Winners, losers, and posers: The effect of power poses on testosterone and risk-taking following competition.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Kristopher M; Apicella, Coren L

2017-06-01

A contribution to a special issue on Hormones and Human Competition. The effect of postural power displays (i.e. power poses) on hormone levels and decision-making has recently been challenged. While Carney et al. (2010) found that holding brief postural displays of power leads to increased testosterone, decreased cortisol and greater economic risk taking, this failed to replicate in a recent high-powered study (Ranehill et al. 2015). It has been put forward that subtle differences in social context may account for the differences in results. Power displays naturally occur within the context of competitions, as do changes in hormones, and researchers have yet to examine the effects of poses within this ecologically relevant context. Using a large sample of 247 male participants, natural winners and losers of a physical competition were randomly assigned to hold a low, neutral or high-power postural display. We found no main effect of pose type on testosterone, cortisol, risk or feelings of power. Winners assigned to a high-power pose had a relative, albeit small, rise in testosterone compared to winners who held neutral or low-power poses. For losers, we found little evidence that high-power poses lead to increased testosterone relative to those holding neutral or low-powered poses. If anything, the reverse was observed - losers had a reduction in testosterone after holding high-power poses. To the extent that changes in testosterone modulate social behaviors adaptively, it is possible that the relative reduction in testosterone observed in losers taking high-powered poses is designed to inhibit further "winner-like" behavior that could result in continued defeat and harm. Still, effects were small, multiple comparisons were made, and the results ran counter to our predictions. We thus treat these conclusions as preliminary. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Climate Ethics: Uncertainty, Values and Policy.

Science.gov (United States)

Roeser, Sabine

2017-10-01

Climate change is a pressing phenomenon with huge potential ethical, legal and social policy implications. Climate change gives rise to intricate moral and policy issues as it involves contested science, uncertainty and risk. In order to come to scientifically and morally justified, as well as feasible, policies, targeting climate change requires an interdisciplinary approach. This special issue will identify the main challenges that climate change poses from social, economic, methodological and ethical perspectives by focusing on the complex interrelations between uncertainty, values and policy in this context. This special issue brings together scholars from economics, social sciences and philosophy in order to address these challenges.

Robust head pose estimation via supervised manifold learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Chao; Song, Xubo

2014-05-01

Head poses can be automatically estimated using manifold learning algorithms, with the assumption that with the pose being the only variable, the face images should lie in a smooth and low-dimensional manifold. However, this estimation approach is challenging due to other appearance variations related to identity, head location in image, background clutter, facial expression, and illumination. To address the problem, we propose to incorporate supervised information (pose angles of training samples) into the process of manifold learning. The process has three stages: neighborhood construction, graph weight computation and projection learning. For the first two stages, we redefine inter-point distance for neighborhood construction as well as graph weight by constraining them with the pose angle information. For Stage 3, we present a supervised neighborhood-based linear feature transformation algorithm to keep the data points with similar pose angles close together but the data points with dissimilar pose angles far apart. The experimental results show that our method has higher estimation accuracy than the other state-of-art algorithms and is robust to identity and illumination variations. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pose estimation of industrial objects towards robot operation

Science.gov (United States)

Niu, Jie; Zhou, Fuqiang; Tan, Haishu; Cao, Yu

2017-10-01

With the advantages of wide range, non-contact and high flexibility, the visual estimation technology of target pose has been widely applied in modern industry, robot guidance and other engineering practices. However, due to the influence of complicated industrial environment, outside interference factors, lack of object characteristics, restrictions of camera and other limitations, the visual estimation technology of target pose is still faced with many challenges. Focusing on the above problems, a pose estimation method of the industrial objects is developed based on 3D models of targets. By matching the extracted shape characteristics of objects with the priori 3D model database of targets, the method realizes the recognition of target. Thus a pose estimation of objects can be determined based on the monocular vision measuring model. The experimental results show that this method can be implemented to estimate the position of rigid objects based on poor images information, and provides guiding basis for the operation of the industrial robot.

Control and System Theory, Optimization, Inverse and Ill-Posed Problems

Science.gov (United States)

1988-09-14

Justlfleatlen Distribut ion/ Availability Codes # AFOSR-87-0350 Avat’ and/or1987-1988 Dist Special *CONTROL AND SYSTEM THEORY , ~ * OPTIMIZATION, * INVERSE...considerable va- riety of research investigations within the grant areas (Control and system theory , Optimization, and Ill-posed problems]. The

?You?re dealing with an emotionally charged individual??: an industry perspective on the challenges posed by medical tourists? informal caregiver-companions

OpenAIRE

Casey, Victoria; Crooks, Valorie A; Snyder, Jeremy; Turner, Leigh

2013-01-01

Background Patients engage in medical tourism when they privately obtain a medical care abroad. Previous research shows that many medical tourists travel abroad with friends and family members who provide support and assistance. Meanwhile, very little is known about this important stakeholder group, referred to here as caregiver-companions. In this article we examine the challenges that can be posed by caregiver-companions and the overall practice of informal caregiving in medical tourism ...

Single leg balancing in ballet: effects of shoe conditions and poses.

Science.gov (United States)

Lobo da Costa, Paula H; Azevedo Nora, Fernanda G S; Vieira, Marcus Fraga; Bosch, Kerstin; Rosenbaum, Dieter

2013-03-01

The purpose of this study was to describe the effects of lower limb positioning and shoe conditions on stability levels of selected single leg ballet poses performed in demi-pointe position. Fourteen female non-professional ballet dancers (mean age of 18.4±2.8 years and mean body mass index of 21.5±2.8kg/m(2)) who had practiced ballet for at least seven years, without any musculoskeletal impairment volunteered to participate in this study. A capacitive pressure platform allowed for the assessment of center of pressure variables related to the execution of three single leg ballet poses in demi pointé position: attitude devant, attitude derriére, and attitude a la second. Peak pressures, contact areas, COP oscillation areas, anterior-posterior and medio-lateral COP oscillations and velocities were compared between two shoe conditions (barefoot versus slippers) and among the different poses. Barefoot performances produced more stable poses with significantly higher plantar contact areas, smaller COP oscillation areas and smaller anterior-posterior COP oscillations. COP oscillation areas, anterior-posterior COP oscillations and medio-lateral COP velocities indicated that attitude a la second is the least challenging and attitude derriére the most challenging pose. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Foreword of Special Issue on “Nomadic Services and Applications”

OpenAIRE

Jason C. Hung

2011-01-01

Nomadic Service has emerged rapidly as an exciting new paradigm that offers a challenging model of cyber-physical services and poses fascinating problems regarding distributed resource management, ranging from information sharing to cooperative computing. This special issue is intended to foster state-of-the-art research in the area of nomadic services and related applications, cloud computing technologies and services, including the topics of collaboration environment, implementation and exe...

Challenges posed by diversity in Academic institutions as they implement Information Literacy: the experiences of Makerere University Library in Uganda

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Faith Beatrice Akiteng

2010-09-01

Full Text Available Over the years, academic libraries have been conducting information literacy (IL programmes for their users. This paper shares Makerere University Library's experience in implementing IL programmes at Makerere University and other academic institutions of learning in Uganda. The findings of this paper are based on the IL sessions' evaluation forms, together with the authors' experiences as instructors. A sample of one thousand (1000 participants' evaluation feedback forms was used in assessing the IL sessions conducted by Makerere University Library in two years (2008-2009. The evaluation focused on the duration and relevancy of training, nature of content, its organization; the instructors, new skills participants gained and how they hoped to pass them to others. Initial findings indicate that IL sessions are highly regarded with repeated recommendations for increased duration and frequency of information literacy sessions in different universities. The various challenges posed by diversity are explained as follows: Difference in age groups arise because admissions to the various universities cater for direct entrants from high school and mature age entrants'. Students also come from different social backgrounds that dictate the standard of schools they attend i.e.; urban schools where education standards are high and skills such as using computers are imparted visa-a-vis the rural schools where such skills are not imparted. To the IL instructor, this implies conducting the training with patience and extending the time allocated for each session in order to impart the basic ICT skills prior to imparting the IL skills. Internationalization on the other hand is not a very big challenge because the proportion of foreign students is small and their ICT skills are moderate. Gender aspects and the diverse disciplines of research in the Ugandan universities also pose challenges when conducting IL sessions in that the groups handled at a time are

Challenges that Preventive Conservation poses to the Cultural Heritage documentation field

Science.gov (United States)

Van Balen, K.

2017-08-01

This contribution examines the challenges posed to the cultural heritage documentation community (the CIPA community and others) in implementing a preventive conservation approach of the built heritage in today's society. The "DNA" of Preventive Conservation. Various authors so far support the argument that preventive conservation is an effective way to respond to the challenges society faces with the preservation of its Cultural Heritage (Van Balen, 2013). A few decades of experiences with the application of preventive conservation in the field of immovable heritage in the form of Monumentenwacht in The Netherland and in Flanders have shown that a good monitoring of the state of preservation with a strong push for maintenance activities contributes to more preservation of authenticity, to more cost-effective preservation and to empowering society in dealing with heritage preservation. (Cebron, 2008) An analysis of these and similar experiences demonstrates that these "Monumentenwacht" activities represent only a part of what could be named a preventive conservation system. Other fields in which prevention is advocated for its higher efficiency, show the importance of system thinking in the development of improved strategies. Applying this approach to the field of the immovable heritage, referring to the initial results shown by the Monumentenwacht practices, it becomes clear that different dimension are at stake simultaneously: the preservation of authenticity or integrity, the management of resources and the connection with society. It shows that the analysis of challenges in heritage preservation and the development of strategies is à priori multifaceted and therefor has a certain level of complexity. The sustainability of the preservation of cultural heritage buildings and sites can be measured according to its multiple economic, social, environmental and cultural support. The Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe report shows that the more diverse the support

Challenges that Preventive Conservation poses to the Cultural Heritage documentation field

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. Van Balen

2017-08-01

Full Text Available This contribution examines the challenges posed to the cultural heritage documentation community (the CIPA community and others in implementing a preventive conservation approach of the built heritage in today’s society. The “DNA” of Preventive Conservation. Various authors so far support the argument that preventive conservation is an effective way to respond to the challenges society faces with the preservation of its Cultural Heritage (Van Balen, 2013. A few decades of experiences with the application of preventive conservation in the field of immovable heritage in the form of Monumentenwacht in The Netherland and in Flanders have shown that a good monitoring of the state of preservation with a strong push for maintenance activities contributes to more preservation of authenticity, to more cost-effective preservation and to empowering society in dealing with heritage preservation. (Cebron, 2008 An analysis of these and similar experiences demonstrates that these “Monumentenwacht” activities represent only a part of what could be named a preventive conservation system. Other fields in which prevention is advocated for its higher efficiency, show the importance of system thinking in the development of improved strategies. Applying this approach to the field of the immovable heritage, referring to the initial results shown by the Monumentenwacht practices, it becomes clear that different dimension are at stake simultaneously: the preservation of authenticity or integrity, the management of resources and the connection with society. It shows that the analysis of challenges in heritage preservation and the development of strategies is à priori multifaceted and therefor has a certain level of complexity. The sustainability of the preservation of cultural heritage buildings and sites can be measured according to its multiple economic, social, environmental and cultural support. The Cultural Heritage Counts for Europe report shows that the

Body-part templates for recovery of 2D human poses under occlusion

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Poppe, Ronald Walter; Poel, Mannes; Perales, F.J.; Fisher, R.B.

2008-01-01

Detection of humans and estimation of their 2D poses from a single image are challenging tasks. This is especially true when part of the observation is occluded. However, given a limited class of movements, poses can be recovered given the visible body-parts. To this end, we propose a novel template

[Further challenges in collaboration and cross-specialization work in psychiatric services].

Science.gov (United States)

Sakano, Yuji; Nakamura, Touru; Nakajima, Kimihiro

2011-01-01

Using a case illustrating cognitive behavioral treatment for a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder, clinical tips and challenges are described in the context of collaboration between multiple health professionals from different backgrounds in a psychiatric hospital. Furthermore, after reviewing the current status of education and training issues related to collaboration, and introducing the fundamental concept of cross-specialization work, existing tasks and future challenges involved in the education and training of multiple health professions are discussed.

Addressing the psychosocial and communication challenges posed by radiological/nuclear terrorism: key developments since NCRP Report No. 138.

Science.gov (United States)

Becker, Steven M

2005-11-01

One of the most innovative aspects of NCRP Report No. 138 (Management of Terrorist Incidents Involving Radioactive Material) was the high priority it accorded to psychosocial and communication issues. While previous discussions of radiological and nuclear terrorism had occasionally referred to these topics, NCRP Report No. 138 was the first report of its kind to recognize the profound challenges posed by these issues and to place them at the heart of preparedness and response efforts. In the years since the report's release, a host of important developments have taken place in relation to psychosocial and communication issues. This paper reviews key changes and advances in five broad areas: (1) training exercises, (2) policy and guidance development, (3) findings on hospital and clinician needs, (4) survey research on public perceptions of radiological terrorism, and (5) risk communication for radiological and nuclear terrorism situations. The article concludes with a discussion of continuing psychosocial and communication challenges, including critical areas needing further attention as the nation moves to meet the threat of terrorism involving radioactive materials.

Problem Posing

OpenAIRE

Šilhavá, Marie

2009-01-01

This diploma thesis concentrates on problem posing from the students' point of view. Problem posing can be either seen as a teaching method which can be used in the class, or it can be used as a tool for researchers or teachers to assess the level of students' understanding of the topic. In my research, I compare three classes, one mathematics specialist class and two generalist classes, in their ability of problem posing. As an assessment tool it seemed that mathemathics specialists were abl...

Status of Environmental Management Initiatives to Accelerate the Reduction of Environmental Risks and Challenges Posed by the Legacy of the Cold War

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2009-01-01

Fifty years of nuclear weapons production and energy research in the United States during the Cold War generated large amounts of radioactive wastes, spent nuclear fuel (SNF), excess plutonium and uranium, thousands of contaminated facilities, and contaminated soil and groundwater. During most of that half century, the Nation did not have the environmental regulatory structure or nuclear waste cleanup technologies that exist today. The result was a legacy of nuclear waste that was stored and disposed of in ways now considered unacceptable. Cleaning up and ultimately disposing of these wastes is the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In 1989, DOE established the Office of Environmental Management (EM) to solve the large scale and technically challenging risks posed by the world's largest nuclear cleanup. This required EM to build a new nuclear cleanup infrastructure, assemble and train a technically specialized workforce, and develop the technologies and tools required to safely decontaminate, disassemble, stabilize, disposition, and remediate unique radiation hazards. The sites where nuclear activities produced legacy waste and contamination include the original Manhattan Project sites--Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee--as well as major Cold War sites, such as Savannah River Site, South Carolina; the Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho; Rocky Flats Plant, Colorado; and Fernald, Ohio. Today EM has responsibility for nuclear cleanup activities at 21 sites covering more than two million acres in 13 states, and employs more than 30,000 Federal and contractor employees, including scientists, engineers and hazardous waste technicians. This cleanup poses unique, technically complex problems, which must be solved under the most hazardous of conditions, and which will require billions of dollars a year for several more decades. The EM program focus during its first 10 years was on managing the most urgent risks and

Status of Environmental Management Initiatives to Accelerate the Reduction of Environmental Risks and Challenges Posed by the Legacy of the Cold War

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

None

2009-01-01

Fifty years of nuclear weapons production and energy research in the United States during the Cold War generated large amounts of radioactive wastes, spent nuclear fuel (SNF), excess plutonium and uranium, thousands of contaminated facilities, and contaminated soil and groundwater. During most of that half century, the Nation did not have the environmental regulatory structure or nuclear waste cleanup technologies that exist today. The result was a legacy of nuclear waste that was stored and disposed of in ways now considered unacceptable. Cleaning up and ultimately disposing of these wastes is the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In 1989, DOE established the Office of Environmental Management (EM) to solve the large scale and technically challenging risks posed by the world's largest nuclear cleanup. This required EM to build a new nuclear cleanup infrastructure, assemble and train a technically specialized workforce, and develop the technologies and tools required to safely decontaminate, disassemble, stabilize, disposition, and remediate unique radiation hazards. The sites where nuclear activities produced legacy waste and contamination include the original Manhattan Project sites--Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee--as well as major Cold War sites, such as Savannah River Site, South Carolina; the Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho; Rocky Flats Plant, Colorado; and Fernald, Ohio. Today EM has responsibility for nuclear cleanup activities at 21 sites covering more than two million acres in 13 states, and employs more than 30,000 Federal and contractor employees, including scientists, engineers and hazardous waste technicians. This cleanup poses unique, technically complex problems, which must be solved under the most hazardous of conditions, and which will require billions of dollars a year for several more decades. The EM program focus during its first 10 years was on managing the most urgent risks and

Web-based Visualisation of Head Pose and Facial Expressions Changes:

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kalliatakis, Grigorios; Vidakis, Nikolaos; Triantafyllidis, Georgios

2016-01-01

Despite significant recent advances in the field of head pose estimation and facial expression recognition, raising the cognitive level when analysing human activity presents serious challenges to current concepts. Motivated by the need of generating comprehensible visual representations from...... and accurately estimate head pose changes in unconstrained environment. In order to complete the secondary process of recognising four universal dominant facial expressions (happiness, anger, sadness and surprise), emotion recognition via facial expressions (ERFE) was adopted. After that, a lightweight data...

Introduction to the Special Issue on Climate Ethics: Uncertainty, Values and Policy

OpenAIRE

Roeser, S.

2017-01-01

Climate change is a pressing phenomenon with huge potential ethical, legal and social policy implications. Climate change gives rise to intricate moral and policy issues as it involves contested science, uncertainty and risk. In order to come to scientifically and morally justified, as well as feasible, policies, targeting climate change requires an interdisciplinary approach. This special issue will identify the main challenges that climate change poses from social, economic, methodological ...

Introduction to the Special Feature on rebuilding fisheries and threatened communities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rosemary E. Ommer

2014-09-01

Full Text Available In this introductory essay to the Special Feature on rebuilding fisheries and threatened communities, we review the contributions of the researchers whose work is contained in this Special Feature. The essays are reviewed using the lens of the three questions that were posed by the Special Feature editors: Why is rebuilding so challenging? What is the relationship between fishery collapse/degradation and short- and long-term issues for food security, livelihoods, employment, and industrial and community resilience? How can we avoid situations in which the communities and people who may have contributed least to collapses/degradation end up paying the most for rebuilding and, indeed, may no longer be in a position where they can benefit from the results of their necessary sacrifices?

The geography of urban agriculture: New trends and challenges

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Duží Barbora

2017-09-01

Full Text Available In the article, which is a theoretical and conceptual introduction for the Special Issue of Moravian Geographical Reports on ‘New trends and challenges of urban agriculture in the context of Europe’, the authors resume and review diverging issues of urban agriculture, exploring and discussing them from a geographical perspective and in a wider context of the transformation of urban and rural spaces, urban regeneration and renewal, agricultural restructuring, multifunctionality, ecosystem services, land-use conflicts and social responsibility. After the introduction that depicts a changing role of agriculture in the context of urban and rural transformations, the current research on urban agriculture in Europe is summarised and reviewed. Then the main trends and concepts of growing and expanding urban agriculture are presented and discussed with a special emphasis on the challenges these pose to geographers.

Challenges and achievements - Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor construction

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Subramani, V.A.; Dhere, S.S.; Manoharan, V.; Subbaraman, P.

2010-01-01

Prototype fast breeder reactor presently under construction poses several challenges in materials, design and construction. The civil structure and equipment are of very large size and complex in nature. This paper presents the features of the design and construction of the PFBR excavation, raft, civil structure of the nuclear island connected buildings and reactor vault. This paper also brings out the details of the large size equipment of special stainless steel and handling structure for their lifting and placement inside the reactor vault. The paper is divided into three parts viz. introduction, challenges and achievements during construction of civil structures and erection of large size components. (author)

Perspective projection for variance pose face recognition from camera calibration

Science.gov (United States)

Fakhir, M. M.; Woo, W. L.; Chambers, J. A.; Dlay, S. S.

2016-04-01

Variance pose is an important research topic in face recognition. The alteration of distance parameters across variance pose face features is a challenging. We provide a solution for this problem using perspective projection for variance pose face recognition. Our method infers intrinsic camera parameters of the image which enable the projection of the image plane into 3D. After this, face box tracking and centre of eyes detection can be identified using our novel technique to verify the virtual face feature measurements. The coordinate system of the perspective projection for face tracking allows the holistic dimensions for the face to be fixed in different orientations. The training of frontal images and the rest of the poses on FERET database determine the distance from the centre of eyes to the corner of box face. The recognition system compares the gallery of images against different poses. The system initially utilises information on position of both eyes then focuses principally on closest eye in order to gather data with greater reliability. Differentiation between the distances and position of the right and left eyes is a unique feature of our work with our algorithm outperforming other state of the art algorithms thus enabling stable measurement in variance pose for each individual.

Full Body Pose Estimation During Occlusion using Multiple Cameras

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fihl, Preben; Cosar, Serhan

people is a very challenging problem for methods based on pictorials structure as for any other monocular pose estimation method. In this report we present work on a multi-view approach based on pictorial structures that integrate low level information from multiple calibrated cameras to improve the 2D...

Camera-pose estimation via projective Newton optimization on the manifold.

Science.gov (United States)

Sarkis, Michel; Diepold, Klaus

2012-04-01

Determining the pose of a moving camera is an important task in computer vision. In this paper, we derive a projective Newton algorithm on the manifold to refine the pose estimate of a camera. The main idea is to benefit from the fact that the 3-D rigid motion is described by the special Euclidean group, which is a Riemannian manifold. The latter is equipped with a tangent space defined by the corresponding Lie algebra. This enables us to compute the optimization direction, i.e., the gradient and the Hessian, at each iteration of the projective Newton scheme on the tangent space of the manifold. Then, the motion is updated by projecting back the variables on the manifold itself. We also derive another version of the algorithm that employs homeomorphic parameterization to the special Euclidean group. We test the algorithm on several simulated and real image data sets. Compared with the standard Newton minimization scheme, we are now able to obtain the full numerical formula of the Hessian with a 60% decrease in computational complexity. Compared with Levenberg-Marquardt, the results obtained are more accurate while having a rather similar complexity.

A review of cooperative and uncooperative spacecraft pose determination techniques for close-proximity operations

Science.gov (United States)

Opromolla, Roberto; Fasano, Giancarmine; Rufino, Giancarlo; Grassi, Michele

2017-08-01

The capability of an active spacecraft to accurately estimate its relative position and attitude (pose) with respect to an active/inactive, artificial/natural space object (target) orbiting in close-proximity is required to carry out various activities like formation flying, on-orbit servicing, active debris removal, and space exploration. According to the specific mission scenario, the pose determination task involves both theoretical and technological challenges related to the search for the most suitable algorithmic solution and sensor architecture, respectively. As regards the latter aspect, electro-optical sensors represent the best option as their use is compatible with mass and power limitation of micro and small satellites, and their measurements can be processed to estimate all the pose parameters. Overall, the degree of complexity of the challenges related to pose determination largely varies depending on the nature of the targets, which may be actively/passively cooperative, uncooperative but known, or uncooperative and unknown space objects. In this respect, while cooperative pose determination has been successfully demonstrated in orbit, the uncooperative case is still under study by universities, research centers, space agencies and private companies. However, in both the cases, the demand for space applications involving relative navigation maneuvers, also in close-proximity, for which pose determination capabilities are mandatory, is significantly increasing. In this framework, a review of state-of-the-art techniques and algorithms developed in the last decades for cooperative and uncooperative pose determination by processing data provided by electro-optical sensors is herein presented. Specifically, their main advantages and drawbacks in terms of achieved performance, computational complexity, and sensitivity to variability of pose and target geometry, are highlighted.

Sensing Strategies for Disambiguating among Multiple Objects in Known Poses.

Science.gov (United States)

1985-08-01

ELEMENT. PROIECT. TASK Artificial Inteligence Laboratory AE OKUI UBR 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 021.39 11. CONTROLLING OFFICE NAME AND ADDRESS 12...AD-Ali65 912 SENSING STRATEGIES FOR DISAMBIGURTING MONG MULTIPLE 1/1 OBJECTS IN KNOWN POSES(U) MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH CAMBRIDGE ARTIFICIAL ...or Dist Special 1 ’ MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY A. I. Memo 855 August, 1985 Sensing Strategies for

Communication perspectives on social networking and citizen journalism challenges to traditional newspapers

OpenAIRE

Katz, James E.

2011-01-01

Communication perspectives are presented on the challenges posed to traditional newspapers by social media and citizen journalism, with special reference to the United States. This is an important topic given the critical role investigative reporting, long the domain of newspapers, plays in fostering democratic practices. New Media and social networking technology are evaluated in terms of their impact on the newspaper enterprise. Alternative scenarios for future developments are examined as ...

Yoga Poses Increase Subjective Energy and State Self-Esteem in Comparison to 'Power Poses'.

Science.gov (United States)

Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka; Lantos, Dorottya; Bowden, Deborah

2017-01-01

Research on beneficial consequences of yoga focuses on the effects of yogic breathing and meditation. Less is known about the psychological effects of performing yoga postures. The present study investigated the effects of yoga poses on subjective sense of energy and self-esteem. The effects of yoga postures were compared to the effects of 'power poses,' which arguably increase the sense of power and self-confidence due to their association with interpersonal dominance (Carney et al., 2010). The study tested the novel prediction that yoga poses, which are not associated with interpersonal dominance but increase bodily energy, would increase the subjective feeling of energy and therefore increase self-esteem compared to 'high power' and 'low power' poses. A two factorial, between participants design was employed. Participants performed either two standing yoga poses with open front of the body ( n = 19), two standing yoga poses with covered front of the body ( n = 22), two expansive, high power poses ( n = 21), or two constrictive, low power poses ( n = 20) for 1-min each. The results showed that yoga poses in comparison to 'power poses' increased self-esteem. This effect was mediated by an increased subjective sense of energy and was observed when baseline trait self-esteem was controlled for. These results suggest that the effects of performing open, expansive body postures may be driven by processes other than the poses' association with interpersonal power and dominance. This study demonstrates that positive effects of yoga practice can occur after performing yoga poses for only 2 min.

Predicting binding poses and affinities for protein - ligand complexes in the 2015 D3R Grand Challenge using a physical model with a statistical parameter estimation

Science.gov (United States)

Grudinin, Sergei; Kadukova, Maria; Eisenbarth, Andreas; Marillet, Simon; Cazals, Frédéric

2016-09-01

The 2015 D3R Grand Challenge provided an opportunity to test our new model for the binding free energy of small molecules, as well as to assess our protocol to predict binding poses for protein-ligand complexes. Our pose predictions were ranked 3-9 for the HSP90 dataset, depending on the assessment metric. For the MAP4K dataset the ranks are very dispersed and equal to 2-35, depending on the assessment metric, which does not provide any insight into the accuracy of the method. The main success of our pose prediction protocol was the re-scoring stage using the recently developed Convex-PL potential. We make a thorough analysis of our docking predictions made with AutoDock Vina and discuss the effect of the choice of rigid receptor templates, the number of flexible residues in the binding pocket, the binding pocket size, and the benefits of re-scoring. However, the main challenge was to predict experimentally determined binding affinities for two blind test sets. Our affinity prediction model consisted of two terms, a pairwise-additive enthalpy, and a non pairwise-additive entropy. We trained the free parameters of the model with a regularized regression using affinity and structural data from the PDBBind database. Our model performed very well on the training set, however, failed on the two test sets. We explain the drawback and pitfalls of our model, in particular in terms of relative coverage of the test set by the training set and missed dynamical properties from crystal structures, and discuss different routes to improve it.

Animated pose templates for modeling and detecting human actions.

Science.gov (United States)

Yao, Benjamin Z; Nie, Bruce X; Liu, Zicheng; Zhu, Song-Chun

2014-03-01

family of optimization methods known as the Concave-Convex Procedure (CCCP) that converge to a local optimal solution. The inference algorithm consists of two components: 1) Detecting top candidates for the pose templates, and 2) computing the sequence of pose templates. Both are done by dynamic programming or, more precisely, beam search. In experiments, we demonstrate that this method is capable of discovering salient poses of actions as well as interactions with contextual objects. We test our method on several public action data sets and a challenging outdoor contextual action data set collected by ourselves. The results show that our model achieves comparable or better performance compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Boneless Pose Editing and Animation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bærentzen, Jakob Andreas; Hansen, Kristian Evers; Erleben, Kenny

2007-01-01

In this paper, we propose a pose editing and animation method for triangulated surfaces based on a user controlled partitioning of the model into deformable parts and rigid parts which are denoted handles. In our pose editing system, the user can sculpt a set of poses simply by transforming...... the handles for each pose. Using Laplacian editing, the deformable parts are deformed to match the handles. In our animation system the user can constrain one or several handles in order to define a new pose. New poses are interpolated from the examples poses, by solving a small non-linear optimization...... problem in order to obtain the interpolation weights. While the system can be used simply for building poses, it is also an animation system. The user can specify a path for a given constraint and the model is animated correspondingly....

Challenges Posed by Novel Psychoactive Substances – Middle East Perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maciej J. Bogusz

2017-04-01

Full Text Available New psychoactive substances (NPS are defined as substances of abuse, either in a pure form or a preparation, that are not controlled by the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs or the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, but which may pose a public health threat. In this context, the term “new” does not necessarily refer to new inventions but to substances that have recently become available or popular in a given society or country. This definition indicates that the problem of NPS is not new; however, the availability of any information via new communication technologies in the 21st century has enabled the spread of unwanted and socially harmful information, like information on the commercial availability of various NPS, offered in rising amounts and brands.

Laser Remediation of Threats Posed by Small Orbital Debris

Science.gov (United States)

Fork, Richard L.; Rogers, Jan R.; Hovater, Mary A.

2012-01-01

The continually increasing amount of orbital debris in near Earth space poses an increasing challenge to space situational awareness. Recent collisions of spacecraft caused abrupt increases in the density of both large and small debris in near Earth space. An especially challenging class of threats is that due to the increasing density of small (1 mm to 10 cm dimension) orbital debris. This small debris poses a serious threat since: (1) The high velocity enables even millimeter dimension debris to cause serious damage to vulnerable areas of space assets, e.g., detector windows; (2) The small size and large number of debris elements prevent adequate detection and cataloguing. We have identified solutions to this threat in the form of novel laser systems and novel ways of using these laser systems. While implementation of the solutions we identify is challenging we find approaches offering threat mitigation within time frames and at costs of practical interest. We base our analysis on the unique combination of coherent light specifically structured in both space and time and applied in novel ways entirely within the vacuum of space to deorbiting small debris. We compare and contrast laser based small debris removal strategies using ground based laser systems with strategies using space based laser systems. We find laser systems located and used entirely within space offer essential and decisive advantages over groundbased laser systems.

Improved pose and affinity predictions using different protocols tailored on the basis of data availability

Science.gov (United States)

Prathipati, Philip; Nagao, Chioko; Ahmad, Shandar; Mizuguchi, Kenji

2016-09-01

The D3R 2015 grand drug design challenge provided a set of blinded challenges for evaluating the applicability of our protocols for pose and affinity prediction. In the present study, we report the application of two different strategies for the two D3R protein targets HSP90 and MAP4K4. HSP90 is a well-studied target system with numerous co-crystal structures and SAR data. Furthermore the D3R HSP90 test compounds showed high structural similarity to existing HSP90 inhibitors in BindingDB. Thus, we adopted an integrated docking and scoring approach involving a combination of both pharmacophoric and heavy atom similarity alignments, local minimization and quantitative structure activity relationships modeling, resulting in the reasonable prediction of pose [with the root mean square deviation (RMSD) values of 1.75 Å for mean pose 1, 1.417 Å for the mean best pose and 1.85 Å for the mean all poses] and affinity (ROC AUC = 0.702 at 7.5 pIC50 cut-off and R = 0.45 for 180 compounds). The second protein, MAP4K4, represents a novel system with limited SAR and co-crystal structure data and little structural similarity of the D3R MAP4K4 test compounds to known MAP4K4 ligands. For this system, we implemented an exhaustive pose and affinity prediction protocol involving docking and scoring using the PLANTS software which considers side chain flexibility together with protein-ligand fingerprints analysis assisting in pose prioritization. This protocol through fares poorly in pose prediction (with the RMSD values of 4.346 Å for mean pose 1, 4.69 Å for mean best pose and 4.75 Å for mean all poses) and produced reasonable affinity prediction (AUC = 0.728 at 7.5 pIC50 cut-off and R = 0.67 for 18 compounds, ranked 1st among 80 submissions).

Pose-invariant face recognition using Markov random fields.

Science.gov (United States)

Ho, Huy Tho; Chellappa, Rama

2013-04-01

One of the key challenges for current face recognition techniques is how to handle pose variations between the probe and gallery face images. In this paper, we present a method for reconstructing the virtual frontal view from a given nonfrontal face image using Markov random fields (MRFs) and an efficient variant of the belief propagation algorithm. In the proposed approach, the input face image is divided into a grid of overlapping patches, and a globally optimal set of local warps is estimated to synthesize the patches at the frontal view. A set of possible warps for each patch is obtained by aligning it with images from a training database of frontal faces. The alignments are performed efficiently in the Fourier domain using an extension of the Lucas-Kanade algorithm that can handle illumination variations. The problem of finding the optimal warps is then formulated as a discrete labeling problem using an MRF. The reconstructed frontal face image can then be used with any face recognition technique. The two main advantages of our method are that it does not require manually selected facial landmarks or head pose estimation. In order to improve the performance of our pose normalization method in face recognition, we also present an algorithm for classifying whether a given face image is at a frontal or nonfrontal pose. Experimental results on different datasets are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Migrated esophageal stent posing a challenge for ventilation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nita D'souza

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Self-expandable esophageal stents are being commonly used for palliative treatment in advanced esophageal cancer patients to relieve dysphagia, prevent tracheoesophageal fistula, and facilitate symptomatic betterment. The modern covered stents reduce the ingrowth of the tumor but have seen an increase in the incidence of stent migrations. We report a rather complicated presentation of an esophageal stent for esophageal dilatation and a challenging management of a difficult tracheostomy.

Pose Estimation of Interacting People using Pictorial Structures

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fihl, Preben; Moeslund, Thomas B.

2010-01-01

Pose estimation of people have had great progress in recent years but so far research has dealt with single persons. In this paper we address some of the challenges that arise when doing pose estimation of interacting people. We build on the pictorial structures framework and make important...... contributions by combining color-based appearance and edge information using a measure of the local quality of the appearance feature. In this way we not only combine the two types of features but dynamically find the optimal weighting of them. We further enable the method to handle occlusions by searching...... a foreground mask for possible occluded body parts and then applying extra strong kinematic constraints to find the true occluded body parts. The effect of applying our two contributions are show through both qualitative and quantitative tests and show a clear improvement on the ability to correctly localize...

Transition Program: The Challenges Faced by Special Needs Students in Gaining Work Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Alias, Aliza

2014-01-01

Transition program for special needs students is known to open opportunities for students with learning disabilities to gain work experience in actual work environment. The program provides training activities and also an opportunity to go for internship to gain work experience. Therefore, this study is to identify the challenges faced by special…

Challenges in care of the child with special health care needs in a resource limited environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edwin Ehi Eseigbe

2013-01-01

Full Text Available To identify challenges encountered in the care of children with special health care needs in a resource limited environment a 10 year-old child with a diagnosis of Tuberous Sclerosis was studied. Challenges identified were in: making a definitive diagnosis, provision of adequate care, cost of care, meeting parental expectations and accessing community support for the child and family. Available specialist health care and related services, including community rehabilitation, were provided for the child and family. The study highlights the need for improved community awareness, development in the provision of specialist health care services and institution of governmental policies that identify, support and protect children with special health care needs.

Pose tracking for augmented reality applications in outdoor archaeological sites

Science.gov (United States)

Younes, Georges; Asmar, Daniel; Elhajj, Imad; Al-Harithy, Howayda

2017-01-01

In recent years, agencies around the world have invested huge amounts of effort toward digitizing many aspects of the world's cultural heritage. Of particular importance is the digitization of outdoor archaeological sites. In the spirit of valorization of this digital information, many groups have developed virtual or augmented reality (AR) computer applications themed around a particular archaeological object. The problem of pose tracking in outdoor AR applications is addressed. Different positional systems are analyzed, resulting in the selection of a monocular camera-based user tracker. The limitations that challenge this technique from map generation, scale, anchoring, to lighting conditions are analyzed and systematically addressed. Finally, as a case study, our pose tracking system is implemented within an AR experience in the Byblos Roman theater in Lebanon.

The dire need for primary care specialization in India: Concerns and challenges

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nafis Faizi

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Primary health care is an evidence-based priority, but it is still inadequately supported in many countries. Ironically, on one hand, India is a popular destination for medical tourism due to the affordability of high quality of health care and, on the other hand, ill health and health care are the main reasons for becoming poor through medical poverty traps. Surprisingly, this is despite the fact that India was committed to 'Health for All by 2000' in the past, and is committed to 'Universal Health Coverage' by 2022! Clearly, these commitments are destined to fail unless something is done to improve the present state of affairs. This study argues for the need to develop primary care as a specialization in India as a remedial measure to reform its health care in order to truly commit to the commitments. Three critical issues for this specialization are discussed in this review: (1 The dynamic and distinct nature of primary care as opposed to other medical specializations, (2 the intersection of primary care and public health which can be facilitated by such a specialization, and (3 research in primary care including the development of screening and referral tools for early diagnosis of cancers, researches for evidence-based interventions via health programs, and primary care epidemiology. Despite the potential challenges and difficulties, India is a country in dire need for primary care specialization. India's experience in providing low-cost and high quality healthcare for medical tourism presages a more cost-effective and efficient primary care with due attention and specialization.

The dire need for primary care specialization in India: Concerns and challenges.

Science.gov (United States)

Faizi, Nafis; Khalique, Najam; Ahmad, Anees; Shah, Mohammad Salman

2016-01-01

Primary health care is an evidence-based priority, but it is still inadequately supported in many countries. Ironically, on one hand, India is a popular destination for medical tourism due to the affordability of high quality of health care and, on the other hand, ill health and health care are the main reasons for becoming poor through medical poverty traps. Surprisingly, this is despite the fact that India was committed to 'Health for All by 2000' in the past, and is committed to 'Universal Health Coverage' by 2022! Clearly, these commitments are destined to fail unless something is done to improve the present state of affairs. This study argues for the need to develop primary care as a specialization in India as a remedial measure to reform its health care in order to truly commit to the commitments. Three critical issues for this specialization are discussed in this review: (1) The dynamic and distinct nature of primary care as opposed to other medical specializations, (2) the intersection of primary care and public health which can be facilitated by such a specialization, and (3) research in primary care including the development of screening and referral tools for early diagnosis of cancers, researches for evidence-based interventions via health programs, and primary care epidemiology. Despite the potential challenges and difficulties, India is a country in dire need for primary care specialization. India's experience in providing low-cost and high quality healthcare for medical tourism presages a more cost-effective and efficient primary care with due attention and specialization.

Perturbation-Based Regularization for Signal Estimation in Linear Discrete Ill-posed Problems

KAUST Repository

Suliman, Mohamed Abdalla Elhag; Ballal, Tarig; Al-Naffouri, Tareq Y.

2016-01-01

Estimating the values of unknown parameters from corrupted measured data faces a lot of challenges in ill-posed problems. In such problems, many fundamental estimation methods fail to provide a meaningful stabilized solution. In this work, we propose a new regularization approach and a new regularization parameter selection approach for linear least-squares discrete ill-posed problems. The proposed approach is based on enhancing the singular-value structure of the ill-posed model matrix to acquire a better solution. Unlike many other regularization algorithms that seek to minimize the estimated data error, the proposed approach is developed to minimize the mean-squared error of the estimator which is the objective in many typical estimation scenarios. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated by applying it to a large set of real-world discrete ill-posed problems. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms a set of benchmark regularization methods in most cases. In addition, the approach also enjoys the lowest runtime and offers the highest level of robustness amongst all the tested benchmark regularization methods.

Perturbation-Based Regularization for Signal Estimation in Linear Discrete Ill-posed Problems

KAUST Repository

Suliman, Mohamed Abdalla Elhag

2016-11-29

Estimating the values of unknown parameters from corrupted measured data faces a lot of challenges in ill-posed problems. In such problems, many fundamental estimation methods fail to provide a meaningful stabilized solution. In this work, we propose a new regularization approach and a new regularization parameter selection approach for linear least-squares discrete ill-posed problems. The proposed approach is based on enhancing the singular-value structure of the ill-posed model matrix to acquire a better solution. Unlike many other regularization algorithms that seek to minimize the estimated data error, the proposed approach is developed to minimize the mean-squared error of the estimator which is the objective in many typical estimation scenarios. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated by applying it to a large set of real-world discrete ill-posed problems. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms a set of benchmark regularization methods in most cases. In addition, the approach also enjoys the lowest runtime and offers the highest level of robustness amongst all the tested benchmark regularization methods.

Pose Space Surface Manipulation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yusuke Yoshiyasu

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Example-based mesh deformation techniques produce natural and realistic shapes by learning the space of deformations from examples. However, skeleton-based methods cannot manipulate a global mesh structure naturally, whereas the mesh-based approaches based on a translational control do not allow the user to edit a local mesh structure intuitively. This paper presents an example-driven mesh editing framework that achieves both global and local pose manipulations. The proposed system is built with a surface deformation method based on a two-step linear optimization technique and achieves direct manipulations of a model surface using translational and rotational controls. With the translational control, the user can create a model in natural poses easily. The rotational control can adjust the local pose intuitively by bending and twisting. We encode example deformations with a rotation-invariant mesh representation which handles large rotations in examples. To incorporate example deformations, we infer a pose from the handle translations/rotations and perform pose space interpolation, thereby avoiding involved nonlinear optimization. With the two-step linear approach combined with the proposed multiresolution deformation method, we can edit models at interactive rates without losing important deformation effects such as muscle bulging.

Automatic generation of statistical pose and shape models for articulated joints.

Science.gov (United States)

Xin Chen; Graham, Jim; Hutchinson, Charles; Muir, Lindsay

2014-02-01

Statistical analysis of motion patterns of body joints is potentially useful for detecting and quantifying pathologies. However, building a statistical motion model across different subjects remains a challenging task, especially for a complex joint like the wrist. We present a novel framework for simultaneous registration and segmentation of multiple 3-D (CT or MR) volumes of different subjects at various articulated positions. The framework starts with a pose model generated from 3-D volumes captured at different articulated positions of a single subject (template). This initial pose model is used to register the template volume to image volumes from new subjects. During this process, the Grow-Cut algorithm is used in an iterative refinement of the segmentation of the bone along with the pose parameters. As each new subject is registered and segmented, the pose model is updated, improving the accuracy of successive registrations. We applied the algorithm to CT images of the wrist from 25 subjects, each at five different wrist positions and demonstrated that it performed robustly and accurately. More importantly, the resulting segmentations allowed a statistical pose model of the carpal bones to be generated automatically without interaction. The evaluation results show that our proposed framework achieved accurate registration with an average mean target registration error of 0.34 ±0.27 mm. The automatic segmentation results also show high consistency with the ground truth obtained semi-automatically. Furthermore, we demonstrated the capability of the resulting statistical pose and shape models by using them to generate a measurement tool for scaphoid-lunate dissociation diagnosis, which achieved 90% sensitivity and specificity.

Statistical Model-Based Face Pose Estimation

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

GE Xinliang; YANG Jie; LI Feng; WANG Huahua

2007-01-01

A robust face pose estimation approach is proposed by using face shape statistical model approach and pose parameters are represented by trigonometric functions. The face shape statistical model is firstly built by analyzing the face shapes from different people under varying poses. The shape alignment is vital in the process of building the statistical model. Then, six trigonometric functions are employed to represent the face pose parameters. Lastly, the mapping function is constructed between face image and face pose by linearly relating different parameters. The proposed approach is able to estimate different face poses using a few face training samples. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate its efficiency and accuracy.

Surety of the nation`s critical infrastructures: The challenge restructuring poses to the telecommunications sector

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cox, R.; Drennen, T.E.; Gilliom, L.; Harris, D.L.; Kunsman, D.M.; Skroch, M.J.

1998-04-01

The telecommunications sector plays a pivotal role in the system of increasingly connected and interdependent networks that make up national infrastructure. An assessment of the probable structure and function of the bit-moving industry in the twenty-first century must include issues associated with the surety of telecommunications. The term surety, as used here, means confidence in the acceptable behavior of a system in both intended and unintended circumstances. This paper outlines various engineering approaches to surety in systems, generally, and in the telecommunications infrastructure, specifically. It uses the experience and expectations of the telecommunications system of the US as an example of the global challenges. The paper examines the principal factors underlying the change to more distributed systems in this sector, assesses surety issues associated with these changes, and suggests several possible strategies for mitigation. It also studies the ramifications of what could happen if this sector became a target for those seeking to compromise a nation`s security and economic well being. Experts in this area generally agree that the U. S. telecommunications sector will eventually respond in a way that meets market demands for surety. Questions remain open, however, about confidence in the telecommunications sector and the nation`s infrastructure during unintended circumstances--such as those posed by information warfare or by cascading software failures. Resolution of these questions is complicated by the lack of clear accountability of the private and the public sectors for the surety of telecommunications.

Study of special challenges for NDT-methods on nuclear structures

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Maack, Stefan; Wiggenhauser, Herbert [BAM Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung, Berlin (Germany); Thunell, Bjoern [Scanscot Technology AB, Lund (Sweden)

2015-07-01

The special design of buildings, constructed for nuclear power plants is a particular challenge for the nondestructive testing in the building industry. In particular the major component thicknesses, the degree of reinforcement and surface coating systems make the application of NDT methods difficult. The studies first steps were undertaken to determine to which extent established applications of these techniques are useable in the field of infrastructure buildings. Methods have been evaluated that are already state of the art. So for example the ground penetrating radar was used for locating metallic mounting parts. Furthermore, the low-lying internal structure of the containment was investigated with the ultrasonic method.

Consistent Treatment of Variables and Causation Poses a Challenge for Behavioral Research Methods: A Commentary on Nesselroade and Molenaar (2016).

Science.gov (United States)

Markus, Keith A

2016-01-01

Nesselroade and Molenaar presented the ideographic filter as a proposal for analyzing lawful regularities in behavioral research. The proposal highlights an inconsistency that poses a challenge for behavioral research more generally. One can distinguish a broadly Humean approach from a broadly non-Humean approach as they relate to variables and to causation. Nesselroade and Molenaar rejected a Humean approach to latent variables that characterizes them as nothing more than summaries of their manifest indicators. By contrast, they tacitly accepted a Humean approach to causes characterized as nothing more than summaries of their manifest causal effects. A non-Humean treatment of variables coupled with a Humean treatment of causation creates a theoretical tension within their proposal. For example, one can interpret the same model elements as simultaneously representing both variables and causes. Future refinement of the ideographic filter proposal to address this tension could follow any of a number of strategies.

Collaborative Random Faces-Guided Encoders for Pose-Invariant Face Representation Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Shao, Ming; Zhang, Yizhe; Fu, Yun

2018-04-01

Learning discriminant face representation for pose-invariant face recognition has been identified as a critical issue in visual learning systems. The challenge lies in the drastic changes of facial appearances between the test face and the registered face. To that end, we propose a high-level feature learning framework called "collaborative random faces (RFs)-guided encoders" toward this problem. The contributions of this paper are three fold. First, we propose a novel supervised autoencoder that is able to capture the high-level identity feature despite of pose variations. Second, we enrich the identity features by replacing the target values of conventional autoencoders with random signals (RFs in this paper), which are unique for each subject under different poses. Third, we further improve the performance of the framework by incorporating deep convolutional neural network facial descriptors and linking discriminative identity features from different RFs for the augmented identity features. Finally, we conduct face identification experiments on Multi-PIE database, and face verification experiments on labeled faces in the wild and YouTube Face databases, where face recognition rate and verification accuracy with Receiver Operating Characteristic curves are rendered. In addition, discussions of model parameters and connections with the existing methods are provided. These experiments demonstrate that our learning system works fairly well on handling pose variations.

Web-based visualisation of head pose and facial expressions changes: monitoring human activity using depth data

OpenAIRE

Kalliatakis, Grigorios; Vidakis, Nikolaos; Triantafyllidis, Georgios

2017-01-01

Despite significant recent advances in the field of head pose estimation and facial expression recognition, raising the cognitive level when analysing human activity presents serious challenges to current concepts. Motivated by the need of generating comprehensible visual representations from different sets of data, we introduce a system capable of monitoring human activity through head pose and facial expression changes, utilising an affordable 3D sensing technology (Microsoft Kinect sensor)...

Juggling Roles and Making Changes: Suggestions for Meeting the Challenges of Being a Special Educator.

Science.gov (United States)

Luckner, John L.

1996-01-01

Special educators experiencing stress are urged to take greater responsibility for their own well-being by maintaining a balanced lifestyle, planning for success, expanding their support network, creating a positive belief system, making learning a lifelong priority, and learning to cope with complexities and challenges. (DB)

Pengenalan Pose Tangan Menggunakan HuMoment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dina Budhi Utami

2017-02-01

Full Text Available Computer vision yang didasarkan pada pengenalan bentuk memiliki banyak potensi dalam interaksi manusia dan komputer. Pose tangan dapat dijadikan simbol interaksi manusia dengan komputer seperti halnya pada penggunaan berbagai pose tangan pada bahasa isyarat. Berbagai pose tangan dapat digunakan untuk menggantikan fungsi mouse, untuk mengendalikan robot, dan sebagainya. Penelitian ini difokuskan pada pembangunan sistem pengenalan pose tangan menggunakan HuMoment. Proses pengenalan pose tangan dimulai dengan melakukan segmentasi citra masukan untuk menghasilkan citra ROI (Region of Interest yaitu area telapak tangan. Selanjutnya dilakukan proses deteksi tepi. Kemudian dilakukan ekstraksi nilai HuMoment. Nilai HuMoment dikuantisasikan ke dalam bukukode yang dihasilkan dari proses pelatihan menggunakan K-Means. Proses kuantisasi dilakukan dengan menghitung nilai Euclidean Distance terkecil antara nilai HuMomment citra masukan dan bukukode. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian, nilai akurasi sistem dalam mengenali pose tangan adalah 88.57%.

A deep learning approach for pose estimation from volumetric OCT data.

Science.gov (United States)

Gessert, Nils; Schlüter, Matthias; Schlaefer, Alexander

2018-05-01

Tracking the pose of instruments is a central problem in image-guided surgery. For microscopic scenarios, optical coherence tomography (OCT) is increasingly used as an imaging modality. OCT is suitable for accurate pose estimation due to its micrometer range resolution and volumetric field of view. However, OCT image processing is challenging due to speckle noise and reflection artifacts in addition to the images' 3D nature. We address pose estimation from OCT volume data with a new deep learning-based tracking framework. For this purpose, we design a new 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture to directly predict the 6D pose of a small marker geometry from OCT volumes. We use a hexapod robot to automatically acquire labeled data points which we use to train 3D CNN architectures for multi-output regression. We use this setup to provide an in-depth analysis on deep learning-based pose estimation from volumes. Specifically, we demonstrate that exploiting volume information for pose estimation yields higher accuracy than relying on 2D representations with depth information. Supporting this observation, we provide quantitative and qualitative results that 3D CNNs effectively exploit the depth structure of marker objects. Regarding the deep learning aspect, we present efficient design principles for 3D CNNs, making use of insights from the 2D deep learning community. In particular, we present Inception3D as a new architecture which performs best for our application. We show that our deep learning approach reaches errors at our ground-truth label's resolution. We achieve a mean average error of 14.89 ± 9.3 µm and 0.096 ± 0.072° for position and orientation learning, respectively. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mickey Mouse poses with a portrait of Ronald McNair

Science.gov (United States)

1999-01-01

In the gymnasium of Ronald McNair Magnet School in Cocoa, Fla., Mickey Mouse poses with a portrait of NASA astronaut Ronald McNair. The portrait was presented to the school by Walt Disney World during a tribute to McNair. The school had previously been renamed for the fallen astronaut who was one of a crew of seven who lost their lives during an accident following launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986.

The challenge of the standardization of nursing specializations in Europe.

Science.gov (United States)

Ranchal, A; Jolley, M J; Keogh, J; Lepiesová, M; Rasku, T; Zeller, S

2015-12-01

The evolution of health care is driving the need for specialist nursing knowledge. Specialist nurses have undertaken a formal training that focuses on a specific clinical area or population and are legitimated by a professional award or legal status. Specialist nurses are better able to provide the most specific and most appropriate care for both people and populations. This paper considers nursing's loose understanding of 'specialization' and the impact this has on those who seek employment outside their own nation but within the family of nations known as the European Union (EU). There is a lack of standardization for nursing specializations across the European Union that leads to lack of mobility across countries. Reports were reviewed from within the European Union, including specialist nursing groups and regulatory nursing bodies. Nurse specialists can be regarded as operating at nursing's 'leading edge'; however, it is here that nursing lacks organization and common standards. This is readily apparent in a EU bound together by the principle of freedom of movement and common professional and academic standards. It is now time for European Union nurses to look beyond the common standards for pre-registration courses and to consider the development of common standards for specialist nursing. Historical attempts to achieve common standards for specialist nursing have largely been unsuccessful due to the diversity of approaches to nurse specialization. It is time now for this challenge to be re-addressed so that specialist nurses can more freely work throughout the European Union. There is a pressing need for policy makers to define specialist nursing and to enable European Union-wide standards. © 2015 International Council of Nurses.

Problem posing reflections and applications

CERN Document Server

Brown, Stephen I

2014-01-01

As a result of the editors' collaborative teaching at Harvard in the late 1960s, they produced a ground-breaking work -- The Art Of Problem Posing -- which related problem posing strategies to the already popular activity of problem solving. It took the concept of problem posing and created strategies for engaging in that activity as a central theme in mathematics education. Based in part upon that work and also upon a number of articles by its authors, other members of the mathematics education community began to apply and expand upon their ideas. This collection of thirty readings is a tes

Special issues as criterion for journal quality evaluation: Letter to editor

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dadkhah Mehdi

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Predatory publishers are defined as publishers who have financial goals. This definition was introduced for the first time by Jeffrey Beall (2012. In some predatory publishers, we can find some papers that are not related to journal's aim and scope. These journals create special issues in order to publish papers that are not related to journal's aim and scope. Thus, we are faced with a question of how the editor of these journals could evaluate these papers. In some trusted journals, editor invites guest editors for special issues, which are related to journal's aim and scope. On the other hand predatory publishers, publish papers without any external reviewers or guest editors. In addition, some journals that publish irrelevant papers in regular issues are also found. This problem can be seen especially in some biological or life science journals. It seems that these problems pose new challenge for the academic world.

Generalized Hough transform based time invariant action recognition with 3D pose information

Science.gov (United States)

Muench, David; Huebner, Wolfgang; Arens, Michael

2014-10-01

Human action recognition has emerged as an important field in the computer vision community due to its large number of applications such as automatic video surveillance, content based video-search and human robot interaction. In order to cope with the challenges that this large variety of applications present, recent research has focused more on developing classifiers able to detect several actions in more natural and unconstrained video sequences. The invariance discrimination tradeoff in action recognition has been addressed by utilizing a Generalized Hough Transform. As a basis for action representation we transform 3D poses into a robust feature space, referred to as pose descriptors. For each action class a one-dimensional temporal voting space is constructed. Votes are generated from associating pose descriptors with their position in time relative to the end of an action sequence. Training data consists of manually segmented action sequences. In the detection phase valid human 3D poses are assumed as input, e.g. originating from 3D sensors or monocular pose reconstruction methods. The human 3D poses are normalized to gain view-independence and transformed into (i) relative limb-angle space to ensure independence of non-adjacent joints or (ii) geometric features. In (i) an action descriptor consists of the relative angles between limbs and their temporal derivatives. In (ii) the action descriptor consists of different geometric features. In order to circumvent the problem of time-warping we propose to use a codebook of prototypical 3D poses which is generated from sample sequences of 3D motion capture data. This idea is in accordance with the concept of equivalence classes in action space. Results of the codebook method are presented using the Kinect sensor and the CMU Motion Capture Database.

Children on the Boundary: The Challenge Posed by Children with Conduct Disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Cohen, Mary Kemper

This synthesis of the literature examines the characteristics of children with conduct disorders and the special education placement dilemmas they present. The paper distinguishes among the terms delinquency, social maladjustment, conduct disorder, and behavioral disorder. The paper discusses eligibility of students with conduct disorders for…

Power distribution faced with the challenges posed by competition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Angelier, J.P.; Hadjsaid, N.; Sabonnadiere, J.C.

2009-01-01

The introduction of liberalization, the increasing share of decentralized electricity generation, the aging of electrical infrastructures, ambitious generation objectives and technological evolution are the key drivers that require substantial investments in the distribution grid. The most urgent challenges are to adapt the network architecture and operation, modernize and improve metering equipment, renovate existing facilities. The Energy Regulatory Commission sets the price to be paid by users of the distribution grid; this price is set rather low, in order to encourage the system operator to make productivity gains. But resultant low income may deprive the operator of the financial resources needed to adapt the system to the new conditions. (authors)

The competitive challenge in banking

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boot, A.W.A.; Schmeits, A.

2005-01-01

The increasingly competitive environment poses challenges to bankers. This paper emphasizes relationship banking as a prime source of the banks' comparative advantage. The proliferation of transaction-oriented banking (trading and financial market activities) does however seriously challenge

Effects of the Problem-Posing Approach on Students' Problem Solving Skills and Metacognitive Awareness in Science Education

Science.gov (United States)

Akben, Nimet

2018-05-01

The interrelationship between mathematics and science education has frequently been emphasized, and common goals and approaches have often been adopted between disciplines. Improving students' problem-solving skills in mathematics and science education has always been given special attention; however, the problem-posing approach which plays a key role in mathematics education has not been commonly utilized in science education. As a result, the purpose of this study was to better determine the effects of the problem-posing approach on students' problem-solving skills and metacognitive awareness in science education. This was a quasi-experimental based study conducted with 61 chemistry and 40 physics students; a problem-solving inventory and a metacognitive awareness inventory were administered to participants both as a pre-test and a post-test. During the 2017-2018 academic year, problem-solving activities based on the problem-posing approach were performed with the participating students during their senior year in various university chemistry and physics departments throughout the Republic of Turkey. The study results suggested that structured, semi-structured, and free problem-posing activities improve students' problem-solving skills and metacognitive awareness. These findings indicated not only the usefulness of integrating problem-posing activities into science education programs but also the need for further research into this question.

Exemplar-based human action pose correction.

Science.gov (United States)

Shen, Wei; Deng, Ke; Bai, Xiang; Leyvand, Tommer; Guo, Baining; Tu, Zhuowen

2014-07-01

The launch of Xbox Kinect has built a very successful computer vision product and made a big impact on the gaming industry. This sheds lights onto a wide variety of potential applications related to action recognition. The accurate estimation of human poses from the depth image is universally a critical step. However, existing pose estimation systems exhibit failures when facing severe occlusion. In this paper, we propose an exemplar-based method to learn to correct the initially estimated poses. We learn an inhomogeneous systematic bias by leveraging the exemplar information within a specific human action domain. Furthermore, as an extension, we learn a conditional model by incorporation of pose tags to further increase the accuracy of pose correction. In the experiments, significant improvements on both joint-based skeleton correction and tag prediction are observed over the contemporary approaches, including what is delivered by the current Kinect system. Our experiments for the facial landmark correction also illustrate that our algorithm can improve the accuracy of other detection/estimation systems.

Camera pose estimation for augmented reality in a small indoor dynamic scene

Science.gov (United States)

Frikha, Rawia; Ejbali, Ridha; Zaied, Mourad

2017-09-01

Camera pose estimation remains a challenging task for augmented reality (AR) applications. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)-based methods are able to estimate the six degrees of freedom camera motion while constructing a map of an unknown environment. However, these methods do not provide any reference for where to insert virtual objects since they do not have any information about scene structure and may fail in cases of occlusion of three-dimensional (3-D) map points or dynamic objects. This paper presents a real-time monocular piece wise planar SLAM method using the planar scene assumption. Using planar structures in the mapping process allows rendering virtual objects in a meaningful way on the one hand and improving the precision of the camera pose and the quality of 3-D reconstruction of the environment by adding constraints on 3-D points and poses in the optimization process on the other hand. We proposed to benefit from the 3-D planes rigidity motion in the tracking process to enhance the system robustness in the case of dynamic scenes. Experimental results show that using a constrained planar scene improves our system accuracy and robustness compared with the classical SLAM systems.

Dr. David Brown poses with a portrait of Ronald McNair

Science.gov (United States)

1999-01-01

In the gymnasium of Ronald McNair Magnet School in Cocoa, Fla., Dr. David Brown, a NASA astronaut, poses with a portrait of NASA astronaut Ronald McNair. The portrait was presented to the school by Walt Disney World during a tribute to McNair. The school had previously been renamed for the fallen astronaut who was one of a crew of seven who lost their lives during an accident following launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986.

Students’ Creativity: Problem Posing in Structured Situation

Science.gov (United States)

Amalina, I. K.; Amirudin, M.; Budiarto, M. T.

2018-01-01

This is a qualitative research concerning on students’ creativity on problem posing task. The study aimed at describing the students’ creative thinking ability to pose the mathematics problem in structured situations with varied condition of given problems. In order to find out the students’ creative thinking ability, an analysis of mathematics problem posing test based on fluency, novelty, and flexibility and interview was applied for categorizing students’ responses on that task. The data analysis used the quality of problem posing and categorized in 4 level of creativity. The results revealed from 29 secondary students grade 8, a student in CTL (Creative Thinking Level) 1 met the fluency. A student in CTL 2 met the novelty, while a student in CTL 3 met both fluency and novelty and no one in CTL 4. These results are affected by students’ mathematical experience. The findings of this study highlight that student’s problem posing creativity are dependent on their experience in mathematics learning and from the point of view of which students start to pose problem.

Pediatric neurocysticercosis: current challenges and future prospects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Singhi P

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Pratibha Singhi, Arushi Gahlot SainiDepartment of Pediatrics, Pediatric Neurology and Neurodevelopment Unit, Advanced Pediatrics Centre, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, IndiaAbstract: Neurocysticercosis (NCC is an acquired infection of the nervous system caused by encysted larvae of Taenia solium. It is a major cause of epilepsy in the tropics and the commonest cause of focal seizures in North Indian children. T. solium teniasis-cysticercosis is considered a parasitic “Neglected Tropical Diseases” endemic throughout Southeast Asia. NCC in children has pleomorphic manifestations depending on the location, number and viability of the cysts, and host response. Even with advancing knowledge of the disease manifestations, many aspects related to diagnosis and treatment, particularly in children, still remain controversial and pose challenges to clinical practice. There is no gold standard test to diagnose NCC and the management recommendations are still emerging. This review provides an overview of diagnosis of NCC in children and its management with special focus on current challenges and future prospects.Keywords: neurocysticercosis, children, epilepsy, ring enhancing lesions, pigs

Addressing the main challenges of energy security in the twenty-first century – Contributions of the conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Markovska, Natasa; Duić, Neven; Mathiesen, Brian Vad; Guzović, Zvonimir; Piacentino, Antonio; Schlör, Holger; Lund, Henrik

2016-01-01

Climate change and fossil fuel reserve depletion both pose challenges for energy security and for wellbeing in general. The top ten among them include: Decarbonising the world economy; Enhancing the energy efficiency and energy savings in buildings; Advancing the energy technologies; Moving towards energy systems based on variable renewables; Electrifying the transport and some industrial processes; Liberalizing and extending the energy markets; Integrating energy sectors to Smart Energy Systems; Making the cities and communities smart; Diversifying the energy sources; and Building more biorefineries. Presenting the contributions of selected conference papers published in the special issues of leading scientific journals (including all the papers from the current Energy special issue), this review demonstrates the capacity of the Conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems for generation of knowledge which could serve as the centrepiece of a pertinent response to those challenges. - Highlights: • Top ten challenges of energy security in the twenty-first century identified. • Selected SDEWES contributions analysed against the identified challenges. • The role of SDEWES as knowledge generator towards addressing the identified challenges credibly demonstrated.

Structural interface parameters are discriminatory in recognising near-native poses of protein-protein interactions.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sony Malhotra

Full Text Available Interactions at the molecular level in the cellular environment play a very crucial role in maintaining the physiological functioning of the cell. These molecular interactions exist at varied levels viz. protein-protein interactions, protein-nucleic acid interactions or protein-small molecules interactions. Presently in the field, these interactions and their mechanisms mark intensively studied areas. Molecular interactions can also be studied computationally using the approach named as Molecular Docking. Molecular docking employs search algorithms to predict the possible conformations for interacting partners and then calculates interaction energies. However, docking proposes number of solutions as different docked poses and hence offers a serious challenge to identify the native (or near native structures from the pool of these docked poses. Here, we propose a rigorous scoring scheme called DockScore which can be used to rank the docked poses and identify the best docked pose out of many as proposed by docking algorithm employed. The scoring identifies the optimal interactions between the two protein partners utilising various features of the putative interface like area, short contacts, conservation, spatial clustering and the presence of positively charged and hydrophobic residues. DockScore was first trained on a set of 30 protein-protein complexes to determine the weights for different parameters. Subsequently, we tested the scoring scheme on 30 different protein-protein complexes and native or near-native structure were assigned the top rank from a pool of docked poses in 26 of the tested cases. We tested the ability of DockScore to discriminate likely dimer interactions that differ substantially within a homologous family and also demonstrate that DOCKSCORE can distinguish correct pose for all 10 recent CAPRI targets.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgaard, Ciara Therése

2004-01-01

The focus of this article is the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the extent to which it can be said that the Special Court has already challenged, or will, in the future, challenge the tradition of impunity for gender-based crimes. In this regard, an analysis is undertaken of the Special Court......'s Statute, Rules of Procedure and Evidence and practice to date, in order to determine its treatment of gender-based crimes and whether it can be said that the Special Court for Sierra Leone challenges the tradition of impunity for gender-based crimes. Udgivelsesdato: december 2004...

Conceiving Human Interaction by Visualising Depth Data of Head Pose Changes and Emotion Recognition via Facial Expressions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kalliatakis, Grigorios; Stergiou, A.G.; Vidakis, Nikolaos

2017-01-01

Affective computing in general and human activity and intention analysis in particular comprise a rapidly-growing field of research. Head pose and emotion changes present serious challenges when applied to player’s training and ludology experience in serious games, or analysis of customer

Pose Planning for the Feed Support System of FAST

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rui Yao

2014-01-01

Full Text Available A six-cable driven parallel manipulator and an A-B rotator in the feed support system of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST are adopted for realizing the position and pose of nine feeds. The six-cable driven parallel manipulator is a flexible mechanism, which may not be stably controlled due to a small cable tension. The A-B rotator is a rigid mechanism, and its stability and accuracy can be improved by small pose angle. Based on the different characteristics, a pose planning function is presented. The optimization target of the pose planning function is to get the smallest pose angle of the A-B rotator, and the constraint condition can reflect the controllability of the six-cable driven parallel manipulator. Then, the pose planning realization process of the feed support system is proposed. Based on the pose planning method, optimized pose angles of the feed support system for the nine feeds are obtained, which suggests that the pose angle of the six-cable driven parallel manipulator changes from 0° to 14° and the pose angle of the A-B rotator changes from 0° to 26.4°.

Challenges in Type 1 diabetes management in South East Asia: Descriptive situational assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jothydev Kesavadev

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Treatment of type 1 diabetes is a challenging issue in South East Asia. Unlike in the developed countries, patients have to procure insulin, glucometer strips and other treatment facilities from their own pockets. Coupled with poor resources are the difficulties with diagnosis, insulin initiation, insulin storage, marital and emotional challenges. Being a disease affecting only a minority of people, it is largely ignored by the governments and policy makers. Comprehensive diagnostic, treatment and team based educational facilities are available only in the speciality diabetes centers in the private sector whereas majority of the subjects with type 1 diabetes are from a poor socio-economic background. Unlike in the Western world, being known as a diabetes patient is a social sigma and poses huge emotional burden living with the disease and getting married. Even with best of the resources, long-term treatment of type 1 diabetes still remains a huge challenge across the globe. In this review, authors from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh detail the country-specific challenges and discuss the possible solutions.

Challenges in Type 1 diabetes management in South East Asia: Descriptive situational assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Kesavadev, Jothydev; Sadikot, Shaukat M; Saboo, Banshi; Shrestha, Dina; Jawad, Fatema; Azad, Kishwar; Wijesuriya, Mahendra Arunashanthi; Latt, Tint Swe; Kalra, Sanjay

2014-09-01

Treatment of type 1 diabetes is a challenging issue in South East Asia. Unlike in the developed countries, patients have to procure insulin, glucometer strips and other treatment facilities from their own pockets. Coupled with poor resources are the difficulties with diagnosis, insulin initiation, insulin storage, marital and emotional challenges. Being a disease affecting only a minority of people, it is largely ignored by the governments and policy makers. Comprehensive diagnostic, treatment and team based educational facilities are available only in the speciality diabetes centers in the private sector whereas majority of the subjects with type 1 diabetes are from a poor socio-economic background. Unlike in the Western world, being known as a diabetes patient is a social sigma and poses huge emotional burden living with the disease and getting married. Even with best of the resources, long-term treatment of type 1 diabetes still remains a huge challenge across the globe. In this review, authors from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh detail the country-specific challenges and discuss the possible solutions.

Cooperation challenges for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Swart, B.

2007-01-01

While the Agreement between the United Nations and Lebanon provides a solid framework for cooperation between the Special Tribunal and Lebanon, Security Council Resolution 1757 (2007) is silent on the duty of third states to assist the Tribunal. As a result, the Special Tribunal will be confronted

A combined vision-inertial fusion approach for 6-DoF object pose estimation

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Juan; Bernardos, Ana M.; Tarrío, Paula; Casar, José R.

2015-02-01

The estimation of the 3D position and orientation of moving objects (`pose' estimation) is a critical process for many applications in robotics, computer vision or mobile services. Although major research efforts have been carried out to design accurate, fast and robust indoor pose estimation systems, it remains as an open challenge to provide a low-cost, easy to deploy and reliable solution. Addressing this issue, this paper describes a hybrid approach for 6 degrees of freedom (6-DoF) pose estimation that fuses acceleration data and stereo vision to overcome the respective weaknesses of single technology approaches. The system relies on COTS technologies (standard webcams, accelerometers) and printable colored markers. It uses a set of infrastructure cameras, located to have the object to be tracked visible most of the operation time; the target object has to include an embedded accelerometer and be tagged with a fiducial marker. This simple marker has been designed for easy detection and segmentation and it may be adapted to different service scenarios (in shape and colors). Experimental results show that the proposed system provides high accuracy, while satisfactorily dealing with the real-time constraints.

2D Methods for pose invariant face recognition

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Mokoena, Ntabiseng

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The ability to recognise face images under random pose is a task that is done effortlessly by human beings. However, for a computer system, recognising face images under varying poses still remains an open research area. Face recognition across pose...

The nucleolus is well-posed

Science.gov (United States)

Fragnelli, Vito; Patrone, Fioravante; Torre, Anna

2006-02-01

The lexicographic order is not representable by a real-valued function, contrary to many other orders or preorders. So, standard tools and results for well-posed minimum problems cannot be used. We prove that under suitable hypotheses it is however possible to guarantee the well-posedness of a lexicographic minimum over a compact or convex set. This result allows us to prove that some game theoretical solution concepts, based on lexicographic order are well-posed: in particular, this is true for the nucleolus.

Real-Time Head Pose Estimation on Mobile Platforms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianfeng Ren

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Many computer vision applications such as augmented reality require head pose estimation. As far as the real-time implementation of head pose estimation on relatively resource limited mobile platforms is concerned, it is required to satisfy real-time constraints while maintaining reasonable head pose estimation accuracy. The introduced head pose estimation approach in this paper is an attempt to meet this objective. The approach consists of the following components: Viola-Jones face detection, color-based face tracking using an online calibration procedure, and head pose estimation using Hu moment features and Fisher linear discriminant. Experimental results running on an actual mobile device are reported exhibiting both the real- time and accuracy aspects of the developed approach.

Face pose tracking using the four-point algorithm

Science.gov (United States)

Fung, Ho Yin; Wong, Kin Hong; Yu, Ying Kin; Tsui, Kwan Pang; Kam, Ho Chuen

2017-06-01

In this paper, we have developed an algorithm to track the pose of a human face robustly and efficiently. Face pose estimation is very useful in many applications such as building virtual reality systems and creating an alternative input method for the disabled. Firstly, we have modified a face detection toolbox called DLib for the detection of a face in front of a camera. The detected face features are passed to a pose estimation method, known as the four-point algorithm, for pose computation. The theory applied and the technical problems encountered during system development are discussed in the paper. It is demonstrated that the system is able to track the pose of a face in real time using a consumer grade laptop computer.

A cross docking pipeline for improving pose prediction and virtual screening performance

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Ashutosh; Zhang, Kam Y. J.

2018-01-01

Pose prediction and virtual screening performance of a molecular docking method depend on the choice of protein structures used for docking. Multiple structures for a target protein are often used to take into account the receptor flexibility and problems associated with a single receptor structure. However, the use of multiple receptor structures is computationally expensive when docking a large library of small molecules. Here, we propose a new cross-docking pipeline suitable to dock a large library of molecules while taking advantage of multiple target protein structures. Our method involves the selection of a suitable receptor for each ligand in a screening library utilizing ligand 3D shape similarity with crystallographic ligands. We have prospectively evaluated our method in D3R Grand Challenge 2 and demonstrated that our cross-docking pipeline can achieve similar or better performance than using either single or multiple-receptor structures. Moreover, our method displayed not only decent pose prediction performance but also better virtual screening performance over several other methods.

Realities and Challenges of Support for Children with Special Needs in Nursery Schools.

Science.gov (United States)

Ishiguro, Kaori; Yoshioka, Shin-Ichi

2016-03-01

Nursery schools and kindergartens have been struggling to cope with increasing numbers of children with special needs. Hence, we conducted a study on what nursery school teachers (NSTs) will require regarding learning and societal resources for supporting such children in the future. A questionnaire survey was conducted for 2,476 NSTs employed in 154 nursery schools in Shimane and Kochi Prefectures. The questionnaires were sent by post to officials at each nursery school. The completed questionnaires were collected by the school officials and returned by post. In addition to statistical processing of the survey results, the content of the free description responses was analyzed using the KJ method. Responses were obtained from 1,509 NSTs at 118 nursery schools. Of the respondents, 90.7% had experienced difficulties coping with children with special needs, and 83.9% were in charge of caring for such children. Such children were enrolled in every childcare facility participating in the survey. The NSTs primarily needed to learn about specific coping methods, the illness, and skills for supporting parents; concerning the societal resources, they needed the addition of assistant NSTs, the implementation of age-five check-up, and the recruitment of mentors. The free description responses were categorized into the following five categories: demand for child care administration, cooperation with professional staff, support for parents, developmental health checkups, and on-site needs for nursery childcare. One of the specific demands was to develop human resources capable of providing parents with appropriate advice. The results have shown that all NSTs are required to deal with children with special needs. Future challenges for providing support for such children are: ⅰ) to raise awareness of such children; ⅱ) to eliminate regional disparities; ⅲ) to provide professional training for NSTs specializing in developmental disorders; ⅳ) to train and re

Overcoming Family Planning Challenges in Africa: Toward Meeting ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

USER

Overcoming Family Planning Challenges in Africa: Toward Meeting. Unmet Need ... The challenges posed are greater in ... Gaps in meeting women's needs persist especially ..... WHO. Everybody's business: Strengthening health systems to.

Skill Levels of Prospective Physics Teachers on Problem Posing

Science.gov (United States)

Cildir, Sema; Sezen, Nazan

2011-01-01

Problem posing is one of the topics which the educators thoroughly accentuate. Problem posing skill is defined as an introvert activity of a student's learning. In this study, skill levels of prospective physics teachers on problem posing were determined and their views on problem posing were evaluated. To this end, prospective teachers were given…

Pose Estimation with a Kinect for Ergonomic Studies: Evaluation of the Accuracy Using a Virtual Mannequin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pierre Plantard

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Analyzing human poses with a Kinect is a promising method to evaluate potentials risks of musculoskeletal disorders at workstations. In ecological situations, complex 3D poses and constraints imposed by the environment make it difficult to obtain reliable kinematic information. Thus, being able to predict the potential accuracy of the measurement for such complex 3D poses and sensor placements is challenging in classical experimental setups. To tackle this problem, we propose a new evaluation method based on a virtual mannequin. In this study, we apply this method to the evaluation of joint positions (shoulder, elbow, and wrist, joint angles (shoulder and elbow, and the corresponding RULA (a popular ergonomics assessment grid upper-limb score for a large set of poses and sensor placements. Thanks to this evaluation method, more than 500,000 configurations have been automatically tested, which would be almost impossible to evaluate with classical protocols. The results show that the kinematic information obtained by the Kinect software is generally accurate enough to fill in ergonomic assessment grids. However inaccuracy strongly increases for some specific poses and sensor positions. Using this evaluation method enabled us to report configurations that could lead to these high inaccuracies. As a supplementary material, we provide a software tool to help designers to evaluate the expected accuracy of this sensor for a set of upper-limb configurations. Results obtained with the virtual mannequin are in accordance with those obtained from a real subject for a limited set of poses and sensor placements.

Local Feature Learning for Face Recognition under Varying Poses

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Duan, Xiaodong; Tan, Zheng-Hua

2015-01-01

In this paper, we present a local feature learning method for face recognition to deal with varying poses. As opposed to the commonly used approaches of recovering frontal face images from profile views, the proposed method extracts the subject related part from a local feature by removing the pose...... related part in it on the basis of a pose feature. The method has a closed-form solution, hence being time efficient. For performance evaluation, cross pose face recognition experiments are conducted on two public face recognition databases FERET and FEI. The proposed method shows a significant...... recognition improvement under varying poses over general local feature approaches and outperforms or is comparable with related state-of-the-art pose invariant face recognition approaches. Copyright ©2015 by IEEE....

Transition: New Challenge for Special Education.

Science.gov (United States)

Dildy, Dennis R.

Special education students who graduate or age-out of school are often not successful in making the transition from school to work. Transition services in Texas are grounded in federal civil rights legislation and a Texas Senate concurrent resolution which calls for preparing and supporting the successful transition of handicapped students to the…

Person-Independent Head Pose Estimation Using Biased Manifold Embedding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sethuraman Panchanathan

2008-02-01

Full Text Available Head pose estimation has been an integral problem in the study of face recognition systems and human-computer interfaces, as part of biometric applications. A fine estimate of the head pose angle is necessary and useful for several face analysis applications. To determine the head pose, face images with varying pose angles can be considered to be lying on a smooth low-dimensional manifold in high-dimensional image feature space. However, when there are face images of multiple individuals with varying pose angles, manifold learning techniques often do not give accurate results. In this work, we propose a framework for a supervised form of manifold learning called Biased Manifold Embedding to obtain improved performance in head pose angle estimation. This framework goes beyond pose estimation, and can be applied to all regression applications. This framework, although formulated for a regression scenario, unifies other supervised approaches to manifold learning that have been proposed so far. Detailed studies of the proposed method are carried out on the FacePix database, which contains 181 face images each of 30 individuals with pose angle variations at a granularity of 1∘. Since biometric applications in the real world may not contain this level of granularity in training data, an analysis of the methodology is performed on sparsely sampled data to validate its effectiveness. We obtained up to 2∘ average pose angle estimation error in the results from our experiments, which matched the best results obtained for head pose estimation using related approaches.

To Strike a Pose: No Stereotype Backlash for Power Posing Women

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miriam Rennung

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Power posing, the adoption of open and powerful postures, has effects that parallel those of actual social power. This study explored the social evaluation of adopting powerful versus powerless body postures in men and women regarding perceived warmth, competence, and the likelihood of eliciting admiration, envy, pity, and contempt. Previous findings suggest that the display of power by women may have side effects due to gender stereotyping, namely reduced warmth ratings and negative emotional reactions. An experiment (N = 2,473 asked participants to rate pictures of men and women who adopted high-power or low-power body postures. High-power posers were rated higher on competence, admiration, envy, and contempt compared to low-power posers, whereas the opposite was true for pity. There was no impact of power posing on perceived warmth. Contrary to expectations, the poser’s gender did not moderate any of the effects. These findings suggest that nonverbal displays of power do influence fundamental dimensions of social perception and their accompanying emotional reactions but result in comparably positive and negative evaluations for both genders.

Ethical Challenges when Interviewing Close Relatives Together – An Integrative Review

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Voltelen, Barbara; Konradsen, Hanne; Østergaard, Birte

and search terms. Results In total 17 articles were located, 9 containing relevant information about dyadic interviewing, only dealing subtly with questions of ethics. Another 8 articles addressed both dyadic interviewing and ethical considerations. Findings were divided into three different themes......Background and purpose Interviewing two interrelated persons (or more) simultaneously might pose different ethical considerations than interviewing just one person. Such ethical considerations, however, remain largely undescribed in literature, challenging the researcher who wishes to conduct them....... The purpose of this study is to describe the special ethical perspectives concerning joint interviews with interrelated persons. Method An integrative review was performed. A search was conducted in Pub Med, Cinahl, Philosophers Index and Academic Search from 1980 -2014. Data corpus from the 17 articles...

Dr. David Brown poses with students at Ronald McNair Middle School

Science.gov (United States)

1999-01-01

Dr. David Brown (right), a NASA astronaut, poses with students in the gymnasium of Ronald McNair Magnet School in Cocoa, Fla. From left, the students are Kristin Rexford, Danitra Anderson, Dominique Smith, Fallon Davis, and Qiana Taylor. Brown was at the school to attend a tribute to NASA astronaut Ronald McNair. The school had previously been renamed for the fallen astronaut who was one of a crew of seven, who lost their lives during an accident following launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986.

University Students' Problem Posing Abilities and Attitudes towards Mathematics.

Science.gov (United States)

Grundmeier, Todd A.

2002-01-01

Explores the problem posing abilities and attitudes towards mathematics of students in a university pre-calculus class and a university mathematical proof class. Reports a significant difference in numeric posing versus non-numeric posing ability in both classes. (Author/MM)

Students’ Mathematical Creative Thinking through Problem Posing Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Ulfah, U.; Prabawanto, S.; Jupri, A.

2017-09-01

The research aims to investigate the differences in enhancement of students’ mathematical creative thinking ability of those who received problem posing approach assisted by manipulative media and students who received problem posing approach without manipulative media. This study was a quasi experimental research with non-equivalent control group design. Population of this research was third-grade students of a primary school in Bandung city in 2016/2017 academic year. Sample of this research was two classes as experiment class and control class. The instrument used is a test of mathematical creative thinking ability. Based on the results of the research, it is known that the enhancement of the students’ mathematical creative thinking ability of those who received problem posing approach with manipulative media aid is higher than the ability of those who received problem posing approach without manipulative media aid. Students who get learning problem posing learning accustomed in arranging mathematical sentence become matter of story so it can facilitate students to comprehend about story

Level of environmental threat posed by horticultural trade in Cactaceae.

Science.gov (United States)

Novoa, Ana; Le Roux, Johannes J; Richardson, David M; Wilson, John R U

2017-10-01

Ornamental horticulture has been identified as an important threat to plant biodiversity and is a major pathway for plant invasions worldwide. In this context, the family Cactaceae is particularly challenging because it is considered the fifth most threatened large taxonomic group in the world; several species are among the most widespread and damaging invasive species; and Cactaceae is one of the most popular horticultural plant groups. Based on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna and the 11 largest online auction sites selling cacti, we documented the international cactus trade. To provide an in-depth look at the dynamics of the industry, we surveyed the businesses involved in the cactus trade in South Africa (a hotspot of cactus trade and invasions). We purchased seeds of every available species and used DNA barcoding to identify species to the genus level. Although <20% of this trade involved threatened species and <3% involved known invasive species, many species were identified by a common name. However, only 0.02% of the globally traded cacti were collected from wild populations. Despite a large commercial network, all South African imports (of which 15% and 1.5% were of species listed as threatened and invasive, respectively) came from the same source. With DNA barcoding, we identified 24% of the species to genus level. Based on our results, we believe that if trade restrictions are placed on the small proportion of cacti that are invasive and there is no major increase in harvesting of native populations, then the commercial trade in cactus poses a negligible environmental threat. However, there are currently no effective methods for easily identifying which cacti are traded, and both the illicit harvesting of cacti from the wild and the informal trade in invasive taxa pose on-going conservation challenges. © 2017 Society for Conservation Biology.

The Marihuana Dilemma: Challenge to Commanders.

Science.gov (United States)

The marihuana dilemma poses a major challenge to commanders in the US Army today. The problem was analyzed as to the characteristics of the drug...available to commanders to meet the challenge. The essay concludes that marihuana should not be legalized; drug users or former drug users should not be

Manifolds for pose tracking from monocular video

Science.gov (United States)

Basu, Saurav; Poulin, Joshua; Acton, Scott T.

2015-03-01

We formulate a simple human-pose tracking theory from monocular video based on the fundamental relationship between changes in pose and image motion vectors. We investigate the natural embedding of the low-dimensional body pose space into a high-dimensional space of body configurations that behaves locally in a linear manner. The embedded manifold facilitates the decomposition of the image motion vectors into basis motion vector fields of the tangent space to the manifold. This approach benefits from the style invariance of image motion flow vectors, and experiments to validate the fundamental theory show reasonable accuracy (within 4.9 deg of the ground truth).

A Teacher Tablet Toolkit to meet the challenges posed by 21st ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The course, as outcome, is presented as a Teacher Tablet Toolkit, designed to meet the challenges inherent to the 21st century rural technology enhanced teaching and learning environment. The paper documents and motivates design decisions, derived from literature and adapted through three iterations of a Design ...

The lighter side of advertising: investigating posing and lighting biases.

Science.gov (United States)

Thomas, Nicole A; Burkitt, Jennifer A; Patrick, Regan E; Elias, Lorin J

2008-11-01

People tend to display the left cheek when posing for a portrait; however, this effect does not appear to generalise to advertising. The amount of body visible in the image and the sex of the poser might also contribute to the posing bias. Portraits also exhibit lateral lighting biases, with most images being lit from the left. This effect might also be present in advertisements. A total of 2801 full-page advertisements were sampled and coded for posing direction, lighting direction, sex of model, and amount of body showing. Images of females showed an overall leftward posing bias, but the biases in males depended on the amount of body visible. Males demonstrated rightward posing biases for head-only images. Overall, images tended to be lit from the top left corner. The two factors of posing and lighting biases appear to influence one another. Leftward-lit images had more leftward poses than rightward, while the opposite occurred for rightward-lit images. Collectively, these results demonstrate that the posing biases in advertisements are dependent on the amount of body showing in the image, and that biases in lighting direction interact with these posing biases.

Bed Bug Epidemic: A Challenge to Public Health

Science.gov (United States)

Ratnapradipa, Dhitinut; Ritzel, Dale O.; Haramis, Linn D.; Bliss, Kadi R.

2011-01-01

In recent years, reported cases of bed bug infestations in the U.S. and throughout the world have escalated dramatically, posing a global public health problem. Although bed bugs are not known to transmit disease to humans, they pose both direct and indirect public health challenges in terms of health effects, treatment, cost, and resource…

Coupled bias-variance tradeoff for cross-pose face recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Annan; Shan, Shiguang; Gao, Wen

2012-01-01

Subspace-based face representation can be looked as a regression problem. From this viewpoint, we first revisited the problem of recognizing faces across pose differences, which is a bottleneck in face recognition. Then, we propose a new approach for cross-pose face recognition using a regressor with a coupled bias-variance tradeoff. We found that striking a coupled balance between bias and variance in regression for different poses could improve the regressor-based cross-pose face representation, i.e., the regressor can be more stable against a pose difference. With the basic idea, ridge regression and lasso regression are explored. Experimental results on CMU PIE, the FERET, and the Multi-PIE face databases show that the proposed bias-variance tradeoff can achieve considerable reinforcement in recognition performance.

Coming to grips with challenging behaviour: a cluster randomised controlled trial on the effects of a new care programme for challenging behaviour on burnout, job satisfaction and job demands of care staff on dementia special care units

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zwijsen, S.A.; Gerritsen, D.L.; Eefsting, J.A.; Smalbrugge, M.; Hertogh, C.M.P.M.; Pot, A.M.

2015-01-01

Background: Caring for people with dementia in dementia special care units is a demanding job. Challenging behaviour is one of the factors influencing the job satisfaction and burnout of care staff. A care programme for the challenging behaviour of nursing home residents with dementia might, next to

Coming to grips with challenging behaviour: a cluster randomised controlled trial on the effects of a new care programme for challenging behaviour on burnout, job satisfaction and job demands of care staff on dementia special care units

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zwijsen, S.A.; Gerritsen, D.L.; Eefsting, J.A.; Smalbrugge, M.; Hertogh, C.M.; Pot, A.M.

2015-01-01

BACKGROUND: Caring for people with dementia in dementia special care units is a demanding job. Challenging behaviour is one of the factors influencing the job satisfaction and burnout of care staff. A care programme for the challenging behaviour of nursing home residents with dementia might, next to

Contemporary careers management: critical challenges for human resource management

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carlos Fernando Torres Oviedo

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This review article lays out some conceptual guidelines regarding careers in organizations. Special emphasis has been made on the transformation that this practice has experienced since the late twentieth century, given the new working conditions created by the technological, economic, and cultural changes that have taken place. The literature shows a more dynamic and complex stage for people and organizations in the current historical moment. It was found that, under the current conditions, people guide their own careers, aiming at achieving higher levels within and/or outside the organization. This poses new challenges and ways of thinking about managing people, leading to the development of alternative practices. Finally, as a suggestion, some questions to be addressed by those responsible of human management are presented, aimed at building reciprocal relationships that contribute to mutual development.

SOOA: Exploring Special On-Off Attacks on Challenge-Based Collaborative Intrusion Detection Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Wenjuan; Meng, Weizhi; Kwok, Lam-For

2017-01-01

The development of collaborative intrusion detection networks (CIDNs) aims to enhance the performance of a single intrusion detection system (IDS), through communicating and collecting information from other IDS nodes. To defend CIDNs against insider attacks, trust-based mechanisms are crucial...... and render CIDNs still vulnerable to advanced insider attacks in a practical deployment. In this paper, our motivation is to investigate the effect of On-Off attacks on challenge-based CIDNs. In particular, as a study, we explore a special On-Off attack (called SOOA), which can keep responding normally...... to one node while acting abnormally to another node. In the evaluation, we explore the attack performance under simulated CIDN environments. Experimental results indicate that our attack can interfere the effectiveness of trust computation for CIDN nodes....

Coping with Challenging Behaviours of Children with Autism: Effectiveness of Brief Training Workshop for Frontline Staff in Special Education Settings

Science.gov (United States)

Ling, C. Y. M.; Mak, W. W. S.

2012-01-01

Background: The present study examined the effectiveness of three staff training elements: psychoeducation (PE) on autism, introduction of functional behavioural analysis (FBA) and emotional management (EM), on the reaction of challenging behaviours for frontline staff towards children with autism in Hong Kong special education settings. Methods:…

Formulas in inverse and ill-posed problems

CERN Document Server

Anikonov, Yu E

1997-01-01

The Inverse and Ill-Posed Problems Series is a series of monographs publishing postgraduate level information on inverse and ill-posed problems for an international readership of professional scientists and researchers. The series aims to publish works which involve both theory and applications in, e.g., physics, medicine, geophysics, acoustics, electrodynamics, tomography, and ecology.

Ms. Rodriquez and Mickey Mouse pose with a portrait of Ronald McNair

Science.gov (United States)

1999-01-01

In the gymnasium of Ronald McNair Magnet School in Cocoa, Fla., Ms. Maria Rodriguez, an Walt Disney World Ambassador, and Mickey Mouse pose with a portrait of NASA astronaut Ronald McNair. The portrait was presented to the school by Walt Disney World during a tribute to McNair. The school had previously been renamed for the fallen astronaut, who was one of a crew of seven who lost their lives during an accident following launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986.

Fast human pose estimation using 3D Zernike descriptors

Science.gov (United States)

Berjón, Daniel; Morán, Francisco

2012-03-01

Markerless video-based human pose estimation algorithms face a high-dimensional problem that is frequently broken down into several lower-dimensional ones by estimating the pose of each limb separately. However, in order to do so they need to reliably locate the torso, for which they typically rely on time coherence and tracking algorithms. Their losing track usually results in catastrophic failure of the process, requiring human intervention and thus precluding their usage in real-time applications. We propose a very fast rough pose estimation scheme based on global shape descriptors built on 3D Zernike moments. Using an articulated model that we configure in many poses, a large database of descriptor/pose pairs can be computed off-line. Thus, the only steps that must be done on-line are the extraction of the descriptors for each input volume and a search against the database to get the most likely poses. While the result of such process is not a fine pose estimation, it can be useful to help more sophisticated algorithms to regain track or make more educated guesses when creating new particles in particle-filter-based tracking schemes. We have achieved a performance of about ten fps on a single computer using a database of about one million entries.

31 CFR 103.64 - Special rules for casinos.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... money laundering and terrorist financing risks posed by the products and services provided by the casino... 31 Money and Finance: Treasury 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Special rules for casinos. 103.64 Section 103.64 Money and Finance: Treasury Regulations Relating to Money and Finance FINANCIAL...

Transfer between Pose and Illumination Training in Face Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Chang Hong; Bhuiyan, Md. Al-Amin; Ward, James; Sui, Jie

2009-01-01

The relationship between pose and illumination learning in face recognition was examined in a yes-no recognition paradigm. The authors assessed whether pose training can transfer to a new illumination or vice versa. Results show that an extensive level of pose training through a face-name association task was able to generalize to a new…

Biotechnology: challenges and prospects

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sasson, A.

1985-04-01

Rapidly occurring technological breakthroughs in the wake of numerous discoveries in different fields, such as biochemistry, genetic engineering as well as cellular and molecular biology as described in this paper have a variety of industrial applications, and forcasts covering these and various other fields have been made. The emerging bio-industry, covering diverse industries, such as chemical, food, pharmaceutical, etc., as well as the domains of health, environmental protection and abatement of pollution present challenging prospects. Several biotechnology processes relating to bioenergy, fermentation, waste transformation, vaccines, etc. are of particular interest to the developing countries. The 'functioning systems' resulting from the breakthrouth in genetic engineering, entailing extraordinary refinement of analytical techniques and technological progress, pose the challenging task of harnessing them to the advantage of mankind. Providing effective legal protection, conducive to the development of biotechnologies-their innovative process and technological change-is a matter of serious concern, involving practical and economical considerations. Several other issues and questions, such as risk prevention and management of potential dangers and hazards in genetic recombination operation by way of safety regulations and necessary guidelines, questions relating to the clinical trials of the interferons-the wonder drug-as well as questions of professional ethics are raised by biotechnologies. Industry-funded research in biotechnology, where scientific and commercial imperatives are interlocked, has for instance, its repercussions on the traditional thrust of university system, specially the sanctity of autonomy for basic research.

An improved silhouette for human pose estimation

Science.gov (United States)

Hawes, Anthony H.; Iftekharuddin, Khan M.

2017-08-01

We propose a novel method for analyzing images that exploits the natural lines of a human poses to find areas where self-occlusion could be present. Errors caused by self-occlusion cause several modern human pose estimation methods to mis-identify body parts, which reduces the performance of most action recognition algorithms. Our method is motivated by the observation that, in several cases, occlusion can be reasoned using only boundary lines of limbs. An intelligent edge detection algorithm based on the above principle could be used to augment the silhouette with information useful for pose estimation algorithms and push forward progress on occlusion handling for human action recognition. The algorithm described is applicable to computer vision scenarios involving 2D images and (appropriated flattened) 3D images.

Pose estimation for mobile robots working on turbine blade

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ma, X.D.; Chen, Q.; Liu, J.J.; Sun, Z.G.; Zhang, W.Z. [Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China). Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials Processing Technology, Ministry of Education, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

2009-03-11

This paper discussed a features point detection and matching task technique for mobile robots used in wind turbine blade applications. The vision-based scheme used visual information from the robot's surrounding environment to match successive image frames. An improved pose estimation algorithm based on a scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) was developed to consider the characteristics of local images of turbine blades, pose estimation problems, and conditions. The method included a pre-subsampling technique for reducing computation and bidirectional matching for improving precision. A random sample consensus (RANSAC) method was used to estimate the robot's pose. Pose estimation conditions included a wide pose range; the distance between neighbouring blades; and mechanical, electromagnetic, and optical disturbances. An experimental platform was used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm. 20 refs., 6 figs.

Temporal subtraction of chest radiographs compensating pose differences

Science.gov (United States)

von Berg, Jens; Dworzak, Jalda; Klinder, Tobias; Manke, Dirk; Kreth, Adrian; Lamecker, Hans; Zachow, Stefan; Lorenz, Cristian

2011-03-01

Temporal subtraction techniques using 2D image registration improve the detectability of interval changes from chest radiographs. Although such methods are well known for some time they are not widely used in radiologic practice. The reason is the occurrence of strong pose differences between two acquisitions with a time interval of months to years in between. Such strong perspective differences occur in a reasonable number of cases. They cannot be compensated by available image registration methods and thus mask interval changes to be undetectable. In this paper a method is proposed to estimate a 3D pose difference by the adaptation of a 3D rib cage model to both projections. The difference between both is then compensated for, thus producing a subtraction image with virtually no change in pose. The method generally assumes that no 3D image data is available from the patient. The accuracy of pose estimation is validated with chest phantom images acquired under controlled geometric conditions. A subtle interval change simulated by a piece of plastic foam attached to the phantom becomes visible in subtraction images generated with this technique even at strong angular pose differences like an anterior-posterior inclination of 13 degrees.

Challenges posed to the European pharmaceutical regulatory system by highly personalized medicines.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnston, John D; Feldschreiber, Peter

2014-03-01

The European pharmaceutical regulatory system has not yet been challenged by issues related to highly personalized medicines such as those to be found with active substances that affect RNA biochemistry. We review the current status of RNA-based pharmacology and present three possible case histories. The implications for the European pharmaceutical regulatory system are discussed. © 2013 The British Pharmacological Society.

Non-standard and improperly posed problems

CERN Document Server

Straughan, Brian; Ames, William F

1997-01-01

Written by two international experts in the field, this book is the first unified survey of the advances made in the last 15 years on key non-standard and improperly posed problems for partial differential equations.This reference for mathematicians, scientists, and engineers provides an overview of the methodology typically used to study improperly posed problems. It focuses on structural stability--the continuous dependence of solutions on the initial conditions and the modeling equations--and on problems for which data are only prescribed on part of the boundary.The book addresses continuou

Virtual Reality and Special Needs

Science.gov (United States)

Jeffs, Tara L.

2009-01-01

The use of virtual environments for special needs is as diverse as the field of Special Education itself and the individuals it serves. Individuals with special needs often face challenges with attention, language, spatial abilities, memory, higher reasoning and knowledge acquisition. Research in the use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE)…

The opportunities and challenges of multi-site evaluations: lessons from the jail diversion and trauma recovery national cross-site evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Stainbrook, Kristin; Penney, Darby; Elwyn, Laura

2015-06-01

Multi-site evaluations, particularly of federally funded service programs, pose a special set of challenges for program evaluation. Not only are there contextual differences related to project location, there are often relatively few programmatic requirements, which results in variations in program models, target populations and services. The Jail Diversion and Trauma Recovery-Priority to Veterans (JDTR) National Cross-Site Evaluation was tasked with conducting a multi-site evaluation of thirteen grantee programs that varied along multiple domains. This article describes the use of a mixed methods evaluation design to understand the jail diversion programs and client outcomes for veterans with trauma, mental health and/or substance use problems. We discuss the challenges encountered in evaluating diverse programs, the benefits of the evaluation in the face of these challenges, and offer lessons learned for other evaluators undertaking this type of evaluation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Method of orthogonally splitting imaging pose measurement

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Na; Sun, Changku; Wang, Peng; Yang, Qian; Liu, Xintong

2018-01-01

In order to meet the aviation's and machinery manufacturing's pose measurement need of high precision, fast speed and wide measurement range, and to resolve the contradiction between measurement range and resolution of vision sensor, this paper proposes an orthogonally splitting imaging pose measurement method. This paper designs and realizes an orthogonally splitting imaging vision sensor and establishes a pose measurement system. The vision sensor consists of one imaging lens, a beam splitter prism, cylindrical lenses and dual linear CCD. Dual linear CCD respectively acquire one dimensional image coordinate data of the target point, and two data can restore the two dimensional image coordinates of the target point. According to the characteristics of imaging system, this paper establishes the nonlinear distortion model to correct distortion. Based on cross ratio invariability, polynomial equation is established and solved by the least square fitting method. After completing distortion correction, this paper establishes the measurement mathematical model of vision sensor, and determines intrinsic parameters to calibrate. An array of feature points for calibration is built by placing a planar target in any different positions for a few times. An terative optimization method is presented to solve the parameters of model. The experimental results show that the field angle is 52 °, the focus distance is 27.40 mm, image resolution is 5185×5117 pixels, displacement measurement error is less than 0.1mm, and rotation angle measurement error is less than 0.15°. The method of orthogonally splitting imaging pose measurement can satisfy the pose measurement requirement of high precision, fast speed and wide measurement range.

Postmodern Critiques Still Challenge the Study of Religion

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Paldam, Ella

2013-01-01

In this introduction, I argue that the postmodern challenge analyzed by Armin W. Geertz in his paper from 2000 still poses a fundamental challenge in the contemporary study of religion. My own field studies among the Chumash Indians of South-central California in 2010 illustrate how postmodernity...

Multi-view 3D Human Pose Estimation in Complex Environment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hofmann, K.M.; Gavrila, D.M.

2012-01-01

We introduce a framework for unconstrained 3D human upper body pose estimation from multiple camera views in complex environment. Its main novelty lies in the integration of three components: single-frame pose recovery, temporal integration and model texture adaptation. Single-frame pose recovery

Contactless and pose invariant biometric identification using hand surface.

Science.gov (United States)

Kanhangad, Vivek; Kumar, Ajay; Zhang, David

2011-05-01

This paper presents a novel approach for hand matching that achieves significantly improved performance even in the presence of large hand pose variations. The proposed method utilizes a 3-D digitizer to simultaneously acquire intensity and range images of the user's hand presented to the system in an arbitrary pose. The approach involves determination of the orientation of the hand in 3-D space followed by pose normalization of the acquired 3-D and 2-D hand images. Multimodal (2-D as well as 3-D) palmprint and hand geometry features, which are simultaneously extracted from the user's pose normalized textured 3-D hand, are used for matching. Individual matching scores are then combined using a new dynamic fusion strategy. Our experimental results on the database of 114 subjects with significant pose variations yielded encouraging results. Consistent (across various hand features considered) performance improvement achieved with the pose correction demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed approach for hand based biometric systems with unconstrained and contact-free imaging. The experimental results also suggest that the dynamic fusion approach employed in this work helps to achieve performance improvement of 60% (in terms of EER) over the case when matching scores are combined using the weighted sum rule.

Economic opportunities and challenges posed by China for Mexico and Central America

OpenAIRE

Dussel Peters, Enrique

2005-01-01

"This study offers a basis for understanding China's performance from a Latin American perspective, and stressing the massive economic opportunities and challenges, and particularly for Central America and Mexico. Moreover, the document assesses in detail the macroeconomic, trade and employment policy and institutional changes in China and its potential effects in Central America and Mexico. These effects are analyzed in the Chinese, Central American, Mexican and US market in general, but als...

Diagnostic performance of magnetic resonance imaging and pre-surgical evaluation in the assessment of traumatic intra-articular knee disorders in children and adolescents: what conditions still pose diagnostic challenges?

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gans, Itai; Ganley, Theodore J. [The Children' s Hospital of Philadelphia, Division of Orthopaedics, 34th and Civic Center Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA (United States); Bedoya, Maria A.; Ho-Fung, Victor [The Children' s Hospital of Philadelphia, Department of Radiology, Philadelphia, PA (United States)

2014-08-31

-surgical evaluation was quite high. The traumatic intra-articular knee lesions that still pose a diagnostic challenge for MRI and pre-surgical evaluation are lateral discoid meniscus, lateral meniscal tears, intra-articular loose bodies and osteochondral injuries. Special attention should be given to those diagnoses when evaluating a pediatric knee MRI. In children with multiple intra-articular injuries, there is significantly more inaccuracy in pre-arthroscopic diagnosis of lateral meniscal tears on both MRI and pre-surgical evaluation. (orig.)

Diagnostic performance of magnetic resonance imaging and pre-surgical evaluation in the assessment of traumatic intra-articular knee disorders in children and adolescents: what conditions still pose diagnostic challenges?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gans, Itai; Ganley, Theodore J.; Bedoya, Maria A.; Ho-Fung, Victor

2015-01-01

-surgical evaluation was quite high. The traumatic intra-articular knee lesions that still pose a diagnostic challenge for MRI and pre-surgical evaluation are lateral discoid meniscus, lateral meniscal tears, intra-articular loose bodies and osteochondral injuries. Special attention should be given to those diagnoses when evaluating a pediatric knee MRI. In children with multiple intra-articular injuries, there is significantly more inaccuracy in pre-arthroscopic diagnosis of lateral meniscal tears on both MRI and pre-surgical evaluation. (orig.)

Plasmodium knowlesi and Wucheriria bancrofti: Their vectors and challenges for the future

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Indra eVythilingam

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Malaria and filariasis still continue to pose public health problems in developing countries of the tropics. Although plans are ongoing for the elimination of both these parasitic vector borne diseases, we are now faced with a daunting challenge as we have a fifth species, Plasmodium knowlesi a simian malaria parasite affecting humans. Similarly in peninsular Malaysia, filariasis was mainly due to Brugia malayi, however, we now see cases of W. bancrofti in immigrant workers coming into the country. Work is on going to eliminate malaria and filariasis from the country. In order to be successful we need to revamp our control measures. Thus this paper attempts to review the vectors of malaria and filariasis in Southeast Asia with special emphasis on P. knowlesi and W. bancrofti and their control strategies.

Methods of RVD object pose estimation and experiments

Science.gov (United States)

Shang, Yang; He, Yan; Wang, Weihua; Yu, Qifeng

2007-11-01

Methods of measuring a RVD (rendezvous and docking) cooperative object's pose from monocular and binocular images respectively are presented. The methods solve the initial values first and optimize the object pose parameters by bundle adjustment. In the disturbance-rejecting binocular method, chosen measurement system parameters of one camera's exterior parameters are modified simultaneously. The methods need three or more cooperative target points to measure the object's pose accurately. Experimental data show that the methods converge quickly and stably, provide accurate results and do not need accurate initial values. Even when the chosen measurement system parameters are subjected to some amount of disturbance, the binocular method manages to provide fairly accurate results.

Single-frame 3D human pose recovery from multiple views

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hofmann, M.; Gavrila, D.M.

2009-01-01

We present a system for the estimation of unconstrained 3D human upper body pose from multi-camera single-frame views. Pose recovery starts with a shape detection stage where candidate poses are generated based on hierarchical exemplar matching in the individual camera views. The hierarchy used in

Turkish Primary School Teachers' Opinions about Problem Posing

Science.gov (United States)

Kilic, Cigdem

2013-01-01

Problem posing is one of the most important topics in a mathematics education. Through problem posing, students gain mathematical abilities and concepts and teachers can evaluate their students and arrange adequate learning environments. The aim of the present study is to investigate Turkish primary school teachers' opinions about problem posing…

Standard diffusive systems are well-posed linear systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Matignon, Denis; Zwart, Heiko J.

2004-01-01

The class of well-posed linear systems as introduced by Salamon has become a well-understood class of systems, see e.g. the work of Weiss and the book of Staffans. Many partial partial differential equations with boundary control and point observation can be formulated as a well-posed linear system.

Systems Challenges for Hypersonic Vehicles

Science.gov (United States)

Hunt, James L.; Laruelle, Gerard; Wagner, Alain

1997-01-01

This paper examines the system challenges posed by fully reusable hypersonic cruise airplanes and access to space vehicles. Hydrocarbon and hydrogen fueled airplanes are considered with cruise speeds of Mach 5 and 10, respectively. The access to space matrix is examined. Airbreathing and rocket powered, single- and two-stage vehicles are considered. Reference vehicle architectures are presented. Major systems/subsystems challenges are described. Advanced, enhancing systems concepts as well as common system technologies are discussed.

SU-G-JeP3-03: Effect of Robot Pose On Beam Blocking for Ultrasound Guided SBRT of the Prostate

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gerlach, S; Schlaefer, A [Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg (Germany); Kuhlemann, I; Ernst, F [Universitaet zu Luebeck, Luebeck (Germany); Fuerweger, C [European Cyberknife Center Munich, Munich (Germany)

2016-06-15

Purpose: Ultrasound presents a fast, volumetric image modality for real-time tracking of abdominal organ motion. How-ever, ultrasound transducer placement during radiation therapy is challenging. Recently, approaches using robotic arms for intra-treatment ultrasound imaging have been proposed. Good and reliable imaging requires placing the transducer close to the PTV. We studied the effect of a seven degrees of freedom robot on the fea-sible beam directions. Methods: For five CyberKnife prostate treatment plans we established viewports for the transducer, i.e., points on the patient surface with a soft tissue view towards the PTV. Choosing a feasible transducer pose and using the kinematic redundancy of the KUKA LBR iiwa robot, we considered three robot poses. Poses 1 to 3 had the elbow point anterior, superior, and inferior, respectively. For each pose and each beam starting point, the pro-jections of robot and PTV were computed. We added a 20 mm margin accounting for organ / beam motion. The number of nodes for which the PTV was partially of fully blocked were established. Moreover, the cumula-tive overlap for each of the poses and the minimum overlap over all poses were computed. Results: The fully and partially blocked nodes ranged from 12% to 20% and 13% to 27%, respectively. Typically, pose 3 caused the fewest blocked nodes. The cumulative overlap ranged from 19% to 29%. Taking the minimum overlap, i.e., considering moving the robot’s elbow while maintaining the transducer pose, the cumulative over-lap was reduced to 16% to 18% and was 3% to 6% lower than for the best individual pose. Conclusion: Our results indicate that it is possible to identify feasible ultrasound transducer poses and to use the kinematic redundancy of a 7 DOF robot to minimize the impact of the imaging subsystem on the feasible beam directions for ultrasound guided and motion compensated SBRT. Research partially funded by DFG grants ER 817/1-1 and SCHL 1844/3-1.

SU-G-JeP3-03: Effect of Robot Pose On Beam Blocking for Ultrasound Guided SBRT of the Prostate

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gerlach, S; Schlaefer, A; Kuhlemann, I; Ernst, F; Fuerweger, C

2016-01-01

Purpose: Ultrasound presents a fast, volumetric image modality for real-time tracking of abdominal organ motion. How-ever, ultrasound transducer placement during radiation therapy is challenging. Recently, approaches using robotic arms for intra-treatment ultrasound imaging have been proposed. Good and reliable imaging requires placing the transducer close to the PTV. We studied the effect of a seven degrees of freedom robot on the fea-sible beam directions. Methods: For five CyberKnife prostate treatment plans we established viewports for the transducer, i.e., points on the patient surface with a soft tissue view towards the PTV. Choosing a feasible transducer pose and using the kinematic redundancy of the KUKA LBR iiwa robot, we considered three robot poses. Poses 1 to 3 had the elbow point anterior, superior, and inferior, respectively. For each pose and each beam starting point, the pro-jections of robot and PTV were computed. We added a 20 mm margin accounting for organ / beam motion. The number of nodes for which the PTV was partially of fully blocked were established. Moreover, the cumula-tive overlap for each of the poses and the minimum overlap over all poses were computed. Results: The fully and partially blocked nodes ranged from 12% to 20% and 13% to 27%, respectively. Typically, pose 3 caused the fewest blocked nodes. The cumulative overlap ranged from 19% to 29%. Taking the minimum overlap, i.e., considering moving the robot’s elbow while maintaining the transducer pose, the cumulative over-lap was reduced to 16% to 18% and was 3% to 6% lower than for the best individual pose. Conclusion: Our results indicate that it is possible to identify feasible ultrasound transducer poses and to use the kinematic redundancy of a 7 DOF robot to minimize the impact of the imaging subsystem on the feasible beam directions for ultrasound guided and motion compensated SBRT. Research partially funded by DFG grants ER 817/1-1 and SCHL 1844/3-1.

Landing the Job: How Special Libraries Can Support Career Research Introduction

Science.gov (United States)

Howard, Heather

2017-01-01

"Special Libraries, Special Challenges" is a column dedicated to exploring the unique public services challenges that arise in libraries that specialize in a particular subject, such as law, medicine, business, and so forth. In each column, the author will discuss public service dilemmas and opportunities that arise in special libraries.…

Pose estimation for augmented reality applications using genetic algorithm.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Ying Kin; Wong, Kin Hong; Chang, Michael Ming Yuen

2005-12-01

This paper describes a genetic algorithm that tackles the pose-estimation problem in computer vision. Our genetic algorithm can find the rotation and translation of an object accurately when the three-dimensional structure of the object is given. In our implementation, each chromosome encodes both the pose and the indexes to the selected point features of the object. Instead of only searching for the pose as in the existing work, our algorithm, at the same time, searches for a set containing the most reliable feature points in the process. This mismatch filtering strategy successfully makes the algorithm more robust under the presence of point mismatches and outliers in the images. Our algorithm has been tested with both synthetic and real data with good results. The accuracy of the recovered pose is compared to the existing algorithms. Our approach outperformed the Lowe's method and the other two genetic algorithms under the presence of point mismatches and outliers. In addition, it has been used to estimate the pose of a real object. It is shown that the proposed method is applicable to augmented reality applications.

Multi -omics and metabolic modelling pipelines: challenges and tools for systems microbiology.

Science.gov (United States)

Fondi, Marco; Liò, Pietro

2015-02-01

Integrated -omics approaches are quickly spreading across microbiology research labs, leading to (i) the possibility of detecting previously hidden features of microbial cells like multi-scale spatial organization and (ii) tracing molecular components across multiple cellular functional states. This promises to reduce the knowledge gap between genotype and phenotype and poses new challenges for computational microbiologists. We underline how the capability to unravel the complexity of microbial life will strongly depend on the integration of the huge and diverse amount of information that can be derived today from -omics experiments. In this work, we present opportunities and challenges of multi -omics data integration in current systems biology pipelines. We here discuss which layers of biological information are important for biotechnological and clinical purposes, with a special focus on bacterial metabolism and modelling procedures. A general review of the most recent computational tools for performing large-scale datasets integration is also presented, together with a possible framework to guide the design of systems biology experiments by microbiologists. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier GmbH.

Posing Problems to Understand Children's Learning of Fractions

Science.gov (United States)

Cheng, Lu Pien

2013-01-01

In this study, ways in which problem posing activities aid our understanding of children's learning of addition of unlike fractions and product of proper fractions was examined. In particular, how a simple problem posing activity helps teachers take a second, deeper look at children's understanding of fraction concepts will be discussed. The…

Self-Organizing Neural Integration of Pose-Motion Features for Human Action Recognition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

German Ignacio Parisi

2015-06-01

Full Text Available The visual recognition of complex, articulated human movements is fundamental for a wide range of artificial systems oriented towards human-robot communication, action classification, and action-driven perception. These challenging tasks may generally involve the processing of a huge amount of visual information and learning-based mechanisms for generalizing a set of training actions and classifying new samples. To operate in natural environments, a crucial property is the efficient and robust recognition of actions, also under noisy conditions caused by, for instance, systematic sensor errors and temporarily occluded persons. Studies of the mammalian visual system and its outperforming ability to process biological motion information suggest separate neural pathways for the distinct processing of pose and motion features at multiple levels and the subsequent integration of these visual cues for action perception. We present a neurobiologically-motivated approach to achieve noise-tolerant action recognition in real time. Our model consists of self-organizing Growing When Required (GWR networks that obtain progressively generalized representations of sensory inputs and learn inherent spatiotemporal dependencies. During the training, the GWR networks dynamically change their topological structure to better match the input space. We first extract pose and motion features from video sequences and then cluster actions in terms of prototypical pose-motion trajectories. Multi-cue trajectories from matching action frames are subsequently combined to provide action dynamics in the joint feature space. Reported experiments show that our approach outperforms previous results on a dataset of full-body actions captured with a depth sensor, and ranks among the best 21 results for a public benchmark of domestic daily actions.

76 FR 52263 - Special Local Regulation for Marine Events; Mattaponi Madness Drag Boat Race, Mattaponi River...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-08-22

... hour, make special local regulations necessary. However, the Coast Guard will provide advance... dangers posed by drag boat racing, operating in speeds excess of 150 miles per hour, make special local... side activities in the event area. The category of water activities includes but is not limited to sail...

Special actinide nuclides: Fuel or waste?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Srinivasan, M.; Rao, K.S.; Dingankar, M.V.

1989-01-01

The special actinide nuclides such as Np, Cm, etc. which are produced as byproducts during the operation of fission reactors are presently looked upon as 'nuclear waste' and are proposed to be disposed of as part of high level waste in deep geological repositories. The potential hazard posed to future generations over periods of thousands of years by these long lived nuclides has been a persistent source of concern to critics of nuclear power. However, the authors have recently shown that each and every one of the special actinide nuclides is a better nuclear fuel than the isotopes of plutonium. This finding suggests that one does not have to resort to exotic neutron sources for transmuting/incinerating them as proposed by some researchers. Recovery of the special actinide elements from the waste stream and recycling them back into conventional fission reactors would eliminate one of the stigmas attached to nuclear energy

Baseline Face Detection, Head Pose Estimation, and Coarse Direction Detection for Facial Data in the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Paone, Jeffrey R [ORNL; Bolme, David S [ORNL; Ferrell, Regina Kay [ORNL; Aykac, Deniz [ORNL; Karnowski, Thomas Paul [ORNL

2015-01-01

Keeping a driver focused on the road is one of the most critical steps in insuring the safe operation of a vehicle. The Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP2) has over 3,100 recorded videos of volunteer drivers during a period of 2 years. This extensive naturalistic driving study (NDS) contains over one million hours of video and associated data that could aid safety researchers in understanding where the driver s attention is focused. Manual analysis of this data is infeasible, therefore efforts are underway to develop automated feature extraction algorithms to process and characterize the data. The real-world nature, volume, and acquisition conditions are unmatched in the transportation community, but there are also challenges because the data has relatively low resolution, high compression rates, and differing illumination conditions. A smaller dataset, the head pose validation study, is available which used the same recording equipment as SHRP2 but is more easily accessible with less privacy constraints. In this work we report initial head pose accuracy using commercial and open source face pose estimation algorithms on the head pose validation data set.

Challenges in Special Steel Making

Science.gov (United States)

Balachandran, G.

2018-02-01

Special bar quality [SBQ] is a long steel product where an assured quality is delivered by the steel mill to its customer. The bars have enhanced tolerance to higher stress application and it is demanded for specialised component making. The SBQ bars are sought for component making processing units such as closed die hot forging, hot extrusion, cold forging, machining, heat treatment, welding operations. The final component quality of the secondary processing units depends on the quality maintained at the steel maker end along with quality maintained at the fabricator end. Thus, quality control is ensured at every unit process stages. The various market segments catered to by SBQ steel segment is ever growing and is reviewed. Steel mills need adequate infrastructure and technological capability to make these higher quality steels. Some of the critical stages of processing SBQ and the critical quality maintenance parameters at the steel mill in the manufacture has been brought out.

High-precision pose measurement method in wind tunnels based on laser-aided vision technology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liu Wei

2015-08-01

Full Text Available The measurement of position and attitude parameters for the isolated target from a high-speed aircraft is a great challenge in the field of wind tunnel simulation technology. In this paper, firstly, an image acquisition method for small high-speed targets with multi-dimensional movement in wind tunnel environment is proposed based on laser-aided vision technology. Combining with the trajectory simulation of the isolated model, the reasonably distributed laser stripes and self-luminous markers are utilized to capture clear images of the object. Then, after image processing, feature extraction, stereo correspondence and reconstruction, three-dimensional information of laser stripes and self-luminous markers are calculated. Besides, a pose solution method based on projected laser stripes and self-luminous markers is proposed. Finally, simulation experiments on measuring the position and attitude of high-speed rolling targets are conducted, as well as accuracy verification experiments. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method is feasible and efficient for measuring the pose parameters of rolling targets in wind tunnels.

Challenges in Infective Endocarditis.

Science.gov (United States)

Cahill, Thomas J; Baddour, Larry M; Habib, Gilbert; Hoen, Bruno; Salaun, Erwan; Pettersson, Gosta B; Schäfers, Hans Joachim; Prendergast, Bernard D

2017-01-24

Infective endocarditis is defined by a focus of infection within the heart and is a feared disease across the field of cardiology. It is frequently acquired in the health care setting, and more than one-half of cases now occur in patients without known heart disease. Despite optimal care, mortality approaches 30% at 1 year. The challenges posed by infective endocarditis are significant. It is heterogeneous in etiology, clinical manifestations, and course. Staphylococcus aureus, which has become the predominant causative organism in the developed world, leads to an aggressive form of the disease, often in vulnerable or elderly patient populations. There is a lack of research infrastructure and funding, with few randomized controlled trials to guide practice. Longstanding controversies such as the timing of surgery or the role of antibiotic prophylaxis have not been resolved. The present article reviews the challenges posed by infective endocarditis and outlines current and future strategies to limit its impact. Copyright © 2017 American College of Cardiology Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Challenges of Career and Technical Education Concurrent Enrollment: An Administrative Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Haag, Patricia W.

2015-01-01

Career and technical education concurrent enrollment may pose unique challenges in programming and enrollment for program administrators, and this chapter describes the experiences and challenges of a CTE concurrent enrollment administrator.

76 FR 36308 - Special Local Regulation for Marine Events; Temporary Change of dates for Recurring Marine Events...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-06-22

... hour, make special local regulations necessary. However, the Coast Guard will provide advance... dangers posed by hydroplane speed boats, operating in speeds excess of 150 miles per hour, make special... includes but is not limited to sail boat regattas, boat parades, power boat racing, swimming events, crew...

"Do your homework…and then hope for the best": the challenges that medical tourism poses to Canadian family physicians' support of patients' informed decision-making.

Science.gov (United States)

Snyder, Jeremy; Crooks, Valorie A; Johnston, Rory; Dharamsi, Shafik

2013-09-22

Medical tourism-the practice where patients travel internationally to privately access medical care-may limit patients' regular physicians' abilities to contribute to the informed decision-making process. We address this issue by examining ways in which Canadian family doctors' typical involvement in patients' informed decision-making is challenged when their patients engage in medical tourism. Focus groups were held with family physicians practicing in British Columbia, Canada. After receiving ethics approval, letters of invitation were faxed to family physicians in six cities. 22 physicians agreed to participate and focus groups ranged from two to six participants. Questions explored participants' perceptions of and experiences with medical tourism. A coding scheme was created using inductive and deductive codes that captured issues central to analytic themes identified by the investigators. Extracts of the coded data that dealt with informed decision-making were shared among the investigators in order to identify themes. Four themes were identified, all of which dealt with the challenges that medical tourism poses to family physicians' abilities to support medical tourists' informed decision-making. Findings relevant to each theme were contrasted against the existing medical tourism literature so as to assist in understanding their significance. Four key challenges were identified: 1) confusion and tensions related to the regular domestic physician's role in decision-making; 2) tendency to shift responsibility related to healthcare outcomes onto the patient because of the regular domestic physician's reduced role in shared decision-making; 3) strains on the patient-physician relationship and corresponding concern around the responsibility of the foreign physician; and 4) regular domestic physicians' concerns that treatments sought abroad may not be based on the best available medical evidence on treatment efficacy. Medical tourism is creating new challenges for

Compensating Pose Uncertainties through Appropriate Gripper Finger Cutouts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wolniakowski Adam

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The gripper finger design is a recurring problem in many robotic grasping platforms used in industry. The task of switching the gripper configuration to accommodate for a new batch of objects typically requires engineering expertise, and is a lengthy and costly iterative trial-and-error process. One of the open challenges is the need for the gripper to compensate for uncertainties inherent to the workcell, e.g. due to errors in calibration, inaccurate pose estimation from the vision system, or object deformation. In this paper, we present an analysis of gripper uncertainty compensating capabilities in a sample industrial object grasping scenario for a finger that was designed using an automated simulation-based geometry optimization method (Wolniakowski et al., 2013, 2015. We test the developed gripper with a set of grasps subjected to structured perturbation in a simulation environment and in the real-world setting. We provide a comparison of the data obtained by using both of these approaches. We argue that the strong correspondence observed in results validates the use of dynamic simulation for the gripper finger design and optimization.

Point Cloud Based Relative Pose Estimation of a Satellite in Close Range

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lujiang Liu

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Determination of the relative pose of satellites is essential in space rendezvous operations and on-orbit servicing missions. The key problems are the adoption of suitable sensor on board of a chaser and efficient techniques for pose estimation. This paper aims to estimate the pose of a target satellite in close range on the basis of its known model by using point cloud data generated by a flash LIDAR sensor. A novel model based pose estimation method is proposed; it includes a fast and reliable pose initial acquisition method based on global optimal searching by processing the dense point cloud data directly, and a pose tracking method based on Iterative Closest Point algorithm. Also, a simulation system is presented in this paper in order to evaluate the performance of the sensor and generate simulated sensor point cloud data. It also provides truth pose of the test target so that the pose estimation error can be quantified. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and achievable pose accuracy, numerical simulation experiments are performed; results demonstrate algorithm capability of operating with point cloud directly and large pose variations. Also, a field testing experiment is conducted and results show that the proposed method is effective.

Creativity of Field-dependent and Field-independent Students in Posing Mathematical Problems

Science.gov (United States)

Azlina, N.; Amin, S. M.; Lukito, A.

2018-01-01

This study aims at describing the creativity of elementary school students with different cognitive styles in mathematical problem-posing. The posed problems were assessed based on three components of creativity, namely fluency, flexibility, and novelty. The free-type problem posing was used in this study. This study is a descriptive research with qualitative approach. Data collections were conducted through written task and task-based interviews. The subjects were two elementary students. One of them is Field Dependent (FD) and the other is Field Independent (FI) which were measured by GEFT (Group Embedded Figures Test). Further, the data were analyzed based on creativity components. The results show thatFD student’s posed problems have fulfilled the two components of creativity namely fluency, in which the subject posed at least 3 mathematical problems, and flexibility, in whichthe subject posed problems with at least 3 different categories/ideas. Meanwhile,FI student’s posed problems have fulfilled all three components of creativity, namely fluency, in which thesubject posed at least 3 mathematical problems, flexibility, in which thesubject posed problems with at least 3 different categories/ideas, and novelty, in which the subject posed problems that are purely the result of her own ideas and different from problems they have known.

Is supergravity well-posed?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Isenberg, J.; Bao, D.; Yasskin, P.B.

1983-01-01

One rather fundamental question concerning supergravity remains unresolved: Is supergravity a well-posed field theory? That is, does a set of certain (Cauchy) data specified on some initial spacelike surface determine a unique, causally propagating spacetime solution of the supergravity field equations (at least in some finite neighborhood of the initial surface)? In this paper, the authors give a very brief report on work directed towards answering this question. (Auth.)

Spontaneous and posed facial expression in Parkinson's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, M C; Smith, M K; Ellgring, H

1996-09-01

Spontaneous and posed emotional facial expressions in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD, n = 12) were compared with those of healthy age-matched controls (n = 12). The intensity and amount of facial expression in PD patients were expected to be reduced for spontaneous but not posed expressions. Emotional stimuli were video clips selected from films, 2-5 min in duration, designed to elicit feelings of happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, or anger. Facial movements were coded using Ekman and Friesen's (1978) Facial Action Coding System (FACS). In addition, participants rated their emotional experience on 9-point Likert scales. The PD group showed significantly less overall facial reactivity than did controls when viewing the films. The predicted Group X Condition (spontaneous vs. posed) interaction effect on smile intensity was found when PD participants with more severe disease were compared with those with milder disease and with controls. In contrast, ratings of emotional experience were similar for both groups. Depression was positively associated with emotion rating but not with measures of facial activity. Spontaneous facial expression appears to be selectively affected in PD, whereas posed expression and emotional experience remain relatively intact.

Lessons learned in induced fit docking and metadynamics in the Drug Design Data Resource Grand Challenge 2

Science.gov (United States)

Baumgartner, Matthew P.; Evans, David A.

2018-01-01

Two of the major ongoing challenges in computational drug discovery are predicting the binding pose and affinity of a compound to a protein. The Drug Design Data Resource Grand Challenge 2 was developed to address these problems and to drive development of new methods. The challenge provided the 2D structures of compounds for which the organizers help blinded data in the form of 35 X-ray crystal structures and 102 binding affinity measurements and challenged participants to predict the binding pose and affinity of the compounds. We tested a number of pose prediction methods as part of the challenge; we found that docking methods that incorporate protein flexibility (Induced Fit Docking) outperformed methods that treated the protein as rigid. We also found that using binding pose metadynamics, a molecular dynamics based method, to score docked poses provided the best predictions of our methods with an average RMSD of 2.01 Å. We tested both structure-based (e.g. docking) and ligand-based methods (e.g. QSAR) in the affinity prediction portion of the competition. We found that our structure-based methods based on docking with Smina (Spearman ρ = 0.614), performed slightly better than our ligand-based methods (ρ = 0.543), and had equivalent performance with the other top methods in the competition. Despite the overall good performance of our methods in comparison to other participants in the challenge, there exists significant room for improvement especially in cases such as these where protein flexibility plays such a large role.

Special Article Ethics and Electronic Health Information Technology ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Objectives: The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), and the National Identification Authority (NIA), pose ethical challenges to the physician-patient relationship due to interoperability. This paper explores (1) the national legislation on Electronic Health Information Technology (EHIT), (2) the ethics of information ...

A proof challenge: multiple alignment and information compression

OpenAIRE

Wolff, J Gerard

2014-01-01

These notes pose a "proof challenge": a proof, or disproof, of the proposition that "For any given body of information, I, expressed as a one-dimensional sequence of atomic symbols, a multiple alignment concept, described in the document, provides a means of encoding all the redundancy that may exist in I. Aspects of the challenge are described.

Challenges in oral drug delivery in patients with esophageal dysphagia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kappelle, W.F.; Siersema, P.D.; Bogte, A.; Vleggaar, F.P.

2016-01-01

INTRODUCTION: Esophageal dysphagia is a commonly reported symptom with various benign and malignant causes. Esophageal dysphagia can impede intake of oral medication, which often poses a major challenge for both patients and physicians. The best way to address this challenge depends of the cause of

Women in the Teaching Profession: Impacts and Challenges

OpenAIRE

A. M. Sultana; Norhirdawati. M. Zahir; Norzalan. H. Yaacob

2014-01-01

Recently in Malaysia, women's participation in teaching profession has increased. The increasing trend of women’s participation in the teaching profession poses challenges in families, especially in the developing countries like Malaysia. One of these challenges, concerns in balancing their role between family and job responsibility that faced by many women teachers. The purpose of this study is to discover how women teachers' impact on family happiness and the challenges faced by them in bal...

Multi-Task Convolutional Neural Network for Pose-Invariant Face Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Yin, Xi; Liu, Xiaoming

2018-02-01

This paper explores multi-task learning (MTL) for face recognition. We answer the questions of how and why MTL can improve the face recognition performance. First, we propose a multi-task Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for face recognition where identity classification is the main task and pose, illumination, and expression estimations are the side tasks. Second, we develop a dynamic-weighting scheme to automatically assign the loss weight to each side task, which is a crucial problem in MTL. Third, we propose a pose-directed multi-task CNN by grouping different poses to learn pose-specific identity features, simultaneously across all poses. Last but not least, we propose an energy-based weight analysis method to explore how CNN-based MTL works. We observe that the side tasks serve as regularizations to disentangle the variations from the learnt identity features. Extensive experiments on the entire Multi-PIE dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work using all data in Multi-PIE for face recognition. Our approach is also applicable to in-the-wild datasets for pose-invariant face recognition and achieves comparable or better performance than state of the art on LFW, CFP, and IJB-A datasets.

Climate change challenges for SEA

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Sanne Vammen

This paper takes a theoretical perspective on the challenges that climate changes pose for SEA. The theoretical framework used is the sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society and the aspects that characterise this society. Climate change is viewed as a risk, and the theory is used to derive...

Hysteresis and Phase Transitions in a Lattice Regularization of an Ill-Posed Forward-Backward Diffusion Equation

Science.gov (United States)

Helmers, Michael; Herrmann, Michael

2018-03-01

We consider a lattice regularization for an ill-posed diffusion equation with a trilinear constitutive law and study the dynamics of phase interfaces in the parabolic scaling limit. Our main result guarantees for a certain class of single-interface initial data that the lattice solutions satisfy asymptotically a free boundary problem with a hysteretic Stefan condition. The key challenge in the proof is to control the microscopic fluctuations that are inevitably produced by the backward diffusion when a particle passes the spinodal region.

Advances and Challenges in Convergent Communication Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Toral-Cruz, Homero; Mihovska, Albena

2017-01-01

Welcome to this special issue of Wireless Personal Communications on Advances and Challenges in Convergent Communication Networks. The main purpose of this special issue is to present new progresses and challenges in convergent networks. Communication networks play an important role in our daily...... life because they allow communicating and sharing contents between heterogeneous nodes around the globe. The emergence of multiple network architectures and emerging technologies have resulted in new applications and services over a heterogeneous network. This heterogeneous network has undergone...... significant challenges in recent years, such as the evolution to a converged network with the capability to support multiple services, while maintaining a satisfactory level of QoE/QoS, security, efficiency and trust. The special issue on Advances and Challenges in Convergent Communication Networks...

Remote patient monitoring: Information reliability challenges

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Petkovic, M.

2009-01-01

An increasing number of extramural applications in the personal healthcare domain pose new challenges regarding the security of medical data. In this paper, we focus on remote patient monitoring systems and the issues around information reliability. In these systems medical data is not collected by

“Do your homework…and then hope for the best”: the challenges that medical tourism poses to Canadian family physicians’ support of patients’ informed decision-making

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

Background Medical tourism—the practice where patients travel internationally to privately access medical care—may limit patients’ regular physicians’ abilities to contribute to the informed decision-making process. We address this issue by examining ways in which Canadian family doctors’ typical involvement in patients’ informed decision-making is challenged when their patients engage in medical tourism. Methods Focus groups were held with family physicians practicing in British Columbia, Canada. After receiving ethics approval, letters of invitation were faxed to family physicians in six cities. 22 physicians agreed to participate and focus groups ranged from two to six participants. Questions explored participants’ perceptions of and experiences with medical tourism. A coding scheme was created using inductive and deductive codes that captured issues central to analytic themes identified by the investigators. Extracts of the coded data that dealt with informed decision-making were shared among the investigators in order to identify themes. Four themes were identified, all of which dealt with the challenges that medical tourism poses to family physicians’ abilities to support medical tourists’ informed decision-making. Findings relevant to each theme were contrasted against the existing medical tourism literature so as to assist in understanding their significance. Results Four key challenges were identified: 1) confusion and tensions related to the regular domestic physician’s role in decision-making; 2) tendency to shift responsibility related to healthcare outcomes onto the patient because of the regular domestic physician’s reduced role in shared decision-making; 3) strains on the patient-physician relationship and corresponding concern around the responsibility of the foreign physician; and 4) regular domestic physicians’ concerns that treatments sought abroad may not be based on the best available medical evidence on treatment

[Bioethical challenges of stem cell tourism].

Science.gov (United States)

Ventura-Juncá, Patricio; Erices, Alejandro; Santos, Manuel J

2013-08-01

Stem cells have drawn extraordinary attention from scientists and the general public due to their potential to generate effective therapies for incurable diseases. At the same time, the production of embryonic stem cells involves a serious ethical issue concerning the destruction of human embryos. Although adult stem cells and induced pluripotential cells do not pose this ethical objection, there are other bioethical challenges common to all types of stem cells related particularly to the clinical use of stem cells. Their clinical use should be based on clinical trials, and in special situations, medical innovation, both of which have particular ethical dimensions. The media has raised unfounded expectations in patients and the public about the real clinical benefits of stem cells. At the same time, the number of unregulated clinics is increasing around the world, making direct offers through Internet of unproven stem cell therapies that attract desperate patients that have not found solutions in standard medicine. This is what is called stem cells tourism. This article reviews this situation, its consequences and the need for international cooperation to establish effective regulations to prevent the exploitation of patients and to endanger the prestige of legitimate stem cell research.

Recognizing and overcoming challenges of couple interview research.

Science.gov (United States)

Mellor, Ruth M; Slaymaker, Emma; Cleland, John

2013-10-01

In this article we discuss some methodological and ethical challenges we faced when conducting a couple-based study on men's role in contraceptive switching, and how we overcame them. The challenges we discuss include recruiting couples with a range of experiences, ensuring informed consent of participants, maintaining confidentiality within interviews, and participants discussing interview content between interviews. As appropriate, we have drawn on study participants' views of these challenges. We conclude that although couple research poses challenges, they can be overcome or minimized, and that for certain research questions this methodology is well worth using.

Guest editorial: Introduction to the special issue on modern control for computer games.

Science.gov (United States)

Argyriou, Vasileios; Kotsia, Irene; Zafeiriou, Stefanos; Petrou, Maria

2013-12-01

A typical gaming scenario, as developed in the past 20 years, involves a player interacting with a game using a specialized input device, such as a joystic, a mouse, a keyboard, etc. Recent technological advances and new sensors (for example, low cost commodity depth cameras) have enabled the introduction of more elaborated approaches in which the player is now able to interact with the game using his body pose, facial expressions, actions, and even his physiological signals. A new era of games has already started, employing computer vision techniques, brain-computer interfaces systems, haptic and wearable devices. The future lies in games that will be intelligent enough not only to extract the player's commands provided by his speech and gestures but also his behavioral cues, as well as his/her emotional states, and adjust their game plot accordingly in order to ensure more realistic and satisfactory gameplay experience. This special issue on modern control for computer games discusses several interdisciplinary factors that influence a user's input to a game, something directly linked to the gaming experience. These include, but are not limited to, the following: behavioral affective gaming, user satisfaction and perception, motion capture and scene modeling, and complete software frameworks that address several challenges risen in such scenarios.

Conceiving Human Interaction by Visualising Depth Data of Head Pose Changes and Emotion Recognition via Facial Expressions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Grigorios Kalliatakis

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Affective computing in general and human activity and intention analysis in particular comprise a rapidly-growing field of research. Head pose and emotion changes present serious challenges when applied to player’s training and ludology experience in serious games, or analysis of customer satisfaction regarding broadcast and web services, or monitoring a driver’s attention. Given the increasing prominence and utility of depth sensors, it is now feasible to perform large-scale collection of three-dimensional (3D data for subsequent analysis. Discriminative random regression forests were selected in order to rapidly and accurately estimate head pose changes in an unconstrained environment. In order to complete the secondary process of recognising four universal dominant facial expressions (happiness, anger, sadness and surprise, emotion recognition via facial expressions (ERFE was adopted. After that, a lightweight data exchange format (JavaScript Object Notation (JSON is employed, in order to manipulate the data extracted from the two aforementioned settings. Motivated by the need to generate comprehensible visual representations from different sets of data, in this paper, we introduce a system capable of monitoring human activity through head pose and emotion changes, utilising an affordable 3D sensing technology (Microsoft Kinect sensor.

Driver head pose tracking with thermal camera

Science.gov (United States)

Bole, S.; Fournier, C.; Lavergne, C.; Druart, G.; Lépine, T.

2016-09-01

Head pose can be seen as a coarse estimation of gaze direction. In automotive industry, knowledge about gaze direction could optimize Human-Machine Interface (HMI) and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). Pose estimation systems are often based on camera when applications have to be contactless. In this paper, we explore uncooled thermal imagery (8-14μm) for its intrinsic night vision capabilities and for its invariance versus lighting variations. Two methods are implemented and compared, both are aided by a 3D model of the head. The 3D model, mapped with thermal texture, allows to synthesize a base of 2D projected models, differently oriented and labeled in yaw and pitch. The first method is based on keypoints. Keypoints of models are matched with those of the query image. These sets of matchings, aided with the 3D shape of the model, allow to estimate 3D pose. The second method is a global appearance approach. Among all 2D models of the base, algorithm searches the one which is the closest to the query image thanks to a weighted least squares difference.

A Support System for the Electric Appliance Control Using Pose Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Kawano, Takuya; Yamamoto, Kazuhiko; Kato, Kunihito; Hongo, Hitoshi

In this paper, we propose an electric appliance control support system for aged and bedridden people using pose recognition. We proposed a pose recognition system that distinguishes between seven poses of the user on the bed. First, the face and arm regions of the user are detected by using the skin color. Our system focuses a recognition region surrounding the face region. Next, the higher order local autocorrelation features within the region are extracted. The linear discriminant analysis creates the coefficient matrix that can optimally distinguish among training data from the seven poses. Our algorithm can recognize the seven poses even if the subject wears different clothes and slightly shifts or slants on the bed. From the experimental results, our system achieved an accuracy rate of over 99 %. Then, we show that it possibles to construct one of a user-friendly system.

The ketogenic diet as broad-spectrum treatment for super-refractory pediatric status epilepticus: challenges in implementation in the pediatric and neonatal intensive care units.

Science.gov (United States)

Cobo, Nicole H; Sankar, Raman; Murata, Kristina K; Sewak, Sarika L; Kezele, Michele A; Matsumoto, Joyce H

2015-02-01

Refractory status epilepticus carries significant morbidity and mortality. Recent reports have promoted the use of the ketogenic diet as an effective treatment for refractory status epilepticus. We describe our recent experience with instituting the ketogenic diet for 4 critically ill children in refractory status epilepticus, ranging in age from 9 weeks to 13.5 years after failure of traditional treatment. The ketogenic diet allowed these patients to be weaned off continuous infusions of anesthetics without recurrence of status epilepticus, though delayed ketosis and persistently elevated glucose measurements posed special challenges to effective initiation, and none experienced complete seizure cessation. The ease of sustaining myocardial function with fatty acid energy substrates compares favorably over the myocardial toxicity posed by anesthetic doses of barbiturates and contributes to the safety profile of the ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet can be implemented successfully and safely for the treatment of refractory status epilepticus in pediatric patients. © The Author(s) 2014.

Job Design for Special Education Teachers

Science.gov (United States)

Major, Amanda E.

2012-01-01

Special education teachers, especially those that teach students with behavioral/emotional challenges, have high attrition rates stemming from stress, job dissatisfaction, and low motivation. The external factors in the school setting and job contribute to special education teachers' attrition and disengagement. A relationship between motivation…

Flexible Polyhedral Surfaces with Two Flat Poses

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hellmuth Stachel

2015-05-01

Full Text Available We present three types of polyhedral surfaces, which are continuously flexible and have not only an initial pose, where all faces are coplanar, but pass during their self-motion through another pose with coplanar faces (“flat pose”. These surfaces are examples of so-called rigid origami, since we only admit exact flexions, i.e., each face remains rigid during the motion; only the dihedral angles vary. We analyze the geometry behind Miura-ori and address Kokotsakis’ example of a flexible tessellation with the particular case of a cyclic quadrangle. Finally, we recall Bricard’s octahedra of Type 3 and their relation to strophoids.

Article Commentary: The interRAI Pediatric Home Care (PEDS HC Assessment: Evaluating the Long-term Community-Based Service and Support Needs of Children Facing Special Healthcare Challenges

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Charles D. Phillips

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The vast majority of assessment instruments developed to assess children facing special healthcare challenges were constructed to assess children within a limited age range or children who face specific conditions or impairments. In contrast, the interRAI Pediatric Home Care (PEDS HC Assessment Form was specifically designed to assess the long-term community-based service and support needs of children and youth aged from four to 20 years who face a wide range of chronic physical or behavioral health challenges. Initial research indicates that PEDS HC items exhibit good predictive validity–-explaining significant proportions of the variance in parents’ perceptions of needs, case managers’ service authorizations, and Medicaid program expenditures for long-term community-based services and supports. In addition, PEDS HC items have been used to construct scales that summarize the strengths and needs of children facing special healthcare challenges. Versions of the PEDS HC are now being used in Medicaid programs in three states in the United States.

Coupled multiview autoencoders with locality sensitivity for three-dimensional human pose estimation

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Jialin; Sun, Jifeng; Luo, Shasha; Duan, Bichao

2017-09-01

Estimating three-dimensional (3D) human poses from a single camera is usually implemented by searching pose candidates with image descriptors. Existing methods usually suppose that the mapping from feature space to pose space is linear, but in fact, their mapping relationship is highly nonlinear, which heavily degrades the performance of 3D pose estimation. We propose a method to recover 3D pose from a silhouette image. It is based on the multiview feature embedding (MFE) and the locality-sensitive autoencoders (LSAEs). On the one hand, we first depict the manifold regularized sparse low-rank approximation for MFE and then the input image is characterized by a fused feature descriptor. On the other hand, both the fused feature and its corresponding 3D pose are separately encoded by LSAEs. A two-layer back-propagation neural network is trained by parameter fine-tuning and then used to map the encoded 2D features to encoded 3D poses. Our LSAE ensures a good preservation of the local topology of data points. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.

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.

Key Challenges in the Search for Innovative Drug Treatments for Special Populations. Converging Needs in Neonatology, Pediatrics, and Medical Genetics.

Science.gov (United States)

MacLeod, Stuart

2017-08-04

The explosion of knowledge concerning the interplay of genetic and environmental factors determining pathophysiology and guiding therapeutic choice has altered the landscape in pediatric clinical pharmacology and pharmacy. The need for innovative research methods and design expertise for small clinical trials to be undertaken in sparse populations has been accentuated. At the same time, shortfalls in critical human resources represent a key challenge, especially in low- and middle-income countries where the need for new research and education directions is greatest. Unless a specific action plan is urgently developed, there will be a continuing gap in availability of the essential expertise needed to address treatment challenges in special patient populations such as neonates, patients suffering from rare or neglected diseases, and children of all ages.

Inverse and Ill-posed Problems Theory and Applications

CERN Document Server

Kabanikhin, S I

2011-01-01

The text demonstrates the methods for proving the existence (if et all) and finding of inverse and ill-posed problems solutions in linear algebra, integral and operator equations, integral geometry, spectral inverse problems, and inverse scattering problems. It is given comprehensive background material for linear ill-posed problems and for coefficient inverse problems for hyperbolic, parabolic, and elliptic equations. A lot of examples for inverse problems from physics, geophysics, biology, medicine, and other areas of application of mathematics are included.

Special Education Teacher Evaluation: Why It Matters, What Makes It Challenging, and How to Address These Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Evelyn; Semmelroth, Carrie Lisa

2014-01-01

There is currently little consensus on how special education teachers should be evaluated. The lack of consensus may be due to several reasons. Special education teachers work under a variety of complex conditions, with a very heterogeneous population, and support student progress toward a very individualized set of goals. In addition, special…

Trajectory Planning with Pose Feedback for a Dual-Arm Space Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yicheng Liu

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In order to obtain high precision path tracking for a dual-arm space robot, a trajectory planning method with pose feedback is proposed to be introduced into the design process in this paper. Firstly, pose error kinematic models are derived from the related kinematics and desired pose command for the end-effector and the base, respectively. On this basis, trajectory planning with pose feedback is proposed from a control perspective. Theoretical analyses show that the proposed trajectory planning algorithm can guarantee that pose error converges to zero exponentially for both the end-effector and the base when the robot is out of singular configuration. Compared with the existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm can lead to higher precision path tracking for the end-effector. Furthermore, the algorithm renders the system good anti-interference property for the base. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed trajectory planning algorithm.

Challenges in industrial fermentation technology research

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Formenti, Luca Riccardo; Nørregaard, Anders; Bolic, Andrijana

2014-01-01

Industrial fermentation processes are increasingly popular, and are considered an important technological asset for reducing our dependence on chemicals and products produced from fossil fuels. However, despite their increasing popularity, fermentation processes have not yet reached the same...... engineering challenges: scaling up and scaling down fermentation processes, the influence of morphology on broth rheology and mass transfer, and establishing novel sensors to measure and control insightful process parameters. The greatest emphasis is on the challenges posed by filamentous fungi, because...

Manufacturing and Security Challenges in 3D Printing

Science.gov (United States)

Zeltmann, Steven Eric; Gupta, Nikhil; Tsoutsos, Nektarios Georgios; Maniatakos, Michail; Rajendran, Jeyavijayan; Karri, Ramesh

2016-07-01

As the manufacturing time, quality, and cost associated with additive manufacturing (AM) continue to improve, more and more businesses and consumers are adopting this technology. Some of the key benefits of AM include customizing products, localizing production and reducing logistics. Due to these and numerous other benefits, AM is enabling a globally distributed manufacturing process and supply chain spanning multiple parties, and hence raises concerns about the reliability of the manufactured product. In this work, we first present a brief overview of the potential risks that exist in the cyber-physical environment of additive manufacturing. We then evaluate the risks posed by two different classes of modifications to the AM process which are representative of the challenges that are unique to AM. The risks posed are examined through mechanical testing of objects with altered printing orientation and fine internal defects. Finite element analysis and ultrasonic inspection are also used to demonstrate the potential for decreased performance and for evading detection. The results highlight several scenarios, intentional or unintentional, that can affect the product quality and pose security challenges for the additive manufacturing supply chain.

Preferential Treatment or Unwanted in Mainstream Schools? The Perceptions of Parents and Teachers with Regards to Pupils with Special Educational Needs and Challenging Behaviour

Science.gov (United States)

Broomhead, Karen E.

2013-01-01

This study explored the perceptions of parents and teachers regarding the differential treatment or stigma experienced by pupils with challenging behaviour--more specifically, those with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESD), as well as children with visible special educational needs (Down's syndrome and/or profound and multiple…

Determining the Performances of Pre-Service Primary School Teachers in Problem Posing Situations

Science.gov (United States)

Kilic, Cigdem

2013-01-01

This study examined the problem posing strategies of pre-service primary school teachers in different problem posing situations (PPSs) and analysed the issues they encounter while posing problems. A problem posing task consisting of six PPSs (two free, two structured, and two semi-structured situations) was delivered to 40 participants.…

Tooth display and lip position during spontaneous and posed smiling in adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Van Der Geld, Pieter; Oosterveld, Paul; Berge, Stefaan J; Kuijpers-Jagtman, Anne M

2008-08-01

To analyze differences in tooth display, lip-line height, and smile width between the posed smiling record, traditionally produced for orthodontic diagnosis, and the spontaneous (Duchenne) smile of joy. The faces of 122 male participants were each filmed during spontaneous and posed smiling. Spontaneous smiles were elicited through the participants watching a comical movie. Maxillary and mandibular lip-line heights, tooth display, and smile width were measured using a digital videographic method for smile analysis. Paired sample t-tests were used to compare measurements of posed and spontaneous smiling. Maxillary lip-line heights during spontaneous smiling were significantly higher than during posed smiling. Compared to spontaneous smiling, tooth display in the (pre)molar area during posed smiling decreased by up to 30%, along with a significant reduction of smile width. During posed smiling, also mandibular lip-line heights changed and the teeth were more covered by the lower lip than during spontaneous smiling. Reduced lip-line heights, tooth display, and smile width on a posed smiling record can have implications for the diagnostics of lip-line height, smile arc, buccal corridors, and plane of occlusion. Spontaneous smiling records next to posed smiling records are therefore recommended for diagnostic purposes. Because of the dynamic nature of spontaneous smiling, it is proposed to switch to dynamic video recording of the smile.

Head Pose Estimation Using Multilinear Subspace Analysis for Robot Human Awareness

Science.gov (United States)

Ivanov, Tonislav; Matthies, Larry; Vasilescu, M. Alex O.

2009-01-01

Mobile robots, operating in unconstrained indoor and outdoor environments, would benefit in many ways from perception of the human awareness around them. Knowledge of people's head pose and gaze directions would enable the robot to deduce which people are aware of the its presence, and to predict future motions of the people for better path planning. To make such inferences, requires estimating head pose on facial images that are combination of multiple varying factors, such as identity, appearance, head pose, and illumination. By applying multilinear algebra, the algebra of higher-order tensors, we can separate these factors and estimate head pose regardless of subject's identity or image conditions. Furthermore, we can automatically handle uncertainty in the size of the face and its location. We demonstrate a pipeline of on-the-move detection of pedestrians with a robot stereo vision system, segmentation of the head, and head pose estimation in cluttered urban street scenes.

The challenges posed by radiation and radionuclide releases to the environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Wenning, Richard J; Apitz, Sabine E; Backhaus, Thomas; Barnthouse, Lawrence; Batley, Graeme; Brooks, Bryan; Chapman, Peter M; Griffin, Michael; Kapustka, Lawrence; Landis, Wayne; Leung, Kenneth M Y; Linkov, Igor; Seager, Thomas P; Suter, Glenn; Tannenbaum, Lawrence

2011-07-01

The recent accident at the Fukushima I nuclear power plant in Japan (also known as Fukushima Daiichi) captured the world's attention and re-invigorated concerns about the safety of nuclear power technology. The Editors of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management invited experts in the field to describe the primary issues associated with the control and release of radioactive materials to the environment, particularly those that are of importance to the health of the human populations and the ecological systems that populate our planet. This collection of invited short commentaries aims to inform on the safety of nuclear power plants damaged by natural disasters and provide a primer on the potential environmental impacts. The intent of these invited commentaries is not to fuel the excitement and fears about the Fukushima Daiichi incident; rather, it is to collect views and comments from some of the world's experts on the broad science and policy challenges raised by this event, and to provide high-level views on the science issues that surround this situation in order to improve our collective ability to avoid or at least minimize the consequences of future events. Copyright © 2011 SETAC.

The "special K" in kaizen.

Science.gov (United States)

McAtee, L F

1999-05-01

Do you want a strategy that guarantees the success of kaizen in your organization? This article will provide insights as to why one organization may succeed and another fails. Learn why the "Special K" is the difference. Idea will be presented on how to develop the "Special K" in others and ourselves. You will be challenged to become a "kaizener".

Pose Estimation and Adaptive Robot Behaviour for Human-Robot Interaction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Svenstrup, Mikael; Hansen, Søren Tranberg; Andersen, Hans Jørgen

2009-01-01

Abstract—This paper introduces a new method to determine a person’s pose based on laser range measurements. Such estimates are typically a prerequisite for any human-aware robot navigation, which is the basis for effective and timeextended interaction between a mobile robot and a human. The robot......’s pose. The resulting pose estimates are used to identify humans who wish to be approached and interacted with. The interaction motion of the robot is based on adaptive potential functions centered around the person that respect the persons social spaces. The method is tested in experiments...

Landscape, Legal, and Biodiversity Threats that Windows Pose to Birds: A Review of an Important Conservation Issue

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Klem Jr.

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Windows in human residential and commercial structures in urban, suburban, and rural landscapes contribute to the deaths of billions of birds worldwide. International treaties, federal, provincial, state, and municipal laws exist to reduce human-associated avian mortality, but are most often not enforced for bird kills resulting from window strikes. As an additive, compared to a compensatory mortality factor, window collisions pose threats to the sustainability and overall population health of common as well as species of special concern. Several solutions to address the window hazard for birds exist, but the most innovative and promising need encouragement and support to market, manufacture, and implement.

An anti-disturbing real time pose estimation method and system

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Jian; Zhang, Xiao-hu

2011-08-01

Pose estimation relating two-dimensional (2D) images to three-dimensional (3D) rigid object need some known features to track. In practice, there are many algorithms which perform this task in high accuracy, but all of these algorithms suffer from features lost. This paper investigated the pose estimation when numbers of known features or even all of them were invisible. Firstly, known features were tracked to calculate pose in the current and the next image. Secondly, some unknown but good features to track were automatically detected in the current and the next image. Thirdly, those unknown features which were on the rigid and could match each other in the two images were retained. Because of the motion characteristic of the rigid object, the 3D information of those unknown features on the rigid could be solved by the rigid object's pose at the two moment and their 2D information in the two images except only two case: the first one was that both camera and object have no relative motion and camera parameter such as focus length, principle point, and etc. have no change at the two moment; the second one was that there was no shared scene or no matched feature in the two image. Finally, because those unknown features at the first time were known now, pose estimation could go on in the followed images in spite of the missing of known features in the beginning by repeating the process mentioned above. The robustness of pose estimation by different features detection algorithms such as Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT) feature, Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and Speed Up Robust Feature (SURF) were compared and the compact of the different relative motion between camera and the rigid object were discussed in this paper. Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) parallel computing was also used to extract and to match hundreds of features for real time pose estimation which was hard to work on Central Processing Unit (CPU). Compared with other pose estimation methods, this new

Introduction to the special section on "Hormones and cognition: perspectives, controversies, and challenges for future research".

Science.gov (United States)

Frick, Karyn M

2012-02-01

The research of the past two decades has firmly established that hormones modulate numerous aspects of cognitive function, including memory, attention, decision-making, and sensory processing. That such a wide variety of hormones influence cognition mediated by multiple nonhypothalamic brain regions illustrates the critical importance of hormones to neural and cognitive function. The diversity of hormonal effects on cognition is evident in the collection of reviews and original research articles assembled for this special section. Together, these articles provide an overview of recent research on varied topics in hormones and cognition, address controversial issues in the field, and discuss challenges that must be overcome in future research to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms through which hormones modulate cognitive function.

125th anniversary of the American Psychological Association-Accomplishments and challenges: Introduction to the special issue.

Science.gov (United States)

VandenBos, Gary R; Hogan, John D; Kazak, Anne E

2017-11-01

In 2017, the American Psychological Association (APA) celebrates the 125th anniversary of its founding. This special issue commemorates this milestone by providing long- and short-term views on the history of APA and its role in psychology in America. The opening paper presents an overview of initiatives and challenges facing the field of psychology and APA in five periods, each roughly 25 years in length. The remaining eight articles review specific issues and areas of activity over varying lengths of time in more recent years. Issues of policy involvement, relations with the media, and involvement with the courts are described, as well as developments related to social justice, education, science, practice, and publications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Changing patterns of inpatient respiratory care services over a decade at the Cleveland Clinic: challenges posed and proposed responses.

Science.gov (United States)

Orens, Douglas K; Kester, Lucy; Konrad, Dale J; Stoller, James K

2005-08-01

Changing characteristics of hospitalized patients over the last decade have created challenges for all health-care providers in delivering optimal care. In the specific case of respiratory care, trends that hospitalized patients have generally become sicker over time and that average lengths of stay have generally become shorter have posed the challenge of meeting demands for more services delivered with greater immediacy. We undertook the current analysis to assess how the delivery of respiratory care services at a tertiary-care academic medical center, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation Hospital, has evolved over the decade 1991 to 2001. In this observational study, we examined concurrent departmental trends and speculated that the capability to increase clinical activity with maintained or improved clinical outcomes, preserved costs, and a lower turnover rate among respiratory therapists reflects features of the professional environment within our Section of Respiratory Therapy. This analysis compares patterns of respiratory care service delivery in two 5-year intervals: from 1991 to 1996 and from 1996 to 2001. Data were collected using a respiratory care information-management system and an inpatient hospital information system, which track the volume and actual cost of services provided. These analyses accounted for the actual time-based cost of the services, including labor (with benefits), necessary equipment and supplies, medications, and equipment maintenance and depreciation. Hospital case-mix index values were determined according to guidelines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as the weighted average of resource allocation scores assigned to diagnosis-related-group categories of hospitalized patients. From 1991 to 2001, there were important expansions in the scope of respiratory care practice by our Section of Respiratory Care, while the volume of respiratory care services delivered per year increased 1.96-fold (from 339,600 to 665

Introduction to the special issue: toward implementing physiological measures in clinical child and adolescent assessments.

Science.gov (United States)

De Los Reyes, Andres; Aldao, Amelia

2015-01-01

The National Institute of Mental Health recently launched the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). The RDoC is an initiative to improve classification of mental health concerns by promoting research on the brain mechanisms underlying these concerns, with the ultimate goal of developing interventions that target these brain mechanisms. A key focus of RDoC involves opening new lines of research examining patients' responses on biological measures. The RDoC presents unique challenges to mental health professionals who work with children and adolescents. Indeed, mental health professionals rarely integrate biological measures into clinical assessments. Thus, RDoC's ability to improve patient care rests, in part, on the development of strategies for implementing biological measures within mental health assessments. Further, mental health professionals already carry out comprehensive assessments that frequently yield inconsistent findings. These inconsistencies have historically posed challenges to interpreting research findings as well as assessment outcomes in practice settings. In this introductory article, we review key issues that informed the development of a special issue of articles demonstrating methods for implementing low-cost measures of physiological functioning in clinical child and adolescent assessments. We also outline a conceptual framework, informed by theoretical work on using and interpreting multiple informants' clinical reports (De Los Reyes, Thomas, Goodman, & Kundey, 2013 ), to guide hypothesis testing when using physiological measures within clinical child and adolescent assessments. This special issue and the conceptual model described in this article may open up new lines of research testing paradigms for implementing clinically feasible physiological measures in clinical child and adolescent assessments.

Locating binding poses in protein-ligand systems using reconnaissance metadynamics

Science.gov (United States)

Söderhjelm, Pär; Tribello, Gareth A.; Parrinello, Michele

2012-01-01

A molecular dynamics-based protocol is proposed for finding and scoring protein-ligand binding poses. This protocol uses the recently developed reconnaissance metadynamics method, which employs a self-learning algorithm to construct a bias that pushes the system away from the kinetic traps where it would otherwise remain. The exploration of phase space with this algorithm is shown to be roughly six to eight times faster than unbiased molecular dynamics and is only limited by the time taken to diffuse about the surface of the protein. We apply this method to the well-studied trypsin–benzamidine system and show that we are able to refind all the poses obtained from a reference EADock blind docking calculation. These poses can be scored based on the length of time the system remains trapped in the pose. Alternatively, one can perform dimensionality reduction on the output trajectory and obtain a map of phase space that can be used in more expensive free-energy calculations. PMID:22440749

Mathematical Thinking and Creativity through Mathematical Problem Posing and Solving

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

María F. Ayllón

2016-04-01

Full Text Available This work shows the relationship between the development of mathematical thinking and creativity with mathematical problem posing and solving. Creativity and mathematics are disciplines that do not usually appear together. Both concepts constitute complex processes sharing elements, such as fluency (number of ideas, flexibility (range of ideas, novelty (unique idea and elaboration (idea development. These factors contribute, among others, to the fact that schoolchildren are competent in mathematics. The problem solving and posing are a very powerful evaluation tool that shows the mathematical reasoning and creative level of a person. Creativity is part of the mathematics education and is a necessary ingredient to perform mathematical assignments. This contribution presents some important research works about problem posing and solving related to the development of mathematical knowledge and creativity. To that end, it is based on various beliefs reflected in the literature with respect to notions of creativity, problem solving and posing.

A Grasp-Pose Generation Method Based on Gaussian Mixture Models

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wenjia Wu

2015-11-01

Full Text Available A Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM-based grasp-pose generation method is proposed in this paper. Through offline training, the GMM is set up and used to depict the distribution of the robot's reachable orientations. By dividing the robot's workspace into small 3D voxels and training the GMM for each voxel, a look-up table covering all the workspace is built with the x, y and z positions as the index and the GMM as the entry. Through the definition of Task Space Regions (TSR, an object's feasible grasp poses are expressed as a continuous region. With the GMM, grasp poses can be preferentially sampled from regions with high reachability probabilities in the online grasp-planning stage. The GMM can also be used as a preliminary judgement of a grasp pose's reachability. Experiments on both a simulated and a real robot show the superiority of our method over the existing method.

Investigation of Problem-Solving and Problem-Posing Abilities of Seventh-Grade Students

Science.gov (United States)

Arikan, Elif Esra; Ünal, Hasan

2015-01-01

This study aims to examine the effect of multiple problem-solving skills on the problem-posing abilities of gifted and non-gifted students and to assess whether the possession of such skills can predict giftedness or affect problem-posing abilities. Participants' metaphorical images of problem posing were also explored. Participants were 20 gifted…

The full Keller-Segel model is well-posed on nonsmooth domains

Science.gov (United States)

Horstmann, D.; Meinlschmidt, H.; Rehberg, J.

2018-04-01

In this paper we prove that the full Keller-Segel system, a quasilinear strongly coupled reaction-crossdiffusion system of four parabolic equations, is well-posed in the sense that it always admits an unique local-in-time solution in an adequate function space, provided that the initial values are suitably regular. The proof is done via an abstract solution theorem for nonlocal quasilinear equations by Amann and is carried out for general source terms. It is fundamentally based on recent nontrivial elliptic and parabolic regularity results which hold true even on rather general nonsmooth spatial domains. For space dimensions 2 and 3, this enables us to work in a nonsmooth setting which is not available in classical parabolic systems theory. Apparently, there exists no comparable existence result for the full Keller-Segel system up to now. Due to the large class of possibly nonsmooth domains admitted, we also obtain new results for the ‘standard’ Keller-Segel system consisting of only two equations as a special case. This work is dedicated to Prof Willi Jäger.

Anticipating flow assurance challenges through geochemistry

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Flannery, M. [Fluid Evaluation and Sampling Technologies (FEAST) Team, Shell International Exploration and Production (United Kingdom)

2008-07-01

The behaviour of reservoir fluids pose a challenge at all stages of petroleum production, from the reservoir to refinery. The challenges sometimes stem from sub-optimal operations or inappropriate system design, with assumptions of similar fluid properties across the field. Hydrocarbon fluid phase behaviour is the product of local PVT conditions and the geochemical identity of the fluids. An appropriate development scenario along with anticipation of production challenges, can benefit from early integration of engineering and geochemical understanding of hydrocarbon fluids. This paper presented field examples of how the kerogen type and maturity, and later post-generation alteration processes such as biodegradation, water washing, TSR can influence likely flow assurance challenges in the production stream. The confounding issues of multiple charges and overlaying signatures were also discussed.

Remote-controlled flexible pose measurement system and method for a moving target in wind tunnel

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei LIU

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The measurement of position and attitude parameters for the isolated target from a high-speed aircraft is a great challenge in the field of wind tunnel simulation technology. This paper proposes a remote-controlled flexible pose measurement system in wind tunnel conditions for the separation of a target from an aircraft. The position and attitude parameters of a moving object are obtained by utilizing a single camera with a focal length and camera orientation that can be changed based on different measurement conditions. Using this proposed system and method, both the flexibility and efficiency of the pose measurement system can be enhanced in wind tunnel conditions to meet the measurement requirements of different objects and experiments, which is also useful for the development of an intelligent position and attitude measurement system. The position and the focal length of the camera also can be controlled remotely during measurements to enlarge both the vertical and horizontal measurement range of this system. Experiments are conducted in the laboratory to measure the position and attitude of moving objects with high flexibility and efficiency, and the measurement precision of the measurement system is also verified through experiments.

Big Data Provenance: Challenges, State of the Art and Opportunities

OpenAIRE

Wang, Jianwu; Crawl, Daniel; Purawat, Shweta; Nguyen, Mai; Altintas, Ilkay

2015-01-01

Ability to track provenance is a key feature of scientific workflows to support data lineage and reproducibility. The challenges that are introduced by the volume, variety and velocity of Big Data, also pose related challenges for provenance and quality of Big Data, defined as veracity. The increasing size and variety of distributed Big Data provenance information bring new technical challenges and opportunities throughout the provenance lifecycle including recording, querying, sharing and ut...

Preparatory power posing affects nonverbal presence and job interview performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Cuddy, Amy J C; Wilmuth, Caroline A; Yap, Andy J; Carney, Dana R

2015-07-01

The authors tested whether engaging in expansive (vs. contractive) "power poses" before a stressful job interview--preparatory power posing--would enhance performance during the interview. Participants adopted high-power (i.e., expansive, open) poses or low-power (i.e., contractive, closed) poses, and then prepared and delivered a speech to 2 evaluators as part of a mock job interview. All interview speeches were videotaped and coded for overall performance and hireability and for 2 potential mediators: verbal content (e.g., structure, content) and nonverbal presence (e.g., captivating, enthusiastic). As predicted, those who prepared for the job interview with high- (vs. low-) power poses performed better and were more likely to be chosen for hire; this relation was mediated by nonverbal presence, but not by verbal content. Although previous research has focused on how a nonverbal behavior that is enacted during interactions and observed by perceivers affects how those perceivers evaluate and respond to the actor, this experiment focused on how a nonverbal behavior that is enacted before the interaction and unobserved by perceivers affects the actor's performance, which, in turn, affects how perceivers evaluate and respond to the actor. This experiment reveals a theoretically novel and practically informative result that demonstrates the causal relation between preparatory nonverbal behavior and subsequent performance and outcomes. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Consistently Showing Your Best Side? Intra-individual Consistency in #Selfie Pose Orientation

Science.gov (United States)

Lindell, Annukka K.

2017-01-01

Painted and photographic portraits of others show an asymmetric bias: people favor their left cheek. Both experimental and database studies confirm that the left cheek bias extends to selfies. To date all such selfie studies have been cross-sectional; whether individual selfie-takers tend to consistently favor the same pose orientation, or switch between multiple poses, remains to be determined. The present study thus examined intra-individual consistency in selfie pose orientations. Two hundred selfie-taking participants (100 male and 100 female) were identified by searching #selfie on Instagram. The most recent 10 single-subject selfies for the each of the participants were selected and coded for type of selfie (normal; mirror) and pose orientation (left, midline, right), resulting in a sample of 2000 selfies. Results indicated that selfie-takers do tend to consistently adopt a preferred pose orientation (α = 0.72), with more participants showing an overall left cheek bias (41%) than would be expected by chance (overall right cheek bias = 31.5%; overall midline bias = 19.5%; no overall bias = 8%). Logistic regression modellng, controlling for the repeated measure of participant identity, indicated that sex did not affect pose orientation. However, selfie type proved a significant predictor when comparing left and right cheek poses, with a stronger left cheek bias for mirror than normal selfies. Overall, these novel findings indicate that selfie-takers show intra-individual consistency in pose orientation, and in addition, replicate the previously reported left cheek bias for selfies and other types of portrait, confirming that the left cheek bias also presents within individuals’ selfie corpora. PMID:28270790

Remediation challenges posed by the fate and transport properties of MTBE

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Day, M.J.

2002-01-01

Releases of fuel from underground tank systems have been a major source of groundwater contamination for several decades. The fate and transport characteristics of fuel components significantly influence the potential risk to groundwater supplies and the methodologies to manage and remediate contamination at fuel release sites. The recognition that MTBE can be more mobile in groundwater systems than other components of oxygenated fuels has put an increased emphasis on early detection and response to fuel leaks and spills. Remediation of oxygenated fuel releases usually follows a sequence of tasks: receptor protection, source control, residual and dissolved phase remediation, and monitored natural attenuation. Good characterization of hydrogeological and geochemical conditions is required because understanding the fate and transport of fuel components is critical to developing an appropriate management plan and an efficient remediation program. Understanding the specific site conditions allows appropriate selection and sequencing of remedial technologies. The physical and chemical characteristics of MTBE can result in a higher mobility in the subsurface, compared with the BTEX components of a gasoline release. These same characteristics make MTBE more readily extractable from the subsurface compared with BTEX. There is an impression that remediating gasoline releases containing MTBE requires costly, specialized technologies compared with those employed to deal with non-oxygenated fuel releases. However, the characteristics of MTBE are well suited to traditional, physical remedial approaches that have proven to be effective with the other components of gasoline. Technologies such as groundwater extraction, soil vapor extraction (SVE), and thermal desorption work exceptionally well with MTBE due to its low adsorptive and high vapor pressure characteristics. Similarly, recent studies have demonstrated that MTBE is biodegradable under a wide variety of conditions

Adaptive Embedded Systems – Challenges of Run-Time Resource Management

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Understanding and efficiently controlling the dynamic behavior of adaptive embedded systems is a challenging endavor. The challenges come from the often very complicated interplay between the application, the application mapping, and the underlying hardware architecture. With MPSoC, we have...... the technology to design and fabricate dynamically reconfigurable hardware platforms. However, such platforms will pose new challenges to tools and methods to efficiently explore these platforms at run-time. This talk will address some of the challenges of run-time resource management in adaptive embedded...... systems....

Cultural adaptations to the differential threats posed by hot versus cold climates.

Science.gov (United States)

Murray, Damian R

2013-10-01

Hot and cold climates have posed differential threats to human survival throughout history. Cold temperatures can pose direct threats to survival in themselves, whereas hot temperatures may pose threats indirectly through higher prevalence of infectious disease. These differential threats yield convergent predictions for the relationship between more demanding climates and freedom of expression, but divergent predictions for freedom from discrimination.

The relative pose estimation of aircraft based on contour model

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Tai; Sun, Xiangyi

2017-02-01

This paper proposes a relative pose estimation approach based on object contour model. The first step is to obtain a two-dimensional (2D) projection of three-dimensional (3D)-model-based target, which will be divided into 40 forms by clustering and LDA analysis. Then we proceed by extracting the target contour in each image and computing their Pseudo-Zernike Moments (PZM), thus a model library is constructed in an offline mode. Next, we spot a projection contour that resembles the target silhouette most in the present image from the model library with reference of PZM; then similarity transformation parameters are generated as the shape context is applied to match the silhouette sampling location, from which the identification parameters of target can be further derived. Identification parameters are converted to relative pose parameters, in the premise that these values are the initial result calculated via iterative refinement algorithm, as the relative pose parameter is in the neighborhood of actual ones. At last, Distance Image Iterative Least Squares (DI-ILS) is employed to acquire the ultimate relative pose parameters.

Problem Posing with Realistic Mathematics Education Approach in Geometry Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Mahendra, R.; Slamet, I.; Budiyono

2017-09-01

One of the difficulties of students in the learning of geometry is on the subject of plane that requires students to understand the abstract matter. The aim of this research is to determine the effect of Problem Posing learning model with Realistic Mathematics Education Approach in geometry learning. This quasi experimental research was conducted in one of the junior high schools in Karanganyar, Indonesia. The sample was taken using stratified cluster random sampling technique. The results of this research indicate that the model of Problem Posing learning with Realistic Mathematics Education Approach can improve students’ conceptual understanding significantly in geometry learning especially on plane topics. It is because students on the application of Problem Posing with Realistic Mathematics Education Approach are become to be active in constructing their knowledge, proposing, and problem solving in realistic, so it easier for students to understand concepts and solve the problems. Therefore, the model of Problem Posing learning with Realistic Mathematics Education Approach is appropriately applied in mathematics learning especially on geometry material. Furthermore, the impact can improve student achievement.

Pose and Solve Varignon Converse Problems

Science.gov (United States)

Contreras, José N.

2014-01-01

The activity of posing and solving problems can enrich learners' mathematical experiences because it fosters a spirit of inquisitiveness, cultivates their mathematical curiosity, and deepens their views of what it means to do mathematics. To achieve these goals, a mathematical problem needs to be at the appropriate level of difficulty,…

Head Pose Estimation on Eyeglasses Using Line Detection and Classification Approach

Science.gov (United States)

Setthawong, Pisal; Vannija, Vajirasak

This paper proposes a unique approach for head pose estimation of subjects with eyeglasses by using a combination of line detection and classification approaches. Head pose estimation is considered as an important non-verbal form of communication and could also be used in the area of Human-Computer Interface. A major improvement of the proposed approach is that it allows estimation of head poses at a high yaw/pitch angle when compared with existing geometric approaches, does not require expensive data preparation and training, and is generally fast when compared with other approaches.

Considerations about the licensing process of special nuclear industrial facilities

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Talarico, M.A., E-mail: talaricomarco@hotmail.com [Marinha do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil). Coordenacao do Porgrama de Submarino com Propulsao Nuclear; Melo, P.F. Frutuoso e [Coordenacao dos Programas de Pos-Graduacao em Engenharia (COPPE/UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil). Programa de Engenharia Nuclear

2015-07-01

This paper brings a discussion about the challenges involved in the development of a new kind of nuclear facility in Brazil, a naval base for nuclear submarines, with attention to the licensing process and considerations about the risk-informed decision making application to the licensing process. Initially, a model of such a naval base, called in this work, special industrial facility, is proposed, with its systems and respective sets of basic requirements, in order to make it possible the accomplishment of the special industrial facility support function to the nuclear submarine. A discussion about current challenges to overcome in this project is presented: the challenges due to the new characteristics of this type of nuclear facility; existence of several interfaces between the special industrial facilities systems and nuclear submarine systems in design activities; lack of specific regulation in Brazil to allow the licensing process of special industrial facilities by the nuclear safety authority; and comments about the lack of information from reference nuclear facilities, as is the case with nuclear power reactors (for example, the German Grafenrheinfeld nuclear plant is the reference plant for the Brazilian Angra 2 nuclear plant). Finally, in view of these challenges, an analysis method of special industrial facility operational scenarios to assist the licensing process is proposed. Also, considerations about the application of risk-informed decision making to the special industrial facility activity and licensing process in Brazil are presented. (author)

Considerations about the licensing process of special nuclear industrial facilities

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Talarico, M.A.; Melo, P.F. Frutuoso e

2015-01-01

This paper brings a discussion about the challenges involved in the development of a new kind of nuclear facility in Brazil, a naval base for nuclear submarines, with attention to the licensing process and considerations about the risk-informed decision making application to the licensing process. Initially, a model of such a naval base, called in this work, special industrial facility, is proposed, with its systems and respective sets of basic requirements, in order to make it possible the accomplishment of the special industrial facility support function to the nuclear submarine. A discussion about current challenges to overcome in this project is presented: the challenges due to the new characteristics of this type of nuclear facility; existence of several interfaces between the special industrial facilities systems and nuclear submarine systems in design activities; lack of specific regulation in Brazil to allow the licensing process of special industrial facilities by the nuclear safety authority; and comments about the lack of information from reference nuclear facilities, as is the case with nuclear power reactors (for example, the German Grafenrheinfeld nuclear plant is the reference plant for the Brazilian Angra 2 nuclear plant). Finally, in view of these challenges, an analysis method of special industrial facility operational scenarios to assist the licensing process is proposed. Also, considerations about the application of risk-informed decision making to the special industrial facility activity and licensing process in Brazil are presented. (author)

Culture and Inter-Group Relations Theory as a Pathway to Improve Decision Making in Coalition Operations

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

O'Mara, William J; Heacox, Nancy J; Gwynne, John W; Smillie, Robert J

2000-01-01

... organizations, and special interest groups. Due to the wide cultural and organizational diversity of the participant groups, coalition operations pose significant challenges to the U.S. military...

Intergenerational Challenges in Australian Jewish School Education

Science.gov (United States)

Gross, Zehavit; Rutland, Suzanne D.

2014-01-01

The aim of this research is to investigate the intergenerational changes that have occurred in Australian Jewish day schools and the challenges these pose for religious and Jewish education. Using a grounded theory approach according to the constant comparative method (Strauss 1987), data from three sources (interviews [296], observations [27],…

Myth of reincarnation: a challenge for mental health profession.

Science.gov (United States)

Gadit, A A Muhammad

2009-02-01

Mental health practitioners often come across a number of challenges in their clinical practice. One such challenge that posed a management dilemma presented with the history of reincarnation. This subject has been discussed in non-scientific literature at length but there is an absolute paucity in scientific literature. This paper describes a case where a boy presented with memories of previous life that started haunting him and caused significant anxiety. The subject of reincarnation needs extensive research in order to understand and manage the resultant clinical challenges.

Attribute And-Or Grammar for Joint Parsing of Human Pose, Parts and Attributes.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Seyoung; Nie, Xiaohan; Zhu, Song-Chun

2017-07-25

This paper presents an attribute and-or grammar (A-AOG) model for jointly inferring human body pose and human attributes in a parse graph with attributes augmented to nodes in the hierarchical representation. In contrast to other popular methods in the current literature that train separate classifiers for poses and individual attributes, our method explicitly represents the decomposition and articulation of body parts, and account for the correlations between poses and attributes. The A-AOG model is an amalgamation of three traditional grammar formulations: (i)Phrase structure grammar representing the hierarchical decomposition of the human body from whole to parts; (ii)Dependency grammar modeling the geometric articulation by a kinematic graph of the body pose; and (iii)Attribute grammar accounting for the compatibility relations between different parts in the hierarchy so that their appearances follow a consistent style. The parse graph outputs human detection, pose estimation, and attribute prediction simultaneously, which are intuitive and interpretable. We conduct experiments on two tasks on two datasets, and experimental results demonstrate the advantage of joint modeling in comparison with computing poses and attributes independently. Furthermore, our model obtains better performance over existing methods for both pose estimation and attribute prediction tasks.

Categorization of questions posed before and after inquiry-based learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sandra Milena García González

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Posing research questions is the central ability of the scientific thought. This article examines the ability of sixth grade children to pose researchable questions before and after a three months’ work on a didactic sequence based on the inquiry school model. According to their purpose, the questions asked by children, after reading a text, were classified into researchable questions -susceptible to be empirically explored-, questions about a cause, and questions on a piece of data. The results show that the amount and the type of questions the students were able to pose during the intervention changed, from most of questions on data or information, to most of researchable questions, subsequently, the importance of designing teaching approaches to foster this ability was proved.

Supporting Novice Special Education Teachers through Quality Professional Development

Science.gov (United States)

Tate, Mary E.

2013-01-01

The special education teaching environment is a teaching environment with unique duties that often challenge novice special education teachers. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to gain clarity of the work environment of special education teachers to uncover professional development practices that would work to support them. Research…

The challenges associated with developing science-based landscape scale management plans.

Science.gov (United States)

Robert C. Szaro; Douglas A. Jr. Boyce; Thomas. Puchlerz

2005-01-01

Planning activities over large landscapes poses a complex of challenges when trying to balance the implementation of a conservation strategy while still allowing for a variety of consumptive and nonconsumptive uses. We examine a case in southeast Alaska to illustrate the breadth of these challenges and an approach to developing a science-based resource plan. Not only...

Stakeholder perspectives on ethical challenges in HIV vaccine trials in South Africa.

Science.gov (United States)

Essack, Zaynab; Koen, Jennifer; Barsdorf, Nicola; Slack, Catherine; Quayle, Michael; Milford, Cedilia; Lindegger, Graham; Ranchod, Chitra; Mukuka, Richard

2010-04-01

There is little published literature on the ethical concerns of stakeholders in HIV vaccine trials. This study explored the ethical challenges identified by various stakeholders, through an open-ended, in-depth approach. While the few previous studies have been largely quantitative, respondents in this study had the opportunity to spontaneously identify the issues that they perceived to be of priority concern in the South African context. Stakeholders spontaneously identified the following as ethical priorities: informed consent, social harms, collaborative relationships between research stakeholders, the participation of children and adolescents, access to treatment for participants who become infected with HIV, physical harms, fair participant and community selection, confidentiality, benefits, and payment. While there is some speculation that research in developing countries poses special ethical challenges, overall no issues were identified that have not been anticipated in international guidance, literature and popular frameworks. However, the South African context affords a distinctive gloss to these expected issues; for example, respondents were concerned that the predominant selection of black participants may perpetuate racist practices of apartheid. Stakeholders should be aware of contextual factors impacting on the implementation of ethical principles. We make a series of recommendations for South African trials, including amendments to the ethical-legal framework and research policies, and, for further research.

Mind the Gap: Integrating Special Collections Teaching

Science.gov (United States)

Samuelson, Todd; Coker, Cait

2014-01-01

Instruction is a vital part of the academic librarian's public services mission, but the teaching efforts of special collections librarians can be overlooked due to the culture and particularities of teaching in an archival setting. This article documents the challenges special collections librarians face in integrating their teaching program into…

Insights into the polerovirus-plant interactome revealed by co-immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry

Science.gov (United States)

The identification of host proteins that interact with virus proteins is a major challenge for the field of virology. Phloem-limited viruses pose extraordinary challenges for in vivo protein interaction experiments because these viruses are localized in very few and highly specialized host cells. ...

Six challenges in the eradication of infectious diseases

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Petra Klepac

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Eradication and elimination are increasingly a part of the global health agenda. Once control measures have driven infection to low levels, the ecology of disease may change posing challenges for eradication efforts. These challenges vary from identifying pockets of susceptibles, improving monitoring during and after the endgame, to quantifying the economics of disease eradication versus sustained control, all of which are shaped and influenced by processes of loss of immunity, susceptible build-up, emergence of resistance, population heterogeneities and non-compliance with control measures. Here we discuss how modelling can be used to address these challenges.

Challenges in fingertip replantation.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Jin-Soo; Yang, Jae-Won; Lee, Dong-Chul; Ki, Sae-Hwi; Roh, Si-Young

2013-11-01

Fingertip amputation is a challenging injury to manage. Among various reconstructive procedures, replantation results in superior outcome, but is seldom considered in many institutions. From the identification of vessel ends to reanastomosis of the submillimeter vessels, fingertip's highly specialized anatomy requires technical excellence. By addressing these anatomic challenges, fingertip replantation can be a routine reconstructive option for microvascular surgeons.

Challenges in Fingertip Replantation

OpenAIRE

Kim, Jin-Soo; Yang, Jae-Won; Lee, Dong-Chul; Ki, Sae-Hwi; Roh, Si-Young

2013-01-01

Fingertip amputation is a challenging injury to manage. Among various reconstructive procedures, replantation results in superior outcome, but is seldom considered in many institutions. From the identification of vessel ends to reanastomosis of the submillimeter vessels, fingertip's highly specialized anatomy requires technical excellence. By addressing these anatomic challenges, fingertip replantation can be a routine reconstructive option for microvascular surgeons.

Application of Shape Similarity in Pose Selection and Virtual Screening in CSARdock2014 Exercise.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Ashutosh; Zhang, Kam Y J

2016-06-27

To evaluate the applicability of shape similarity in docking-based pose selection and virtual screening, we participated in the CSARdock2014 benchmark exercise for identifying the correct docking pose of inhibitors targeting factor XA, spleen tyrosine kinase, and tRNA methyltransferase. This exercise provides a valuable opportunity for researchers to test their docking programs, methods, and protocols in a blind testing environment. In the CSARdock2014 benchmark exercise, we have implemented an approach that uses ligand 3D shape similarity to facilitate docking-based pose selection and virtual screening. We showed here that ligand 3D shape similarity between bound poses could be used to identify the native-like pose from an ensemble of docking-generated poses. Our method correctly identified the native pose as the top-ranking pose for 73% of test cases in a blind testing environment. Moreover, the pose selection results also revealed an excellent correlation between ligand 3D shape similarity scores and RMSD to X-ray crystal structure ligand. In the virtual screening exercise, the average RMSD for our pose prediction was found to be 1.02 Å, and it was one of the top performances achieved in CSARdock2014 benchmark exercise. Furthermore, the inclusion of shape similarity improved virtual screening performance of docking-based scoring and ranking. The coefficient of determination (r(2)) between experimental activities and docking scores for 276 spleen tyrosine kinase inhibitors was found to be 0.365 but reached 0.614 when the ligand 3D shape similarity was included.

An Improved Method of Pose Estimation for Lighthouse Base Station Extension.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Yi; Weng, Dongdong; Li, Dong; Xun, Hang

2017-10-22

In 2015, HTC and Valve launched a virtual reality headset empowered with Lighthouse, the cutting-edge space positioning technology. Although Lighthouse is superior in terms of accuracy, latency and refresh rate, its algorithms do not support base station expansion, and is flawed concerning occlusion in moving targets, that is, it is unable to calculate their poses with a small set of sensors, resulting in the loss of optical tracking data. In view of these problems, this paper proposes an improved pose estimation algorithm for cases where occlusion is involved. Our algorithm calculates the pose of a given object with a unified dataset comprising of inputs from sensors recognized by all base stations, as long as three or more sensors detect a signal in total, no matter from which base station. To verify our algorithm, HTC official base stations and autonomous developed receivers are used for prototyping. The experiment result shows that our pose calculation algorithm can achieve precise positioning when a few sensors detect the signal.

78 FR 21258 - Special Local Regulations; Patriot Challenge Kayak Race, Ashley River; Charleston, SC

Science.gov (United States)

2013-04-10

... return to Brittlebank Park by the same route. The event consists of a large number of kayakers whose... kayakers, and following the last participant kayakers. The event poses significant risks to participants... the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution...

Enhancing students’ mathematical problem posing skill through writing in performance tasks strategy

Science.gov (United States)

Kadir; Adelina, R.; Fatma, M.

2018-01-01

Many researchers have studied the Writing in Performance Task (WiPT) strategy in learning, but only a few paid attention on its relation to the problem-posing skill in mathematics. The problem-posing skill in mathematics covers problem reformulation, reconstruction, and imitation. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of WiPT strategy on students’ mathematical problem-posing skill. The research was conducted at a Public Junior Secondary School in Tangerang Selatan. It used a quasi-experimental method with randomized control group post-test. The samples were 64 students consists of 32 students of the experiment group and 32 students of the control. A cluster random sampling technique was used for sampling. The research data were obtained by testing. The research shows that the problem-posing skill of students taught by WiPT strategy is higher than students taught by a conventional strategy. The research concludes that the WiPT strategy is more effective in enhancing the students’ mathematical problem-posing skill compared to the conventional strategy.

A Perkins Challenge: Assessing Technical Skills in CTE

Science.gov (United States)

Stone, James R., III

2009-01-01

Federal law requires state to develop performance measures and data-collection systems for secondary and postsecondary technical-skill attainment. This poses many challenges, such as defining a technical skills, measurement and when to assess students. In this article, the author outlines various assessment models and looks at the challenges…

Big Data Goes Personal: Privacy and Social Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Bonomi, Luca

2015-01-01

The Big Data phenomenon is posing new challenges in our modern society. In addition to requiring information systems to effectively manage high-dimensional and complex data, the privacy and social implications associated with the data collection, data analytics, and service requirements create new important research problems. First, the high…

Special Edition: Limits and Prospects of Criminal Law Reform – Past, Present, Future

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Thalia Anthony

2017-08-01

Full Text Available This special issue traces multifaceted readings of criminal law reform in the context of developments in Australia, North America and Europe. It addresses a range of criminal law legislative regimes, frameworks and issues confronting criminal law reform including as they relate to family violence, organisational liability for child sexual abuse, drug-driving and Indigenous under-representation on juries. In doing so, the articles variously assess the impacts of past criminal law reforms, current processes of reform, areas in need of future reform and the limitations of reform. It poses a number of challenges: Who does law reform serve? What principles should guide the work of criminal justice reform? What is the role and responsibility of universities in law reform? Who are the natural allies of academics in agitating for reform? Is reform of criminal law enough for progressive social change? Do public inquiries and law reform assist with progressive change or do they have the potential to undermine the struggle for more humane and equitable social responses?

Coming to grips with challenging behaviour: a cluster randomised controlled trial on the effects of a new care programme for challenging behaviour on burnout, job satisfaction and job demands of care staff on dementia special care units.

Science.gov (United States)

Zwijsen, S A; Gerritsen, D L; Eefsting, J A; Smalbrugge, M; Hertogh, C M P M; Pot, A M

2015-01-01

Caring for people with dementia in dementia special care units is a demanding job. Challenging behaviour is one of the factors influencing the job satisfaction and burnout of care staff. A care programme for the challenging behaviour of nursing home residents with dementia might, next to diminishing the challenging behaviour of residents, improve job satisfaction and reduce the care staff's feelings of burnout. To determine the effects of a care programme for the challenging behaviour of nursing home residents with dementia on the burnout, job satisfaction and job demands of care staff. The care programme was implemented according to a stepped wedge design in which care units were randomly divided over five groups with different time points of starting with implementation. 17 Dutch dementia special care units. Care staff members of the 17 units. The care programme consists of an education package and of various structured assessment tools that guide professionals through the multidisciplinary detection, analysis, treatment and evaluation of treatment of challenging behaviour. Burnout, job satisfaction and job demands were measured before implementation, halfway through the implementation process and after all the care units had implemented the care programme. Burnout was measured with the Dutch version of the Maslach burnout inventory (UBOS-C, three subscales); job satisfaction and job demands were measured with subscales of the Leiden Quality of Work Questionnaire. Mixed model analyses were used to determine effects. Care staff could not be blinded for the intervention. Of the 1441 questionnaires, 645 were returned (response 45%, 318 control measurements, 327 intervention measurements) by 380 unique care staff members. Significant effects were found on job satisfaction (0.93, 95% CI 0.48-1.38). On the other outcomes, no significant changes in the scores were found. Positive effects of using the Grip on Challenging behaviour care programme were found on job

Teach it Yourself - Fast Modeling of Industrial Objects for 6D Pose Estimation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sølund, Thomas; Rajeeth Savarimuthu, Thiusius; Glent Buch, Anders

2015-01-01

In this paper, we present a vision system that allows a human to create new 3D models of novel industrial parts by placing the part in two different positions in the scene. The two shot modeling framework generates models with a precision that allows the model to be used for 6D pose estimation wi....... In addition, the models are applied in a pose estimation application, evaluated with 37 different scenes with 61 unique object poses. The pose estimation results show a mean translation error on 4.97 mm and a mean rotation error on 3.38 degrees....

Thermal hydraulic issues and challenges for current and new generation FBRs

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Chellapandi, P.; Velusamy, K., E-mail: kvelu@igcar.gov.in

2015-12-01

Highlights: • We present challenges in thermal hydraulic design of sodium cooled fast reactors. • We present roadmap of Indian fast reactor program and innovative design concepts. • Analysis methodology for thermal striping and thermal stratification are highlighted. • Design solutions for gas entrainment are presented. • Experimental approaches for normal and post accident decay heat removal are highlighted. - Abstract: Pool type sodium cooled fast reactors pose several design challenges and among them, certain thermal hydraulics and structural mechanics issues are special. High frequency temperature fluctuations due to thermal striping, thermal stratifications and sodium free level fluctuations at the liquid–cover gas interfaces are to be investigated carefully to eliminate high cycle thermal fatigue of structures. Solutions to address the core thermal hydraulics call for high power computing. Innovative concepts and methods are developed to carry out plant dynamics and safety studies. Particularly, extensive numerical and experimental simulation techniques are needed for understanding and solving the gas entrainment mechanisms and its effects on core safety. Though decay heat removal through natural convection is achievable in a pool type SFR, demonstration of design solutions conceived in the reactor and performance of diverse systems under all operating conditions, especially over prolonged station blackout situations needs advanced CFD computations and should be validated by relatively large scale simulated experiments. These issues are addressed in this paper under five broad topics: special thermal hydraulic issues to be addressed in SFR, thermal hydraulic design and analysis, plant dynamics studies, safety studies and evolving thermal hydraulic studies for the future FBRs. The 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is taken as the reference design for addressing the issues. Indian fast reactor programme is highlighted in the introduction

77 FR 23125 - Special Local Regulation; Tuscaloosa Dragon Boat Race; Black Warrior River; Tuscaloosa, AL

Science.gov (United States)

2012-04-18

... commercially transited river system poses significant safety hazards to both the Dragon Boat racers and the...-AA08 Special Local Regulation; Tuscaloosa Dragon Boat Race; Black Warrior River; Tuscaloosa, AL AGENCY... crews, vessels, and persons on navigable waters during the Jr. League of Tuscaloosa Dragon Boat Races...

ONKALO POSE experiment. Phase 3: execution and monitoring

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Valli, J.; Hakala, M.; Wanne, T.; Kantia, P.; Siren, T.

2014-01-01

In-depth knowledge of the in situ stress state at the Olkiluoto site is critical for stability assessment both prior to and after deposition of spent nuclear fuel in order to understand and avoid potential damage to the rock at the site. Posiva's Olkiluoto Spalling Experiment (POSE) was designed specifically for this purpose with three primary goals: establish the in situ spalling/damage strength of Olkiluoto migmatitic gneiss, establish the state of in situ stress at the -345 m depth level and act as a Prediction-Outcome (P-O) exercise. Phases 1 and 2 of POSE are outlined in WR 2012-60. The objectives of the third phase of the POSE experiment are the same as the original objectives outlined above. This report outlines the execution and results of the third phase of the POSE experiment. The third phase of the experiment involved internally heating the third experimental hole (ONK-EH3) of the POSE niche in order to cause a symmetrical thermal stress increase around the hole due to the thermal expansion of rock. This thermomechanically induced stress increase, coupled with the estimated existing in situ stress state, should cause the maximum principal stress around the hole to exceed the predicted spalling strength of the rock around the hole. ONK-EH3 is located almost completely in pegmatitic granite. Four fractures near the top of the hole were mapped after boring ONK-EH3, and a tensile failure located at the contact between mica-rich gneiss and pegmatitic granite was observed 18 months after boring, prior to the experiment. Based on predictive calculations and the estimated in situ state of stress, the maximum principal stress magnitude should reach ca. 100 MPa when the temperature was just below 100 deg C after 12 weeks of heating. There were problems with the heater control unit at the beginning of the experiment, after which heating proceeded according to plan. The crack damage threshold of pegmatitic granite has been determined to be 85 ±17 MPa at Olkiluoto

Optical neural network system for pose determination of spinning satellites

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Andrew; Casasent, David

1990-01-01

An optical neural network architecture and algorithm based on a Hopfield optimization network are presented for multitarget tracking. This tracker utilizes a neuron for every possible target track, and a quadratic energy function of neural activities which is minimized using gradient descent neural evolution. The neural net tracker is demonstrated as part of a system for determining position and orientation (pose) of spinning satellites with respect to a robotic spacecraft. The input to the system is time sequence video from a single camera. Novelty detection and filtering are utilized to locate and segment novel regions from the input images. The neural net multitarget tracker determines the correspondences (or tracks) of the novel regions as a function of time, and hence the paths of object (satellite) parts. The path traced out by a given part or region is approximately elliptical in image space, and the position, shape and orientation of the ellipse are functions of the satellite geometry and its pose. Having a geometric model of the satellite, and the elliptical path of a part in image space, the three-dimensional pose of the satellite is determined. Digital simulation results using this algorithm are presented for various satellite poses and lighting conditions.

Technical solutions to nonproliferation challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Satkowiak, Lawrence

2014-05-01

The threat of nuclear terrorism is real and poses a significant challenge to both U.S. and global security. For terrorists, the challenge is not so much the actual design of an improvised nuclear device (IND) but more the acquisition of the special nuclear material (SNM), either highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium, to make the fission weapon. This paper provides two examples of technical solutions that were developed in support of the nonproliferation objective of reducing the opportunity for acquisition of HEU. The first example reviews technologies used to monitor centrifuge enrichment plants to determine if there is any diversion of uranium materials or misuse of facilities to produce undeclared product. The discussion begins with a brief overview of the basics of uranium processing and enrichment. The role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), its safeguard objectives and how the technology evolved to meet those objectives will be described. The second example focuses on technologies developed and deployed to monitor the blend down of 500 metric tons of HEU from Russia's dismantled nuclear weapons to reactor fuel or low enriched uranium (LEU) under the U.S.-Russia HEU Purchase Agreement. This reactor fuel was then purchased by U.S. fuel fabricators and provided about half the fuel for the domestic power reactors. The Department of Energy established the HEU Transparency Program to provide confidence that weapons usable HEU was being blended down and thus removed from any potential theft scenario. Two measurement technologies, an enrichment meter and a flow monitor, were combined into an automated blend down monitoring system (BDMS) and were deployed to four sites in Russia to provide 24/7 monitoring of the blend down. Data was downloaded and analyzed periodically by inspectors to provide the assurances required.

Technical solutions to nonproliferation challenges

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Satkowiak, Lawrence [Director, Nonproliferation, Safeguards and Security Programs, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee (United States)

2014-05-09

The threat of nuclear terrorism is real and poses a significant challenge to both U.S. and global security. For terrorists, the challenge is not so much the actual design of an improvised nuclear device (IND) but more the acquisition of the special nuclear material (SNM), either highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium, to make the fission weapon. This paper provides two examples of technical solutions that were developed in support of the nonproliferation objective of reducing the opportunity for acquisition of HEU. The first example reviews technologies used to monitor centrifuge enrichment plants to determine if there is any diversion of uranium materials or misuse of facilities to produce undeclared product. The discussion begins with a brief overview of the basics of uranium processing and enrichment. The role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), its safeguard objectives and how the technology evolved to meet those objectives will be described. The second example focuses on technologies developed and deployed to monitor the blend down of 500 metric tons of HEU from Russia's dismantled nuclear weapons to reactor fuel or low enriched uranium (LEU) under the U.S.-Russia HEU Purchase Agreement. This reactor fuel was then purchased by U.S. fuel fabricators and provided about half the fuel for the domestic power reactors. The Department of Energy established the HEU Transparency Program to provide confidence that weapons usable HEU was being blended down and thus removed from any potential theft scenario. Two measurement technologies, an enrichment meter and a flow monitor, were combined into an automated blend down monitoring system (BDMS) and were deployed to four sites in Russia to provide 24/7 monitoring of the blend down. Data was downloaded and analyzed periodically by inspectors to provide the assurances required.

Challenges in the management of early versus late presenting ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

... presenting CDH poses more diagnostic challenges; but once identified and appropriate treatment instituted, it has an excellent prognosis. We recommend that physicians should include CDH in the differential diagnosis of patients with birth asphyxia and in patients with chronic respiratory symptoms with failure to thrive.

Challenges in subsurface in situ remediation of chlorinated solvents

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Broholm, Mette Martina; Fjordbøge, Annika Sidelmann; Christiansen, Camilla Maymann

2014-01-01

Chlorinated solvent source zones in the subsurface pose a continuous threat to groundwater quality at many sites worldwide. In situ remediation of these sites is particularly challenging in heterogeneous fractured media and where the solvents are present as DNAPL. In situ remediation by chemical...

Ethical challenge of desertification in Northern Nigeria | Ikeke ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

If desertification is not stopped it impedes development and sustainability. This paper uses a critical analytic method, to examine the ethical challenges that desertification poses. It makes a conceptual analysis of the main concepts such as ethics, desertification and Northern Nigeria. It looks at how desertification is an ethical ...

A multi-camera system for real-time pose estimation

Science.gov (United States)

Savakis, Andreas; Erhard, Matthew; Schimmel, James; Hnatow, Justin

2007-04-01

This paper presents a multi-camera system that performs face detection and pose estimation in real-time and may be used for intelligent computing within a visual sensor network for surveillance or human-computer interaction. The system consists of a Scene View Camera (SVC), which operates at a fixed zoom level, and an Object View Camera (OVC), which continuously adjusts its zoom level to match objects of interest. The SVC is set to survey the whole filed of view. Once a region has been identified by the SVC as a potential object of interest, e.g. a face, the OVC zooms in to locate specific features. In this system, face candidate regions are selected based on skin color and face detection is accomplished using a Support Vector Machine classifier. The locations of the eyes and mouth are detected inside the face region using neural network feature detectors. Pose estimation is performed based on a geometrical model, where the head is modeled as a spherical object that rotates upon the vertical axis. The triangle formed by the mouth and eyes defines a vertical plane that intersects the head sphere. By projecting the eyes-mouth triangle onto a two dimensional viewing plane, equations were obtained that describe the change in its angles as the yaw pose angle increases. These equations are then combined and used for efficient pose estimation. The system achieves real-time performance for live video input. Testing results assessing system performance are presented for both still images and video.

Big data challenges

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bachlechner, Daniel; Leimbach, Timo

2016-01-01

Although reports on big data success stories have been accumulating in the media, most organizations dealing with high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets still face challenges. Only a thorough understanding of these challenges puts organizations into a position in which...... they can make an informed decision for or against big data, and, if the decision is positive, overcome the challenges smoothly. The combination of a series of interviews with leading experts from enterprises, associations and research institutions, and focused literature reviews allowed not only...... framework are also relevant. For large enterprises and startups specialized in big data, it is typically easier to overcome the challenges than it is for other enterprises and public administration bodies....

Buprenorphine and addiction: challenges for the pharmacist.

Science.gov (United States)

Boatwright, Deborah E

2002-01-01

To present an analysis of the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000 (DATA) and its impact on the practice of pharmacy. Statutes, codes, regulations, newspaper articles, journal articles; search of articles posted on MEDLINE identified using the search terms methadone, buprenorphine, treatment, opioid abuse, and opioid addiction. Not applicable. Not applicable. DATA and Food and Drug Administration approval of sublingual tablets of buprenorphine and buprenorphine with naloxone (Reckitt and Benckiser) will dramatically expand opioid addicts' access to treatment and increase the number of opioid addicts receiving prescriptions for buprenorphine and buprenorphine with naloxone. The availability of buprenorphine will pose unique challenges to pharmacists and suggests the need for education on addiction and greater awareness of the unique needs of patients recovering from addiction. The stage is being set to expand access to treatment and reach more untreated opioid addicts in the United States. Professional organizations such as the American Pharmaceutical Association should work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to develop training materials, curricula, and guidelines for pharmacists on substance abuse with a special focus on outpatient opioid treatment. Such materials could be used in continuing education programs and materials and in pharmacy schools.

The challenges of risk society for impact assessment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Sanne Vammen

2017-01-01

, the challenge of delivering assessments and predictions and the challenge of handling differences of opinion and debate. Through a case example of integration of climate change in strategic environmental assessment, the paper uses empirical evidence from a survey and a series of interviews to carry out......This paper takes its point of departure in Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society and the aspects that characterise this society. The paper puts forward a hypothe- sis, on which theoretical challenges the characteristics of risk society pose to impact assessment as a decision support tool; namely...... a preliminary discussion of how the theoretical challenges are reflected in practice. The case study results show that the challenge of delivering assessments and predictions in a risk society is reflected in the current state of practice, while the challenge of handling differences of opinion and debate...

Recovering the 3d Pose and Shape of Vehicles from Stereo Images

Science.gov (United States)

Coenen, M.; Rottensteiner, F.; Heipke, C.

2018-05-01

The precise reconstruction and pose estimation of vehicles plays an important role, e.g. for autonomous driving. We tackle this problem on the basis of street level stereo images obtained from a moving vehicle. Starting from initial vehicle detections, we use a deformable vehicle shape prior learned from CAD vehicle data to fully reconstruct the vehicles in 3D and to recover their 3D pose and shape. To fit a deformable vehicle model to each detection by inferring the optimal parameters for pose and shape, we define an energy function leveraging reconstructed 3D data, image information, the vehicle model and derived scene knowledge. To minimise the energy function, we apply a robust model fitting procedure based on iterative Monte Carlo model particle sampling. We evaluate our approach using the object detection and orientation estimation benchmark of the KITTI dataset (Geiger et al., 2012). Our approach can deal with very coarse pose initialisations and we achieve encouraging results with up to 82 % correct pose estimations. Moreover, we are able to deliver very precise orientation estimation results with an average absolute error smaller than 4°.

Teaching Human Poses Interactively to a Social Robot

Science.gov (United States)

Gonzalez-Pacheco, Victor; Malfaz, Maria; Fernandez, Fernando; Salichs, Miguel A.

2013-01-01

The main activity of social robots is to interact with people. In order to do that, the robot must be able to understand what the user is saying or doing. Typically, this capability consists of pre-programmed behaviors or is acquired through controlled learning processes, which are executed before the social interaction begins. This paper presents a software architecture that enables a robot to learn poses in a similar way as people do. That is, hearing its teacher's explanations and acquiring new knowledge in real time. The architecture leans on two main components: an RGB-D (Red-, Green-, Blue- Depth) -based visual system, which gathers the user examples, and an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system, which processes the speech describing those examples. The robot is able to naturally learn the poses the teacher is showing to it by maintaining a natural interaction with the teacher. We evaluate our system with 24 users who teach the robot a predetermined set of poses. The experimental results show that, with a few training examples, the system reaches high accuracy and robustness. This method shows how to combine data from the visual and auditory systems for the acquisition of new knowledge in a natural manner. Such a natural way of training enables robots to learn from users, even if they are not experts in robotics. PMID:24048336

Teaching Human Poses Interactively to a Social Robot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miguel A. Salichs

2013-09-01

Full Text Available The main activity of social robots is to interact with people. In order to do that, the robot must be able to understand what the user is saying or doing. Typically, this capability consists of pre-programmed behaviors or is acquired through controlled learning processes, which are executed before the social interaction begins. This paper presents a software architecture that enables a robot to learn poses in a similar way as people do. That is, hearing its teacher’s explanations and acquiring new knowledge in real time. The architecture leans on two main components: an RGB-D (Red-, Green-, Blue- Depth -based visual system, which gathers the user examples, and an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR system, which processes the speech describing those examples. The robot is able to naturally learn the poses the teacher is showing to it by maintaining a natural interaction with the teacher. We evaluate our system with 24 users who teach the robot a predetermined set of poses. The experimental results show that, with a few training examples, the system reaches high accuracy and robustness. This method shows how to combine data from the visual and auditory systems for the acquisition of new knowledge in a natural manner. Such a natural way of training enables robots to learn from users, even if they are not experts in robotics.

An Investigation of Eighth Grade Students' Problem Posing Skills (Turkey Sample)

Science.gov (United States)

Arikan, Elif Esra; Ünal, Hasan

2015-01-01

To pose a problem refers to the creative activity for mathematics education. The purpose of the study was to explore the eighth grade students' problem posing ability. Three learning domains such as requiring four operations, fractions and geometry were chosen for this reason. There were two classes which were coded as class A and class B. Class A…

Analyzing Pre-Service Primary Teachers' Fraction Knowledge Structures through Problem Posing

Science.gov (United States)

Kilic, Cigdem

2015-01-01

In this study it was aimed to determine pre-service primary teachers' knowledge structures of fraction through problem posing activities. A total of 90 pre-service primary teachers participated in this study. A problem posing test consisting of two questions was used and the participants were asked to generate as many as problems based on the…

Challenges on the high luminosity frontier of e+ e-

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Barletta, W.A.

1993-05-01

For phi factories, tau-charm factories, and B factories to meet their respective luminosity goals, the circulating currents that typify e + e - colliders must be raised an order of magnitude. At the same time the beam size at the interaction point must be decreased. The approaches to realizing these conditions include increasing the charge per bunch, increasing the number of bunches in the collider, increasing the crossing angle for rapid bunch separation, tilting the bunch with respect to the direction of motion at the interaction point (''crab-crossing''), and minimizing the β function at the interaction point. The technological challenges implied by such strategies include the development of (1) novel rf-cavity designs to suppress higher order modes and to provide large rf-voltages for longitudinal focusing, (2) a new generation of powerful feedback electronics to control multi-bunch instabilities, and (3) vacuum chambers and pumping schemes suitable for operation with very high levels of synchrotron radiation. In high current colliders the design of the interaction region poses special problems of allowing rapid beam separation and avoiding excessive scattering of background radiation into the detector

Science, Sport and Technology--A Contribution to Educational Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

O'Hara, Kelly; Reis, Paula; Esteves, Dulce; Bras, Rui; Branco, Luisa

2011-01-01

Improve students' ability to link knowledge with real life practice, through enhancing children or teenagers' ability to think critically by way of making observations, posing questions, drawing up hypotheses, planning and carrying out investigations, analysing data and therefore improve their decision making is an educational challenge. Learning…

E-Banking and its features - Albania as a special case

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ermela Bashuri

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The e-banking system is a system which enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions such as: balance inquiries, account transfers, bill payments and some of them offer even the possibility to make loan or credit card applications on a website operated by the institution via internet at any place or time. The e-banking is referred to as online banking or internet banking. The banks have chosen to be part of the wide world of Web in order to stay competitive in the fast changing world of business and also to take further advantages. This innovation (accompanied by globalization and technology development has”obliged” the business entities to redefine and remodel their operations. Electronic banking is the wave of the future. It provides enormous benefits to consumers in terms of the ease and cost of transactions. But it also poses new challenges for country authorities in regulating and supervising the financial system and in designing and implementing macroeconomic policy. In the first section there is an overview of E-banking products and services offered world wide and in Albania as a special case. In the second section there is a general overview of the e-banking advantages and disadvantages. In the third part there is a discussion above the features, challenges, advantages and disadvantages of E-Banking vs traditional banking. In the last part there are given some general recommendations to be taken in consideration in order to maintain effective and to further develop the operating environment for the existing and potential e-banks.

Improving attitudes toward mathematics learning with problem posing in class VIII

Science.gov (United States)

Vionita, Alfha; Purboningsih, Dyah

2017-08-01

This research is classroom action research which is collaborated to improve student's behavior toward math and mathematics learning at class VIII by using problem posing approach. The subject of research is all of students grade VIIIA which consist of 32 students. This research has been held on two period, first period is about 3 times meeting, and second period is about 4 times meeting. The instrument of this research is implementation of learning observation's guidance by using problem posing approach. Cycle test has been used to measure cognitive competence, and questionnaire to measure the students' behavior in mathematics learning process. The result of research shows the students' behavior has been improving after using problem posing approach. It is showed by the behavior's criteria of students that has increasing result from the average in first period to high in second period. Furthermore, the percentage of test result is also improve from 68,75% in first period to 78,13% in second period. On the other hand, the implementation of learning observation by using problem posing approach has also improving and it is showed by the average percentage of teacher's achievement in first period is 89,2% and student's achievement 85,8%. These results get increase in second period for both teacher and students' achievement which are 94,4% and 91,11%. As a result, students' behavior toward math learning process in class VIII has been improving by using problem posing approach.

Bacterial contamination in a special care baby unit of a tertiary ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Background: Nosocomial infections pose a great challenge on healthcare systems. Although surfaces in neonatal wards, umbilical stump wounds and catheter are responsible for a high number of nosocomial infections due to bacteria. The aim of this study was to determine the bacterial profile of air and surface ...

Challenges and Ideas to Achieve Wireless 100 Gb/s Transmission: An Overview of Challenges and Solutions within the German Research Foundation (DFG) Special Priority Program SPP1655

Science.gov (United States)

Kraemer, Rolf

2017-09-01

Wireless communications is one of the fastest growing technology fields, driving numerous other innovations in electronics. One challenging research area within the wireless field is to achieve much higher transmission rates. First products with up to 3 Gb/s are in the market. In the coming years we predict this speed growing quickly up to and beyond 100 Gb/s. Today it is an open question how we can realize a wireless system at this speed. If we intend to use such systems in a mobile environment, we can only afford to spend approximately 1-10 pW/b for the end-to-end communication. This includes RF-transmission and all processing and protocol steps. The SPP1655 of the DFG was set up to investigate new paradigms for achieving the 100 Gb/s wireless transmission goal. Within 11 coordinated projects researchers from all over Germany are addressing several relevant issues ranging from the antennas and RF-Frontend, baseband-processing and error correction to protocol processing. A number of limitations of current approaches have to be investigated and new algorithms must be found in order to achieve the intended goal. One of the big challenges is finding the correct balance between analog and digital signal processing to achieve an extremely high performance at very low energy consumption. Another challenge is to find a good balance between bandwidth and bandwidth efficiency to achieve the 100 Gbps goal. Finally, protocol processing will need new approaches to decouple the central processor of a computer from the high-end input/output operations. Within this editorial we will address the main challenges and briefly outline the approaches of the running projects. The rest of this special issue will be devoted to more detailed descriptions and achievements of the individual projects of SPP1655.

What Is the Purpose? Reflections on Inclusion and Special Education from a Capability Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Reindal, Solveig Magnus

2010-01-01

This article investigated what the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum can contribute to the issue of inclusion as a new theoretical framework for special education. By posing the question: "What is the purpose of inclusion?", I have proposed to answer this query by investigating how the capability approach is able to…

Cloud computing approaches for prediction of ligand binding poses and pathways.

Science.gov (United States)

Lawrenz, Morgan; Shukla, Diwakar; Pande, Vijay S

2015-01-22

We describe an innovative protocol for ab initio prediction of ligand crystallographic binding poses and highly effective analysis of large datasets generated for protein-ligand dynamics. We include a procedure for setup and performance of distributed molecular dynamics simulations on cloud computing architectures, a model for efficient analysis of simulation data, and a metric for evaluation of model convergence. We give accurate binding pose predictions for five ligands ranging in affinity from 7 nM to > 200 μM for the immunophilin protein FKBP12, for expedited results in cases where experimental structures are difficult to produce. Our approach goes beyond single, low energy ligand poses to give quantitative kinetic information that can inform protein engineering and ligand design.

Early Childhood Special Education in a Refugee Resettlement Community: Challenges and Innovative Practices

Science.gov (United States)

Hurley, Jennifer J.; Warren, Rachel A.; Habalow, Rebecca D.; Weber, Lauren E.; Tousignant, Sarah R.

2014-01-01

There has been a significant increase in the number of children who are culturally and linguistically diverse who qualify for early childhood special education (ECSE) services [Banerjee, R., & Guiberson, M. (2012). "Evaluating young children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds for special education services."…

Yoga Poses Increase Subjective Energy and State Self-Esteem in Comparison to ‘Power Poses’

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Agnieszka Golec de Zavala

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Research on beneficial consequences of yoga focuses on the effects of yogic breathing and meditation. Less is known about the psychological effects of performing yoga postures. The present study investigated the effects of yoga poses on subjective sense of energy and self-esteem. The effects of yoga postures were compared to the effects of ‘power poses,’ which arguably increase the sense of power and self-confidence due to their association with interpersonal dominance (Carney et al., 2010. The study tested the novel prediction that yoga poses, which are not associated with interpersonal dominance but increase bodily energy, would increase the subjective feeling of energy and therefore increase self-esteem compared to ‘high power’ and ‘low power’ poses. A two factorial, between participants design was employed. Participants performed either two standing yoga poses with open front of the body (n = 19, two standing yoga poses with covered front of the body (n = 22, two expansive, high power poses (n = 21, or two constrictive, low power poses (n = 20 for 1-min each. The results showed that yoga poses in comparison to ‘power poses’ increased self-esteem. This effect was mediated by an increased subjective sense of energy and was observed when baseline trait self-esteem was controlled for. These results suggest that the effects of performing open, expansive body postures may be driven by processes other than the poses’ association with interpersonal power and dominance. This study demonstrates that positive effects of yoga practice can occur after performing yoga poses for only 2 min.

Meeting the challenge of BNFL's decommissioning programme

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sheil, A.E.

1997-01-01

The paper reviews the co-ordinated and integrated programme, adopted by BNFL, in the decommissioning of its radioactive plants. It examines BNFL's approach to the challenges posed by the eventual decommissioning of its 120 plants, its overall strategies, the constraints and the progress achieved to date, drawing on real experience from the 22 completed projects and the 24 projects currently underway. (author)

Challenges and advantages of using GPS data in outdoor advertisement

OpenAIRE

Hecker, Dirk; Körner, Christine; May, Michael

2011-01-01

A growing number of companies use mobility data in their day-to-day business. Especially in the area of outdoor advertising, GPS devices have been successfully applied in order to measure poster performance in recent years. Based on personal mobility traces, the quality and precision of performance measures has increased significantly. However, the usage of GPS technology poses several challenges when applied to critical business processes. We will present several challenges and solutions whi...

Challenges posed by tick-borne rickettsiae: eco-epidemiology and public health implications.

Science.gov (United States)

Eremeeva, Marina E; Dasch, Gregory A

2015-01-01

Rickettsiae are obligately intracellular bacteria that are transmitted to vertebrates by a variety of arthropod vectors, primarily by fleas and ticks. Once transmitted or experimentally inoculated into susceptible mammals, some rickettsiae may cause febrile illness of different morbidity and mortality, and which can manifest with different types of exhanthems in humans. However, most rickettsiae circulate in diverse sylvatic or peridomestic reservoirs without having obvious impacts on their vertebrate hosts or affecting humans. We have analyzed the key features of tick-borne maintenance of rickettsiae, which may provide a deeper basis for understanding those complex invertebrate interactions and strategies that have permitted survival and circulation of divergent rickettsiae in nature. Rickettsiae are found in association with a wide range of hard and soft ticks, which feed on very different species of large and small animals. Maintenance of rickettsiae in these vector systems is driven by both vertical and horizontal transmission strategies, but some species of Rickettsia are also known to cause detrimental effects on their arthropod vectors. Contrary to common belief, the role of vertebrate animal hosts in maintenance of rickettsiae is very incompletely understood. Some clearly play only the essential role of providing a blood meal to the tick while other hosts may supply crucial supplemental functions for effective agent transmission by the vectors. This review summarizes the importance of some recent findings with known and new vectors that afford an improved understanding of the eco-epidemiology of rickettsiae; the public health implications of that information for rickettsial diseases are also described. Special attention is paid to the co-circulation of different species and genotypes of rickettsiae within the same endemic areas and how these observations may influence, correctly or incorrectly, trends, and conclusions drawn from the surveillance of

Monocular-Based 6-Degree of Freedom Pose Estimation Technology for Robotic Intelligent Grasping Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tao Liu

2017-02-01

Full Text Available Industrial robots are expected to undertake ever more advanced tasks in the modern manufacturing industry, such as intelligent grasping, in which robots should be capable of recognizing the position and orientation of a part before grasping it. In this paper, a monocular-based 6-degree of freedom (DOF pose estimation technology to enable robots to grasp large-size parts at informal poses is proposed. A camera was mounted on the robot end-flange and oriented to measure several featured points on the part before the robot moved to grasp it. In order to estimate the part pose, a nonlinear optimization model based on the camera object space collinearity error in different poses is established, and the initial iteration value is estimated with the differential transformation. Measuring poses of the camera are optimized based on uncertainty analysis. Also, the principle of the robotic intelligent grasping system was developed, with which the robot could adjust its pose to grasp the part. In experimental tests, the part poses estimated with the method described in this paper were compared with those produced by a laser tracker, and results show the RMS angle and position error are about 0.0228° and 0.4603 mm. Robotic intelligent grasping tests were also successfully performed in the experiments.

Solid waste management challenges for cities in developing countries

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Abarca Guerrero, L.; Maas, G.J.; Hogland, W

2013-01-01

Solid waste management is a challenge for the cities’ authorities in developing countries mainly due to the increasing generation of waste, the burden posed on the municipal budget as a result of the high costs associated to its management, the lack of understanding over a diversity of factors that

Extraction mechanics in lingual orthodontics: Challenges and solutions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tushar M Hegde

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The 21st century has witnessed a slow but sure incorporation of lingual orthodontic protocols into the orthodontic mainstream. Extraction mechanics with lingual orthodontic appliance poses challenges to even the most experienced clinician. This article is a case series of three cases treated by extraction mechanics in a detailed and sequential manner.

ICT in University Education: Usage and Challenges among ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This study was a survey which explored ICT usage and challenges among academic staff. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to determine the areas of ICT usage among academic staff; identify the obstacles to their ICT usage and identify their areas of training need in ICT usage. Five research questions were posed ...

A pose estimation method for unmanned ground vehicles in GPS denied environments

Science.gov (United States)

Tamjidi, Amirhossein; Ye, Cang

2012-06-01

This paper presents a pose estimation method based on the 1-Point RANSAC EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) framework. The method fuses the depth data from a LIDAR and the visual data from a monocular camera to estimate the pose of a Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) in a GPS denied environment. Its estimation framework continuy updates the vehicle's 6D pose state and temporary estimates of the extracted visual features' 3D positions. In contrast to the conventional EKF-SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) frameworks, the proposed method discards feature estimates from the extended state vector once they are no longer observed for several steps. As a result, the extended state vector always maintains a reasonable size that is suitable for online calculation. The fusion of laser and visual data is performed both in the feature initialization part of the EKF-SLAM process and in the motion prediction stage. A RANSAC pose calculation procedure is devised to produce pose estimate for the motion model. The proposed method has been successfully tested on the Ford campus's LIDAR-Vision dataset. The results are compared with the ground truth data of the dataset and the estimation error is ~1.9% of the path length.

Classroom Behaviour Management Strategies in Response to Problematic Behaviours of Primary School Children with Special Educational Needs: Views of Special Educational Needs Coordinators

Science.gov (United States)

Nye, Elizabeth; Gardner, Frances; Hansford, Lorraine; Edwards, Vanessa; Hayes, Rachel; Ford, Tamsin

2016-01-01

Children identified with special educational needs (SEN) and behavioural difficulties present extra challenges to educators and require additional supports in school. This paper presents views from special educational needs coordinators (SENCos) on various strategies used by educators to support children identified with SEN and problematic…

Multispectral embedding-based deep neural network for three-dimensional human pose recovery

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Jialin; Sun, Jifeng

2018-01-01

Monocular image-based three-dimensional (3-D) human pose recovery aims to retrieve 3-D poses using the corresponding two-dimensional image features. Therefore, the pose recovery performance highly depends on the image representations. We propose a multispectral embedding-based deep neural network (MSEDNN) to automatically obtain the most discriminative features from multiple deep convolutional neural networks and then embed their penultimate fully connected layers into a low-dimensional manifold. This compact manifold can explore not only the optimum output from multiple deep networks but also the complementary properties of them. Furthermore, the distribution of each hierarchy discriminative manifold is sufficiently smooth so that the training process of our MSEDNN can be effectively implemented only using few labeled data. Our proposed network contains a body joint detector and a human pose regressor that are jointly trained. Extensive experiments conducted on four databases show that our proposed MSEDNN can achieve the best recovery performance compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

East Asian Security: Two Views. The Security Challenges in Northeast Asia: A Chinese View. Security Challenges to the United States in Northeast Asia: Looking beyond the Transformation of the Six-Party Talks

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Shulong, Chu; Rozman, Gilbert

2007-01-01

.... The two papers herein, originally presented at the Strategic Studies Institute's 2007 annual Strategy Conference, highlight the challenges posed by the rise of China and by the new possibility...

Methods for intraoperative, sterile pose-setting of patient-specific microstereotactic frames

Science.gov (United States)

Vollmann, Benjamin; Müller, Samuel; Kundrat, Dennis; Ortmaier, Tobias; Kahrs, Lüder A.

2015-03-01

This work proposes new methods for a microstereotactic frame based on bone cement fixation. Microstereotactic frames are under investigation for minimal invasive temporal bone surgery, e.g. cochlear implantation, or for deep brain stimulation, where products are already on the market. The correct pose of the microstereotactic frame is either adjusted outside or inside the operating room and the frame is used for e.g. drill or electrode guidance. We present a patientspecific, disposable frame that allows intraoperative, sterile pose-setting. Key idea of our approach is bone cement between two plates that cures while the plates are positioned with a mechatronics system in the desired pose. This paper includes new designs of microstereotactic frames, a system for alignment and first measurements to analyze accuracy and applicable load.

Making 2D face recognition more robust using AAMs for pose compensation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Huisman, Peter; Munster, Ruud; Moro-Ellenberger, Stephanie; Veldhuis, Raymond N.J.; Bazen, A.M.

2006-01-01

The problem of pose in 2D face recognition is widely acknowledged. Commercial systems are limited to near frontal face images and cannot deal with pose deviations larger than 15 degrees from the frontal view. This is a problem, when using face recognition for surveillance applications in which

Integrating Worked Examples into Problem Posing in a Web-Based Learning Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Hsiao, Ju-Yuan; Hung, Chun-Ling; Lan, Yu-Feng; Jeng, Yoau-Chau

2013-01-01

Most students always lack of experience and perceive difficult regarding problem posing. The study hypothesized that worked examples may have benefits for supporting students' problem posing activities. A quasi-experiment was conducted in the context of a business mathematics course for examining the effects of integrating worked examples into…

Challenging Anti-Immigration Discourses in School and Community Contexts

Science.gov (United States)

Allexsaht-Snider, Martha; Buxton, Cory A.; Harman, Ruth

2012-01-01

Rapid migration shifts, anti-immigrant discourses in the public sphere, and harsh immigration policies have posed daunting challenges for immigrant students, their families, their teachers, and their communities in the 21st century. Trends in public discourse and law enforcement in the United States mirror developments in European countries with…

Top DoD Management Challenges, Fiscal Year 2018

Science.gov (United States)

2018-01-01

Providing Effective, Comprehensive, and Cost Effective Health Care 10. Identifying and Implementing Efficiencies in the DoD INSPECTOR GENERAL...8: Ensuring Ethical Conduct ................ 64 Challenge 9: Providing Effective, Comprehensive, and Cost Effective Health  Care...eroding ISIS physical caliphate in Iraq. INFLUENCE OF RUSSIA AND IRAN IN SYRIA In March 2017, General Votel testified that Iran poses the greatest

The New Pacific Security Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

Science.gov (United States)

1993-01-01

ECONOMIC COOPERATION 45 Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir in December 1990. The pro- posed grouping was to be restricted to Asian countries, thus ex...caused the a in the Diet and then was torpedoed by the US Department of State, which did not want a settle- ment and warned that Okinawa may remain...not convene a special session of the National Security Council, but finally, in October 1990, did submit a bill to the Diet calling for the creation

Head Pose Estimation from Passive Stereo Images

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Breitenstein, Michael D.; Jensen, Jeppe; Høilund, Carsten

2009-01-01

function. Our algorithm incorporates 2D and 3D cues to make the system robust to low-quality range images acquired by passive stereo systems. It handles large pose variations (of ±90 ° yaw and ±45 ° pitch rotation) and facial variations due to expressions or accessories. For a maximally allowed error of 30...

Challenges for Deep Vadose Zone Remediation at the Hanford Site

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Morse, John G.; Charboneau, Briant L.; Lober, Robert W.; Triplett, Mark B.

2008-01-01

The 'deep vadose zone' is defined as the region below the practical depth of surface remedy influence (e.g., excavation or barrier). At the Hanford Site, this region of the Central Plateau poses unique challenges for characterization and remediation. The contaminants in this region also pose a potentially significant continuing or future threat to groundwater. Currently, deep vadose zone characterization efforts and remedy selection are spread over multiple waste site Operable Units and tank farm Waste Management Areas. A particular challenge for this effort is the situation in which past leaks from single-shell tanks have become commingled with discharges from nearby liquid disposal sites. The Hanford Site is working with all affected parties, including the Washington State Department of Ecology, the Environmental Protection Agency, DOE-RL, DOE-ORP, and multiple contractor organizations to develop a unified approach to conducting work and reaching remediation decisions. This effort addresses the complex and challenging technical and regulatory issues within this environment. A true inter-Agency effort is evaluating the best strategy or combination of strategies for focusing technical investigations, including treatability studies, and for attaining remedy decisions on the Hanford Site

The Challenge Posed by Geomagnetic Activity to Electric Power Reliability: Evidence From England and Wales

Science.gov (United States)

Forbes, Kevin F.; St. Cyr, O. C.

2017-10-01

This paper addresses whether geomagnetic activity challenged the reliability of the electric power system during part of the declining phase of solar cycle 23. Operations by National Grid in England and Wales are examined over the period of 11 March 2003 through 31 March 2005. This paper examines the relationship between measures of geomagnetic activity and a metric of challenged electric power reliability known as the net imbalance volume (NIV). Measured in megawatt hours, NIV represents the sum of all energy deployments initiated by the system operator to balance the electric power system. The relationship between geomagnetic activity and NIV is assessed using a multivariate econometric model. The model was estimated using half-hour settlement data over the period of 11 March 2003 through 31 December 2004. The results indicate that geomagnetic activity had a demonstrable effect on NIV over the sample period. Based on the parameter estimates, out-of-sample predictions of NIV were generated for each half hour over the period of 1 January to 31 March 2005. Consistent with the existence of a causal relationship between geomagnetic activity and the electricity market imbalance, the root-mean-square error of the out-of-sample predictions of NIV is smaller; that is, the predictions are more accurate, when the statistically significant estimated effects of geomagnetic activity are included as drivers in the predictions.

Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Tanzania: Current Status and Challenges

OpenAIRE

Kilonzo, Semvua B.; Gunda, Daniel W.; Mpondo, Bonaventura C. T.; Bakshi, Fatma A.; Jaka, Hyasinta

2018-01-01

Hepatitis B is one of the most common infectious diseases in the world with high prevalence in most of sub-Saharan Africa countries. The complexity in its diagnosis and treatment poses a significant management challenge in the resource-limited settings including Tanzania, where most of the tests and drugs are either unavailable or unaffordable. This mini review aims at demonstrating the current status of the disease in the country and discussing the concomitant challenges in diagnosis, treatm...

A new challenge for advertising on mobile devices: Social TV

OpenAIRE

Natalia Quintas-Froufe; Ana González-Neira

2015-01-01

Mobile device advertising is a rapidly growing market due to the penetration of mobile devices in Spanish society. Advertising communication in this digital ecosystem continually poses new challenges. One of these - the subject of this proposal - is the link-up between mobile advertising with social TV. It opens up new possibilities for the development of advertising strategies on mobile devices.The aim of this paper is to describe the challenges faced by the Spanish advertising industry with...

Security, development and human rights: normative, legal and policy challenges for the international drug control system.

Science.gov (United States)

Barrett, Damon

2010-03-01

This commentary addresses some of the challenges posed by the broader normative, legal and policy framework of the United Nations for the international drug control system. The 'purposes and principles' of the United Nations are presented and set against the threat based rhetoric of the drug control system and the negative consequences of that system. Some of the challenges posed by human rights law and norms to the international drug control system are also described, and the need for an impact assessment of the current system alongside alternative policy options is highlighted as a necessary consequence of these analyses. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Special Educators and Mathematics Phobia: An Initial Qualitative Investigation

Science.gov (United States)

Humphrey, Michael; Hourcade, Jack J.

2010-01-01

Special educators are uniquely challenged to be content experts in all curricular areas, including mathematics, because students in their caseloads may require academic instruction in any area. However, special educators with math phobia may be limited in their ability to provide effective instruction to their students with mathematical deficits…

Sixty Years of Special Needs Education in Tanzania: Celebrating ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This study traces the development of special needs education in Tanzania from 1950, and discusses the achievements and the persistent challenges that Tanzania is facing as we celebrate 60 years since the first special education school was started. Both documentation and interview methods were used to collect ...

The Meaningful Use of Big Data: Four Perspectives - Four Challenges

NARCIS (Netherlands)

C. Bizer; P.A. Boncz (Peter); M Brodie; O. Erling (Orri)

2011-01-01

textabstractTwenty-five Semantic Web and Database researchers met at the 2011 STI Semantic Summit in Riga, Latvia July 6-8, 2011 to discuss the opportunities and challenges posed by Big Data for the Semantic Web, Semantic Technologies, and Database communities. The unanimous conclusion was that the

Special care with special child-oral health status of differently abled children attending special schools in Delhi: A cross-sectional study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Monika Prasad

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Oral health is an essential component of overall health. Oral health maintenance is more complex for the physically challenged children; the essential problem is lack of cooperation and coordination because of their physical or mental inability. Thus, physically challenged children are considered as a high-risk group for having dental problems. Aim: The aim of this study is to assess dental caries experience, oral hygiene status, periodontal status, and prevalence of malocclusion among differently abled children attending special schools in Delhi. Materials and Methods: A total of 1060 (610 males and 450 females, differently abled children were included in the study. The children were grouped into visually impaired, hearing and speech impaired, and orthopedic physically challenged only. Clinical examination was recorded using Dentition Status and Treatment Need Index and periodontal status recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2013 and examination for malocclusion was made according to the Dental Aesthetic Index as described by the WHO Oral Health Survey 1997. The Simplified Oral Hygiene Index introduced by John C Greene and Jack R Vermillion in 1964 was used to assess the oral hygiene status. Results: Out of 1060 physically challenged children, 56.4% (598 had dental caries with the mean index or decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT being 1.10 (standard deviation ±1.26. It was observed that prevalence of dental caries was high in visually impaired group (63.2% and least in hearing and speech impaired group (51.7%. The overall oral hygiene status recorded was good in 58.5%, fair in 40.8%, and poor in 0.7% of the study population. Conclusion: The cumulative neglect of oral health was seen among the physically challenged children. Children with visual impairment had much more poorer oral health when compared to the hearing and speech impairment and orthopedically physically challenged group. An improved accessibility

Problem-Posing in Education: Transformation of the Practice of the Health Professional.

Science.gov (United States)

Casagrande, L. D. R.; Caron-Ruffino, M.; Rodrigues, R. A. P.; Vendrusculo, D. M. S.; Takayanagui, A. M. M.; Zago, M. M. F.; Mendes, M. D.

1998-01-01

Studied the use of a problem-posing model in health education. The model based on the ideas of Paulo Freire is presented. Four innovative experiences of teaching-learning in environmental and occupational health and patient education are reported. Notes that the problem-posing model has the capability to transform health-education practice.…

Robotic-surgical instrument wrist pose estimation.

Science.gov (United States)

Fabel, Stephan; Baek, Kyungim; Berkelman, Peter

2010-01-01

The Compact Lightweight Surgery Robot from the University of Hawaii includes two teleoperated instruments and one endoscope manipulator which act in accord to perform assisted interventional medicine. The relative positions and orientations of the robotic instruments and endoscope must be known to the teleoperation system so that the directions of the instrument motions can be controlled to correspond closely to the directions of the motions of the master manipulators, as seen by the the endoscope and displayed to the surgeon. If the manipulator bases are mounted in known locations and all manipulator joint variables are known, then the necessary coordinate transformations between the master and slave manipulators can be easily computed. The versatility and ease of use of the system can be increased, however, by allowing the endoscope or instrument manipulator bases to be moved to arbitrary positions and orientations without reinitializing each manipulator or remeasuring their relative positions. The aim of this work is to find the pose of the instrument end effectors using the video image from the endoscope camera. The P3P pose estimation algorithm is used with a Levenberg-Marquardt optimization to ensure convergence. The correct transformations between the master and slave coordinate frames can then be calculated and updated when the bases of the endoscope or instrument manipulators are moved to new, unknown, positions at any time before or during surgical procedures.

Protocol challenges for on-the-job voice dosimetry of teachers in the United States and Finland

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Nix, John; Svec, Jan G.; Laukkanen, Anna-Maria; Titze, Ingo R.

The occupational voice use of teachers has been an important research topic over the last 10 years. However, data collection on vocal loading in teachers at and away from the workplace poses significant challenges to the research protocol. The challenges include recruitment of subjects, voice data

The rise of self-driving cars : is the private international law framework for non-contractual obligations posing a bump in the road?

OpenAIRE

De Bruyne, Jan; Vanleenhove, Cedric

2018-01-01

This article focusses on some implications related to the commercialisation of self-driving or autonomous cars. Such vehicles are no longer a mere futuristic idea. They could soon be available on the market. Society in general and the applicable rules in particular will undergo a transformation following the introduction of autonomous vehicles. Despite the many benefits, self-driving cars also pose several challenges. These do not only relate to technical aspects but also to the influence of ...

Challenges and solutions for climate change

CERN Document Server

Gaast, Wytze

2012-01-01

The latest scientific knowledge on climate change indicates that higher greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere through unchecked emissions will provoke severe climate change and ocean acidification threatening environmental structures on which humanity relies. Climate change therefore poses major socio-economic, technical and environmental challenges which will have serious impacts on countries’ pathways towards sustainable development. As a result, climate change and sustainable development have increasingly become interlinked. A changing climate makes achieving Millennium Development Goals more difficult and expensive, so there is every reason to achieve development goals with low greenhouse gas emissions. This leads to the following five challenges discussed by Challenges and Solutions for Climate Change: To place climate negotiations in the wider context of sustainability, equity and social change so that development benefits can be maximised at the same time as decreasing greenhouse gas emissi...

Estimation methods for special nuclear materials holdup

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pillay, K.K.S.; Picard, R.R.

1984-01-01

The potential value of statistical models for the estimation of residual inventories of special nuclear materials was examined using holdup data from processing facilities and through controlled experiments. Although the measurement of hidden inventories of special nuclear materials in large facilities is a challenging task, reliable estimates of these inventories can be developed through a combination of good measurements and the use of statistical models. 7 references, 5 figures

The Effects of Problem Posing on Student Mathematical Learning: A Meta-Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Rosli, Roslinda; Capraro, Mary Margaret; Capraro, Robert M.

2014-01-01

The purpose of the study was to meta-synthesize research findings on the effectiveness of problem posing and to investigate the factors that might affect the incorporation of problem posing in the teaching and learning of mathematics. The eligibility criteria for inclusion of literature in the meta-analysis was: published between 1989 and 2011,…

Trotting Gait of a Quadruped Robot Based on the Time-Pose Control Method

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cai RunBin

2013-02-01

Full Text Available We present the Time-Pose control method for the trotting gait of a quadruped robot on flat ground and up a slope. The method, with brief control structure, real-time operation ability and high adaptability, divides quadruped robot control into gait control and pose control. Virtual leg and intuitive controllers are introduced to simplify the model and generate the trajectory of mass centre and location of supporting legs in gait control, while redundancy optimization is used for solving the inverse kinematics in pose control. The models both on flat ground and up a slope are fully analysed, and different kinds of optimization methods are compared using the manipulability measure in order to select the best option. Simulations are performed, which prove that the Time-Pose control method is realizable for these two kinds of environment.

Data Sharing: Convert Challenges into Opportunities.

Science.gov (United States)

Figueiredo, Ana Sofia

2017-01-01

Initiatives for sharing research data are opportunities to increase the pace of knowledge discovery and scientific progress. The reuse of research data has the potential to avoid the duplication of data sets and to bring new views from multiple analysis of the same data set. For example, the study of genomic variations associated with cancer profits from the universal collection of such data and helps in selecting the most appropriate therapy for a specific patient. However, data sharing poses challenges to the scientific community. These challenges are of ethical, cultural, legal, financial, or technical nature. This article reviews the impact that data sharing has in science and society and presents guidelines to improve the efficient sharing of research data.

Effect of Job Specialization on the Hospital Stay and Job Satisfaction of ED Nurses

OpenAIRE

Shamsi; Mahmoudi; Sirati Nir; Babatabar Darzi

2016-01-01

Background In recent decades, the increasing crowdedness of the emergency departments has posed various problems for patients and healthcare systems worldwide. These problems include prolonged hospital stay, patient dissatisfaction and nurse burnout or job dissatisfaction. Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of emergency department (ED) nurses’ job specialization on their job satisfaction and the length ...

Attitudes of Teachers in Obudu, Nigeria toward the Education of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The challenges that learners with special need face in the course of learning are enormous. These challenges pose crucial problems to the teachers who are in direct contact with these types of learners. It is on this note that this study is undertaken to find out empirically the teachers' attitudes toward the education of ...

Robust Pose Estimation using the SwissRanger SR-3000 Camera

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gudmundsson, Sigurjon Arni; Larsen, Rasmus; Ersbøll, Bjarne Kjær

2007-01-01

In this paper a robust method is presented to classify and estimate an objects pose from a real time range image and a low dimensional model. The model is made from a range image training set which is reduced dimensionally by a nonlinear manifold learning method named Local Linear Embedding (LLE)......). New range images are then projected to this model giving the low dimensional coordinates of the object pose in an efficient manner. The range images are acquired by a state of the art SwissRanger SR-3000 camera making the projection process work in real-time....

ICT and Mass Commnication: The Trends and Challenges of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This paper reviews the environment of public affairs reporting in Nigeria and examines it against the global trend as shaped by ICTs and the challenges this poses to the business of reporting. The paper observes that not only have the traditional reportorial tools been replaced with slim, fast and versatile digital tools, the ...

Appraisal and acquisition innovative practices for archives and special collections

CERN Document Server

Theimer, Kate

2015-01-01

Appraisal and Acquisition: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections explores how archivists and special collections librarians in organizations of different sizes and types have approached the challenges of collection, as well as exploring opportunities to acquire new kinds of materials and conduct thoughtful reappraisal.

Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Tanzania: Current Status and Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Bakshi, Fatma A.; Jaka, Hyasinta

2018-01-01

Hepatitis B is one of the most common infectious diseases in the world with high prevalence in most of sub-Saharan Africa countries. The complexity in its diagnosis and treatment poses a significant management challenge in the resource-limited settings including Tanzania, where most of the tests and drugs are either unavailable or unaffordable. This mini review aims at demonstrating the current status of the disease in the country and discussing the concomitant challenges in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. PMID:29666656

Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Tanzania: Current Status and Challenges

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Semvua B. Kilonzo

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Hepatitis B is one of the most common infectious diseases in the world with high prevalence in most of sub-Saharan Africa countries. The complexity in its diagnosis and treatment poses a significant management challenge in the resource-limited settings including Tanzania, where most of the tests and drugs are either unavailable or unaffordable. This mini review aims at demonstrating the current status of the disease in the country and discussing the concomitant challenges in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

Beyond the Classroom: Internships and Students with Special Needs

Science.gov (United States)

Severance, Theresa A.; Starr, Pamela J.

2011-01-01

Internships and other forms of experiential learning are a valuable learning opportunity and resource for many students and perhaps even more so for those with special needs. Outside of the classroom, however, assisting students with special needs may present faculty with new questions and challenges as they navigate the transition to a community…

Physical activity at altitude: challenges for people with diabetes: a review

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mol, P. de; Vries, S.T. de; Koning, E.J. de; Gans, R.O.; Bilo, H.J.; Tack, C.J.

2014-01-01

BACKGROUND: A growing number of subjects with diabetes take part in physical activities at altitude such as skiing, climbing, and trekking. Exercise under conditions of hypobaric hypoxia poses some unique challenges on subjects with diabetes, and the presence of diabetes can complicate safe and

Physical Activity at Altitude : Challenges for People With Diabetes A Review

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Mol, Pieter; de Vries, Suzanna T.; de Koning, Eelco J. P.; Gans, Reinold O. B.; Bilo, Henk J. G.; Tack, Cees J.

BACKGROUND A growing number of subjects with diabetes take part in physical activities at altitude such as skiing, climbing, and trekking. Exercise under conditions of hypobaric hypoxia poses some unique challenges on subjects with diabetes, and the presence of diabetes can complicate safe and

Binary classification posed as a quadratically constrained quadratic ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

Binary classification is posed as a quadratically constrained quadratic problem and solved using the proposed method. Each class in the binary classification problem is modeled as a multidimensional ellipsoid to forma quadratic constraint in the problem. Particle swarms help in determining the optimal hyperplane or ...

Developing teachers' subject didactic competence through problem posing

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Tichá, Marie; Hošpesová, A.

2013-01-01

Roč. 83, č. 1 (2013), s. 133-143 ISSN 0013-1954 Institutional support: RVO:67985840 Keywords : professional development * primary school teachers * problem posing Subject RIV: AM - Education Impact factor: 0.639, year: 2013 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10649-012-9455-1

Unrevealing culture-negative severe sepsis

OpenAIRE

de Prost, Nicolas; Razazi, Keyvan; Brun-Buisson, Christian

2013-01-01

Sepsis involves a wide array of sources and microorganisms, only a fraction of which are microbiologically documented. Culture-negative sepsis poses special diagnostic challenges to both clinicians and microbiologists and further questions the validity of sepsis definitions.

Information Needs and Information Seeking Behavior of Teachers of Special Education in Shillong, India

Science.gov (United States)

Laloo, Bikika; Buhril, Jocica L.

2013-01-01

Teaching itself, though noble, is a challenging profession. Such a profession calls upon not only the intellectual capacities of the teacher, but the physical and emotional as well. In short, it is a unique profession. Teaching differently-abled students (special education), is even more challenging. By virtue of their teaching a special group of…

Challenges in the implementation of a quality management system applied to radiometric analysis

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Dias, Danila C.S.; Bonifacio, Rodrigo L.; Nascimento, Marcos R.L.; Silva, Nivaldo C. da; Taddei, Maria Helena T., E-mail: danilacdias@gmail.com [Comissao Nacional de Energia Nuclear (LAPOC/CNEN-MG), Pocos de Caldas, MG (Brazil). Laboratorio de Pocos de Caldas

2015-07-01

The concept of quality in laboratories has been well established as an essential factor in the search for reliable results. Since its first version published (1999), the ISO/IEC 17025 has been applied in the industrial and research fields, in a wide range of laboratorial analyses. However, the implementation of a Quality Management System still poses great challenges to institutions and companies. The purpose of this work is to expose the constraints related to the implementation of ISO/IEC 17025 applied to analytical assays of radionuclides, accomplished by studying the case of the Pocos de Caldas Laboratory of the Brazilian Commission for Nuclear Energy. In this lab, a project of accreditation of techniques involving determination of radionuclides in water, soil, sediment and food samples has been conducted since 2011. The challenges presented by this project arise from the administrative view, where the governmental nature of the institution translates into unlevelled availability resources and the organizational view, whereas QMS requires inevitable changes in the organizational culture. It is important to point out that when it comes to accreditation of analysis involving radioactive elements, many aspects must be treated carefully due to the their very particular nature. Among these concerns are the determination of analysis uncertainties, accessibility to international proficiency studies, international radioactive samples and CRM transportation, the study of parameters on the validation of analytical methods and the lack of documentation and specialized personnel regarding quality at radiometric measurements. Through an effective management system, the institution is overcoming these challenges, moving toward the ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. (author)

Challenges in the implementation of a quality management system applied to radiometric analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dias, Danila C.S.; Bonifacio, Rodrigo L.; Nascimento, Marcos R.L.; Silva, Nivaldo C. da; Taddei, Maria Helena T.

2015-01-01

The concept of quality in laboratories has been well established as an essential factor in the search for reliable results. Since its first version published (1999), the ISO/IEC 17025 has been applied in the industrial and research fields, in a wide range of laboratorial analyses. However, the implementation of a Quality Management System still poses great challenges to institutions and companies. The purpose of this work is to expose the constraints related to the implementation of ISO/IEC 17025 applied to analytical assays of radionuclides, accomplished by studying the case of the Pocos de Caldas Laboratory of the Brazilian Commission for Nuclear Energy. In this lab, a project of accreditation of techniques involving determination of radionuclides in water, soil, sediment and food samples has been conducted since 2011. The challenges presented by this project arise from the administrative view, where the governmental nature of the institution translates into unlevelled availability resources and the organizational view, whereas QMS requires inevitable changes in the organizational culture. It is important to point out that when it comes to accreditation of analysis involving radioactive elements, many aspects must be treated carefully due to the their very particular nature. Among these concerns are the determination of analysis uncertainties, accessibility to international proficiency studies, international radioactive samples and CRM transportation, the study of parameters on the validation of analytical methods and the lack of documentation and specialized personnel regarding quality at radiometric measurements. Through an effective management system, the institution is overcoming these challenges, moving toward the ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. (author)

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Human Computing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pantic, Maja; Santos, E.; Pentland, A.; Nijholt, Antinus

2009-01-01

The seven articles in this special issue focus on human computing. Most focus on two challenging issues in human computing, namely, machine analysis of human behavior in group interactions and context-sensitive modeling.

Inertial measurement unit–based iterative pose compensation algorithm for low-cost modular manipulator

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yunhan Lin

2016-01-01

Full Text Available It is a necessary mean to realize the accurate motion control of the manipulator which uses end-effector pose correction method and compensation method. In this article, first, we established the kinematic model and error model of the modular manipulator (WUST-ARM, and then we discussed the measurement methods and precision of the inertial measurement unit sensor. The inertial measurement unit sensor is mounted on the end-effector of modular manipulator, to get the real-time pose of the end-effector. At last, a new inertial measurement unit–based iterative pose compensation algorithm is proposed. By applying this algorithm in the pose compensation experiment of modular manipulator which is composed of low-cost rotation joints, the results show that the inertial measurement unit can obtain a higher precision when in static state; it will accurately feedback to the control system with an accurate error compensation angle after a brief delay when the end-effector moves to the target point, and after compensation, the precision errors of roll angle, pitch angle, and yaw angle are reached at 0.05°, 0.01°, and 0.27° respectively. It proves that this low-cost method provides a new solution to improve the end-effector pose of low-cost modular manipulator.

Conservation biogeography - foundations, concepts and challenges

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Richardson, Timothy; Whittaker, R.J.; Whittaker, Robert J.

2010-01-01

Conservation biogeography involves the application of biogeographical principles, theories, and analyses to problems regarding biodiversity conservation. The field was formally defined in 2005, and considerable research has been conducted in the ensuing 5 years. This editorial sets the context...... for 16 contributions in a special issue of Diversity and Distributions on developments and challenges in conservation biogeography. Papers are grouped into the following main themes: species distribution modelling; data requirements; approaches for assigning conservation priorities; approaches...... for integrating information from numerous disparate sources; special challenges involving invasive species; and the crucial issue of determining how elements of biodiversity are likely to respond to rapid climate change. One paper provides a synthesis of requirements for a robust conservation biogeography...

Multiperson visual focus of attention from head pose and meeting contextual cues.

Science.gov (United States)

Ba, Sileye O; Odobez, Jean-Marc

2011-01-01

This paper introduces a novel contextual model for the recognition of people's visual focus of attention (VFOA) in meetings from audio-visual perceptual cues. More specifically, instead of independently recognizing the VFOA of each meeting participant from his own head pose, we propose to jointly recognize the participants' visual attention in order to introduce context-dependent interaction models that relate to group activity and the social dynamics of communication. Meeting contextual information is represented by the location of people, conversational events identifying floor holding patterns, and a presentation activity variable. By modeling the interactions between the different contexts and their combined and sometimes contradictory impact on the gazing behavior, our model allows us to handle VFOA recognition in difficult task-based meetings involving artifacts, presentations, and moving people. We validated our model through rigorous evaluation on a publicly available and challenging data set of 12 real meetings (5 hours of data). The results demonstrated that the integration of the presentation and conversation dynamical context using our model can lead to significant performance improvements.

Health Issues: Do Cell Phones Pose a Health Hazard?

Science.gov (United States)

... Procedures Home, Business, and Entertainment Products Cell Phones Health Issues Share Tweet Linkedin Pin it More sharing ... it Email Print Do cell phones pose a health hazard? Many people are concerned that cell phone ...

Pose Self-Measurement of Noncooperative Spacecraft Based on Solar Panel Triangle Structure

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jingzhou Song

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Aiming at the recognition and location of noncooperative spacecraft, this paper presents a monocular vision pose measurement method based on solar triangle structure. First of all, an autonomous recognition algorithm of feature structure based on sliding window Hough transformation (SWHT and inscribed circle of a triangle is proposed, and the image coordinates of feature points on the triangle can be obtained relying on this algorithm, combined with the P4P algorithm and the structure of spacecraft, calculating the relative pose of target expressed by rotation and translation matrix. The whole algorithm can be loaded into the prewritten onboard program, which will get the autocomplete feature structure extraction and relative pose measurement without human intervention, and this method does not need to mount any markers on the target. Then compare the measured values with the accurate value of the laser tracker, so that a conclusion can be drawn that the maximum position error is lower than 5% and the rotation error is lower than 4%, which meets the requirements of noncooperative spacecraft’s pose measurement for observations, tracking, and docking in the final rendezvous phase.

Mining Key Skeleton Poses with Latent SVM for Action Recognition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaoqiang Li

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Human action recognition based on 3D skeleton has become an active research field in recent years with the recently developed commodity depth sensors. Most published methods analyze an entire 3D depth data, construct mid-level part representations, or use trajectory descriptor of spatial-temporal interest point for recognizing human activities. Unlike previous work, a novel and simple action representation is proposed in this paper which models the action as a sequence of inconsecutive and discriminative skeleton poses, named as key skeleton poses. The pairwise relative positions of skeleton joints are used as feature of the skeleton poses which are mined with the aid of the latent support vector machine (latent SVM. The advantage of our method is resisting against intraclass variation such as noise and large nonlinear temporal deformation of human action. We evaluate the proposed approach on three benchmark action datasets captured by Kinect devices: MSR Action 3D dataset, UTKinect Action dataset, and Florence 3D Action dataset. The detailed experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves superior performance to the state-of-the-art skeleton-based action recognition methods.

LEVELING STUDENTS’ CREATIVE THINKING IN SOLVING AND POSING MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tatag Yuli Eko Siswono

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Many researchers assume that people are creative, but their degree ofcreativity is different. The notion of creative thinking level has beendiscussed .by experts. The perspective of mathematics creative thinkingrefers to a combination of logical and divergent thinking which is basedon intuition but has a conscious aim. The divergent thinking is focusedon flexibility, fluency, and novelty in mathematical problem solving andproblem posing. As students have various backgrounds and differentabilities, they possess different potential in thinking patterns,imagination, fantasy and performance; therefore, students have differentlevels of creative thinking. A research study was conducted in order todevelop a framework for students’ levels of creative thinking inmathematics. This research used a qualitative approach to describe thecharacteristics of the levels of creative thinking. Task-based interviewswere conducted to collect data with ten 8thgrade junior secondary schoolstudents. The results distinguished five levels of creative thinking,namely level 0 to level 4 with different characteristics in each level.These differences are based on fluency, flexibility, and novelty inmathematical problem solving and problem posing.Keywords: student’s creative thinking, problem posing, flexibility,fluency, novelty DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22342/jme.1.1.794.17-40

Comparison On Matching Methods Used In Pose Tracking For 3D Shape Representation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Khin Kyu Kyu Win

2017-01-01

Full Text Available In this work three different algorithms such as Brute Force Delaunay Triangulation and k-d Tree are analyzed on matching comparison for 3D shape representation. It is intended for developing the pose tracking of moving objects in video surveillance. To determine 3D pose of moving objects some tracking system may require full 3D pose estimation of arbitrarily shaped objects in real time. In order to perform 3D pose estimation in real time each step in the tracking algorithm must be computationally efficient. This paper presents method comparison for the computationally efficient registration of 3D shapes including free-form surfaces. Matching of free-form surfaces are carried out by using geometric point matching algorithm ICP. Several aspects of the ICP algorithm are investigated and analyzed by using specified surface setup. The surface setup processed in this system is represented by simple geometric primitive dealing with objects of free-from shape. Considered representations are a cloud of points.

Pose measurement method with six parameters for microassembly based on an optical micrometer

Science.gov (United States)

Ye, Xin; Wang, Qiang; Zhang, Zhi-jing; Sun, Yuan; Zhang, Xiao-feng

2009-07-01

This paper presents a new pose measurement method of microminiature parts that is capable of transforming one dimension (1D) contour size obtained by optical micrometer to three dimension (3D) data with six parameters for microassembly. Pose measurement is one of the most important processes for microminiature parts' alignment and insertion in microassembly. During the past few years, researchers have developed their microassembly systems focusing on visual identification to obtain two or three dimension data with no more than three parameters. Scanning electronic microscope (SEM), optical microscope, and stereomicroscope are applied in their systems. However, as structures of microminiature parts become increasingly complex, six parameters to represent their position and orientation are specifically needed. Firstly, The pose measurement model is established based on the introduction of measuring objects and measuring principle of optical micrometer. The measuring objects are microminiature parts with complex 3D structure. Two groups of two dimension (2D) data are gathered at two different measurement positions. Then part pose with 6 parameters is calculated, including 3 position parameters of feature point of the part and 3 orientation parameters of the part axis. Secondly, pose measurement process for a small shaft, vertical orientation determination, and position parameters obtaining are presented. 2D data is gathered by scanning the generatrix of the part, and valid data is extracted and saved in arrays. A vertical orientation criterion is proposed to determine whether the part is parallel to the Z-axis of the coordinate. If not, 2D data will be fixed into a linear equation using least square algorithm. Then orientation parameters are calculated. Center of Part End (CPE) is selected as feature point of the part, and its position parameters are extracted form two group of 2D data. Finally, a fast pose measurement device is developed and representative

Combining Front Vehicle Detection with 3D Pose Estimation for a Better Driver Assistance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yu Peng

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Driver assistant systems enhance traffic safety and efficiency. The accurate 3D pose of a front vehicle can help a driver to make the right decision on the road. We propose a novel real-time system to estimate the 3D pose of the front vehicle. This system consists of two parallel threads: vehicle rear tracking and mapping. The vehicle rear is first identified in the video captured by an onboard camera, after license plate localization and foreground extraction. The 3D pose estimation technique is then employed with respect to the extracted vehicle rear. Most current 3D pose estimation techniques need prior models or a stereo initialization with user cooperation. It is extremely difficult to obtain prior models due to the varying appearance of vehicles' rears. Moreover, it is unsafe to ask for drivers' cooperation when a vehicle is running. In our system, two initial keyframes for stereo algorithms are automatically extracted by vehicle rear detection and tracking. Map points are defined as a collection of point features extracted from the vehicle's rear with their 3D information. These map points are inferences that relate the 2D features detected in following vehicles' rears with the 3D world. The relative 3D pose of the onboard camera to the front vehicle rear is then estimated through matching the map points with point features detected on the front vehicle rear. We demonstrate the capabilities of our system by testing on real-time and synthesized videos. In order to make the experimental analysis visible, we demonstrated an estimated 3D pose through augmented reality, which needs accurate and real-time 3D pose estimation.

Perbedaan Keterampilan Pemecahan Masalah pada Pembelajaran Fisika Menggunakan Metode Problem Posing dan Problem Solving

OpenAIRE

Rahman, Adetya; Hartini, Sri; An'nur, Syubhan

2015-01-01

Teachers should be able to choose the method of learning that can help students in learning physics, namely the method of problem posing and problem solving method. The purposes of this study are : (1) describe the learning physics skills by using problem posing method, (2) describe the learning physics skills by using problem solving method, and (3) know difference between learning physics skills by using problem posing method and problem solving method in class XI of Science SMAN 6 Banjarma...

Challenges in the Management of a Patient with Myxoedema Coma ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Myxoedema coma is a rare life-threatening disease, and it is essential that it is managed appropriately to reduce the associated high mortality. However, in the setting where efficient healthcare delivery is hampered by inadequacies, the management of such cases may pose a significant challenge. We present the case of a ...

Challenges of privacy protection in big data analytics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Meiko

2013-01-01

The big data paradigm implies that almost every type of information eventually can be derived from sufficiently large datasets. However, in such terms, linkage of personal data of individuals poses a severe threat to privacy and civil rights. In this position paper, we propose a set of challenges...... that have to be addressed in order to perform big data analytics in a privacy-compliant way....

The Effect of Problem Solving and Problem Posing Models and Innate Ability to Students Achievement

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ratna Kartika Irawati

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Pengaruh Model Problem Solving dan Problem Posing serta Kemampuan Awal terhadap Hasil Belajar Siswa   Abstract: Chemistry concepts understanding features abstract quality and requires higher order thinking skills. Yet, the learning on chemistry has not boost the higher order thinking skills of the students. The use of the learning model of Problem Solving and Problem Posing in observing the innate ability of the student is expected to resolve the issue. This study aims to determine the learning model which is effective to improve the study of the student with different level of innate ability. This study used the quasi-experimental design. The research data used in this research is the quiz/test of the class which consist of 14 multiple choice questions and 5 essay questions. The data analysis used is ANOVA Two Ways. The results showed that Problem Posing is more effective to improve the student compared to Problem Solving, students with high level of innate ability have better outcomes in learning rather than the students with low level of innate ability after being applied with the Problem solving and Problem posing model, further, Problem Solving and Problem Posing is more suitable to be applied to the students with high level of innate ability. Key Words: problem solving, problem posing, higher order thinking skills, innate ability, learning outcomes   Abstrak: Pemahaman konsep-konsep kimia yang bersifat abstrak membutuhkan keterampilan berpikir tingkat tinggi. Pembelajaran kimia belum mendorong siswa melakukan keterampilan berpikir tingkat tinggi. Penggunaan model pembelajaran Problem Solving dan Problem Posing dengan memperhatikan kemampuan awal siswa diduga dapat mengatasi masalah tersebut. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui model pembelajaran yang efektif dalam meningkatkan hasil belajar dengan kemampuan awal siswa yang berbeda. Penelitian ini menggunakan rancangan eksperimen semu. Data penelitian menggunakan tes hasil belajar

Antibiotics as CECs: An Overview of the Hazards Posed by Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Geoffrey Ivan Scott

2016-04-01

Full Text Available ABSTRACTMonitoring programs have traditionally monitored legacy contaminants but are shifting focus to Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs. CECs present many challenges for monitoring and assessment, because measurement methods don't always exist nor have toxicological studies been fully conducted to place results in proper context. Also some CECs affect metabolic pathways to produce adverse outcomes that are not assessed through traditional toxicological evaluations. Antibiotics are CECs that pose significant environmental risks including development of both toxic effects at high doses and antibiotic resistance at doses well below the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC which kill bacteria and have been found in nearly half of all sites monitored in the US. Antimicrobial resistance has generally been attributed to the use of antibiotics in medicine for humans and livestock as well as aquaculture operations. The objective of this study was to assess the extent and magnitude of antibiotics in the environment and estimate their potential hazards in the environment. Antibiotics concentrations were measured in a number of monitoring studies which included Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP effluent, surface waters, sediments and biota. A number of studies reported levels of Antibiotic Resistant Microbes (ARM in surface waters and some studies found specific ARM genes (e.g. the blaM-1 gene in E. coli which may pose additional environmental risk. High levels of this gene were found to survive WWTP disinfection and accumulated in sediment at levels 100-1000 times higher than in the sewerage effluent, posing potential risks for gene transfer to other bacteria.in aquatic and marine ecosystems. Antibiotic risk assessment approaches were developed based on the use of MICs and MIC Ratios [High (Antibiotic Resistant/Low (Antibiotic Sensitive MIC] for each antibiotic indicating the range of bacterial adaptability to each antibiotic to help define the No

An Update on the Epidemiology of Schizophrenia with a Special Reference to Clinically Important Risk Factors

Science.gov (United States)

El-Missiry, Ahmed; Aboraya, Ahmed Sayed; Manseur, Hader; Manchester, Johnna; France, Cheryl; Border, Katherine

2011-01-01

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness which poses a tremendous burden on the families, caregivers and the society. The purpose of this paper is to provide an updated review of the epidemiology of schizophrenia with a special attention to the clinically important risk factors such as drug abuse, hormonal factors and the new advances in genetic…

Data Sharing: Convert Challenges into Opportunities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana Sofia Figueiredo

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Initiatives for sharing research data are opportunities to increase the pace of knowledge discovery and scientific progress. The reuse of research data has the potential to avoid the duplication of data sets and to bring new views from multiple analysis of the same data set. For example, the study of genomic variations associated with cancer profits from the universal collection of such data and helps in selecting the most appropriate therapy for a specific patient. However, data sharing poses challenges to the scientific community. These challenges are of ethical, cultural, legal, financial, or technical nature. This article reviews the impact that data sharing has in science and society and presents guidelines to improve the efficient sharing of research data.

Big Data Provenance: Challenges, State of the Art and Opportunities.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jianwu; Crawl, Daniel; Purawat, Shweta; Nguyen, Mai; Altintas, Ilkay

2015-01-01

Ability to track provenance is a key feature of scientific workflows to support data lineage and reproducibility. The challenges that are introduced by the volume, variety and velocity of Big Data, also pose related challenges for provenance and quality of Big Data, defined as veracity. The increasing size and variety of distributed Big Data provenance information bring new technical challenges and opportunities throughout the provenance lifecycle including recording, querying, sharing and utilization. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of Big Data provenance related to the veracity of the datasets themselves and the provenance of the analytical processes that analyze these datasets. It also explains our current efforts towards tracking and utilizing Big Data provenance using workflows as a programming model to analyze Big Data.

Legal Challenges of Combating Terrorism: International Humanitarian Law Implications of ‘Signature Strikes’ by Drones.

OpenAIRE

Ndi, George

2015-01-01

Terrorism has become the main international security challenge of the 21st century. From a historical perspective, terrorism has always been a serious concern for governments and nation states. The modern threat posed by terrorism has a much wider scope because of its international character. The much bigger threat posed by modern terrorism can also be explained by technological innovations and the reliance of terror networks on social networks both to propagate their message and as a recruit...

Fraction Multiplication and Division Word Problems Posed by Different Years of Pre-Service Elementary Mathematics Teachers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tuba Aydogdu Iskenderoglu

2018-04-01

Full Text Available It is important for pre-service teachers to know the conceptual difficulties they have experienced regarding the concepts of multiplication and division in fractions and problem posing is a way to learn these conceptual difficulties. Problem posing is a synthetic activity that fundamentally has multiple answers. The purpose of this study is to analyze the multiplication and division of fractions problems posed by pre-service elementary mathematics teachers and to investigate how the problems posed change according to the year of study the pre-service teachers are in. The study employed developmental research methods. A total of 213 pre-service teachers enrolled in different years of the Elementary Mathematics Teaching program at a state university in Turkey took part in the study. The “Problem Posing Test” was used as the data collecting tool. In this test, there are 3 multiplication and 3 division operations. The data were analyzed using qualitative descriptive analysis. The findings suggest that, regardless of the year, pre-service teachers had more conceptual difficulties in problem posing about the division of fractions than in problem posing about the multiplication of fractions.

Meanings Given to Algebraic Symbolism in Problem-Posing

Science.gov (United States)

Cañadas, María C.; Molina, Marta; del Río, Aurora

2018-01-01

Some errors in the learning of algebra suggest that students might have difficulties giving meaning to algebraic symbolism. In this paper, we use problem posing to analyze the students' capacity to assign meaning to algebraic symbolism and the difficulties that students encounter in this process, depending on the characteristics of the algebraic…

Naval Mines in the 21st Century: Can NATO Navies Meet the Challenge?

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Rios, John J

2005-01-01

.... One of the realities that has not changed is the threat posed by sea mines. Global proliferation of sea mines, both older variants and advanced new designs, has continued to grow and presents a unique challenge to maritime security...

Language Interpretation for Diverse Families: Considerations for Special Education Teachers

Science.gov (United States)

More, Cori M.; Hart, Juliet E.; Cheatham, Gregory A.

2013-01-01

The special education field is challenged by a lack of attention to and recruitment of well-trained language interpreters in schools. As such, special education teachers need to take a leadership role in working with interpreters to ensure diverse families are collaborative members of individualized education program (IEP) teams. Using the…

Implementing a WIC-Based Intervention to Promote Exclusive Breastfeeding: Challenges, Facilitators, and Adaptive Strategies.

Science.gov (United States)

Eldridge, Johanna D; Hartnett, Josette O; Lee, Furrina F; Sekhobo, Jackson P; Edmunds, Lynn S

Understand factors that contributed to the implementation of a successful multicomponent intervention to promote exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) within Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinics. Qualitative study of staff implementers' experiences using implementation status reports, facilitated group discussion immediately after implementation, and WIC administrative data. WIC staff from 12 clinics participated in an EBF Learning Community composed of 8 intervention trainings and ongoing support from trainers and peers. A total of 47 WIC staff including 11 directors, 20 other administrators, 8 nutritionists, and 6 peer counselors. A WIC-integrated EBF promotion initiative, supported through a Learning Community, composed of prenatal screening, tailored trimester-specific counseling, and timely postpartum follow-up. Challenges and facilitators to implementation within clinics. Iterative qualitative analysis using directed, emergent, and thematic coding. Implementation experiences were characterized by (1) perceived benefits of implementation, including improved EBF knowledge and counseling confidence among staff; and (2) managing implementation, including responding to challenges posed by clinic settings (resources, routine practices, values, and perceptions of mothers) through strategies such as adapting clinic practices and intervention components. Implementation was shaped by clinic setting and adaptive strategies. Future WIC interventions may benefit from formal consideration of intervention fit with local clinic setting and allowable adaptations. Copyright © 2017 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Congenital lobar emphysema in neonates: Anaesthetic challenges

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mridu Paban Nath

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Congenital lobar emphysema (CLE is a potentially reversible, though possibly life-threatening, cause of respiratory distress in the neonate. It poses dilemma in diagnosis and management. We are presenting a 6-week-old baby who presented with a sudden onset of respiratory distress related to CLE affecting the left upper lobe. Lobectomy was performed under general anaesthesia with one lung ventilation. The details of anaesthetic challenges and management are described here.

Modern slavery challenges to supply chain management

OpenAIRE

Gold, Stefan; Trautrims, Alexander; Trodd, Zoe

2015-01-01

Purpose\\ud – This paper aims to draw attention to the challenges modern slavery poses to supply chain management. Although many international supply chains are (most often unknowingly) connected to slave labour activities, supply chain managers and researchers have so far neglected the issue. This will most likely change as soon as civil society lobbying and new legislation impose increasing litigation and reputational risks on companies operating international supply chains. \\ud \\ud Design/m...

Embedded esophageal foreign body. A diagnostic challenge

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bhat, Venkatraman S.; AlSaadi, Khalid A.; Bessiouni, Ibrahim E.; Tuffaha, Amjad S.

2009-01-01

Esophageal foreign body (EFB) ingestion is of ubiquitous occurrence in pediatric population. Diagnosis and precise localization of non-radio opaque FB poses considerable challenge. Delayed presentation, poor history, and inconclusive esophagoscopic findings often lead to diagnostic delay. Multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) could be a great option in these situations. We present a case of EFB in a child who presented with failure to thrive, had negative fibreoptic endoscopy, ultimately diagnosed conclusively on MDCT examination. (author)

Photonic integrated circuits: new challenges for lithography

Science.gov (United States)

Bolten, Jens; Wahlbrink, Thorsten; Prinzen, Andreas; Porschatis, Caroline; Lerch, Holger; Giesecke, Anna Lena

2016-10-01

In this work routes towards the fabrication of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and the challenges their fabrication poses on lithography, such as large differences in feature dimension of adjacent device features, non-Manhattan-type features, high aspect ratios and significant topographic steps as well as tight lithographic requirements with respect to critical dimension control, line edge roughness and other key figures of merit not only for very small but also for relatively large features, are highlighted. Several ways those challenges are faced in today's low-volume fabrication of PICs, including the concept multi project wafer runs and mix and match approaches, are presented and possible paths towards a real market uptake of PICs are discussed.

Food challenges facing people living with HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The findings of the study indicate that the economic situation in the country coupled with the lack of adequate rainfall has posed challenges to the ability of HIV/AIDS patients to maintain a healthy diet. In addition, there were concerns about the departure of non-government organisations which used to provide them with food ...

The rarity of "unusual" [corrected] dispositions of victim bodies: staging and posing.

Science.gov (United States)

Keppel, Robert D; Weis, Joseph G

2004-11-01

The act of leaving a victim's body in an unusual position is a conscious criminal action by an offender to thwart an investigation, shock the finder and investigators of the crime scene, or give perverted pleasure to the killer. The unusual position concepts of posing and staging a murder victim have been documented thoroughly and have been accepted by the courts as a definable phenomenon. One staging case and one posing case are outlined and reveal characteristics of those homicides. From the Washington State Attorney General's Homicide Investigation and Tracking System's database on murder covering the years 1981-2000 (a total of 5,224 cases), the relative frequency of unusual body dispositions is revealed as a very rare occurrence. Only 1.3% of victims are left in an unusual position, with 0.3% being posed and 0.1% being staged. The characteristics of these types of murders also set them apart: compared to all other murders, in staged murders the victims and killers are, on average, older. All victims and offenders in the staged murders are white, with victims being disproportionately white in murders with any kind of unusual body disposition. Likewise, females stand out as victims when the body is posed, staged, or left in other unusual positions. Whereas posed bodies are more likely to include sexual assault, often in serial murders, there is no evidence of either in the staged cases. Lastly, when a body is left in an unusual position, binding is more likely, as well as the use of more "hands on" means of killing the victim, such as stabbing or cutting weapons, bludgeons, ligatures, or hands and feet.

Orff-Schulwerk in Special Education: A Case Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Filianou

2013-12-01

Full Text Available In the school year 2012-2013 a cross-curricular programme was designed by a class teacher and a music teacher in a school for children with special needs in Athens, Greece. The programme was based on the Carl Orff approach. The purpose of this article is to show the advantages and the effectiveness of the elemental music and movement approach when applied in a group of students with special educational needs in a public school for special education. The motivation of the cooperating teachers in selecting this specific group stemmed from the particular challenges that they were facing. The first challenge was the lack of homogeneity among the students. There were children with mental deficiencies, pervasive developmental disorders (autism and rare syndromes. The second challenge was that the programme focused on only one specific topic that sought to acquaint children with their body and how to relate to it through space and time. The final challenge was the use of music and movement as the main means of achieving the goals of this programme. The goals were both musical and non-musical. The outcomes of the programme were thought to be positive by both teachers. The students worked in a group and their cooperation increased progressively during the programme. They showed progress not only cognitively but also psychokinetically and socially. At the end of the school year, their progress was marked by their participation in the school festival, in a performance of music and movement, which was the result of their efforts all year.

EDITORIAL: Special issue on optical micromanipulation

Science.gov (United States)

Heckenberg, N.; Dholakia, K.

2007-08-01

Few would have predicted the impact the laser has had across all of the natural sciences. Laser technology in tandem with microscopy has fuelled a revolutionary advance in biology and chemistry. Microscopic methods permit imaging of cells, nanoparticles, atoms and single molecules. Without doubt, biophotonics has emerged in many guises as a major player on the international arena, and has spawned an industry with an explosive growth rate. Notably, the influence of light is not restricted to passive imaging—it may also move, trap and manoeuvre objects from single atoms right through to the size of a large cell with no damage whatsoever. Given the well-known uses of high power lasers in surgery and industrial cutting, this sounds like science fiction, but at the size scale of these objects it is science fact: it is the area of optical micromanipulation that is the subject of this special issue. The field of optical micromanipulation has continued to impact right across the sciences in an unprecedented fashion, since its inception in the late 1960s. Excitingly the field has made an exceptional impact in single molecule biophysics and the physics of non-equilibrium systems largely due to the fact that an optical trap is an elegant and powerful force transducer. The field is also branching out into new directions: cell biology is benefiting from this advance. Trapping and microfluidics is an exciting combination within the broader remit of the field of optofluidics: methods of multiple traps using diffractive optics are permitting cell sorting, traps are aiding local viscosity measurements and novel biological studies are being performed. Combining traps with other spectroscopic methods and imaging modes is an interesting theme that poses interesting challenges but promises exciting new knowledge. All these areas are represented in this special issue, along with a number of contributions to quantitative modelling of optical fields suitable for trapping and of the

Communicating specialized knowledge - negotiating knowledge communication between writer and editor

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Petersen, Margrethe

In communicating research findings, authors of academic journal articles face the challenge of overcoming the barriers posed by the knowledge asymmetries between (a) authors and journal readership and (b) authors and editors. Considering the general taxonomy of the submission procedure and the ke...... role of academic journal editors, the issue of whether, regardless of the quality of the submissions received, editors are sometimes insurmountable barriers to knowledge communication should be debated....

International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards: Challenge and response

Science.gov (United States)

Spector, Leonard S.

2017-11-01

This article provides a critical review of the nuclear accounting and inspection system of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), known as "IAEA safeguards." The article focuses on the multiple challenges the Agency confronts in verifying that all nuclear activities in the countries under its safeguards system are being pursued for exclusively peaceful purposes. The principal challenges noted are those posed by: undeclared facilities, the development of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, illicit procurement activities, denial of inspector access, difficulties in verifying absence of weaponization activities, and difficulties in establishing that all nuclear-relevant activities in a state are peaceful. The article is in the form of annotated PowerPoint briefing slides.

The investigation and implementation of real-time face pose and direction estimation on mobile computing devices

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Deqian; Gao, Lisheng; Jhang, Seong Tae

2012-04-01

The mobile computing device has many limitations, such as relative small user interface and slow computing speed. Usually, augmented reality requires face pose estimation can be used as a HCI and entertainment tool. As far as the realtime implementation of head pose estimation on relatively resource limited mobile platforms is concerned, it is required to face different constraints while leaving enough face pose estimation accuracy. The proposed face pose estimation method met this objective. Experimental results running on a testing Android mobile device delivered satisfactory performing results in the real-time and accurately.

Comparing environmental issues in Cuba before and after the Special Period: balancing sustainable development and survival.

Science.gov (United States)

Maal-Bared, Rasha

2006-04-01

Following the Earth Summit in 1992, Cuba designed and implemented a variety of programs, administrative structures, and public awareness activities to promote sound environmental management and sustainable development. This came shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union and the strengthening of the US blockade in 1990, which resulted in a 35% drop in Cuban GDP. This period, referred to as the Special Period, witnessed a decrease in many environmentally damaging activities both by choice and by necessity, but also resulted in many decisions to resuscitate the Cuban economy. The purpose of this work was to compare and rank the environmental risks Cuba faced before and during the Special Period (1990-2000) using two Comparative environmental risk assessments (CERAs). To do so, an ecosystem integrity risk assessment matrix was constructed with 42 risk end points. The matrix assessed the risk posed by 17 problem areas including air pollution, water contamination, solid waste sites, pesticides and ecosystem degradation. The risks were calculated using five criteria: area affected, vulnerability of affected population, severity of impact, irreversibility of effect and uncertainty. To construct this matrix, both literature reviews and expert interviews in Cuba were conducted in 2000. The results showed a general decrease in risk scores during the Special Period. Before the Special Period, high risks were posed by: terrestrial degradation and industrial wastewater and sludge, followed by freshwater degradation, surface water stressors, and pesticides. After the Special Period, industrial wastewater and sludge and pesticides were no longer high-risk areas, but municipal wastewater and marine coastal degradation ranked higher than previously. Also, the risk endpoints most stressed after 1990 were affected by activities controlled by the government, such as mining and tourism, and lack of infrastructure. Therefore, the claims that public environmental education is the main

special article child health: past, present and future challenges

African Journals Online (AJOL)

among other things at ... in the planning of the new extensions to Korle Bu ... one ward (ward M) housed all the paediatric pa- ... Health Care Delivery to children by the Women Medi- .... Street, London to try to learn some paediatrics. ... career. Times indeed have changed, but there will al- ways be personal challenges for ...

Parental Challenges in Providing Care for Children with Special ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Majority (45, 61.6%) were in the mid and lower social classes (III-V).The most identified parental challenges were economic and medical, indicated by all the parents. Others were social, stress and educational in that order. Type of child's disorder, severity of the disorder and parental social class were indicated by all the ...

Zebra Mussels Pose a Threat to Virginia's Waters

OpenAIRE

Helfrich, Louis A. (Louis Anthony), 1942-; Weigmann, Diana L.; Speenburgh, Renee M.; Neves, Richard J.; Kitchel, Lisie; Bruenderman, Sue A., 1962-

2005-01-01

Provides an brief introduction to the invasion of the zebra mussel into American waters, explains the economic consequences they pose, and discusses if Virginia will inherit the problem, what the public can do to help, the general lifecycle of the zebra mussel and if they can be controlled, and who is working on the zebra mussel problem.

Pose Self-Calibration of Stereo Vision Systems for Autonomous Vehicle Applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Musleh, Basam; Martín, David; Armingol, José María; de la Escalera, Arturo

2016-09-14

Nowadays, intelligent systems applied to vehicles have grown very rapidly; their goal is not only the improvement of safety, but also making autonomous driving possible. Many of these intelligent systems are based on making use of computer vision in order to know the environment and act accordingly. It is of great importance to be able to estimate the pose of the vision system because the measurement matching between the perception system (pixels) and the vehicle environment (meters) depends on the relative position between the perception system and the environment. A new method of camera pose estimation for stereo systems is presented in this paper, whose main contribution regarding the state of the art on the subject is the estimation of the pitch angle without being affected by the roll angle. The validation of the self-calibration method is accomplished by comparing it with relevant methods of camera pose estimation, where a synthetic sequence is used in order to measure the continuous error with a ground truth. This validation is enriched by the experimental results of the method in real traffic environments.

Pose Self-Calibration of Stereo Vision Systems for Autonomous Vehicle Applications

Science.gov (United States)

Musleh, Basam; Martín, David; Armingol, José María; de la Escalera, Arturo

2016-01-01

Nowadays, intelligent systems applied to vehicles have grown very rapidly; their goal is not only the improvement of safety, but also making autonomous driving possible. Many of these intelligent systems are based on making use of computer vision in order to know the environment and act accordingly. It is of great importance to be able to estimate the pose of the vision system because the measurement matching between the perception system (pixels) and the vehicle environment (meters) depends on the relative position between the perception system and the environment. A new method of camera pose estimation for stereo systems is presented in this paper, whose main contribution regarding the state of the art on the subject is the estimation of the pitch angle without being affected by the roll angle. The validation of the self-calibration method is accomplished by comparing it with relevant methods of camera pose estimation, where a synthetic sequence is used in order to measure the continuous error with a ground truth. This validation is enriched by the experimental results of the method in real traffic environments. PMID:27649178

Overcoming recruitment challenges in construction safety intervention research.

Science.gov (United States)

Kidd, Pamela; Parshall, Mark; Wojcik, Susan; Struttmann, Tim

2004-03-01

Recruiting workers in small construction companies and securing their participation in voluntary safety programs or safety research poses unique challenges. Worker turnover and worksite changes contribute to difficulties in locating and enrolling participants. Economic pressures and time demands potentially threaten ongoing participation. Six simulation exercises designed to reduce back and fall injuries in small construction companies were developed based on data from focus groups of workers and company owners. Working with a workers' compensation insurer, we had access to owner-operators of general, heavy, and special trade construction companies reporting less than $10,000 in payroll expenses. Recruitment methods included a participation incentive, mailed invitations followed by phone contacts, and follow-up reminders. Despite using recruitment methods recommended in the literature, participation rates were low over a 2-year intervention period. Because of these difficulties, factors affecting participation or nonparticipation became an additional research focus. Owners' perceptions of already having a good safety record and of the time demands of participation were the most commonly cited reasons for not participating. Literature on recruitment emphasizes processes and procedures under investigator control rather than understanding potential participants' judgments about the adequacy of their existing practices and the potential benefits of intervention participation relative to potential time and productivity trade-offs. Greater attention to such judgments may enhance recruitment and participation in under-studied and difficult to access populations. Copyright 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

IMU-based Real-time Pose Measurement system for Anterior Pelvic Plane in Total Hip Replacement Surgeries.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhe Cao; Shaojie Su; Hao Tang; Yixin Zhou; Zhihua Wang; Hong Chen

2017-07-01

With the aging of population, the number of Total Hip Replacement Surgeries (THR) increased year by year. In THR, inaccurate position of the implanted prosthesis may lead to the failure of the operation. In order to reduce the failure rate and acquire the real-time pose of Anterior Pelvic Plane (APP), we propose a measurement system in this paper. The measurement system includes two parts: Initial Pose Measurement Instrument (IPMI) and Real-time Pose Measurement Instrument (RPMI). IPMI is used to acquire the initial pose of the APP, and RPMI is used to estimate the real-time pose of the APP. Both are composed of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and magnetometer sensors. To estimate the attitude of the measurement system, the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is adopted in this paper. The real-time pose of the APP could be acquired together with the algorithm designed in the paper. The experiment results show that the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is within 1.6 degrees, which meets the requirement of THR operations.

Tridimensional pose estimation of a person head

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Perez Berenguer, Elisa; Soria, Carlos; Nasisi, Oscar; Mut, Vicente

2007-01-01

In this work, we present a method for estimating 3-D motion parameters; this method provides an alternative way for 3D head pose estimation from image sequence in the current computer vision literature. This method is robust over extended sequences and large head motions and accurately extracts the orientation angles of head from a single view. Experimental results show that this tracking system works well for development a human-computer interface for people that possess severe motor incapacity

An Empirical Investigation of the Practices and Challenges Specific to International User Studies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Sabine; Nielsen, Lene; Jensen, Iben

2015-01-01

In today’s globalized world, it is increasingly important for companies to gain knowledge about international markets and to understand the differences and similarities between international users. As a result, international user studies have become more common. However, they still pose a challenge...

Coping with global environmental change, disasters and security: threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Brauch, H.G.; Oswald Spring, Ú.; Mesjasz, C.; Grin, J.; Kameri-Mbote, P.; Chourou, B.; Dunay, P.; Birkmann, J.

2011-01-01

This policy-focused Global Environmental and Human Security Handbook for the Anthropo-cene (GEHSHA) addresses new security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks posed by global environmental change and disasters. In 6 forewords, 5 preface essays 95 peer reviewed chapcountries analyse in 10

Rethinking the globalisation of problem-based learning: how culture challenges self-directed learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Frambach, Janneke M; Driessen, Erik W; Chan, Li-Chong; van der Vleuten, Cees P M

2012-08-01

Medical schools worldwide are increasingly switching to student-centred methods such as problem-based learning (PBL) to foster lifelong self-directed learning (SDL). The cross-cultural applicability of these methods has been questioned because of their Western origins and because education contexts and learning approaches differ across cultures. This study evaluated PBL's cross-cultural applicability by investigating how it is applied in three medical schools in regions with different cultures in, respectively, East Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe. Specifically, it investigated how students' cultural backgrounds impact on SDL in PBL and how this impact affects students. A qualitative, cross-cultural, comparative case study was conducted in three medical schools. Data were collected through 88 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Year 1 and 3 students, tutors and key persons involved in PBL, 32 observations of Year 1 and 3 PBL tutorials, document analysis, and contextual information. The data were thematically analysed using the template analysis method. Comparisons were made among the three medical schools and between Year 1 and 3 students across and within the schools. The cultural factors of uncertainty and tradition posed a challenge to Middle Eastern students' SDL. Hierarchy posed a challenge to Asian students and achievement impacted on both sets of non-Western students. These factors were less applicable to European students, although the latter did experience some challenges. Several contextual factors inhibited or enhanced SDL across the cases. As students grew used to PBL, SDL skills increased across the cases, albeit to different degrees. Although cultural factors can pose a challenge to the application of PBL in non-Western settings, it appears that PBL can be applied in different cultural contexts. However, its globalisation does not postulate uniform processes and outcomes, and culturally sensitive alternatives might be developed. �

Adaptive relative pose control of spacecraft with model couplings and uncertainties

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Liang; Zheng, Zewei

2018-02-01

The spacecraft pose tracking control problem for an uncertain pursuer approaching to a space target is researched in this paper. After modeling the nonlinearly coupled dynamics for relative translational and rotational motions between two spacecraft, position tracking and attitude synchronization controllers are developed independently by using a robust adaptive control approach. The unknown kinematic couplings, parametric uncertainties, and bounded external disturbances are handled with adaptive updating laws. It is proved via Lyapunov method that the pose tracking errors converge to zero asymptotically. Spacecraft close-range rendezvous and proximity operations are introduced as an example to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.

ESPRIT: Exercise Sensing and Pose Recovery Inference Tool, Phase I

Data.gov (United States)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — We propose to develop ESPRIT: an Exercise Sensing and Pose Recovery Inference Tool, in support of NASA's effort in developing crew exercise technologies for...

The problem is education not ``special education''

Science.gov (United States)

Fellner, Gene

2015-12-01

In his article, Urban special education policy and the lived experience of stigma in a high school science classroom, Chris Hale persuasively argues that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and subsequent special education policies have largely failed to serve special education students who are stigmatized by their deficit classification. Though classified students may be doubly stigmatized, research suggests that students of color who live in economically stressed communities are also subject to systemic educational policies that produce stigma; special education should be understood within the larger context of educational policy in the inner city. Though we cannot immediately dismantle the macro level structures that nurture stigma, I suggest pedagogies based on facilitating phenomenological awareness enacted through individual-collectively based methodologies to challenge the stigma that classified as well as non-classified students in the inner city often carry with them.

A new concept of a multidisciplinary lymphoedema centre

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Birkballe, S; Karlsmark, T; Noerregaard, S

2012-01-01

Lymphoedema is increasingly recognized as a significant problem in healthcare. The number of patients is growing, posing a future challenge to healthcare systems and economics. Over the past decade, specialized lymphoedema management has been established around the world to accommodate the growin...

Assessing exposure risks for aquatic organisms posed by Tamiflu use under seasonal influenza and pandemic conditions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen, Wei-Yu; Lin, Chia-Jung; Liao, Chung-Min

2014-01-01

Environmental pollution by anti-influenza drugs is increasingly recognized as a threat to aquatic environments. However, little is known about empirical data on risk effects posed by environmentally relevant concentrations of anti-influenza drug based on recently published ecotoxicological researches in Taiwan. Here we linked ecotoxicology models with an epidemiological scheme to assess exposure risks of aquatic organisms and environmental hazards posed by antiviral oseltamivir (Tamiflu) use in Taiwan. Built on published bioassays, we used probabilistic risk assessment model to estimate potential threats of environmentally relevant hazards on algae, daphnid, and zerbrafish. We found that Tamiflu use was unlikely to pose a significant chronic environmental risk to daphnia and zebrafish during seasonal influenza. However, the chronic environmental risk posed by Tamiflu use during pandemic was alarming. We conclude that no significant risk to algal growth was found during seasonal influenza and high pandemic Tamiflu use. -- Highlights: • Environmentally relevant concentrations of anti-influenza drug have ecotoxicologically important effects. • Tamiflu is unlikely to pose a significant chronic environmental risk during seasonal influenza. • Chronic environmental risk posed by Tamiflu during pandemic is alarming. • Tertiary process in sewage treatment plants is crucial in mitigating Tamiflu exposure risk. -- A probabilistic framework can be used for assessing exposure risks posed by environmentally relevant concentrations of anti-influenza drug in aquatic ecosystems

Regulatory challenges affecting ICT development in Ukraine

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kretova, Olga A.

2017-01-01

in the region in terms of network readiness (64th place out of 139 economies) and global competitiveness (79th place out of 140 economies) in 2016. The significance of ICT policies is broadly understood at the highest political level in Ukraine, however their implementation has always posed a challenge....... And the chapter is organized as follows. Section 2.1 is the introduction; section 2.2 presents an overview of policies and regulations influencing ICTs in Ukraine; section 2.3 presents a snapshot of the national ICT sector which is dominated by the mobile market and the Broadband Access Technology market; Section...... 2.4 provides an insight into the various ICT regulations, how it affected the markets and the challenges in implementing these policies; section 2.5 highlights the role , successes and challenges of implementing regulations aimed at implementing e-government; and section 2.7 concludes this chapter...

Deformation-specific and deformation-invariant visual object recognition: pose vs identity recognition of people and deforming objects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tristan J Webb

2014-04-01

Full Text Available When we see a human sitting down, standing up, or walking, we can recognise one of these poses independently of the individual, or we can recognise the individual person, independently of the pose. The same issues arise for deforming objects. For example, if we see a flag deformed by the wind, either blowing out or hanging languidly, we can usually recognise the flag, independently of its deformation; or we can recognise the deformation independently of the identity of the flag. We hypothesize that these types of recognition can be implemented by the primate visual system using temporo-spatial continuity as objects transform as a learning principle. In particular, we hypothesize that pose or deformation can be learned under conditions in which large numbers of different people are successively seen in the same pose, or objects in the same deformation. We also hypothesize that person-specific representations that are independent of pose, and object-specific representations that are independent of deformation and view, could be built, when individual people or objects are observed successively transforming from one pose or deformation and view to another. These hypotheses were tested in a simulation of the ventral visual system, VisNet, that uses temporal continuity, implemented in a synaptic learning rule with a short-term memory trace of previous neuronal activity, to learn invariant representations. It was found that depending on the statistics of the visual input, either pose-specific or deformation-specific representations could be built that were invariant with respect to individual and view; or that identity-specific representations could be built that were invariant with respect to pose or deformation and view. We propose that this is how pose-specific and pose-invariant, and deformation-specific and deformation-invariant, perceptual representations are built in the brain.

Places to Go: Challenges to Multicultural Art Education in a Global Economy

Science.gov (United States)

Desai, Dipti

2005-01-01

This article examines the relationship between globalization and postmodern multicultural art education. The questions that drive my investigation are: What is the role of postmodern multiculturalism in this current phase of globalization and what challenges does globalization pose for multiculturalism? I explore the shifts in the field of art…

Muscle utilization patterns vary by skill levels of the practitioners across specific yoga poses (asanas).

Science.gov (United States)

Ni, Meng; Mooney, Kiersten; Balachandran, Anoop; Richards, Luca; Harriell, Kysha; Signorile, Joseph F

2014-08-01

To compare muscle activation patterns in 14 dominant side muscles during different yoga poses across three skill levels. Mixed repeated-measures descriptive study. University neuromuscular research laboratory, Miami, US. A group of 36 yoga practitioners (9 M/27 F; mean ± SD, 31.6 ± 12.6 years) with at least 3 months yoga practice experience. Each of the 11 surya namaskar poses A and B was performed separately for 15s and the surface electromyography for 14 muscles were recorded. Normalized root mean square of the electromyographic signal (NrmsEMG) for 14 muscles (5 upper body, 4 trunk, 5 lower body). There were significant main effects of pose for all fourteen muscles except middle trapezius (p<.02) and of skill level for the vastus medialis; p=.027). A significant skill level × pose interaction existed for five muscles (pectoralis major sternal head, anterior deltoid, medial deltoid, upper rectus abdominis and gastrocnemius lateralis; p<.05). Post hoc analyses using Bonferroni comparisons indicated that different poses activated specific muscle groups; however, this varied by skill level. Our results indicate that different poses can produce specific muscle activation patterns which may vary due to practitioners' skill levels. This information can be used in designing rehabilitation and training programs and for cuing during yoga training. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Digestive challenges for vertebrate animals: Microbial diversity, cardiorespiratory coupling, and dietary specialization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Barboza, P.S.; Bennett, A.; Lignot, H.-H.

2010-01-01

and digestive functions, and (3) the evolution of dietary specialization. Herbivores consume, digest, and detoxify complex diets by using a wide variety of enzymes expressed by bacteria, predominantly in the phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Carnivores, such as snakes that feed intermittently, sometimes...... characteristics of the diet and the level of food intake. In this article, we discuss three themes that affect the ability of an animal to alter digestive function in relation to novel substrates and changing food supply: (1) the fermentative digestion in herbivores, (2) the integration of cardiopulmonary...... process very large meals that require compensatory adjustments in blood flow, acid secretion, and regulation of acid‐base homeostasis. Snakes and birds that specialize in simple diets of prey or nectar retain their ability to digest a wider selection of prey. The digestive system continues...

Data Science Meets the Clinician: Challenges and Future Directions.

Science.gov (United States)

Charitos, Efstratios I; Wilbring, Manuel; Treede, Hendrik

2018-01-01

In the last three decades a profound transformation of the medical profession has taken place. The modern clinician is required to consume vast amounts of information from clinical studies, critically reviewing evidence that may or may not lead to changes in clinical practice. The present article presents some challenges that this era of information poses to clinicians and patients. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Herbivorous ecomorphology and specialization patterns in theropod dinosaur evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Zanno, Lindsay E; Makovicky, Peter J

2011-01-04

Interpreting key ecological parameters, such as diet, of extinct organisms without the benefit of direct observation or explicit fossil evidence poses a formidable challenge for paleobiological studies. To date, dietary categorizations of extinct taxa are largely generated by means of modern analogs; however, for many species the method is subject to considerable ambiguity. Here we present a refined approach for assessing trophic habits in fossil taxa and apply the method to coelurosaurian dinosaurs--a clade for which diet is particularly controversial. Our findings detect 21 morphological features that exhibit statistically significant correlations with extrinsic fossil evidence of coelurosaurian herbivory, such as stomach contents and a gastric mill. These traits represent quantitative, extrinsically founded proxies for identifying herbivorous ecomorphology in fossils and are robust despite uncertainty in phylogenetic relationships among major coelurosaurian subclades. The distribution of these features suggests that herbivory was widespread among coelurosaurians, with six major subclades displaying morphological evidence of the diet, and that contrary to previous thought, hypercarnivory was relatively rare and potentially secondarily derived. Given the potential for repeated, independent evolution of herbivory in Coelurosauria, we also test for repetitive patterns in the appearance of herbivorous traits within sublineages using rank concordance analysis. We find evidence for a common succession of increasing specialization to herbivory in the subclades Ornithomimosauria and Oviraptorosauria, perhaps underlain by intrinsic functional and/or developmental constraints, as well as evidence indicating that the early evolution of a beak in coelurosaurians correlates with an herbivorous diet.

A new benchmark for pose estimation with ground truth from virtual reality

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schlette, Christian; Buch, Anders Glent; Aksoy, Eren Erdal

2014-01-01

The development of programming paradigms for industrial assembly currently gets fresh impetus from approaches in human demonstration and programming-by-demonstration. Major low- and mid-level prerequisites for machine vision and learning in these intelligent robotic applications are pose estimation......, stereo reconstruction and action recognition. As a basis for the machine vision and learning involved, pose estimation is used for deriving object positions and orientations and thus target frames for robot execution. Our contribution introduces and applies a novel benchmark for typical multi...

Transistor challenges - A DRAM perspective

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Faul, Juergen W.; Henke, Dietmar

2005-01-01

Key challenges of the transistor scaling from a DRAM perspective will be reviewed. Both, array transistors as well as DRAM support devices face challenges that differ essentially from high performance logic device scaling. As a major difference, retention time and standby current requirements characterize special boundary conditions in the DRAM device design. Array device scaling is determined by a chip size driven aggressive node scaling. To continue scaling, major innovations need to be introduced into state-of-the-art planar array transistors. Alternatively, non planar device concepts will have to be evaluated. Support device design for DRAMs is driven by today's market demand for increased chip performances at little to no extra cost. Major innovations are required to continue that path. Besides this strive for performance increase, special limitations for 'on pitch' circuits at the array edge will come up due to the aggressive cell size scaling

Cleaning Insertions and Collimation Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Redaelli, S.; Appleby, R. B.; Bertarelli, A.; Bruce, R.; Jowett, J. M.; Lechner, A.; Losito, R.

High-performance collimation systems are essential for operating efficiently modern hadron machine with large beam intensities. In particular, at the LHC the collimation system ensures a clean disposal of beam halos in the superconducting environment. The challenges of the HL-LHC study pose various demanding requests for beam collimation. In this paper we review the present collimation system and its performance during the LHC Run 1 in 2010-2013. Various collimation solutions under study to address the HL-LHC requirements are then reviewed, identifying the main upgrade baseline and pointing out advanced collimation concept for further enhancement of the performance.

Pose Self-Calibration of Stereo Vision Systems for Autonomous Vehicle Applications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Basam Musleh

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Nowadays, intelligent systems applied to vehicles have grown very rapidly; their goal is not only the improvement of safety, but also making autonomous driving possible. Many of these intelligent systems are based on making use of computer vision in order to know the environment and act accordingly. It is of great importance to be able to estimate the pose of the vision system because the measurement matching between the perception system (pixels and the vehicle environment (meters depends on the relative position between the perception system and the environment. A new method of camera pose estimation for stereo systems is presented in this paper, whose main contribution regarding the state of the art on the subject is the estimation of the pitch angle without being affected by the roll angle. The validation of the self-calibration method is accomplished by comparing it with relevant methods of camera pose estimation, where a synthetic sequence is used in order to measure the continuous error with a ground truth. This validation is enriched by the experimental results of the method in real traffic environments.

Personal privacy, information assurance, and the threat posed by malware techology

Science.gov (United States)

Stytz, Martin R.; Banks, Sheila B.

2006-04-01

In spite of our best efforts to secure the cyber world, the threats posed to personal privacy by attacks upon networks and software continue unabated. While there are many reasons for this state of affairs, clearly one of the reasons for continued vulnerabilities in software is the inability to assess their security properties and test their security systems while they are in development. A second reason for this growing threat to personal privacy is the growing sophistication and maliciousness of malware coupled with the increasing difficulty of detecting malware. The pervasive threat posed by malware coupled with the difficulties faced when trying to detect its presence or an attempted intrusion make addressing the malware threat one of the most pressing issues that must be solved in order to insure personal privacy to users of the internet. In this paper, we will discuss the threat posed by malware, the types of malware found in the wild (outside of computer laboratories), and current techniques that are available for from a successful malware penetration. The paper includes a discussion of anti-malware tools and suggestions for future anti-malware efforts.

Ethical concepts and future challenges of neuroimaging: an Islamic perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Delaimy, Wael K

2012-09-01

Neuroscience is advancing at a rapid pace, with new technologies and approaches that are creating ethical challenges not easily addressed by current ethical frameworks and guidelines. One fascinating technology is neuroimaging, especially functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Although still in its infancy, fMRI is breaking new ground in neuroscience, potentially offering increased understanding of brain function. Different populations and faith traditions will likely have different reactions to these new technologies and the ethical challenges they bring with them. Muslims are approximately one-fifth of world population and they have a specific and highly regulated ethical and moral code, which helps them deal with scientific advances and decision making processes in an Islamically ethical manner. From this ethical perspective, in light of the relevant tenets of Islam, neuroimaging poses various challenges. The privacy of spirituality and the thought process, the requirement to put community interest before individual interest, and emphasis on conscious confession in legal situations are Islamic concepts that can pose a challenge for the use of something intrusive such as an fMRI. Muslim moral concepts such as There shall be no harm inflicted or reciprocated in Islam and Necessities overrule prohibitions are some of the criteria that might appropriately be used to guide advancing neuroscience. Neuroscientists should be particularly prudent and well prepared in implementing neuroscience advances that are breaking new scientific and ethical ground. Neuroscientists should also be prepared to assist in setting the ethical frameworks in place in advance of what might be perceived as runaway applications of technology.

Regulatory Oversight for New Projects - Challenges and Improvement in Regulation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lall, F.

2016-01-01

From inception, there has been rise in number of Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) even though very few accidents / events led to intermittent setbacks. However these accidents / events have posed challenges towards enhancement of safety and scope of regulation in all phases of NPP such as siting, design, construction, commissioning and decommissioning. It is essential to ensure compliance to these enhanced safety requirements during all phases of NPP. New and evolutionary reactors are under threshold for regulatory consideration world over. The variety of technologies and genres by themselves pose challenges to regulatory bodies. These challenges are to be addressed through systematic enhancement of the regulation including updating of regulatory documents. The paper touches upon some key elements to be considered towards such enhancement of regulation during all stages of NPP. These being; ensuring quality assurance, regulatory oversight especially over supply chain and contractors, counterfeit material specifically in case of international dealings, emergency handling in case of multi-unit site, feedback and associated enhancements from international events, construction experience database and feedback for safety enhancement, qualification and acceptance of first of a kind systems, regulatory enforcement specifically in case of imported reactors and maintaining interface between safety and security. Regulation in present context has become dynamic and Regulatory bodies need to continue enhancement of its current regulation taking into account the technological developments, feedback from construction, operation and accidents in the current fleet of plants. The paper touches upon some of these elements and highlights the challenges and improvements in regulation. (author)

Hierarchical graphical-based human pose estimation via local multi-resolution convolutional neural network

Science.gov (United States)

Zhu, Aichun; Wang, Tian; Snoussi, Hichem

2018-03-01

This paper addresses the problems of the graphical-based human pose estimation in still images, including the diversity of appearances and confounding background clutter. We present a new architecture for estimating human pose using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Firstly, a Relative Mixture Deformable Model (RMDM) is defined by each pair of connected parts to compute the relative spatial information in the graphical model. Secondly, a Local Multi-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network (LMR-CNN) is proposed to train and learn the multi-scale representation of each body parts by combining different levels of part context. Thirdly, a LMR-CNN based hierarchical model is defined to explore the context information of limb parts. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed deep learning approach for human pose estimation.

Hierarchical graphical-based human pose estimation via local multi-resolution convolutional neural network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aichun Zhu

2018-03-01

Full Text Available This paper addresses the problems of the graphical-based human pose estimation in still images, including the diversity of appearances and confounding background clutter. We present a new architecture for estimating human pose using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN. Firstly, a Relative Mixture Deformable Model (RMDM is defined by each pair of connected parts to compute the relative spatial information in the graphical model. Secondly, a Local Multi-Resolution Convolutional Neural Network (LMR-CNN is proposed to train and learn the multi-scale representation of each body parts by combining different levels of part context. Thirdly, a LMR-CNN based hierarchical model is defined to explore the context information of limb parts. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed deep learning approach for human pose estimation.

Challenges and potential improvements in the admission process of patients with spinal cord injury in a specialized rehabilitation clinic - an interview based qualitative study of an interdisciplinary team.

Science.gov (United States)

Röthlisberger, Fabian; Boes, Stefan; Rubinelli, Sara; Schmitt, Klaus; Scheel-Sailer, Anke

2017-06-26

The admission process of patients to a hospital is the starting point for inpatient services. In order to optimize the quality of the health services provision, one needs a good understanding of the patient admission workflow in a clinic. The aim of this study was to identify challenges and potential improvements in the admission process of spinal cord injury patients at a specialized rehabilitation clinic from the perspective of an interdisciplinary team of health professionals. Semi-structured interviews with eight health professionals (medical doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, nurses) at the Swiss Paraplegic Centre (acute and rehabilitation clinic) were conducted based on a maximum variety purposive sampling strategy. The interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. The interviewees described the challenges and potential improvements in this admission process, focusing on five themes. First, the characteristics of the patient with his/her health condition and personality and his/her family influence different areas in the admission process. Improvements in the exchange of information between the hospital and the patient could speed up and simplify the admission process. In addition, challenges and potential improvements were found concerning the rehabilitation planning, the organization of the admission process and the interdisciplinary work. This study identified five themes of challenges and potential improvements in the admission process of spinal cord injury patients at a specialized rehabilitation clinic. When planning adaptations of process steps in one of the areas, awareness of effects in other fields is necessary. Improved pre-admission information would be a first important step to optimize the admission process. A common IT-system providing an interdisciplinary overview and possibilities for interdisciplinary exchange would support the management of the admission process. Managers of other hospitals can supplement

Introduced organisms pose the most significant threat to the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

spamer

Introduced organisms pose the most significant threat to the conservation status of oceanic islands (e.g.. Williamson 1996). Subantarctic Prince Edward Island, the smaller of the two islands in the Prince Edward. Island group, has few introduced organisms; it is cur- rently known to support only three introduced animals.

Morozov-type discrepancy principle for nonlinear ill-posed problems ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

For proving the existence of a regularization parameter under a Morozov-type discrepancy principle for Tikhonov regularization of nonlinear ill-posed problems, it is required to impose additional nonlinearity assumptions on the forward operator. Lipschitz continuity of the Freéchet derivative and requirement of the Lipschitz ...

Morozov-type discrepancy principle for nonlinear ill-posed problems ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

2016-08-26

Aug 26, 2016 ... For proving the existence of a regularization parameter under a Morozov-type discrepancy principle for Tikhonov regularization of nonlinear ill-posed problems, it is required to impose additional nonlinearity assumptions on the forward operator. Lipschitz continuity of the Freéchet derivative and requirement ...

Automation of 3D micro object handling process

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gegeckaite, Asta; Hansen, Hans Nørgaard

2007-01-01

Most of the micro objects in industrial production are handled with manual labour or in semiautomatic stations. Manual labour usually makes handling and assembly operations highly flexible, but slow, relatively imprecise and expensive. Handling of 3D micro objects poses special challenges due to ...

National level maternal health decisions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Koduah, A.

2016-01-01

Maternal and neonatal deaths and morbidity still pose an enormous challenge for health authorities in Ghana, a lower middle income country. Despite massive investments in maternal and neonatal health and special attention through Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 4

TICs en las PYMES de Centroamérica: Impacto de la adopción de ...

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

The digital revolution, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and globalization pose new challenges for the successful performance of micro-, ... Special journal issue highlights IDRC-supported findings on women's paid work ... opportunity for the awardees to develop their skills and network with some of the ...

Hospitals : a design manual

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wagenaar, C.; Mens, N.

Hospitals as a building type have undergone a substantial evolution in the past years. Changes in healthcare, the impact of evidence-based medicine and aspects of healthcare economics (such as the clustering of diagnostic procedures in specialized clinics) pose new and different challenges for the

Networking the rural community.

Science.gov (United States)

Tiongson, K H; Arneson, S I

1993-04-01

A branch network of affiliate hospitals has been providing home care services to rural North Dakota residents successfully for a decade. Here's how this effective system meets the special challenges that a rural environment poses for hiring, training, scheduling, and supporting home care aides.

Creating Hope for Life-Sentenced Offenders

Science.gov (United States)

Ruddell, Rick; Broom, Ian; Young, Matthew

2010-01-01

Offenders sentenced to terms of life imprisonment pose special challenges for correctional systems. The Correctional Service of Canada collaborated with nongovernmental agencies to develop programmatic interventions to better prepare this population to survive their prison sentences and transition to the community. This study describes the…

Solitary Fibrous Tumor of Retromolar Pad; a Rare Challenging Case

Science.gov (United States)

Lotfi, Ali; Mokhtari, Sepideh; Moshref, Mohammad; Shahla, Maryam; Atarbashi Moghadam, Saede

2017-01-01

Solitary fibrous tumor has a wide spectrum of histopathologic features and many tumors show similar microscopic features. This similarity poses diagnostic challenges to the pathologists and immunohistochemical analysis is required in many cases. Moreover, it is a rare entity in orofacial region which consequently would make its diagnosis more challenging in oral cavity. The knowledge of various microscopic patterns of this tumor contributes to a proper diagnosis and prevents unnecessary treatment. This study reports a case of solitary fibrous tumor in the retromolar pad area and discusses its various histological features and differential diagnoses. PMID:28620640

A Half Century of Special Education: What We Have Achieved and the Challenges We Face

Science.gov (United States)

Weintraub, Frederick J.

2012-01-01

Almost 50 years ago, while President of CEC, Frances Connor delivered a presidential address entitled "The Sword and the Spirit." She called for five revolutions. The first revolution called for increasing the quantity and quality of special education teachers. The second stated that "special education depends upon an intensive…

Inclusive Pedagogy in Light of Social Justice. Special Educational Rights and Inclusive Classrooms: On Whose Terms? a Field Study in Stockholm Suburbs

Science.gov (United States)

De Silva, Nilani Ljunggren

2013-01-01

The question of inclusive education is not straightforward. Despite all its good intentions, inclusive education, in practice faces numerous challenges today. This study analyses these challenges in the Swedish special education context. The author explores special educators' experiences, possibilities and challenges when applying inclusive…

Editorial to the Special issue of the journal

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nikša Alfirević

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This is the editorial to the Special issue of the Management journal, dedicated to the 11th International Conference on "Challenges of Europe", organized by the Faculty of Economics in Split, Croatia, in May 2015.

76 FR 80410 - Pendency of Request for Approval of Special Withdrawal Liability Rules; the Cultural Institutions...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-12-23

...This notice advises interested persons that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (``PBGC'') has received a request from The Cultural Institutions Pension Plan for approval of a plan amendment providing for special withdrawal liability rules. Under Sec. 4203(f) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and PBGC's regulation on Extension of Special Withdrawal Liability Rules, a multiemployer pension plan may, with PBGC approval, be amended to provide for special withdrawal liability rules similar to those that apply to the construction and entertainment industries. Such approval is granted only if PBGC determines that the rules apply to an industry with characteristics that make use of the special rules appropriate and that the rules will not pose a significant risk to PBGC. Before granting an approval, PBGC's regulations require PBGC to give interested persons an opportunity to comment on the request. The purpose of this notice is to advise interested persons of the request and to solicit their views on it.

Software challenges in extreme scale systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sarkar, Vivek; Harrod, William; Snavely, Allan E

2009-01-01

Computer systems anticipated in the 2015 - 2020 timeframe are referred to as Extreme Scale because they will be built using massive multi-core processors with 100's of cores per chip. The largest capability Extreme Scale system is expected to deliver Exascale performance of the order of 10 18 operations per second. These systems pose new critical challenges for software in the areas of concurrency, energy efficiency and resiliency. In this paper, we discuss the implications of the concurrency and energy efficiency challenges on future software for Extreme Scale Systems. From an application viewpoint, the concurrency and energy challenges boil down to the ability to express and manage parallelism and locality by exploring a range of strong scaling and new-era weak scaling techniques. For expressing parallelism and locality, the key challenges are the ability to expose all of the intrinsic parallelism and locality in a programming model, while ensuring that this expression of parallelism and locality is portable across a range of systems. For managing parallelism and locality, the OS-related challenges include parallel scalability, spatial partitioning of OS and application functionality, direct hardware access for inter-processor communication, and asynchronous rather than interrupt-driven events, which are accompanied by runtime system challenges for scheduling, synchronization, memory management, communication, performance monitoring, and power management. We conclude by discussing the importance of software-hardware co-design in addressing the fundamental challenges for application enablement on Extreme Scale systems.

Multifactor Analysis of Roadheader’s Body Pose Responses during the Horizontal Cutting Process

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kai Zong

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Based on the Lagrange equation in system dynamics, aiming at the horizontal cutting process, the dynamical coupling model of boom-type roadheader’s body pose was established. According to input problem of solving the model, a calculation method of the cutting head load was proposed, and the relationship between the cutting head load and pressure of the driving cylinders and swing angle of the cutting arm was obtained through simulating analysis. The simulation model was established to solve the dynamical coupling model. The cutting head load, horizontal swing angle of the cutting arm, and dip angle of coal seam were regarded as independent variables to perform changing parameter analysis in variations of the body pose. The field experiment was carried out, and the measured data is basically consistent with the simulation values. The results show that lateral displacement of the body can reach up to 6.5 cm, backward displacement can reach up to 5.2 cm, floor-based quantity can reach up to 11 cm, pitch angle of the body can reach up to 7.8°, and roll angle can reach up to 2.1°. Variations of the body pose parameters are influenced greatly by the cutting head load, while the influence from horizontal swing angle of the cutting arm and dip angle of coal seam is slighter. Among the pose parameters, floor-based quantity and pitch angle of the body vary relatively greatly, which tend to seriously influence forming quality of the roadway and should be mainly considered in deviation rectification of the roadheader’s body pose.

Introduction - AABFJ Financial Planning Special Issue 2009

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ciorstan J. Smark

2009-03-01

Full Text Available This special issue draws on recent work of financial planning specialists, finance specialists and economists todocument some of the trends, perception and challenges of financial planning in 2009. This diversity ofcontributors reflects the diversity and the multiplicity of influences that impact on financial planning.

Dyakonov surface waves

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Takayama, Osamu; Crasovan, Lucian Cornel; Johansen, Steffen Kjær

2008-01-01

The interface of two semi-infinite media, where at least one of them is a birefringent crystal, supports a special type of surface wave that was predicted theoretically by D'yakonov in 1988. Since then, the properties of such waves, which exist in transparent media only under very special......, the existence of these surface waves in specific material examples is analyzed, discussing the challenge posed by their experimental observation....

Rectifier Design Challenges for RF Wireless Power Transfer and Energy Harvesting Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Collado

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The design of wireless power transfer (WPT and energy harvesting (EH solutions poses different challenges towards achieving maximum RF-DC conversion efficiency in these systems. This paper covers several selected challenges when developing WPT and electromagnetic EH solutions, such as the design of multiband and broadband rectifiers, the minimization of the effect that load and input power variations may have on the system performance and finally the most optimum power combining mechanisms that can be used when dealing with multi-element rectifiers.

Enrichment of foods with omega-3 fatty acids: A multidisciplinary challenge

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jacobsen, Charlotte

2010-01-01

Enrichment of foods with marine omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) poses a multidisciplinary challenge to food industry and academia. Although our knowledge about possible health effects of omega-3 PUFA has increased tremendously during the last 30 years, there is still a lot to be learned...... about these healthy fatty acids. Moreover, consumer acceptance and lipid oxidation of omega-3 PUFA-enriched food are other major challenges that the food industry meet when developing omega-3-enriched foods. Two examples on multidisciplinary research projects to overcome some of these challenges...... are given in this article together with cases studies illustrating how lipid oxidation can be prevented in a range of different omega-3-enriched foods....

Feature and Pose Constrained Visual Aided Inertial Navigation for Computationally Constrained Aerial Vehicles

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Brian; Hudson, Nicolas; Tweddle, Brent; Brockers, Roland; Matthies, Larry

2011-01-01

A Feature and Pose Constrained Extended Kalman Filter (FPC-EKF) is developed for highly dynamic computationally constrained micro aerial vehicles. Vehicle localization is achieved using only a low performance inertial measurement unit and a single camera. The FPC-EKF framework augments the vehicle's state with both previous vehicle poses and critical environmental features, including vertical edges. This filter framework efficiently incorporates measurements from hundreds of opportunistic visual features to constrain the motion estimate, while allowing navigating and sustained tracking with respect to a few persistent features. In addition, vertical features in the environment are opportunistically used to provide global attitude references. Accurate pose estimation is demonstrated on a sequence including fast traversing, where visual features enter and exit the field-of-view quickly, as well as hover and ingress maneuvers where drift free navigation is achieved with respect to the environment.

Special issue : transport in a post-carbon society

Science.gov (United States)

2009-04-01

This special issue of World Transport Policy & Practice is an outcome of the conference Planning for the Carbon Neutral World: Challenges for Cities and Regions, held 15-18 May 2008 in Salzburg, Austria. The conference, organised by SCUPAD Salzbu...

Perioperative challenges in patients with giant occipital encephalocele with microcephaly and micrognathia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hukum Singh

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Meninigo-encepahlocoele (MEC is a common neurosurgical operation. The size of MEC may vary which has bearing with its management. The association of MEC with micrognathia and microcephaly is rarely reported. The association poses special problem for intubation and maintenance of anaesthesia. Giant MEC may lead to significant CSF loss resulting in hemodynamic alteration. The prior knowledge and care in handling the patient can avoid minor as well as major complications.

POSING THE HISTORICAL JESUS QUESTION AND THE GOAL OF ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

mycl

... study recommended that. African scholars be allowed to develop and pose the Historical Jesus ... he is seen as the starting point for modern critical study of Jesus. (Burer). ... African anthropology and culture and the data of revelation, and how this theology ... Man” from two perspectives: that of a biblical culture in the first.

A Strategy to Support Educational Leaders in Developing Countries to Manage Contextual Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Wolhuter, Charl; van der Walt, Hannes; Steyn, Hennie

2016-01-01

The central theoretical argument of this paper is that educational leadership and organisational development and change in educational institutions in developing countries will not be effective unless school leaders are aware of the challenges posed by contextual factors that might have an impact on their professional activities. The article…

MRI to X-ray mammography intensity-based registration with simultaneous optimisation of pose and biomechanical transformation parameters.

Science.gov (United States)

Mertzanidou, Thomy; Hipwell, John; Johnsen, Stian; Han, Lianghao; Eiben, Bjoern; Taylor, Zeike; Ourselin, Sebastien; Huisman, Henkjan; Mann, Ritse; Bick, Ulrich; Karssemeijer, Nico; Hawkes, David

2014-05-01

Determining corresponding regions between an MRI and an X-ray mammogram is a clinically useful task that is challenging for radiologists due to the large deformation that the breast undergoes between the two image acquisitions. In this work we propose an intensity-based image registration framework, where the biomechanical transformation model parameters and the rigid-body transformation parameters are optimised simultaneously. Patient-specific biomechanical modelling of the breast derived from diagnostic, prone MRI has been previously used for this task. However, the high computational time associated with breast compression simulation using commercial packages, did not allow the optimisation of both pose and FEM parameters in the same framework. We use a fast explicit Finite Element (FE) solver that runs on a graphics card, enabling the FEM-based transformation model to be fully integrated into the optimisation scheme. The transformation model has seven degrees of freedom, which include parameters for both the initial rigid-body pose of the breast prior to mammographic compression, and those of the biomechanical model. The framework was tested on ten clinical cases and the results were compared against an affine transformation model, previously proposed for the same task. The mean registration error was 11.6±3.8mm for the CC and 11±5.4mm for the MLO view registrations, indicating that this could be a useful clinical tool. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Operating a railway system within a challenging environment: Economic history and experiences of Zimbabwe’s national railways

OpenAIRE

Charles Mbohwa

2008-01-01

This paper presents a historical background to the development of the railways in Zimbabwe and then discusses their current state. Besides being a landlocked country in Southern Africa, Zimbabwe has since 2000 been saddled with socio-economic and political challenges which have seen a decline in all economic indices, hence posing some challenges to its railways. This article discusses the challenges faced by the railways as a result of high inflation, unstable currency exchange rate, brain dr...

Physics challenges in the strong interactions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ellis, S.D.

1991-01-01

An overview of the challenges to be faced in the area of the strong interactions during the 1990`s is presented. As an illustrative example special attention is given to the analysis of jets as studied at hadron colliders.

Physics challenges in the strong interactions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ellis, S.D.

1991-01-01

An overview of the challenges to be faced in the area of the strong interactions during the 1990's is presented. As an illustrative example special attention is given to the analysis of jets as studied at hadron colliders

Strategy for the Long Haul. Special Operations Forces: Future Challenges and Opportunities

Science.gov (United States)

2008-01-01

College, 2006); and David Tucker and Chris- topher Lamb , “Restructuring Special Operations Forces for Emerging Threats, NDU Strategic Forum, January...Secretary of Defense Gates, SOCOM commander Admiral Eric Olson, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for SOLIC/IC Michael Vickers. See: Stew Mag- nuson

Construction and Operation of a Deep Geological Spent Fuel Repository in Sweden; Some Regulatory Aspects and Challenges

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hedberg, Bengt

2014-01-01

The implementation of a deep geological spent fuel disposal concept in Sweden poses challenges on both implementer and regulator in many aspects. One such challenge is the application of the regulatory framework in a different situation compared to conventional process type nuclear facilities. A specific challenge in this regard is how to understand and address constraints from post-closure safety related to the construction and operation of the repository. The maybe most challenging aspect, however, is the unusually long time frame, i.e. many generations, for realization of the project. This paper addresses some of these challenges from a regulatory perspective. (authors)

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Supplement

Science.gov (United States)

2015-01-30

trade and revenue Project ( AtAr ): Latest deliverables including monthly, quarterly, annual, final, and evaluation reports generated during the...indicators given the increasing challenges in physical access. no response provided. Continued on the next page GOVERNANCE 38 appendices Special inSpector

Improving head and body pose estimation through semi-supervised manifold alignment

KAUST Repository

Heili, Alexandre

2014-10-27

In this paper, we explore the use of a semi-supervised manifold alignment method for domain adaptation in the context of human body and head pose estimation in videos. We build upon an existing state-of-the-art system that leverages on external labelled datasets for the body and head features, and on the unlabelled test data with weak velocity labels to do a coupled estimation of the body and head pose. While this previous approach showed promising results, the learning of the underlying manifold structure of the features in the train and target data and the need to align them were not explored despite the fact that the pose features between two datasets may vary according to the scene, e.g. due to different camera point of view or perspective. In this paper, we propose to use a semi-supervised manifold alignment method to bring the train and target samples closer within the resulting embedded space. To this end, we consider an adaptation set from the target data and rely on (weak) labels, given for example by the velocity direction whenever they are reliable. These labels, along with the training labels are used to bias the manifold distance within each manifold and to establish correspondences for alignment.

The Pregnancy Assistance Fund as a Support for Student Parents in Postsecondary Education. Fact Sheet #C398

Science.gov (United States)

Gunn-Wright, Rhiana

2012-01-01

Pregnancy and parenting can pose special challenges to students enrolled in secondary and postsecondary education, including issues related to child care, financial aid, transportation, and academic and career planning. In some circumstances, the responsibilities related to pregnancy and parenting can undermine students' ability to pursue and…

Designing Nordic Technology-Enhanced Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Cerratto-Pargman, Teresa; Jarvela, Sanna M.; Milrad, Marcelo

2012-01-01

The latest developments of information and communication technologies (ICT) and its large penetration in different sectors of our society pose new challenges and demands in the field of education. This special issue entitled "Designing Nordic technology-enhanced learning (TEL)", presents and discusses how researchers in the Nordic…

Gaussian particle filter based pose and motion estimation

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2007-01-01

Determination of relative three-dimensional (3D) position, orientation, and relative motion between two reference frames is an important problem in robotic guidance, manipulation, and assembly as well as in other fields such as photogrammetry.A solution to pose and motion estimation problem that uses two-dimensional (2D) intensity images from a single camera is desirable for real-time applications. The difficulty in performing this measurement is that the process of projecting 3D object features to 2D images is a nonlinear transformation. In this paper, the 3D transformation is modeled as a nonlinear stochastic system with the state estimation providing six degrees-of-freedom motion and position values, using line features in image plane as measuring inputs and dual quaternion to represent both rotation and translation in a unified notation. A filtering method called the Gaussian particle filter (GPF) based on the particle filtering concept is presented for 3D pose and motion estimation of a moving target from monocular image sequences. The method has been implemented with simulated data, and simulation results are provided along with comparisons to the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) to show the relative advantages of the GPF. Simulation results showed that GPF is a superior alternative to EKF and UKF.

Specialism in radiography - a contemporary history of diagnostic radiography

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ferris, Christine [Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, Sheffield Hallam University, Robert Winston Building, Sheffield, S10 2BP (United Kingdom)], E-mail: c.m.ferris@shu.ac.uk

2009-12-15

Aim and method: Specialism is relative comparing the unusual to a norm. Origins of radiographers' perceptions of what is a specialism are identified. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 practitioners and 10 leading voices whose combined practice span 1932-2001. Findings: Findings show that the exclusive nature of practice is influential on what is perceived as a specialism. Radiographers held career aspirations that included greater recognition, clinical involvement, autonomy and challenging work. Career aspirations were clinical rather than managerial and extended across modality boundaries. A key barrier to career progression was inequality of opportunity as local medical career requirements were dominant. Characteristics of specialism of diagnostic radiography are identified. Factors influencing the formation of specialism are also identified. Summary: Specialisation was dominant but not necessarily constructive to career progression or additional autonomy. Specialism relates to new areas of practice and is facilitated by service need, clear practice boundaries, visionary management, medical support, role development leading to increased autonomy and additional training and education.

Specialism in radiography - a contemporary history of diagnostic radiography

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ferris, Christine

2009-01-01

Aim and method: Specialism is relative comparing the unusual to a norm. Origins of radiographers' perceptions of what is a specialism are identified. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 practitioners and 10 leading voices whose combined practice span 1932-2001. Findings: Findings show that the exclusive nature of practice is influential on what is perceived as a specialism. Radiographers held career aspirations that included greater recognition, clinical involvement, autonomy and challenging work. Career aspirations were clinical rather than managerial and extended across modality boundaries. A key barrier to career progression was inequality of opportunity as local medical career requirements were dominant. Characteristics of specialism of diagnostic radiography are identified. Factors influencing the formation of specialism are also identified. Summary: Specialisation was dominant but not necessarily constructive to career progression or additional autonomy. Specialism relates to new areas of practice and is facilitated by service need, clear practice boundaries, visionary management, medical support, role development leading to increased autonomy and additional training and education.

Physics challenges in the strong interactions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ellis, S.D.

1991-01-01

An overview of the challenges to be faced in the area of the strong interactions during the 1990's is presented. As an illustrative example special attention is given to the analysis of jets as studied at hadron colliders.

Morozov-type discrepancy principle for nonlinear ill-posed problems ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

[3] Engl H W, Kunisch K and Neubauer A, Convergence rates for Tikhonov regularization of nonliner problems, Inverse Problems 5 (1989) 523–540. [4] Hanke M, Neubauer A and Scherzer O, A convergence analysis of Landweber iteration for nonlinear ill-posed problems, Numer. Math. 72 (1995) 21–37. [5] Hofmann B and ...

Enhancing Students' Communication Skills through Problem Posing and Presentation

Science.gov (United States)

Sugito; E. S., Sri Mulyani; Hartono; Supartono

2017-01-01

This study was to explore how enhance communication skill through problem posing and presentation method. The subjects of this research were the seven grade students Junior High School, including 20 male and 14 female. This research was conducted in two cycles and each cycle consisted of four steps, they were: planning, action, observation, and…

3D Facial Landmarking under Expression, Pose, and Occlusion Variations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

H. Dibeklioğ lu; A.A. Salah (Albert Ali); L. Akarun

2008-01-01

htmlabstractAutomatic localization of 3D facial features is important for face recognition, tracking, modeling and expression analysis. Methods developed for 2D images were shown to have problems working across databases acquired with different illumination conditions. Expression variations, pose

Did Buddha turn the other cheek too? A comparison of posing biases between Jesus and Buddha.

Science.gov (United States)

Duerksen, Kari N; Friedrich, Trista E; Elias, Lorin J

2015-10-02

People tend to exhibit a leftward bias in posing. Various studies suggest that posing to the left portrays a stronger emotion, whereas posing to the right portrays a more neutral emotion. Religions such as Christianity emphasize the role of strong emotions in religious experience, whereas religions such as Buddhism emphasize the calming of emotions as being important. In the present study, we investigated if the emphasis on emotionality of a religion influences the depiction of their religious figures. Specifically, we coded 484 paintings of Jesus and Buddha from online art databases for whether the deity exhibited a left bias, right bias, or central face presentation. The posing biases were analysed to discover whether paintings of Jesus would more frequently depict a leftward bias than paintings of Buddha. Jesus is more commonly depicted with a leftward bias than Buddha, and Buddha is more commonly depicted with a central face presentation than Jesus. These findings support the idea that the amount of emotionality that is to be conveyed in artwork influences the whether the subject is posed with a leftward bias.

Methods and computing challenges of the realistic simulation of physics events in the presence of pile-up in the ATLAS experiment

CERN Document Server

Chapman, J D; The ATLAS collaboration

2014-01-01

We are now in a regime where we observe substantial multiple proton-proton collisions within each filled LHC bunch-crossing and also multiple filled bunch-crossings within the sensitive time window of the ATLAS detector. This will increase with increased luminosity in the near future. Including these effects in Monte Carlo simulation poses significant computing challenges. We present a description of the standard approach used by the ATLAS experiment and details of how we manage the conflicting demands of keeping the background dataset size as small as possible while minimizing the effect of background event re-use. We also present details of the methods used to minimize the memory footprint of these digitization jobs, to keep them within the grid limit, despite combining the information from thousands of simulated events at once. We also describe an alternative approach, known as Overlay. Here, the actual detector conditions are sampled from raw data using a special zero-bias trigger, and the simulated physi...

Strategies for Coping with the Challenges of Incarceration among Nigerian Prison Inmates

Science.gov (United States)

Agbakwuru, Chikwe; Awujo, Grace C.

2016-01-01

This paper investigated the strategies for coping with the challenges of incarceration among inmates of Port Harcourt Prison, Nigeria. The population was 2,997 inmates of the prison while the sample was 250 inmates drawn through stratified random sampling technique from the same Port Harcourt prison. Six research questions were posed and data for…

Challenges for sustainable resource use : Uncertainty, trade and climate policies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bretschger, L.; Smulders, Sjak A.

2012-01-01

We integrate new challenges to thinking about resource markets and sustainable resource use policies in a general framework. The challenges, emerging from six papers that JEEM publishes in a special issue, are (i) demand uncertainty and stockpiling, (ii) international trade and resource dependence,

Meeting Hintikka's Challenge to Paraconsistentism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Walter Carnielli

2009-12-01

Full Text Available Jaakko Hintikka, in a series of talks in Brazil in 2008, defended that IF (“independence- friendly” logic and paraconsistent logic are, in a sense, very similar. Having sketched the proposal of a new paraconsistent system, he maintains that several achievements of IF logic could be reproducible in paraconsistent logic. One of the major difficulties, left as a challenge, would be to formulate some truth conditions for this new paraconsistent first-order language in order to make IF logic and paraconsistent logic more inter-related. My proposal is that this would demand an innovative game-theoretical semantic approach to paraconsistentism, but also that the syntax of the paraconsistent “Logics of Formal Inconsistency” can model the internal logic of Socratic elenchi. I aim to discuss these, and other points posed by Hintikka, as challenges and opportunities for paraconsistentism, paraconsistent logics and IF logics, as well as to raise some criticisms on Hintikka’s view about paraconsistency.

Head Pose Estimation on Top of Haar-Like Face Detection: A Study Using the Kinect Sensor

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anwar Saeed

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Head pose estimation is a crucial initial task for human face analysis, which is employed in several computer vision systems, such as: facial expression recognition, head gesture recognition, yawn detection, etc. In this work, we propose a frame-based approach to estimate the head pose on top of the Viola and Jones (VJ Haar-like face detector. Several appearance and depth-based feature types are employed for the pose estimation, where comparisons between them in terms of accuracy and speed are presented. It is clearly shown through this work that using the depth data, we improve the accuracy of the head pose estimation. Additionally, we can spot positive detections, faces in profile views detected by the frontal model, that are wrongly cropped due to background disturbances. We introduce a new depth-based feature descriptor that provides competitive estimation results with a lower computation time. Evaluation on a benchmark Kinect database shows that the histogram of oriented gradients and the developed depth-based features are more distinctive for the head pose estimation, where they compare favorably to the current state-of-the-art approaches. Using a concatenation of the aforementioned feature types, we achieved a head pose estimation with average errors not exceeding 5:1; 4:6; 4:2 for pitch, yaw and roll angles, respectively.

Special interest in decision making in entrepreneurship policy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bager, Torben; Klyver, Kim; Schou Nielsen, Pia

2015-01-01

The study investigates the role of the special interests of key decision makers in entrepreneurship policy formation at the national level. An ethnographic method is applied to analyse in depth the 2005 decision by the Danish Government to shift from volume oriented to growth oriented...... entrepreneurship policy. The theoretical value of this paper is its challenge to the widespread rationality view in the entrepreneurship field and a deepened understanding of how the pursuit of special interests is related to ambiguous evidence and system-level rationality....

Using Testimonial Response to Frame the Challenges and Possibilities of Risky Historical Texts

Science.gov (United States)

Damico, James; Apol, Laura

2008-01-01

Literature that vividly and explicitly describes (often in the form of testimonies from one or more characters) traumatic and/or catastrophic events of human history poses particular challenges for readers. This article proposes testimonial response as one approach to responding to these "risky historical texts." By way of introducing "testimonial…

Training Public School Special Educators to Implement Two Functional Analysis Models

Science.gov (United States)

Rispoli, Mandy; Neely, Leslie; Healy, Olive; Gregori, Emily

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy and efficiency of a training package to teach public school special educators to conduct functional analyses of challenging behavior. Six public school educators were divided into two cohorts of three and were taught two models of functional analysis of challenging behavior: traditional and…

Principal-Identified Challenges, Needs, and Recommendations for Instructional Leadership in Special Education

Science.gov (United States)

Kraft, Rose A. Liddell

2016-01-01

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, added instructional responsibilities for school principals specific to students with disabilities. However, these laws did not require additional training in special education policy or instruction for principals, despite the existence of…

Small is challenging; distal femur fracture management in an elderly lady with achondroplastic dwarfism.

Science.gov (United States)

Murphy, Colin G; Chrea, Bopha; Molloy, Alan P; Nicholson, Paul

2013-03-20

Achondroplasia is an autosomal dominant dwarfing condition that represents the most common form of skeletal dysplasia. The disease is caused by a mutation in the gene encoding fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) found at the p16.3 locus on chromosome 4 which results in severe inhibition of subchondral bone growth. Anatomic variations, including articular and periarticular deformities classically seen with this condition, amplify the complexity of fracture fixation. Blood volume loss, age-related bone fragility, component selection and positioning pose serious orthopaedic challenges. Concomitant cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological comorbidities pose additional high-risk perioperative considerations. Despite an estimated prevalence of 1:25 000 in the general population, there is little literature concerning the operative and postoperative treatment challenges faced by orthopaedic surgeons dealing with fracture management on a patient with this condition. We present a case of an intercondylar femoral fracture in an elderly achondroplastic lady successfully treated with percutaneous screw fixation.

Solidary Dimension of Bio-Ethical Challenges in Croatian Society

OpenAIRE

MATULIĆ, Tonči

2006-01-01

This contribution investigates the solidary dimensions of bio-ethical challenges with special reflection on their situation and demands in Croatian society. The research unfolds in several stages. The introduction questions the state of today's cultural situation within which bio-ethical challenges emerge. In continuation, the paper investigates relations between social issues as a world notion and bio-ethical challenges that undoubtedly constitute a vital component of that issue. This is par...

The Challenges of Distributing Leadership in Irish Post-Primary Schools

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Margaret O’DONOVAN

2015-12-01

Full Text Available This study explores the challenges and opportunities in relation to developing distributed leadership practice in Irish post-primary schools. It considers school leadership within the context of contemporary distributed leadership theory. Associated concepts such as distributed cognition and activity theory are used to frame the study. The study is situated in a space which acknowledges the current complex reality in our schools, where school leadership is characterised by increased workload and an ever-expanding role-definition. Drawing on the empirical findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with principals, deputy principals, post of responsibility holders and teachers in three case-study schools, the study probes: (1 how school leaders (reconstruct a form of leadership suited to the needs of the current reality, by exploring their leadership and management styles; (2 how the internal conditions are created in which distributed leadership can function; (3 the challenges posed by distributed leadership and how they might be overcome. The findings clarify that school leadership is a construct beyond the scope of the principal alone. While there is widespread support for a distributed model of leadership, the concept does not explicitly form part of the discourse in the case-study schools. This poses challenges for school leaders and policy-makers to put mechanisms in place to re-culture schools, to develop teacher-leadership capacity and to reflect on the future direction of leadership in Irish post-primary schools.

The challenges of distributing leadership in Irish post-primary schools

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Margaret O'Donovan

2015-09-01

Full Text Available This study explores the challenges and opportunities in relation to developing distributed leadership practice in Irish post-primary schools. It considers school leadership within the context of contemporary distributed leadership theory. Associated concepts such as distributed cognition and activity theory are used to frame the study. The study is situated in a space which acknowledges the current complex reality in our schools, where school leadership is characterised by increased workload and an ever-expanding role-definition. Drawing on the empirical findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with principals, deputy principals, post of responsibility holders and teachers in three case-study schools, the study probes: (1 how school leaders (reconstruct a form of leadership suited to the needs of the current reality, by exploring their leadership and management styles; (2 how the internal conditions are created in which distributed leadership can function; (3 the challenges posed by distributed leadership and how they might be overcome. The findings clarify that school leadership is a construct beyond the scope of the principal alone. While there is widespread support for a distributed model of leadership, the concept does not explicitly form part of the discourse in the case-study schools. This poses challenges for school leaders and policy-makers to put mechanisms in place to re-culture schools, to develop teacher-leadership capacity and to reflect on the future direction of leadership in Irish post-primary schools.

Challenges and solutions in enterprise computing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Sinderen, Marten J.

2008-01-01

The emergence of the networked enterprise has a profound effect on enterprise computing. This introduction discusses some important challenges in enterprise computing, which are the result of the mentioned networking trend, and positions the articles of this special issue with respect to these

Challenges of Charter Schools with Special Education: Issues of Concern for Charter School Authorizers and Service Providers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Leman Kaniturk Kose

2013-04-01

Full Text Available Charter schools, as one type of school choice, have been attracting a growing number of students since first inception in Minnesota in 1991. Although charter schools are a fledgling reform, they are already a significant part of the federal and state efforts to improve schools and have a growing number of students. Like traditional public schools, charter schools accept all students equally. As a result, they are also obligated to support and serve students with disabilities and meet the requirements of constitutional provisions and federal laws enacted for students with disabilities. This article intends to provide a succinct literature review examining the operational and organizational challenges regarding the design and delivery of special education in the young charter school movement so that charter school authorizers and service providers are cognizant of the issues of concern when serving students with disabilities at charter schools. The literature was located through searching through the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC, Google Scholar, and the Dissertation Abstracts International. Other information is gleaned from the U.S. Department of Education, Center for Education Reform, and the federal and state statutes regarding students with disabilities.

Occupational asthma due to manual metal-arc welding of special stainless steels.

Science.gov (United States)

Hannu, T; Piipari, R; Kasurinen, H; Keskinen, H; Tuppurainen, M; Tuomi, T

2005-10-01

Occupational asthma (OA) can be induced by fumes of manual metal-arc welding on stainless steel. In recent years, the use of special stainless steels (SSS) with high chromium content has increased. This study presents two cases of OA caused by manual metal-arc welding on SSS. In both cases, the diagnosis of OA was based on respiratory symptoms, occupational exposure and positive findings in the specific challenge tests. In the first case, a 46-yr-old welder had experienced severe dyspnoea while welding SSS (SMO steel), but not in other situations. Challenge tests with both mild steel and stainless steel using a common electrode were negative. Welding SSS with a special electrode caused a delayed 37% drop in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1). In the second case, a 34-yr-old male had started to experience dyspnoea during the past few years, while welding especially SSS (Duplex steel). The workplace peak expiratory flow monitoring was suggestive of OA. Challenge tests with both mild steel and stainless steel using a common electrode did not cause bronchial obstruction. Welding SSS with a special electrode caused a delayed 31% drop in FEV1. In conclusion, exposure to manual metal-arc welding fumes of special stainless steel should be considered as a new cause of occupational asthma.

Relative Pose Estimation and Accuracy Verification of Spherical Panoramic Image

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

XIE Donghai

2017-11-01

Full Text Available This paper improves the method of the traditional 5-point relative pose estimation algorithm, and proposes a relative pose estimation algorithm which is suitable for spherical panoramic images. The algorithm firstly computes the essential matrix, then decomposes the essential matrix to obtain the rotation matrix and the translation vector using SVD, and finally the reconstructed three-dimensional points are used to eliminate the error solution. The innovation of the algorithm lies the derivation of panorama epipolar formula and the use of the spherical distance from the point to the epipolar plane as the error term for the spherical panorama co-planarity function. The simulation experiment shows that when the random noise of the image feature points is within the range of pixel, the error of the three Euler angles is about 0.1°, and the error between the relative translational displacement and the simulated value is about 1.5°. The result of the experiment using the data obtained by the vehicle panorama camera and the POS shows that:the error of the roll angle and pitch angle can be within 0.2°, the error of the heading angle can be within 0.4°, and the error between the relative translational displacement and the POS can be within 2°. The result of our relative pose estimation algorithm is used to generate the spherical panoramic epipolar images, then we extract the key points between the spherical panoramic images and calculate the errors in the column direction. The result shows that the errors is less than 1 pixel.

Spine concerns in the Special Olympian with Down syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Tassone, James Channing; Duey-Holtz, Allison

2008-03-01

As with any child participating in sports, the safety of The Special Olympian participating in athletics is paramount. The preparticipation medical clearance is necessary to ensure these athletes' safety. In response to evidence that 15% of all individuals with Down syndrome have atlanto-occipital and/or atlanto-axial instability or subluxation, the Special Olympics Inc have additionally mandated preparticipation spine clearance for all individuals with Down syndrome. Spine clearance for the Special Olympian is challenging for the healthcare provider. In addition, controversy has arisen surrounding The Special Olympics Inc policy statement. The purposes of this article are to provide healthcare providers with a review of atlanto-occipital and atlanto-axial instability and subluxation, review spine clearance guidelines, discuss the details and controversy surrounding The Special Olympics Inc mandate, and provide recommendations on how to improve screening and ensure safety of the participants based on the current medical literature.

NASA Space Rocket Logistics Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

Neeley, James R.; Jones, James V.; Watson, Michael D.; Bramon, Christopher J.; Inman, Sharon K.; Tuttle, Loraine

2014-01-01

The Space Launch System (SLS) is the new NASA heavy lift launch vehicle and is scheduled for its first mission in 2017. The goal of the first mission, which will be uncrewed, is to demonstrate the integrated system performance of the SLS rocket and spacecraft before a crewed flight in 2021. SLS has many of the same logistics challenges as any other large scale program. Common logistics concerns for SLS include integration of discreet programs geographically separated, multiple prime contractors with distinct and different goals, schedule pressures and funding constraints. However, SLS also faces unique challenges. The new program is a confluence of new hardware and heritage, with heritage hardware constituting seventy-five percent of the program. This unique approach to design makes logistics concerns such as commonality especially problematic. Additionally, a very low manifest rate of one flight every four years makes logistics comparatively expensive. That, along with the SLS architecture being developed using a block upgrade evolutionary approach, exacerbates long-range planning for supportability considerations. These common and unique logistics challenges must be clearly identified and tackled to allow SLS to have a successful program. This paper will address the common and unique challenges facing the SLS programs, along with the analysis and decisions the NASA Logistics engineers are making to mitigate the threats posed by each.

ULTOR(Registered TradeMark) Passive Pose and Position Engine For Spacecraft Relative Navigation

Science.gov (United States)

Hannah, S. Joel

2008-01-01

The ULTOR(Registered TradeMark) Passive Pose and Position Engine (P3E) technology, developed by Advanced Optical Systems, Inc (AOS), uses real-time image correlation to provide relative position and pose data for spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control. Potential data sources include a wide variety of sensors, including visible and infrared cameras. ULTOR(Registered TradeMark) P3E has been demonstrated on a number of host processing platforms. NASA is integrating ULTOR(Registerd TradeMark) P3E into its Relative Navigation System (RNS), which is being developed for the upcoming Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Mission 4 (SM4). During SM4 ULTOR(Registered TradeMark) P3E will perform realtime pose and position measurements during both the approach and departure phases of the mission. This paper describes the RNS implementation of ULTOR(Registered TradeMark) P3E, and presents results from NASA's hardware-in-the-loop simulation testing against the HST mockup.

Family Stress and Coping for Mexican Origin Adolescents

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Freda F.; Gonzales, Nancy A.; Fernandez, Aida Cristina; Millsap, Roger E.; Dumka, Larry E.

2011-01-01

Family-related stressors pose special challenges for adolescents of Mexican origin, given traditional cultural norms that compel youths to get involved with family problems despite their limited ability to effect change. The current study examines the prospective effects of coping strategies (i.e., active, distraction, avoidance, support-seeking,…

Enhancing the performance of mobile healthcare systems based on task-redistribution

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mei, H.; van Beijnum, Bernhard J.F.; Widya, I.A.; Jones, Valerie M.; Hermens, Hermanus J.

2008-01-01

Mobile healthcare (m-health) systems have attracted a great deal of attention due to their potential to improve the quality of diagnosis, reduce medical costs and help address the challenges posed by the aging society. A generic m-health service platform has been developed and specialized to deal

A problem-posing approach to teaching the topic of radioactivity

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Klaassen, C.W.J.M.

1995-01-01

This thesis highlights a problem-posing approach to science education. By this is meant an approach that explicitly aims at providing students with content-related motives for extending their existing conceptual resources, experiential base and belief system in a certain direction, such that a

Effects of pose and image resolution on automatic face recognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mahmood, Zahid; Ali, Tauseef; Khan, Samee U.

The popularity of face recognition systems have increased due to their use in widespread applications. Driven by the enormous number of potential application domains, several algorithms have been proposed for face recognition. Face pose and image resolutions are among the two important factors that

Engineering grand challenges and the attributes of the global engineer

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Guerra, Aida; Ulseth, Ron; Jonhson, Bart

2017-01-01

Technology has been changing world in ways never imagined. The ever-evolving society and rapid development posed different demands and challenges to the engineering profession. Addressing these challenges means to re-vision and reform the ways we educate future engineers and the attributes need...... to be enhanced. This paper reports a literature review with aim to (1) understand the different stakeholders’ perspectives, namely students, educators, and employers, (2) understand the profile of the global engineer (i.e. knowledge, competences and skills), and (3) outline and discuss learning strategies....... As a result, the paper presents the main gaps in the existing knowledge, formulates research hypothesis, and proposes a research design for a follow up empirical study to investigate further the engineering grand challenges, the attributes needed to solve them, and the learning environments required....

Regularization theory for ill-posed problems selected topics

CERN Document Server

Lu, Shuai

2013-01-01

Thismonograph is a valuable contribution to thehighly topical and extremly productive field ofregularisationmethods for inverse and ill-posed problems. The author is an internationally outstanding and acceptedmathematicianin this field. In his book he offers a well-balanced mixtureof basic and innovative aspects.He demonstrates new,differentiatedviewpoints, and important examples for applications. The bookdemontrates thecurrent developments inthe field of regularization theory,such as multiparameter regularization and regularization in learning theory. The book is written for graduate and PhDs

The Role of the Adult with Disabilities’ Family in the Labor Inclusion Processes: A Challenge for Special Education in Costa Rica

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana Magaly Madrigal-Lizano

2015-05-01

Full Text Available The following essay presents the author’s thoughts regarding positive and negative family impacts of the process of including the adult with disabilities. It also discusses the significance and challenges faced by those teachers and schools in charge of special education based on the responsibility of establishing the most mechanisms possible to provide, along with their families, a free environment when it comes to decision making for the population with disabilities in regards to their job future and the special skills needed to provide a free independent lifestyle.  The essay focuses on a social model in an inclusive paradigm based on a human rights perspective. In accordance with Vargas (2012, it suggests a social model that highlights social barriers and their environment with a holistic view, which does not exclude individual intervention but emphasizes the inclusion of this population in a world which has been designed by and for people that do not experience any disability.  When shifting from the medical model to the social one, responsibility is also transferred to the social and political aspects, hence making the family a relevant pillar to be considered in different training and information environments in support of the adult with disabilities who needs and deserves the opportunity of having a job as a way to be autonomous and independent.

Mobile operators as banks or vice-versa? and: the challenges of Mobile channels for banks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

L-F. Pau (Louis-François)

2004-01-01

textabstractThis short paper addresses the strategic challenges of deposit banks, and payment clearinghouses, posed by the growing role of mobile operators as collectors and payment agents of flow of cash for themselves and third parties. Through analysis and data analysis from selected operators ,

Predicting the affinity of Farnesoid X Receptor ligands through a hierarchical ranking protocol: a D3R Grand Challenge 2 case study

Science.gov (United States)

Réau, Manon; Langenfeld, Florent; Zagury, Jean-François; Montes, Matthieu

2018-01-01

The Drug Design Data Resource (D3R) Grand Challenges are blind contests organized to assess the state-of-the-art methods accuracy in predicting binding modes and relative binding free energies of experimentally validated ligands for a given target. The second stage of the D3R Grand Challenge 2 (GC2) was focused on ranking 102 compounds according to their predicted affinity for Farnesoid X Receptor. In this task, our workflow was ranked 5th out of the 77 submissions in the structure-based category. Our strategy consisted in (1) a combination of molecular docking using AutoDock 4.2 and manual edition of available structures for binding poses generation using SeeSAR, (2) the use of HYDE scoring for pose selection, and (3) a hierarchical ranking using HYDE and MM/GBSA. In this report, we detail our pose generation and ligands ranking protocols and provide guidelines to be used in a prospective computer aided drug design program.

Sharing Special Education Strategies in Rural Kenya

Science.gov (United States)

Shamberger, Cynthia T.

2014-01-01

As a former special education teacher at the elementary, middle and high school levels, many unique and complex learning situations were encountered. The author, who was a junior faculty member on her initial trip to Kenya, experienced a very challenging, yet rewarding, learning opportunity with teachers gathered in a community located in rural…

Pain Assessment in Children with Special Needs: A Review of the Literature

Science.gov (United States)

Quinn, Brenna L.; Seibold, Esther; Hayman, Laura

2015-01-01

Challenges in assessing the pain of children with special needs are created by the differing abilities of these students to self-report pain presence and intensity. This article reports the results of a literature review examining methods of pain assessment for children with special needs. The authors note the need to foster partnerships with…

Data Modeling Challenges of Advanced Interoperability.

Science.gov (United States)

Blobel, Bernd; Oemig, Frank; Ruotsalainen, Pekka

2018-01-01

Progressive health paradigms, involving many different disciplines and combining multiple policy domains, requires advanced interoperability solutions. This results in special challenges for modeling health systems. The paper discusses classification systems for data models and enterprise business architectures and compares them with the ISO Reference Architecture. On that basis, existing definitions, specifications and standards of data models for interoperability are evaluated and their limitations are discussed. Amendments to correctly use those models and to better meet the aforementioned challenges are offered.

Special Collections, Primary Resources, and Information Literacy Pedagogy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Melissa A. Hubbard

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Literature suggests that teaching Information Literacy (IL as an intellectual framework, rather than a set of computer-based tools, can be challenging for numerous reasons. At the same time, other articles describe the unique value of using hands-on investigations of special collections materials to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills and IL in discipline-specific contexts for upper-level students. This article reports on a collaboration between an IL instructor and a special collections librarian to create a hands-on special collections experience for entry-level IL students. We found that exposing these students to these materials can improve their IL and research skills. We explain our methods for designing and assessing such class sessions, and report on our results with students.

A New Pose Estimation Algorithm Using a Perspective-Ray-Based Scaled Orthographic Projection with Iteration.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pengfei Sun

Full Text Available Pose estimation aims at measuring the position and orientation of a calibrated camera using known image features. The pinhole model is the dominant camera model in this field. However, the imaging precision of this model is not accurate enough for an advanced pose estimation algorithm. In this paper, a new camera model, called incident ray tracking model, is introduced. More importantly, an advanced pose estimation algorithm based on the perspective ray in the new camera model, is proposed. The perspective ray, determined by two positioning points, is an abstract mathematical equivalent of the incident ray. In the proposed pose estimation algorithm, called perspective-ray-based scaled orthographic projection with iteration (PRSOI, an approximate ray-based projection is calculated by a linear system and refined by iteration. Experiments on the PRSOI have been conducted, and the results demonstrate that it is of high accuracy in the six degrees of freedom (DOF motion. And it outperforms three other state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of accuracy during the contrast experiment.

PRA has many faces - can the safety goal be well-posed

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bargmann, H.

1983-01-01

The question is discussed whether probabilistic reliability problems can, principally, be well-posed in practical situations. The problem is reduced to the question whether an underlying probabilistic experiment which is, essentially, the set of outcomes can be precisely specified such that the solution of the problem is unique. Upon reexamination of a classical paradox due to Bertrand and consideration of a typical problem of structural reliability we conclude that the possibility of well-posing a reliability problem should be considered illusory, for fundamental reasons which are inherent in practical situations. In particular, it should not be assumed that a quantitative safety goal could be verified. Generally, a probabilistic assessment should be considered as a quantitative method for establishing rational results which should, however, not be viewed as quantitative measures but as qualitative guides

Estimation de pose omnidirectionnelle dans un contexte de réalité augmentée

OpenAIRE

Poirier, Stéphane

2012-01-01

Estimer la pose de la caméra est un défi fondamental en réalité augmentée et permet la superposition d’un modèle à la réalité. Estimer précisément la pose est souvent critique en ingénierie d’infrastructures. Les images omnidirectionnelles ont un champ de vision supérieur aux images planaires communément utilisées en RA. Cette propriété peut bénéficier à l’estimation de la pose. Or, aucun travail ne présente de résultats montrant clairement un gain de précision. Notre objectif est de quantifi...

Pose Measurement Method and Experiments for High-Speed Rolling Targets in a Wind Tunnel

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhenyuan Jia

2014-12-01

Full Text Available High-precision wind tunnel simulation tests play an important role in aircraft design and manufacture. In this study, a high-speed pose vision measurement method is proposed for high-speed and rolling targets in a supersonic wind tunnel. To obtain images with high signal-to-noise ratio and avoid impacts on the aerodynamic shape of the rolling targets, a high-speed image acquisition method based on ultrathin retro-reflection markers is presented. Since markers are small-sized and some of them may be lost when the target is rolling, a novel markers layout with which markers are distributed evenly on the surface is proposed based on a spatial coding method to achieve highly accurate pose information. Additionally, a pose acquisition is carried out according to the mentioned markers layout after removing mismatching points by Case Deletion Diagnostics. Finally, experiments on measuring the pose parameters of high-speed targets in the laboratory and in a supersonic wind tunnel are conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. Experimental results indicate that the position measurement precision is less than 0.16 mm, the pitching and yaw angle precision less than 0.132° and the roll angle precision 0.712°.

Pose measurement method and experiments for high-speed rolling targets in a wind tunnel.

Science.gov (United States)

Jia, Zhenyuan; Ma, Xin; Liu, Wei; Lu, Wenbo; Li, Xiao; Chen, Ling; Wang, Zhengqu; Cui, Xiaochun

2014-12-12

High-precision wind tunnel simulation tests play an important role in aircraft design and manufacture. In this study, a high-speed pose vision measurement method is proposed for high-speed and rolling targets in a supersonic wind tunnel. To obtain images with high signal-to-noise ratio and avoid impacts on the aerodynamic shape of the rolling targets, a high-speed image acquisition method based on ultrathin retro-reflection markers is presented. Since markers are small-sized and some of them may be lost when the target is rolling, a novel markers layout with which markers are distributed evenly on the surface is proposed based on a spatial coding method to achieve highly accurate pose information. Additionally, a pose acquisition is carried out according to the mentioned markers layout after removing mismatching points by Case Deletion Diagnostics. Finally, experiments on measuring the pose parameters of high-speed targets in the laboratory and in a supersonic wind tunnel are conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. Experimental results indicate that the position measurement precision is less than 0.16 mm, the pitching and yaw angle precision less than 0.132° and the roll angle precision 0.712°.

Mathematical Thinking and Creativity through Mathematical Problem Posing and Solving

Science.gov (United States)

Ayllón, María F.; Gómez, Isabel A.; Ballesta-Claver, Julio

2016-01-01

This work shows the relationship between the development of mathematical thinking and creativity with mathematical problem posing and solving. Creativity and mathematics are disciplines that do not usually appear together. Both concepts constitute complex processes sharing elements, such as fluency (number of ideas), flexibility (range of ideas),…

Management innovative practices for archives and special collections

CERN Document Server

Theimer, Kate

2014-01-01

Management: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections explores the kinds of challenges that managers of archival programs face today and how those challenges can be met to achieve optimal results while working within existing resources. The book features thirteen case studies that demonstrate solutions to both traditional management concerns as well as new issues and opportunities presented by changes in technology and organizational environments. This book will help professionals build stronger archival programs by making effective use of people, technology, and resources whil

Generation Y’s expectations of their future employment relationships pose a challenge for their employers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Katarzyna Dziewanowska

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Generation Y is starting to represent a significant proportion of the labor force and adds to the diversity challenges faced by companies, especially those operating in a global market. Although many characteristics of Generation Y with regard to work and employment have been identified through research, most comes from developed Western countries. We explored the employment expectations of business students in Poland, Slovenia, the UK and South Korea from the psychological contract perspective. We aimed to identify and explain differences between anticipated employee and employer obligations of future entrants to the labor market. Overall, students expect more relational and balanced dimensions of a psychological contract than transactional. However, there are significant differences in the elements, dimensions and types of psychological contract between countries. Polish and Slovenian responses show more elements of a transactional contract than the UK and Korean. The differences can be explained by taking into account economic context and national culture characteristics. The implications of the results for employers’ approach to managing young talent are also discussed.

Active and Passive Diagnostic Signatures of Special Nuclear Materials

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Myers, William L. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Karpius, Peter Joseph [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Myers, Steven Charles [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

2017-05-26

An overview will be given discussing signatures associated with special nuclear materials acquired using both active and passive diagnostic techniques. Examples of how technology advancements have helped improve diagnostic capabilities to meet the challenges of today’s applications will be discussed.

Roundtable discussion: Early labor: what's the problem?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Janssen, Patricia; Nolan, Mary L.; Spiby, Helen; Green, Josephine; Gross, Mechthild M.; Cheyne, Helen; Hundley, Vanora; Rijnders, Marlies; de Jonge, Ank; Buitendijk, Simone

2009-01-01

PREFACE: In places where hospital birth is the norm, one of the major contemporary challenges to the organization of intrapartum care is posed by women who are not in established labor. In the United Kingdom, these women have been given a special name, "Category X," and they can account for a

Roundtable discussion : Early labor : What's the problem?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Janssen, P.; Nolan, M.L.; Spiby, H.; Green, J.; Gross, M.M.; Cheyne, H.; Hundley, V.; Rijnders, M.; Jonge, A.de; Buitendijk, S.

2009-01-01

PREFACE: In places where hospital birth is the norm, one of the major contemporary challenges to the organization of intrapartum care is posed by women who are not in established labor. In the United Kingdom, these women have been given a special name, "Category X," and they can account for a

Resident Physicians' Clinical Training and Error Rate: The Roles of Autonomy, Consultation, and Familiarity with the Literature

Science.gov (United States)

Naveh, Eitan; Katz-Navon, Tal; Stern, Zvi

2015-01-01

Resident physicians' clinical training poses unique challenges for the delivery of safe patient care. Residents face special risks of involvement in medical errors since they have tremendous responsibility for patient care, yet they are novice practitioners in the process of learning and mastering their profession. The present study explores…

Assessment of ADHD Documentation from Candidates Requesting Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Accommodations for the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners COMLEX Exam

Science.gov (United States)

Joy, Javed A.; Julius, Rose J.; Akter, Rashida; Baron, David A.

2010-01-01

Purpose: Every year increasing numbers of candidates request special accommodations for high-stakes medical licensing examinations, due to ADHD, on the basis of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This poses significant challenges for both the applicant and the medical boards and has significant financial, legal, and ethical implications.…

Examining the Development and Recommendations for Special Education in the State of Kuwait: An Evolving Program

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Shammari, Zaid; Yawkey, Thomas D.

2007-01-01

This article focuses on special education students in public schools, that is, those students in particular who have special needs and challenges in learning and/or development. More specifically, and beyond the introduction, this article is divided into several sections. The following section focuses on a brief history of Special Education in…

Absolute stability results for well-posed infinite-dimensional systems with applications to low-gain integral control

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Logemann, H; Curtain, RF

2000-01-01

We derive absolute stability results for well-posed infinite-dimensional systems which, in a sense, extend the well-known circle criterion to the case that the underlying linear system is the series interconnection of an exponentially stable well-posed infinite-dimensional system and an integrator

Multi-view 3D human pose estimation combining single-frame recovery, temporal integration and model adaptation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hofmann, K.M.; Gavrilla, D.M.

2009-01-01

We present a system for the estimation of unconstrained 3D human upper body movement from multiple cameras. Its main novelty lies in the integration of three components: single frame pose recovery, temporal integration and model adaptation. Single frame pose recovery consists of a hypothesis