the nucleation mode (emissions depending on particle size and driving conditions. Differences between real-world emission patterns and regulatory cycles (NEDC) are also presented, which evidence that detecting particle number emissions real-world driving conditions.

  11. Association Between NCAP Ratings and Real-World Rear Seat Occupant Risk of Injury.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Metzger, Kristina B; Gruschow, Siobhan; Durbin, Dennis R; Curry, Allison E

    2015-01-01

    Several studies have evaluated the correlation between U.S. or Euro New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) ratings and injury risk to front seat occupants, in particular driver injuries. Conversely, little is known about whether NCAP 5-star ratings predict real-world risk of injury to restrained rear seat occupants. The NHTSA has identified rear seat occupant protection as a specific area under consideration for improvements to its NCAP. In order to inform NHTSA's efforts, we examined how NCAP's current 5-star rating system predicts risk of moderate or greater injury among restrained rear seat occupants in real-world crashes. We identified crash-involved vehicles, model year 2004-2013, in NASS-CDS (2003-2012) with known make and model and nonmissing occupant information. We manually matched these vehicles to their NCAP star ratings using data on make, model, model year, body type, and other identifying information. The resultant linked NASS-CDS and NCAP database was analyzed to examine associations between vehicle ratings and rear seat occupant injury risk; risk to front seat occupants was also estimated for comparison. Data were limited to restrained occupants and occupant injuries were defined as any injury with a maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) score of 2 or greater. We linked 95% of vehicles in NASS-CDS to a specific vehicle in NCAP. The 18,218 vehicles represented an estimated 6 million vehicles with over 9 million occupants. Rear seat passengers accounted for 12.4% of restrained occupants. The risk of injury in all crashes for restrained rear seat occupants was lower in vehicles with a 5-star driver rating in frontal impact tests (1.4%) than with 4 or fewer stars (2.6%, P =.015); results were similar for the frontal impact passenger rating (1.3% vs. 2.4%, P =.024). Conversely, side impact driver and passenger crash tests were not associated with rear seat occupant injury risk (driver test: 1.7% for 5-star vs. 1.8% for 1-4 stars; passenger test: 1.6% for 5

  12. Simulation and similarity using models to understand the world

    CERN Document Server

    Weisberg, Michael

    2013-01-01

    In the 1950s, John Reber convinced many Californians that the best way to solve the state's water shortage problem was to dam up the San Francisco Bay. Against massive political pressure, Reber's opponents persuaded lawmakers that doing so would lead to disaster. They did this not by empirical measurement alone, but also through the construction of a model. Simulation and Similarity explains why this was a good strategy while simultaneously providing an account of modeling and idealization in modern scientific practice. Michael Weisberg focuses on concrete, mathematical, and computational models in his consideration of the nature of models, the practice of modeling, and nature of the relationship between models and real-world phenomena. In addition to a careful analysis of physical, computational, and mathematical models, Simulation and Similarity offers a novel account of the model/world relationship. Breaking with the dominant tradition, which favors the analysis of this relation through logical notions suc...

  13. Assessment of the peste des petits ruminants world epizootic situation and estimate its spreading to Russia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fayssal Bouchemla

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available Aim: This study focuses on the spatial dynamic associated with the spreading of the peste des petits ruminants (PPR disease for the past decade (from the year 2007 to 2017, assesses the resulting situation in the world, and has an emphasis on Russian advantages been a PPR host. Materials and Methods: Outbreaks were confirmed and reported officially by the World Organization for Animal Health (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and polymerase chain reaction were used. Data contain the account number of infected, dead, and all susceptible animals in focus of infection in the period of 2007-2017. Once conventional statistical population was defined, a model was installed. Geo-information system QuickMAP was used to clear up the map disease, and through the @Risk program, we got our forecasting value of future situations (by Monte Carlo method. Results: The spatial study of PPR's occurrence and its spread was mapping according to the incidence of cases and outbreaks. Clusters demonstrated risk levels in the world in the period from 2007 to 2017 year. Based on the epizootological analysis, an assessment of PPR risk and the probability movement of infection in Russia from nearby disadvantaged countries had been carried out. A statistically significant impact of the socioeconomic system on the stationarity index was found equal to 0.63. The PPR risk of spreading could not be ignored. Nevertheless, conducting effective large-scale vaccine companies in a complex of antiepizootic activities against PPR could reduce the risk of spread of the disease up to 91.8%. Conclusion: Despite all mentioned facts above, the PPR probability can only be reduced by coordinating work of border veterinary services, as in disadvantaged as in free from this disease country, that is, what makes an effective and complete eradication of the disease could be quite realistic.

  14. EIA model documentation: World oil refining logistics demand model,''WORLD'' reference manual

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1994-01-01

    This manual is intended primarily for use as a reference by analysts applying the WORLD model to regional studies. It also provides overview information on WORLD features of potential interest to managers and analysts. Broadly, the manual covers WORLD model features in progressively increasing detail. Section 2 provides an overview of the WORLD model, how it has evolved, what its design goals are, what it produces, and where it can be taken with further enhancements. Section 3 reviews model management covering data sources, managing over-optimization, calibration and seasonality, check-points for case construction and common errors. Section 4 describes in detail the WORLD system, including: data and program systems in overview; details of mainframe and PC program control and files;model generation, size management, debugging and error analysis; use with different optimizers; and reporting and results analysis. Section 5 provides a detailed description of every WORLD model data table, covering model controls, case and technology data. Section 6 goes into the details of WORLD matrix structure. It provides an overview, describes how regional definitions are controlled and defines the naming conventions for-all model rows, columns, right-hand sides, and bounds. It also includes a discussion of the formulation of product blending and specifications in WORLD. Several Appendices supplement the main sections

  15. Real-world vehicle emission factors in Chinese metropolis city--Beijing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Qi-dong; He, Ke-bin; Huo, Hong; Lents, James

    2005-01-01

    The dynamometer tests with different driving cycles and the real-world tests are presented. Results indicated the pollutants emission factors and fuel consumption factor with ECE15 + EUDC driving cycle usually take the lowest value and with real world driving cycle occur the highest value, and different driving cycles will lead to significantly different vehicle emission factors with the same vehicle. Relative to the ECE15 + EUDC driving cycle, the increasing rate of pollutant emission factors of CO, NOx and HC are - 0.42-2.99, -0.32-0.81 and -0.11-11 with FTP75 testing, 0.11-1.29, -0.77-0.64 and 0.47-10.50 with Beijing 1997 testing and 0.25-1.83, 0.09-0.75 and - 0.58-1.50 with real world testing. Compared to the carburetor vehicles, the retrofit and MPI + TWC vehicles' pollution emissionfactors decrease with different degree. The retrofit vehicle (Santana) will reduce 4.44%-58.44% CO, -4.95%-36.79% NOx, -32.32%-33.89% HC, and -9.39%-14.29% fuel consumption, and especially that the MPI + TWC vehicle will decrease CO by 82.48%-91.76%, NOx by 44.87%-92.79%, HC by 90.00%-93.89% and fuel consumption by 5.44%-10.55%. Vehicles can cause pollution at a very high rate when operated in high power modes; however, they may not often operate in these high power modes. In analyzing vehicle emissions, it describes the fraction of time that vehicles operate in various power modes. In Beijing, vehicles spend 90% of their operation in low power modes or decelerating.

  16. Representing and reasoning about program in situation calculus

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Bo; Zhang, Ming-yi; Wu, Mao-nian; Xie, Gang

    2011-12-01

    Situation calculus is an expressive tool for modeling dynamical system in artificial intelligence, changes in a dynamical world is represented naturally by the notions of action, situation and fluent in situation calculus. Program can be viewed as a discrete dynamical system, so it is possible to model program with situation calculus. To model program written in a smaller core programming language CL, notion of fluent is expanded for representing value of expression. Together with some functions returning concerned objects from expressions, a basic action theory of CL programming is constructed. Under such a theory, some properties of program, such as correctness and termination can be reasoned about.

  17. Alternative Assessment--Can Real-World Skills Be Tested? Policy Briefs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Simon, Karen; Gregg, Soleil

    Many educators are shifting their teaching strategies and approaches to include more emphasis on critical thinking skills, the communication of ideas, a variety of approaches to content emphasizing varied student learning styles, and the need to draw explicit connections among topics for retention of learning. Real-world assessment measures, then,…

  18. Science writing in the real world

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mike Mentis

    2014-02-01

    Full Text Available The objective of this contribution is to consider guides to technical writing. Since the professional writes what he does and does what he writes, guides to how you execute the one relate to how you perform the other, so this article is about more than just writing. While there is need for idiosyncrasy and individualism, there are some rules. Documents must have an explicit purpose stated at the outset. By their nature, documents in the applied sciences and business address real-world problems, but elsewhere activity may be laissez faire for which the cost-effectiveness in yielding innovations is contestable. A hallmark of written science and technology is that every statement is capable of being tested and capable of being shown to be wrong, and that methods yield repeatable results. Caution should be observed in requiring authoritative referencing for every notion, partly because of the unsatisfying infinite regress in searching for ultimate sources, and partly to avoid squashing innovation. It is not only the content of messages that matters, but reliability too. Probability theory must be built into design to assure that strong inference can be drawn from outcomes. Research, business and infrastructure projects must substitute the frequent optimistic ‘everything goes according to plan’ (EGAP with a more realistic ‘most likely development’ (MLD and the risks of even that not happening. A cornerstone of science and technology is parsimony. No description, experiment, explanation, hypothesis, idea, instrument, machine, method, model, prediction, statement, technique, test or theory should be more elaborate than necessary to satisfy its purpose. Antifragility – the capacity to survive and benefit from shocks – must be designed into project and organizational structure and function by manipulating such factors as complexity and interdependency to evade failure in a turbulent and unpredictable world. The role of writing is to integrate

  19. [Exploration and demonstration study on drug combination from clinical real world].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xie, Yan-ming; Wang, Lian-xin; Wang, Yong-yan

    2014-09-01

    Drug combination is extensive in the clinical real world,which is an important part and the inherent requirements of the post-marketing evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The key issues and technology include multi-domain and multi-disciplinary such as the rationality, efficacy and safety evaluation of combination drug starting from clinical real world, study on component in vivo and mechanism of combination drug, the risk/benefit assessment and cost-benefit evaluation of combination drug and so on. The topic has been studied as clinical demonstration on combination therapy of variety of diseases such as coronary heart disease, stroke, insomnia, depression, hepatitis, herpes zoster, psoriasis and ectopic pregnancy. Meanwhile, multi-disciplinary dynamic innovation alliance of clinical drug combination has been presented, which can promote the academic development and improving service ability and level of TCM.

  20. The Real World Significance of Performance Prediction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pardos, Zachary A.; Wang, Qing Yang; Trivedi, Shubhendu

    2012-01-01

    In recent years, the educational data mining and user modeling communities have been aggressively introducing models for predicting student performance on external measures such as standardized tests as well as within-tutor performance. While these models have brought statistically reliable improvement to performance prediction, the real world…

  1. Discontinuation risk comparison among 'real-world' newly anticoagulated atrial fibrillation patients

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lip, Gregory Y H; Pan, Xianying; Kamble, Shital

    2018-01-01

    Discontinuation of oral anticoagulants may expose non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) patients to an increased risk of stroke. This study describes the real-world discontinuation rates and compared the risk of drug discontinuation among NVAF patients initiating apixaban, warfarin, dabigatran,...

  2. Real-world and trial-based cost-effectiveness analysis of bevacizumab in HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer patients: a study of the Southeast Netherlands Breast Cancer Consortium.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Kampen, R J W; Ramaekers, B L T; Lobbezoo, D J A; de Boer, M; Dercksen, M W; van den Berkmortel, F; Smilde, T J; van de Wouw, A J; Peters, F P J; van Riel, J M G; Peters, N A J B; Tjan-Heijnen, V C G; Joore, M A

    2017-07-01

    The aim of our analysis was to assess the real-world cost-effectiveness of bevacizumab in addition to taxane treatment versus taxane monotherapy for HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer compared with the cost-effectiveness based on the efficacy results from a trial. A state transition model was built to estimate costs, life years (LYs) and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) for both treatments. Two scenarios were examined: a real-world scenario and a trial-based scenario in which transition probabilities were primarily based on a real-world cohort study and the E2100 trial, respectively. In both scenarios, costs and utility parameter estimates were extracted from the real-world cohort study. Moreover, the Dutch health care perspective was adopted. In both the real-world and trial scenarios, bevacizumab-taxane is more expensive (incremental costs of €56,213 and €52,750, respectively) and more effective (incremental QALYs of 0.362 and 0.189, respectively) than taxane monotherapy. In the real-world scenario, bevacizumab-taxane compared to taxane monotherapy led to an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of €155,261 per QALY gained. In the trial scenario, the ICER amounted to €278,711 per QALY gained. According to the Dutch informal threshold, bevacizumab in addition to taxane treatment was not considered cost-effective for HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer both in a real-world and in a trial scenario. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Collective Action Situated in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blodgett, Bridget M.

    2011-01-01

    For the first time in the history of collective action, the offline world has experienced a virtually organized and enacted union strike. While this was the first publicly noticed political action in a virtual world, others have been going on for several years now. As virtual worlds continue to grow in popularity, this type of protest of action…

  4. An interorganizational IT infrastructure for self-organization in logistics : situation awareness and real-time chain composition

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hofman, W.J.; Punter, L.M.; Bastiaansen, H.J.M.; Cornelisse, E.; Dalmolen, S.; Palaskas, Z.; Karakostas, B.; Gato, J.; Garcia, J.; Herrero, G.; Gonzalez-Rodrigues, M.

    2016-01-01

    To meet the challenges for more sustainable, effective and efficient transport services in global logistics, a new IT-paradigm is needed to harvest the opportunities that capabilities for situation awareness and real-time chain composition provide. The iCargo project provides such an advanced,

  5. Neurocognitive systems related to real-world prospective memory.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Grégoria Kalpouzos

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Prospective memory (PM denotes the ability to remember to perform actions in the future. It has been argued that standard laboratory paradigms fail to capture core aspects of PM. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We combined functional MRI, virtual reality, eye-tracking and verbal reports to explore the dynamic allocation of neurocognitive processes during a naturalistic PM task where individuals performed errands in a realistic model of their residential town. Based on eye movement data and verbal reports, we modeled PM as an iterative loop of five sustained and transient phases: intention maintenance before target detection (TD, TD, intention maintenance after TD, action, and switching, the latter representing the activation of a new intention in mind. The fMRI analyses revealed continuous engagement of a top-down fronto-parietal network throughout the entire task, likely subserving goal maintenance in mind. In addition, a shift was observed from a perceptual (occipital system while searching for places to go, to a mnemonic (temporo-parietal, fronto-hippocampal system for remembering what actions to perform after TD. Updating of the top-down fronto-parietal network occurred at both TD and switching, the latter likely also being characterized by frontopolar activity. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Taken together, these findings show how brain systems complementary interact during real-world PM, and support a more complete model of PM that can be applied to naturalistic PM tasks and that we named PROspective MEmory DYnamic (PROMEDY model because of its dynamics on both multi-phase iteration and the interactions of distinct neurocognitive networks.

  6. Analysis of real value of virtual currency in game World of Warcraft

    OpenAIRE

    Šilha, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    This bachelor thesis aims to analyze in its first part the price development of WoW token after its launching to the world markets. It seeks the origin of price shocks andidentifies common determinants for world markets with WoW token. The differences between world markets are also examined. The real value of virtual currency (gold) used in this game, is determined, based on the price of WoW token. Introduction of WoW token is aimed to reduce the power of black market. The impact of Wow token...

  7. Strategies to Support Students' Mathematical Modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jung, Hyunyi

    2015-01-01

    An important question for mathematics teachers is this: "How can we help students learn mathematics to solve everyday problems, rather than teaching them only to memorize rules and practice mathematical procedures?" Teaching students using modeling activities can help them learn mathematics in real-world problem-solving situations that…

  8. Handbook of Research on Technology Tools for Real-World Skill Development (2 Volumes)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosen, Yigel, Ed.; Ferrara, Steve, Ed.; Mosharraf, Maryam, Ed.

    2016-01-01

    Education is expanding to include a stronger focus on the practical application of classroom lessons in an effort to prepare the next generation of scholars for a changing world economy centered on collaborative and problem-solving skills for the digital age. "The Handbook of Research on Technology Tools for Real-World Skill Development"…

  9. Narrative Construction, Social Perceptions, and the Situation Model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costabile, Kristi A

    2016-05-01

    The present investigation examined how three salient features of narrative thinking (situation model construction, linguistic concreteness, and perspective-taking) influenced the social inference process. Results of four experiments indicated that compared with those given other objectives, perceivers given narrative objectives were: (a) more likely to make situation rather than trait attributions for observed behaviors (Experiment 1), (b) less likely to make implicit trait inferences (Experiment 2), and (c) less likely to rely on behavior valence when making evaluative judgments (Experiment 4). Linguistic analyses indicated that narrative construction consistently entailed the creation of situation models of events and linguistic concreteness, but only situation model creation mediated the relationship between narrative and inferences. Experiment 3 confirmed the mediating role of situation models: Perceivers with narrative objectives made trait inferences only when behaviors were inconsistent with contextual information. The role of these core narrative features on social perceptions is discussed. © 2016 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

  10. A leadless pacemaker in the real-world setting

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Roberts, Paul R.; Clementy, Nicolas; Al Samadi, Faisal

    2017-01-01

    , telemetry, and battery issues. Objective The acute performance of the Micra transcatheter pacemaker from a worldwide Post-Approval Registry is reported. Methods The registry is an ongoing prospective single-arm observational study designed to assess the safety and effectiveness of Micra in the post...... were low and stable. Conclusion Performance of the Micra transcatheter pacemaker in a real-world setting demonstrates a high rate (99.6%) of implant success and low rate (1.51%) of major complications through 30 days post implant. In particular, the rates of pericardial effusion, device dislodgement...

  11. Real-World Evidence In Support Of Precision Medicine: Clinico-Genomic Cancer Data As A Case Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Agarwala, Vineeta; Khozin, Sean; Singal, Gaurav; O'Connell, Claire; Kuk, Deborah; Li, Gerald; Gossai, Anala; Miller, Vincent; Abernethy, Amy P

    2018-05-01

    The majority of US adult cancer patients today are diagnosed and treated outside the context of any clinical trial (that is, in the real world). Although these patients are not part of a research study, their clinical data are still recorded. Indeed, data captured in electronic health records form an ever-growing, rich digital repository of longitudinal patient experiences, treatments, and outcomes. Likewise, genomic data from tumor molecular profiling are increasingly guiding oncology care. Linking real-world clinical and genomic data, as well as information from other co-occurring data sets, could create study populations that provide generalizable evidence for precision medicine interventions. However, the infrastructure required to link, ensure quality, and rapidly learn from such composite data is complex. We outline the challenges and describe a novel approach to building a real-world clinico-genomic database of patients with cancer. This work represents a case study in how data collected during routine patient care can inform precision medicine efforts for the population at large. We suggest that health policies can promote innovation by defining appropriate uses of real-world evidence, establishing data standards, and incentivizing data sharing.

  12. Introducing a logic for real-world agents with degrees of belief

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Rens, GB

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available stream_source_info Gens_2009.pdf.txt stream_content_type text/plain stream_size 3189 Content-Encoding UTF-8 stream_name Gens_2009.pdf.txt Content-Type text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Introducing a Logic for Real-world Agents... the world could be. A further step to capture uncertain knowledge is to assign a likelihood to each state considered possible so that degrees of belief can be captured. Now as the robot acts and observes while completing its tasks, it will change its...

  13. Evaluation of a Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic Model for Hypouricemic Effects of Febuxostat Using Datasets Obtained from Real-world Patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirai, Toshinori; Itoh, Toshimasa; Kimura, Toshimi; Echizen, Hirotoshi

    2018-06-06

    Febuxostat is an active xanthine oxidase (XO) inhibitor that is widely used in the hyperuricemia treatment. We aimed to evaluate the predictive performance of a pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) model for hypouricemic effects of febuxostat. Previously, we have formulated a PK--PD model for predicting hypouricemic effects of febuxostat as a function of baseline serum urate levels, body weight, renal function, and drug dose using datasets reported in preapproval studies (Hirai T et al., Biol Pharm Bull 2016; 39: 1013-21). Using an updated model with sensitivity analysis, we examined the predictive performance of the PK-PD model using datasets obtained from the medical records of patients who received febuxostat from March 2011 to December 2015 at Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital. Multivariate regression analysis was performed to explore clinical variables to improve the predictive performance of the model. A total of 1,199 serum urate data were retrieved from 168 patients (age: 60.5 ±17.7 years, 71.4% males) who received febuxostat as hyperuricemia treatment. There was a significant correlation (r=0.68, p<0.01) between serum urate levels observed and those predicted by the modified PK-PD model. A multivariate regression analysis revealed that the predictive performance of the model may be improved further by considering comorbidities, such as diabetes mellitus, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), and co-administration of loop diuretics (r = 0.77, p<0.01). The PK-PD model may be useful for predicting individualized maintenance doses of febuxostat in real-world patients. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

  14. Energy situation in France and in the World - What political choices?

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2012-05-01

    Energy production and distribution play a key-role in the evolution of our societies. The resources coming from the Earth's crust are limited and our energy production system has negative impacts on the environment which have to be minimized. Political projects have to take these constraints into consideration with a long-term vision. The French Society of Physics (SFP) approached the experts of the Energy-Environment commission to shade light on the energy debate in France and in the rest of the world. A precise and brief analysis of the French and worldwide energy situation is presented in a first part (situation and prospective, costs, benefits and risks, decarbonization, R and D, energy saving and conservation..). Then, a series of 10 thematic information sheets summarizes different economical, environmental and political aspects of the energy question: resources and reserves, environmental impact of various power generation sources, risks, costs and benefits of the different energy industries, energy costs, production irregularity management, networks and storage facilities, European transportation networks and super-networks for electricity, gas, petroleum and CO 2 , consumption abatement, decarbonization strategies, energy policy choices for France from 2010 to 2050

  15. A real-world Case Study in Information Technology for Undergraduate Students

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sikkel, Nicolaas; Spil, Antonius A.M.; van de Weg, R.L.W.

    1999-01-01

    Real-world case studies are important to complement the academic skills and knowledge acquired by computer science students. In this paper we relate our experiences with a course specifically designed to address this issue. The problem to be addressed is the replacement of a Hospital Information

  16. New Teaching Environments Near Real-World-Like Laboratories for Power Engineering

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Holbøll, Joachim; Østergaard, Jacob

    2014-01-01

    , and operating real-world systems. The tool to be presented here is mainly establishment of teaching facilities at the Technical University of Denmark adjacent to the research facilities and where nearness to the ‘real world’ is essential and implemented by clearly visible research activities and by close......The Technical University of Denmark offers educations within power engineering at all levels: bachelor, master and PhD. Relevant bachelor programs use the CDIO educational framework, which allows the students to learn engineering fundaments in a context of conceiving, designing, implementing...

  17. Real-World Sorting of RHIC Superconducting Magnets

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wei, J.; Gupta, R.; Harrison, M.; Jain, A.; Peggs, S.; Thompson, P.; Trbojevic, D.; Wanderer, P.

    1999-01-01

    During the seven-year construction of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), more than 1700 superconducting dipoles, quadrupoles, sextupoles, and multi-layer correctors have been constructed and installed. These magnets have been sorted at several production stages to optimize their performance and reliability. For arc magnets, priorities have bene put first on quench performance and operational risk minimization, second on field transfer function and other first-order quantities, and finally on nonlinear field errors which were painstakingly optimized at design. For Interaction-Region (IR) magnets, sorting is applied to select the best possible combination of magnets for the low-β interaction points (IP). This paper summarizes the history of this real-world sorting process

  18. Real-World Solutions for Developing High-Quality PHP Frameworks and Applications

    CERN Document Server

    Bergmann, Sebastian

    2011-01-01

    Learn to develop high-quality applications and frameworks in PHP Packed with in-depth information and step-by-step guidance, this book escorts you through the process of creating, maintaining and extending sustainable software of high quality with PHP. World-renowned PHP experts present real-world case studies for developing high-quality applications and frameworks in PHP that can easily be adapted to changing business requirements. . They offer different approaches to solving  typical development and quality assurance problems that every developer needs to know and master.Details the process

  19. The study of disaster situation awareness based on volunteered geographic information

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Qiansheng; Chen, Zi; Li, Shengming; Luo, Nianxue

    2015-12-01

    As the development of Web 2.0, the social media like microblog, blogs and social network have supplied a bunch of information with locations (Volunteered Geographical Information, VGI).Recent years many cases have shown that, if disaster happened, the cyber citizens will get together very quickly and share the disaster information, this results a bunch of volunteered geographical information about disaster situation which is very valuable for disaster response if this VGIs are used efficiently and properly. This project will take typhoon disaster as case study. In this paper, we study the relations between weibo messages and the real typhoon situation, we proposed an analysis framework for mine the relations between weibo messages distribution and physical space. We found that the number of the weibo messages, key words frequency and spatial temporary distribution of the messages have strong relations with the disaster spread in the real world, and this research results can improve our disaster situation awareness in the future. The achievement of the study will give a method for typhoon disaster situation awareness based on VGI from the bottom up, and will locate the disaster spot and evolution quickly which is very important for disaster response and recover.

  20. Quantitative Comparison Between Crowd Models for Evacuation Planning and Evaluation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Viswanathan, V.; Lee, C.E.; Lees, M.H.; Cheong, S.A.; Sloot, P.M.A.

    2014-01-01

    Crowd simulation is rapidly becoming a standard tool for evacuation planning and evaluation. However, the many crowd models in the literature are structurally different, and few have been rigorously calibrated against real-world egress data, especially in emergency situations. In this paper we

  1. Is the person-situation debate important for agent-based modeling and vice-versa?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron

    Full Text Available Agent-based models (ABM are believed to be a very powerful tool in the social sciences, sometimes even treated as a substitute for social experiments. When building an ABM we have to define the agents and the rules governing the artificial society. Given the complexity and our limited understanding of the human nature, we face the problem of assuming that either personal traits, the situation or both have impact on the social behavior of agents. However, as the long-standing person-situation debate in psychology shows, there is no consensus as to the underlying psychological mechanism and the important question that arises is whether the modeling assumptions we make will have a substantial influence on the simulated behavior of the system as a whole or not.Studying two variants of the same agent-based model of opinion formation, we show that the decision to choose either personal traits or the situation as the primary factor driving social interactions is of critical importance. Using Monte Carlo simulations (for Barabasi-Albert networks and analytic calculations (for a complete graph we provide evidence that assuming a person-specific response to social influence at the microscopic level generally leads to a completely different and less realistic aggregate or macroscopic behavior than an assumption of a situation-specific response; a result that has been reported by social psychologists for a range of experimental setups, but has been downplayed or ignored in the opinion dynamics literature.This sensitivity to modeling assumptions has far reaching consequences also beyond opinion dynamics, since agent-based models are becoming a popular tool among economists and policy makers and are often used as substitutes of real social experiments.

  2. Creating and using real-world evidence to answer questions about clinical effectiveness

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Simon de Lusignan

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available New forms of evidence are needed to complement evidence generated from randomised controlled trials (RCTs. Real-World Evidence (RWE is a potential new form of evidence, but remains undefined.This paper sets to fill that gap by defining RWE as the output from a rigorous research process which: (1 includes a clear a priori statement of a hypothesis to be tested or research question to be answered; (2 defines the data sources that will be used and critically appraises their strengths and weaknesses; and (3 applies appropriate methods, including advanced analytics. These elements should be set out in advance of the study commencing, ideally in a published protocol.The strengths of RWE studies are that they are more inclusive than RCTs and can enable an evidence base to be developed around real-world effectiveness and to start to address the complications of managing other real-world problems such as multimorbidity. Computerised medical record systems and big data provide a rich source of data for RWE studies.However, guidance is needed to help assess the rigour of RWE studies so that the strength of recommendations based on their output can be determined. Additionally, RWE advanced analytics methods need better categorisation and validation.We predict that the core role of RCTs will shift towards assessing safety and achieving regulatory compliance. RWE studies, notwithstanding their limitations, may become established as the best vehicle to assess efficacy. 

  3. Comparing Expert Driving Behavior in Real World and Simulator Contexts

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hiran B. Ekanayake

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Computer games are increasingly used for purposes beyond mere entertainment, and current hi-tech simulators can provide quite, naturalistic contexts for purposes such as traffic education. One of the critical concerns in this area is the validity or transferability of acquired skills from a simulator to the real world context. In this paper, we present our work in which we compared driving in the real world with that in the simulator at two levels, that is, by using performance measures alone, and by combining psychophysiological measures with performance measures. For our study, we gathered data using questionnaires as well as by logging vehicle dynamics, environmental conditions, video data, and users' psychophysiological measurements. For the analysis, we used several novel approaches such as scatter plots to visualize driving tasks of different contexts and to obtain vigilance estimators from electroencephalographic (EEG data in order to obtain important results about the differences between the driving in the two contexts. Our belief is that both experimental procedures and findings of our experiment are very important to the field of serious games concerning how to evaluate the fitness of driving simulators and measure driving performance.

  4. A modified harmony search method for environmental/economic load dispatch of real-world power systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jeddi, Babak; Vahidinasab, Vahid

    2014-01-01

    Highlights: • A combined economic and emission load dispatch (CEELD) model is proposed. • The proposed model considers practical constraints of real-world power systems. • A new modified harmony search algorithm proposed to solve non-convex CEELD. • The proposed algorithm is tested by applying it to solve seven test systems. - Abstract: Economic load dispatch (ELD) problem is one of the basic and important optimization problems in a power system. However, considering practical constraints of real-world power systems such as ramp rate limits, prohibited operating zones, valve loading effects, multi-fuel options, spinning reserve and transmission system losses in ELD problem makes it a non-convex optimization problem, which is a challenging one and cannot be solved by traditional methods. Moreover, considering environmental issues, results in combined economic and emission load dispatch (CEELD) problem that is a multiobjective optimization model with two non-commensurable and contradictory objectives. In this paper, a modified harmony search algorithm (MHSA) proposed and applied to solve ELD and CEELD problem considering the abovementioned constraints. In the proposed MHSA, a new improvising method based on wavelet mutation together with a new memory consideration scheme based on the roulette wheel mechanism are proposed which improves the accuracy, convergence speed, and robustness of the classical HSA. Performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated by applying it to solve various test systems having non-convex solution spaces. To Show the effectiveness of the proposed method, obtained results compared with classical harmony search algorithm (HSA) and some of the most recently published papers in the area

  5. Virtual Worlds: Relationship between Real Life and Experience in Second Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anstadt, Scott P.; Bradley, Shannon; Burnette, Ashley; Medley, Lesley L.

    2013-01-01

    Due to the unique applications of virtual reality in many modern contexts, Second Life (SL) offers inimitable opportunities for research and exploration and experiential learning as part of a distance learning curriculum assignment. A review of current research regarding SL examined real world social influences in online interactions and what the…

  6. Real-world experimentation of distributed DSA network algorithms

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tonelli, Oscar; Berardinelli, Gilberto; Tavares, Fernando Menezes Leitão

    2013-01-01

    such as a dynamic propagation environment, human presence impact and terminals mobility. This chapter focuses on the practical aspects related to the real world-experimentation with distributed DSA network algorithms over a testbed network. Challenges and solutions are extensively discussed, from the testbed design......The problem of spectrum scarcity in uncoordinated and/or heterogeneous wireless networks is the key aspect driving the research in the field of flexible management of frequency resources. In particular, distributed dynamic spectrum access (DSA) algorithms enable an efficient sharing...... to the setup of experiments. A practical example of experimentation process with a DSA algorithm is also provided....

  7. Automatic guidance of attention during real-world visual search.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seidl-Rathkopf, Katharina N; Turk-Browne, Nicholas B; Kastner, Sabine

    2015-08-01

    Looking for objects in cluttered natural environments is a frequent task in everyday life. This process can be difficult, because the features, locations, and times of appearance of relevant objects often are not known in advance. Thus, a mechanism by which attention is automatically biased toward information that is potentially relevant may be helpful. We tested for such a mechanism across five experiments by engaging participants in real-world visual search and then assessing attentional capture for information that was related to the search set but was otherwise irrelevant. Isolated objects captured attention while preparing to search for objects from the same category embedded in a scene, as revealed by lower detection performance (Experiment 1A). This capture effect was driven by a central processing bottleneck rather than the withdrawal of spatial attention (Experiment 1B), occurred automatically even in a secondary task (Experiment 2A), and reflected enhancement of matching information rather than suppression of nonmatching information (Experiment 2B). Finally, attentional capture extended to objects that were semantically associated with the target category (Experiment 3). We conclude that attention is efficiently drawn towards a wide range of information that may be relevant for an upcoming real-world visual search. This mechanism may be adaptive, allowing us to find information useful for our behavioral goals in the face of uncertainty.

  8. Automatic guidance of attention during real-world visual search

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seidl-Rathkopf, Katharina N.; Turk-Browne, Nicholas B.; Kastner, Sabine

    2015-01-01

    Looking for objects in cluttered natural environments is a frequent task in everyday life. This process can be difficult, as the features, locations, and times of appearance of relevant objects are often not known in advance. A mechanism by which attention is automatically biased toward information that is potentially relevant may thus be helpful. Here we tested for such a mechanism across five experiments by engaging participants in real-world visual search and then assessing attentional capture for information that was related to the search set but was otherwise irrelevant. Isolated objects captured attention while preparing to search for objects from the same category embedded in a scene, as revealed by lower detection performance (Experiment 1A). This capture effect was driven by a central processing bottleneck rather than the withdrawal of spatial attention (Experiment 1B), occurred automatically even in a secondary task (Experiment 2A), and reflected enhancement of matching information rather than suppression of non-matching information (Experiment 2B). Finally, attentional capture extended to objects that were semantically associated with the target category (Experiment 3). We conclude that attention is efficiently drawn towards a wide range of information that may be relevant for an upcoming real-world visual search. This mechanism may be adaptive, allowing us to find information useful for our behavioral goals in the face of uncertainty. PMID:25898897

  9. People detection in crowded scenes using active contour models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sidla, Oliver

    2009-01-01

    The detection of pedestrians in real-world scenes is a daunting task, especially in crowded situations. Our experience over the last years has shown that active shape models (ASM) can contribute significantly to a robust pedestrian detection system. The paper starts with an overview of shape model approaches, it then explains our approach which builds on top of Eigenshape models which have been trained using real-world data. These models are placed over candidate regions and matched to image gradients using a scoring function which integrates i) point distribution, ii) local gradient orientations iii) local image gradient strengths. A matching and shape model update process is iteratively applied in order to fit the flexible models to the local image content. The weights of the scoring function have a significant impact on the ASM performance. We analyze different settings of scoring weights for gradient magnitude, relative orientation differences, distance between model and gradient in an experiment which uses real-world data. Although for only one pedestrian model in an image computation time is low, the number of necessary processing cycles which is needed to track many people in crowded scenes can become the bottleneck in a real-time application. We describe the measures which have been taken in order to improve the speed of the ASM implementation and make it real-time capable.

  10. The deterioration of the food situation in the Third World and the capitalist system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feder, E

    1981-01-01

    Hunger and malnutrition are today associated with the capitalist system. The evidence points to a further deterioration of the food situation in the Third World in the foreseeable future, as a result of massive capital and technology transfers from the rich capitalist countries to the underdeveloped agricultures operated by trans-national concerns or private investors, with the active support of development assistance agencies such as the World Bank. Contrary to the superficial predictions of the World Bank, for example, poverty is bound to increase and the purchasing power of the masses must decline. Particular attention must be paid to the supply of staple foods and the proletariat. This is threatened by a variety of factors, attributable to the operation of the capitalist system. Among them are the senseless waste of Third World resources caused by the foreign investors' insatiable thirst for the quick repatriation of super-profits and the increasing orientation of Third World agricultures toward high-value or export crops (which are usually the same), an orientation which is imposed upon them by the industrial countries' agricultural development strategies. Even self-sufficiency programs for more staple foods, such as the ill-reputed Green Revolution, predictably cannot be of long duration.

  11. A Model for Situation and Threat Assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    2006-12-01

    CUBRC , Inc.) 8151 Needwood #T103 Derwood, MD 20855 UNITED STATES steinberg@cubrc.org A model is presented for situation and threat assessment...PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) Subject Matter Expert (SME) Calspan-UB Research Center ( CUBRC , Inc.) 8151 Needwood #T103 Derwood, MD...1 A Model for Situation and Threat Assessment Alan Steinberg CUBRC , Inc. steinberg@cubrc.org November, 2005 2 Objectives • Advance the state-of

  12. Extending Situated Language Comprehension (Accounts) with Speaker and Comprehender Characteristics: Toward Socially Situated Interpretation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Münster, Katja; Knoeferle, Pia

    2017-01-01

    More and more findings suggest a tight temporal coupling between (non-linguistic) socially interpreted context and language processing. Still, real-time language processing accounts remain largely elusive with respect to the influence of biological (e.g., age) and experiential (e.g., world and moral knowledge) comprehender characteristics and the influence of the 'socially interpreted' context, as for instance provided by the speaker. This context could include actions, facial expressions, a speaker's voice or gaze, and gestures among others. We review findings from social psychology, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics to highlight the relevance of (the interplay between) the socially interpreted context and comprehender characteristics for language processing. The review informs the extension of an extant real-time processing account (already featuring a coordinated interplay between language comprehension and the non-linguistic visual context) with a variable ('ProCom') that captures characteristics of the language user and with a first approximation of the comprehender's speaker representation. Extending the CIA to the sCIA (social Coordinated Interplay Account) is the first step toward a real-time language comprehension account which might eventually accommodate the socially situated communicative interplay between comprehenders and speakers.

  13. Extending Situated Language Comprehension (Accounts with Speaker and Comprehender Characteristics: Toward Socially Situated Interpretation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Katja Münster

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available More and more findings suggest a tight temporal coupling between (non-linguistic socially interpreted context and language processing. Still, real-time language processing accounts remain largely elusive with respect to the influence of biological (e.g., age and experiential (e.g., world and moral knowledge comprehender characteristics and the influence of the ‘socially interpreted’ context, as for instance provided by the speaker. This context could include actions, facial expressions, a speaker’s voice or gaze, and gestures among others. We review findings from social psychology, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics to highlight the relevance of (the interplay between the socially interpreted context and comprehender characteristics for language processing. The review informs the extension of an extant real-time processing account (already featuring a coordinated interplay between language comprehension and the non-linguistic visual context with a variable (‘ProCom’ that captures characteristics of the language user and with a first approximation of the comprehender’s speaker representation. Extending the CIA to the sCIA (social Coordinated Interplay Account is the first step toward a real-time language comprehension account which might eventually accommodate the socially situated communicative interplay between comprehenders and speakers.

  14. Effects of an Online Rational Emotive Curriculum on Primary School Students' Tendencies for Online and Real-World Aggression

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Eric Zhi-Feng; Ho, H. C.; Song, Y. J.

    2011-01-01

    This study investigated the relationship between online and real-world aggressive behavior among primary school students as well as the effects of an online rational emotive curriculum on reducing the tendency of students to display aggression online and in the real-world. We developed an online information literacy course integrated with rational…

  15. Can singular examples change implicit racial attitudes in the real-world?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leslie E. Roos

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Implicit attitudes about social groups persist independently of explicit beliefs and can influence not only social behavior, but also medical and legal practices. Although examples presented in the laboratory can alter such implicit attitudes, it is unclear whether the same influence is exerted by real-world exemplars. Following the 2008 US election, Plant et al. reported that the Implicit Association Test or IAT revealed a decrease in negative implicit attitudes towards African-Americans. However, a large-scale study also employing the IAT found little evidence for a change in implicit attitudes pre- and post-election. Here we present evidence that the 2008 US election may have facilitated at least a temporary change in implicit racial attitudes in the US. Our results rely on the Affective Lexical Priming Score or ALPS and pre- and post-election measurements for both US and non-US participants. US students who, pre-election, exhibited negative associations with black faces, post-election showed positive associations with black faces. Canadian students pre- and post-election did not show a similar shift. To account for these findings, we posit that the socio-cognitive processes underlying ALPS are different from those underlying the IAT. Acknowledging that we cannot form a causal link between an intervening real-world event and laboratory-measured implicit attitudes, we speculate that our findings may be driven by the fact that the 2008 election campaign included extremely positive media coverage of President Obama and prominently featured his face in association with positive words – similar to the structure of ALPS. Even so, our real-world finding adds to the literature demonstrating the malleability of implicit attitudes and has implications for how we understand the socio-cognitive mechanisms underlying stereotypes.

  16. Application of Ion Chromatography to the Investigation of Real-World Samples

    Science.gov (United States)

    Whelan, Rebecca J.; Hannon, Theresa E.; Zare, Richard N.

    2004-01-01

    The use of ion chromatography (IC) as a means to teach important analytical concepts while giving the students a valuable opportunity to identify and investigate a real-world system of interest to them is described. A single IC apparatus can be tailored for different classes of analyses by the selection of different column-eluent combinations.

  17. Energy Consumption Prediction for Electric Vehicles Based on Real-World Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cedric De Cauwer

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available Electric vehicle (EV energy consumption is variable and dependent on a number of external factors such as road topology, traffic, driving style, ambient temperature, etc. The goal of this paper is to detect and quantify correlations between the kinematic parameters of the vehicle and its energy consumption. Real-world data of EV energy consumption are used to construct the energy consumption calculation models. Based on the vehicle dynamics equation as underlying physical model, multiple linear regression is used to construct three models. Each model uses a different level of aggregation of the input parameters, allowing predictions using different types of available input parameters. One model uses aggregated values of the kinematic parameters of trips. This model allows prediction with basic, easily available input parameters such as travel distance, travel time, and temperature. The second model extends this by including detailed acceleration data. The third model uses the raw data of the kinematic parameters as input parameters to predict the energy consumption. Using detailed values of kinematic parameters for the prediction in theory increases the link between the statistical model and its underlying physical principles, but requires these parameters to be available as input in order to make predictions. The first two models show similar results. The third model shows a worse fit than the first two, but has a similar accuracy. This model has great potential for future improvement.

  18. Empirical Evidence for Niss' "Implemented Anticipation" in Mathematising Realistic Situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stillman, Gloria; Brown, Jill P.

    2012-01-01

    Mathematisation of realistic situations is an on-going focus of research. Classroom data from a Year 9 class participating in a program of structured modelling of real situations was analysed for evidence of Niss's theoretical construct, implemented anticipation, during mathematisation. Evidence was found for two of three proposed aspects. In…

  19. Leveraging Real-World Evidence in Disease-Management Decision-Making with a Total Cost of Care Estimator.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nguyen, Thanh-Nghia; Trocio, Jeffrey; Kowal, Stacey; Ferrufino, Cheryl P; Munakata, Julie; South, Dell

    2016-12-01

    Health management is becoming increasingly complex, given a range of care options and the need to balance costs and quality. The ability to measure and understand drivers of costs is critical for healthcare organizations to effectively manage their patient populations. Healthcare decision makers can leverage real-world evidence to explore the value of disease-management interventions in shifting total cost trends. To develop a real-world, evidence-based estimator that examines the impact of disease-management interventions on the total cost of care (TCoC) for a patient population with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). Data were collected from a patient-level real-world evidence data set that uses the IMS PharMetrics Health Plan Claims Database. Pharmacy and medical claims for patients meeting the inclusion or exclusion criteria were combined in longitudinal cohorts with a 180-day preindex and 360-day follow-up period. Descriptive statistics, such as mean and median patient costs and event rates, were derived from a real-world evidence analysis and were used to populate the base-case estimates within the TCoC estimator, an exploratory economic model that was designed to estimate the potential impact of several disease-management activities on the TCoC for a patient population with NVAF. Using Microsoft Excel, the estimator is designed to compare current direct costs of medical care to projected costs by varying assumptions on the impact of disease-management activities and applying the associated changes in cost trends to the affected populations. Disease-management levers are derived from literature-based concepts affecting costs along the NVAF disease continuum. The use of the estimator supports analyses across 4 US geographic regions, age, cost types, and care settings during 1 year. All patients included in the study were continuously enrolled in their health plan (within the IMS PharMetrics Health Plan Claims Database) between July 1, 2010, and June 30

  20. Tourism in Real and Virtual Space

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alireza Dehghan

    2009-07-01

    Full Text Available During these two decades, according to the expansion of communication, there is a deep transformation in individuals’ conception of space. As space plays an important role in tourism, either real or virtual, this transformation happens in the field too. The present study attempts to show how tourism in the contemporary virtualized world, or as some authors name: the dual globalized situation, occurs.

  1. Real-time door detection for indoor autonomous vehicle

    Science.gov (United States)

    He, Zhihao; Zhu, Ming

    2017-07-01

    Indoor Autonomous Vehicle(IAV) is used in many indoor scenes. Such as hotels and hospitals. Door detection is a key issue to guide the IAV into rooms. In this paper, we consider door detection in the use of indoor navigation of IAV. Since real-time properties are important for real-world IAV, the detection algorithm must be fast enough. Most monocular-camera based door detection model need a perfect detection of the four line segments of the door or the four corners. But in many situations, line segments could be extended or cut off. And there could be many false detected corners. And few of them can distinguish doors from door-like objects with door-like shape effectively. We proposed a 2-D vision model of the door that is made up of line segments. The number of parts detected is used to determine the possibility of a door. Our algorithm is tested on a database of doors.1 The robustness and real-time are verified. The precision is 89.4%. Average time consumed for processing a 640x320 figure is 44.73ms.

  2. The Best of All Worlds: Immersive Interfaces for Art Education in Virtual and Real World Teaching and Learning Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grenfell, Janette

    2013-01-01

    Selected ubiquitous technologies encourage collaborative participation between higher education students and educators within a virtual socially networked e-learning landscape. Multiple modes of teaching and learning, ranging from real world experiences, to text and digital images accessed within the Deakin studies online learning management…

  3. Using electronic medical records analysis to investigate the effectiveness of lifestyle programs in real-world primary care is challenging: a case study in diabetes mellitus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Linmans, Joris J; Viechtbauer, Wolfgang; Koppenaal, Tjarco; Spigt, Mark; Knottnerus, J André

    2012-07-01

    The increasing prevalence of diabetes suggests a gap between real world and controlled trial effectiveness of lifestyle interventions, but real-world investigations are rare. Electronic medical registration facilitates research on real-world effectiveness, although such investigations may require specific methodology and statistics. We investigated the effects of real-world primary care for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We used medical records of patients (n=2,549) with T2DM from 10 primary health care centers. A mixed-effects regression model for repeated measurements was used to evaluate the changes in weight and Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) over time. There was no statistically significant change in weight (+0.07 kg, P=0.832) and HbA1c (+0.03%, P=0.657) during the observation period of 972 days. Most patients maintained their physical activity level (70%), and 54 % had an insufficient activity level. The variability in the course of weight and HbA1c was because of differences between patients and not between health care providers. Despite effective lifestyle interventions in controlled trial settings, we found that real-world primary care is only able to stabilize weight and HbA1c in patients with T2DM over time. Medical registration can be used to monitor the actual effectiveness of interventions in primary care. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Modeling Of A Monocular, Full-Color, Laser-Scanning, Helmet-Mounted Display for Aviator Situational Awareness

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-03-27

    Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory P.O. Box 620577 Fort Rucker, AL 36362 USAARL 2017-10 Product Manager for Air Warrior SFAE-SDR-AW 6726 Odyssey Drive ...superimposed over real -world ambient scenes and artificial clutter. It is the idea of modeling HMDs to produce imagery that will in turn be...19 List of Figures 1. HMD Emission Spectra

  5. Cars and Kinetic Energy--Some Simple Physics with Real-World Relevance

    Science.gov (United States)

    Parthasarathy, Raghuveer

    2012-01-01

    Understanding energy usage is crucial to understanding modern civilization, as well as many of the challenges it faces. Energy-related issues also offer real-world examples of important physical concepts, and as such have been the focus of several articles in "The Physics Teacher" in the past few decades (e.g., Refs. 1-5, noted further below).…

  6. Fast And Flexible Modelling Of Real-Time Systems With Rtcp-Nets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcin Szpyrka

    2004-01-01

    Full Text Available A large number of formalisms has been proposed for real-time systems modelling. However, formal methods are not widely used in industrial software development. Such a situation could be treated as a result of a lack of suitable tools for fast designing of a model, its analysis and modification. RTCP-nets have been defined to facilitate fast modelling of embedded systems incorporating rule-based systems. Computer tools that are being developed for RTCP-nets, use a template mechanism to allow users to design models and manipulate its properties fast and effectively. Both theoretical and practical aspects of RTCP-nets are presented in the paper.

  7. Fast and Flexible Modelling of Real-Time Systems with RTCP-Nets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcin Szpyrka

    2004-01-01

    Full Text Available A large number of formalisms has been proposed for real-time systems modelling. However, formal methods are not widely used in industrial software development. Such a situation could be treated as a result of a lack of suitable tools for fast designing of a model, its analysis and modification. RTCP-nets have been defined to facilitate fast modelling of embedded systems incorporating rule-based systems. Computer tools that are being developed for RTCP-nets, use a template mechanism to allow users to design models and manipulate its properties fast and effectively. Both theoretical and practical aspects of RTCP-nets are presented in the paper.

  8. From market games to real-world markets

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jefferies, P.; Hart, M. L.; Hui, P. M.; Johnson, N. F.

    2001-04-01

    This paper uses the development of multi-agent market models to present a unified approach to the joint questions of how financial market movements may be simulated, predicted, and hedged against. We first present the results of agent-based market simulations in which traders equipped with simple buy/sell strategies and limited information compete in speculatory trading. We examine the effect of different market clearing mechanisms and show that implementation of a simple Walrasian auction leads to unstable market dynamics. We then show that a more realistic out-of-equilibrium clearing process leads to dynamics that closely resemble real financial movements, with fat-tailed price increments, clustered volatility and high volume autocorrelation. We then show that replacing the `synthetic' price history used by these simulations with data taken from real financial time-series leads to the remarkable result that the agents can collectively learn to identify moments in the market where profit is attainable. Hence on real financial data, the system as a whole can perform better than random. We then employ the formalism of Bouchaud in conjunction with agent based models to show that in general risk cannot be eliminated from trading with these models. We also show that, in the presence of transaction costs, the risk of option writing is greatly increased. This risk, and the costs, can however be reduced through the use of a delta-hedging strategy with modified, time-dependent volatility structure.

  9. Analysis of the chemical composition of ultrafine particles from two domestic solid biomass fired room heaters under simulated real-world use

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ozgen, Senem; Becagli, Silvia; Bernardoni, Vera; Caserini, Stefano; Caruso, Donatella; Corbella, Lorenza; Dell'Acqua, Manuela; Fermo, Paola; Gonzalez, Raquel; Lonati, Giovanni; Signorini, Stefano; Tardivo, Ruggero; Tosi, Elisa; Valli, Gianluigi; Vecchi, Roberta; Marinovich, Marina

    2017-02-01

    Two common types of wood (beech and fir) were burned in commercial pellet (11.1 kW) and wood (8.2 kW) stoves following a combustion cycle simulating the behavior of a real-world user. Ultrafine particulate matter (UFP, dp pellets and wood UFP samples, where high TC levels characterize the wood log combustion and potassium salts are dominant in every pellet sample. Crucial aspects determining the UFP composition in the wood stove experiments are critical situations in terms of available oxygen (a lack or an excess of combustion air) and high temperatures. Whereas for the automatically controlled pellets stove local situations (e.g., hindered air-fuel mixing due to heaps of pellets on the burner pot) determine the emission levels and composition. Wood samples contain more potentially carcinogenic PAHs with respect to pellets samples. Some diagnostic ratios related to PAH isomers and anhydrosugars compiled from experimental UFP data in the present study and compared to literature values proposed for the emission source discrimination for atmospheric aerosol, extend the evaluation usually limited to higher particle size fractions also to UFP.

  10. Psychological interventions used to reduce sports injuries: a systematic review of real-world effectiveness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gledhill, Adam; Forsdyke, Dale; Murray, Eliot

    2018-02-20

    To systematically review studies examining the role of psychological interventions in injury prevention. The primary research question was: What is the real-world effectiveness of psychological intervention in preventing sports injuries? Mixed methods systematic review with best evidence synthesis. CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, SPORTDiscus, Science Direct and PubMed. Randomised controlled trials (RCT), non-RCTs that included a comparison group, before and after study designs and qualitative methods. Studies were required to outline specific unimodal or multimodal psychological interventions used in relation to injury prevention in the real-world setting. Studies were independently appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Thirteen papers (incorporating 14 studies) met the eligibility criteria, of which 93% (13/14) reported a decrease in injury rates (effect size range=0.2-1.21). There was an overall moderate risk of bias in reporting (52%). There is a dominance of stress management-based interventions in literature due to the prominence of the model of stress and athletic injury within the area. Psychological interventions demonstrate small (0.2) to large (1.21) effects on sports injury rates. The research area demonstrates a cumulative moderate risk in reporting bias (52%). CRD42016035879. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

  11. Teaching Real-World Applications of Business Statistics Using Communication to Scaffold Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Green, Gareth P.; Jones, Stacey; Bean, John C.

    2015-01-01

    Our assessment research suggests that quantitative business courses that rely primarily on algorithmic problem solving may not produce the deep learning required for addressing real-world business problems. This article illustrates a strategy, supported by recent learning theory, for promoting deep learning by moving students gradually from…

  12. Bringing the Real World in: Reflection on Building a Virtual Learning Environment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mundkur, Anuradha; Ellickson, Cara

    2012-01-01

    We reflect on translating participatory and experiential learning methodologies into an online teaching environment through a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that simulates the "real-world" contexts of international development in order to develop an applied critical understanding of gender analysis and gender mainstreaming. Rather than being…

  13. System dynamics modelling of situation awareness

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Oosthuizen, R

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available . The feedback loops and delays in the Command and Control system also contribute to the complex dynamic behavior. This paper will build on existing situation awareness models to develop a System Dynamics model to support a qualitative investigation through...

  14. Multisource data assimilation in a Richards equation-based integrated hydrological model: a real-world application to an experimental hillslope

    Science.gov (United States)

    Camporese, M.; Botto, A.

    2017-12-01

    Data assimilation is becoming increasingly popular in hydrological and earth system modeling, as it allows for direct integration of multisource observation data in modeling predictions and uncertainty reduction. For this reason, data assimilation has been recently the focus of much attention also for integrated surface-subsurface hydrological models, whereby multiple terrestrial compartments (e.g., snow cover, surface water, groundwater) are solved simultaneously, in an attempt to tackle environmental problems in a holistic approach. Recent examples include the joint assimilation of water table, soil moisture, and river discharge measurements in catchment models of coupled surface-subsurface flow using the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). Although the EnKF has been specifically developed to deal with nonlinear models, integrated hydrological models based on the Richards equation still represent a challenge, due to strong nonlinearities that may significantly affect the filter performance. Thus, more studies are needed to investigate the capabilities of EnKF to correct the system state and identify parameters in cases where the unsaturated zone dynamics are dominant. Here, the model CATHY (CATchment HYdrology) is applied to reproduce the hydrological dynamics observed in an experimental hillslope, equipped with tensiometers, water content reflectometer probes, and tipping bucket flow gages to monitor the hillslope response to a series of artificial rainfall events. We assimilate pressure head, soil moisture, and subsurface outflow with EnKF in a number of assimilation scenarios and discuss the challenges, issues, and tradeoffs arising from the assimilation of multisource data in a real-world test case, with particular focus on the capability of DA to update the subsurface parameters.

  15. Incidence of real-world automotive parent and halogenated PAH in urban atmosphere.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gao, Pan-Pan; Zhao, Yi-Bo; Ni, Hong-Gang

    2018-06-01

    This study reports results from a tunnel experiment impact of real-world traffic-related particle and gas parent and halogenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs and HPAHs) on urban air. The traffic related emission characteristics and subsequent environmental behavior of these compounds were investigated. To understand the significance of real-world transport emissions to the urban air, traffic-related mass emissions of PAHs and HPAHs were estimated based on measured emission factors. According to our results, PAHs and HPAHs emissions via particulate phase were greater than those via gaseous phase; particles in 2.1-3.3 μm size fraction, have the major contribution to particulate PAHs and HPAHs emissions. Over all, contribution of traffic-related emission of PAHs (only ∼3% of the total PAHs emission in China) is an overstated source of PAHs pollution in China. Actually, exhaust pipe emission contributed much less than the total traffic-related emission of pollutants. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. EIA model documentation: World oil refining logistics demand model,``WORLD`` reference manual. Version 1.1

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    1994-04-11

    This manual is intended primarily for use as a reference by analysts applying the WORLD model to regional studies. It also provides overview information on WORLD features of potential interest to managers and analysts. Broadly, the manual covers WORLD model features in progressively increasing detail. Section 2 provides an overview of the WORLD model, how it has evolved, what its design goals are, what it produces, and where it can be taken with further enhancements. Section 3 reviews model management covering data sources, managing over-optimization, calibration and seasonality, check-points for case construction and common errors. Section 4 describes in detail the WORLD system, including: data and program systems in overview; details of mainframe and PC program control and files;model generation, size management, debugging and error analysis; use with different optimizers; and reporting and results analysis. Section 5 provides a detailed description of every WORLD model data table, covering model controls, case and technology data. Section 6 goes into the details of WORLD matrix structure. It provides an overview, describes how regional definitions are controlled and defines the naming conventions for-all model rows, columns, right-hand sides, and bounds. It also includes a discussion of the formulation of product blending and specifications in WORLD. Several Appendices supplement the main sections.

  17. Real World NET, C#, and Silverlight Indispensible Experiences from 15 MVPs

    CERN Document Server

    Evjen, Bill; Balassy, Gyorgy; Gleeren, Gill; Giard, David; Golesh, Alex; Grossnicklaus, Kevin; Jenkins, Caleb; Juday, Jeffrey; Lele, Vishwas; Likness, Jeremy; Millett, Scott; Nagel, Christian; Yöndem , Daron; Weyer, Christian

    2011-01-01

    A team of MVP authors guides you through the .NET 4 Framework Written by a group of experienced MVPs, this unparalleled book delves into the intricate-and often daunting-world of .NET 4. Each author draws from a particular area of expertise to provide invaluable information on using the various .NET 4, C# 4, Silverlight 4, and Visual Studio tools in the real world. The authors break down the vast .NET 4 Framework into easily digestible portions to offer you a strong foundation on what makes .NET such a popular and successful framework for building a wide range of solutions.Breaks down the .NET

  18. Inferring relevance in a changing world

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robert C Wilson

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Reinforcement learning models of human and animal learning usually concentrate on how we learn the relationship between different stimuli or actions and rewards. However, in real world situations stimuli are ill-defined. On the one hand, our immediate environment is extremely multi-dimensional. On the other hand, in every decision-making scenario only a few aspects of the environment are relevant for obtaining reward, while most are irrelevant. Thus a key question is how do we learn these relevant dimensions, that is, how do we learn what to learn about? We investigated this process of representation learning experimentally, using a task in which one stimulus dimension was relevant for determining reward at each point in time. As in real life situations, in our task the relevant dimension can change without warning, adding ever-present uncertainty engendered by a constantly changing environment. We show that human performance on this task is better described by a suboptimal strategy based on selective attention and serial hypothesis testing rather than a normative strategy based on probabilistic inference. From this, we conjecture that the problem of inferring relevance in general scenarios is too computationally demanding for the brain to solve optimally. As a result the brain utilizes approximations, employing these even in simplified scenarios in which optimal representation learning is tractable, such as the one in our experiment.

  19. How to do Research in the Real world: What is to know and Who is to gain?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Villumsen, Anne Marie Anker

    2016-01-01

    a specific line of research. This, again, requires time. In the presentation, I will propose new concepts concerning real world research and knowledge production. The presentation will be based on data from a collaborative organizational field study. The aim of the study was establish a coherent practice...... of multidisciplinary collaboration between day-care and social services to support and aid children and families at risk. First, I propose the concepts of a) Development through Research and b) Research through Development. Both concepts are inter-dependent. They share development as a goal and both require applying......Real world research: The need for different types of knowledge requires two knowledge production processes In real world research, there are dilemmas. One significant dilemma is time. The field of practice needs a type of knowledge that is produced quickly and can be applied immediately...

  20. Network resilience to real-world disasters: Eyjafjallajökull and 9/11

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woolley, Olivia; Thiemann, Christian; Grady, Daniel; Brockmann, Dirk

    2011-03-01

    We investigate the resilience of the the world-wide air transportation network (WAN) to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the recent eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull. Although both disasters caused wide-spread disruption, the number of airports that were closed and the volume of interrupted traffic were well below the percolation threshold predicted by the classical theory. In order to quantify and visualize network deformation before breakdown, we introduce a framework based on the increase in shortest-path distance and homogenization of shortest-path structure. These real-world disasters are a new type of disruption because the removal of all vertices (airports) is geographically compact. Our framework incorporates the dual perspective of individual airports and geopolitical regions to capture how the impact interacts with the sub-network structure.We find that real-world events have an impact signature which is qualitatively different from that of random or high-centrality attacks. Furthermore, we find that the network is more resilient to the 9/11 disaster, although it removed more airports and traffic than the volcanic ash-cloud. This is due to the network roles of Europe and North America. We discuss how regional roles influence resilience to a region's removal.

  1. Real-Time System for Water Modeling and Management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, J.; Zhao, T.; David, C. H.; Minsker, B.

    2012-12-01

    Working closely with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), we are developing a real-time system for water modeling and management using advanced cyberinfrastructure, data integration and geospatial visualization, and numerical modeling. The state of Texas suffered a severe drought in 2011 that cost the state $7.62 billion in agricultural losses (crops and livestock). Devastating situations such as this could potentially be avoided with better water modeling and management strategies that incorporate state of the art simulation and digital data integration. The goal of the project is to prototype a near-real-time decision support system for river modeling and management in Texas that can serve as a national and international model to promote more sustainable and resilient water systems. The system uses National Weather Service current and predicted precipitation data as input to the Noah-MP Land Surface model, which forecasts runoff, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and water table levels given land surface features. These results are then used by a river model called RAPID, along with an error model currently under development at UT-Austin, to forecast stream flows in the rivers. Model forecasts are visualized as a Web application for TCEQ decision makers, who issue water diversion (withdrawal) permits and any needed drought restrictions; permit holders; and reservoir operation managers. Users will be able to adjust model parameters to predict the impacts of alternative curtailment scenarios or weather forecasts. A real-time optimization system under development will help TCEQ to identify optimal curtailment strategies to minimize impacts on permit holders and protect health and safety. To develop the system we have implemented RAPID as a remotely-executed modeling service using the Cyberintegrator workflow system with input data downloaded from the North American Land Data Assimilation System. The

  2. Designing "Real-World" trials to meet the needs of health policy makers at marketing authorization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Calvert, Melanie; Wood, John; Freemantle, Nick

    2011-07-01

    There is increasing interest in conducting "Real-World" trials that go beyond traditional assessment of efficacy and safety to examine market access and value for money questions before marketing authorization of a new pharmaceutical product or health technology. This commentary uses practical examples to demonstrate how high-quality evidence of the cost-effectiveness of an intervention may be gained earlier in the development process. Issues surrounding the design and analysis of "Real-World" trials to demonstrate relative cost-effectiveness early in the life of new technologies are discussed. The modification of traditional phase III trial designs, de novo trial designs, the combination of trial-based and epidemiological data, and the use of simulation model-based approaches to address reimbursement questions are described. Modest changes to a phase III trial protocol and case report form may be undertaken at the design stage to provide valid estimates of health care use and the benefits accrued; however, phase III designs often preclude "real-life" practice. Relatively small de novo trials may be used to address adherence to therapy or patient preference, although simply designed studies with active comparators enrolling large numbers of patients may provide evidence on long-term safety and rare adverse events. Practical examples demonstrate that it is possible to provide high-quality evidence of the cost-effectiveness of an intervention earlier in the development process. Payers and decision makers should preferentially adopt treatments with such evidence than treatments for which evidence is lacking or of lower quality. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  3. Drawing the Ideal World and Real World: A Study of Lesbian, Labour and Social Inclusion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Henrique Luiz Caproni Neto

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we analyze the experience of lesbian women in Juiz de Fora on the scope of work, society and the individual, from drawings made by them. Discussed the experience of sexuality and lesbophobia as aspects present in their lives and at work, considering that fall into a heteronormative context. So, we conducted a qualitative study with the preparation of drawings and interviews that allowed the construction of categories: being lesbian, inclusion and social integration, personal and professional development, and real world and the ideal world. These drawings are shown as a rich and interesting technique to provide access to their subjective and symbolic dimensions as to their social and work experiences. Finally, we advocate a reflective and humanistic stance both in society and in organizations about the socially constructed and valued patterns that can marginalize or stigmatize those fleeing them.

  4. Modelling and Scheduling Autonomous Mobile Robot for a Real-World Industrial Application

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dang, Vinh Quang; Nielsen, Izabela Ewa; Bøgh, Simon

    2013-01-01

    proposes an approach composing of: a mobile robot system design (“Little Helper”), an appropriate and comprehensive industrial application (multiple-part feeding tasks), an implementation concept for industrial environments (the bartender concept), and a real-time heuristics integrated into Mission...... from the real-time heuristics. The results also demonstrated that the proposed real-time heuristics has capability of finding the best schedule in online production mode....

  5. Building Real World Domain-Specific Social Network Websites as a Capstone Project

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yue, Kwok-Bun; De Silva, Dilhar; Kim, Dan; Aktepe, Mirac; Nagle, Stewart; Boerger, Chris; Jain, Anubha; Verma, Sunny

    2009-01-01

    This paper describes our experience of using Content Management Software (CMS), specifically Joomla, to build a real world domain-specific social network site (SNS) as a capstone project for graduate information systems and computer science students. As Web 2.0 technologies become increasingly important in driving business application development,…

  6. The Latent Class Model as a Measurement Model for Situational Judgment Tests

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Frank Rijmen

    2011-11-01

    Full Text Available In a situational judgment test, it is often debatable what constitutes a correct answer to a situation. There is currently a multitude of scoring procedures. Establishing a measurement model can guide the selection of a scoring rule. It is argued that the latent class model is a good candidate for a measurement model. Two latent class models are applied to the Managing Emotions subtest of the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test: a plain-vanilla latent class model, and a second-order latent class model that takes into account the clustering of several possible reactions within each hypothetical scenario of the situational judgment test. The results for both models indicated that there were three subgroups characterised by the degree to which differentiation occurred between possible reactions in terms of perceived effectiveness. Furthermore, the results for the second-order model indicated a moderate cluster effect.

  7. Propagation phenomena in real world networks

    CERN Document Server

    Fay, Damien; Gabryś, Bogdan

    2015-01-01

    “Propagation, which looks at spreading in complex networks, can be seen from many viewpoints; it is undesirable, or desirable, controllable, the mechanisms generating that propagation can be the topic of interest, but in the end all depends on the setting. This book covers leading research on a wide spectrum of propagation phenomenon and the techniques currently used in its modelling, prediction, analysis and control. Fourteen papers range over topics including epidemic models, models for trust inference, coverage strategies for networks, vehicle flow propagation, bio-inspired routing algorithms, P2P botnet attacks and defences, fault propagation in gene-cellular networks, malware propagation for mobile networks, information propagation in crisis situations, financial contagion in interbank networks, and finally how to maximize the spread of influence in social networks. The compendium will be of interest to researchers, those working in social networking, communications and finance and is aimed at providin...

  8. A Review of Quantitative Situation Assessment Models for Nuclear Power Plant Operators

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Hyun Chul; Seong, Poong Hyun

    2009-01-01

    Situation assessment is the process of developing situation awareness and situation awareness is defined as 'the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future.' Situation awareness is an important element influencing human actions because human decision making is based on the result of situation assessment or situation awareness. There are many models for situation awareness and those models can be categorized into qualitative or quantitative. As the effects of some input factors on situation awareness can be investigated through the quantitative models, the quantitative models are more useful for the design of operator interfaces, automation strategies, training program, and so on, than the qualitative models. This study presents the review of two quantitative models of situation assessment (SA) for nuclear power plant operators

  9. Modelling the world oil market: Assessment of a quarterly econometric model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dees, Stephane; Karadeloglou, Pavlos; Kaufmann, Robert K.; Sanchez, Marcelo

    2007-01-01

    This paper describes a structural econometric model of the world oil market that can be used to analyse oil market developments and risks. Oil demand depends on domestic economic activity and the real price of oil. Oil supply for non-OPEC producers, based on competitive behaviours, is constrained by geological and institutional conditions. Oil prices are determined by a 'price rule' that includes market conditions and OPEC behaviour. Policy simulations indicate that oil demand and non-OPEC supply are rather inelastic to changes in price, while OPEC decisions about quota and capacity utilisation have a significant, immediate impact on oil prices

  10. Multilingual children between real and imaginary worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Laursen, Helle Pia; Kolstrup, Kirsten Lundgaard

    2017-01-01

    This article analyzes how a group of multilingual children in their early adolescence use various forms of language play and position themselves symbolically through involvement in signifying practices. By developing a conceptual framework that combines insights on language play (Cook 2000......) and the signifying self (Kramsch 2009), it demonstrates how the children as sign makers and symbolic subjects (re)signify their own learning space. The analysis reveals how, during a reading and joint text construction activity in Danish, they explore the symbolic possibilities of signs and subjectivities, while...... moving in and out of the text and back and forth between imagined and real worlds. These findings illustrate how the children’s interest both shapes their playful interaction and takes shape through it. It furthermore shows how language play contributes to paving the way for a resignification...

  11. Waking up from the dream of reason; Rationality in the real world

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Van Hezewijk, René

    2007-01-01

    Review Essay of: Gerd Gigerenzer, Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 344 pp. ISBN 0–19–513622–5 (hbk). Gerd Gigerenzer, Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2002. 310 pp. ISBN 0–713–99512–2

  12. Adapting to Change in a Master Level Real-World-Projects Capstone Course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tappert, Charles C.; Stix, Allen

    2012-01-01

    Our mission of capstone computing courses for the past ten years has been to offer students experience with the development of real-world information technology projects. This experience has included both the hard and soft skills required for the work they could expect as industrial practitioners. Hard skills entail extending one's knowledge…

  13. Effective use of integrated hydrological models in basin-scale water resources management: surrogate modeling approaches

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Y.; Wu, B.; Wu, X.

    2015-12-01

    Integrated hydrological models (IHMs) consider surface water and subsurface water as a unified system, and have been widely adopted in basin-scale water resources studies. However, due to IHMs' mathematical complexity and high computational cost, it is difficult to implement them in an iterative model evaluation process (e.g., Monte Carlo Simulation, simulation-optimization analysis, etc.), which diminishes their applicability for supporting decision-making in real-world situations. Our studies investigated how to effectively use complex IHMs to address real-world water issues via surrogate modeling. Three surrogate modeling approaches were considered, including 1) DYCORS (DYnamic COordinate search using Response Surface models), a well-established response surface-based optimization algorithm; 2) SOIM (Surrogate-based Optimization for Integrated surface water-groundwater Modeling), a response surface-based optimization algorithm that we developed specifically for IHMs; and 3) Probabilistic Collocation Method (PCM), a stochastic response surface approach. Our investigation was based on a modeling case study in the Heihe River Basin (HRB), China's second largest endorheic river basin. The GSFLOW (Coupled Ground-Water and Surface-Water Flow Model) model was employed. Two decision problems were discussed. One is to optimize, both in time and in space, the conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater for agricultural irrigation in the middle HRB region; and the other is to cost-effectively collect hydrological data based on a data-worth evaluation. Overall, our study results highlight the value of incorporating an IHM in making decisions of water resources management and hydrological data collection. An IHM like GSFLOW can provide great flexibility to formulating proper objective functions and constraints for various optimization problems. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that surrogate modeling approaches can pave the path for such incorporation in real-world

  14. MODELING OF POWER SYSTEMS AND TESTING OF RELAY PROTECTION DEVICES IN REAL AND MODEL TIME

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    I. V. Novash

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The methods of modelling of power system modes and of testing of relay protection devices with the aid the simulation complexes in real time and with the help of computer software systems that enables the simulation of virtual time scale are considered. Information input protection signals in the simulation of the virtual model time are being obtained in the computational experiment, whereas the tests of protective devices are carried out with the help of hardware and software test systems with the use of estimated input signals. Study of power system stability when modes of generating and consuming electrical equipment and conditions of devices of relay protection are being changed requires testing with the use of digital simulators in a mode of a closed loop. Herewith feedbacks between a model of the power system operating in a real time and external devices or their models must be determined (modelled. Modelling in real time and the analysis of international experience in the use of digital simulation power systems for real-time simulation (RTDS simulator have been fulfilled. Examples are given of the use of RTDS systems by foreign energy companies to test relay protection systems and control, to test the equipment and devices of automatic control, analysis of cyber security and evaluation of the operation of energy systems under different scenarios of occurrence of emergency situations. Some quantitative data on the distribution of RTDS in different countries and Russia are presented. It is noted that the leading energy universities of Russia use the real-time simulation not only to solve scientific and technical problems, but also to conduct training and laboratory classes on modelling of electric networks and anti-emergency automatic equipment with the students. In order to check serviceability of devices of relay protection without taking into account the reaction of the power system tests can be performed in an open loop mode with the

  15. Temporal and kinematic variables for real-world falls harvested from lumbar sensors in the elderly population.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bourke, A K; Klenk, J; Schwickert, L; Aminian, K; Ihlen, E A F; Helbostad, J L; Chiari, L; Becker, C

    2015-01-01

    Automatic fall detection will reduce the consequences of falls in the elderly and promote independent living, ensuring people can confidently live safely at home. Inertial sensor technology can distinguish falls from normal activities. However, fall data recorded from elderly people in real life. The FARSEEING project has compiled a database of real life falls from elderly people, to gain new knowledge about fall events. We have extracted temporal and kinematic parameters to further improve the development of fall detection algorithms. A total of 100 real-world falls were analysed. Subjects with a known fall history were recruited, inertial sensors were attached to L5 and a fall report, following a fall, was used to extract the fall signal. This data-set was examined, and variables were extracted that include upper and lower impact peak values, posture angle change during the fall and time of occurrence. These extracted parameters, can be used to inform the design of fall-detection algorithms for real-world falls detection in the elderly.

  16. The relative importance of real-time in-cab and external feedback in managing fatigue in real-world commercial transport operations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fitzharris, Michael; Liu, Sara; Stephens, Amanda N; Lenné, Michael G

    2017-05-29

    Real-time driver monitoring systems represent a solution to address key behavioral risks as they occur, particularly distraction and fatigue. The efficacy of these systems in real-world settings is largely unknown. This article has three objectives: (1) to document the incidence and duration of fatigue in real-world commercial truck-driving operations, (2) to determine the reduction, if any, in the incidence of fatigue episodes associated with providing feedback, and (3) to tease apart the relative contribution of in-cab warnings from 24/7 monitoring and feedback to employers. Data collected from a commercially available in-vehicle camera-based driver monitoring system installed in a commercial truck fleet operating in Australia were analyzed. The real-time driver monitoring system makes continuous assessments of driver drowsiness based on eyelid position and other factors. Data were collected in a baseline period where no feedback was provided to drivers. Real-time feedback to drivers then occurred via in-cab auditory and haptic warnings, which were further enhanced by direct feedback by company management when fatigue events were detected by external 24/7 monitors. Fatigue incidence rates and their timing of occurrence across the three time periods were compared. Relative to no feedback being provided to drivers when fatigue events were detected, in-cab warnings resulted in a 66% reduction in fatigue events, with a 95% reduction achieved by the real-time provision of direct feedback in addition to in-cab warnings (p safety culture of the company in terms of how the information is used. Data were analysed on a per-truck trip basis, and the findings are indicative of fatigue events in a large-scale commercial transport fleet. Future research ought to account for individual driver performance, which was not possible with the available data in this retrospective analysis. Evidence that real-time driver monitoring feedback is effective in reducing fatigue events is

  17. The 'bookshelf illusion'--a real-world Zöllner-type illusion?

    Science.gov (United States)

    MacLin, Otto H; Peterson, Dwight J

    2010-01-01

    We discovered an interesting perceptual distortion in our office where an upright lamp in front of a bookshelf was noticeably curved to form several subtle S-shaped bends. We realized that the books in the bookshelf fell in a particular manner, leaning in alternative directions, which caused the straight lamp to appear bent, creating what may be a real-world example of the Zöllner illusion. Evidence for the production of the illusion diagrammatically and an explanation for the effect are provided.

  18. Modelling remediation options for urban contamination situations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Thiessen, K.M.; Andersson, Kasper Grann; Charnock, T.W.

    2009-01-01

    and remedial options enables the evaluation of a variety of situations or alternative recovery strategies in contexts of preparedness or decision-making. At present a number of models and modelling approaches are available for different purposes. This paper summarizes the available modelling approaches...

  19. Students without Borders: Global Collaborative Learning Connects School to the Real World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bickley, Mali; Carleton, Jim

    2009-01-01

    Kids can't help but get engaged when they're collaborating with peers across the globe to solve real-life problems. Global collaborative learning is about connecting students in communities of learners around the world so they can work together on projects that make a difference locally and globally. It is about building relationships and…

  20. An accelerometry-based methodology for assessment of real-world bilateral upper extremity activity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ryan R Bailey

    Full Text Available The use of both upper extremities (UE is necessary for the completion of many everyday tasks. Few clinical assessments measure the abilities of the UEs to work together; rather, they assess unilateral function and compare it between affected and unaffected UEs. Furthermore, clinical assessments are unable to measure function that occurs in the real-world, outside the clinic. This study examines the validity of an innovative approach to assess real-world bilateral UE activity using accelerometry.Seventy-four neurologically intact adults completed ten tasks (donning/doffing shoes, grooming, stacking boxes, cutting playdough, folding towels, writing, unilateral sorting, bilateral sorting, unilateral typing, and bilateral typing while wearing accelerometers on both wrists. Two variables, the Bilateral Magnitude and Magnitude Ratio, were derived from accelerometry data to distinguish between high- and low-intensity tasks, and between bilateral and unilateral tasks. Estimated energy expenditure and time spent in simultaneous UE activity for each task were also calculated.The Bilateral Magnitude distinguished between high- and low-intensity tasks, and the Magnitude Ratio distinguished between unilateral and bilateral UE tasks. The Bilateral Magnitude was strongly correlated with estimated energy expenditure (ρ = 0.74, p<0.02, and the Magnitude Ratio was strongly correlated with time spent in simultaneous UE activity (ρ = 0.93, p<0.01 across tasks.These results demonstrate face validity and construct validity of this methodology to quantify bilateral UE activity during the performance of everyday tasks performed in a laboratory setting, and can now be used to assess bilateral UE activity in real-world environments.

  1. Frontal theta EEG dynamics in a real-world air traffic control task.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shou, Guofa; Ding, Lei

    2013-01-01

    Mental workload and time-on-task effect are two major factors expediting fatigue progress, which leads to performance decline and/or failure in real-world tasks. In the present study, electroencephalography (EEG) is applied to study mental fatigue development during an air traffic control (ATC) task. Specifically, the frontal theta EEG dynamics are firstly dissolved into a unique frontal independent component (IC) through a novel time-frequency independent component analysis (tfICA) method. Then the temporal fluctuations of the identified frontal ICs every minute are compared to workload (reflected by number of clicks per minute) and time-on-task effect by correlational analysis and linear regression analysis. It is observed that the frontal theta activity significantly increase with workload augment and time-on-task. The present study demonstrates that the frontal theta EEG activity identified by tfICA method is a sensitive and reliable metric to assess mental workload and time-on-task effect in a real-world task, i.e., ATC task, at the resolution of minute(s).

  2. Economic (in)equality and sustainability : preschool children’s views of the economic situation of other children in the world

    OpenAIRE

    Borg, Farhana

    2017-01-01

    This study explored preschool children’s knowledge and views of other children’s economic situation worldwide, and their self-reported sources of such knowledge. A total of 53 final-year preschool children, aged 5–6, from 12 preschools in Sweden were interviewed. Children’s responses were analysed using content analysis and the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcomes Taxonomy. Most of them seemed to have knowledge about the lives and the economic situation of other children in the world. ...

  3. Replacing a Hospital Information System: an example of a real-world case study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sikkel, Nicolaas; Spil, Antonius A.M.; van de Weg, R.L.W.

    Real-world case studies are important to complement the academic skills and knowledge acquired by computer science students. In this paper we relate our experiences with a course specifically designed to address this issue. The objectives of the course are threefold: to train management and

  4. Understanding the GOLD 2011 Strategy as applied to a real-world COPD population

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vestbo, J.; Vogelmeier, C.; Small, M.

    2014-01-01

    Study objectives: The aim of this analysis was to understand the implications of the GOLD 2011 multidimensional system for the assessment and management of COPD, using data from a real-world observational study. Methods: Data were drawn from the Adelphi Respiratory Disease Specific Programme...

  5. Developing Humanoid Robots for Real-World Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stoica, Adrian; Kuhlman, Michael; Assad, Chris; Keymeulen, Didier

    2008-01-01

    Humanoids are steadily improving in appearance and functionality demonstrated in controlled environments. To address the challenges of operation in the real-world, researchers have proposed the use of brain-inspired architectures for robot control, and the use of robot learning techniques that enable the robot to acquire and tune skills and behaviours. In the first part of the paper we introduce new concepts and results in these two areas. First, we present a cerebellum-inspired model that demonstrated efficiency in the sensory-motor control of anthropomorphic arms, and in gait control of dynamic walkers. Then, we present a set of new ideas related to robot learning, emphasizing the importance of developing teaching techniques that support learning. In the second part of the paper we propose the use in robotics of the iterative and incremental development methodologies, in the context of practical task-oriented applications. These methodologies promise to rapidly reach system-level integration, and to early identify system-level weaknesses to focus on. We apply this methodology in a task targeting the automated assembly of a modular structure using HOAP-2. We confirm this approach led to rapid development of a end-to-end capability, and offered guidance on which technologies to focus on for gradual improvement of a complete functional system. It is believed that providing Grand Challenge type milestones in practical task-oriented applications accelerates development. As a meaningful target in short-mid term we propose the 'IKEA Challenge', aimed at the demonstration of autonomous assembly of various pieces of furniture, from the box, following included written/drawn instructions.

  6. Real-time Social Media Data Analytics for Situational Awareness of the Electric Grid

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mao, H.; Chinthavali, S.; Lee, S.; Shankar, M.; Thiagarajan, S.

    2016-12-01

    With the increasing frequency of extreme events due to climate change, wide area situational awareness (SA) of the electric grid has become a primary need for federal agencies like DOE,FEMA etc. for emergency preparedness and recovery purposes. While several sensor feeds from Genscape, GridEye, PMUs provide a comprehensive view of the transmission grid, national-scale situational awareness tools are still relying on utility websites for outage information at a distribution level. The inconsistency and the variety in outage website's data formats makes this approach unreliable and also incurs huge software maintenance costs. Social media has emerged as a great medium for the utilities to share outage information with their customers. Despite their potential usefulness, extracting relevant data from these social media data-streams is challenging due to the inherent noise and irrelevant information such as tips to customers during storms, marketing, etc. In this study, we implement a practical and novel machine learning based data-analytics pipeline (Fig 1) for SA, which extracts real-time tweets from around 300 utility companies, processes these tweets using keyword filtering and Naïve-Bayes text classifier trained using supervised learning techniques to detect only relevant tweets. We validated the results by comparing it with the results identified by a human analyst for a period of 48 hours, and it showed around 98.3% accuracy. In addition to the tweets posted by utility companies, millions of twitter users, who are considered as human "social sensors", report power outages online. Therefore, we use Twitter Streaming API to extract real-time tweets containing keywords such as "power outage", "blackout", and "power cuts". An advanced natural language processing technique is proposed to identify the geo-locations associated with this power outage data. The detected tweets are visualized as a color-coded state and a county US map based on the number of outage tweets

  7. Food for Thought: Cross-Classification and Category Organization in a Complex Real-World Domain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ross, Brian H.; Murphy, Gregory L.

    1999-01-01

    Seven studies involving 256 undergraduates examined how people represent, access, and make inferences about the real-world category domain, foods. Results give a detailed picture of the use of cross-classification in a complex domain. (SLD)

  8. The long-term supply/demand trend of world energy and the current oil situation in the Asia

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Okamoto, Hiroyuki

    1996-01-01

    Total world primary energy consumption excluding the FSU increased by 2.9% in 1995, which is somewhat above the 10 year average rate of 2.4%. This reflected strong economic growth in most parts of the world. The increase in demand confirmed the recovery of the link between the economic growth and consumption of primary energy, which broke down in the period of oil crises. Oil demand in the Asian Emerging Market Economies has continued to be very strong. Oil demand has doubled in a decade in this region and is now one sixth of world consumption. Malaysia was the fastest growing oil market in the world in 1995 at 15.5%. In volume terms, S. Korea grew the most in the world by 170,000 b/d, closely followed by China and India. Because of the fast growing oil demand, many energy economists expect a tight supply situation in the Asian oil market in the early 21st Century. However, recent technological developments would be able to supply crude oil appropriate for an increase in oil demand. (author)

  9. Haptograph Representation of Real-World Haptic Information by Wideband Force Control

    Science.gov (United States)

    Katsura, Seiichiro; Irie, Kouhei; Ohishi, Kiyoshi

    Artificial acquisition and reproduction of human sensations are basic technologies of communication engineering. For example, auditory information is obtained by a microphone, and a speaker reproduces it by artificial means. Furthermore, a video camera and a television make it possible to transmit visual sensation by broadcasting. On the contrary, since tactile or haptic information is subject to the Newton's “law of action and reaction” in the real world, a device which acquires, transmits, and reproduces the information has not been established. From the point of view, real-world haptics is the key technology for future haptic communication engineering. This paper proposes a novel acquisition method of haptic information named “haptograph”. The haptograph visualizes the haptic information like photograph. The proposed haptograph is applied to haptic recognition of the contact environment. A linear motor contacts to the surface of the environment and its reaction force is used to make a haptograph. A robust contact motion and sensor-less sensing of the reaction force are attained by using a disturbance observer. As a result, an encyclopedia of contact environment is attained. Since temporal and spatial analyses are conducted to represent haptic information as the haptograph, it is possible to be recognized and to be evaluated intuitively.

  10. Virtual Worlds: Relationship Between Real Life and Experience in Second Life

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Scott P. Anstadt

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Due to the unique applications of virtual reality in many modern contexts, Second Life (SL offers inimitable opportunities for research and exploration and experiential learning as part of a distance learning curriculum assignment. A review of current research regarding SL examined real world social influences in online interactions and what the effects on users may be. This aids students in understanding the social constructionist perceptions and worldview of those persons they may serve in social services. This suggests the importance of developing an understanding of the relationship between users’ real life (RL and their SL. Some research has begun to reveal the effectiveness of telecommunication and computer simulation with certain clients in the fields of mental health and social work, yet there is a lack of sufficient research done within the context of virtual worlds. The current study surveyed users of several educationally and health focused SIMS (simulations as to what motivates their SL and RL interactions. The data explores associations between users’ RL and their SL in several areas,potentially addressing the future role of educating social work students regarding research methodology in online virtual reality interactions. Implications for social work are discussed including engaging clients using incentives for social participation built into the SL milieu.

  11. Real-world Data for Clinical Evidence Generation in Oncology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khozin, Sean; Blumenthal, Gideon M; Pazdur, Richard

    2017-11-01

    Conventional cancer clinical trials can be slow and costly, often produce results with limited external validity, and are difficult for patients to participate in. Recent technological advances and a dynamic policy landscape in the United States have created a fertile ground for the use of real-world data (RWD) to improve current methods of clinical evidence generation. Sources of RWD include electronic health records, insurance claims, patient registries, and digital health solutions outside of conventional clinical trials. A definition focused on the original intent of data collected at the point of care can distinguish RWD from conventional clinical trial data. When the intent of data collection at the point of care is research, RWD can be generated using experimental designs similar to those employed in conventional clinical trials, but with several advantages that include gains in efficient execution of studies with an appropriate balance between internal and external validity. RWD can support active pharmacovigilance, insights into the natural history of disease, and the development of external control arms. Prospective collection of RWD can enable evidence generation based on pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) that support randomized study designs and expand clinical research to the point of care. PCTs may help address the growing demands for access to experimental therapies while increasing patient participation in cancer clinical trials. Conducting valid real-world studies requires data quality assurance through auditable data abstraction methods and new incentives to drive electronic capture of clinically relevant data at the point of care. Published by Oxford University Press 2017. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the US.

  12. Representing Operational Modes for Situation Awareness

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kirchhübel, Denis; Lind, Morten; Ravn, Ole

    2017-01-01

    Operating complex plants is an increasingly demanding task for human operators. Diagnosis of and reaction to on-line events requires the interpretation of real time data. Vast amounts of sensor data as well as operational knowledge about the state and design of the plant are necessary to deduct reasonable reactions to abnormal situations. Intelligent computational support tools can make the operator’s task easier, but they require knowledge about the overall system in form of some model. While tools used for fault-tolerant control design based on physical principles and relations are valuable tools for designing robust systems, the models become too complex when considering the interactions on a plant-wide level. The alarm systems meant to support human operators in the diagnosis of the plant-wide situation on the other hand fail regularly in situations where these interactions of systems lead to many related alarms overloading the operator with alarm floods. Functional modelling can provide a middle way to reduce the complexity of plant-wide models by abstracting from physical details to more general functions and behaviours. Based on functional models the propagation of failures through the interconnected systems can be inferred and alarm floods can potentially be reduced to their root-cause. However, the desired behaviour of a complex system changes due to operating procedures that require more than one physical and functional configuration. In this paper a consistent representation of possible configurations is deduced from the analysis of an exemplary start-up procedure by functional models. The proposed interpretation of the modelling concepts simplifies the functional modelling of distinct modes. The analysis further reveals relevant links between the quantitative sensor data and the qualitative perspective of the diagnostics tool based on functional models. This will form the basis for the ongoing development of a novel real-time diagnostics system based

  13. Representing Operational Modes for Situation Awareness

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kirchhübel, Denis; Lind, Morten; Ravn, Ole

    2017-01-01

    Operating complex plants is an increasingly demanding task for human operators. Diagnosis of and reaction to on-line events requires the interpretation of real time data. Vast amounts of sensor data as well as operational knowledge about the state and design of the plant are necessary to deduct reasonable reactions to abnormal situations. Intelligent computational support tools can make the operator’s task easier, but they require knowledge about the overall system in form of some model. While tools used for fault-tolerant control design based on physical principles and relations are valuable tools for designing robust systems, the models become too complex when considering the interactions on a plant-wide level. The alarm systems meant to support human operators in the diagnosis of the plant-wide situation on the other hand fail regularly in situations where these interactions of systems lead to many related alarms overloading the operator with alarm floods. Functional modelling can provide a middle way to reduce the complexity of plant-wide models by abstracting from physical details to more general functions and behaviours. Based on functional models the propagation of failures through the interconnected systems can be inferred and alarm floods can potentially be reduced to their root-cause. However, the desired behaviour of a complex system changes due to operating procedures that require more than one physical and functional configuration. In this paper a consistent representation of possible configurations is deduced from the analysis of an exemplary start-up procedure by functional models. The proposed interpretation of the modelling concepts simplifies the functional modelling of distinct modes. The analysis further reveals relevant links between the quantitative sensor data and the qualitative perspective of the diagnostics tool based on functional models. This will form the basis for the ongoing development of a novel real-time diagnostics system based

  14. Robust Real-Time Music Transcription with a Compositional Hierarchical Model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pesek, Matevž; Leonardis, Aleš; Marolt, Matija

    2017-01-01

    The paper presents a new compositional hierarchical model for robust music transcription. Its main features are unsupervised learning of a hierarchical representation of input data, transparency, which enables insights into the learned representation, as well as robustness and speed which make it suitable for real-world and real-time use. The model consists of multiple layers, each composed of a number of parts. The hierarchical nature of the model corresponds well to hierarchical structures in music. The parts in lower layers correspond to low-level concepts (e.g. tone partials), while the parts in higher layers combine lower-level representations into more complex concepts (tones, chords). The layers are learned in an unsupervised manner from music signals. Parts in each layer are compositions of parts from previous layers based on statistical co-occurrences as the driving force of the learning process. In the paper, we present the model's structure and compare it to other hierarchical approaches in the field of music information retrieval. We evaluate the model's performance for the multiple fundamental frequency estimation. Finally, we elaborate on extensions of the model towards other music information retrieval tasks.

  15. Real-time simulation of large-scale floods

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Q.; Qin, Y.; Li, G. D.; Liu, Z.; Cheng, D. J.; Zhao, Y. H.

    2016-08-01

    According to the complex real-time water situation, the real-time simulation of large-scale floods is very important for flood prevention practice. Model robustness and running efficiency are two critical factors in successful real-time flood simulation. This paper proposed a robust, two-dimensional, shallow water model based on the unstructured Godunov- type finite volume method. A robust wet/dry front method is used to enhance the numerical stability. An adaptive method is proposed to improve the running efficiency. The proposed model is used for large-scale flood simulation on real topography. Results compared to those of MIKE21 show the strong performance of the proposed model.

  16. Semantic web for robots : applying semantic web technologies for interoperability between virtual worlds and real robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Juarez Cordova, A.G.

    2012-01-01

    The topic of this PhD project is in the context of cross-reality, a term that de??nes mixed reality environments that tunnel dense real-world data acquired through the use of sensor/actuator device networks into virtual worlds. It is part of the ongoing academia and industry e??orts to achieve

  17. Learning Behavior Analysis of a Ubiquitous Situated Reflective Learning System with Application to Life Science and Technology Teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hwang, Wu-Yuin; Chen, Hong-Ren; Chen, Nian-Shing; Lin, Li-Kai; Chen, Jin-Wen

    2018-01-01

    Education research has shown that reflective study can efficiently enhance learning, and the acquisition of knowledge and skills from real-life situations has become a focus of interest for scholars. The knowledge-learning model based on verbal instruction, used in traditional classrooms, does not make use of real-life situations that encourage…

  18. European type-approval test procedure for evaporative emissions from passenger cars against real-world mobility data from two Italian provinces.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martini, Giorgio; Paffumi, Elena; De Gennaro, Michele; Mellios, Giorgos

    2014-07-15

    This paper presents an evaluation of the European type-approval test procedure for evaporative emissions from passenger cars based on real-world mobility data. The study relies on two large databases of driving patterns from conventional fuel vehicles collected by means of on-board GPS systems in the Italian provinces of Modena and Firenze. Approximately 28,000 vehicles were monitored, corresponding to approximately 36 million kilometres over a period of one month. The driving pattern of each vehicle was processed to derive the relation between trip length and parking duration, and the rate of occurrence of parking events against multiple evaporative cycles, defined on the basis of the type-approval test procedure as 12-hour diurnal time windows. These results are used as input for an emission simulation model, which calculates the total evaporative emissions given the characteristics of the evaporative emission control system of the vehicle and the ambient temperature conditions. The results suggest that the evaporative emission control system, fitted to the vehicles from Euro 3 step and optimised for the current type-approval test procedure, could not efficiently work under real-world conditions, resulting in evaporative emissions well above the type-approval limit, especially for small size vehicles and warm climate conditions. This calls for a revision of the type-approval test procedure in order to address real-world evaporative emissions. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  19. Real-world-time simulation of memory consolidation in a large-scale cerebellar model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Masato eGosui

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available We report development of a large-scale spiking network model of thecerebellum composed of more than 1 million neurons. The model isimplemented on graphics processing units (GPUs, which are dedicatedhardware for parallel computing. Using 4 GPUs simultaneously, we achieve realtime simulation, in which computer simulation ofcerebellar activity for 1 sec completes within 1 sec in thereal-world time, with temporal resolution of 1 msec.This allows us to carry out a very long-term computer simulationof cerebellar activity in a practical time with millisecond temporalresolution. Using the model, we carry out computer simulationof long-term gain adaptation of optokinetic response (OKR eye movementsfor 5 days aimed to study the neural mechanisms of posttraining memoryconsolidation. The simulation results are consistent with animal experimentsand our theory of posttraining memory consolidation. These resultssuggest that realtime computing provides a useful means to studya very slow neural process such as memory consolidation in the brain.

  20. Comparative evaluation of 1D and quasi-2D hydraulic models based on benchmark and real-world applications for uncertainty assessment in flood mapping

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dimitriadis, Panayiotis; Tegos, Aristoteles; Oikonomou, Athanasios; Pagana, Vassiliki; Koukouvinos, Antonios; Mamassis, Nikos; Koutsoyiannis, Demetris; Efstratiadis, Andreas

    2016-03-01

    One-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional hydraulic freeware models (HEC-RAS, LISFLOOD-FP and FLO-2d) are widely used for flood inundation mapping. These models are tested on a benchmark test with a mixed rectangular-triangular channel cross section. Using a Monte-Carlo approach, we employ extended sensitivity analysis by simultaneously varying the input discharge, longitudinal and lateral gradients and roughness coefficients, as well as the grid cell size. Based on statistical analysis of three output variables of interest, i.e. water depths at the inflow and outflow locations and total flood volume, we investigate the uncertainty enclosed in different model configurations and flow conditions, without the influence of errors and other assumptions on topography, channel geometry and boundary conditions. Moreover, we estimate the uncertainty associated to each input variable and we compare it to the overall one. The outcomes of the benchmark analysis are further highlighted by applying the three models to real-world flood propagation problems, in the context of two challenging case studies in Greece.

  1. Real World Europeanisation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pedersen, Morten Jarlbæk

    2017-01-01

    Several studies of the impacts of the EU on modern policies and polities evade investigation of the most detailed level of Europeanisation, i.e. gradual legal changes. This seems odd as it is exactly these small gears turning that constitute perhaps the most real and concrete of all types of Euro...

  2. Model Checking Real-Time Systems

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bouyer, Patricia; Fahrenberg, Uli; Larsen, Kim Guldstrand

    2018-01-01

    This chapter surveys timed automata as a formalism for model checking real-time systems. We begin with introducing the model, as an extension of finite-state automata with real-valued variables for measuring time. We then present the main model-checking results in this framework, and give a hint...

  3. Uncertainties in real-world decisions on medical technologies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lu, C Y

    2014-08-01

    Patients, clinicians, payers and policy makers face substantial uncertainties in their respective healthcare decisions as they attempt to achieve maximum value, or the greatest level of benefit possible at a given cost. Uncertainties largely come from incomplete information at the time that decisions must be made. This is true in all areas of medicine because evidence from clinical trials is often incongruent with real-world patient care. This article highlights key uncertainties around the (comparative) benefits and harms of medical technologies. Initiatives and strategies such as comparative effectiveness research and coverage with evidence development may help to generate reliable and relevant evidence for decisions on coverage and treatment. These efforts could result in better decisions that improve patient outcomes and better use of scarce medical resources. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  4. The Research of Car-Following Model Based on Real-Time Maximum Deceleration

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Longhai Yang

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper is concerned with the effect of real-time maximum deceleration in car-following. The real-time maximum acceleration is estimated with vehicle dynamics. It is known that an intelligent driver model (IDM can control adaptive cruise control (ACC well. The disadvantages of IDM at high and constant speed are analyzed. A new car-following model which is applied to ACC is established accordingly to modify the desired minimum gap and structure of the IDM. We simulated the new car-following model and IDM under two different kinds of road conditions. In the first, the vehicles drive on a single road, taking dry asphalt road as the example in this paper. In the second, vehicles drive onto a different road, and this paper analyzed the situation in which vehicles drive from a dry asphalt road onto an icy road. From the simulation, we found that the new car-following model can not only ensure driving security and comfort but also control the steady driving of the vehicle with a smaller time headway than IDM.

  5. Modeling real-time balancing power demands in wind power systems using stochastic differential equations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Olsson, Magnus; Perninge, Magnus; Soeder, Lennart

    2010-01-01

    The inclusion of wind power into power systems has a significant impact on the demand for real-time balancing power due to the stochastic nature of wind power production. The overall aim of this paper is to present probabilistic models of the impact of large-scale integration of wind power on the continuous demand in MW for real-time balancing power. This is important not only for system operators, but also for producers and consumers since they in most systems through various market solutions provide balancing power. Since there can occur situations where the wind power variations cancel out other types of deviations in the system, models on an hourly basis are not sufficient. Therefore the developed model is in continuous time and is based on stochastic differential equations (SDE). The model can be used within an analytical framework or in Monte Carlo simulations. (author)

  6. SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS OF REAL-WORLD DRIVING BEHAVIOR FOLLOWING FOCAL BRAIN LESIONS

    OpenAIRE

    Thompson, Kelsey; Read, Katherine; Anderson, Steven; Rizzo, Matthew

    2011-01-01

    Many patients with circumscribed brain injuries, such as those caused by stroke or focal trauma, return to driving after a period of acute recovery. These persons often have chronic residual cognitive deficits that may impact on driving safety, but little is known about their driving behavior in the real world. Extant studies tend to rely on driving simulators or controlled on-road drives. These methods of observation are not able to capture the complexities of the typical driving environment...

  7. Real-world emissions of in-use off-road vehicles in Mexico.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zavala, Miguel; Huertas, Jose Ignacio; Prato, Daniel; Jazcilevich, Aron; Aguilar, Andrés; Balam, Marco; Misra, Chandan; Molina, Luisa T

    2017-09-01

    Off-road vehicles used in construction and agricultural activities can contribute substantially to emissions of gaseous pollutants and can be a major source of submicrometer carbonaceous particles in many parts of the world. However, there have been relatively few efforts in quantifying the emission factors (EFs) and for estimating the potential emission reduction benefits using emission control technologies for these vehicles. This study characterized the black carbon (BC) component of particulate matter and NOx, CO, and CO 2 EFs of selected diesel-powered off-road mobile sources in Mexico under real-world operating conditions using on-board portable emissions measurements systems (PEMS). The vehicles sampled included two backhoes, one tractor, a crane, an excavator, two front loaders, two bulldozers, an air compressor, and a power generator used in the construction and agricultural activities. For a selected number of these vehicles the emissions were further characterized with wall-flow diesel particle filters (DPFs) and partial-flow DPFs (p-DPFs) installed. Fuel-based EFs presented less variability than time-based emission rates, particularly for the BC. Average baseline EFs in working conditions for BC, NOx, and CO ranged from 0.04 to 5.7, from 12.6 to 81.8, and from 7.9 to 285.7 g/kg-fuel, respectively, and a high dependency by operation mode and by vehicle type was observed. Measurement-base frequency distributions of EFs by operation mode are proposed as an alternative method for characterizing the variability of off-road vehicles emissions under real-world conditions. Mass-based reductions for black carbon EFs were substantially large (above 99%) when DPFs were installed and the vehicles were idling, and the reductions were moderate (in the 20-60% range) for p-DPFs in working operating conditions. The observed high variability in measured EFs also indicates the need for detailed vehicle operation data for accurately estimating emissions from off

  8. A multi-sensor fusion framework for improving situational awareness in demanding maritime training

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sanfilippo, Filippo

    2017-01-01

    Real offshore operational scenarios can involve a considerable amount of risk. Sophisticated training programmes involving specially designed simulator environments constitute a promising approach for improving an individual's perception and assessment of dangerous situations in real applications. One of the world's most advanced providers of simulators for such demanding offshore operations is the Offshore Simulator Centre AS (OSC). However, even though the OSC provides powerful simulation tools, techniques for visualising operational procedures that can be used to further improve Situational awareness (SA), are still lacking. Providing the OSC with an integrated multi-sensor fusion framework is the goal of this work. The proposed framework is designed to improve planning, execution and assessment of demanding maritime operations by adopting newly-designed risk-evaluation tools. Different information from the simulator scene and from the real world can be collected, such as audio, video, bio-metric data from eye-trackers, other sensor data and annotations. This integration is the base for research on novel SA assessment methodologies. This will serve the industry for the purpose of improving operational effectiveness and safety through the use of simulators. In this work, a training methodology based on the concept of briefing/debriefing is adopted based on previous literature. By using this methodology borrowed from similarly demanding applications, the efficiency of the proposed framework is validated in a conceptual case study. In particular, the training procedure, which was previously performed by Statoil and partners, for the world's first sub-sea gas compression plant, in Aasgard, Norway, is considered and reviewed highlighting the potentials of the proposed framework. - Highlights: • A framework for improving SA in demanding maritime training is proposed. • The proposed framework is integrated with the Offshore Simulator Centre AS (OSC). • This

  9. Making Real-World Issues Our Business: Critical Literacy in a Third-Grade Classroom.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heffernan, Lee; Lewison, Mitzi

    2000-01-01

    Reflects on the events that occurred during a six-month period in a suburban classroom. Documents the transformation that took place in learning and teaching as students took part in a critical literacy curriculum. Examines the significant curricular changes that occur when the "real world" is allowed to enter classroom discussions and…

  10. Real world use of an Internet intervention for pediatric encopresis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ritterband, Lee M; Ardalan, Kaveh; Thorndike, Frances P; Magee, Joshua C; Saylor, Drew K; Cox, Daniel J; Sutphen, James L; Borowitz, Stephen M

    2008-06-30

    The Internet is a significant source of medical information and is now being shown to be an important conduit for delivering various health-related interventions. This paper aimed to examine the utility and impact of an Internet intervention for childhood encopresis as part of standard medical care in a "real world" setting. Patients diagnosed with encopresis were given a Web-based information prescription to use an Internet intervention for pediatric encopresis. A total of 22 families utilized the intervention between July 2004 and June 2006. A chart review and phone interview were undertaken to collect user characteristics; defecation-related information, including frequency of soiling, bowel movements (BMs) in the toilet, and amount of pain associated with defecation; and information on computer/Internet usage. Three questionnaires were used to examine the utility of, impact of, and adherence to the Internet intervention. Program utilization was obtained from a data tracking system that monitored usage in real time. Overall, parents rated the Internet intervention as enjoyable, understandable, and easy to use. They indicated that the Internet intervention positively affected their children, decreasing overall accidents and increasing child comfort on the toilet at home. Of the 20 children who initially reported fecal accidents, 19 (95%) experienced at least a 50% improvement, with a reduction of accident frequency from one fecal accident per day to one accident per week. Although it is not clear whether this improvement is directly related to the use of the Internet intervention, patient feedback suggests that the program was an important element, further establishing Internet interventions as a viable and desirable addition to standard medical care for pediatric encopresis. To our knowledge, this is the first time a pediatric Internet intervention has been examined as part of a "real world" setting. This is an important step toward establishing Internet

  11. Teachers' professional judgement in real teaching situations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mikkelsen, Sidse Hølvig; Daugbjerg, Peer; Sommer, Lise

    2017-01-01

    Teachers' daily work is complex consisting of teaching, dialogue with pupils, principals, colleagues, parents besides a variety of daily supervision tasks. This entails that the teachers' workdays are loaded with judgements, evaluations, reflections and actions founded on reasonable considerations....... Teachers' capability to make sensible judgements in pedagogical situations and moments are based on their personal norms and knowledge. Norms and knowledge that makes it possible for them to make well-considered decisions regarding good teaching. Teachers' planned changes in teaching are typically well...... as well as unconscious and they are expressed bodily and verbally. The presentation will discuss methodological approach on how to investigate teachers' professional judgement. We will use video recordings of actual teaching situations to generate dialogue with the participating teachers. The dialogue...

  12. Designing and Using Projects with Real World Application in a MBA Managerial Accounting Class: The Case of The Balanced Scorecard

    Science.gov (United States)

    Houke, Charlotte

    2017-01-01

    This paper explores the purpose of designing and using projects with real world application in a M.B.A. managerial accounting class. Included is a discussion of how and why the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Project has been used in classes to link theory with practice by providing real world application of the BSC framework. M.B.A. students represent a…

  13. Comparisons of MOVES Light-duty Gasoline NOx Emission Rates with Real-world Measurements

    Science.gov (United States)

    Choi, D.; Sonntag, D.; Warila, J.

    2017-12-01

    Recent studies have shown differences between air quality model estimates and monitored values for nitrogen oxides. Several studies have suggested that the discrepancy between monitored and modeled values is due to an overestimation of NOx from mobile sources in EPA's emission inventory, particularly for light-duty gasoline vehicles. EPA's MOtor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) is an emission modeling system that estimates emissions for cars, trucks and other mobile sources at the national, county, and project level for criteria pollutants, greenhouse gases, and air toxics. Studies that directly measure vehicle emissions provide useful data for evaluating MOVES when the measurement conditions are properly accounted for in modeling. In this presentation, we show comparisons of MOVES2014 to thousands of real-world NOx emissions measurements from individual light-duty gasoline vehicles. The comparison studies include in-use vehicle emissions tests conducted on chassis dynamometer tests in support of Denver, Colorado's Vehicle Inspection & Maintenance Program and remote sensing data collected using road-side instruments in multiple locations and calendar years in the United States. In addition, we conduct comparisons of MOVES predictions to fleet-wide emissions measured from tunnels. We also present details on the methodology used to conduct the MOVES model runs in comparing to the independent data.

  14. Effects of age on a real-world What-Where-When memory task.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adele eMazurek

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Many cognitive abilities decline with aging, making it difficult to detect pathological changes against a background of natural changes in cognition. Most of the tests to assess cognitive decline are artificial tasks that have little resemblance to the problems faced by people in everyday life. This means both that people may have little practice doing such tasks (potentially contributing to the decline in performance and that the tasks may not be good predictors of real-world cognitive problems.In this study, we test the performance of young people (18-25 years and older people (60+-year-olds on a novel, more ecologically valid test of episodic memory: the real-world What-Where-When (WWW memory test. We also compare them on a battery of other cognitive tests, including working memory, psychomotor speed, executive function, and episodic memory. Older people show the expected age-related declines on the test battery. In the WWW memory task, older people were more likely to fail to remember any What-Where-When combination than younger people were, although they did not significantly differ in their overall WWW score due to some older people performing as well as or better than most younger people. WWW memory performance was significantly predicted by other measures of episodic memory, such as the single-trial learning and long-term retention in the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning task and Combined Object Location Memory in the Object Relocation task. Self-reported memory complaints also predicted performance on the WWW task.These findings confirm that our real-world WWW memory task is a valid measure of episodic memory, with high ecological validity, which may be useful as a predictor of everyday memory abilities. The task will require a bit more development to improve its sensitivity to cognitive declines in aging and to potentially distinguish between mentally healthy older adults and those with early signs of cognitive pathologies.

  15. A transactional framework for pediatric rehabilitation: shifting the focus to situated contexts, transactional processes, and adaptive developmental outcomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    King, Gillian; Imms, Christine; Stewart, Debra; Freeman, Matt; Nguyen, Tram

    2018-07-01

    A paradigm shift is taking place in pediatric rehabilitation research, practice, and policy - a shift towards the real-life contexts of clients rather than requiring clients to navigate the world of pediatric rehabilitation. This article proposes a conceptual framework to bring about a broader awareness of clients' lives and transactional processes of change over the life course. The framework draws attention to transactional processes by which individuals, situated in life contexts, change and adapt over the life course and, in turn, influence their contextual settings and broader environments. This framework is based on (a) basic tenets derived from foundational theories taking a life course perspective to change, and (b) transactional processes identified from relevant pediatric rehabilitation models that bring these foundational theories into the pediatric rehabilitation sphere. The framework identifies three types of transactional processes relevant to pediatric rehabilitation: facilitative, resiliency, and socialization processes. These processes describe how contexts and people mutually influence each other via opportunities and situated experiences, thus facilitating capacity, adaptation to adversity, and socialization to new roles and life transitions. The utility of the framework is considered for research, practice, service organizations, and policy. Implications for Rehabilitation The framework supports practitioners going beyond person and environment as separate entities, to provide services to the "situated person" in real-life contexts The framework shifts the focus from "body structures/functions" and "person in activity" to "person in changing and challenging life contexts" Working from a transactional perspective, practitioner-client conversations will change; practitioners will view client situations through a lens of opportunities and experiences, assess client experiences in real-life contexts, and strive to create context-based therapy

  16. Ticagrelor versus clopidogrel in real-world patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction: 1-year results by propensity score analysis

    OpenAIRE

    Vercellino, Matteo; S?nchez, Federico Ariel; Boasi, Valentina; Perri, Dino; Tacchi, Chiara; Secco, Gioel Gabrio; Cattunar, Stefano; Pistis, Gianfranco; Mascelli, Giovanni

    2017-01-01

    Background European guidelines recommend the use of ticagrelor versus clopidogrel in patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). This recommendation is based on inconclusive results and subanalyses from clinical trials. Few data are available on the effects of ticagrelor in a real-world population. Methods To compare the effects of ticagrelor and clopidogrel in a real-world STEMI population, we conducted a pre-post case-control study examining all patients with STEMI included in...

  17. Real-World Switching to Riociguat: Management and Practicalities in Patients with PAH and CTEPH.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gall, Henning; Vachiéry, Jean-Luc; Tanabe, Nobuhiro; Halank, Michael; Orozco-Levi, Mauricio; Mielniczuk, Lisa; Chang, MiKyung; Vogtländer, Kai; Grünig, Ekkehard

    2018-06-01

    A proportion of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) do not achieve treatment goals or experience side effects on their current therapy. In such cases, switching patients to a new drug while discontinuing the first may be a viable and appropriate treatment option. CAPTURE was designed to investigate how physicians manage the switching of patients to riociguat in real-world clinical practice. Observations from the study were used to assess whether recommendations in the riociguat prescribing information are reflected in clinical practice. CAPTURE was an international, multicenter, uncontrolled, retrospective chart review that collected data from patients with PAH or inoperable or persistent/recurrent CTEPH who switched to riociguat from another pulmonary hypertension (PH)-targeted medical therapy. The primary objective of the study was to understand the procedure undertaken in real-world clinical practice for patients switching to riociguat. Of 127 patients screened, 125 were enrolled in CAPTURE. The majority of patients switched from a phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor (PDE5i) to riociguat and the most common reason for switching was lack of efficacy. Physicians were already using the recommended treatment-free period when switching patients to riociguat from sildenafil, but a slightly longer period than recommended for tadalafil. In line with the contraindication, the majority of patients did not receive riociguat and PDE5i therapy concomitantly. Physicians also followed the recommended dose-adjustment procedure for riociguat. Switching to riociguat from another PH-targeted therapy may be feasible in real-world clinical practice in the context of the current recommendations.

  18. Real world evidence: a form of big data, transforming healthcare data into actionable real time insights and informed business decisions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Uttam Kumar Barick

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Data has always played an important role in assisting business decisions and overall improvement of a company’s strategies. The introduction of what has come to be named ‘BIG data’ has changed the industry paradigm altogether for a few domains like media, mobility, retail and social. Data from the real world is also considered as BIG data based on its magnitude, sources and the industry’s capacity to handle the same. Although, the healthcare industry has been using real world data for decades, digitization of health records has demonstrated its value to all the stakeholders with a reaffirmation of interest in it. Over time, companies are looking to adopt new technologies in linking these fragmented data for meaningful and actionable insights to demonstrate their value over competition. It has also been noticed that the consequences of not demonstrating the value of data are sometimes leads regulators and payers to be severe. The real challenge though is not in identifying data sets but transforming these data sets into actionable real time insights and business decisions. Evidence and value development frameworks need to work side by side, harnessing meaningful insights in parallel to product development from early phase to life-cycle management. This should in-turn create evidence and value-based insights for multiple stakeholders across the industry; ultimately supporting the patient as the end user to take informed decisions that impact access to care. This article attempts to review the current state of affairs in the area of BIG data in pharma OR BIG DIP as it is increasingly being referred to.

  19. Resource Management in Constrained Dynamic Situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seok, Jinwoo

    Resource management is considered in this dissertation for systems with limited resources, possibly combined with other system constraints, in unpredictably dynamic environments. Resources may represent fuel, power, capabilities, energy, and so on. Resource management is important for many practical systems; usually, resources are limited, and their use must be optimized. Furthermore, systems are often constrained, and constraints must be satisfied for safe operation. Simplistic resource management can result in poor use of resources and failure of the system. Furthermore, many real-world situations involve dynamic environments. Many traditional problems are formulated based on the assumptions of given probabilities or perfect knowledge of future events. However, in many cases, the future is completely unknown, and information on or probabilities about future events are not available. In other words, we operate in unpredictably dynamic situations. Thus, a method is needed to handle dynamic situations without knowledge of the future, but few formal methods have been developed to address them. Thus, the goal is to design resource management methods for constrained systems, with limited resources, in unpredictably dynamic environments. To this end, resource management is organized hierarchically into two levels: 1) planning, and 2) control. In the planning level, the set of tasks to be performed is scheduled based on limited resources to maximize resource usage in unpredictably dynamic environments. In the control level, the system controller is designed to follow the schedule by considering all the system constraints for safe and efficient operation. Consequently, this dissertation is mainly divided into two parts: 1) planning level design, based on finite state machines, and 2) control level methods, based on model predictive control. We define a recomposable restricted finite state machine to handle limited resource situations and unpredictably dynamic environments

  20. Team performance modeling for HRA in dynamic situations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shu Yufei; Furuta, Kazuo; Kondo, Shunsuke

    2002-01-01

    This paper proposes a team behavior network model that can simulate and analyze response of an operator team to an incident in a dynamic and context-sensitive situation. The model is composed of four sub-models, which describe the context of team performance. They are task model, event model, team model and human-machine interface model. Each operator demonstrates aspects of his/her specific cognitive behavior and interacts with other operators and the environment in order to deal with an incident. Individual human factors, which determine the basis of communication and interaction between individuals, and cognitive process of an operator, such as information acquisition, state-recognition, decision-making and action execution during development of an event scenario are modeled. A case of feed and bleed operation in pressurized water reactor under an emergency situation was studied and the result was compared with an experiment to check the validity of the proposed model

  1. Attention focussing and anomaly detection in real-time systems monitoring

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doyle, Richard J.; Chien, Steve A.; Fayyad, Usama M.; Porta, Harry J.

    1993-01-01

    In real-time monitoring situations, more information is not necessarily better. When faced with complex emergency situations, operators can experience information overload and a compromising of their ability to react quickly and correctly. We describe an approach to focusing operator attention in real-time systems monitoring based on a set of empirical and model-based measures for determining the relative importance of sensor data.

  2. A longitudinal examination of the moderating effects of symptoms on the relationship between functional competence and real world functional performance in Schizophrenia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michael W. Best

    2014-06-01

    Conclusions: Residual negative and depressive symptoms are distinct constructs that impede the use of functional skills in the real world. Depressive symptoms are often overlooked in schizophrenia but appear to be an important factor that limits the use of functional ability in real world environments.

  3. A improved Network Security Situation Awareness Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Fangwei

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available In order to reflect the situation of network security assessment performance fully and accurately, a new network security situation awareness model based on information fusion was proposed. Network security situation is the result of fusion three aspects evaluation. In terms of attack, to improve the accuracy of evaluation, a situation assessment method of DDoS attack based on the information of data packet was proposed. In terms of vulnerability, a improved Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS was raised and maked the assessment more comprehensive. In terms of node weights, the method of calculating the combined weights and optimizing the result by Sequence Quadratic Program (SQP algorithm which reduced the uncertainty of fusion was raised. To verify the validity and necessity of the method, a testing platform was built and used to test through evaluating 2000 DAPRA data sets. Experiments show that the method can improve the accuracy of evaluation results.

  4. Gaining Modelling and Mathematical Experience by Constructing Virtual Sensory Systems in Maze-Videogames

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sacristán, Ana Isabel; Pretelín-Ricárdez, Angel

    2017-01-01

    This work is part of a research project that aims to enhance engineering students' learning of how to apply mathematics in modelling activities of real-world situations, through the construction (design and programming) of videogames. We want also for students to relate their mathematical knowledge with other disciplines (e.g., physics, computer…

  5. Experiences from Real-World Deployment of Context-Aware Technologies in a Hospital Environment

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bardram, Jakob Eyvind; Hansen, Thomas Riisgaard; Mogensen, Martin

    2006-01-01

    and discuss our experiences from an ongoing deployment of a suite of context-aware technologies and applications in a hospital environment, including a context-awareness infrastructure, a location tracking system, and two context-aware applications running on interactive wall displays and mobile phones. Based......Context-aware computing is a central concept in ubiquitous computing and many suggestions for context-aware technologies and applications have been proposed. There is, however, little evidence on how these concepts and technologies play out in a real-world setting. In this paper we describe...... on an analysis of the use of these systems, we observe that many of the ideas behind context-aware computing are valid, and that the context-aware applications are useful for clinicians in their work. By reflecting on the nature of the designed context-aware technologies, we present a model which states...

  6. Real World SharePoint 2010 Indispensable Experiences from 22 MVPs

    CERN Document Server

    Hillier, Scot; Bishop, Darrin; Bleeker, Todd; Bogue, Robert; Bosch, Karine; Brotto, Claudio; Buenz, Adam; Connell, Andrew; Drisgill, Randy; Lapointe, Gary; Medero, Jason; Molnar, Agnes; O'Brien, Chris; Klindt, Todd; Poelmans, Joris; Rehmani, Asif; Ross, John; Swan, Nick; Walsh, Mike; Williams, Randy; Young, Shane; Macori, Igor

    2010-01-01

    Proven real-world best practices from leading Microsoft SharePoint MVPsSharePoint enables Web sites to host shared workspaces and is a leading solution for Enterprise Content Management. The newest version boasts significant changes, impressive enhancements, and new features, requiring developers and administrators of all levels of experience to quickly get up to speed on the latest changes. This book is a must-have anthology of current best practices for SharePoint 2010 from 20 of the top SharePoint MVPs. They offer insider advice on everything from installation, workflow, and Web parts to bu

  7. Fieldwork Skills in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Craven, Benjamin; Lloyd, Geoffrey; Gordon, Clare; Houghton, Jacqueline; Morgan, Daniel

    2017-04-01

    Virtual reality has an increasingly significant role to play in teaching and research, but for geological applications realistic landscapes are required that contain sufficient detail to prove viable for investigation by both inquisitive students and critical researchers. To create such virtual landscapes, we combine DTM data with digitally modelled outcrops in the game engine Unity. Our current landscapes are fictional worlds, invented to focus on generation techniques and the strategic and spatial immersion within a digital environment. These have proved very successful in undergraduate teaching; however, we are now moving onto recreating real landscapes for more advanced teaching and research. The first of these is focussed on Rhoscolyn, situated within the Ynys Mon Geopark on Anglesey, UK. It is a popular area for both teaching and research in structural geology so has a wide usage demographic. The base of the model is created from DTM data, both 1 m LiDAR and 5 m GPS point data, and manipulated with QGIS before import to Unity. Substance is added to the world via models of architectural elements (e.g. walls and buildings) and appropriate flora and fauna, including sounds. Texturing of these models is performed using 25 cm aerial imagery and field photographs. Whilst such elements enhance immersion, it is the use of digital outcrop models that fully completes the experience. From fieldwork, we have a library of photogrammetric outcrops that can be modelled into 3D features using free (VisualSFM and MeshLab) and non-free (AgiSoft Photoscan) tools. These models are then refined and converted in Maya to create models for better insertion into the Unity environment. The finished product is a virtual landscape; a Rhoscolyn `world' that is sufficiently detailed to provide a base not only for geological teaching and training but also for geological research. Additionally, the `Rhoscolyn World' represents a significant tool for those students who are unable to attend

  8. Robust Emission Management Strategy to Meet Real-World Emission Requirements for HD Diesel Engines

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mentink, P.; Nieuwenhof, R. van den; Kupper, F.; Willems, F.; Kooijman, D.

    2015-01-01

    Heavy-duty diesel engines are used in different application areas, like long-haul, city distribution, dump truck and building and construction industry. For these wide variety of areas, the engine performance needs to comply with the real-world legislation limits and should simultaneously have a low

  9. Robust emission management strategy to meet real-world emission requirements for HD diesel engines

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mentink, P.R.; Nieuwenhof, van den R.; Kupper, F.; Willems, F.P.T.; Kooijman, D.

    2015-01-01

    Heavy-duty diesel engines are used in different application areas, like long-haul, city distribution, dump truck and building and construction industry. For these wide variety of areas, the engine performance needs to comply with the real-world legislation limits and should simultaneously have a low

  10. Stochastic Real-World Drive Cycle Generation Based on a Two Stage Markov Chain Approach

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Balau, A.E.; Kooijman, D.; Vazquez Rodarte, I.; Ligterink, N.

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents a methodology and tool that stochastically generates drive cycles based on measured data, with the purpose of testing and benchmarking light duty vehicles in a simulation environment or on a test-bench. The WLTP database, containing real world driving measurements, was used as

  11. The role of the dorsal anterior insula in sexual risk: Evidence from an erotic Go/NoGo task and real-world risk-taking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xue, Feng; Droutman, Vita; Barkley-Levenson, Emily E; Smith, Benjamin J; Xue, Gui; Miller, Lynn C; Bechara, Antoine; Lu, Zhong-Lin; Read, Stephen J

    2018-04-01

    The insula plays an important role in response inhibition. Most relevant here, it has been proposed that the dorsal anterior insular cortex (dAIC) plays a central role in a salience network that is responsible for switching between the default mode network and the executive control network. However, the insula's role in sexually motivated response inhibition has not yet been studied. In this study, eighty-five 18- to 30-year-old sexually active men who have sex with men (MSM) performed an erotic Go/NoGo task while in an MRI scanner. Participants' real-world sexual risk-taking (frequency of condomless anal intercourse over the past 90 days) was then correlated with their neural activity during the task. We found greater activity in bilateral anterior insular cortex (both dorsal and ventral) on contrasts with stronger motivational information (attractive naked male pictures versus pictures of clothed, middle-aged females) and on contrasts requiring greater response inhibition (NoGo versus Go). We also found that activity in the right dAIC was negatively correlated with participants' real-world sexual risk-taking. Our results confirmed the involvement of the insular cortex in motivated response inhibition. Especially, the decreased right dAIC activity may reduce the likelihood that the executive control network will come online when individuals are faced with situations requiring inhibitory control and thus lead them to make more risky choices. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  12. Toward Self-Referential Autonomous Learning of Object and Situation Models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Damerow, Florian; Knoblauch, Andreas; Körner, Ursula; Eggert, Julian; Körner, Edgar

    2016-01-01

    Most current approaches to scene understanding lack the capability to adapt object and situation models to behavioral needs not anticipated by the human system designer. Here, we give a detailed description of a system architecture for self-referential autonomous learning which enables the refinement of object and situation models during operation in order to optimize behavior. This includes structural learning of hierarchical models for situations and behaviors that is triggered by a mismatch between expected and actual action outcome. Besides proposing architectural concepts, we also describe a first implementation of our system within a simulated traffic scenario to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

  13. The effect of real-world personal familiarity on the speed of face information processing.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Benjamin Balas

    2007-11-01

    Full Text Available Previous studies have explored the effects of familiarity on various kinds of visual face judgments, yet the role of familiarity in face processing is not fully understood. Across different face judgments and stimulus sets, the data is equivocal as to whether or not familiarity impacts recognition processes.Here, we examine the effect of real-world personal familiarity in three simple delayed-match-to-sample tasks in which subjects were required to match faces on the basis of orientation (upright v. inverted, gender and identity. We find that subjects had a significant speed advantage with familiar faces in all three tasks, with large effects for the gender and identity matching tasks.Our data indicates that real-world experience with a face exerts a powerful influence on face processing in tasks where identity information is irrelevant, even in tasks that could in principle be solved via low-level cues. These results underscore the importance of experience in shaping visual recognition processes.

  14. Modeling emergent border-crossing behaviors during pandemics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Santos, Eunice E.; Santos, Eugene; Korah, John; Thompson, Jeremy E.; Gu, Qi; Kim, Keum Joo; Li, Deqing; Russell, Jacob; Subramanian, Suresh; Zhang, Yuxi; Zhao, Yan

    2013-06-01

    Modeling real-world scenarios is a challenge for traditional social science researchers, as it is often hard to capture the intricacies and dynamisms of real-world situations without making simplistic assumptions. This imposes severe limitations on the capabilities of such models and frameworks. Complex population dynamics during natural disasters such as pandemics is an area where computational social science can provide useful insights and explanations. In this paper, we employ a novel intent-driven modeling paradigm for such real-world scenarios by causally mapping beliefs, goals, and actions of individuals and groups to overall behavior using a probabilistic representation called Bayesian Knowledge Bases (BKBs). To validate our framework we examine emergent behavior occurring near a national border during pandemics, specifically the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Mexico. The novelty of the work in this paper lies in representing the dynamism at multiple scales by including both coarse-grained (events at the national level) and finegrained (events at two separate border locations) information. This is especially useful for analysts in disaster management and first responder organizations who need to be able to understand both macro-level behavior and changes in the immediate vicinity, to help with planning, prevention, and mitigation. We demonstrate the capabilities of our framework in uncovering previously hidden connections and explanations by comparing independent models of the border locations with their fused model to identify emergent behaviors not found in either independent location models nor in a simple linear combination of those models.

  15. Real-world Outcomes of Multiple Myeloma: Retrospective Analysis of the Czech Registry of Monoclonal Gammopathies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hájek, Roman; Jarkovsky, Jiri; Maisnar, Vladimír; Pour, Ludek; Špička, Ivan; Minařík, Jiri; Gregora, Evžen; Kessler, Petr; Sýkora, Michal; Fraňková, Hana; Campioni, Marco; DeCosta, Lucy; Treur, Maarten; Gonzalez-McQuire, Sebastian; Bouwmeester, Walter

    2018-06-01

    Real-world data on patient outcomes and treatment patterns in multiple myeloma (MM) are limited. The present noninterventional, observational, retrospective analysis of prospectively collected Czech patient medical record data from the Registry of Monoclonal Gammopathies estimated real-world outcomes in adults with a diagnosis of symptomatic MM made between May 2007 and June 2014. In total, 2446 patients had initiated first-line treatment. The median overall survival since the diagnosis (primary endpoint) was 50.3 months (95% confidence interval, 46.1-54.5 months) and decreased with each successive treatment line. A similar trend was observed for progression-free survival and the depth of response. In line with European guidelines and clinical practice, bortezomib-, thalidomide-, and lenalidomide-based regimens were most commonly used across all treatment lines (42.3%, 28.9%, and 18.4%, respectively). In the first line, bortezomib and thalidomide were used most often, with lenalidomide the most commonly used agent in the relapse setting (second to fourth lines). Exploratory analyses revealed that younger age (≤ 65 years), lower international staging system stage, and previous stem cell transplantation were associated with significant improvements in overall and progression-free survival, especially in the early treatment lines. The present study is the first analysis of Czech data from the Registry of Monoclonal Gammopathies, and it provides important insights into the real-world management of MM for physicians and healthcare providers. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Simulated Real-World Energy Impacts of a Thermally Sensitive Powertrain Considering Viscous Losses and Enrichment (Presentation)

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wood, E.; Gonder, J.; Lopp, S.; Jehlik, F.

    2014-09-01

    It is widely understood that cold-temperature engine operation negatively impacts vehicle fuel use due to a combination of increased friction (high-viscosity engine oil) and temporary enrichment (accelerated catalyst heating). However, relatively little effort has been dedicated to thoroughly quantifying these impacts across a large number of driving cycles and ambient conditions. This work leverages high-quality dynamometer data collected at various ambient conditions to develop a modeling framework for quantifying engine cold-start fuel penalties over a wide array of real-world usage profiles. Additionally, mitigation strategies including energy retention and exhaust heat recovery are explored with benefits quantified for each approach.

  17. Estimating daily time series of streamflow using hydrological model calibrated based on satellite observations of river water surface width: Toward real world applications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Wenchao; Ishidaira, Hiroshi; Bastola, Satish; Yu, Jingshan

    2015-05-01

    Lacking observation data for calibration constrains applications of hydrological models to estimate daily time series of streamflow. Recent improvements in remote sensing enable detection of river water-surface width from satellite observations, making possible the tracking of streamflow from space. In this study, a method calibrating hydrological models using river width derived from remote sensing is demonstrated through application to the ungauged Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar. Generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) is selected as a tool for automatic calibration and uncertainty analysis. Of 50,000 randomly generated parameter sets, 997 are identified as behavioral, based on comparing model simulation with satellite observations. The uncertainty band of streamflow simulation can span most of 10-year average monthly observed streamflow for moderate and high flow conditions. Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency is 95.7% for the simulated streamflow at the 50% quantile. These results indicate that application to the target basin is generally successful. Beyond evaluating the method in a basin lacking streamflow data, difficulties and possible solutions for applications in the real world are addressed to promote future use of the proposed method in more ungauged basins. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. A mathematical model for efficient emergency transportation in a disaster situation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tlili, Takwa; Abidi, Sofiene; Krichen, Saoussen

    2018-01-29

    This work focuses on a real-life patient transportation problem derived from emergency medical services (EMS), whereby providing ambulatory service for emergency requests during disaster situations. Transportation of patients in congested traffic compounds already time sensitive treatment. An urgent situation is defined as individuals with major or minor injuries requiring EMS assistance simultaneously. Patients are either (1) slightly injured and treated on site or (2) are seriously injured and require transfer to points of care (PoCs). This paper will discuss enhancing the response-time of EMS providers by improving the ambulance routing problem (ARP). A genetic based algorithm is proposed to efficiently guide the ARP while simultaneously solving two scenarios. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  19. Project Manager Street Smarts A Real World Guide to PMP Skills

    CERN Document Server

    Zaval, Linda Kretz

    2011-01-01

    The perfect workbook for project managers and PMP exam candidates seeking practical experience New project managers and students pursuing the Project Management Professional certification are looking for practical experience to solidify their skills. The step-by-step tasks presented in this book offer them an opportunity to practice the common tasks project managers face in the real world. The authors, both expert project management trainers and consultants, explore each phase of project management: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closing the project, with in-depth

  20. Real-time Pedestrian Crossing Recognition for Assistive Outdoor Navigation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fontanesi, Simone; Frigerio, Alessandro; Fanucci, Luca; Li, William

    2015-01-01

    Navigation in urban environments can be difficult for people who are blind or visually impaired. In this project, we present a system and algorithms for recognizing pedestrian crossings in outdoor environments. Our goal is to provide navigation cues for crossing the street and reaching an island or sidewalk safely. Using a state-of-the-art Multisense S7S sensor, we collected 3D pointcloud data for real-time detection of pedestrian crossing and generation of directional guidance. We demonstrate improvements to a baseline, monocular-camera-based system by integrating 3D spatial prior information extracted from the pointcloud. Our system's parameters can be set to the actual dimensions of real-world settings, which enables robustness of occlusion and perspective transformation. The system works especially well in non-occlusion situations, and is reasonably accurate under different kind of conditions. As well, our large dataset of pedestrian crossings, organized by different types and situations of pedestrian crossings in order to reflect real-word environments, is publicly available in a commonly used format (ROS bagfiles) for further research.

  1. Real-world fuel economy and CO2 emissions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ploetz, Patrick; Funke, Simon Arpad; Jochem, Patrick

    2015-01-01

    Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) combine electric propulsion with an internal combustion engine. Their potential to reduce transport related green-house gas emissions highly depends on their actual usage and electricity provision. Various studies underline their environmental and economic advantages, but are based on standardised driving cycles, simulations or small PHEV fleets. Here, we analyse real-world fuel economy of PHEV and the factors influencing it based on about 2,000 actual PHEV that have been observed over more than a year in the U.S. and Germany. We find that real-world fuel economy of PHEV differ widely among users. The main factors explaining this variation are the annual mileage, the regularity of daily driving, and the likelihood of long-distance trips. Current test cycle fuel economy ratings neglect these factors. Despite the broad range of PHEV fuel economies, the test cycle fuel economy ratings can be close to empiric PHEV fleet averages if the average annual mile-age is about 17,000 km. For the largest group of PHEV in our data, the Chevrolet Volt, we find the average fuel economy to be 1.45 litres/100 km at an average electric driving share of 78%. The resulting real-world tank-to-wheel CO 2 emissions of these PHEV are 42 gCO 2 /km and the annual CO 2 savings in the U.S. amount to about 50 Mt. In conclusion, the variance of empirical PHEV fuel economy is considerably higher than of conventional vehicles. This should be taken into account by future test cycles and high electric driving shares should be incentivised.

  2. Can You Tell Me Something about Yourself?: Self-Presentation in Children and Adolescents with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder in Hypothetical and Real Life Situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scheeren, Anke M.; Begeer, Sander; Banerjee, Robin; Terwogt, Mark Meerum; Koot, Hans M.

    2010-01-01

    The self-presentation skills of children and adolescents with high-functioning autistic spectrum disorder (HFASD) and typically developing (TD) controls were compared, in response to both hypothetical and real life situations. In both situations, 26 HFASD and 26 TD participants were prompted to describe themselves twice, first in a baseline…

  3. Mid-level perceptual features distinguish objects of different real-world sizes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Long, Bria; Konkle, Talia; Cohen, Michael A; Alvarez, George A

    2016-01-01

    Understanding how perceptual and conceptual representations are connected is a fundamental goal of cognitive science. Here, we focus on a broad conceptual distinction that constrains how we interact with objects--real-world size. Although there appear to be clear perceptual correlates for basic-level categories (apples look like other apples, oranges look like other oranges), the perceptual correlates of broader categorical distinctions are largely unexplored, i.e., do small objects look like other small objects? Because there are many kinds of small objects (e.g., cups, keys), there may be no reliable perceptual features that distinguish them from big objects (e.g., cars, tables). Contrary to this intuition, we demonstrated that big and small objects have reliable perceptual differences that can be extracted by early stages of visual processing. In a series of visual search studies, participants found target objects faster when the distractor objects differed in real-world size. These results held when we broadly sampled big and small objects, when we controlled for low-level features and image statistics, and when we reduced objects to texforms--unrecognizable textures that loosely preserve an object's form. However, this effect was absent when we used more basic textures. These results demonstrate that big and small objects have reliably different mid-level perceptual features, and suggest that early perceptual information about broad-category membership may influence downstream object perception, recognition, and categorization processes. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  4. Understanding Is Key: An Analysis of Factors Pertaining to Trust in a Real-World Automation System.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Balfe, Nora; Sharples, Sarah; Wilson, John R

    2018-06-01

    This paper aims to explore the role of factors pertaining to trust in real-world automation systems through the application of observational methods in a case study from the railway sector. Trust in automation is widely acknowledged as an important mediator of automation use, but the majority of the research on automation trust is based on laboratory work. In contrast, this work explored trust in a real-world setting. Experienced rail operators in four signaling centers were observed for 90 min, and their activities were coded into five mutually exclusive categories. Their observed activities were analyzed in relation to their reported trust levels, collected via a questionnaire. The results showed clear differences in activity, even when circumstances on the workstations were very similar, and significant differences in some trust dimensions were found between groups exhibiting different levels of intervention and time not involved with signaling. Although the empirical, lab-based studies in the literature have consistently found that reliability and competence of the automation are the most important aspects of trust development, understanding of the automation emerged as the strongest dimension in this study. The implications are that development and maintenance of trust in real-world, safety-critical automation systems may be distinct from artificial laboratory automation. The findings have important implications for emerging automation concepts in diverse industries including highly automated vehicles and Internet of things.

  5. Compiling models into real-time systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dormoy, J.L.; Cherriaux, F.; Ancelin, J.

    1992-08-01

    This paper presents an architecture for building real-time systems from models, and model-compiling techniques. This has been applied for building a real-time model-based monitoring system for nuclear plants, called KSE, which is currently being used in two plants in France. We describe how we used various artificial intelligence techniques for building it: a model-based approach, a logical model of its operation, a declarative implementation of these models, and original knowledge-compiling techniques for automatically generating the real-time expert system from those models. Some of those techniques have just been borrowed from the literature, but we had to modify or invent other techniques which simply did not exist. We also discuss two important problems, which are often underestimated in the artificial intelligence literature: size, and errors. Our architecture, which could be used in other applications, combines the advantages of the model-based approach with the efficiency requirements of real-time applications, while in general model-based approaches present serious drawbacks on this point

  6. Compiling models into real-time systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dormoy, J.L.; Cherriaux, F.; Ancelin, J.

    1992-08-01

    This paper presents an architecture for building real-time systems from models, and model-compiling techniques. This has been applied for building a real-time model-base monitoring system for nuclear plants, called KSE, which is currently being used in two plants in France. We describe how we used various artificial intelligence techniques for building it: a model-based approach, a logical model of its operation, a declarative implementation of these models, and original knowledge-compiling techniques for automatically generating the real-time expert system from those models. Some of those techniques have just been borrowed from the literature, but we had to modify or invent other techniques which simply did not exist. We also discuss two important problems, which are often underestimated in the artificial intelligence literature: size, and errors. Our architecture, which could be used in other applications, combines the advantages of the model-based approach with the efficiency requirements of real-time applications, while in general model-based approaches present serious drawbacks on this point

  7. Statistics Hacks Tips & Tools for Measuring the World and Beating the Odds

    CERN Document Server

    Frey, Bruce

    2008-01-01

    Want to calculate the probability that an event will happen? Be able to spot fake data? Prove beyond doubt whether one thing causes another? Or learn to be a better gambler? You can do that and much more with 75 practical and fun hacks packed into Statistics Hacks. These cool tips, tricks, and mind-boggling solutions from the world of statistics, measurement, and research methods will not only amaze and entertain you, but will give you an advantage in several real-world situations-including business.

  8. Medium Truck Duty Cycle Data from Real-World Driving Environments: Final Report

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Lascurain, Mary Beth [ORNL; Franzese, Oscar [ORNL; Capps, Gary J [ORNL; Siekmann, Adam [ORNL; Thomas, Neil [ORNL; LaClair, Tim J [ORNL; Barker, Alan M [ORNL; Knee, Helmut E [ORNL

    2012-11-01

    Since the early part of the 20th century, the US trucking industry has provided a safe and economical means of moving commodities across the country. At present, nearly 80% of US domestic freight movement involves the use of trucks. The US Department of Energy (DOE) is spearheading a number of research efforts to improve heavy vehicle fuel efficiencies. This includes research in engine technologies (including hybrid and fuel cell technologies), lightweight materials, advanced fuels, and parasitic loss reductions. In addition, DOE is developing advanced tools and models to support heavy vehicle research and is leading the 21st Century Truck Partnership and the SuperTruck development effort. Both of these efforts have the common goal of decreasing the fuel consumption of heavy vehicles. In the case of SuperTruck, a goal of improving the overall freight efficiency of a combination tractor-trailer has been established. This Medium Truck Duty Cycle (MTDC) project is a critical element in DOE s vision for improved heavy vehicle energy efficiency; it is unique in that there is no other existing national database of characteristic duty cycles for medium trucks based on collecting data from Class 6 and 7 vehicles. It involves the collection of real-world data on medium trucks for various situational characteristics (e.g., rural/urban, freeway/arterial, congested/free-flowing, good/bad weather) and looks at the unique nature of medium trucks drive cycles (stop-and-go delivery, power takeoff, idle time, short-radius trips). This research provides a rich source of data that can contribute to the development of new tools for FE and modeling, provide DOE a sound basis upon which to make technology investment decisions, and provide a national archive of real-world-based medium-truck operational data to support energy efficiency research. The MTDC project involved a two-part field operational test (FOT). For the Part-1 FOT, three vehicles each from two vocations (urban transit and

  9. The Robobo Project: Bringing Educational Robotics Closer to Real-World Applications

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bellas, Francisco; Naya, Martin; Varela, Gervasio

    2017-01-01

    The Robobo Project is a STEM-based project that aims to bring educational robotics, in primary and high school, closer to real-world applications. It is based on the use of a smartphone-based robotic platform called Robobo, a very flexible programming environment, and a set of lessons to integrate...... them. The smartphone provides high-level hardware capabilities in terms of sensors, communications and processing capabilities that allow to create more practical and realistic lessons that exploit human-robot interaction, with a small investment. In this paper, we present the main elements...

  10. Functional and real-time requirements of a multisensor data fusion (MSDF) situation and threat assessment (STA) resource management (RM) system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duquet, Jean Remi; Bergeron, Pierre; Blodgett, Dale E.; Couture, Jean; Macieszczak, Maciej; Mayrand, Michel; Chalmers, Bruce A.; Paradis, Stephane

    1998-03-01

    The Research and Development group at Lockheed Martin Canada, in collaboration with the Defence Research Establishment Valcartier, has undertaken a research project in order to capture and analyze the real-time and functional requirements of a next generation Command and Control System (CCS) for the Canadian Patrol Frigates, integrating Multi- Sensor Data Fusion (MSDF), Situation and Threat Assessment (STA) and Resource Management (RM). One important aspect of the project is to define how the use of Artificial Intelligence may optimize the performance of an integrated, real-time MSDF/STA/RM system. A closed-loop simulation environment is being developed to facilitate the evaluation of MSDF/STA/RM concepts, algorithms and architectures. This environment comprises (1) a scenario generator, (2) complex sensor, hardkill and softkill weapon models, (3) a real-time monitoring tool, (4) a distributed Knowledge-Base System (KBS) shell. The latter is being completely redesigned and implemented in-house since no commercial KBS shell could adequately satisfy all the project requirements. The closed- loop capability of the simulation environment, together with its `simulated real-time' capability, allows the interaction between the MSDF/STA/RM system and the environment targets during the execution of a scenario. This capability is essential to measure the performance of many STA and RM functionalities. Some benchmark scenarios have been selected to demonstrate quantitatively the capabilities of the selected MSDF/STA/RM algorithms. The paper describes the simulation environment and discusses the MSDF/STA/RM functionalities currently implemented and their performance as an automatic CCS.

  11. Human resource assignment and role representation mechanism with the "cascading staff-group authoring" and "relation/situation" model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hirose, Y; Sasaki, Y; Kinoshita, A

    2001-01-01

    We have previously reported the access control mechanism and audit strategy of the "patient-doctor relation and clinical situation at the point-of-care" model with multi-axial access control matrix (ACM). This mechanism overcomes the deficit of ACM in the aspect of data accessibility but does not resolve the representation of the staff's affiliate and/or plural membership in the complex real world. Care groups inside a department or inter-department clinical team plays significant clinical role but also spend great amount of time and money in the hospital. Therefore the impact of human resource assignment and cost of such stakeholders to the hospital management is huge, so that they should be accurately treated in the hospital information system. However multi-axial ACM has problems with the representation of staff groups due to static parameters such as department/license because staffs belong to a group rather temporarily and/or a medical staff may belong to plural groups. As a solution, we have designed and implemented "cascading staff-group authoring" method with "relation and situation" model and multi-axial ACM. In this mechanism, (i) a system administrator certifies "group chief certifying person" according to the request and authorization by the department director, (ii) the "group chief certifying person" certifies "group chief(s)", (iii) the "group chief" recruits its members from the medical staffs, and at the same time the "group chief" decides the profit distribution policy of this group. This will enable medical staff to access EMR according to the role he/she plays whether it is as a department staff or as a group member. This solution has worked successfully over the past few years. It provides end-users with a flexible and time-to-time staff-group authoring environment using a simple human-interfaced tool without security breach and without system administration cost. In addition, profit and cost distribution is clarified among departments and

  12. A Situative Space Model for Mobile Mixed-Reality Computing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pederson, Thomas; Janlert, Lars-Erik; Surie, Dipak

    2011-01-01

    This article proposes a situative space model that links the physical and virtual realms and sets the stage for complex human-computer interaction defined by what a human agent can see, hear, and touch, at any given point in time.......This article proposes a situative space model that links the physical and virtual realms and sets the stage for complex human-computer interaction defined by what a human agent can see, hear, and touch, at any given point in time....

  13. Real-World Rib Fracture Patterns in Frontal Crashes in Different Restraint Conditions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Ellen L; Craig, Matthew; Scarboro, Mark

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to use the detailed medical injury information in the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) to evaluate patterns of rib fractures in real-world crash occupants in both belted and unbelted restraint conditions. Fracture patterns binned into rib regional levels were examined to determine normative trends associated with belt use and other possible contributing factors. Front row adult occupants with Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) 3+ rib fractures, in frontal crashes with a deployed frontal airbag, were selected from the CIREN database. The circumferential location of each rib fracture (with respect to the sternum) was documented using a previously published method (Ritchie et al. 2006) and digital computed tomography scans. Fracture patterns for different crash and occupant parameters (restraint use, involved physical component, occupant kinematics, crash principal direction of force, and occupant age) were compared qualitatively and quantitatively. There were 158 belted and 44 unbelted occupants included in this study. For belted occupants, fractures were mainly located near the path of the shoulder belt, with the majority of fractures occurring on the inboard (with respect to the vehicle) side of the thorax. For unbelted occupants, fractures were approximately symmetric and distributed across both sides of the thorax. There were negligible differences in fracture patterns between occupants with frontal (0°) and near side (330° to 350° for drivers; 10° to 30° for passengers) crash principal directions of force but substantial differences between groups when occupant kinematics (and contacts within the vehicle) were considered. Age also affected fracture pattern, with fractures tending to occur more anteriorly in older occupants and more laterally in younger occupants (both belted and unbelted). Results of this study confirmed with real-world data that rib fracture patterns in unbelted occupants were more distributed

  14. World energy projection system: Model documentation

    Science.gov (United States)

    1992-06-01

    The World Energy Project System (WEPS) is an accounting framework that incorporates projects from independently documented models and assumptions about the future energy intensity of economic activity (ratios of total energy consumption divided by gross domestic product) and about the rate of incremental energy requirements met by hydropower, geothermal, coal, and natural gas to produce projections of world energy consumption published annually by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in the International Energy Outlook (IEO). Two independently documented models presented in Figure 1, the Oil Market Simulation (OMS) model and the World Integrated Nuclear Evaluation System (WINES), provide projections of oil and nuclear power consumption published in the IEO. Output from a third independently documented model, and the International Coal Trade Model (ICTM), is not published in the IEO but is used in WEPS as a supply check on projections of world coal consumption produced by WEPS and published in the IEO. A WEPS model of natural gas production documented in this report provides the same type of implicit supply check on the WEPS projections of world natural gas consumption published in the IEO. Two additional models are included in Figure 1, the OPEC Capacity model and the Non-OPEC Oil Production model. These WEPS models provide inputs to the OMS model and are documented in this report.

  15. World energy projection system: Model documentation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1992-06-01

    The World Energy Project System (WEPS) is an accounting framework that incorporates projects from independently documented models and assumptions about the future energy intensity of economic activity (ratios of total energy consumption divided by gross domestic product) and about the rate of incremental energy requirements met by hydropower, geothermal, coal, and natural gas to produce projections of world energy consumption published annually by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in the International Energy Outlook (IEO) (Figure 1). Two independently documented models presented in Figure 1, the Oil Market Simulation (OMS) model and the World Integrated Nuclear Evaluation System (WINES) provide projections of oil and nuclear power consumption published in the IEO. Output from a third independently documented model, and the International Coal Trade Model (ICTM), is not published in the IEO but is used in WEPS as a supply check on projections of world coal consumption produced by WEPS and published in the IEO. A WEPS model of natural gas production documented in this report provides the same type of implicit supply check on the WEPS projections of world natural gas consumption published in the IEO. Two additional models are included in Figure 1, the OPEC Capacity model and the Non-OPEC Oil Production model. These WEPS models provide inputs to the OMS model and are documented in this report

  16. Evaluating climate field reconstruction techniques using improved emulations of real-world conditions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, J.; Emile-Geay, J.; Guillot, D.; Smerdon, J. E.; Rajaratnam, B.

    2014-01-01

    Pseudoproxy experiments (PPEs) have become an important framework for evaluating paleoclimate reconstruction methods. Most existing PPE studies assume constant proxy availability through time and uniform proxy quality across the pseudoproxy network. Real multiproxy networks are, however, marked by pronounced disparities in proxy quality, and a steep decline in proxy availability back in time, either of which may have large effects on reconstruction skill. A suite of PPEs constructed from a millennium-length general circulation model (GCM) simulation is thus designed to mimic these various real-world characteristics. The new pseudoproxy network is used to evaluate four climate field reconstruction (CFR) techniques: truncated total least squares embedded within the regularized EM (expectation-maximization) algorithm (RegEM-TTLS), the Mann et al. (2009) implementation of RegEM-TTLS (M09), canonical correlation analysis (CCA), and Gaussian graphical models embedded within RegEM (GraphEM). Each method's risk properties are also assessed via a 100-member noise ensemble. Contrary to expectation, it is found that reconstruction skill does not vary monotonically with proxy availability, but also is a function of the type and amplitude of climate variability (forced events vs. internal variability). The use of realistic spatiotemporal pseudoproxy characteristics also exposes large inter-method differences. Despite the comparable fidelity in reconstructing the global mean temperature, spatial skill varies considerably between CFR techniques. Both GraphEM and CCA efficiently exploit teleconnections, and produce consistent reconstructions across the ensemble. RegEM-TTLS and M09 appear advantageous for reconstructions on highly noisy data, but are subject to larger stochastic variations across different realizations of pseudoproxy noise. Results collectively highlight the importance of designing realistic pseudoproxy networks and implementing multiple noise realizations of PPEs

  17. The effectiveness of lane departure warning systems-A reduction in real-world passenger car injury crashes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sternlund, Simon; Strandroth, Johan; Rizzi, Matteo; Lie, Anders; Tingvall, Claes

    2017-02-17

    The objective of this study was to estimate the safety benefits of in vehicle lane departure warning (LDW) and lane keeping aid (LKA) systems in reducing relevant real-world passenger car injury crashes. The study used an induced exposure method, where LDW/LKA-sensitive and nonsensitive crashes were compared for Volvo passenger cars equipped with and without LDW/LKA systems. These crashes were matched by car make, model, model year, and technical equipment; that is, low-speed autonomous emergency braking (AEB) called City Safety (CS). The data were extracted from the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition database (STRADA) and consisted of 1,853 driver injury crashes that involved 146 LDW-equipped cars, 11 LKA-equipped cars, and 1,696 cars without LDW/LKA systems. The analysis showed a positive effect of the LDW/LKA systems in reducing lane departure crashes. The LDW/LKA systems were estimated to reduce head-on and single-vehicle injury crashes on Swedish roads with speed limits between 70 and 120 km/h and with dry or wet road surfaces (i.e., not covered by ice or snow) by 53% with a lower limit of 11% (95% confidence interval [CI]). This reduction corresponded to a reduction of 30% with a lower limit of 6% (95% CI) for all head-on and single-vehicle driver injury crashes (including all speed limits and all road surface conditions). LDW/LKA systems were estimated to lower the driver injury risk in crash types that the systems are designed to prevent; that is, head-on and single-vehicle crashes. Though these are important findings, they were based on a small data set. Therefore, further research is desirable to evaluate the effectiveness of LDW/LKA systems under real-world conditions and to differentiate the effectiveness between technical solutions (i.e., LDW and LKA) proposed by different manufacturers.

  18. Real-time management of a multipurpose water reservoir with a heteroscedastic inflow model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pianosi, F.; Soncini-Sessa, R.

    2009-10-01

    Stochastic dynamic programming has been extensively used as a method for designing optimal regulation policies for water reservoirs. However, the potential of this method is dramatically reduced by its computational burden, which often forces to introduce strong approximations in the model of the system, especially in the description of the reservoir inflow. In this paper, an approach to partially remedy this problem is proposed and applied to a real world case study. It foresees solving the management problem on-line, using a reduced model of the system and the inflow forecast provided by a dynamic model. By doing so, all the hydrometeorological information that is available in real-time is fully exploited. The model here proposed for the inflow forecasting is a nonlinear, heteroscedastic model that provides both the expected value and the standard deviation of the inflow through dynamic relations. The effectiveness of such model for the purpose of the reservoir regulation is evaluated through simulation and comparison with the results provided by conventional homoscedastic inflow models.

  19. What Is Real-World Data? A Review of Definitions Based on Literature and Stakeholder Interviews

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Makady, Amr; de Boer, Anthonius; Hillege, Hans; Klungel, Olaf; Goettsch, Wim

    2017-01-01

    Background: Despite increasing recognition of the value of real-world data (RWD), consensus on the definition of RWD is lacking.  Objectives: To review definitions publicly available for RWD to shed light on similarities and differences between them.  Methods: A literature review and stakeholder

  20. Impact of sacubitril/valsartan on heart failure admissions: insights from real-world patient prescriptions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martens, Pieter; Lambeets, Seppe; Lau, Chirikwah; Dupont, Matthias; Mullens, Wilfried

    2018-06-17

    Sacubitril/valsartan reduced heart failure (HF)-admissions and cardiovascular mortality in the PARADIGM-HF-trial. However, real-world patients are often frailer and less able to tolerate high doses of sacubitril/valsartan. We performed a retrospective analysis of consecutive patients prescribed sacubitril/valsartan in a single tertiary HF-clinic between December 2016 and January 2018. HF-admissions were assessed in a paired fashion, comparing the amount of antecedent HF-episodes with incident HF-episodes after the initiation. Baseline risk for adverse events was assessed by the EMPHASIS-HF-risk-score Results: A total of 201-HF-patients were retrospectively identified (age = 68 ± 11 years, ejection fraction = 29 ± 8%). Real world patients were older, had higher serum creatinine and a higher New-York Heart-Association (NYHA)-class (p sacubitril/valsartan a total of 23-individual patients experienced at least one HF-episodes. Over the same time period preceding initiation of sacubitril/valsartan, 51 individual patients experienced a HF-episodes (p Sacubitril/valsartan significantly reduced the rate of incident vs. antecedent HF-admissions, in patients with low or high baseline NYHA-class (II vs. III and IV; p value = 0.019 respectively p = .004) or patients with an EMPHASIS-HF risk score below or above the mean (p = .002 respectively p = .016). Patients older than 75-years exhibited a trend towards HF-reduction. Higher doses of sacubitril/valsartan were associated with more reduction in incident versus antecedent HF-episodes. Despite being frailer and older, real-world patients exhibit a significant and early reduction in incident HF-hospitalisations following initiation of sacubitril/valsartan. Higher doses might be associated with more reduction in HF-admissions, underscoring the importance of dose uptitration.

  1. Perils of using speed zone data to assess real-world compliance to speed limits.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chevalier, Anna; Clarke, Elizabeth; Chevalier, Aran John; Brown, Julie; Coxon, Kristy; Ivers, Rebecca; Keay, Lisa

    2017-11-17

    Real-world driving studies, including those involving speeding alert devices and autonomous vehicles, can gauge an individual vehicle's speeding behavior by comparing measured speed with mapped speed zone data. However, there are complexities with developing and maintaining a database of mapped speed zones over a large geographic area that may lead to inaccuracies within the data set. When this approach is applied to large-scale real-world driving data or speeding alert device data to determine speeding behavior, these inaccuracies may result in invalid identification of speeding. We investigated speeding events based on service provider speed zone data. We compared service provider speed zone data (Speed Alert by Smart Car Technologies Pty Ltd., Ultimo, NSW, Australia) against a second set of speed zone data (Google Maps Application Programming Interface [API] mapped speed zones). We found a systematic error in the zones where speed limits of 50-60 km/h, typical of local roads, were allocated to high-speed motorways, which produced false speed limits in the speed zone database. The result was detection of false-positive high-range speeding. Through comparison of the service provider speed zone data against a second set of speed zone data, we were able to identify and eliminate data most affected by this systematic error, thereby establishing a data set of speeding events with a high level of sensitivity (a true positive rate of 92% or 6,412/6,960). Mapped speed zones can be a source of error in real-world driving when examining vehicle speed. We explored the types of inaccuracies found within speed zone data and recommend that a second set of speed zone data be utilized when investigating speeding behavior or developing mapped speed zone data to minimize inaccuracy in estimates of speeding.

  2. Spontaneous mentalizing during an interactive real world task: an fMRI study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spiers, Hugo J; Maguire, Eleanor A

    2006-01-01

    There are moments in everyday life when we need to consider the thoughts and intentions of other individuals in order to act in a socially appropriate manner. Most of this mentalizing occurs spontaneously as we go about our business in the complexity of the real world. As such, studying the neural basis of spontaneous mentalizing has been virtually impossible. Here we devised a means to achieve this by employing a unique combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a detailed and interactive virtual reality simulation of a bustling familiar city, and a retrospective verbal report protocol. We were able to provide insights into the content of spontaneous mentalizing events and identify the brain regions that underlie them. We found increased activity in a number of regions, namely the right posterior superior temporal sulcus, the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporal pole associated with spontaneous mentalizing. Furthermore, we observed the right posterior superior temporal sulcus to be consistently active during several different subtypes of mentalizing events. By contrast, medial prefrontal cortex seemed to be particularly involved in thinking about agents that were visible in the environment. Our findings show that it is possible to investigate the neural basis of mentalizing in a manner closer to its true context, the real world, opening up intriguing possibilities for making comparisons with those who have mentalizing problems.

  3. Allocating effort and anticipating pleasure in schizophrenia: Relationship with real world functioning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serper, M; Payne, E; Dill, C; Portillo, C; Taliercio, J

    2017-10-01

    Poor motivation to engage in goal-oriented behavior has been recognized as a hallmark feature of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SZ). Low drive in SZ may be related to anticipating rewards as well as to poor working memory. However, few studies to date have examined beliefs about self-efficacy and satisfaction for future rewards (anticipatory pleasure). Additionally, few studies to date have examined how these deficits may impact SZ patients' real world functioning. The present study examined SZ patients' (n=57) anticipatory pleasure, working memory, self-efficacy and real world functioning in relation to their negative symptom severity. Results revealed that SZ patients' negative symptom severity was related to decisions in effort allocation and reward probability, working memory deficits, self-efficacy and anticipatory pleasure for future reward. Effort allocation deficits also predicted patients' daily functioning skills. SZ patients with high levels of negative symptoms are not merely effort averse, but have more difficulty effectively allocating effort and anticipating pleasure engaging in effortful activities. It may be the case that continuously failing to achieve reinforcement from engagement and participation may lead SZ patients to form certain negative beliefs about their abilities which contributes to amotivation and cognitive deficits. Lastly, our findings provide further support for a link between SZ patients functional daily living skills their effort allocation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  4. Size-resolved particle number emission patterns under real-world driving conditions using positive matrix factorization

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Domínguez-Sáez, A.; Viana, M.; Barrios, C.C.; Rubio, J.R.; Amato, F.; Pujadas, M.; Querol, X.

    2012-01-01

    A novel on-board system was tested to characterize size-resolved particle number emission patterns under real-world driving conditions, running in a EURO4 diesel vehicle and in a typical urban circuit in Madrid (Spain). Emission profiles were determined as a function of driving conditions. Source

  5. The Map in Our Head Is Not Oriented North: Evidence from a Real-World Environment.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tad T Brunyé

    Full Text Available Like most physical maps, recent research has suggested that cognitive maps of familiar environments may have a north-up orientation. We demonstrate that north orientation is not a necessary feature of cognitive maps and instead may arise due to coincidental alignment between cardinal directions and the built and natural environment. Experiment 1 demonstrated that pedestrians have difficulty pointing north while navigating a familiar real-world environment with roads, buildings, and green spaces oriented oblique to cardinal axes. Instead, north estimates tended to be parallel or perpendicular to roads. In Experiment 2, participants did not demonstrate privileged memory access when oriented toward north while making relative direction judgments. Instead, retrieval was fastest and most accurate when orientations were aligned with roads. In sum, cognitive maps are not always oriented north. Rather, in some real-world environments they can be oriented with respect to environment-specific features, serving as convenient reference systems for organizing and using spatial memory.

  6. Towards Porting a Real-World Seismological Application to the Intel MIC Architecture

    OpenAIRE

    V. Weinberg

    2014-01-01

    This whitepaper aims to discuss first experiences with porting an MPI-based real-world geophysical application to the new Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture. The selected code SeisSol is an application written in Fortran that can be used to simulate earthquake rupture and radiating seismic wave propagation in complex 3-D heterogeneous materials. The PRACE prototype cluster EURORA at CINECA, Italy, was accessed to analyse the MPI-performance of SeisSol on Intel Xeon Phi on both sing...

  7. Understanding Is Key: An Analysis of Factors Pertaining to Trust in a Real-World Automation System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Balfe, Nora; Sharples, Sarah; Wilson, John R.

    2018-01-01

    Objective: This paper aims to explore the role of factors pertaining to trust in real-world automation systems through the application of observational methods in a case study from the railway sector. Background: Trust in automation is widely acknowledged as an important mediator of automation use, but the majority of the research on automation trust is based on laboratory work. In contrast, this work explored trust in a real-world setting. Method: Experienced rail operators in four signaling centers were observed for 90 min, and their activities were coded into five mutually exclusive categories. Their observed activities were analyzed in relation to their reported trust levels, collected via a questionnaire. Results: The results showed clear differences in activity, even when circumstances on the workstations were very similar, and significant differences in some trust dimensions were found between groups exhibiting different levels of intervention and time not involved with signaling. Conclusion: Although the empirical, lab-based studies in the literature have consistently found that reliability and competence of the automation are the most important aspects of trust development, understanding of the automation emerged as the strongest dimension in this study. The implications are that development and maintenance of trust in real-world, safety-critical automation systems may be distinct from artificial laboratory automation. Application: The findings have important implications for emerging automation concepts in diverse industries including highly automated vehicles and Internet of things. PMID:29613815

  8. Local self-similarity descriptor for point-of-interest reconstruction of real-world scenes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gao, Xianglu; Wan, Weibing; Zhao, Qunfei; Zhang, Xianmin

    2015-01-01

    Scene reconstruction is utilized commonly in close-range photogrammetry, with diverse applications in fields such as industry, biology, and aerospace industries. Presented surfaces or wireframe three-dimensional (3D) model reconstruction applications are either too complex or too inflexible to accommodate various types of real-world scenes, however. This paper proposes an algorithm for acquiring point-of-interest (referred to throughout the study as POI) coordinates in 3D space, based on multi-view geometry and a local self-similarity descriptor. After reconstructing several POIs specified by a user, a concise and flexible target object measurement method, which obtains the distance between POIs, is described in detail. The proposed technique is able to measure targets with high accuracy even in the presence of obstacles and non-Lambertian surfaces. The method is so flexible that target objects can be measured with a handheld digital camera. Experimental results further demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. (paper)

  9. Collaborative adaptations in social work intervention research in real-world settings: lessons learned from the field.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blank Wilson, Amy; Farkas, Kathleen

    2014-01-01

    Social work research has identified the crucial role that service practitioners play in the implementation of evidence-based practices. This has led some researchers to suggest that intervention research needs to incorporate collaborative adaptation strategies in the design and implementation of studies focused on adapting evidence-based practices to real-world practice settings. This article describes a collaborative approach to service adaptations that was used in an intervention study that integrated evidence-based mental health and correctional services in a jail reentry program for people with serious mental illness. This description includes a discussion of the nature of the collaboration engaged in this study, the implementation strategies that were used to support this collaboration, and the lessons that the research team has learned about engaging a collaborative approach to implementing interventions in research projects being conducted in real-world social service delivery settings.

  10. Traffic Accidents Involving Cyclists Identifying Causal Factors Using Questionnaire Survey, Traffic Accident Data, and Real-World Observation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oikawa, Shoko; Hirose, Toshiya; Aomura, Shigeru; Matsui, Yasuhiro

    2016-11-01

    The purpose of this study is to clarify the mechanism of traffic accidents involving cyclists. The focus is on the characteristics of cyclist accidents and scenarios, because the number of traffic accidents involving cyclists in Tokyo is the highest in Japan. First, dangerous situations in traffic incidents were investigated by collecting data from 304 cyclists in one city in Tokyo using a questionnaire survey. The survey indicated that cyclists used their bicycles generally while commuting to work or school in the morning. Second, the study investigated the characteristics of 250 accident situations involving cyclists that happened in the city using real-world bicycle accident data. The results revealed that the traffic accidents occurred at intersections of local streets, where cyclists collided most often with vehicles during commute time in the morning. Third, cyclists' behavior was observed at a local street intersection in the morning in the city using video pictures. In one hour during the morning commute period, 250 bicycles passed through the intersection. The results indicated that one of the reasons for traffic accidents involving cyclists might be the combined effect of low visibility, caused by the presence of box-like building structures close to the intersections, and the cyclists' behavior in terms of their velocity and no confirming safety. It was observed that, on average, bicycle velocity was 3.1 m/s at the initial line of an intersection. The findings from this study could be useful in developing new technologies to improve cyclist safety, such as alert devices for cyclists and vehicle drivers, wireless communication systems between cyclists and vehicle drivers, or advanced vehicles with bicycle detection and collision mitigation systems.

  11. Android arcade game app a real world project : case study approach

    CERN Document Server

    DiMarzio, Jerome

    2012-01-01

    Apress, the leading Android books publisher, continues to provide you with very hands-on, practical books for teaching and showing app developers how to build and design apps, including game apps, that can be built and deployed in the various Android app stores out there. Android Arcade Game App:  A Real World Project - Case Study Approach is no different in that it walks you through creating an arcade style Prison Break game app-top to bottom-for an Android smartphone or tablet.  This book teaches you the unique characteristics and challenges of creating an Arcade style game And it provides y

  12. Modelling situation awareness relations in a multiagent system

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Blom, H.A.P.; Sharpanskykh, A.

    2015-01-01

    There is broad consensus that situation awareness (SA) plays a key role in agent-based modelling of complex sociotechnical systems. However in the social sciences and human factors literature there are different views on what SA is and how it could be modelled. More specifically, one school of

  13. Why does primary angioplasty not work in registries? Quantifying the susceptibility of real-world comparative effectiveness data to allocation bias.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sen, Sayan; Davies, Justin E; Malik, Iqbal S; Foale, Rodney A; Mikhail, Ghada W; Hadjiloizou, Nearchos; Hughes, Alun; Mayet, Jamil; Francis, Darrel P

    2012-11-01

    Meta-analysis of registries (comparative effectiveness research) shows that primary angioplasty and fibrinolysis have equivalent real-world survival. Yet, randomized, controlled trials consistently find primary angioplasty superior. Can unequal allocation of higher-risk patients in registries have masked primary angioplasty benefit? First, we constructed a model to demonstrate the potential effect of allocation bias. We then analyzed published registries (55022 patients) for allocation of higher-risk patients (Killip class ≥1) to determine whether the choice of reperfusion therapy was affected by the risk level of the patient. Meta-regression was used to examine the relationship between differences in allocation of high-risk patient to primary angioplasty or fibrinolysis and mortality. Initial modeling suggested that registry outcomes are sensitive to allocation bias of high-risk patients. Across the registries, the therapy receiving excess high-risk patients had worse mortality. Unequal distribution of high-risk status accounted for most of the between-registry variance (adjusted R(2)(meta)=83.1%). Accounting for differential allocation of higher-risk patients, primary angioplasty gave 22% lower mortality (odds ratio, 0.78; 95% confidence interval, 0.64-0.97; P=0.029). We derive a formula, called the number needed to abolish, highlighting situations in which comparative effectiveness studies are particularly vulnerable to this bias. In ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, clinicians' preference for management of a few high-risk patients can shift mortality substantially. Comparative effectiveness research in any disease is vulnerable to this, especially diseases with an immediately identifiable high-risk subgroup that clinicians prefer to allocate to 1 therapy. For this reason, preliminary indications from registry-based comparative effectiveness research should be definitively tested by randomized, controlled trials.

  14. Real-time traffic signal optimization model based on average delay time per person

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pengpeng Jiao

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Real-time traffic signal control is very important for relieving urban traffic congestion. Many existing traffic control models were formulated using optimization approach, with the objective functions of minimizing vehicle delay time. To improve people’s trip efficiency, this article aims to minimize delay time per person. Based on the time-varying traffic flow data at intersections, the article first fits curves of accumulative arrival and departure vehicles, as well as the corresponding functions. Moreover, this article transfers vehicle delay time to personal delay time using average passenger load of cars and buses, employs such time as the objective function, and proposes a signal timing optimization model for intersections to achieve real-time signal parameters, including cycle length and green time. This research further implements a case study based on practical data collected at an intersection in Beijing, China. The average delay time per person and queue length are employed as evaluation indices to show the performances of the model. The results show that the proposed methodology is capable of improving traffic efficiency and is very effective for real-world applications.

  15. Real-world fuel economy and CO{sub 2} emissions of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ploetz, Patrick; Funke, Simon Arpad; Jochem, Patrick [Fraunhofer-Institut fuer System- und Innovationsforschung (ISI), Karlsruhe (Germany). Competence Center Energiepolitik und Energiesysteme

    2015-07-01

    Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) combine electric propulsion with an internal combustion engine. Their potential to reduce transport related green-house gas emissions highly depends on their actual usage and electricity provision. Various studies underline their environmental and economic advantages, but are based on standardised driving cycles, simulations or small PHEV fleets. Here, we analyse real-world fuel economy of PHEV and the factors influencing it based on about 2,000 actual PHEV that have been observed over more than a year in the U.S. and Germany. We find that real-world fuel economy of PHEV differ widely among users. The main factors explaining this variation are the annual mileage, the regularity of daily driving, and the likelihood of long-distance trips. Current test cycle fuel economy ratings neglect these factors. Despite the broad range of PHEV fuel economies, the test cycle fuel economy ratings can be close to empiric PHEV fleet averages if the average annual mile-age is about 17,000 km. For the largest group of PHEV in our data, the Chevrolet Volt, we find the average fuel economy to be 1.45 litres/100 km at an average electric driving share of 78%. The resulting real-world tank-to-wheel CO{sub 2} emissions of these PHEV are 42 gCO{sub 2}/km and the annual CO{sub 2} savings in the U.S. amount to about 50 Mt. In conclusion, the variance of empirical PHEV fuel economy is considerably higher than of conventional vehicles. This should be taken into account by future test cycles and high electric driving shares should be incentivised.

  16. Familiar real-world spatial cues provide memory benefits in older and younger adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Robin, Jessica; Moscovitch, Morris

    2017-05-01

    Episodic memory, future thinking, and memory for scenes have all been proposed to rely on the hippocampus, and evidence suggests that these all decline in healthy aging. Despite this age-related memory decline, studies examining the effects of context reinstatement on episodic memory have demonstrated that reinstating elements of the encoding context of an event leads to better memory retrieval in both younger and older adults. The current study was designed to test whether more familiar, real-world contexts, such as locations that participants visited often, would improve the detail richness and vividness of memory for scenes, autobiographical events, and imagination of future events in young and older adults. The predicted age-related decline in internal details across all 3 conditions was accompanied by persistent effects of contextual familiarity, in which a more familiar spatial context led to increased detail and vividness of remembered scenes, autobiographical events, and, to some extent, imagined future events. This study demonstrates that autobiographical memory, imagination of the future, and scene memory are similarly affected by aging, and all benefit from being associated with more familiar (real-world) contexts, illustrating the stability of contextual reinstatement effects on memory throughout the life span. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  17. Impaired behavior on real-world tasks following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tranel, Daniel; Hathaway-Nepple, Julie; Anderson, Steven W

    2007-04-01

    Patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortices (VMPC) commonly manifest blatant behavioral navigation defects in the real world, but it has been difficult to measure these impairments in the clinic or laboratory. Using a set of "strategy application" tasks, which were designed by Shallice and Burgess (1991) to be ecologically valid for detecting executive dysfunction, we investigated the hypothesis that VMPC damage would be associated with defective performance on such tasks, whereas damage outside the VMPC region would not. A group of 9 patients with bilateral VMPC damage was contrasted with comparison groups of participants with (a) prefrontal brain damage outside the VMPC region (n = 8); (b) nonprefrontal brain damage (n = 17); and (c) no brain damage (n = 20). We found support for the hypothesis: VMPC patients had more impaired performances on the strategy application tasks, especially on a Multiple Errands Test that required patients to execute a series of unstructured tasks in a real-world setting (shopping mall). The results are consistent with the notion that efficacious behavioral navigation is dependent on the VMPC region. However, the strategy application tasks were relatively time consuming and effortful, and their diagnostic yield over and above conventional executive functioning tests may not be sufficient to warrant their inclusion in standard clinical assessment.

  18. World Magnetic Model 2010

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The World Magnetic Model is the standard model used by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.K. Ministry of Defence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)...

  19. World Magnetic Model 2015

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The World Magnetic Model is the standard model used by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.K. Ministry of Defence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)...

  20. Real-world persistence with fingolimod for the treatment of multiple sclerosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kantor, Daniel; Johnson, Kristen; Vieira, Maria Cecilia; Signorovitch, James; Li, Nanxin; Gao, Wei; Koo, Valerie; Duchesneau, Emilie; Herrera, Vivian

    2018-05-15

    To systematically review reports of fingolimod persistence in the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) across data sources and practice settings, and to develop a consensus estimate of the 1-year real-world persistence rate. A systematic literature review was conducted (MEDLINE, EMBASE, and abstracts from selected conferences [2013-2015]) to identify observational studies reporting 1-year fingolimod persistence among adult patients with RRMS (sample size ≥50). A random-effects meta-analysis was performed to estimate a synthesized 1-year persistence rate and to assess heterogeneity across studies. Of 527 publications identified, 25 real-world studies reporting 1-year fingolimod persistence rates were included. The studies included patients from different data sources (e.g., administrative claims, electronic medical records, or registries), used different definitions of persistence (e.g., based on prescriptions refills, patient report, or prescription orders), and spanned multiple geographic regions. Reported 1-year persistence rates ranged from 72%-100%, and exhibited statistical evidence of heterogeneity (I 2  = 93% of the variability due to heterogeneity across studies). The consensus estimate of the 1-year persistence rate was 82% (95% confidence interval: 79%-85%). Across heterogeneous study designs and patient populations found in real-world studies, the consensus 1-year fingolimod persistence rate exceeded 80%, consistent with persistence rates identified in the recently-completed trial, PREFERMS. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  1. Modeling and analysis of real-time and embedded systems with UML and MARTE developing cyber-physical systems

    CERN Document Server

    Selic, Bran

    2013-01-01

    Modeling and Analysis of Real-Time and Embedded Systems with UML and MARTE explains how to apply the complex MARTE standard in practical situations. This approachable reference provides a handy user guide, illustrating with numerous examples how you can use MARTE to design and develop real-time and embedded systems and software. Expert co-authors Bran Selic and Sébastien Gérard lead the team that drafted and maintain the standard and give you the tools you need apply MARTE to overcome the limitations of cyber-physical systems. The functional sophistication required of modern cyber-physical

  2. The importance of shared mental models and shared situation awareness for transforming robots from tools to teammates

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ososky, Scott; Schuster, David; Jentsch, Florian; Fiore, Stephen; Shumaker, Randall; Lebiere, Christian; Kurup, Unmesh; Oh, Jean; Stentz, Anthony

    2012-06-01

    Current ground robots are largely employed via tele-operation and provide their operators with useful tools to extend reach, improve sensing, and avoid dangers. To move from robots that are useful as tools to truly synergistic human-robot teaming, however, will require not only greater technical capabilities among robots, but also a better understanding of the ways in which the principles of teamwork can be applied from exclusively human teams to mixed teams of humans and robots. In this respect, a core characteristic that enables successful human teams to coordinate shared tasks is their ability to create, maintain, and act on a shared understanding of the world and the roles of the team and its members in it. The team performance literature clearly points towards two important cornerstones for shared understanding of team members: mental models and situation awareness. These constructs have been investigated as products of teams as well; amongst teams, they are shared mental models and shared situation awareness. Consequently, we are studying how these two constructs can be measured and instantiated in human-robot teams. In this paper, we report results from three related efforts that are investigating process and performance outcomes for human robot teams. Our investigations include: (a) how human mental models of tasks and teams change whether a teammate is human, a service animal, or an advanced automated system; (b) how computer modeling can lead to mental models being instantiated and used in robots; (c) how we can simulate the interactions between human and future robotic teammates on the basis of changes in shared mental models and situation assessment.

  3. Patient value: its nature, measurement, and role in real world evidence studies and outcomes-based reimbursement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McKenna, Stephen P; Wilburn, Jeanette

    2018-05-01

    The assessment of "patient value" is fundamental to clinical trials, real world evidence studies, and outcomes-based reimbursement schemes. Measures of health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) are widely used in health research. Such measures are effective in determining the presence or absence of symptoms and functional ability. However, HRQoL measures were not intended, nor designed, to determine the value to patients of alternative health states. Functions have no intrinsic value-they are a means to fulfil human needs. However, needs can be met in a variety of ways, for example by adopting different functions or by the provision of social services. It is possible to analyze all functions in terms of the needs they satisfy. A needs model has been applied in health research since the 1990s. It is concerned with the extent to which human needs are fulfilled in the presence of disease and its treatment. It is argued that this is the major concern of the patient. Needs-based measures are patient-centric and produce a valid unidimensional index of outcome. Consequently, they provide a direct means of measuring patient value. This approach provides the possibility of evaluating health services in terms of the value they provide to consumers and payers. It also has a role to play in real-world evidence studies and outcomes-based reimbursement. It is recommended that greater attention is given in future to the development of patient-reported outcome measures that provide direct assessments of patient value.

  4. Effect of hybrid system battery performance on determining CO2 emissions of hybrid electric vehicles in real-world conditions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Alvarez, Robert; Schlienger, Peter; Weilenmann, Martin

    2010-01-01

    Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) can potentially reduce vehicle CO 2 emissions by using recuperated kinetic vehicle energy stored as electric energy in a hybrid system battery (HSB). HSB performance affects the individual net HEV CO 2 emissions for a given driving pattern, which is considered to be equivalent to unchanged net energy content in the HSB. The present study investigates the influence of HSB performance on the statutory correction procedure used to determine HEV CO 2 emissions in Europe based on chassis dynamometer measurements with three identical in-use examples of a full HEV model featuring different mileages. Statutory and real-world driving cycles and full electric vehicle operation modes have been considered. The main observation is that the selected HEVs can only use 67-80% of the charge provided to the HSB, which distorts the outcomes of the statutory correction procedure that does not consider such irreversibility. CO 2 emissions corrected according to this procedure underestimate the true net CO 2 emissions of one HEV by approximately 13% in real-world urban driving. The correct CO 2 emissions are only reproduced when considering the HSB performance in this driving pattern. The statutory procedure for correcting HEV CO 2 emissions should, therefore, be adapted.

  5. Net clinical benefit of new oral anticoagulants (dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban) versus no treatment in a 'real world' atrial fibrillation population

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Banerjee, A; Lane, D A; Torp-Pedersen, C

    2012-01-01

    The concept of net clinical benefit has been used to quantify the balance between risk of ischaemic stroke (IS) and risk of intracranial haemorrhage (ICH) with the use oral anticoagulant therapy (OAC) in the setting of non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF), and has shown that patients at highest ...... in AF. Using 'real world' data, our modelling analysis has shown that when the risk of bleeding and stroke are both high, all three new drugs appear to have a greater net clinical benefit compared to warfarin....

  6. What Is Real-World Data (RWD)? : A Review of Definitions Based on Literature and Stakeholder Interviews

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Makady, Amr; de Boer, Anthonius; Hillege, Hans; Klungel, Olaf; Goettsch, Wim

    Background: Despite increasing recognition of the value of real-world data (RWD), consensus on the definition of RWD is lacking. Objectives: To review definitions publicly available for RWD to shed light on similarities and differences between them. Methods: A literature review and stakeholder

  7. Summary of human social, cultural, behavioral (HSCB) modeling for information fusion panel discussion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blasch, Erik; Salerno, John; Kadar, Ivan; Yang, Shanchieh J.; Fenstermacher, Laurie; Endsley, Mica; Grewe, Lynne

    2013-05-01

    During the SPIE 2012 conference, panelists convened to discuss "Real world issues and challenges in Human Social/Cultural/Behavioral modeling with Applications to Information Fusion." Each panelist presented their current trends and issues. The panel had agreement on advanced situation modeling, working with users for situation awareness and sense-making, and HSCB context modeling in focusing research activities. Each panelist added different perspectives based on the domain of interest such as physical, cyber, and social attacks from which estimates and projections can be forecasted. Also, additional techniques were addressed such as interest graphs, network modeling, and variable length Markov Models. This paper summarizes the panelists discussions to highlight the common themes and the related contrasting approaches to the domains in which HSCB applies to information fusion applications.

  8. Bridging the gap between the randomised clinical trial world and the real world by combination of population-based registry and electronic health record data : A case study in haemato-oncology

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kibbelaar, R E; Oortgiesen, B E; van der Wal-Oost, A M; Boslooper, K; Coebergh, J W; Veeger, N J G M; Joosten, P; Storm, H; van Roon, E N; Hoogendoorn, M

    2017-01-01

    Randomised clinical trials (RCTs) are considered the basis of evidence-based medicine. It is recognised more and more that application of RCT results in daily practice of clinical decision-making is limited because the RCT world does not correspond with the clinical real world. Recent strategies

  9. Game Strategies of Ship in the Collision Situations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jozef Lisowski

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available The paper introduced the basic model of process of safe ship control in a collision situation using a game model with j objects, which includes non-linear state equations and non-linear, time varying constraints of the state variables as well as the quality game control index in the forms of the game integral payment and the final payment. Approximated model of the process control as the model of multi-step matrix game in the form of dual linear programming problem has been adopted here. The Game Ship Control GSC computer program has been designed in the Matlab/Simulink software in order to determine the own ship's safe trajectory. These considerations have been illustrated with examples of a computer simulation using an GSC program for determining the safe ship's trajectory in real navigational situation. Simulation research were passed for five sets of strategies of the own ship and met ships.

  10. Real-World Executive Functions in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Profiles of Impairment and Associations with Adaptive Functioning and Co-Morbid Anxiety and Depression

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wallace, Gregory L.; Kenworthy, Lauren; Pugliese, Cara E.; Popal, Haroon S.; White, Emily I.; Brodsky, Emily; Martin, Alex

    2016-01-01

    Although executive functioning (EF) difficulties are well documented among children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), little is known about real-world measures of EF among adults with ASD. Therefore, this study examined parent-reported real-world EF problems among 35 adults with ASD without intellectual disability and their…

  11. Using temporal information to construct, update, and retrieve situation models of narratives

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rinck, M.; Hähnel, A.; Becker, G.

    2001-01-01

    Four experiments explored how readers use temporal information to construct and update situation models and retrieve them from memory. In Experiment 1, readers spontaneously constructed temporal and spatial situation models of single sentences. In Experiment 2, temporal inconsistencies caused

  12. School and Situated Knowledge: Travel or Tourism?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Damarin, Suzanne K.

    1993-01-01

    Examines issues related to situated cognition and learning, both in the classroom and in the world. Topics discussed include educational theories; the situated nature of knowledge; the perception of experts; and the role of technology in situated learning, including virtual reality, hypertext, and telecommunications. (26 references) (LRW)

  13. A novel Direct Small World network model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    LIN Tao

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available There is a certain degree of redundancy and low efficiency of existing computer networks.This paper presents a novel Direct Small World network model in order to optimize networks.In this model,several nodes construct a regular network.Then,randomly choose and replot some nodes to generate Direct Small World network iteratively.There is no change in average distance and clustering coefficient.However,the network performance,such as hops,is improved.The experiments prove that compared to traditional small world network,the degree,average of degree centrality and average of closeness centrality are lower in Direct Small World network.This illustrates that the nodes in Direct Small World networks are closer than Watts-Strogatz small world network model.The Direct Small World can be used not only in the communication of the community information,but also in the research of epidemics.

  14. The situation of environment in the world; L`etat de l`environnement dans le monde

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Beaud, M; Beaud, C; Larbi Bouguerra, M [Groupe de Vezelay, 89 Vezelay (France)

    1994-12-31

    To understand and to act to protect the Earth planet, this work suggests for the first time, a complete diagnosis of the situation and formulates priorities to face to futures. A survey of damages, of risks and responsibilities: resources squandering, pollutions, ozone layer attack, greenhouse effect, nuclear threat, reduction of biological variety. Inventory of fixtures: industrialized countries, (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia), countries marked by planned economy (Eastern Europe, ex USSR, China), old Third World countries (Asia, Middle East, Maghreb, Africa, South America, South Pacific) without forgetting Arctic, Antarctic and oceans. Convictions and values to act: energies, tacks to reverse trends, propositions of humanists replies to that historical challenge. (N.C.)

  15. The Situational Small World of a Post-Disaster Community: Insights into Information Behaviors after the Devastation of Hurricane Katrina in Slidell, Louisiana

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slagle, Tisha Anne

    2010-01-01

    Catastrophes like Katrina destroy a community's critical infrastructure--a situation that instigates several dilemmas. Immediately, the community experiences information disruption within the community, as well as between the community and the outside world. The inability to communicate because of physical or virtual barriers to information…

  16. EU-funded initiatives for real world evidence: descriptive analysis of their characteristics and relevance for regulatory decision-making.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Plueschke, Kelly; McGettigan, Patricia; Pacurariu, Alexandra; Kurz, Xavier; Cave, Alison

    2018-06-14

    A review of European Union (EU)-funded initiatives linked to 'Real World Evidence' (RWE) was performed to determine whether their outputs could be used for the generation of real-world data able to support the European Medicines Agency (EMA)'s regulatory decision-making on medicines. The initiatives were identified from publicly available websites. Their topics were categorised into five areas: 'Data source', 'Methodology', 'Governance model', 'Analytical model' and 'Infrastructure'. To assess their immediate relevance for medicines evaluation, their therapeutic areas were compared with the products recommended for EU approval in 2016 and those included in the EMA pharmaceutical business pipeline. Of 171 originally identified EU-funded initiatives, 65 were selected based on their primary and secondary objectives (35 'Data source' initiatives, 15 'Methodology', 10 'Governance model', 17 'Analytical model' and 25 'Infrastructure'). These 65 initiatives received over 734 million Euros of public funding. At the time of evaluation, the published outputs of the 40 completed initiatives did not always match their original objectives. Overall, public information was limited, data access was not explicit and their sustainability was unclear. The topics matched 8 of 14 therapeutic areas of the products recommended for approval in 2016 and 8 of 15 therapeutic areas in the 2017-2019 pharmaceutical business pipeline. Haematology, gastroenterology or cardiovascular systems were poorly represented. This landscape of EU-funded initiatives linked to RWE which started before 31 December 2016 highlighted that the immediate utilisation of their outputs to support regulatory decision-making is limited, often due to insufficient available information and to discrepancies between outputs and objectives. Furthermore, the restricted sustainability of the initiatives impacts on their downstream utility. Multiple projects focussing on the same therapeutic areas increase the likelihood of

  17. Classification versus inference learning contrasted with real-world categories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, Erin L; Ross, Brian H

    2011-07-01

    Categories are learned and used in a variety of ways, but the research focus has been on classification learning. Recent work contrasting classification with inference learning of categories found important later differences in category performance. However, theoretical accounts differ on whether this is due to an inherent difference between the tasks or to the implementation decisions. The inherent-difference explanation argues that inference learners focus on the internal structure of the categories--what each category is like--while classification learners focus on diagnostic information to predict category membership. In two experiments, using real-world categories and controlling for earlier methodological differences, inference learners learned more about what each category was like than did classification learners, as evidenced by higher performance on a novel classification test. These results suggest that there is an inherent difference between learning new categories by classifying an item versus inferring a feature.

  18. Real-world use, safety, and survival of ipilimumab in metastatic cutaneous melanoma in The Netherlands.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jochems, Anouk; Leeneman, Brenda; Franken, Margreet G; Schouwenburg, Maartje G; Aarts, Maureen J B; van Akkooi, Alexander C J; van den Berkmortel, Franchette W P J; van den Eertwegh, Alfonsus J M; Groenewegen, Gerard; de Groot, Jan Willem B; Haanen, John B A G; Hospers, Geke A P; Kapiteijn, Ellen; Koornstra, Rutger H; Kruit, Wim H J; Louwman, Marieke W J; Piersma, Djura; van Rijn, Rozemarijn S; Ten Tije, Albert J; Vreugdenhil, Gerard; Wouters, Michel W J M; Uyl-de Groot, Carin A; van der Hoeven, Koos J M

    2018-07-01

    Phase III trials with ipilimumab showed an improved survival in patients with metastatic melanoma. We evaluated the use and safety of ipilimumab, and the survival of all patients with metastatic cutaneous melanoma (N=807) receiving ipilimumab in real-world clinical practice in The Netherlands using data from the Dutch Melanoma Treatment Registry. Patients who were registered between July 2012 and July 2015 were included and analyzed according to their treatment status: treatment-naive (N=344) versus previously-treated (N=463). Overall, 70% of treatment-naive patients and 62% of previously-treated patients received all four planned doses of ipilimumab. Grade 3 and 4 immune-related adverse events occurred in 29% of treatment-naive patients and 21% of previously-treated patients. No treatment-related deaths occurred. Median time to first event was 5.4 months [95% confidence interval (CI): 4.7-6.5 months] in treatment-naive patients and 4.4 months (95% CI: 4.0-4.7 months) in previously-treated patients. Median overall survival was 14.3 months (95% CI: 11.6-16.7 months) in treatment-naive patients and 8.7 months (95% CI: 7.6-9.6 months) in previously-treated patients. In both patient groups, an elevated lactate dehydrogenase level (hazard ratio: 2.25 and 1.70 in treatment-naive and previously-treated patients, respectively) and American Joint Committee on Cancer M1c-stage disease (hazard ratio: 1.81 and 1.83, respectively) were negatively associated with overall survival. These real-world outcomes of ipilimumab slightly differed from outcomes in phase III trials. Although phase III trials are crucial for establishing efficacy, real-world data are of great added value enhancing the generalizability of outcomes of ipilimumab in clinical practice.

  19. Prediction and Characterization of High-Activity Events in Social Media Triggered by Real-World News.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalyanam, Janani; Quezada, Mauricio; Poblete, Barbara; Lanckriet, Gert

    2016-01-01

    On-line social networks publish information on a high volume of real-world events almost instantly, becoming a primary source for breaking news. Some of these real-world events can end up having a very strong impact on on-line social networks. The effect of such events can be analyzed from several perspectives, one of them being the intensity and characteristics of the collective activity that it produces in the social platform. We research 5,234 real-world news events encompassing 43 million messages discussed on the Twitter microblogging service for approximately 1 year. We show empirically that exogenous news events naturally create collective patterns of bursty behavior in combination with long periods of inactivity in the network. This type of behavior agrees with other patterns previously observed in other types of natural collective phenomena, as well as in individual human communications. In addition, we propose a methodology to classify news events according to the different levels of intensity in activity that they produce. In particular, we analyze the most highly active events and observe a consistent and strikingly different collective reaction from users when they are exposed to such events. This reaction is independent of an event's reach and scope. We further observe that extremely high-activity events have characteristics that are quite distinguishable at the beginning stages of their outbreak. This allows us to predict with high precision, the top 8% of events that will have the most impact in the social network by just using the first 5% of the information of an event's lifetime evolution. This strongly implies that high-activity events are naturally prioritized collectively by the social network, engaging users early on, way before they are brought to the mainstream audience.

  20. Stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation: re-defining 'real-world data' within the broader data universe.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fanaroff, Alexander C; Steffel, Jan; Alexander, John H; Lip, Gregory Y H; Califf, Robert M; Lopes, Renato D

    2018-04-23

    Real-world data (RWD) has been defined as data generated outside of traditional randomized clinical trials (RCTs). Though RWD has received increasing attention from regulatory authorities and professional societies, dividing evidence into that derived from 'real-world' vs. 'non-real-world' sources provides only one element of a much larger framework for evidence evaluation. Evidence should be evaluated on the source of the data, the method of treatment allocation (whether any intervention being evaluated was assigned or simply observed as used in practice) and the context in which the evidence was generated (overall study design). Under this framework, RWD refers only to data source, and a study incorporates RWD when it primarily uses data collected for non-research purposes, such as insurance claims data or the electronic health record, regardless of study design. Separation of study design, data source, and context enables parallel evaluation of two critical elements: (i) whether a study can support claims of causal inference, which can be assured with a high degree of confidence only in studies where patients are assigned treatments by protocol; and (ii) whether the study population and clinical context mirror clinical practice, a strength of observational studies using data from clinical practice or administrative claims. In this review, we describe the strengths and weaknesses of observational and non-observational studies, and studies involving RWD and non-RWD, through the lens of anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation (AF). Observational studies employing RWD are useful for describing how oral anticoagulants are used in clinical practice, but generally cannot be used to make claims regarding comparative treatment effects. Questions regarding treatment effect generally are best answered through an RCT, and additional pragmatic RCTs are needed to compare different antithrombotic agents for the prevention of thrombotic events in AF.

  1. Learning Behavior Models for Interpreting and Predicting Traffic Situations

    OpenAIRE

    Gindele, Tobias

    2014-01-01

    In this thesis, we present Bayesian state estimation and machine learning methods for predicting traffic situations. The cognitive ability to assess situations and behaviors of traffic participants, and to anticipate possible developments is an essential requirement for several applications in the traffic domain, especially for self-driving cars. We present a method for learning behavior models from unlabeled traffic observations and develop improved learning methods for decision trees.

  2. The Pharmacogenomics Research Network Translational Pharmacogenetics Program: Overcoming Challenges of Real-World Implementation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shuldiner, AR; Relling, MV; Peterson, JF; Hicks, JK; Freimuth, RR; Sadee, W; Pereira, NL; Roden, DM; Johnson, JA; Klein, TE

    2013-01-01

    The pace of discovery of potentially actionable pharmacogenetic variants has increased dramatically in recent years. However, the implementation of this new knowledge for individualized patient care has been slow. The Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) Translational Pharmacogenetics Program seeks to identify barriers and develop real-world solutions to implementation of evidence-based pharmacogenetic tests in diverse health-care settings. Dissemination of the resulting toolbox of “implementation best practices” will prove useful to a broad audience. PMID:23588301

  3. Real-world operation conditions and on-road emissions of Beijing diesel buses measured by using portable emission measurement system and electric low-pressure impactor.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Zhihua; Ge, Yunshan; Johnson, Kent C; Shah, Asad Naeem; Tan, Jianwei; Wang, Chu; Yu, Linxiao

    2011-03-15

    On-road measurement is an effective method to investigate real-world emissions generated from vehicles and estimate the difference between engine certification cycles and real-world operating conditions. This study presents the results of on-road measurements collected from urban buses which propelled by diesel engine in Beijing city. Two widely used Euro III emission level buses and two Euro IV emission level buses were chosen to perform on-road emission measurements using portable emission measurement system (PEMS) for gaseous pollutant and Electric Low Pressure Impactor (ELPI) for particulate matter (PM) number emissions. The results indicate that considerable discrepancies of engine operating conditions between real-world driving cycles and engine certification cycles have been observed. Under real-world operating conditions, carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbon (HC) emissions can easily meet their respective regulations limits, while brake specification nitrogen oxide (bsNO(x)) emissions present a significant deviation from its corresponding limit. Compared with standard limits, the real-world bsNO(x) emission of the two Euro III emission level buses approximately increased by 60% and 120% respectively, and bsNO(x) of two Euro IV buses nearly twice standard limits because Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) system not active under low exhaust temperature. Particle mass were estimated via particle size distribution with the assumption that particle density and diameter is liner. The results demonstrate that nanometer size particulate matter make significant contribution to total particle number but play a minor role to total particle mass. It is suggested that specific certified cycle should be developed to regulate bus engines emissions on the test bench or use PEMS to control the bus emissions under real-world operating conditions. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Paper based Flexible and Conformal SERS Substrate for Rapid Trace Detection on Real-world Surfaces

    Science.gov (United States)

    Singamaneni, Srikanth; Lee, Chang; Tian, Limei

    2011-03-01

    One of the important but often overlooked considerations in the design of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates for trace detection is the efficiency of sample collection. Conventional designs based on rigid substrates such as silicon, alumina, and glass resist conformal contact with the surface under investigation, making the sample collection inefficient. We demonstrate a novel SERS substrate based on common filter paper adsorbed with gold nanorods, which allows conformal contact with real-world surfaces, thus dramatically enhancing the sample collection efficiency compared to conventional rigid substrates. We demonstrate the detection of trace amounts of analyte (140 pg spread over 4 cm2) by simply swabbing the surface under investigation with the novel SERS substrate. The hierarchical fibrous structure of paper serves as a 3D vasculature for easy uptake and transport of the analytes to the electromagnetic hot spots in the paper. Simple yet highly efficient and cost effective SERS substrate demonstrated here brings SERS based trace detection closer to real-world applications. We acknowledge the financial support from Center for Materials Innovation at Washington University.

  5. Performance of the "CCS Algorithm" in real world patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    LaHaye, Stephen A; Olesen, Jonas B; Lacombe, Shawn P

    2015-06-01

    With the publication of the 2014 Focused Update of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Guidelines for the Management of Atrial Fibrillation, the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Atrial Fibrillation Guidelines Committee has introduced a new triage and management algorithm; the so-called "CCS Algorithm". The CCS Algorithm is based upon expert opinion of the best available evidence; however, the CCS Algorithm has not yet been validated. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of the CCS Algorithm in a cohort of real world patients. We compared the CCS Algorithm with the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Algorithm in 172 hospital inpatients who are at risk of stroke due to non-valvular atrial fibrillation in whom anticoagulant therapy was being considered. The CCS Algorithm and the ESC Algorithm were concordant in 170/172 patients (99% of the time). There were two patients (1%) with vascular disease, but no other thromboembolic risk factors, which were classified as requiring oral anticoagulant therapy using the ESC Algorithm, but for whom ASA was recommended by the CCS Algorithm. The CCS Algorithm appears to be unnecessarily complicated in so far as it does not appear to provide any additional discriminatory value above and beyond the use of the ESC Algorithm, and its use could result in under treatment of patients, specifically female patients with vascular disease, whose real risk of stroke has been understated by the Guidelines.

  6. Configurational entropy in brane-world models

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Correa, R.A.C. [CCNH, Universidade Federal do ABC, Santo Andre, SP (Brazil); Rocha, Roldao da [CMCC, Universidade Federal do ABC, Santo Andre, SP (Brazil); International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste (Italy)

    2015-11-15

    In this work we investigate the entropic information on thick brane-world scenarios and its consequences. The brane-world entropic information is studied for the sine-Gordon model and hence the brane-world entropic information measure is shown to be an accurate way for providing the most suitable range for the bulk AdS curvature, in particular from the informational content of physical solutions. Besides, the brane-world configurational entropy is employed to demonstrate a high organisational degree in the structure of the configuration of the system, for large values of a parameter of the sine-Gordon model but the one related to the AdS curvature. The Gleiser and Stamatopoulos procedure is finally applied in order to achieve a precise correlation between the energy of the system and the brane-world configurational entropy. (orig.)

  7. Configurational entropy in brane-world models

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Correa, R. A. C., E-mail: fis04132@gmail.com [CCNH, Universidade Federal do ABC, 09210-580, Santo André, SP (Brazil); Rocha, Roldão da, E-mail: roldao.rocha@ufabc.edu.br [CMCC, Universidade Federal do ABC, 09210-580, Santo André, SP (Brazil); International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Via Bonomea 265, 34136, Trieste (Italy)

    2015-11-02

    In this work we investigate the entropic information on thick brane-world scenarios and its consequences. The brane-world entropic information is studied for the sine-Gordon model and hence the brane-world entropic information measure is shown to be an accurate way for providing the most suitable range for the bulk AdS curvature, in particular from the informational content of physical solutions. Besides, the brane-world configurational entropy is employed to demonstrate a high organisational degree in the structure of the configuration of the system, for large values of a parameter of the sine-Gordon model but the one related to the AdS curvature. The Gleiser and Stamatopoulos procedure is finally applied in order to achieve a precise correlation between the energy of the system and the brane-world configurational entropy.

  8. Configurational entropy in brane-world models

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Correa, R. A. C.; Rocha, Roldão da

    2015-01-01

    In this work we investigate the entropic information on thick brane-world scenarios and its consequences. The brane-world entropic information is studied for the sine-Gordon model and hence the brane-world entropic information measure is shown to be an accurate way for providing the most suitable range for the bulk AdS curvature, in particular from the informational content of physical solutions. Besides, the brane-world configurational entropy is employed to demonstrate a high organisational degree in the structure of the configuration of the system, for large values of a parameter of the sine-Gordon model but the one related to the AdS curvature. The Gleiser and Stamatopoulos procedure is finally applied in order to achieve a precise correlation between the energy of the system and the brane-world configurational entropy

  9. Atmospheric dispersion models for real-time application in the decision support system being developed within the CEC

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mikkelsen, T.

    1992-01-01

    A number of Commission of the European Communities member states are presently coordinating their research and development of a ''Real-time On-line DecisiOn Support'' (RODOS) for emergency assistance in the event of nuclear accident. In addition to atmospheric dispersion, the system involves multiple other radiological disciplines. The ability to estimate a specific atmospheric dispersion scenarios in real-time becomes a first-priority task and is of uttermost importance for the subsequent success or failure of such a comprehensive decision support system to guide off-site emergency situations. No single dispersion model is at present able to cover all possible release-types and scales of dispersion. A hierarchy of atmospheric flow and dispersion models is presently being ranked for suitability to real-time calculate air and integrated-air concentrations. Starting at the short-range scale, models are discriminated with respect to principle, adequacy and flexibility, CPU-time constraints, experimental evaluation record, instantaneous or short-time release handling, deposition measures (wet and dry), input and output data flexibility and uncertainty-handling and model-interpretation. Additional features of particular importance are: Robustness in schemes for meteorological preprocessing of meteorological input data, and on-line backfitting and data-assimilation procedures. Models demonstrating practical and operational use, including real-time operational experience, have in this context the highest priority, as opposed to the more sophisticated and theoretical ''development-type'' models. Real-time methods founded on our present knowledge and data concerning flow and dispersion in the atmospheric boundary layer, are of primary interest. (au) (18 refs.)

  10. Real-world exhaust temperature profiles of on-road heavy-duty diesel vehicles equipped with selective catalytic reduction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boriboonsomsin, Kanok; Durbin, Thomas; Scora, George; Johnson, Kent; Sandez, Daniel; Vu, Alexander; Jiang, Yu; Burnette, Andrew; Yoon, Seungju; Collins, John; Dai, Zhen; Fulper, Carl; Kishan, Sandeep; Sabisch, Michael; Jackson, Doug

    2018-09-01

    On-road heavy-duty diesel vehicles are a major contributor of oxides of nitrogen (NO x ) emissions. In the US, many heavy-duty diesel vehicles employ selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology to meet the 2010 emission standard for NO x . Typically, SCR needs to be at least 200°C before a significant level of NO x reduction is achieved. However, this SCR temperature requirement may not be met under some real-world operating conditions, such as during cold starts, long idling, or low speed/low engine load driving activities. The frequency of vehicle operation with low SCR temperature varies partly by the vehicle's vocational use. In this study, detailed vehicle and engine activity data were collected from 90 heavy-duty vehicles involved in a range of vocations, including line haul, drayage, construction, agricultural, food distribution, beverage distribution, refuse, public work, and utility repair. The data were used to create real-world SCR temperature and engine load profiles and identify the fraction of vehicle operating time that SCR may not be as effective for NO x control. It is found that the vehicles participated in this study operate with SCR temperature lower than 200°C for 11-70% of the time depending on their vocation type. This implies that real-world NO x control efficiency could deviate from the control efficiency observed during engine certification. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  11. Cockpit System Situational Awareness Modeling Tool

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keller, John; Lebiere, Christian; Shay, Rick; Latorella, Kara

    2004-01-01

    This project explored the possibility of predicting pilot situational awareness (SA) using human performance modeling techniques for the purpose of evaluating developing cockpit systems. The Improved Performance Research Integration Tool (IMPRINT) was combined with the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) cognitive modeling architecture to produce a tool that can model both the discrete tasks of pilots and the cognitive processes associated with SA. The techniques for using this tool to predict SA were demonstrated using the newly developed Aviation Weather Information (AWIN) system. By providing an SA prediction tool to cockpit system designers, cockpit concepts can be assessed early in the design process while providing a cost-effective complement to the traditional pilot-in-the-loop experiments and data collection techniques.

  12. A real world dissemination and implementation of Transdiagnostic Behavior Therapy (TBT) for veterans with affective disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gros, Daniel F; Szafranski, Derek D; Shead, Sarah D

    2017-03-01

    Dissemination and implementation of evidence-based psychotherapies is challenging in real world clinical settings. Transdiagnostic Behavior Therapy (TBT) for affective disorders was developed with dissemination and implementation in clinical settings in mind. The present study investigated a voluntary local dissemination and implementation effort, involving 28 providers participating in a four-hour training on TBT. Providers completed immediate (n=22) and six-month follow-up (n=12) training assessments and were encouraged to collect data on their TBT patients (delivery fidelity was not investigated). Findings demonstrated that providers endorsed learning of and interest in using TBT after the training. At six-months, 50% of providers reported using TBT with their patients and their perceived effectiveness of TBT to be very good to excellent. Submitted patient outcome data evidenced medium to large effect sizes. Together, these findings provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of a real world dissemination and implementation of TBT. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  13. Experience inheritance from famous specialists based on real-world clinical research paradigm of traditional Chinese medicine.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, Guanli; Wang, Yinghui; Zhang, Runshun; Liu, Baoyan; Zhou, Xuezhong; Zhou, Xiaji; Zhang, Hong; Guo, Yufeng; Xue, Yanxing; Xu, Lili

    2014-09-01

    The current modes of experience inheritance from famous specialists in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) include master and disciple, literature review, clinical-epidemiology-based clinical research observation, and analysis and data mining via computer and database technologies. Each mode has its advantages and disadvantages. However, a scientific and instructive experience inheritance mode has not been developed. The advent of the big data era as well as the formation and practice accumulation of the TCM clinical research paradigm in the real world have provided new perspectives, techniques, and methods for inheriting experience from famous TCM specialists. Through continuous exploration and practice, the research group proposes the innovation research mode based on the real-world TCM clinical research paradigm, which involves the inheritance and innovation of the existing modes. This mode is formulated in line with its own development regularity of TCM and is expected to become the main mode of experience inheritance in the clinical field.

  14. Testing Quantum Models of Conjunction Fallacy on the World Wide Web

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aerts, Diederik; Arguëlles, Jonito Aerts; Beltran, Lester; Beltran, Lyneth; de Bianchi, Massimiliano Sassoli; Sozzo, Sandro; Veloz, Tomas

    2017-12-01

    The `conjunction fallacy' has been extensively debated by scholars in cognitive science and, in recent times, the discussion has been enriched by the proposal of modeling the fallacy using the quantum formalism. Two major quantum approaches have been put forward: the first assumes that respondents use a two-step sequential reasoning and that the fallacy results from the presence of `question order effects'; the second assumes that respondents evaluate the cognitive situation as a whole and that the fallacy results from the `emergence of new meanings', as an `effect of overextension' in the conceptual conjunction. Thus, the question arises as to determine whether and to what extent conjunction fallacies would result from `order effects' or, instead, from `emergence effects'. To help clarify this situation, we propose to use the World Wide Web as an `information space' that can be interrogated both in a sequential and non-sequential way, to test these two quantum approaches. We find that `emergence effects', and not `order effects', should be considered the main cognitive mechanism producing the observed conjunction fallacies.

  15. Software Tools For Building Decision-support Models For Flood Emergency Situations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garrote, L.; Molina, M.; Ruiz, J. M.; Mosquera, J. C.

    The SAIDA decision-support system was developed by the Spanish Ministry of the Environment to provide assistance to decision-makers during flood situations. SAIDA has been tentatively implemented in two test basins: Jucar and Guadalhorce, and the Ministry is currently planning to have it implemented in all major Spanish basins in a few years' time. During the development cycle of SAIDA, the need for providing as- sistance to end-users in model definition and calibration was clearly identified. System developers usually emphasise abstraction and generality with the goal of providing a versatile software environment. End users, on the other hand, require concretion and specificity to adapt the general model to their local basins. As decision-support models become more complex, the gap between model developers and users gets wider: Who takes care of model definition, calibration and validation?. Initially, model developers perform these tasks, but the scope is usually limited to a few small test basins. Before the model enters operational stage, end users must get involved in model construction and calibration, in order to gain confidence in the model recommendations. However, getting the users involved in these activities is a difficult task. The goal of this re- search is to develop representation techniques for simulation and management models in order to define, develop and validate a mechanism, supported by a software envi- ronment, oriented to provide assistance to the end-user in building decision models for the prediction and management of river floods in real time. The system is based on three main building blocks: A library of simulators of the physical system, an editor to assist the user in building simulation models, and a machine learning method to calibrate decision models based on the simulation models provided by the user.

  16. Managing in the Virtual World: How Second Life is Rewriting the Rules of "Real Life" Business

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wyld, David C.

    In this paper, we will explore the growth of virtual worlds - one of the most exciting and fast-growing concepts in the Web 2.0 era. We will see that while there has been significant growth across all demographic groups, online gaming in MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) are finding particular appeal in today's youth - the so-called "digital native" generation. We then overview the today's virtual world marketplace, both in the youth and adult-oriented markets. Second Life is emerging as the most important virtual world today, due to the intense interest amongst both large organizations and individual entrepreneurs to conduct real business in the virtual environment. Due to its prominence today and its forecasted growth over the next decade, we take a look at the unscripted world of Second Life, examining the corporate presence in-world, as well as the economic, technical, legal, ethical and security issues involved for companies doing business in the virtual world. In conclusion, we present an analysis of where we stand in terms of virtual world development today and a projection of where we will be heading in the near future. Finally, we present advice to management practitioners and academicians on how to learn about virtual worlds and explore the world of opportunities in them.

  17. Effect of hybrid system battery performance on determining CO{sub 2} emissions of hybrid electric vehicles in real-world conditions

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Alvarez, Robert; Schlienger, Peter; Weilenmann, Martin [Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Internal Combustion Engines, Ueberlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Duebendorf (Switzerland)

    2010-11-15

    Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) can potentially reduce vehicle CO{sub 2} emissions by using recuperated kinetic vehicle energy stored as electric energy in a hybrid system battery (HSB). HSB performance affects the individual net HEV CO{sub 2} emissions for a given driving pattern, which is considered to be equivalent to unchanged net energy content in the HSB. The present study investigates the influence of HSB performance on the statutory correction procedure used to determine HEV CO{sub 2} emissions in Europe based on chassis dynamometer measurements with three identical in-use examples of a full HEV model featuring different mileages. Statutory and real-world driving cycles and full electric vehicle operation modes have been considered. The main observation is that the selected HEVs can only use 67-80% of the charge provided to the HSB, which distorts the outcomes of the statutory correction procedure that does not consider such irreversibility. CO{sub 2} emissions corrected according to this procedure underestimate the true net CO{sub 2} emissions of one HEV by approximately 13% in real-world urban driving. The correct CO{sub 2} emissions are only reproduced when considering the HSB performance in this driving pattern. The statutory procedure for correcting HEV CO{sub 2} emissions should, therefore, be adapted. (author)

  18. The Development of a Teaching Strategy for Implementing a Real-World Business Project into Database Courses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seyed-Abbassi, Behrooz; King, Ronnie; Wiseman, Eddie

    2007-01-01

    Collaborations between business and academia provide valuable opportunities for students to connect classroom learning with practical work experience. To effectively reach a significant number of students, one approach is to meld a real-world business project and classroom assignment into a realistic business scenario that can be addressed by…

  19. Cognitive tests predict real-world errors: the relationship between drug name confusion rates in laboratory-based memory and perception tests and corresponding error rates in large pharmacy chains.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schroeder, Scott R; Salomon, Meghan M; Galanter, William L; Schiff, Gordon D; Vaida, Allen J; Gaunt, Michael J; Bryson, Michelle L; Rash, Christine; Falck, Suzanne; Lambert, Bruce L

    2017-05-01

    Drug name confusion is a common type of medication error and a persistent threat to patient safety. In the USA, roughly one per thousand prescriptions results in the wrong drug being filled, and most of these errors involve drug names that look or sound alike. Prior to approval, drug names undergo a variety of tests to assess their potential for confusability, but none of these preapproval tests has been shown to predict real-world error rates. We conducted a study to assess the association between error rates in laboratory-based tests of drug name memory and perception and real-world drug name confusion error rates. Eighty participants, comprising doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technicians and lay people, completed a battery of laboratory tests assessing visual perception, auditory perception and short-term memory of look-alike and sound-alike drug name pairs (eg, hydroxyzine/hydralazine). Laboratory test error rates (and other metrics) significantly predicted real-world error rates obtained from a large, outpatient pharmacy chain, with the best-fitting model accounting for 37% of the variance in real-world error rates. Cross-validation analyses confirmed these results, showing that the laboratory tests also predicted errors from a second pharmacy chain, with 45% of the variance being explained by the laboratory test data. Across two distinct pharmacy chains, there is a strong and significant association between drug name confusion error rates observed in the real world and those observed in laboratory-based tests of memory and perception. Regulators and drug companies seeking a validated preapproval method for identifying confusing drug names ought to consider using these simple tests. By using a standard battery of memory and perception tests, it should be possible to reduce the number of confusing look-alike and sound-alike drug name pairs that reach the market, which will help protect patients from potentially harmful medication errors. Published by the BMJ

  20. Real-world practice and Expectation of Asia-Pacific physicians and patients in Helicobacter Pylori eradication (REAP-HP Survey).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chuah, Yoen-Young; Wu, Deng-Chyang; Chuah, Seng-Kee; Yang, Jyh-Chin; Lee, Tzong-Hsi; Yeh, Hong-Zen; Chen, Chan-Lin; Liu, Yu-Hwa; Hsu, Ping-I

    2017-06-01

    The aims of the study were: 1, to survey the most popular anti-H. pylori regimens in Asia-Pacific region and the real-world effectiveness of these regimens; and 2, to investigate the expectation gaps of eradication rate between physicians and patients. A questionnaire was distributed to Asia-Pacific physicians who attended the Asia-Pacific Digestive Week 2015 meeting. Reported eradication rates from the literatures were compared with real-world rates of surveyed popular regimens within the region. In addition, a questionnaire was distributed to H. pylori-infected patients in three regions of Taiwan. A total of 691 physicians and 539 patients participated in the survey. The top five most commonly used regimens were 7-day clarithromycin-based standard triple therapy (50.4%), 14-day clarithromycin-based standard triple therapy (31.0%), 10-day sequential therapy (6.1%), 14-day bismuth quadruple therapy (3.9%), and 14-day hybrid therapy (3.6%). All countries except for China had a significant gap between the expectation of physicians on anti-H. pylori therapy and the real-world eradication rate of most commonly adopted regimens (all P value Asia-Pacific countries to adopt newer and more efficacious anti-H. pylori regimens to meet the Kyoto consensus recommendation and their patients' expectations. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  1. Real world efficiency of retrofit partial-flow diesel particulate filters for trucks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Van Asch, R.; Verbeek, R.; Ligterink, N.; Kadijk, G.

    2009-11-01

    In 2006 the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) introduced an incentive scheme for retrofitting diesel particulate filters on Euro II and Euro III trucks. This scheme involves both partial flow and full flow diesel particulate filters (also called semi-open or open respectively wall-flow or closed filters). In the period 2007 till January 2009 about 15,000 partial flow filters and 8,000 full flow diesel particulate filters were installed. The minimum filtration efficiency requirement for the partial flow diesel particulate filters is 50% during the type approval test. In 2008 an engine dynamometer test programme was conducted to measure the filtration efficiency of retrofit open particulates filters of heavy trucks. This led to somewhat disappointing results with average filtration efficiencies in the range of 5-20% during city and national motorway driving conditions up to 20-40% during long distance motorway driving. This result leads to two main questions: (1) Is this result also representative for medium heavy trucks used for delivery, and (2) do similar efficiencies show up also in tests on entire vehicles, tested under conditions as close as possible to their real world usage profile. To this end, an additional measurement programme was defined, which is reported here. The objective of the study reported here is to determine the real world filtration efficiency of retrofit partial flow particulate filters for a number of trucks under different driving conditions such as city and motorway driving. The emphasis should be on medium heavy trucks typically used for national delivery.

  2. Eye Movement Patterns during Locomotion in Real-World and Simulated Environments

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ming Zhao

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available Eye movements in a search-and-count walking task were compared between a simulated (SE and real-world environment (RE. Eye movements were recorded using the mobile WearCam in either RE or the StroMoHab locomotion simulator, a treadmill-based system for gait mobility rehabilitation. For Experiment 1, a RE was prepared with objects (coloured balls and occluding barriers placed along a 38 m long corridor. A video was captured from a walker's viewpoint at 1.3 km/hr. Fifteen subjects per environment reported the total object count after completing a walk while viewing the video in the SE (at 0, 1.3, or 2.5 km/h and RE (at 1.3 km/h. Examining the number of eye transitions (TotET between objects in relation to walking speed in SE, revealed significant increases between 0 and 2.5 km/h (F3, 56 =20.62, p = .02 and 1.3 and 2.5 km/h (F3, 56 =20.62, p = .039, despite no change in video speed; no significant difference was found between 0 and 1.3 km/h. In Experiment 2, 15 subjects viewed a static checkered screen and were instructed to ‘view the screen’ while walking. TotET decreased significantly, between 1.3 km/h and 5.2 km/h (F2, 27 =3.437, p = .014; no significant differences were observed between 2.6 km/h and either 1.3 km/h or 5.2 km/h. In real-world conditions, walking faster increases the difficulty of search tasks, with a likely correlated increase in eye movements. Apparently, the expectation of increased difficulty carries over to SE, even if the visual task is not more difficult. The findings point to physiological and perceptual correlations between locomotion and eye movements.

  3. Real-time advanced nuclear reactor core model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Koclas, J.; Friedman, F.; Paquette, C.; Vivier, P.

    1990-01-01

    The paper describes a multi-nodal advanced nuclear reactor core model. The model is based on application of modern equivalence theory to the solution of neutron diffusion equation in real time employing the finite differences method. The use of equivalence theory allows the application of the finite differences method to cores divided into hundreds of nodes, as opposed to the much finer divisions (in the order of ten thousands of nodes) where the unmodified method is currently applied. As a result the model can be used for modelling of the core kinetics for real time full scope training simulators. Results of benchmarks, validate the basic assumptions of the model and its applicability to real-time simulation. (orig./HP)

  4. Sacubitril/Valsartan: From Clinical Trials to Real-world Experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Joly, Joanna M; Desai, Akshay S

    2018-04-23

    Compared to enalapril, use of angiotensin-receptor blocker and neprilysin inhibitor sacubitril/valsartan to treat patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is associated with substantial reductions in both cardiovascular mortality and heart failure progression. The purpose of this review is to discuss the real-world experience of sacubitril/valsartan. In the years following the publication of the landmark PARADIGM-HF trial in 2014 and its subsequent FDA approval, a growing evidence base supports the safety and efficacy of sacubitril/valsartan in a broad spectrum of patients with HFrEF. Updated clinical practice guidelines have embraced the use of sacubitril/valsartan in preference to ACE inhibitors or ARBs in selected patients. In this review, we highlight the clinical trials that led to these key updates to clinical guidelines, offer practical strategies for patient selection and utilization in clinical practice, and identify important areas of uncertainty that require future research.

  5. The Salford Lung Study protocol: a pragmatic, randomised phase III real-world effectiveness trial in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bakerly, Nawar Diar; Woodcock, Ashley; New, John P; Gibson, J Martin; Wu, Wei; Leather, David; Vestbo, Jørgen

    2015-09-04

    New treatments need to be evaluated in real-world clinical practice to account for co-morbidities, adherence and polypharmacy. Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), ≥ 40 years old, with exacerbation in the previous 3 years are randomised 1:1 to once-daily fluticasone furoate 100 μg/vilanterol 25 μg in a novel dry-powder inhaler versus continuing their existing therapy. The primary endpoint is the mean annual rate of COPD exacerbations; an electronic medical record allows real-time collection and monitoring of endpoint and safety data. The Salford Lung Study is the world's first pragmatic randomised controlled trial of a pre-licensed medication in COPD. Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT01551758.

  6. Aquifers in coastal reclaimed lands - real world assessments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saha, A.; Bironne, A.; Vonhögen-Peeters, L.; Lee, W. K.; Babovic, V. M.; Vermeulen, P.; van Baaren, E.; Karaoulis, M.; Blanchais, F.; Nguyen, M.; Pauw, P.; Doornenbal, P.

    2017-12-01

    Climate change and population growth are significant concerns in coastal regions around the world, where more than 30% of the world's population reside. The numbers continue to rise as coastal areas are increasingly urbanized. Urbanization creates land shortages along the coasts, which has spurred coastal reclamation activities as a viable solution. In this study, we focus on these reclamation areas; reclaimed areas in Singapore, and in the Netherlands, and investigate the potential of these reclaimed bodies as artificial aquifers that could attenuate water shortage problems in addition to their original purpose. We compare how the reclamation methods determine the hydrogeological characteristics of these manmade aquifers. We highlight similarities in freshwater lens development in the artificial shallow aquifers under natural recharge under diverse conditions, i.e. tropical and temperate zones, using numerical models. The characteristics and responses of these aquifers with dynamic freshwater-saltwater interface are contrasted against naturally occurring coastal aquifers where equilibrium was disturbed by anthropogenic activities. Finally, we assess the risks associated with subsidence and saltwater intrusion, combining measurements and numerical models, in case these aquifers are planned for Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) or Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) strategies. Relative performances of some ASR schemes are simulated and compared in the reclaimed lands.

  7. Post-Marketing Safety Surveillance of the Salvia Miltiorrhiza Depside Salt for Infusion: A Real World Study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ying-Ying Yan

    Full Text Available Salvia Miltiorrhiza Depside Salt for Infusion (SMDS is made of a group of highly purified listed drugs. However, its safety data is still reported limitedly. Compared with the clinical trials, its safety in the real world setting is barely assessed.To investigate the safety issues, including adverse events (AEs, adverse events related to SMDS (ADEs, and adverse drug reactions (ADRs of the SMDS in the real world clinical practice.This is a prospective, multicenter, pharmacist-led, cohort study in the real world setting. Consecutive patients prescribed with SMDS were all included in 36 sites. Pharmacists were well trained to standardized collect the patients information, including demographics, medical history, prescribing patterns of SMDS, combined medications, adverse events, laboratory investigations, outcomes of the treatment when discharge, and interventions by pharmacists. Adverse events and adverse drug reactions were collected in details. Multivariate possion regression analysis was applied to identify risk factors associated with ADEs using the significance level (α 0.05. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01872520.Thirty six hospitals were participated in the study and 30180 consecutive inpatients were included. The median age was 62 (interquartile range [IQR], 50-73 years, and male was 17384 (57.60% among the 30180 patients. The incidences of the AEs, ADEs and ADRs were 6.40%, 1.57% and 0.79%, respectively. There were 9 kinds of new ADEs which were not on the approved label found in the present study. According to the multivariate analysis, male (RR = 1.381, P = 0.009, 95%CI [1.085~1.759], more concomitant medications (RR = 1.049, P<0.001, 95%CI [1.041~1.057], longer duration of SMDS therapy (RR = 1.027, P<0.001, 95%CI [1.013~1.041], higher drug concentration (RR = 1.003, P = 0.014, 95%CI [1.001~1.006], and resolvent unapproved (RR = 1.900, P = 0.002, 95%CI [1.260~2.866] were the independent risk factors of the ADEs. Moreover, following

  8. Finite element modelling of fire situations in UF6 transport containers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Basombrio, F.G.

    1996-01-01

    In this report we describe some runs made with the code FASES2. They concern different situations associated to fires originated by accidents in the transport of containers filled with UF6. Such situations have been inspired in cases taken from the current literature, and related to numerical modelling or experiments. We aim to consign the most relevant aspects of such runs, with the future purpose of comparing them with the predictions made with simpler lumped models. In such a way, it will be possible to calibrate the simple models with the results coming from detailed models. (author). 6 refs., 12 figs

  9. Programming and Tuning a Quantum Annealing Device to Solve Real World Problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perdomo-Ortiz, Alejandro; O'Gorman, Bryan; Fluegemann, Joseph; Smelyanskiy, Vadim

    2015-03-01

    Solving real-world applications with quantum algorithms requires overcoming several challenges, ranging from translating the computational problem at hand to the quantum-machine language to tuning parameters of the quantum algorithm that have a significant impact on the performance of the device. In this talk, we discuss these challenges, strategies developed to enhance performance, and also a more efficient implementation of several applications. Although we will focus on applications of interest to NASA's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the methods and concepts presented here apply to a broader family of hard discrete optimization problems, including those that occur in many machine-learning algorithms.

  10. Modeling the Turning Speed and Car Following Behaviors of Autonomous Vehicles in a Virtual World

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carrillo-González José Gerardo

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available This article deals with mathematical models for controlling vehicles behavior in a virtual world, where two behaviors are considered: 1 curve turning and 2 car following situations, in this last is essential to provide a safety distance between the leader and the follower and at the same time keep the follower not delayed with respect to the leader, and in a curve turning the complexity is to provide a safety speed inside the curve and keep the car inside the lane. Using basic information as vehicles position, mathematical models can be developed for explaining the heading angle and the autonomous vehicles speed on curves, i.e. the controlled by the models. A model that predicts the autonomous vehicle speed on curves is developed considering previous data in other curves. Two models that control the acceleration/deceleration behavior of autonomous vehicles in a car following situation are proposed. In the first model, the parameters are calibrated with a proposed algorithm which enables accuracy in order to imitate the human behavior for accelerating and braking, and the second model provides a safety distance between the follower and the leader at sudden stops of the latter and employs the acceleration/deceleration top capabilities to follow the leader car similar to the human behavior.

  11. Providing Geospatial Education and Real World Applications of Data across the Climate Initiative Themes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weigel, A. M.; Griffin, R.; Bugbee, K.

    2015-12-01

    Various organizations such as the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) have developed a structure for general thematic areas in Earth science research, however the Climate Data Initiative (CDI) is addressing the challenging goal of organizing such datasets around core themes specifically related to climate change impacts. These thematic areas, which currently include coastal flooding, food resilience, ecosystem vulnerability, water, transportation, energy infrastructure, and human health, form the core of a new college course at the University of Alabama in Huntsville developed around real-world applications in the Earth sciences. The goal of this course is to educate students on the data available and scope of GIS applications in Earth science across the CDI climate themes. Real world applications and datasets serve as a pedagogical tool that provide a useful medium for instruction in scientific geospatial analysis and GIS software. With a wide range of potential research areas that fall under the rubric of "Earth science", thematic foci can help to structure a student's understanding of the potential uses of GIS across sub-disciplines, while communicating core data processing concepts. The learning modules and use-case scenarios for this course demonstrate the potential applications of CDI data to undergraduate and graduate Earth science students.

  12. Top-down and bottom-up aspects of active search in a real-world environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foulsham, Tom; Chapman, Craig; Nasiopoulos, Eleni; Kingstone, Alan

    2014-03-01

    Visual search has been studied intensively in the labouratory, but lab search often differs from search in the real world in many respects. Here, we used a mobile eye tracker to record the gaze of participants engaged in a realistic, active search task. Participants were asked to walk into a mailroom and locate a target mailbox among many similar mailboxes. This procedure allowed control of bottom-up cues (by making the target mailbox more salient; Experiment 1) and top-down instructions (by informing participants about the cue; Experiment 2). The bottom-up salience of the target had no effect on the overall time taken to search for the target, although the salient target was more likely to be fixated and found once it was within the central visual field. Top-down knowledge of target appearance had a larger effect, reducing the need for multiple head and body movements, and meaning that the target was fixated earlier and from further away. Although there remains much to be discovered in complex real-world search, this study demonstrates that principles from visual search in the labouratory influence gaze in natural behaviour, and provides a bridge between these labouratory studies and research examining vision in natural tasks.

  13. You Do Not Talk about Fight Club if You Do Not Notice Fight Club: Inattentional Blindness for a Simulated Real-World Assault

    OpenAIRE

    Christopher F Chabris; Adam Weinberger; Matthew Fontaine; Daniel J Simons

    2011-01-01

    Inattentional blindness—the failure to see visible and otherwise salient events when one is paying attention to something else—has been proposed as an explanation for various real-world events. In one such event, a Boston police officer chasing a suspect ran past a brutal assault and was prosecuted for perjury when he claimed not to have seen it. However, there have been no experimental studies of inattentional blindness in real-world conditions. We simulated the Boston incident by having sub...

  14. Virtual-World Naturalism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Reynolds

    2010-07-01

    Full Text Available Sometimes a player will stray from the path described by a game, moving into new spaces, developing new possible modes of interaction, and often discovering the rougher edges of the game world, where physics models break down, textures become incongruous, and the pieces don’t quite fit together. Gameplay that seeks out these spaces and these phenomena, that searches for such clues to the underlying construction of the virtual environment, is a kind of virtual-world naturalism, at once a return to an investigative urge that has been subsumed to the exhaustive mapping and description of the real world and a form of resistance to the very idea of pre-defined paths of action, of externally imposed limits, in virtual worlds as well as in our own.

  15. Mechatronic modeling of real-time wheel-rail contact

    CERN Document Server

    Bosso, Nicola; Gugliotta, Antonio; Somà, Aurelio

    2013-01-01

    Real-time simulations of the behaviour of a rail vehicle require realistic solutions of the wheel-rail contact problem which can work in a real-time mode. Examples of such solutions for the online mode have been well known and are implemented within standard and commercial tools for the simulation codes for rail vehicle dynamics. This book is the result of the research activities carried out by the Railway Technology Lab of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Torino. This book presents work on the project for the development of a real-time wheel-rail contact model and provides the simulation results obtained with dSpace real-time hardware. Besides this, the implementation of the contact model for the development of a real-time model for the complex mechatronic system of a scaled test rig is presented in this book and may be useful for the further validation of the real-time contact model with experiments on a full scale test rig.

  16. Co-creating and Evaluating a Web-app Mapping Real-World Health Care Services for Students: The servi-Share Protocol.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Montagni, Ilaria; Langlois, Emmanuel; Wittwer, Jérôme; Tzourio, Christophe

    2017-02-16

    University students aged 18-30 years are a population group reporting low access to health care services, with high rates of avoidance and delay of medical care. This group also reports not having appropriate information about available health care services. However, university students are at risk for several health problems, and regular medical consultations are recommended in this period of life. New digital devices are popular among the young, and Web-apps can be used to facilitate easy access to information regarding health care services. A small number of electronic health (eHealth) tools have been developed with the purpose of displaying real-world health care services, and little is known about how such eHealth tools can improve access to care. This paper describes the processes of co-creating and evaluating the beta version of a Web-app aimed at mapping and describing free or low-cost real-world health care services available in the Bordeaux area of France, which is specifically targeted to university students. The co-creation process involves: (1) exploring the needs of students to know and access real-world health care services; (2) identifying the real-world health care services of interest for students; and (3) deciding on a user interface, and developing the beta version of the Web-app. Finally, the evaluation process involves: (1) testing the beta version of the Web-app with the target audience (university students aged 18-30 years); (2) collecting their feedback via a satisfaction survey; and (3) planning a long-term evaluation. The co-creation process of the beta version of the Web-app was completed in August 2016 and is described in this paper. The evaluation process started on September 7, 2016. The project was completed in December 2016 and implementation of the Web-app is ongoing. Web-apps are an innovative way to increase the health literacy of young people in terms of delivery of and access to health care. The creation of Web-apps benefits

  17. Estimation of the players maximum heart rate in real game situations in team sports: a practical propose

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorge Cuadrado Reyes

    2011-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract   This  research developed a logarithms  for calculating the maximum heart rate (max. HR for players in team sports in  game situations. The sample was made of  thirteen players (aged 24 ± 3   to a  Division Two Handball team. HR was initially measured by Course Navette test.  Later, twenty one training sessions were conducted  in which HR and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE, were  continuously monitored, in each task. A lineal regression analysis was done  to help find a max. HR prediction equation from the max. HR of the three highest intensity sessions. Results from  this equation correlate significantly with data obtained in the Course Navette test and with those obtained by other indirect methods. The conclusion of this research is that this equation provides a very useful and easy way to measure the max. HR in real game situations, avoiding non-specific analytical tests and, therefore laboratory testing..   Key words: workout control, functional evaluation, prediction equation.

  18. Modeling Control Situations in Power System Operations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Saleem, Arshad; Lind, Morten; Singh, Sri Niwas

    2010-01-01

    for intelligent operation and control must represent system features, so that information from measurements can be related to possible system states and to control actions. These general modeling requirements are well understood, but it is, in general, difficult to translate them into a model because of the lack...... of explicit principles for model construction. This paper presents a work on using explicit means-ends model based reasoning about complex control situations which results in maintaining consistent perspectives and selecting appropriate control action for goal driven agents. An example of power system......Increased interconnection and loading of the power system along with deregulation has brought new challenges for electric power system operation, control and automation. Traditional power system models used in intelligent operation and control are highly dependent on the task purpose. Thus, a model...

  19. Connecting Educators with Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry-Based Science and Students with STEM Careers with Real-World Experiences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Suzanne Lunsford

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Our professional development workshops have provided participating teachers (inservice and pre-service with interdisciplinary experiences in earth and environmental science that have built their content into real-world problem based research initiatives (STEM, Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. One of our real-world issues has been the detection of phenol since it has been a concern in the real-world coal mining industry. Coal tars are a complex of variable mixtures of phenols. Phenol and phenol derivative compounds are widely used in the production of polymers, drugs, dyes, explosives, pesticides, stabilizers and antioxidants. These phenolic compounds are discharged into the environment and can represent a serious hazard, mainly by the contamination of superficial and underground waters. The toxic effect of phenol can cause comas, convulsions, cyanosis, liver damage, kidney damage, lung damage and death. The mining industry for coal is an alternative source of energy and used in thermoelectric power plants. However, the pollutant phenol that can be found in coal has high need to be detected and is an important aspect to keep an eye on due to these harmful chemicals such as phenol discharging into the environment. Our inquiry-based labs have engaged our inservice and pre-service students by visiting a mine and learning the positive and negative aspects of mining and the importance of water quality. Thus, this inquiry-based module will illustrate the use of an electrochemistry modified carbon nanotube poly-3-hexylthiophene electrode to detect such harmful chemicals as phenol by unique electrochemistry techniques such as Differential Pulse Voltammetry (DPV.

  20. Training Inference Making Skills Using a Situation Model Approach Improves Reading Comprehension

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lisanne eBos

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available This study aimed to enhance third and fourth graders’ text comprehension at the situation model level. Therefore, we tested a reading strategy training developed to target inference making skills, which are widely considered to be pivotal to situation model construction. The training was grounded in contemporary literature on situation model-based inference making and addressed the source (text-based versus knowledge-based, type (necessary versus unnecessary for (re-establishing coherence, and depth of an inference (making single lexical inferences versus combining multiple lexical inferences, as well as the type of searching strategy (forward versus backward. Results indicated that, compared to a control group (n = 51, children who followed the experimental training (n = 67 improved their inference making skills supportive to situation model construction. Importantly, our training also resulted in increased levels of general reading comprehension and motivation. In sum, this study showed that a ‘level of text representation’-approach can provide a useful framework to teach inference making skills to third and fourth graders.

  1. Towards ontology-driven situation-aware disaster management

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Moreira, João; Ferreira Pires, Luis; van Sinderen, Marten J.; Dockhorn Costa, P.

    2015-01-01

    Over the last years, numerous ICT applications with mechanisms to detect situations have been developed to support disaster management (DM), which is a field of a great societal and economic importance. Those applications are termed situation-aware (SA) because they try, in near real-time, to

  2. Situated learning theory: adding rate and complexity effects via Kauffman's NK model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yuan, Yu; McKelvey, Bill

    2004-01-01

    For many firms, producing information, knowledge, and enhancing learning capability have become the primary basis of competitive advantage. A review of organizational learning theory identifies two approaches: (1) those that treat symbolic information processing as fundamental to learning, and (2) those that view the situated nature of cognition as fundamental. After noting that the former is inadequate because it focuses primarily on behavioral and cognitive aspects of individual learning, this paper argues the importance of studying learning as interactions among people in the context of their environment. It contributes to organizational learning in three ways. First, it argues that situated learning theory is to be preferred over traditional behavioral and cognitive learning theories, because it treats organizations as complex adaptive systems rather than mere information processors. Second, it adds rate and nonlinear learning effects. Third, following model-centered epistemology, it uses an agent-based computational model, in particular a "humanized" version of Kauffman's NK model, to study the situated nature of learning. Using simulation results, we test eight hypotheses extending situated learning theory in new directions. The paper ends with a discussion of possible extensions of the current study to better address key issues in situated learning.

  3. Visual Saliency Models for Text Detection in Real World.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Renwu Gao

    Full Text Available This paper evaluates the degree of saliency of texts in natural scenes using visual saliency models. A large scale scene image database with pixel level ground truth is created for this purpose. Using this scene image database and five state-of-the-art models, visual saliency maps that represent the degree of saliency of the objects are calculated. The receiver operating characteristic curve is employed in order to evaluate the saliency of scene texts, which is calculated by visual saliency models. A visualization of the distribution of scene texts and non-texts in the space constructed by three kinds of saliency maps, which are calculated using Itti's visual saliency model with intensity, color and orientation features, is given. This visualization of distribution indicates that text characters are more salient than their non-text neighbors, and can be captured from the background. Therefore, scene texts can be extracted from the scene images. With this in mind, a new visual saliency architecture, named hierarchical visual saliency model, is proposed. Hierarchical visual saliency model is based on Itti's model and consists of two stages. In the first stage, Itti's model is used to calculate the saliency map, and Otsu's global thresholding algorithm is applied to extract the salient region that we are interested in. In the second stage, Itti's model is applied to the salient region to calculate the final saliency map. An experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed model outperforms Itti's model in terms of captured scene texts.

  4. Strategies for OPEC's pricing decisions. [Using model of world energy market

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Gately, D; Kyle, J F; Fischer, D

    1977-11-01

    A model of the world energy market that incorporates price expectations and lagged adjustments of demand and supply is used to examine implications of various price-paths that could be selected by OPEC. After demonstrating the sensitivity of the results to changes in functional specifications and certain parameter values, the authors discuss a variety of rule-of-thumb pricing strategies under which OPEC sets prices in response to available market signals. A strategy that is relatively cautious about further major price increases serves OPEC relatively well in comparison with other stategies, but there exists a real possibility of major, abrupt price increases within the next ten years.

  5. Dynamic modeling and simulation of a real world billiard

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hartl, Alexandre E.; Miller, Bruce N.; Mazzoleni, Andre P.

    2011-01-01

    Gravitational billiards provide an experimentally accessible arena for testing formulations of nonlinear dynamics. We present a mathematical model that captures the essential dynamics required for describing the motion of a realistic billiard for arbitrary boundaries. Simulations of the model are applied to parabolic, wedge and hyperbolic billiards that are driven sinusoidally. Direct comparisons are made between the model's predictions and previously published experimental data. It is shown that the data can be successfully modeled with a simple set of parameters without an assumption of exotic energy dependence. -- Highlights: → We create a model of a gravitational billiard that includes rotation and dissipation. → Predictions of the model are compared with the experiments of Felt and Olafsen. → The simulations correctly predict the essential features of the experiments.

  6. Pragmatically Framed Cross-Situational Noun Learning Using Computational Reinforcement Models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Najnin, Shamima; Banerjee, Bonny

    2018-01-01

    Cross-situational learning and social pragmatic theories are prominent mechanisms for learning word meanings (i.e., word-object pairs). In this paper, the role of reinforcement is investigated for early word-learning by an artificial agent. When exposed to a group of speakers, the agent comes to understand an initial set of vocabulary items belonging to the language used by the group. Both cross-situational learning and social pragmatic theory are taken into account. As social cues, joint attention and prosodic cues in caregiver's speech are considered. During agent-caregiver interaction, the agent selects a word from the caregiver's utterance and learns the relations between that word and the objects in its visual environment. The "novel words to novel objects" language-specific constraint is assumed for computing rewards. The models are learned by maximizing the expected reward using reinforcement learning algorithms [i.e., table-based algorithms: Q-learning, SARSA, SARSA-λ, and neural network-based algorithms: Q-learning for neural network (Q-NN), neural-fitted Q-network (NFQ), and deep Q-network (DQN)]. Neural network-based reinforcement learning models are chosen over table-based models for better generalization and quicker convergence. Simulations are carried out using mother-infant interaction CHILDES dataset for learning word-object pairings. Reinforcement is modeled in two cross-situational learning cases: (1) with joint attention (Attentional models), and (2) with joint attention and prosodic cues (Attentional-prosodic models). Attentional-prosodic models manifest superior performance to Attentional ones for the task of word-learning. The Attentional-prosodic DQN outperforms existing word-learning models for the same task.

  7. Casting a Wide Net for Innovation: Bringing Interdisciplinary Collaboration to Real World Problems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robert Cherinka

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available Federal agencies are seeking new ways to innovate, procure and enhance enterprise capabilities. Competitions are one tool that federal agencies can use to drive innovation and solve mission-centric problems—whether technical, scientific, or creative. In this paper we present an examination of several approaches to foster open innovation through challenges and competitions in support of key business operations in the workforce. We highlight specific examples of their use in "real world" environments and provide an assessment of applicability, benefits and challenges for implementation in large organizations.

  8. Real-time prediction of extreme ambient carbon monoxide concentrations due to vehicular exhaust emissions using univariate linear stochastic models

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sharma, P.; Khare, M.

    2000-01-01

    Historical data of the time-series of carbon monoxide (CO) concentration was analysed using Box-Jenkins modelling approach. Univariate Linear Stochastic Models (ULSMs) were developed to examine the degree of prediction possible for situations where only a limited data set, restricted only to the past record of pollutant data are available. The developed models can be used to provide short-term, real-time forecast of extreme CO concentrations for an Air Quality Control Region (AQCR), comprising a major traffic intersection in a Central Business District of Delhi City, India. (author)

  9. Plan for radiological emergencies situations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Estrada Figueroa, E.R.

    1998-01-01

    The objective for the Emergencies plan it is to reestablish the stock that they should be executed by the regulatory Entity in Guatemala during a real potential radiological emergency situation in the national territory

  10. [Three Essential Shared Capabilities for Young Psychiatrists: Brain, Real-world, and Life-course Principles toward Values-based Psychiatry].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kasai, Kiyoto

    2015-01-01

    The discipline of psychiatry promotes well-being and recovery based on a comprehensive understanding of the patient from the perspectives of the brain, real-world, and life-course. Pursuant to efforts toward addressing social issues at a regional and national level, it is assumed that the psychiatrist can assist individuals based on an understanding of these three perspectives. This tripartite relationship goes beyond the history of extreme reductionism in neuroscience and the aftermath resulting from the anti-psychiatry movement to provide a foundation for the development of psychiatry and a theoretical groundwork for such basic psychiatric issues as what role pharmacotherapy plays in psychiatric treatment, just why the lives of people living in the community are thought to be important to an individual's well-being, and just what constitutes recovery. Humans have come to possess highly developed brain and mental functions as a result of the adaptation to the social environment that takes place as part of the evolutionary process. While mental functions are thus dictated in large part by evolution of the brain, they also consist of important features that are not attributable to reductionist models of the brain. That is, human mental functioning forms a foundation for metacognition and sophisticated language functions, and through interactions with others and society, one's mental functioning allows for further brain transformation and development (self-regulation of mental functions). Humans develop their own brain and mental functions through mutual exchanges with others, and their dealings with other people and society form their individual modes of living in the real-world. The human brain and mental functions have evolved in such a way as to provide for a better mode of living. Accordingly, for the individual, the makeup of his or her mode of living in the real-world is the source of the well-being that serves to support that individual's values. The

  11. Cost-effectiveness analysis of biodegradable polymer versus durable polymer drug-eluting stents incorporating real-world evidence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teng, Monica; Zhao, Ying Jiao; Khoo, Ai Leng; Ananthakrishna, Rajiv; Yeo, Tiong Cheng; Lim, Boon Peng; Chan, Mark Y; Loh, Joshua P

    2018-06-05

    Compared with second-generation durable polymer drug-eluting stents (DP-DES), the cost-effectiveness of biodegradable polymer drug-eluting stents (BP-DES) remains unclear in the real-world setting. We assessed the cost-effectiveness of BP-DES in patients with coronary artery disease undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We developed a decision-analytic model to compare the cost-effectiveness of BP-DES to DP-DES over one year and five years from healthcare payer perspective. Relative treatment effects during the first year post-PCI were obtained from a real-world population analysis while clinical event risks in the subsequent four years were derived from a meta-analysis of published studies. At one year, based on the clinical data analysis of 497 propensity-score matched pairs of patients, BP-DES were associated with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of USD20,503 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained. At five years, BP-DES yielded an ICER of USD4,062 per QALY gained. At the willingness-to-pay threshold of USD50,400 (one gross domestic product per capita in Singapore in 2015), BP-DES were cost-effective. Sensitivity analysis showed that the cost of stents had a significant impact on the cost-effectiveness of BP-DES. Threshold analysis demonstrated that if the cost difference between BP-DES and DP-DES exceeded USD493, BP-DES would not be cost-effective in patients with one-year of follow-up. BP-DES were cost-effective compared with DP-DES in patients with coronary artery disease at one year and five years after PCI. It is worth noting that the cost of stents had a significant impact on the findings. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

  12. The SPURS Data Management System: Real-time Situational Awareness at Sea

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bingham, F.; Chao, Y.; Li, P.; Vu, Q. A.

    2012-12-01

    SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper ocean Regional Study) is a field program in the North Atlantic to study the subtropical surface salinity maximum. It is a heterogeneous array consisting of research ships, profiling floats, surface drifters, gliders, microstructure profilers and moorings, as well as satellite observations and models. The SPURS Data Management System aims to capture the status of the observing system in near-real time and allow SPURS science team members to deploy observational assets "on the fly". At the heart of this is a visualization system that tracks the positions of the various assets and displays them in a an interface using Google Earth. The interface was used by program participants on land and at sea to coordinate the deployment of instrumentation. Before the Fall AGU, SPURS will have completed the first part of its mission with a 6-week cruise to the study area. This poster presents some of the highlights of the field campaign, and details the lessons learned in doing real-time oceanography on the high seas.

  13. How successful is secondary prevention for coronary artery disease (CAD) in the real world

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rauf, M.A.; Khan, N.; Khan, N.; Khan, I.; Hafizullah, M.; Mahmood, N.

    2012-01-01

    Objective: To document the effects of secondary prevention on different risk factors in the real world situation. Methodology: It was a cross sectional comparative study carried out at a referral cardiac clinic in Peshawar from January 2010 to December 2010. Study subjects presenting with at least 6 months follow up were included from different parts of Khyber Pukhtunkhawa. All patients with positive history or objective evidence of CAD were enrolled. Study subjects were divided in two groups based on the fact that either taking or had stopped medication for the duration of the study period. Study variables were levels of lipids, glucose, blood pressure (BP), smoking and obesity. Results: A total of 843 patients were included in the study. Males were 70.4 % (593). Mean age was 58.74 +- 10.6 years. Patients taking regular medicine were 69.03% while 30.97% had stopped their medicine for at least three months. Diabetics, hypertensive and positive family history for CAD were 33.4%, 50.25% and 24% respectively. When compared to patient who had stopped medicine, mean systolic BP (p= 0.014), diastolic BP (p= 0.05), mean Cholesterol (p=0.000), mean LDL (p=0.000), mean HDL (p=0.000) and HbA1c% (p=0.049), was well controlled in patients who were taking medicine regularly. Mean BMI (p=0.786), triglycerides and smoking (p=0.761) had no significant difference between the two groups. Conclusion: Blood pressure, serum cholesterol, LDL, HDL, as well as HbA1c% were reduced with little effect on serum TGs, BMI and smoking in those who were taking medicine regularly compared to those who had stopped. (author)

  14. Vigilance in the laboratory predicts avoidance in the real world: A dimensional analysis of neural, behavioral, and ecological momentary data in anxious youth

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rebecca B. Price

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Vigilance and avoidance of threat are observed in anxious adults during laboratory tasks, and are posited to have real-world clinical relevance, but data are mixed in anxious youth. We propose that vigilance-avoidance patterns will become evident in anxious youth through a focus on individual differences and real-world strategic avoidance. Decreased functional connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex (PFC could play a mechanistic role in this link. 78 clinically anxious youth completed a dot-probe task to assess vigilance to threat while undergoing fMRI. Real-world avoidance was assessed using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA of self-reported suppression and distraction during negative life events. Vigilance toward threat was positively associated with EMA distraction and suppression. Functional connectivity between a right amygdala seed region and dorsomedial and right dorsolateral PFC regions was inversely related to EMA distraction. Dorsolateral PFC-amygdalar connectivity statistically mediated the relationship between attentional vigilance and real-world distraction. Findings suggest anxious youth showing attentional vigilance toward threat are more likely to use suppression and distraction to regulate negative emotions. Reduced PFC control over limbic reactivity is a possible neural substrate of this pattern. These findings lend ecological validity to laboratory vigilance assessments and suggest PFC-amygdalar connectivity is a neural mechanism bridging laboratory and naturalistic contexts.

  15. How Artificial Intelligence May Be Applied in Real World Situations

    OpenAIRE

    Michalewicz , Zbigniew

    2010-01-01

    International audience; In the modern information era, managers must recognize the competitive opportunities represented by decision-support tools. New family of such systems, based on recent advances in Artificial Intelligence, combine prediction and optimization techniques to assist decision makers in complex, rapidly changing environments. These systems address the fundamental questions: What is likely to happen in the future? and what is the best course of action? These modern AI systems ...

  16. Eligibility of sacubitril-valsartan in a real-world heart failure population: a community-based single-centre study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Norberg, Helena; Bergdahl, Ellinor; Lindmark, Krister

    2018-04-01

    This study aims to investigate the eligibility of the Prospective Comparison of Angiotensin Receptor-Neprilysin Inhibitor (ARNI) with ACE inhibitor to Determine Impact on Global Mortality and Morbidity in Heart Failure (PARADIGM-HF) study to a real-world heart failure population. Medical records of all heart failure patients living within the catchment area of Umeå University Hospital were reviewed. This district consists of around 150 000 people. Out of 2029 patients with a diagnosis of heart failure, 1924 (95%) had at least one echocardiography performed, and 401 patients had an ejection fraction of ≤35% at their latest examination. The major PARADIGM-HF criteria were applied, and 95 patients fulfilled all enrolment criteria and thus were eligible for sacubitril-valsartan. This corresponds to 5% of the overall heart failure population and 24% of the population with ejection fraction ≤ 35%. The eligible patients were significantly older (73.2 ± 10.3 vs. 63.8 ± 11.5 years), had higher blood pressure (128 ± 17 vs. 122 ± 15 mmHg), had higher heart rate (77 ± 17 vs. 72 ± 12 b.p.m.), and had more atrial fibrillation (51.6% vs. 36.2%) than did the PARADIGM-HF population. Only 24% of our real-world heart failure and reduced ejection fraction population was eligible for sacubitril-valsartan, and the real-world heart failure and reduced ejection fraction patients were significantly older than the PARADIGM-HF population. The lack of data on a majority of the patients that we see in clinical practice is a real problem, and we are limited to extrapolation of results on a slightly different population. This is difficult to address, but perhaps registry-based randomized clinical trials will help to solve this issue. © 2018 The Authors. ESC Heart Failure published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology.

  17. Analysis of Upper Bound Power Output for a Wrist-Worn Rotational Energy Harvester from Real-World Measured Inputs

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xue, T; Roundy, S; Ma, X; Rahn, C

    2014-01-01

    Energy harvesting from human motion addresses the growing need for battery-free health and wellness sensors in wearable applications. The major obstacles to harvesting energy in such applications are low and random frequencies due to the nature of human motion. This paper presents a generalized rotational harvester model in 3 dimensions to determine the upper bound of power output from real world measured data. Simulation results indicate much space for improvement on power generation comparing to existing devices. We have developed a rotational energy harvester for human motion that attempts to close the gap between theoretical possibility and demonstrated devices. Like previous work, it makes use of magnetically plucked piezoelectric beams. However, it more fully utilizes the space available and has many degrees of freedom available for optimization. Finally we present a prototype harvester based on the coupled harvester model with preliminary experimental validation

  18. Recognition of risk situations based on endoscopic instrument tracking and knowledge based situation modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Speidel, Stefanie; Sudra, Gunther; Senemaud, Julien; Drentschew, Maximilian; Müller-Stich, Beat Peter; Gutt, Carsten; Dillmann, Rüdiger

    2008-03-01

    Minimally invasive surgery has gained significantly in importance over the last decade due to the numerous advantages on patient-side. The surgeon has to adapt special operation-techniques and deal with difficulties like the complex hand-eye coordination, limited field of view and restricted mobility. To alleviate these constraints we propose to enhance the surgeon's capabilities by providing a context-aware assistance using augmented reality (AR) techniques. In order to generate a context-aware assistance it is necessary to recognize the current state of the intervention using intraoperatively gained sensor data and a model of the surgical intervention. In this paper we present the recognition of risk situations, the system warns the surgeon if an instrument gets too close to a risk structure. The context-aware assistance system starts with an image-based analysis to retrieve information from the endoscopic images. This information is classified and a semantic description is generated. The description is used to recognize the current state and launch an appropriate AR visualization. In detail we present an automatic vision-based instrument tracking to obtain the positions of the instruments. Situation recognition is performed using a knowledge representation based on a description logic system. Two augmented reality visualization programs are realized to warn the surgeon if a risk situation occurs.

  19. Model-Checking Real-Time Control Programs

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Iversen, T. K.; Kristoffersen, K. J.; Larsen, Kim Guldstrand

    2000-01-01

    In this paper, we present a method for automatic verification of real-time control programs running on LEGO(R) RCX(TM) bricks using the verification tool UPPALL. The control programs, consisting of a number of tasks running concurrently, are automatically translated into the mixed automata model...... of UPPAAL. The fixed scheduling algorithm used by the LEGO(R) RCX(TM) processor is modeled in UPPALL, and supply of similar (sufficient) timed automata models for the environment allows analysis of the overall real-time system using the tools of UPPALL. To illustrate our technique for sorting LEGO(R) bricks...

  20. Cure modeling in real-time prediction: How much does it help?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ying, Gui-Shuang; Zhang, Qiang; Lan, Yu; Li, Yimei; Heitjan, Daniel F

    2017-08-01

    Various parametric and nonparametric modeling approaches exist for real-time prediction in time-to-event clinical trials. Recently, Chen (2016 BMC Biomedical Research Methodology 16) proposed a prediction method based on parametric cure-mixture modeling, intending to cover those situations where it appears that a non-negligible fraction of subjects is cured. In this article we apply a Weibull cure-mixture model to create predictions, demonstrating the approach in RTOG 0129, a randomized trial in head-and-neck cancer. We compare the ultimate realized data in RTOG 0129 to interim predictions from a Weibull cure-mixture model, a standard Weibull model without a cure component, and a nonparametric model based on the Bayesian bootstrap. The standard Weibull model predicted that events would occur earlier than the Weibull cure-mixture model, but the difference was unremarkable until late in the trial when evidence for a cure became clear. Nonparametric predictions often gave undefined predictions or infinite prediction intervals, particularly at early stages of the trial. Simulations suggest that cure modeling can yield better-calibrated prediction intervals when there is a cured component, or the appearance of a cured component, but at a substantial cost in the average width of the intervals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.