Professional Development for Rural and Remote Teachers Using Video Conferencing

Science.gov (United States)

Maher, Damian; Prescott, Anne

2017-01-01

Teachers in rural and remote schools face many challenges including those relating to distance, isolation and lack of professional development opportunities. This article examines a project where mathematics and science teachers were provided with professional development opportunities via video conferencing to help them use syllabus documents to…

Remote video conferencing teaching from CERN

CERN Multimedia

Harold Ogren

For those of us who are teaching at a university, coming to CERN for a week means that someone else has to be found to teach our course. Recently, thanks to an initiative of CERN's Education Group who in collaboration with the IT department have buit a Remote Video Conference (VC) room for outreach communication with schools, I have been able to test teaching class back home whilst at the same time being at CERN! On Monday October 5, at 16:00, (10:00 at Indiana University), I attempted my first remote class. Of course, I could not do this alone. Back in the main auditorium in the physics Department, Hal Evans and Fred Luehring had rolled in a portable teleconference center, set up lecture demos and started a class computer. At CERN, Knut Bjorkli had the teaching center teleconference screen active, and had also connected to my class website when I arrived. The first day startup was a bit rocky - there were fire wall problems (?) that required that we connect to the Indiana VC unit rather than the other way a...

Design and Smartphone-Based Implementation of a Chaotic Video Communication Scheme via WAN Remote Transmission

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Zhuosheng; Yu, Simin; Li, Chengqing; Lü, Jinhu; Wang, Qianxue

This paper proposes a chaotic secure video remote communication scheme that can perform on real WAN networks, and implements it on a smartphone hardware platform. First, a joint encryption and compression scheme is designed by embedding a chaotic encryption scheme into the MJPG-Streamer source codes. Then, multiuser smartphone communications between the sender and the receiver are implemented via WAN remote transmission. Finally, the transmitted video data are received with the given IP address and port in an Android smartphone. It should be noted that, this is the first time that chaotic video encryption schemes are implemented on such a hardware platform. The experimental results demonstrate that the technical challenges on hardware implementation of secure video communication are successfully solved, reaching a balance amongst sufficient security level, real-time processing of massive video data, and utilization of available resources in the hardware environment. The proposed scheme can serve as a good application example of chaotic secure communications for smartphone and other mobile facilities in the future.

Online sparse representation for remote sensing compressed-sensed video sampling

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jie; Liu, Kun; Li, Sheng-liang; Zhang, Li

2014-11-01

Most recently, an emerging Compressed Sensing (CS) theory has brought a major breakthrough for data acquisition and recovery. It asserts that a signal, which is highly compressible in a known basis, can be reconstructed with high probability through sampling frequency which is well below Nyquist Sampling Frequency. When applying CS to Remote Sensing (RS) Video imaging, it can directly and efficiently acquire compressed image data by randomly projecting original data to obtain linear and non-adaptive measurements. In this paper, with the help of distributed video coding scheme which is a low-complexity technique for resource limited sensors, the frames of a RS video sequence are divided into Key frames (K frames) and Non-Key frames (CS frames). In other words, the input video sequence consists of many groups of pictures (GOPs) and each GOP consists of one K frame followed by several CS frames. Both of them are measured based on block, but at different sampling rates. In this way, the major encoding computation burden will be shifted to the decoder. At the decoder, the Side Information (SI) is generated for the CS frames using traditional Motion-Compensated Interpolation (MCI) technique according to the reconstructed key frames. The over-complete dictionary is trained by dictionary learning methods based on SI. These learning methods include ICA-like, PCA, K-SVD, MOD, etc. Using these dictionaries, the CS frames could be reconstructed according to sparse-land model. In the numerical experiments, the reconstruction performance of ICA algorithm, which is often evaluated by Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), has been made compared with other online sparse representation algorithms. The simulation results show its advantages in reducing reconstruction time and robustness in reconstruction performance when applying ICA algorithm to remote sensing video reconstruction.

IndigoVision IP video keeps watch over remote gas facilities in Amazon rainforest

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Anon.

2010-07-15

In Brazil, IndigoVision's complete IP video security technology is being used to remotely monitor automated gas facilities in the Amazon rainforest. Twelve compounds containing millions of dollars of process automation, telemetry, and telecom equipment are spread across many thousands of miles of forest and centrally monitored in Rio de Janeiro using Control Center, the company's Security Management software. The security surveillance project uses a hybrid IP network comprising satellite, fibre optic, and wireless links. In addition to advanced compression technology and bandwidth tuning tools, the IP video system uses Activity Controlled Framerate (ACF), which controls the frame rate of the camera video stream based on the amount of motion in a scene. In the absence of activity, the video is streamed at a minimum framerate, but the moment activity is detected the framerate jumps to the configured maximum. This significantly reduces the amount of bandwidth needed. At each remote facility, fixed analog cameras are connected to transmitter nodules that convert the feed to high-quality digital video for transmission over the IP network. The system also integrates alarms with video surveillance. PIR intruder detectors are connected to the system via digital inputs on the transmitters. Advanced alarm-handling features in the Control Center software process the PIR detector alarms and alert operators to potential intrusions. This improves operator efficiency and incident response. 1 fig.

Automation of pharmaceutical warehouse using groups robots with remote climate control and video surveillance

OpenAIRE

Zhuravska, I. M.; Popel, M. I.

2015-01-01

In this paper, we present a complex solution for automation pharmaceutical warehouse, including the implementation of climate-control, video surveillance with remote access to video, robotics selection of medicine with the optimization of the robot motion. We describe all the elements of local area network (LAN) necessary to solve all these problems.

Manageable and Extensible Video Streaming Systems for On-Line Monitoring of Remote Laboratory Experiments

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jian-Wei Lin

2009-08-01

Full Text Available To enable clients to view real-time video of the involved instruments during a remote experiment, two real-time video streaming systems are devised. One is for the remote experiments which instruments locate in one geographic spot and the other is for those which instruments scatter over different places. By means of running concurrent streaming processes at a server, multiple instruments can be monitored simultaneously by different clients. The proposed systems possess excellent extensibility, that is, the systems can easily add new digital cameras for instruments without modifying any software. Also they are well-manageable, meaning that an administrator can conveniently adjust the quality of the real-time video depending on system load and visual requirements. Finally, some evaluation concerning CPU utilization and bandwidth consumption of the systems have been evaluated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed solutions.

Assessing Caribbean Shallow and Mesophotic Reef Fish Communities Using Baited-Remote Underwater Video (BRUV) and Diver-Operated Video (DOV) Survey Techniques

Science.gov (United States)

Macaya-Solis, Consuelo; Exton, Dan A.; Gress, Erika; Wright, Georgina; Rogers, Alex D.

2016-01-01

Fish surveys form the backbone of reef monitoring and management initiatives throughout the tropics, and understanding patterns in biases between techniques is crucial if outputs are to address key objectives optimally. Often biases are not consistent across natural environmental gradients such as depth, leading to uncertainty in interpretation of results. Recently there has been much interest in mesophotic reefs (reefs from 30–150 m depth) as refuge habitats from fishing pressure, leading to many comparisons of reef fish communities over depth gradients. Here we compare fish communities using stereo-video footage recorded via baited remote underwater video (BRUV) and diver-operated video (DOV) systems on shallow and mesophotic reefs in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Caribbean. We show inconsistent responses across families, species and trophic groups between methods across the depth gradient. Fish species and family richness were higher using BRUV at both depth ranges, suggesting that BRUV is more appropriate for recording all components of the fish community. Fish length distributions were not different between methods on shallow reefs, yet BRUV recorded more small fish on mesophotic reefs. However, DOV consistently recorded greater relative fish community biomass of herbivores, suggesting that studies focusing on herbivores should consider using DOV. Our results highlight the importance of considering what component of reef fish community researchers and managers are most interested in surveying when deciding which survey technique to use across natural gradients such as depth. PMID:27959907

Integrated remotely sensed datasets for disaster management

Science.gov (United States)

McCarthy, Timothy; Farrell, Ronan; Curtis, Andrew; Fotheringham, A. Stewart

2008-10-01

Video imagery can be acquired from aerial, terrestrial and marine based platforms and has been exploited for a range of remote sensing applications over the past two decades. Examples include coastal surveys using aerial video, routecorridor infrastructures surveys using vehicle mounted video cameras, aerial surveys over forestry and agriculture, underwater habitat mapping and disaster management. Many of these video systems are based on interlaced, television standards such as North America's NTSC and European SECAM and PAL television systems that are then recorded using various video formats. This technology has recently being employed as a front-line, remote sensing technology for damage assessment post-disaster. This paper traces the development of spatial video as a remote sensing tool from the early 1980s to the present day. The background to a new spatial-video research initiative based at National University of Ireland, Maynooth, (NUIM) is described. New improvements are proposed and include; low-cost encoders, easy to use software decoders, timing issues and interoperability. These developments will enable specialists and non-specialists collect, process and integrate these datasets within minimal support. This integrated approach will enable decision makers to access relevant remotely sensed datasets quickly and so, carry out rapid damage assessment during and post-disaster.

A Semi-Automatic, Remote-Controlled Video Observation System for Transient Luminous Events

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Allin, Thomas Højgaard; Neubert, Torsten; Laursen, Steen

2003-01-01

In support for global ELF/VLF observations, HF measurements in France, and conjugate photometry/VLF observations in South Africa, we developed and operated a semi-automatic, remotely controlled video system for the observation of middle-atmospheric transient luminous events (TLEs). Installed...

Integrating IPix immersive video surveillance with unattended and remote monitoring (UNARM) systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Michel, K.D.; Klosterbuer, S.F.; Langner, D.C.

2004-01-01

Commercially available IPix cameras and software are being researched as a means by which an inspector can be virtually immersed into a nuclear facility. A single IPix camera can provide 360 by 180 degree views with full pan-tilt-zoom capability, and with no moving parts on the camera mount. Immersive video technology can be merged into the current Unattended and Remote Monitoring (UNARM) system, thereby providing an integrated system of monitoring capabilities that tie together radiation, video, isotopic analysis, Global Positioning System (GPS), etc. The integration of the immersive video capability with other monitoring methods already in place provides a significantly enhanced situational awareness to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors.

The design of video and remote analysis system for gamma spectrum based on LabVIEW

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xu Hongkun; Fang Fang; Chen Wei

2009-01-01

For the protection of analyst in the measurement,as well as the facilitation of expert to realize the remote analysis, a solution of live video combined with internet access and control is proposed. DirectShow technology and the LabVIEW'S IDT (Internet Develop Toolkit) module are used, video and analysis pages of the gamma energy spectrum are integrated and published in the windows system by IIS (Internet Information Sever). We realize the analysis of gamma spectrum and remote operations by internet. At the same time, the system has a friendly interface and easily to be put into practice. It also has some reference value for the related radioactive measurement. (authors)

Low-complexity wavelet-based image/video coding for home-use and remote surveillance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Loomans, M.J.H.; Koeleman, C.J.; Joosen, K.M.J.; With, de P.H.N.

2011-01-01

The availability of inexpensive cameras enables alternative applications beyond personal video communication. For example, surveillance of rooms and home premises is such an alternative application, which can be extended with remote viewing on hand-held battery-powered consumer devices. Scalable

Video chat technology to remotely quantify dietary, supplement and medication adherence in clinical trials.

Science.gov (United States)

Peterson, Courtney M; Apolzan, John W; Wright, Courtney; Martin, Corby K

2016-11-01

We conducted two studies to test the validity, reliability, feasibility and acceptability of using video chat technology to quantify dietary and pill-taking (i.e. supplement and medication) adherence. In study 1, we investigated whether video chat technology can accurately quantify adherence to dietary and pill-taking interventions. Mock study participants ate food items and swallowed pills, while performing randomised scripted 'cheating' behaviours to mimic non-adherence. Monitoring was conducted in a cross-over design, with two monitors watching in-person and two watching remotely by Skype on a smartphone. For study 2, a twenty-two-item online survey was sent to a listserv with more than 20 000 unique email addresses of past and present study participants to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the technology. For the dietary adherence tests, monitors detected 86 % of non-adherent events (sensitivity) in-person v. 78 % of events via video chat monitoring (P=0·12), with comparable inter-rater agreement (0·88 v. 0·85; P=0·62). However, for pill-taking, non-adherence trended towards being more easily detected in-person than by video chat (77 v. 60 %; P=0·08), with non-significantly higher inter-rater agreement (0·85 v. 0·69; P=0·21). Survey results from study 2 (n 1076 respondents; ≥5 % response rate) indicated that 86·4 % of study participants had video chatting hardware, 73·3 % were comfortable using the technology and 79·8 % were willing to use it for clinical research. Given the capability of video chat technology to reduce participant burden and outperform other adherence monitoring methods such as dietary self-report and pill counts, video chatting is a novel and promising platform to quantify dietary and pill-taking adherence.

A proposed protocol for remote control of automated assessment devices

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kissock, P.S.; Pritchard, D.A.

1996-01-01

Systems and devices that are controlled remotely are becoming more common in security systems in the US Air Force and other government agencies to provide protection of valuable assets. These systems reduce the number of needed personnel while still providing a high level of protection. However, each remotely controlled device usually has its own communication protocol. This limits the ability to change devices without changing the system that provides the communications control to the device. Sandia is pursuing a standard protocol that can be used to communicate with the different devices currently in use, or may be used in the future, in the US Air Force and other government agencies throughout the security community. Devices to be controlled include intelligent pan/tilt mounts, day/night video cameras, thermal imaging cameras, and remote data processors. Important features of this protocol include the ability to send messages of varying length, identify the sender, and more importantly, control remote data processors. This paper describes the proposed public domain protocol, features, and examples of use. The authors hope to elicit comments from security technology developers regarding format and use of remotely controlled automated assessment devices

Mobile-Cloud Assisted Video Summarization Framework for Efficient Management of Remote Sensing Data Generated by Wireless Capsule Sensors

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Irfan Mehmood

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE has great advantages over traditional endoscopy because it is portable and easy to use, especially in remote monitoring health-services. However, during the WCE process, the large amount of captured video data demands a significant deal of computation to analyze and retrieve informative video frames. In order to facilitate efficient WCE data collection and browsing task, we present a resource- and bandwidth-aware WCE video summarization framework that extracts the representative keyframes of the WCE video contents by removing redundant and non-informative frames. For redundancy elimination, we use Jeffrey-divergence between color histograms and inter-frame Boolean series-based correlation of color channels. To remove non-informative frames, multi-fractal texture features are extracted to assist the classification using an ensemble-based classifier. Owing to the limited WCE resources, it is impossible for the WCE system to perform computationally intensive video summarization tasks. To resolve computational challenges, mobile-cloud architecture is incorporated, which provides resizable computing capacities by adaptively offloading video summarization tasks between the client and the cloud server. The qualitative and quantitative results are encouraging and show that the proposed framework saves information transmission cost and bandwidth, as well as the valuable time of data analysts in browsing remote sensing data.

Mobile-cloud assisted video summarization framework for efficient management of remote sensing data generated by wireless capsule sensors.

Science.gov (United States)

Mehmood, Irfan; Sajjad, Muhammad; Baik, Sung Wook

2014-09-15

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) has great advantages over traditional endoscopy because it is portable and easy to use, especially in remote monitoring health-services. However, during the WCE process, the large amount of captured video data demands a significant deal of computation to analyze and retrieve informative video frames. In order to facilitate efficient WCE data collection and browsing task, we present a resource- and bandwidth-aware WCE video summarization framework that extracts the representative keyframes of the WCE video contents by removing redundant and non-informative frames. For redundancy elimination, we use Jeffrey-divergence between color histograms and inter-frame Boolean series-based correlation of color channels. To remove non-informative frames, multi-fractal texture features are extracted to assist the classification using an ensemble-based classifier. Owing to the limited WCE resources, it is impossible for the WCE system to perform computationally intensive video summarization tasks. To resolve computational challenges, mobile-cloud architecture is incorporated, which provides resizable computing capacities by adaptively offloading video summarization tasks between the client and the cloud server. The qualitative and quantitative results are encouraging and show that the proposed framework saves information transmission cost and bandwidth, as well as the valuable time of data analysts in browsing remote sensing data.

Mobile-Cloud Assisted Video Summarization Framework for Efficient Management of Remote Sensing Data Generated by Wireless Capsule Sensors

Science.gov (United States)

Mehmood, Irfan; Sajjad, Muhammad; Baik, Sung Wook

2014-01-01

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) has great advantages over traditional endoscopy because it is portable and easy to use, especially in remote monitoring health-services. However, during the WCE process, the large amount of captured video data demands a significant deal of computation to analyze and retrieve informative video frames. In order to facilitate efficient WCE data collection and browsing task, we present a resource- and bandwidth-aware WCE video summarization framework that extracts the representative keyframes of the WCE video contents by removing redundant and non-informative frames. For redundancy elimination, we use Jeffrey-divergence between color histograms and inter-frame Boolean series-based correlation of color channels. To remove non-informative frames, multi-fractal texture features are extracted to assist the classification using an ensemble-based classifier. Owing to the limited WCE resources, it is impossible for the WCE system to perform computationally intensive video summarization tasks. To resolve computational challenges, mobile-cloud architecture is incorporated, which provides resizable computing capacities by adaptively offloading video summarization tasks between the client and the cloud server. The qualitative and quantitative results are encouraging and show that the proposed framework saves information transmission cost and bandwidth, as well as the valuable time of data analysts in browsing remote sensing data. PMID:25225874

Video systems for alarm assessment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Greenwoll, D.A.; Matter, J.C.; Ebel, P.E.

1991-09-01

The purpose of this NUREG is to present technical information that should be useful to NRC licensees in designing closed-circuit television systems for video alarm assessment. There is a section on each of the major components in a video system: camera, lens, lighting, transmission, synchronization, switcher, monitor, and recorder. Each section includes information on component selection, procurement, installation, test, and maintenance. Considerations for system integration of the components are contained in each section. System emphasis is focused on perimeter intrusion detection and assessment systems. A glossary of video terms is included. 13 figs., 9 tabs

Video systems for alarm assessment

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Greenwoll, D.A.; Matter, J.C. (Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)); Ebel, P.E. (BE, Inc., Barnwell, SC (United States))

1991-09-01

The purpose of this NUREG is to present technical information that should be useful to NRC licensees in designing closed-circuit television systems for video alarm assessment. There is a section on each of the major components in a video system: camera, lens, lighting, transmission, synchronization, switcher, monitor, and recorder. Each section includes information on component selection, procurement, installation, test, and maintenance. Considerations for system integration of the components are contained in each section. System emphasis is focused on perimeter intrusion detection and assessment systems. A glossary of video terms is included. 13 figs., 9 tabs.

Usability of aerial video footage for 3-D scene reconstruction and structural damage assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Cusicanqui, Johnny; Kerle, Norman; Nex, Francesco

2018-06-01

Remote sensing has evolved into the most efficient approach to assess post-disaster structural damage, in extensively affected areas through the use of spaceborne data. For smaller, and in particular, complex urban disaster scenes, multi-perspective aerial imagery obtained with unmanned aerial vehicles and derived dense color 3-D models are increasingly being used. These type of data allow the direct and automated recognition of damage-related features, supporting an effective post-disaster structural damage assessment. However, the rapid collection and sharing of multi-perspective aerial imagery is still limited due to tight or lacking regulations and legal frameworks. A potential alternative is aerial video footage, which is typically acquired and shared by civil protection institutions or news media and which tends to be the first type of airborne data available. Nevertheless, inherent artifacts and the lack of suitable processing means have long limited its potential use in structural damage assessment and other post-disaster activities. In this research the usability of modern aerial video data was evaluated based on a comparative quality and application analysis of video data and multi-perspective imagery (photos), and their derivative 3-D point clouds created using current photogrammetric techniques. Additionally, the effects of external factors, such as topography and the presence of smoke and moving objects, were determined by analyzing two different earthquake-affected sites: Tainan (Taiwan) and Pescara del Tronto (Italy). Results demonstrated similar usabilities for video and photos. This is shown by the short 2 cm of difference between the accuracies of video- and photo-based 3-D point clouds. Despite the low video resolution, the usability of these data was compensated for by a small ground sampling distance. Instead of video characteristics, low quality and application resulted from non-data-related factors, such as changes in the scene, lack of

Student’s Video Production as Formative Assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eduardo Gama

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Learning assessments are subject of discussion both in their theoretical and practical approaches. The process of measuring learning in physics by high school students, either qualitatively or quantitatively, is one in which it should be possible to identify not only the concepts and contents students failed to achieve but also the reasons for the failure. We propose that students’ video production offers a very effective formative assessment tool to teachers: as a formative assessment, it produces information that allows the understanding of where and when the learning process succeeded or failed, of identifying, as a subject or as a group, the deficiencies or misunderstandings related to the theme under analysis and their interpretation by students, and it provides also a different kind of assessment, related to some other life skills, such as ability to carry on a project till its conclusion and to work cooperatively. In this paper, we describe the use of videos produced by high school students as an assessment resource. The students were asked to prepare a short video, which was then presented to the whole group and discussed. The videos reveal aspects of students’ difficulties that usually do not appear in formal assessments such as tests and questionnaires. After the use of the videos as a component of classroom assessments and the use of the discussions to rethink learning activities in the group, the videos were analysed and classified in various categories. This analysis showed a strong correlation between the technical quality of the video and the content quality of the students’ argumentation. Also, it was shown that the students do not prepare their video based on quick and easy production; they usually choose forms of video production that require careful planning and implementation, and this reflects directly on the overall quality of the video and of the learning process.

Immersive video

Science.gov (United States)

Moezzi, Saied; Katkere, Arun L.; Jain, Ramesh C.

1996-03-01

Interactive video and television viewers should have the power to control their viewing position. To make this a reality, we introduce the concept of Immersive Video, which employs computer vision and computer graphics technologies to provide remote users a sense of complete immersion when viewing an event. Immersive Video uses multiple videos of an event, captured from different perspectives, to generate a full 3D digital video of that event. That is accomplished by assimilating important information from each video stream into a comprehensive, dynamic, 3D model of the environment. Using this 3D digital video, interactive viewers can then move around the remote environment and observe the events taking place from any desired perspective. Our Immersive Video System currently provides interactive viewing and `walkthrus' of staged karate demonstrations, basketball games, dance performances, and typical campus scenes. In its full realization, Immersive Video will be a paradigm shift in visual communication which will revolutionize television and video media, and become an integral part of future telepresence and virtual reality systems.

Attention modeling for video quality assessment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

You, Junyong; Korhonen, Jari; Perkis, Andrew

2010-01-01

averaged spatiotemporal pooling. The local quality is derived from visual attention modeling and quality variations over frames. Saliency, motion, and contrast information are taken into account in modeling visual attention, which is then integrated into IQMs to calculate the local quality of a video frame...... average between the global quality and the local quality. Experimental results demonstrate that the combination of the global quality and local quality outperforms both sole global quality and local quality, as well as other quality models, in video quality assessment. In addition, the proposed video...... quality modeling algorithm can improve the performance of image quality metrics on video quality assessment compared to the normal averaged spatiotemporal pooling scheme....

Examination report: Remote video examination of air slots under the primary tank at 241-AN-107

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pedersen, L.T.

1998-01-01

This report documents the results of remote video examination of air slots in the insulating concrete slab beneath the primary tank at 241-AN-107. Life Extension Equipment Engineering has selected tank 241-AN-107 for ultrasonic evaluation of tank wall, knuckle, and floor plates. Access to the primary tank floor plates is via the air slots which were formed into the insulating concrete slab during tank construction (reference drawings H-2-71105 and H-2-71160). Prior to deployment of the ultrasonic inspection equipment it is desirable to examine the air slots for obstructions and debris which could impede the ultrasonic equipment. The criteria, equipment description, deliverables, and responsibilities for examination of the air slots are described in HNF-1949, Rev. 0, ''Engineering Task Plan for Remote Video Examination of Air Slots Under the Primary Tank at 241-AN-107''

Subjective Video Quality Assessment in H.264/AVC Video Coding Standard

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Z. Miličević

2012-11-01

Full Text Available This paper seeks to provide an approach for subjective video quality assessment in the H.264/AVC standard. For this purpose a special software program for the subjective assessment of quality of all the tested video sequences is developed. It was developed in accordance with recommendation ITU-T P.910, since it is suitable for the testing of multimedia applications. The obtained results show that in the proposed selective intra prediction and optimized inter prediction algorithm there is a small difference in picture quality (signal-to-noise ratio between decoded original and modified video sequences.

Designing and remotely testing mobile diabetes video games.

Science.gov (United States)

DeShazo, Jonathan; Harris, Lynne; Turner, Anne; Pratt, Wanda

2010-01-01

We have investigated game design and usability for three mobile phone video games designed to deliver diabetes education. The games were refined using focus groups. Six people with diabetes participated in the first focus group and five in the second. Following the focus groups, we incorporated the new findings into the game design, and then conducted a field test to evaluate the games in the context in which they would actually be used. Data were collected remotely about game usage by eight people with diabetes. The testers averaged 45 seconds per question and answered an average of 50 total nutrition questions each. They self-reported playing the game for 10-30 min, which coincided with the measured metrics of the game. Mobile games may represent a promising new way to engage the user and deliver relevant educational content.

No-Reference Video Quality Assessment using MPEG Analysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Søgaard, Jacob; Forchhammer, Søren; Korhonen, Jari

2013-01-01

We present a method for No-Reference (NR) Video Quality Assessment (VQA) for decoded video without access to the bitstream. This is achieved by extracting and pooling features from a NR image quality assessment method used frame by frame. We also present methods to identify the video coding...... and estimate the video coding parameters for MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC which can be used to improve the VQA. The analysis differs from most other video coding analysis methods since it is without access to the bitstream. The results show that our proposed method is competitive with other recent NR VQA methods...

No-Reference Video Quality Assessment by HEVC Codec Analysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Huang, Xin; Søgaard, Jacob; Forchhammer, Søren

2015-01-01

This paper proposes a No-Reference (NR) Video Quality Assessment (VQA) method for videos subject to the distortion given by High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). The proposed assessment can be performed either as a BitstreamBased (BB) method or as a Pixel-Based (PB). It extracts or estimates...... the transform coefficients, estimates the distortion, and assesses the video quality. The proposed scheme generates VQA features based on Intra coded frames, and then maps features using an Elastic Net to predict subjective video quality. A set of HEVC coded 4K UHD sequences are tested. Results show...... that the quality scores computed by the proposed method are highly correlated with the subjective assessment....

No-Reference Video Quality Assessment using Codec Analysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Søgaard, Jacob; Forchhammer, Søren; Korhonen, Jari

2015-01-01

types of videos, estimating the level of quantization used in the I-frames, and exploiting this information to assess the video quality. In order to do this for H.264/AVC, the distribution of the DCT-coefficients after intra-prediction and deblocking are modeled. To obtain VQA features for H.264/AVC, we......A no-reference video quality assessment (VQA) method is presented for videos distorted by H.264/AVC and MPEG-2. The assessment is performed without access to the bit-stream. Instead we analyze and estimate coefficients based on decoded pixels. The approach involves distinguishing between the two...... propose a novel estimation method of the quantization in H.264/AVC videos without bitstream access, which can also be used for Peak Signalto-Noise Ratio (PSNR) estimation. The results from the MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC analysis are mapped to a perceptual measure of video quality by Support Vector Regression...

No Reference Video-Quality-Assessment Model for Monitoring Video Quality of IPTV Services

Science.gov (United States)

Yamagishi, Kazuhisa; Okamoto, Jun; Hayashi, Takanori; Takahashi, Akira

Service providers should monitor the quality of experience of a communication service in real time to confirm its status. To do this, we previously proposed a packet-layer model that can be used for monitoring the average video quality of typical Internet protocol television content using parameters derived from transmitted packet headers. However, it is difficult to monitor the video quality per user using the average video quality because video quality depends on the video content. To accurately monitor the video quality per user, a model that can be used for estimating the video quality per video content rather than the average video quality should be developed. Therefore, to take into account the impact of video content on video quality, we propose a model that calculates the difference in video quality between the video quality of the estimation-target video and the average video quality estimated using a packet-layer model. We first conducted extensive subjective quality assessments for different codecs and video sequences. We then model their characteristics based on parameters related to compression and packet loss. Finally, we verify the performance of the proposed model by applying it to unknown data sets different from the training data sets used for developing the model.

Using high-technology to enforce low-technology safety measures: the use of third-party remote video auditing and real-time feedback in healthcare.

Science.gov (United States)

Armellino, Donna; Hussain, Erfan; Schilling, Mary Ellen; Senicola, William; Eichorn, Ann; Dlugacz, Yosef; Farber, Bruce F

2012-01-01

Hand hygiene is a key measure in preventing infections. We evaluated healthcare worker (HCW) hand hygiene with the use of remote video auditing with and without feedback. The study was conducted in an 17-bed intensive care unit from June 2008 through June 2010. We placed cameras with views of every sink and hand sanitizer dispenser to record hand hygiene of HCWs. Sensors in doorways identified when an individual(s) entered/exited. When video auditors observed a HCW performing hand hygiene upon entering/exiting, they assigned a pass; if not, a fail was assigned. Hand hygiene was measured during a 16-week period of remote video auditing without feedback and a 91-week period with feedback of data. Performance feedback was continuously displayed on electronic boards mounted within the hallways, and summary reports were delivered to supervisors by electronic mail. During the 16-week prefeedback period, hand hygiene rates were less than 10% (3933/60 542) and in the 16-week postfeedback period it was 81.6% (59 627/73 080). The increase was maintained through 75 weeks at 87.9% (262 826/298 860). The data suggest that remote video auditing combined with feedback produced a significant and sustained improvement in hand hygiene.

Evaluating Student Self-Assessment through Video-Recorded Patient Simulations.

Science.gov (United States)

Sanderson, Tammy R; Kearney, Rachel C; Kissell, Denise; Salisbury, Jessica

2016-08-01

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine if the use of a video-recorded clinical session affects the accuracy of dental hygiene student self-assessment and dental hygiene instructor feedback. A repeated measures experiment was conducted. The use of the ODU 11/12 explorer was taught to students and participating faculty through video and demonstration. Students then demonstrated activation of the explorer on a student partner using the same technique. While faculty completed the student assessment in real time, the sessions were video recorded. After completing the activation of the explorer, students and faculty completed an assessment of the student's performance using a rubric. A week later, both students and faculty viewed the video of the clinical skill performance and reassessed the student's performance using the same rubric. The student videos were randomly assigned a number, so faculty reassessed the performance without access to the student's identity or the score that was initially given. Twenty-eight students and 4 pre-clinical faculty completed the study. Students' average score was 4.68±1.16 on the first assessment and slightly higher 4.89±1.45 when reviewed by video. Faculty average scores were 5.07±2.13 at the first assessment and 4.79±2.54 on the second assessment with the video. No significant differences were found between the differences in overall scores, there was a significant difference in the scores of the grading criteria compared to the expert assessment scores (p=0.0001). This pilot study shows that calibration and assessment without bias in education is a challenge. Analyzing and incorporating new techniques can result in more exact assessment of student performance and self-assessment. Copyright © 2016 The American Dental Hygienists’ Association.

Objective assessment of IP video calls with Asterisk

OpenAIRE

Kapičák, Lukáš; Nevlud, Pavel; Mikulec, Martin; Zdrálek, Jaroslav

2012-01-01

The paper deals with an objective assessment of IP video calls transmission over GSM and UMTS networks. Video transmission is affected by many factors in mobile network. Among these factors belong packet loss, latency and transmission rate of the mobile network. Network properties were simulated by Simena network simulator. Our team have developed a unique technique for finding defects in video appearing in video calls. This technique is built on modified Asterisk SW PBX with enabled video re...

Applications of remote sensing techniques to the assessment of dam safety: A progress report

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bowlby, J.R.; Grass, J.D.; Singhroy, V.H.

1990-01-01

Remote sensing detection and data collection techniques, combined with data from image analyses, have become effective tools that can be used for rapid identification, interpretation and evaluation of the geological and environmental information required in some areas of performance analysis of hydraulic dams. Potential geological hazards to dams such as faults, landslides and liquefaction, regional crustal warping or tilting, stability of foundation materials, flooding and volcanic hazards are applications in which remote sensing may aid analysis. Details are presented of remote sensing techiques, optimal time of data acquisition, interpreting techniques, and application. Techniques include LANDSAT thematic mapper (TM), SPOT images, thermal infrared scanning, colour infrared photography, normal colour photography, panchromatic black and white, normal colour video, infrared video, airborne multi-spectral electronic imagery, airborne synthetic aperture radar, side scan sonar, and LIDAR (optical radar). 3 tabs

Unsupervised deep learning for real-time assessment of video streaming services

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Torres Vega, M.; Mocanu, D.C.; Liotta, A.

2017-01-01

Evaluating quality of experience in video streaming services requires a quality metric that works in real time and for a broad range of video types and network conditions. This means that, subjective video quality assessment studies, or complex objective video quality assessment metrics, which would

Image and video based remote target localization and tracking on smartphones

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Qia; Lobzhanidze, Alex; Jang, Hyun; Zeng, Wenjun; Shang, Yi; Yang, Jingyu

2012-06-01

Smartphones are becoming popular nowadays not only because of its communication functionality but also, more importantly, its powerful sensing and computing capability. In this paper, we describe a novel and accurate image and video based remote target localization and tracking system using the Android smartphones, by leveraging its built-in sensors such as camera, digital compass, GPS, etc. Even though many other distance estimation or localization devices are available, our all-in-one, easy-to-use localization and tracking system on low cost and commodity smartphones is first of its kind. Furthermore, smartphones' exclusive user-friendly interface has been effectively taken advantage of by our system to facilitate low complexity and high accuracy. Our experimental results show that our system works accurately and efficiently.

Deep learning for quality assessment in live video streaming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Torres Vega, M.; Mocanu, D.C.; Famaey, J.; Stavrou, S.; Liotta, A.

Video content providers put stringent requirements on the quality assessment methods realized on their services. They need to be accurate, real-time, adaptable to new content, and scalable as the video set grows. In this letter, we introduce a novel automated and computationally efficient video

Specialized video systems for use in waste tanks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anderson, E.K.; Robinson, C.W.; Heckendorn, F.M.

1992-01-01

The Robotics Development Group at the Savannah River Site is developing a remote video system for use in underground radioactive waste storage tanks at the Savannah River Site, as a portion of its site support role. Viewing of the tank interiors and their associated annular spaces is an extremely valuable tool in assessing their condition and controlling their operation. Several specialized video systems have been built that provide remote viewing and lighting, including remotely controlled tank entry and exit. Positioning all control components away from the facility prevents the potential for personnel exposure to radiation and contamination. The SRS waste tanks are nominal 4.5 million liter (1.3 million gallon) underground tanks used to store liquid high level radioactive waste generated by the site, awaiting final disposal. The typical waste tank (Figure 1) is of flattened shape (i.e. wider than high). The tanks sit in a dry secondary containment pan. The annular space between the tank wall and the secondary containment wall is continuously monitored for liquid intrusion and periodically inspected and documented. The latter was historically accomplished with remote still photography. The video systems includes camera, zoom lens, camera positioner, and vertical deployment. The assembly enters through a 125 mm (5 in) diameter opening. A special attribute of the systems is they never get larger than the entry hole during camera aiming etc. and can always be retrieved. The latest systems are easily deployable to a remote setup point and can extend down vertically 15 meters (50ft). The systems are expected to be a valuable asset to tank operations

Objective video quality measure for application to tele-echocardiography.

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Peter Thomas; O'Hare, Neil; Walsh, Kevin P; Ward, Neil; Conlon, Niamh

2008-08-01

Real-time tele-echocardiography is widely used to remotely diagnose or exclude congenital heart defects. Cost effective technical implementation is realised using low-bandwidth transmission systems and lossy compression (videoconferencing) schemes. In our study, DICOM video sequences were converted to common multimedia formats, which were then, compressed using three lossy compression algorithms. We then applied a digital (multimedia) video quality metric (VQM) to determine objectively a value for degradation due to compression. Three levels of compression were simulated by varying system bandwidth and compared to a subjective assessment of video clip quality by three paediatric cardiologists with more than 5 years of experience.

Perceived Quality of Full HD Video - Subjective Quality Assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juraj Bienik

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In recent years, an interest in multimedia services has become a global trend and this trend is still rising. The video quality is a very significant part from the bundle of multimedia services, which leads to a requirement for quality assessment in the video domain. Video quality of a streamed video across IP networks is generally influenced by two factors “transmission link imperfection and efficiency of compression standards. This paper deals with subjective video quality assessment and the impact of the compression standards H.264, H.265 and VP9 on perceived video quality of these compression standards. The evaluation is done for four full HD sequences, the difference of scenes is in the content“ distinction is based on Spatial (SI and Temporal (TI Index of test sequences. Finally, experimental results follow up to 30% bitrate reducing of H.265 and VP9 compared with the reference H.264.

Remote Digital Preoperative Assessments for Cleft Lip and Palate May Improve Clinical and Economic Impact in Global Plastic Surgery.

Science.gov (United States)

Hughes, Christopher; Campbell, Jacob; Mukhopadhyay, Swagoto; McCormack, Susan; Silverman, Richard; Lalikos, Janice; Babigian, Alan; Castiglione, Charles

2017-09-01

Reconstructive surgical care can play a vital role in the resource-poor settings of low- and middle-income countries. Telemedicine platforms can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of surgical care. The purpose of this study is to determine whether remote digital video evaluations are reliable in the context of a short-term plastic surgical intervention. The setting for this study was a district hospital located in Latacunga, Ecuador. Participants were 27 consecutive patients who presented for operative repair of cleft lip and palate. We calculated kappa coefficients for reliability between in-person and remote digital video assessments for the classification of cleft lip and palate between two separate craniofacial surgeons. We hypothesized that the technology would be a reliable method of preoperative assessment for cleft disease. Of the 27 (81.4%) participants, 22 received operative treatment for their cleft disorder. Mean age was 11.1 ± 8.3 years. Patients presented with a spectrum of disorders, including cleft lip (24 of 27, 88.9%), cleft palate (19 of 27, 70.4%), and alveolar cleft (19 of 27, 70.4%). We found a 95.7% agreement between observers for cleft lip with substantial reliability (κ = .78, P cleft palate, with a moderate interrater reliability (κ = .55, P = .01). We found only a 47.8% agreement between observers for alveolar cleft with a nonsignificant, weak kappa agreement (κ = .06, P = .74). Remote digital assessments are a reliable way to preoperatively diagnose cleft lip and palate in the context of short-term plastic surgical interventions in low- and middle-income countries. Future work will evaluate the potential for real-time, telemedicine assessments to reduce cost and improve clinical effectiveness in global plastic surgery.

Open-source telemedicine platform for wireless medical video communication.

Science.gov (United States)

Panayides, A; Eleftheriou, I; Pantziaris, M

2013-01-01

An m-health system for real-time wireless communication of medical video based on open-source software is presented. The objective is to deliver a low-cost telemedicine platform which will allow for reliable remote diagnosis m-health applications such as emergency incidents, mass population screening, and medical education purposes. The performance of the proposed system is demonstrated using five atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound videos. The videos are encoded at the clinically acquired resolution, in addition to lower, QCIF, and CIF resolutions, at different bitrates, and four different encoding structures. Commercially available wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3.5G high-speed packet access (HSPA) wireless channels are used to validate the developed platform. Objective video quality assessment is based on PSNR ratings, following calibration using the variable frame delay (VFD) algorithm that removes temporal mismatch between original and received videos. Clinical evaluation is based on atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound video assessment protocol. Experimental results show that adequate diagnostic quality wireless medical video communications are realized using the designed telemedicine platform. HSPA cellular networks provide for ultrasound video transmission at the acquired resolution, while VFD algorithm utilization bridges objective and subjective ratings.

Open-Source Telemedicine Platform for Wireless Medical Video Communication

Science.gov (United States)

Panayides, A.; Eleftheriou, I.; Pantziaris, M.

2013-01-01

An m-health system for real-time wireless communication of medical video based on open-source software is presented. The objective is to deliver a low-cost telemedicine platform which will allow for reliable remote diagnosis m-health applications such as emergency incidents, mass population screening, and medical education purposes. The performance of the proposed system is demonstrated using five atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound videos. The videos are encoded at the clinically acquired resolution, in addition to lower, QCIF, and CIF resolutions, at different bitrates, and four different encoding structures. Commercially available wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3.5G high-speed packet access (HSPA) wireless channels are used to validate the developed platform. Objective video quality assessment is based on PSNR ratings, following calibration using the variable frame delay (VFD) algorithm that removes temporal mismatch between original and received videos. Clinical evaluation is based on atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound video assessment protocol. Experimental results show that adequate diagnostic quality wireless medical video communications are realized using the designed telemedicine platform. HSPA cellular networks provide for ultrasound video transmission at the acquired resolution, while VFD algorithm utilization bridges objective and subjective ratings. PMID:23573082

Open-Source Telemedicine Platform for Wireless Medical Video Communication

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. Panayides

2013-01-01

Full Text Available An m-health system for real-time wireless communication of medical video based on open-source software is presented. The objective is to deliver a low-cost telemedicine platform which will allow for reliable remote diagnosis m-health applications such as emergency incidents, mass population screening, and medical education purposes. The performance of the proposed system is demonstrated using five atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound videos. The videos are encoded at the clinically acquired resolution, in addition to lower, QCIF, and CIF resolutions, at different bitrates, and four different encoding structures. Commercially available wireless local area network (WLAN and 3.5G high-speed packet access (HSPA wireless channels are used to validate the developed platform. Objective video quality assessment is based on PSNR ratings, following calibration using the variable frame delay (VFD algorithm that removes temporal mismatch between original and received videos. Clinical evaluation is based on atherosclerotic plaque ultrasound video assessment protocol. Experimental results show that adequate diagnostic quality wireless medical video communications are realized using the designed telemedicine platform. HSPA cellular networks provide for ultrasound video transmission at the acquired resolution, while VFD algorithm utilization bridges objective and subjective ratings.

Comparing two remote video survey methods for spatial predictions of the distribution and environmental niche suitability of demersal fishes.

Science.gov (United States)

Galaiduk, Ronen; Radford, Ben T; Wilson, Shaun K; Harvey, Euan S

2017-12-15

Information on habitat associations from survey data, combined with spatial modelling, allow the development of more refined species distribution modelling which may identify areas of high conservation/fisheries value and consequentially improve conservation efforts. Generalised additive models were used to model the probability of occurrence of six focal species after surveys that utilised two remote underwater video sampling methods (i.e. baited and towed video). Models developed for the towed video method had consistently better predictive performance for all but one study species although only three models had a good to fair fit, and the rest were poor fits, highlighting the challenges associated with modelling habitat associations of marine species in highly homogenous, low relief environments. Models based on baited video dataset regularly included large-scale measures of structural complexity, suggesting fish attraction to a single focus point by bait. Conversely, models based on the towed video data often incorporated small-scale measures of habitat complexity and were more likely to reflect true species-habitat relationships. The cost associated with use of the towed video systems for surveying low-relief seascapes was also relatively low providing additional support for considering this method for marine spatial ecological modelling.

Quality Assessment of Compressed Video for Automatic License Plate Recognition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ukhanova, Ann; Støttrup-Andersen, Jesper; Forchhammer, Søren

2014-01-01

Definition of video quality requirements for video surveillance poses new questions in the area of quality assessment. This paper presents a quality assessment experiment for an automatic license plate recognition scenario. We explore the influence of the compression by H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC s...... recognition in our study has a behavior similar to human recognition, allowing the use of the same mathematical models. We furthermore propose an application of one of the models for video surveillance systems......Definition of video quality requirements for video surveillance poses new questions in the area of quality assessment. This paper presents a quality assessment experiment for an automatic license plate recognition scenario. We explore the influence of the compression by H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC...... standards on the recognition performance. We compare logarithmic and logistic functions for quality modeling. Our results show that a logistic function can better describe the dependence of recognition performance on the quality for both compression standards. We observe that automatic license plate...

Assessment of competence in video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy: A Danish nationwide study.

Science.gov (United States)

Petersen, René Horsleben; Gjeraa, Kirsten; Jensen, Katrine; Møller, Lars Borgbjerg; Hansen, Henrik Jessen; Konge, Lars

2018-04-18

Competence in video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy has previously been established on the basis of numbers of procedures performed, but this approach does not ensure competence. Specific assessment tools, such as the newly developed video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy assessment tool, allow for structured and objective assessment of competence. Our aim was to provide validity evidence for the video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy assessment tool. Video recordings of 60 video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomies performed by 18 thoracic surgeons were rated using the video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy assessment tool. All 4 centers of thoracic surgery in Denmark participated in the study. Two video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery experts rated the videos. They were blinded to surgeon and center. The total internal consistency reliability Cronbach's alpha was 0.93. Inter-rater reliability between the 2 raters was Pearson's r = 0.71 (P video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy assessment tool scores for the 10 procedures performed by beginners were 22.1 (standard deviation [SD], 8.6) for the 28 procedures performed by the intermediate surgeons, 31.2 (SD, 4.4), and for the 20 procedures performed by experts 35.9 (SD, 2.9) (P better than intermediates (P better than beginners (P video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy (video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy assessment tool) in a clinical setting. The discriminatory ability among expert surgeons, intermediate surgeons, and beginners proved highly significant. The video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery lobectomy assessment tool could be an important aid in the future training and certification of thoracic surgeons. Copyright © 2018 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Content validation of an interprofessional learning video peer assessment tool.

Science.gov (United States)

Nisbet, Gillian; Jorm, Christine; Roberts, Chris; Gordon, Christopher J; Chen, Timothy F

2017-12-16

Large scale models of interprofessional learning (IPL) where outcomes are assessed are rare within health professional curricula. To date, there is sparse research describing robust assessment strategies to support such activities. We describe the development of an IPL assessment task based on peer rating of a student generated video evidencing collaborative interprofessional practice. We provide content validation evidence of an assessment rubric in the context of large scale IPL. Two established approaches to scale development in an educational setting were combined. A literature review was undertaken to develop a conceptual model of the relevant domains and issues pertaining to assessment of student generated videos within IPL. Starting with a prototype rubric developed from the literature, a series of staff and student workshops were undertaken to integrate expert opinion and user perspectives. Participants assessed five-minute videos produced in a prior pilot IPL activity. Outcomes from each workshop informed the next version of the rubric until agreement was reached on anchoring statements and criteria. At this point the rubric was declared fit to be used in the upcoming mandatory large scale IPL activity. The assessment rubric consisted of four domains: patient issues, interprofessional negotiation; interprofessional management plan in action; and effective use of video medium to engage audience. The first three domains reflected topic content relevant to the underlying construct of interprofessional collaborative practice. The fourth domain was consistent with the broader video assessment literature calling for greater emphasis on creativity in education. We have provided evidence for the content validity of a video-based peer assessment task portraying interprofessional collaborative practice in the context of large-scale IPL activities for healthcare professional students. Further research is needed to establish the reliability of such a scale.

Objective video quality assessment method for freeze distortion based on freeze aggregation

Science.gov (United States)

Watanabe, Keishiro; Okamoto, Jun; Kurita, Takaaki

2006-01-01

With the development of the broadband network, video communications such as videophone, video distribution, and IPTV services are beginning to become common. In order to provide these services appropriately, we must manage them based on subjective video quality, in addition to designing a network system based on it. Currently, subjective quality assessment is the main method used to quantify video quality. However, it is time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, we need an objective quality assessment technology that can estimate video quality from video characteristics effectively. Video degradation can be categorized into two types: spatial and temporal. Objective quality assessment methods for spatial degradation have been studied extensively, but methods for temporal degradation have hardly been examined even though it occurs frequently due to network degradation and has a large impact on subjective quality. In this paper, we propose an objective quality assessment method for temporal degradation. Our approach is to aggregate multiple freeze distortions into an equivalent freeze distortion and then derive the objective video quality from the equivalent freeze distortion. Specifically, our method considers the total length of all freeze distortions in a video sequence as the length of the equivalent single freeze distortion. In addition, we propose a method using the perceptual characteristics of short freeze distortions. We verified that our method can estimate the objective video quality well within the deviation of subjective video quality.

Perceptual video quality assessment in H.264 video coding standard using objective modeling.

Science.gov (United States)

Karthikeyan, Ramasamy; Sainarayanan, Gopalakrishnan; Deepa, Subramaniam Nachimuthu

2014-01-01

Since usage of digital video is wide spread nowadays, quality considerations have become essential, and industry demand for video quality measurement is rising. This proposal provides a method of perceptual quality assessment in H.264 standard encoder using objective modeling. For this purpose, quality impairments are calculated and a model is developed to compute the perceptual video quality metric based on no reference method. Because of the shuttle difference between the original video and the encoded video the quality of the encoded picture gets degraded, this quality difference is introduced by the encoding process like Intra and Inter prediction. The proposed model takes into account of the artifacts introduced by these spatial and temporal activities in the hybrid block based coding methods and an objective modeling of these artifacts into subjective quality estimation is proposed. The proposed model calculates the objective quality metric using subjective impairments; blockiness, blur and jerkiness compared to the existing bitrate only calculation defined in the ITU G 1070 model. The accuracy of the proposed perceptual video quality metrics is compared against popular full reference objective methods as defined by VQEG.

Application of Video Recognition Technology in Landslide Monitoring System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qingjia Meng

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The video recognition technology is applied to the landslide emergency remote monitoring system. The trajectories of the landslide are identified by this system in this paper. The system of geological disaster monitoring is applied synthetically to realize the analysis of landslide monitoring data and the combination of video recognition technology. Landslide video monitoring system will video image information, time point, network signal strength, power supply through the 4G network transmission to the server. The data is comprehensively analysed though the remote man-machine interface to conduct to achieve the threshold or manual control to determine the front-end video surveillance system. The system is used to identify the target landslide video for intelligent identification. The algorithm is embedded in the intelligent analysis module, and the video frame is identified, detected, analysed, filtered, and morphological treatment. The algorithm based on artificial intelligence and pattern recognition is used to mark the target landslide in the video screen and confirm whether the landslide is normal. The landslide video monitoring system realizes the remote monitoring and control of the mobile side, and provides a quick and easy monitoring technology.

Pollen Bearing Honey Bee Detection in Hive Entrance Video Recorded by Remote Embedded System for Pollination Monitoring

Science.gov (United States)

Babic, Z.; Pilipovic, R.; Risojevic, V.; Mirjanic, G.

2016-06-01

Honey bees have crucial role in pollination across the world. This paper presents a simple, non-invasive, system for pollen bearing honey bee detection in surveillance video obtained at the entrance of a hive. The proposed system can be used as a part of a more complex system for tracking and counting of honey bees with remote pollination monitoring as a final goal. The proposed method is executed in real time on embedded systems co-located with a hive. Background subtraction, color segmentation and morphology methods are used for segmentation of honey bees. Classification in two classes, pollen bearing honey bees and honey bees that do not have pollen load, is performed using nearest mean classifier, with a simple descriptor consisting of color variance and eccentricity features. On in-house data set we achieved correct classification rate of 88.7% with 50 training images per class. We show that the obtained classification results are not far behind from the results of state-of-the-art image classification methods. That favors the proposed method, particularly having in mind that real time video transmission to remote high performance computing workstation is still an issue, and transfer of obtained parameters of pollination process is much easier.

Crowdsourcing based subjective quality assessment of adaptive video streaming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Shahid, M.; Søgaard, Jacob; Pokhrel, J.

2014-01-01

In order to cater for user’s quality of experience (QoE) re- quirements, HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) based solutions of video services have become popular recently. User QoE feedback can be instrumental in improving the capabilities of such services. Perceptual quality experiments that involve...... humans are considered to be the most valid method of the as- sessment of QoE. Besides lab-based subjective experiments, crowdsourcing based subjective assessment of video quality is gaining popularity as an alternative method. This paper presents insights into a study that investigates perceptual pref......- erences of various adaptive video streaming scenarios through crowdsourcing based subjective quality assessment....

Presence in Video-Mediated Interactions: Case Studies at CSIRO

Science.gov (United States)

Alem, Leila

Although telepresence and a sense of connectedness with others are frequently mentioned in media space studies, as far as we know, none of these studies report attempts at assessing this critical aspect of user experience. While some attempts have been made to measure presence in virtual reality or augmented reality, (a comprehensive review of existing measures is available in Baren and Ijsselsteijn [2004]), very little work has been reported in measuring presence in video-mediated collaboration systems. Traditional studies of video-mediated collaboration have mostly focused their evaluation on measures of task performance and user satisfaction. Videoconferencing systems can be seen as a type of media space; they rely on technologies of audio, video, and computing put together to create an environment extending the embodied mind. This chapter reports on a set of video-mediated collaboration studies conducted at CSIRO in which different aspects of presence are being investigated. The first study reports the sense of physical presence a specialist doctor experiences when engaged in a remote consultation of a patient using the virtual critical care unit (Alem et al., 2006). The Viccu system is an “always-on” system connecting two hospitals (Li et al., 2006). The presence measure focuses on the extent to which users of videoconferencing systems feel physically present in the remote location. The second study reports the sense of social presence users experience when playing a game of charades with remote partners using a video conference link (Kougianous et al., 2006). In this study the presence measure focuses on the extent to which users feel connected with their remote partners. The third study reports the sense of copresence users experience when building collaboratively a piece of Lego toy (Melo and Alem, 2007). The sense of copresence is the extent to which users feel present with their remote partner. In this final study the sense of copresence is

Service provider perceptions of transitioning from audio to video capability in a telehealth system: a qualitative evaluation

OpenAIRE

Clay-Williams, Robyn; Baysari, Melissa; Taylor, Natalie; Zalitis, Dianne; Georgiou, Andrew; Robinson, Maureen; Braithwaite, Jeffrey; Westbrook, Johanna

2017-01-01

Background Telephone consultation and triage services are increasingly being used to deliver health advice. Availability of high speed internet services in remote areas allows healthcare providers to move from telephone to video telehealth services. Current approaches for assessing video services have limitations. This study aimed to identify the challenges for service providers associated with transitioning from audio to video technology. Methods Using a mixed-method, qualitative approach, w...

Real-time video streaming system for LHD experiment using IP multicast

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Emoto, Masahiko; Yamamoto, Takashi; Yoshida, Masanobu; Nagayama, Yoshio; Hasegawa, Makoto

2009-01-01

In order to accomplish smooth cooperation research, remote participation plays an important role. For this purpose, the authors have been developing various applications for remote participation for the LHD (Large Helical Device) experiments, such as Web interface for visualization of acquired data. The video streaming system is one of them. It is useful to grasp the status of the ongoing experiment remotely, and we provide the video images displayed in the control room to the remote users. However, usual streaming servers cannot send video images without delay. The delay changes depending on how to send the images, but even a little delay might become critical if the researchers use the images to adjust the diagnostic devices. One of the main causes of delay is the procedure of compressing and decompressing the images. Furthermore, commonly used video compression method is lossy; it removes less important information to reduce the size. However, lossy images cannot be used for physical analysis because the original information is lost. Therefore, video images for remote participation should be sent without compression in order to minimize the delay and to supply high quality images durable for physical analysis. However, sending uncompressed video images requires large network bandwidth. For example, sending 5 frames of 16bit color SXGA images a second requires 100Mbps. Furthermore, the video images must be sent to several remote sites simultaneously. It is hard for a server PC to handle such a large data. To cope with this problem, the authors adopted IP multicast to send video images to several remote sites at once. Because IP multicast packets are sent only to the network on which the clients want the data; the load of the server does not depend on the number of clients and the network load is reduced. In this paper, the authors discuss the feasibility of high bandwidth video streaming system using IP multicast. (author)

The assessment of online heath videos for surgery in Crohn's Disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Marshall, J H; Baker, D M; Lee, M J; Jones, G L; Lobo, A J; Brown, S R

2018-02-10

YouTube ™ is an open-access, non-peer reviewed video-hosting site and is used as a source of publicly available healthcare information. This study aimed to assess the thematic content of the most viewed videos relating to surgery and Crohn's Disease and to explore the viewer interactions to these videos. A search of YouTube ™ was carried out using one search string. The 50 most viewed videos were identified and categorised by source, content themes and assessed for viewer interactions. Video comments were used to describe the usefulness of the video content to viewers. The majority of videos were uploaded by patients (n=21).The remainder were uploaded by individual health care professionals (n=9), hospital/speciality associations (n=18) and industry (n=2). The median number of likes for patient videos was significantly higher than hospital/speciality association videos (p=content(n=27), and more comments asking for further information (n=14). The median number of likes for 'experience of surgery' (p=content of patient sourced videos focused on surgical and disease experience, suggesting these themes are important to patients.Current patient developed videos provide limited information, as reflected by viewers requesting further information. Storytelling patient-centred videos combined with clinical evidence may be a good model for future videos. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The art of assessing quality for images and video

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Deriche, M.

2011-01-01

The early years of this century have witnessed a tremendous growth in the use of digital multimedia data for di?erent communication applications. Researchers from around the world are spending substantial research efforts in developing techniques for improving the appearance of images/video. However, as we know, preserving high quality is a challenging task. Images are subject to distortions during acquisition, compression, transmission, analysis, and reconstruction. For this reason, the research area focusing on image and video quality assessment has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. In particular, compression applications and other multimedia applications need powerful techniques for evaluating quality objectively without human interference. This tutorial will cover the di?erent faces of image quality assessment. We will motivate the need for robust image quality assessment techniques, then discuss the main algorithms found in the literature with a critical perspective. We will present the di?erent metrics used for full reference, reduced reference and no reference applications. We will then discuss the difference between image and video quality assessment. In all of the above, we will take a critical approach to explain which metric can be used for which application. Finally we will discuss the different approaches to analyze the performance of image/video quality metrics, and end the tutorial with some perspectives on newly introduced metrics and their potential applications.

Comparative population assessments of Nautilus sp. in the Philippines, Australia, Fiji, and American Samoa using baited remote underwater video systems.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gregory J Barord

Full Text Available The extant species of Nautilus and Allonautilus (Cephalopoda inhabit fore-reef slope environments across a large geographic area of the tropical western Pacific and eastern Indian Oceans. While many aspects of their biology and behavior are now well-documented, uncertainties concerning their current populations and ecological role in the deeper, fore-reef slope environments remain. Given the historical to current day presence of nautilus fisheries at various locales across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, a comparative assessment of the current state of nautilus populations is critical to determine whether conservation measures are warranted. We used baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS to make quantitative photographic records as a means of estimating population abundance of Nautilus sp. at sites in the Philippine Islands, American Samoa, Fiji, and along an approximately 125 km transect on the fore reef slope of the Great Barrier Reef from east of Cairns to east of Lizard Island, Australia. Each site was selected based on its geography, historical abundance, and the presence (Philippines or absence (other sites of Nautilus fisheries The results from these observations indicate that there are significantly fewer nautiluses observable with this method in the Philippine Islands site. While there may be multiple possibilities for this difference, the most parsimonious is that the Philippine Islands population has been reduced due to fishing. When compared to historical trap records from the same site the data suggest there have been far more nautiluses at this site in the past. The BRUVS proved to be a valuable tool to measure Nautilus abundance in the deep sea (300-400 m while reducing our overall footprint on the environment.

Remote Assessment of Lunar Resource Potential

Science.gov (United States)

Taylor, G. Jeffrey

1992-01-01

Assessing the resource potential of the lunar surface requires a well-planned program to determine the chemical and mineralogical composition of the Moon's surface at a range of scales. The exploration program must include remote sensing measurements (from both Earth's surface and lunar orbit), robotic in situ analysis of specific places, and eventually, human field work by trained geologists. Remote sensing data is discussed. Resource assessment requires some idea of what resources will be needed. Studies thus far have concentrated on oxygen and hydrogen production for propellant and life support, He-3 for export as fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, and use of bulk regolith for shielding and construction materials. The measurement requirements for assessing these resources are given and discussed briefly.

Web-based remote video monitoring system implemented using Java technology

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Xiaoming

2012-04-01

A HTTP based video transmission system has been built upon the p2p(peer to peer) network structure utilizing the Java technologies. This makes the video monitoring available to any host which has been connected to the World Wide Web in any method, including those hosts behind firewalls or in isolated sub-networking. In order to achieve this, a video source peer has been developed, together with the client video playback peer. The video source peer can respond to the video stream request in HTTP protocol. HTTP based pipe communication model is developed to speeding the transmission of video stream data, which has been encoded into fragments using the JPEG codec. To make the system feasible in conveying video streams between arbitrary peers on the web, a HTTP protocol based relay peer is implemented as well. This video monitoring system has been applied in a tele-robotic system as a visual feedback to the operator.

Forest biodiversity and its assessment by remote sensing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Innes, J.L.; Koch, B.

1998-01-01

Several international conventions and agreements have stressed the importance of the assessment of forest biodiversity. However, the methods by which such assessments can be made remain unclear. Remote sensing represents an important tool for looking at ecosystem diversity and various structural aspects of individual ecosystems. It provides a means to make assessments across several different spatial scales, and is also critical for assessments of changes in ecosystem pattern over time. Many different forms of remote sensing are available. While lately the emphasis on laser scanner and synthetic aperture radar data has increased, most work to date has used photographs and digital optical imagery, primarily from airborne and spaceborne platforms. These provide the opportunity to assess different phenomena from the landscape to the stand scale. Remote sensing provides the most efficient tool available for determining landscape-scale elements of forest biodiversity, such as the relative proportion of matrix and patches and their physical arrangement. At intermediate scales, remote sensing provides an ideal tool for evaluating the presence of corridors and the nature of edges. At the stand scale, remote sensing technologies are likely to deliver an increasing amount of information about the structural attributes of forest stands, such as the nature of the canopy surface, the presence of layering within the canopy and presence of (very) coarse woody debris on the forest floor. Given the rate of development in the technology, even greater usage is likely in the future. (author)

Home Video Telemetry vs inpatient telemetry: A comparative study looking at video quality

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sutapa Biswas

Full Text Available Objective: To compare the quality of home video recording with inpatient telemetry (IPT to evaluate our current Home Video Telemetry (HVT practice. Method: To assess our HVT practice, a retrospective comparison of the video quality against IPT was conducted with the latter as the gold standard. A pilot study had been conducted in 2008 on 5 patients.Patients (n = 28 were included in each group over a period of one year.The data was collected from referral spreadsheets, King’s EPR and telemetry archive.Scoring of the events captured was by consensus using two scorers.The variables compared included: visibility of the body part of interest, visibility of eyes, time of event, illumination, contrast, sound quality and picture clarity when amplified to 200%.Statistical evaluation was carried out using Shapiro–Wilk and Chi-square tests. The P-value of ⩽0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Significant differences were demonstrated in lighting and contrast between the two groups (HVT performed better in both.Amplified picture quality was slightly better in the HVT group. Conclusion: Video quality of HVT is comparable to IPT, even surpassing IPT in certain aspects such as the level of illumination and contrast. Results were reconfirmed in a larger sample of patients with more variables. Significance: Despite the user and environmental variability in HVT, it looks promising and can be seriously considered as a preferable alternative for patients who may require investigation at locations remote from an EEG laboratory. Keywords: Home Video Telemetry, EEG, Home video monitoring, Video quality

Improving visual skills: II-remote assessment via Internet.

Science.gov (United States)

Powers, Maureen K; Grisham, J David; Wurm, Janice K; Wurm, William C

2009-02-01

Even though poor readers often have poor visual skills, such as binocular coordination and oculomotor control, students' visual skills are rarely assessed. Computer assessments have the potential to assist in identifying students whose visual skills are deficient. This study compared assessments made by an Internet-based computer orthoptics program with those of an on-site vision therapist. Students (N = 41) in grades 1 through 8, reading at least 2 levels below grade, were assessed for visual skill dysfunction (including binocular fusion and tracking ability) by a vision therapist at their school in Wisconsin. The therapist determined whether the student had adequate visual skills based on clinical and behavioral observations. A "remote" investigator located in California determined the adequacy of accommodative facility, tracking, and vergence skills in the same students, based on quantitative progress through the modules of an Internet-based computer orthoptics training program during 3 assessment sessions. The on-site therapist made 33 referrals for possible visual skills training (80%). The remote investigator made 25 referrals (61%), all of which were consistent with referrals made by the on-site therapist; thus, no false-positives occurred when using the remote assessment technique. The 8 additional referrals by the therapist were attributed to the ability to observe student behavior during assessment. Remote assessment of visual skills via an Internet orthoptics program may provide a simple means to detect visual skill problems experienced by poor readers.

Using collaborative technologies in remote lab delivery systems for topics in automation

Science.gov (United States)

Ashby, Joe E.

Lab exercises are a pedagogically essential component of engineering and technology education. Distance education remote labs are being developed which enable students to access lab facilities via the Internet. Collaboration, students working in teams, enhances learning activity through the development of communication skills, sharing observations and problem solving. Web meeting communication tools are currently used in remote labs. The problem identified for investigation was that no standards of practice or paradigms exist to guide remote lab designers in the selection of collaboration tools that best support learning achievement. The goal of this work was to add to the body of knowledge involving the selection and use of remote lab collaboration tools. Experimental research was conducted where the participants were randomly assigned to three communication treatments and learning achievement was measured via assessments at the completion of each of six remote lab based lessons. Quantitative instruments used for assessing learning achievement were implemented, along with a survey to correlate user preference with collaboration treatments. A total of 53 undergraduate technology students worked in two-person teams, where each team was assigned one of the treatments, namely (a) text messaging chat, (b) voice chat, or (c) webcam video with voice chat. Each had little experience with the subject matter involving automation, but possessed the necessary technical background. Analysis of the assessment score data included mean and standard deviation, confirmation of the homogeneity of variance, a one-way ANOVA test and post hoc comparisons. The quantitative and qualitative data indicated that text messaging chat negatively impacted learning achievement and that text messaging chat was not preferred. The data also suggested that the subjects were equally divided on preference to voice chat verses webcam video with voice chat. To the end of designing collaborative

Quality of Experience Assessment of Video Quality in Social Clouds

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Asif Ali Laghari

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Video sharing on social clouds is popular among the users around the world. High-Definition (HD videos have big file size so the storing in cloud storage and streaming of videos with high quality from cloud to the client are a big problem for service providers. Social clouds compress the videos to save storage and stream over slow networks to provide quality of service (QoS. Compression of video decreases the quality compared to original video and parameters are changed during the online play as well as after download. Degradation of video quality due to compression decreases the quality of experience (QoE level of end users. To assess the QoE of video compression, we conducted subjective (QoE experiments by uploading, sharing, and playing videos from social clouds. Three popular social clouds, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, were selected to upload and play videos online for users. The QoE was recorded by using questionnaire given to users to provide their experience about the video quality they perceive. Results show that Facebook and Twitter compressed HD videos more as compared to other clouds. However, Facebook gives a better quality of compressed videos compared to Twitter. Therefore, users assigned low ratings for Twitter for online video quality compared to Tumblr that provided high-quality online play of videos with less compression.

Use of a UAV-mounted video camera to assess feeding behavior of Raramuri Criollo cows

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Interest in use of unmanned aerial vehicles in science has increased in recent years. It is predicted that they will be a preferred remote sensing platform for applications that inform sustainable rangeland management in the future. The objective of this study was to determine whether UAV video moni...

Evaluation of intrusion sensors and video assessment in areas of restricted passage

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hoover, C.E.; Ringler, C.E.

1996-04-01

This report discusses an evaluation of intrusion sensors and video assessment in areas of restricted passage. The discussion focuses on applications of sensors and video assessment in suspended ceilings and air ducts. It also includes current and proposed requirements for intrusion detection and assessment. Detection and nuisance alarm characteristics of selected sensors as well as assessment capabilities of low-cost board cameras were included in the evaluation

Video and accelerometer-based motion analysis for automated surgical skills assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Zia, Aneeq; Sharma, Yachna; Bettadapura, Vinay; Sarin, Eric L; Essa, Irfan

2018-03-01

Basic surgical skills of suturing and knot tying are an essential part of medical training. Having an automated system for surgical skills assessment could help save experts time and improve training efficiency. There have been some recent attempts at automated surgical skills assessment using either video analysis or acceleration data. In this paper, we present a novel approach for automated assessment of OSATS-like surgical skills and provide an analysis of different features on multi-modal data (video and accelerometer data). We conduct a large study for basic surgical skill assessment on a dataset that contained video and accelerometer data for suturing and knot-tying tasks. We introduce "entropy-based" features-approximate entropy and cross-approximate entropy, which quantify the amount of predictability and regularity of fluctuations in time series data. The proposed features are compared to existing methods of Sequential Motion Texture, Discrete Cosine Transform and Discrete Fourier Transform, for surgical skills assessment. We report average performance of different features across all applicable OSATS-like criteria for suturing and knot-tying tasks. Our analysis shows that the proposed entropy-based features outperform previous state-of-the-art methods using video data, achieving average classification accuracies of 95.1 and 92.2% for suturing and knot tying, respectively. For accelerometer data, our method performs better for suturing achieving 86.8% average accuracy. We also show that fusion of video and acceleration features can improve overall performance for skill assessment. Automated surgical skills assessment can be achieved with high accuracy using the proposed entropy features. Such a system can significantly improve the efficiency of surgical training in medical schools and teaching hospitals.

Specialized video systems for use in underground storage tanks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heckendom, F.M.; Robinson, C.W.; Anderson, E.K.; Pardini, A.F.

1994-01-01

The Robotics Development Groups at the Savannah River Site and the Hanford site have developed remote video and photography systems for deployment in underground radioactive waste storage tanks at Department of Energy (DOE) sites as a part of the Office of Technology Development (OTD) program within DOE. Figure 1 shows the remote video/photography systems in a typical underground storage tank environment. Viewing and documenting the tank interiors and their associated annular spaces is an extremely valuable tool in characterizing their condition and contents and in controlling their remediation. Several specialized video/photography systems and robotic End Effectors have been fabricated that provide remote viewing and lighting. All are remotely deployable into and from the tank, and all viewing functions are remotely operated. Positioning all control components away from the facility prevents the potential for personnel exposure to radiation and contamination. Overview video systems, both monaural and stereo versions, include a camera, zoom lens, camera positioner, vertical deployment system, and positional feedback. Each independent video package can be inserted through a 100 mm (4 in.) diameter opening. A special attribute of these packages is their design to never get larger than the entry hole during operation and to be fully retrievable. The End Effector systems will be deployed on the large robotic Light Duty Utility Arm (LDUA) being developed by other portions of the OTD-DOE programs. The systems implement a multi-functional ''over the coax'' design that uses a single coaxial cable for all data and control signals over the more than 900 foot cable (or fiber optic) link

Remote control video cameras on a suborbital rocket

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wessling, Francis C.

1997-01-01

Three video cameras were controlled in real time from the ground to a sub-orbital rocket during a fifteen minute flight from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Telemetry communications with the rocket allowed the control of the cameras. The pan, tilt, zoom, focus, and iris of two of the camera lenses, the power and record functions of the three cameras, and also the analog video signal that would be sent to the ground was controlled by separate microprocessors. A microprocessor was used to record data from three miniature accelerometers, temperature sensors and a differential pressure sensor. In addition to the selected video signal sent to the ground and recorded there, the video signals from the three cameras also were recorded on board the rocket. These recorders were mounted inside the pressurized segment of the rocket payload. The lenses, lens control mechanisms, and the three small television cameras were located in a portion of the rocket payload that was exposed to the vacuum of space. The accelerometers were also exposed to the vacuum of space

Video education for critical care nurses to assess pain with a behavioural pain assessment tool: A descriptive comparative study.

Science.gov (United States)

Björn, Annika; Pudas-Tähkä, Sanna-Mari; Salanterä, Sanna; Axelin, Anna

2017-10-01

To evaluate the impact of video education on critical care nurses' knowledge and skills in using a behavioural pain assessment tool for intensive care patients and to explore the nurses' experiences with video education. Forty-eight nurses in one intensive care unit watched an educational video on the use of the Critical-Care Pain Observation Tool, then assessed pain in two patients with the tool and took a knowledge test. The researcher made parallel pain assessments. Interrater reliability of patients' pain assessment between nurses and the researcher was determined to examine nurses' skills in using the tool after education. Twenty nurses were interviewed about their experiences with the video education. Interviews were analysed with deductive thematic analysis. The knowledge test scores indicated that the nurses learned the principles of how to use the tool. The interrater reliability of pain assessments reached a moderate level of agreement during the painful procedure, with a weighted kappa coefficient value of 0.48, CL [0.37, 0.58]. The nurses perceived video education positively, but requested additional interaction. Video education is useful in teaching the principles of using a pain assessment tool. Additional clinical training is required for nurses to reach adequate skills in using the tool. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Video System for Viewing From a Remote or Windowless Cockpit

Science.gov (United States)

Banerjee, Amamath

2009-01-01

A system of electronic hardware and software synthesizes, in nearly real time, an image of a portion of a scene surveyed by as many as eight video cameras aimed, in different directions, at portions of the scene. This is a prototype of systems that would enable a pilot to view the scene outside a remote or windowless cockpit. The outputs of the cameras are digitized. Direct memory addressing is used to store the data of a few captured images in sequence, and the sequence is repeated in cycles. Cylindrical warping is used in merging adjacent images at their borders to construct a mosaic image of the scene. The mosaic-image data are written to a memory block from which they can be rendered on a head-mounted display (HMD) device. A subsystem in the HMD device tracks the direction of gaze of the wearer, providing data that are used to select, for display, the portion of the mosaic image corresponding to the direction of gaze. The basic functionality of the system has been demonstrated by mounting the cameras on the roof of a van and steering the van by use of the images presented on the HMD device.

Using standardized video cases for assessment of medical communication skills: reliability of an objective structured video examination by computer

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hulsman, R. L.; Mollema, E. D.; Oort, F. J.; Hoos, A. M.; de Haes, J. C. J. M.

2006-01-01

OBJECTIVE: Using standardized video cases in a computerized objective structured video examination (OSVE) aims to measure cognitive scripts underlying overt communication behavior by questions on knowledge, understanding and performance. In this study the reliability of the OSVE assessment is

The effect of video review of resident laparoscopic surgical skills measured by self- and external assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Herrera-Almario, Gabriel E; Kirk, Katherine; Guerrero, Veronica T; Jeong, Kwonho; Kim, Sara; Hamad, Giselle G

2016-02-01

Video review of surgical skills is an educational modality that allows trainees to reflect on self-performance. The purpose of this study was to determine whether resident and attending assessments of a resident's laparoscopic performance differ and whether video review changes assessments. Third-year surgery residents were invited to participate. Elective laparoscopic procedures were video recorded. The Global Operative Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills evaluation was completed immediately after the procedure and again 7 to 10 days later by both resident and attending. Scores were compared using t tests. Nine residents participated and 76 video reviews were completed. Residents scored themselves significantly lower than the faculty scores both before and after video review. Resident scores did not change significantly after video review. Attending and resident self-assessment of laparoscopic skills differs and subsequent video review does not significantly affect Global Operative Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills scores. Further studies should evaluate the impact of video review combined with verbal feedback on skill acquisition and assessment. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Video Game Device Haptic Interface for Robotic Arc Welding

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Corrie I. Nichol; Milos Manic

2009-05-01

Recent advances in technology for video games have made a broad array of haptic feedback devices available at low cost. This paper presents a bi-manual haptic system to enable an operator to weld remotely using the a commercially available haptic feedback video game device for the user interface. The system showed good performance in initial tests, demonstrating the utility of low cost input devices for remote haptic operations.

Assessing the accuracy of remote sensing techniques in vegetation ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Assessing the accuracy of remote sensing techniques in vegetation fractions estimation. ... This study aimed at exploring different remote sensing (RS) techniques for quantitatively measuring vegetation and bare soil ... HOW TO USE AJOL.

Weighted-MSE based on saliency map for assessing video quality of H.264 video streams

Science.gov (United States)

Boujut, H.; Benois-Pineau, J.; Hadar, O.; Ahmed, T.; Bonnet, P.

2011-01-01

Human vision system is very complex and has been studied for many years specifically for purposes of efficient encoding of visual, e.g. video content from digital TV. There have been physiological and psychological evidences which indicate that viewers do not pay equal attention to all exposed visual information, but only focus on certain areas known as focus of attention (FOA) or saliency regions. In this work, we propose a novel based objective quality assessment metric, for assessing the perceptual quality of decoded video sequences affected by transmission errors and packed loses. The proposed method weights the Mean Square Error (MSE), Weighted-MSE (WMSE), according to the calculated saliency map at each pixel. Our method was validated trough subjective quality experiments.

Impact of Constant Rate Factor on Objective Video Quality Assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juraj Bienik

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with the impact of constant rate factor value on the objective video quality assessment using PSNR and SSIM metrics. Compression efficiency of H.264 and H.265 codecs defined by different Constant rate factor (CRF values was tested. The assessment was done for eight types of video sequences depending on content for High Definition (HD, Full HD (FHD and Ultra HD (UHD resolution. Finally, performance of both mentioned codecs with emphasis on compression ratio and efficiency of coding was compared.

Remote Viewing End Effectors for Light Duty Utility Arm Robot (U)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heckendorn, F.M.; Robinson, C.W.; Haynes, H.B.; Anderosn, E.K.; Pardini, A.F.

1996-01-01

The Robotics Development Groups at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and at the Hanford site have developed remote video and photography systems for deployment in underground radioactive-waste storage tanks at the Department of Energy (DOE) sites as a part of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) program within DOE. Viewing and documenting the tank interiors and their associated annular spaces is an extremely valuable tool in characterizing their condition and contents and in controlling their remediation. Several specialized video/photography systems and robotic End Effectors have been fabricated that provide remote viewing and lighting. All are remotely deployable into and out of the tank, with all viewing functions remotely operated. Positioning all control components away from the facility prevents the potential for personnel exposure to radiation and contamination. Only the remote video systems are discussed in this paper

Measures of behavioral function predict duration of video game play: Utilization of the Video Game Functional Assessment - Revised.

Science.gov (United States)

Buono, Frank D; Griffiths, Mark D; Sprong, Matthew E; Lloyd, Daniel P; Sullivan, Ryan M; Upton, Thomas D

2017-12-01

Background Internet gaming disorder (IGD) was introduced in the DSM-5 as a way of identifying and diagnosing problematic video game play. However, the use of the diagnosis is constrained, as it shares criteria with other addictive orders (e.g., pathological gambling). Aims Further work is required to better understand IGD. One potential avenue of investigation is IGD's relationship to the primary reinforcing behavioral functions. This study explores the relationship between duration of video game play and the reinforcing behavioral functions that may motivate or maintain video gaming. Methods A total of 499 video game players began the online survey, with complete data from 453 participants (85% white and 28% female), were analyzed. Individuals were placed into five groups based on self-reported hours of video gaming per week, and completed the Video Game Functional Assessment - Revised (VGFA-R). Results The results demonstrated the escape and social attention function were significant in predicting duration of video game play, whereas sensory and tangible were not significant. Conclusion Future implications of the VGFA-R and behaviorally based research are discussed.

The role of optical flow in automated quality assessment of full-motion video

Science.gov (United States)

Harguess, Josh; Shafer, Scott; Marez, Diego

2017-09-01

In real-world video data, such as full-motion-video (FMV) taken from unmanned vehicles, surveillance systems, and other sources, various corruptions to the raw data is inevitable. This can be due to the image acquisition process, noise, distortion, and compression artifacts, among other sources of error. However, we desire methods to analyze the quality of the video to determine whether the underlying content of the corrupted video can be analyzed by humans or machines and to what extent. Previous approaches have shown that motion estimation, or optical flow, can be an important cue in automating this video quality assessment. However, there are many different optical flow algorithms in the literature, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. We examine the effect of the choice of optical flow algorithm (including baseline and state-of-the-art), on motionbased automated video quality assessment algorithms.

Assessment of teacher competence using video portfolios: reliability, construct validity and consequential validity

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Admiraal, W.; Hoeksma, M.; van de Kamp, M.-T.; van Duin, G.

2011-01-01

The richness and complexity of video portfolios endanger both the reliability and validity of the assessment of teacher competencies. In a post-graduate teacher education program, the assessment of video portfolios was evaluated for its reliability, construct validity, and consequential validity.

Video-assisted functional assessment of index pollicisation in congenital anomalies.

Science.gov (United States)

Mas, Virginie; Ilharreborde, Brice; Mallet, Cindy; Mazda, Keyvan; Simon, Anne-Laure; Jehanno, Pascal

2016-08-01

Functional results of index pollicisation are usually assessed by the clinical score of Percival. This score is based on elementary hand movements and does not reflect the function of the neo thumb in daily life activities. The aim of this study was to develop a new video-assisted scoring system based on daily life activities to assess index pollicisation functional outcomes. Twenty-two consecutive children, operated between 1998 and 2012, were examined with a mean of 77 months after surgery. The mean age at surgery was 34 months. Post-operative results were evaluated by a new video-assisted 14-point scoring system consisting of seven basic tasks that are frequently used in daily activities. The series of tasks was performed both on the request of the examiner and in real-life conditions with the use of a hidden camera. Each video recording was examined by three different examiners. Each examiner rated the video recordings three times, with an interval of one week between examinations. Inter- and intra-observer agreements were calculated. Inter- and intra-observer agreements were excellent both on request (κ = 0.87 [0.84-0.97] for inter-observer agreement and 0.92 [0.82-0.98] for intra-observer agreement) and on hidden camera (κ = 0.83 [0.78-0.91] for inter-observer agreement and 0.89 [0.83-0.96] for intra-observer agreement). The results were significantly better on request than on hidden camera (p = 0.045). The correlation between the video-assisted scoring system and the Percival score was poor. The video-assisted scoring system is a reliable tool to assess index pollicisation functional outcomes. The scoring system on hidden camera is more representative of the neo thumb use in daily life complex movements. Level IV.

Computer-generated video fly-through: an aid to visual impact assessment for windfarms

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Neilson, G.; Leeming, T.; Hall, S.

1998-01-01

Computer generated video fly-through provides a new method of assessing the visual impact of wind farms. With a PC, software and digital terrain model of the wind farm it is possible to produce videos ranging from wireframe to realistically shaded models. Using computer generated video fly-through visually sensitive corridors can be explored fully, wind turbine rotors can be seen in motion, critical viewpoints can be identified for photomontages and the context of the wind farm appreciated better. This paper describes the techniques of computer generated video fly through and examines its various applications in visual impact assessment of wind farms. (Author)

Predictive no-reference assessment of video quality

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Torres Vega, M.; Mocanu, D.C.; Stavrou, S.; Liotta, A.

2017-01-01

Among the various means to evaluate the quality of video streams, light-weight No-Reference (NR) methods have low computation and may be executed on thin clients. Thus, these methods would be perfect candidates in cases of real-time quality assessment, automated quality control and in adaptive

Integration of Centrifuge Testing in Undergraduate Geotechnical Engineering Education at Remote Campuses

Science.gov (United States)

El Shamy, Usama; Abdoun, Tarek; McMartin, Flora; Pando, Miguel A.

2013-01-01

We report the results of a pilot study aimed at developing, implementing, and assessing an educational module that integrates remote major research instrumentation into undergraduate classes. Specifically, this study employs Internet Web-based technologies to allow for real-time video monitoring and execution of cutting-edge experiments. The…

Remotely supported prehospital ultrasound: A feasibility study of real-time image transmission and expert guidance to aid diagnosis in remote and rural communities.

Science.gov (United States)

Eadie, Leila; Mulhern, John; Regan, Luke; Mort, Alasdair; Shannon, Helen; Macaden, Ashish; Wilson, Philip

2017-01-01

Introduction Our aim is to expedite prehospital assessment of remote and rural patients using remotely-supported ultrasound and satellite/cellular communications. In this paradigm, paramedics are remotely-supported ultrasound operators, guided by hospital-based specialists, to record images before receiving diagnostic advice. Technology can support users in areas with little access to medical imaging and suboptimal communications coverage by connecting to multiple cellular networks and/or satellites to stream live ultrasound and audio-video. Methods An ambulance-based demonstrator system captured standard trauma and novel transcranial ultrasound scans from 10 healthy volunteers at 16 locations across the Scottish Highlands. Volunteers underwent brief scanning training before receiving expert guidance via the communications link. Ultrasound images were streamed with an audio/video feed to reviewers for interpretation. Two sessions were transmitted via satellite and 21 used cellular networks. Reviewers rated image and communication quality, and their utility for diagnosis. Transmission latency and bandwidth were recorded, and effects of scanner and reviewer experience were assessed. Results Appropriate views were provided in 94% of the simulated trauma scans. The mean upload rate was 835/150 kbps and mean latency was 114/2072 ms for cellular and satellite networks, respectively. Scanning experience had a significant impact on time to achieve a diagnostic image, and review of offline scans required significantly less time than live-streamed scans. Discussion This prehospital ultrasound system could facilitate early diagnosis and streamlining of treatment pathways for remote emergency patients, being particularly applicable in rural areas worldwide with poor communications infrastructure and extensive transport times.

Remote online ergonomic assessment in the office environment as compared to face-to-face ergonomic assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Eyal, Levy; Ribak, Joseph; Badihi, Yehuda

2012-01-01

remote online ergonomic assessment in the office environment as compared to face-to-face ergonomic assessment and examination of the applicability of remote online ergonomic assessment to office workers. 40 employees from a large Israeli hi-tech company were ergonomically assessed per the University of California computer usage checklist, according to the two assessment types (face-to-face and remote). An additional Ergonomist "assessor 2" examined the credibility of the process. Research hypothesis 1 was verified: 21 out of 22 questions (95.45%) from the checklist indicated compatibility between "assessor 1" to the "Gold Standard" at an 80% level. Research hypothesis 2: examining the credibility between the assessors with regard to remote assessment. This hypothesis was partially verified, the correlation between the assessors was measured at 0.54. Research hypothesis 3: examining the extent of deviation of natural posture between distal body parts assessment (distant from the center of the body) and proximal body parts (close to the center of the body). This hypothesis was clearly verified. It has been proven that there is statistical significance between the results. The current research has proved that there is an additional method to assess musculoskeletal disorders risk factors remotely online at office environment.

Macro and Micro Remote Viewing of Objects in Sealed Gloveboxes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heckendorn, F.M.

2004-01-01

The Savannah River Site uses sophisticated glovebox facilities to process and analyze material that is radiologically contaminated or that must be protected from contamination by atmospheric gases. The analysis can be visual, non destructive measurement, or destructive measurement, and allows for the gathering of information that would otherwise not be obtainable. Macro and Micro systems that cover a range of 2X to 400X magnifications with a robust system compatible with the harsh glovebox environment were installed. Remote video inspection systems were developed and deployed in Savannah River Site glovebox facilities that provide high quality or mega-pixel quality remote views, for remote inspections. The specialized video systems that are the subject of this report exhibited specialized field application of remote video/viewing techniques by expanding remote viewing to high and very high quality viewing in gloveboxes. This technological enhancement will allow the gathering of precision information that is otherwise not available

No-Reference Video Quality Assessment Model for Distortion Caused by Packet Loss in the Real-Time Mobile Video Services

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiarun Song

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Packet loss will make severe errors due to the corruption of related video data. For most video streams, because the predictive coding structures are employed, the transmission errors in one frame will not only cause decoding failure of itself at the receiver side, but also propagate to its subsequent frames along the motion prediction path, which will bring a significant degradation of end-to-end video quality. To quantify the effects of packet loss on video quality, a no-reference objective quality assessment model is presented in this paper. Considering the fact that the degradation of video quality significantly relies on the video content, the temporal complexity is estimated to reflect the varying characteristic of video content, using the macroblocks with different motion activities in each frame. Then, the quality of the frame affected by the reference frame loss, by error propagation, or by both of them is evaluated, respectively. Utilizing a two-level temporal pooling scheme, the video quality is finally obtained. Extensive experimental results show that the video quality estimated by the proposed method matches well with the subjective quality.

An Assessment of Remote Visual Methods to Detect Cracking in Reactor Components

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cumblidge, Stephen E.; Anderson, Michael T.; Doctor, Steven R.; Simonen, Fredric A.; Elliot, Anthony J.

2008-01-01

Recently, the U.S. nuclear industry has proposed replacing current volumetric and/or surface examinations of certain components in commercial nuclear power plants, as required by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section XI, Inservice Inspection of Nuclear Power Plant Components, with a simpler visual testing (VT) method. The advantages of VT are that these tests generally involve much less radiation exposure and time to perform the examination than do volumetric examinations such as ultrasonic testing. The issues relative to the reliability of VT in determining the structural integrity of reactor components were examined. Some piping and pressure vessel components in a nuclear power station are examined using VT as they are either in high radiation fields or component geometry precludes the use of ultrasonic testing (UT) methodology. Remote VT with radiation-hardened video systems has been used by nuclear utilities to find cracks in pressure vessel cladding in pressurized water reactors, core shrouds in boiling water reactors, and to investigate leaks in piping and reactor components. These visual tests are performed using a wide variety of procedures and equipment. The techniques for remote VT use submersible closed-circuit video cameras to examine reactor components and welds. PNNL conducted a parametric study that examined the important variables influencing the effectiveness of a remote visual test. Tested variables included lighting techniques, camera resolution, camera movement, and magnification. PNNL also conducted a limited laboratory test using a commercial visual testing camera system to experimentally determine the ability of the camera system to detect cracks of various widths under ideal conditions. The results of these studies and their implications are presented in this paper

Integrated remotely sensed datasets for disaster management

OpenAIRE

McCarthy, Tim; Farrell, Ronan; Curtis, Andrew; Fotheringham, A. Stewart

2008-01-01

Video imagery can be acquired from aerial, terrestrial and marine based platforms and has been exploited for a range of remote sensing applications over the past two decades. Examples include coastal surveys using aerial video, routecorridor infrastructures surveys using vehicle mounted video cameras, aerial surveys over forestry and agriculture, underwater habitat mapping and disaster management. Many of these video systems are based on interlaced, television standards such as North...

Using video games to combine learning and assessment in mathematics education

OpenAIRE

Kristian Juha Mikael Kiili; Keith Devlin; Arttu Perttula; Pauliina Tuomi; Antero Lindstedt

2015-01-01

One problem with most education systems is that learning and (summative) assessment are generally treated as quite separate things in schools. We argue that video games can provide an opportunity to combine these processes in an engaging and effective way. The present study focuses on investigating the effectiveness and the assessment power of two different mathematics video games, Semideus and Wuzzit Trouble. In the current study, we validated the Semideus game as a rational number test inst...

Crowdsourcing earthquake damage assessment using remote sensing imagery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stuart Gill

2011-06-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the evolution of recent work on using crowdsourced analysis of remote sensing imagery, particularly high-resolution aerial imagery, to provide rapid, reliable assessments of damage caused by earthquakes and potentially other disasters. The initial effort examined online imagery taken after the 2008 Wenchuan, China, earthquake. A more recent response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake led to the formation of an international consortium: the Global Earth Observation Catastrophe Assessment Network (GEO-CAN. The success of GEO-CAN in contributing to the official damage assessments made by the Government of Haiti, the United Nations, and the World Bank led to further development of a web-based interface. A current initiative in Christchurch, New Zealand, is underway where remote sensing experts are analyzing satellite imagery, geotechnical engineers are marking liquefaction areas, and structural engineers are identifying building damage. The current site includes online training to improve the accuracy of the assessments and make it possible for even novice users to contribute to the crowdsourced solution. The paper discusses lessons learned from these initiatives and presents a way forward for using crowdsourced remote sensing as a tool for rapid assessment of damage caused by natural disasters around the world.

Delivering Diagnostic Quality Video over Mobile Wireless Networks for Telemedicine

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sira P. Rao

2009-01-01

Full Text Available In real-time remote diagnosis of emergency medical events, mobility can be enabled by wireless video communications. However, clinical use of this potential advance will depend on definitive and compelling demonstrations of the reliability of diagnostic quality video. Because the medical domain has its own fidelity criteria, it is important to incorporate diagnostic video quality criteria into any video compression system design. To this end, we used flexible algorithms for region-of-interest (ROI video compression and obtained feedback from medical experts to develop criteria for diagnostically lossless (DL quality. The design of the system occurred in three steps-measurement of bit rate at which DL quality is achieved through evaluation of videos by medical experts, incorporation of that information into a flexible video encoder through the notion of encoder states, and an encoder state update option based on a built-in quality criterion. Medical experts then evaluated our system for the diagnostic quality of the video, allowing us to verify that it is possible to realize DL quality in the ROI at practical communication data transfer rates, enabling mobile medical assessment over bit-rate limited wireless channels. This work lays the scientific foundation for additional validation through prototyped technology, field testing, and clinical trials.

The Optimiser: monitoring and improving switching delays in video conferencing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

S. Gunkel (Simon); A.J. Jansen (Jack); I. Kegel; D.C.A. Bulterman (Dick); P.S. Cesar Garcia (Pablo Santiago)

2014-01-01

htmlabstractWith the growing popularity of video communication systems, more people are using group video chat, rather than only one-to-one video calls. In such multi-party sessions, remote participants compete for the available screen space and bandwidth. A common solution is showing the current

Remote participation for LHD experiments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Emoto, M.; Yamamoto, T.; Komada, S.; Nagayama, Y.

2006-01-01

To accomplish a large-scale experiment, such as large helical device (LHD) experiment, effective cooperation among institutes is necessary. In order to establish such cooperation, the NIFS provides the following remote participation facilities for the LHD experiments. (1) Remote access: The user can use a virtual private network (VPN) to connect to the LAN. This is the most flexible technique to participate in the experiments. The users who are not familiar with the experiments can log into the remote server running MetaFrame and Linux. In these computers, the required software is already installed. Therefore, the user need not be concerned with installing software. (2) Remote data reference: A mirror server exists to provide physical data to remote users. Moreover, the users can retrieve summarized data via a web server, which provides summarized information of each discharge experiment and graphs of the principal physical data. These graphs are useful for finding the required data quickly. (3) Remote communication and monitoring: For effective remote cooperation, communication between researchers is very important. For this purpose, a video conferencing system and a video streaming service are available. In addition to these facilities, the NIFS introduced Super SINET in 2002. This is an optical-fiber-based network. The backbone speed of this network is 10 Gbps, and the speed is 1 Gbps for direct connections

Remote participation for LHD experiments

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Emoto, M. [National Institute for Fusion Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, 322-6 Oroshi, Toki 509-5292 (Japan)]. E-mail: emoto.masahiko@LHD.nifs.ac.jp; Yamamoto, T. [National Institute for Fusion Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, 322-6 Oroshi, Toki 509-5292 (Japan); Komada, S. [National Institute for Fusion Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, 322-6 Oroshi, Toki 509-5292 (Japan); Nagayama, Y. [National Institute for Fusion Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, 322-6 Oroshi, Toki 509-5292 (Japan)

2006-07-15

To accomplish a large-scale experiment, such as large helical device (LHD) experiment, effective cooperation among institutes is necessary. In order to establish such cooperation, the NIFS provides the following remote participation facilities for the LHD experiments. (1) Remote access: The user can use a virtual private network (VPN) to connect to the LAN. This is the most flexible technique to participate in the experiments. The users who are not familiar with the experiments can log into the remote server running MetaFrame and Linux. In these computers, the required software is already installed. Therefore, the user need not be concerned with installing software. (2) Remote data reference: A mirror server exists to provide physical data to remote users. Moreover, the users can retrieve summarized data via a web server, which provides summarized information of each discharge experiment and graphs of the principal physical data. These graphs are useful for finding the required data quickly. (3) Remote communication and monitoring: For effective remote cooperation, communication between researchers is very important. For this purpose, a video conferencing system and a video streaming service are available. In addition to these facilities, the NIFS introduced Super SINET in 2002. This is an optical-fiber-based network. The backbone speed of this network is 10 Gbps, and the speed is 1 Gbps for direct connections.

Subjective Quality Assessment of H.264/AVC Video Streaming with Packet Losses

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Naccari Matteo

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Research in the field of video quality assessment relies on the availability of subjective scores, collected by means of experiments in which groups of people are asked to rate the quality of video sequences. The availability of subjective scores is fundamental to enable validation and comparative benchmarking of the objective algorithms that try to predict human perception of video quality by automatically analyzing the video sequences, in a way to support reproducible and reliable research results. In this paper, a publicly available database of subjective quality scores and corrupted video sequences is described. The scores refer to 156 sequences at CIF and 4CIF spatial resolutions, encoded with H.264/AVC and corrupted by simulating the transmission over an error-prone network. The subjective evaluation has been performed by 40 subjects at the premises of two academic institutions, in standard-compliant controlled environments. In order to support reproducible research in the field of full-reference, reduced-reference, and no-reference video quality assessment algorithms, both the uncompressed files and the H.264/AVC bitstreams, as well as the packet loss patterns, have been made available to the research community.

Effects That Facebook-Based Online Peer Assessment with Micro-Teaching Videos Can Have on Attitudes toward Peer Assessment and Perceived Learning from Peer Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Guan-Yu

2016-01-01

The present study investigates the effects that Facebook-based online peer assessment with micro-teaching videos can have on attitudes toward peer assessment and perceived learning from peer assessment. The study recruited a sample of 31 university students who were enrolled in a teacher-training course. Using assessees' microteaching videos, the…

Smartphone based automatic organ validation in ultrasound video.

Science.gov (United States)

Vaish, Pallavi; Bharath, R; Rajalakshmi, P

2017-07-01

Telesonography involves transmission of ultrasound video from remote areas to the doctors for getting diagnosis. Due to the lack of trained sonographers in remote areas, the ultrasound videos scanned by these untrained persons do not contain the proper information that is required by a physician. As compared to standard methods for video transmission, mHealth driven systems need to be developed for transmitting valid medical videos. To overcome this problem, we are proposing an organ validation algorithm to evaluate the ultrasound video based on the content present. This will guide the semi skilled person to acquire the representative data from patient. Advancement in smartphone technology allows us to perform high medical image processing on smartphone. In this paper we have developed an Application (APP) for a smartphone which can automatically detect the valid frames (which consist of clear organ visibility) in an ultrasound video and ignores the invalid frames (which consist of no-organ visibility), and produces a compressed sized video. This is done by extracting the GIST features from the Region of Interest (ROI) of the frame and then classifying the frame using SVM classifier with quadratic kernel. The developed application resulted with the accuracy of 94.93% in classifying valid and invalid images.

Staff acceptance of video monitoring for coordination: a video system to support perioperative situation awareness.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Young Ju; Xiao, Yan; Hu, Peter; Dutton, Richard

2009-08-01

To understand staff acceptance of a remote video monitoring system for operating room (OR) coordination. Improved real-time remote visual access to OR may enhance situational awareness but also raises privacy concerns for patients and staff. Survey. A system was implemented in a six-room surgical suite to display OR monitoring video at an access restricted control desk area. Image quality was manipulated to improve staff acceptance. Two months after installation, interviews and a survey were conducted on staff acceptance of video monitoring. About half of all OR personnel responded (n = 63). Overall levels of concerns were low, with 53% rated no concerns and 42% little concern. Top two reported uses of the video were to see if cases are finished and to see if a room is ready. Viewing the video monitoring system as useful did not reduce levels of concern. Staff in supervisory positions perceived less concern about the system's impact on privacy than did those supervised (p < 0.03). Concerns for patient privacy correlated with concerns for staff privacy and performance monitoring. Technical means such as manipulating image quality helped staff acceptance. Manipulation of image quality resulted overall acceptance of monitoring video, with residual levels of concerns. OR nurses may express staff privacy concern in the form of concerns over patient privacy. This study provided suggestions for technological and implementation strategies of video monitoring for coordination use in OR. Deployment of communication technology and integration of clinical information will likely raise concerns over staff privacy and performance monitoring. The potential gain of increased information access may be offset by negative impact of a sense of loss of autonomy.

A Comparative Survey of Methods for Remote Heart Rate Detection From Frontal Face Videos

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chen Wang

2018-05-01

Full Text Available Remotely measuring physiological activity can provide substantial benefits for both the medical and the affective computing applications. Recent research has proposed different methodologies for the unobtrusive detection of heart rate (HR using human face recordings. These methods are based on subtle color changes or motions of the face due to cardiovascular activities, which are invisible to human eyes but can be captured by digital cameras. Several approaches have been proposed such as signal processing and machine learning. However, these methods are compared with different datasets, and there is consequently no consensus on method performance. In this article, we describe and evaluate several methods defined in literature, from 2008 until present day, for the remote detection of HR using human face recordings. The general HR processing pipeline is divided into three stages: face video processing, face blood volume pulse (BVP signal extraction, and HR computation. Approaches presented in the paper are classified and grouped according to each stage. At each stage, algorithms are analyzed and compared based on their performance using the public database MAHNOB-HCI. Results found in this article are limited on MAHNOB-HCI dataset. Results show that extracted face skin area contains more BVP information. Blind source separation and peak detection methods are more robust with head motions for estimating HR.

Development and preliminary validation of an interactive remote physical therapy system.

Science.gov (United States)

Mishra, Anup K; Skubic, Marjorie; Abbott, Carmen

2015-01-01

In this paper, we present an interactive physical therapy system (IPTS) for remote quantitative assessment of clients in the home. The system consists of two different interactive interfaces connected through a network, for a real-time low latency video conference using audio, video, skeletal, and depth data streams from a Microsoft Kinect. To test the potential of IPTS, experiments were conducted with 5 independent living senior subjects in Kansas City, MO. Also, experiments were conducted in the lab to validate the real-time biomechanical measures calculated using the skeletal data from the Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect and Microsoft Xbox One Kinect, with ground truth data from a Vicon motion capture system. Good agreements were found in the validation tests. The results show potential capabilities of the IPTS system to provide remote physical therapy to clients, especially older adults, who may find it difficult to visit the clinic.

Balancing Attended and Global Stimuli in Perceived Video Quality Assessment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

You, Junyong; Korhonen, Jari; Perkis, Andrew

2011-01-01

. This paper proposes a quality model based on the late attention selection theory, assuming that the video quality is perceived via two mechanisms: global and local quality assessment. First we model several visual features influencing the visual attention in quality assessment scenarios to derive......The visual attention mechanism plays a key role in the human perception system and it has a significant impact on our assessment of perceived video quality. In spite of receiving less attention from the viewers, unattended stimuli can still contribute to the understanding of the visual content...... an attention map using appropriate fusion techniques. The global quality assessment as based on the assumption that viewers allocate their attention equally to the entire visual scene, is modeled by four carefully designed quality features. By employing these same quality features, the local quality model...

Video Quality Assessment Using Spatio-Velocity Contrast Sensitivity Function

Science.gov (United States)

Hirai, Keita; Tumurtogoo, Jambal; Kikuchi, Ayano; Tsumura, Norimichi; Nakaguchi, Toshiya; Miyake, Yoichi

Due to the development and popularization of high-definition televisions, digital video cameras, Blu-ray discs, digital broadcasting, IP television and so on, it plays an important role to identify and quantify video quality degradations. In this paper, we propose SV-CIELAB which is an objective video quality assessment (VQA) method using a spatio-velocity contrast sensitivity function (SV-CSF). In SV-CIELAB, motion information in videos is effectively utilized for filtering unnecessary information in the spatial frequency domain. As the filter to apply videos, we used the SV-CSF. It is a modulation transfer function of the human visual system, and consists of the relationship among contrast sensitivities, spatial frequencies and velocities of perceived stimuli. In the filtering process, the SV-CSF cannot be directly applied in the spatial frequency domain because spatial coordinate information is required when using velocity information. For filtering by the SV-CSF, we obtain video frames separated in spatial frequency domain. By using velocity information, the separated frames with limited spatial frequencies are weighted by contrast sensitivities in the SV-CSF model. In SV-CIELAB, the criteria are obtained by calculating image differences between filtered original and distorted videos. For the validation of SV-CIELAB, subjective evaluation experiments were conducted. The subjective experimental results were compared with SV-CIELAB and the conventional VQA methods such as CIELAB color difference, Spatial-CIELAB, signal to noise ratio and so on. From the experimental results, it was shown that SV-CIELAB is a more efficient VQA method than the conventional methods.

Why Video Games Can Be a Good Fit for Formative Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Bauer, Malcolm; Wylie, Caroline; Jackson, Tanner; Mislevy, Bob; Hoffman-John, Erin; John, Michael; Corrigan, Seth

2017-01-01

This paper explores the relation between formative assessment principles and their analogues in video games that game designers have been developing over the past 35 years. We identify important parallels between the two that should enable effective and efficient use of well-designed video games in the classroom as part of an overall learning…

Reliability and accuracy of a video analysis protocol to assess core ability.

Science.gov (United States)

McDonald, Dawn A; Delgadillo, James Q; Fredericson, Michael; McConnell, Jennifer; Hodgins, Melissa; Besier, Thor F

2011-03-01

To develop and test a method to measure core ability in healthy athletes with 2-dimensional video analysis software (SiliconCOACH). Specific objectives were to: (1) develop a standardized exercise battery with progressions of increasing difficulty to evaluate areas of core ability in elite athletes; (2) develop an objective and quantitative grading rubric with the use of video analysis software; (3) assess the test-retest reliability of the exercise battery; (4) assess the interrater and intrarater reliability of the video analysis system; and (5) assess the accuracy of the assessment. Test-retest repeatability and accuracy. Testing was conducted in the Stanford Human Performance Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Nine female gymnasts currently training with the Stanford Varsity Women's Gymnastics Team participated in testing. Participants completed a test battery composed of planks, side planks, and leg bridges of increasing difficulty. Subjects completed two 20-minute testing sessions within a 4- to 10-day period. Two-dimensional sagittal-plane video was captured simultaneously with 3-dimensional motion capture. The main outcome measures were pelvic displacement and time that elapsed until failure occurred, as measured with SiliconCOACH video analysis software. Test-retest and interrater and intrarater reliability of the video analysis measures was assessed. Accuracy as compared with 3-dimensional motion capture also was assessed. Levels reached during the side planks and leg bridges had an excellent test-retest correlation (r(2) = 0.84, r(2) = 0.95). Pelvis displacements measured by examiner 1 and examiner 2 had an excellent correlation (r(2) = 0.86, intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.92). Pelvis displacements measured by examiner 1 during independent grading sessions had an excellent correlation (r(2) = 0.92). Pelvis displacements from the plank and from a set of combined plank and side plank exercises both had an excellent correlation with 3

Distributed Real-Time Embedded Video Processing

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Lv, Tiehan

2004-01-01

.... A deployable multi-camera video system must perform distributed computation, including computation near the camera as well as remote computations, in order to meet performance and power requirements...

A review of video security training and assessment-systems and their applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cellucci, J.; Hall, R.J.

1991-01-01

This paper reports that during the last 10 years computer-aided video data collection and playback systems have been used as nuclear facility security training and assessment tools with varying degrees of success. These mobile systems have been used by trained security personnel for response force training, vulnerability assessment, force-on-force exercises and crisis management. Typically, synchronous recordings from multiple video cameras, communications audio, and digital sensor inputs; are played back to the exercise participants and then edited for training and briefing. Factors that have influence user acceptance include: frequency of use, the demands placed on security personnel, fear of punishment, user training requirements and equipment cost. The introduction of S-VHS video and new software for scenario planning, video editing and data reduction; should bring about a wider range of security applications and supply the opportunity for significant cost sharing with other user groups

Covert video monitoring in the assessment of medically unexplained symptoms in children.

Science.gov (United States)

Wallace, Dustin P; Sim, Leslie A; Harrison, Tracy E; Bruce, Barbara K; Harbeck-Weber, Cynthia

2012-04-01

Diagnosis of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) occurs after thorough evaluations have failed to identify a physiological cause for symptoms. However, families and providers may wonder if something has been missed, leading to reduced confidence in behavioral treatment. Confidence may be improved through the use of technology such as covert video monitoring to better assess functioning across settings. A 12-year-old male presented with progressive neurological decline, precipitated by chronic pain. After thorough evaluation and the failure of standard treatments (medical, rehabilitative, and psychological) covert video monitoring revealed that the patient demonstrated greater abilities when alone in his room. Negative reinforcement was used to initiate recovery, accompanied by positive reinforcement and a rehabilitative approach. Covert video monitoring assisted in three subsequent cases over the following 3 years. In certain complex cases, video monitoring can inform the assessment and treatment of MUS. Discussion includes ethical and practical considerations.

The role of satellite remote sensing in structured ecosystem risk assessments.

Science.gov (United States)

Murray, Nicholas J; Keith, David A; Bland, Lucie M; Ferrari, Renata; Lyons, Mitchell B; Lucas, Richard; Pettorelli, Nathalie; Nicholson, Emily

2018-04-01

The current set of global conservation targets requires methods for monitoring the changing status of ecosystems. Protocols for ecosystem risk assessment are uniquely suited to this task, providing objective syntheses of a wide range of data to estimate the likelihood of ecosystem collapse. Satellite remote sensing can deliver ecologically relevant, long-term datasets suitable for analysing changes in ecosystem area, structure and function at temporal and spatial scales relevant to risk assessment protocols. However, there is considerable uncertainty about how to select and effectively utilise remotely sensed variables for risk assessment. Here, we review the use of satellite remote sensing for assessing spatial and functional changes of ecosystems, with the aim of providing guidance on the use of these data in ecosystem risk assessment. We suggest that decisions on the use of satellite remote sensing should be made a priori and deductively with the assistance of conceptual ecosystem models that identify the primary indicators representing the dynamics of a focal ecosystem. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An introduction to video image compression and authentication technology for safeguards applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Johnson, C.S.

1995-01-01

Verification of a video image has been a major problem for safeguards for several years. Various verification schemes have been tried on analog video signals ever since the mid-1970's. These schemes have provided a measure of protection but have never been widely adopted. The development of reasonably priced complex video processing integrated circuits makes it possible to digitize a video image and then compress the resulting digital file into a smaller file without noticeable loss of resolution. Authentication and/or encryption algorithms can be more easily applied to digital video files that have been compressed. The compressed video files require less time for algorithm processing and image transmission. An important safeguards application for authenticated, compressed, digital video images is in unattended video surveillance systems and remote monitoring systems. The use of digital images in the surveillance system makes it possible to develop remote monitoring systems that send images over narrow bandwidth channels such as the common telephone line. This paper discusses the video compression process, authentication algorithm, and data format selected to transmit and store the authenticated images

Improving the accuracy of self-assessment of practical clinical skills using video feedback--the importance of including benchmarks.

Science.gov (United States)

Hawkins, S C; Osborne, A; Schofield, S J; Pournaras, D J; Chester, J F

2012-01-01

Isolated video recording has not been demonstrated to improve self-assessment accuracy. This study examines if the inclusion of a defined standard benchmark performance in association with video feedback of a student's own performance improves the accuracy of student self-assessment of clinical skills. Final year medical students were video recorded performing a standardised suturing task in a simulated environment. After the exercise, the students self-assessed their performance using global rating scales (GRSs). An identical self-assessment process was repeated following video review of their performance. Students were then shown a video-recorded 'benchmark performance', which was specifically developed for the study. This demonstrated the competency levels required to score full marks (30 points). A further self-assessment task was then completed. Students' scores were correlated against expert assessor scores. A total of 31 final year medical students participated. Student self-assessment scores before video feedback demonstrated moderate positive correlation with expert assessor scores (r = 0.48, p benchmark performance demonstration, self-assessment scores demonstrated a very strong positive correlation with expert scores (r = 0.83, p benchmark performance in combination with video feedback may significantly improve the accuracy of students' self-assessments.

USDOE Remote Sensing Laboratory multisensor surveys

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tinney, L.; Christel, L.; Clark, H.; Mackey, H.

1996-01-01

The United States Department of Energy (USDOE) maintains a Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) to support nuclear related programs of the US Government. The mission of the organization includes both emergency response and routine environmental assessments of nuclear facilities. The unique suite of equipment used by RSL for multisensor surveys of nuclear facilities include gamma radiation sensors, mapping quality aerial cameras, video cameras, thermal imagers, and multispectral scanners. Results for RSL multisensor surveys that have been conducted at the Savannah River Site (SRS) located in South Carolina are presented

Video Quality Assessment and Machine Learning: Performance and Interpretability

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Søgaard, Jacob; Forchhammer, Søren; Korhonen, Jari

2015-01-01

In this work we compare a simple and a complex Machine Learning (ML) method used for the purpose of Video Quality Assessment (VQA). The simple ML method chosen is the Elastic Net (EN), which is a regularized linear regression model and easier to interpret. The more complex method chosen is Support...... Vector Regression (SVR), which has gained popularity in VQA research. Additionally, we present an ML-based feature selection method. Also, it is investigated how well the methods perform when tested on videos from other datasets. Our results show that content-independent cross-validation performance...... on a single dataset can be misleading and that in the case of very limited training and test data, especially in regards to different content as is the case for many video datasets, a simple ML approach is the better choice....

Using industry ROV videos to assess fish associations with subsea pipelines

Science.gov (United States)

McLean, D. L.; Partridge, J. C.; Bond, T.; Birt, M. J.; Bornt, K. R.; Langlois, T. J.

2017-06-01

Remote Operated Vehicles are routinely used to undertake inspection and maintenance activities of underwater pipelines in north-west Australia. In doing so, many terabytes of geo-referenced underwater video are collected at depths, and on a scale usually unobtainable for ecological research. We assessed fish diversity and abundance from existing ROV videos collected along 2-3 km sections of two pipelines in north-west Australia, one at 60-80 m water depth and the other at 120-130 m. A total of 5962 individual fish from 92 species and 42 families were observed. Both pipelines were characterised by a high abundance of commercially important fishes including: snappers (Lutjanidae) and groupers (Epinephelidae). The presence of thousands of unidentifiable larval fish, in addition to juveniles, sub-adults and adults suggests that the pipelines may be enhancing, rather than simply attracting, fish stocks. The prevalence and high complexity of sponges on the shallower pipeline and of deepwater corals on the deeper pipeline had a strong positive correlation with the fish abundance. These habitats likely offer a significant food source and refuge for fish, but also for invertebrates upon which fish feed. A greater diversity on the shallower pipeline, and a higher abundance of fishes on both pipelines, were associated with unsupported pipeline sections (spans) and many species appeared to be utilising pipeline spans as refuges. This study is a first look at the potential value of subsea pipelines for fishes on the north-west shelf. While the results suggest that these sections of pipeline appear to offer significant habitat that supports diverse and important commercially fished species, further work, including off-pipeline surveys on the natural seafloor, are required to determine conclusively the ecological value of pipelines and thereby inform discussions regarding the ecological implications of pipeline decommissioning.

International remote monitoring project Argentina Nuclear Power Station Spent Fuel Transfer Remote Monitoring System

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schneider, S.; Lucero, R.; Glidewell, D.

1997-01-01

The Autoridad Regulataria Nuclear (ARN) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) are cooperating on the development of a Remote Monitoring System for nuclear nonproliferation efforts. A Remote Monitoring System for spent fuel transfer will be installed at the Argentina Nuclear Power Station in Embalse, Argentina. The system has been designed by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) providing gamma and neutron sensors. This project will test and evaluate the fundamental design and implementation of the Remote Monitoring System in its application to regional and international safeguards efficiency. This paper provides a description of the monitoring system and its functions. The Remote Monitoring System consists of gamma and neutron radiation sensors, RF systems, and video systems integrated into a coherent functioning whole. All sensor data communicate over an Echelon LonWorks Network to a single data logger. The Neumann DCM 14 video module is integrated into the Remote Monitoring System. All sensor and image data are stored on a Data Acquisition System (DAS) and archived and reviewed on a Data and Image Review Station (DIRS). Conventional phone lines are used as the telecommunications link to transmit on-site collected data and images to remote locations. The data and images are authenticated before transmission. Data review stations will be installed at ARN in Buenos Aires, Argentina, ABACC in Rio De Janeiro, IAEA Headquarters in Vienna, and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 2 refs., 2 figs

RICE: A Reliable and Efficient Remote Instrumentation Collaboration Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Prasad Calyam

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Remote access of scientific instruments over the Internet (i.e., remote instrumentation demand high-resolution (2D and 3D video image transfers with simultaneous real-time mouse and keyboard controls. Consequently, user quality of experience (QoE is highly sensitive to network bottlenecks. Further, improper user control while reacting to impaired video caused due to network bottlenecks could result in physical damages to the expensive instrument equipment. Hence, it is vital to understand the interplay between (a user keyboard/mouse actions toward the instrument, and (b corresponding network reactions for transfer of instrument video images toward the user. In this paper, we first present an analytical model for characterizing user and network interplay during remote instrumentation sessions in terms of demand and supply interplay principles of traditional economics. Next, we describe the trends of the model parameters using subjective and objective measurements obtained from QoE experiments. Thereafter, we describe our Remote Instrumentation Collaboration Environment (RICE software that leverages our experiences from the user and network interplay studies, and has functionalities that facilitate reliable and efficient remote instrumentation such as (a network health awareness to detect network bottleneck periods, and (b collaboration tools for multiple participants to interact during research and training sessions.

US remote monitoring operational experience

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dupree, S.A.; Sonnier, C.S.

1997-01-01

Under international partnerships and bilateral agreements with the U.S. Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories, other national laboratories, and international partner organizations have emplaced remote monitoring systems in nuclear facilities and laboratories in various parts of the world for the purpose of conducting field trials of remote monitoring. The purpose of the present report is to review the results from these field trials and draw general conclusions regarding the trials. Many thousands of hours of sensor and system operation have been logged, and data have been retrieved from many locations. In virtually all cases the system components have functioned as intended and data have been successfully collected and transmitted for review. Comparisons between front-end-triggered video and time-lapse video have shown that the triggered record has captured all relevant monitored operations at the various nuclear facilities included in the field trials. We believe the utility and functional reliability of remote monitoring for international safeguards has been shown. However, it should be kept in mind that openness and transparency, including some form of short-notice inspections, are likely to be prerequisites to the safeguards implementation of remote monitoring in any State

Photo-acoustic and video-acoustic methods for sensing distant sound sources

Science.gov (United States)

Slater, Dan; Kozacik, Stephen; Kelmelis, Eric

2017-05-01

Long range telescopic video imagery of distant terrestrial scenes, aircraft, rockets and other aerospace vehicles can be a powerful observational tool. But what about the associated acoustic activity? A new technology, Remote Acoustic Sensing (RAS), may provide a method to remotely listen to the acoustic activity near these distant objects. Local acoustic activity sometimes weakly modulates the ambient illumination in a way that can be remotely sensed. RAS is a new type of microphone that separates an acoustic transducer into two spatially separated components: 1) a naturally formed in situ acousto-optic modulator (AOM) located within the distant scene and 2) a remote sensing readout device that recovers the distant audio. These two elements are passively coupled over long distances at the speed of light by naturally occurring ambient light energy or other electromagnetic fields. Stereophonic, multichannel and acoustic beam forming are all possible using RAS techniques and when combined with high-definition video imagery it can help to provide a more cinema like immersive viewing experience. A practical implementation of a remote acousto-optic readout device can be a challenging engineering problem. The acoustic influence on the optical signal is generally weak and often with a strong bias term. The optical signal is further degraded by atmospheric seeing turbulence. In this paper, we consider two fundamentally different optical readout approaches: 1) a low pixel count photodiode based RAS photoreceiver and 2) audio extraction directly from a video stream. Most of our RAS experiments to date have used the first method for reasons of performance and simplicity. But there are potential advantages to extracting audio directly from a video stream. These advantages include the straight forward ability to work with multiple AOMs (useful for acoustic beam forming), simpler optical configurations, and a potential ability to use certain preexisting video recordings. However

Concerns of Quality and Safety in Public Domain Surgical Education Videos: An Assessment of the Critical View of Safety in Frequently Used Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy Videos.

Science.gov (United States)

Deal, Shanley B; Alseidi, Adnan A

2017-12-01

Online videos are among the most common resources for case preparation. Using crowd sourcing, we evaluated the relationship between operative quality and viewing characteristics of online laparoscopic cholecystectomy videos. We edited 160 online videos of laparoscopic cholecystectomy to 60 seconds or less. Crowd workers (CW) rated videos using Global Objective Assessment of Laparoscopic Skills (GOALS), the critical view of safety (CVS) criteria, and assigned overall pass/fail ratings if CVS was achieved; linear mixed effects models derived average ratings. Views, likes, dislikes, subscribers, and country were recorded for subset analysis of YouTube videos. Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC) assessed correlation between performance measures. One video (0.06%) achieved a passing CVS score of ≥5; 23%, ≥4; 44%, ≥3; 79%, ≥2; and 100% ≥1. Pass/fail ratings correlated to CVS, SCC 0.95 (p quality. The average CVS and GOALS scores were no different for videos with >20,000 views (22%) compared with those with online surgical videos of LC. Favorable characteristics, such as number of views or likes, do not translate to higher quality. Copyright © 2017 American College of Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Development and Validation of a Video Measure for Assessing Women’s Risk Perception for Alcohol-Related Sexual Assault

Science.gov (United States)

Parks, Kathleen A.; Levonyan-Radloff, Kristine; Dearing, Ronda L.; Hequembourg, Amy; Testa, Maria

2016-01-01

Objective Using an iterative process, a series of three video scenarios were developed for use as a standardized measure for assessing women’s perception of risks for alcohol-related sexual assault (SA). The videos included ambiguous and clear behavioral and environmental risk cues. Method Focus group discussions with young, female heavy drinkers (N = 42) were used to develop three videos at different risk levels (low, moderate, and high) in Study 1. Realism, reliability, and validity of the videos were assessed using multiple methods in Studies 2 and 3. One hundred-four women were used to compare differences in risk perception across the video risk level in Study 2. In Study 3 (N = 60), we assessed women’s perceptions of the low and high risk videos under conditions of no alcohol and alcohol. Results The realism and reliability of the videos were good. Women who viewed the low risk video compared to women who viewed the moderate and high risk videos perceived less risk for SA. We found an interaction between alcohol and risk perception such that, women in the alcohol condition were less likely to perceive risk when watching the high risk video. Conclusions As the video risk level increased, women’s perception of risk increased. These findings provide convergent evidence for the validity of the video measure. Given the limited number of standardized scenarios for assessing risk perception for sexual assault, our findings suggest that these videos may provide a needed standardized measure. PMID:27747131

Assessment of YouTube videos as a source of information on medication use in pregnancy.

Science.gov (United States)

Hansen, Craig; Interrante, Julia D; Ailes, Elizabeth C; Frey, Meghan T; Broussard, Cheryl S; Godoshian, Valerie J; Lewis, Courtney; Polen, Kara N D; Garcia, Amanda P; Gilboa, Suzanne M

2016-01-01

When making decisions about medication use in pregnancy, women consult many information sources, including the Internet. The aim of this study was to assess the content of publicly accessible YouTube videos that discuss medication use in pregnancy. Using 2023 distinct combinations of search terms related to medications and pregnancy, we extracted metadata from YouTube videos using a YouTube video Application Programming Interface. Relevant videos were defined as those with a medication search term and a pregnancy-related search term in either the video title or description. We viewed relevant videos and abstracted content from each video into a database. We documented whether videos implied each medication to be "safe" or "unsafe" in pregnancy and compared that assessment with the medication's Teratogen Information System (TERIS) rating. After viewing 651 videos, 314 videos with information about medication use in pregnancy were available for the final analyses. The majority of videos were from law firms (67%), television segments (10%), or physicians (8%). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) were the most common medication class named (225 videos, 72%), and 88% of videos about SSRIs indicated that they were unsafe for use in pregnancy. However, the TERIS ratings for medication products in this class range from "unlikely" to "minimal" teratogenic risk. For the majority of medications, current YouTube video content does not adequately reflect what is known about the safety of their use in pregnancy and should be interpreted cautiously. However, YouTube could serve as a platform for communicating evidence-based medication safety information. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Scale to Assess Science Activity Videos (SASAV): The Study of Validity and Reliability

Science.gov (United States)

Kara, Yilmaz; Bakirci, Hasan

2018-01-01

The purpose of the study was to develop an assessment scale for science activity videos that can be used to determine qualified science activity videos that can fulfill the objectives of activity based science education, help teachers to evaluate any science activity videos and decide whether to include into science learning process. The subjects…

Operation quality assessment model for video conference system

Science.gov (United States)

Du, Bangshi; Qi, Feng; Shao, Sujie; Wang, Ying; Li, Weijian

2018-01-01

Video conference system has become an important support platform for smart grid operation and management, its operation quality is gradually concerning grid enterprise. First, the evaluation indicator system covering network, business and operation maintenance aspects was established on basis of video conference system's operation statistics. Then, the operation quality assessment model combining genetic algorithm with regularized BP neural network was proposed, which outputs operation quality level of the system within a time period and provides company manager with some optimization advice. The simulation results show that the proposed evaluation model offers the advantages of fast convergence and high prediction accuracy in contrast with regularized BP neural network, and its generalization ability is superior to LM-BP neural network and Bayesian BP neural network.

Remote programming of cochlear implants: a telecommunications model.

Science.gov (United States)

McElveen, John T; Blackburn, Erin L; Green, J Douglas; McLear, Patrick W; Thimsen, Donald J; Wilson, Blake S

2010-09-01

Evaluate the effectiveness of remote programming for cochlear implants. Retrospective review of the cochlear implant performance for patients who had undergone mapping and programming of their cochlear implant via remote connection through the Internet. Postoperative Hearing in Noise Test and Consonant/Nucleus/Consonant word scores for 7 patients who had undergone remote mapping and programming of their cochlear implant were compared with the mean scores of 7 patients who had been programmed by the same audiologist over a 12-month period. Times required for remote and direct programming were also compared. The quality of the Internet connection was assessed using standardized measures. Remote programming was performed via a virtual private network with a separate software program used for video and audio linkage. All 7 patients were programmed successfully via remote connectivity. No untoward patient experiences were encountered. No statistically significant differences could be found in comparing postoperative Hearing in Noise Test and Consonant/Nucleus/Consonant word scores for patients who had undergone remote programming versus a similar group of patients who had their cochlear implant programmed directly. Remote programming did not require a significantly longer programming time for the audiologist with these 7 patients. Remote programming of a cochlear implant can be performed safely without any deterioration in the quality of the programming. This ability to remotely program cochlear implant patients gives the potential to extend cochlear implantation to underserved areas in the United States and elsewhere.

Heart rate measurement based on face video sequence

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Fang; Zhou, Qin-Wu; Wu, Peng; Chen, Xing; Yang, Xiaofeng; Yan, Hong-jian

2015-03-01

This paper proposes a new non-contact heart rate measurement method based on photoplethysmography (PPG) theory. With this method we can measure heart rate remotely with a camera and ambient light. We collected video sequences of subjects, and detected remote PPG signals through video sequences. Remote PPG signals were analyzed with two methods, Blind Source Separation Technology (BSST) and Cross Spectral Power Technology (CSPT). BSST is a commonly used method, and CSPT is used for the first time in the study of remote PPG signals in this paper. Both of the methods can acquire heart rate, but compared with BSST, CSPT has clearer physical meaning, and the computational complexity of CSPT is lower than that of BSST. Our work shows that heart rates detected by CSPT method have good consistency with the heart rates measured by a finger clip oximeter. With good accuracy and low computational complexity, the CSPT method has a good prospect for the application in the field of home medical devices and mobile health devices.

Direct Observation vs. Video-Based Assessment in Flexible Cystoscopy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dagnaes-Hansen, Julia; Mahmood, Oria; Bube, Sarah

2018-01-01

.86. Interrater reliability was 0.74 for single measure and 0.85 for average measures. A hawk-dove effect was seen between the 2 raters. Direct observer bias was detected when comparing direct observer scores to the assessment by an independent video-rater (p

Methods and Algorithms for Detecting Objects in Video Files

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nguyen The Cuong

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Video files are files that store motion pictures and sounds like in real life. In today's world, the need for automated processing of information in video files is increasing. Automated processing of information has a wide range of application including office/home surveillance cameras, traffic control, sports applications, remote object detection, and others. In particular, detection and tracking of object movement in video file plays an important role. This article describes the methods of detecting objects in video files. Today, this problem in the field of computer vision is being studied worldwide.

The TMI-2 remote technology program

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bengel, P.R.

1986-01-01

Since the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2), an aggressive approach has been pursued in developing the tools needed for the recovery of the plant. The plant's owner has embarked on a systematic program to develop remote equipment. The program developed conceptual and then physical equipment. The remote reconnaissance vehicles (RRVs) and the remote working vehicle (RWV) span the requirements of the recovery program from the ability to perform radiological and video surveys to heavy-duty decontamination and demolition work. 4 figs

Design Scheme of Remote Monitoring System Based on Qt

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xu Dawei

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This paper introduces a design scheme of remote monitoring system based on Qt, the scheme of remote monitoring system based on S3C2410 and Qt, with the aid of cross platform development tools Qt and powerful ARM platform design and implementation. The development of remote video surveillance system based on embedded terminal has practical significance and value.

STANDARDIZING QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF FUSED REMOTELY SENSED IMAGES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

C. Pohl

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The multitude of available operational remote sensing satellites led to the development of many image fusion techniques to provide high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution images. The comparison of different techniques is necessary to obtain an optimized image for the different applications of remote sensing. There are two approaches in assessing image quality: 1. Quantitatively by visual interpretation and 2. Quantitatively using image quality indices. However an objective comparison is difficult due to the fact that a visual assessment is always subject and a quantitative assessment is done by different criteria. Depending on the criteria and indices the result varies. Therefore it is necessary to standardize both processes (qualitative and quantitative assessment in order to allow an objective image fusion quality evaluation. Various studies have been conducted at the University of Osnabrueck (UOS to establish a standardized process to objectively compare fused image quality. First established image fusion quality assessment protocols, i.e. Quality with No Reference (QNR and Khan's protocol, were compared on varies fusion experiments. Second the process of visual quality assessment was structured and standardized with the aim to provide an evaluation protocol. This manuscript reports on the results of the comparison and provides recommendations for future research.

Standardizing Quality Assessment of Fused Remotely Sensed Images

Science.gov (United States)

Pohl, C.; Moellmann, J.; Fries, K.

2017-09-01

The multitude of available operational remote sensing satellites led to the development of many image fusion techniques to provide high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution images. The comparison of different techniques is necessary to obtain an optimized image for the different applications of remote sensing. There are two approaches in assessing image quality: 1. Quantitatively by visual interpretation and 2. Quantitatively using image quality indices. However an objective comparison is difficult due to the fact that a visual assessment is always subject and a quantitative assessment is done by different criteria. Depending on the criteria and indices the result varies. Therefore it is necessary to standardize both processes (qualitative and quantitative assessment) in order to allow an objective image fusion quality evaluation. Various studies have been conducted at the University of Osnabrueck (UOS) to establish a standardized process to objectively compare fused image quality. First established image fusion quality assessment protocols, i.e. Quality with No Reference (QNR) and Khan's protocol, were compared on varies fusion experiments. Second the process of visual quality assessment was structured and standardized with the aim to provide an evaluation protocol. This manuscript reports on the results of the comparison and provides recommendations for future research.

Using Student-Produced Video to Validate Head-to-Toe Assessment Performance.

Science.gov (United States)

Purpora, Christina; Prion, Susan

2018-03-01

This study explored third-semester baccalaureate nursing students' perceptions of the value of using student-produced video as an approach for learning head-to-toe assessment, an essential clinical nursing skill taught in the classroom. A cognitive apprenticeship model guided the study. The researchers developed a 34-item survey. A convenience sample of 72 students enrolled in an applied assessment and nursing fundamentals course at a university in the western United States provided the data. Most students reported a videotaping process that worked, supportive faculty, valuable faculty review of their work, confidence, a sense of performance independence, the ability to identify normal assessment findings, and few barriers to learning. The results suggested that a student-produced video approach to learning head-to-toe assessment was effective. Further, the study demonstrated how to leverage available instructional technology to provide meaningful, personalized instruction and feedback to students about an essential nursing skill. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(3):154-158.]. Copyright 2018, SLACK Incorporated.

Finnish remote environmental monitoring field demonstration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Toivonen, H.; Leppaenen, A.; Ylaetalo, S.; Lehtinen, J.; Hokkinen, J.; Tarvainen, M.; Crawford, T.; Glidewell, D.; Smartt, H.; Torres, J.

1997-10-01

Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), Helsinki, Finland and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), working under the Finnish Support Program to IAEA Safeguards and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) funded International Remote Monitoring Program (Task FIN E 935), have undertaken a joint effort to demonstrate the use of remote monitoring for environmental air sampling and safeguards applications. The results of the task will be used by the IAEA to identify the feasibility, cost-effectiveness, reliability, advantages, and problems associated with remote environmental monitoring. An essential prerequisite for a reliable remote air sampling system is the protection of samples against tampering. Means must be developed to guarantee that the sampling itself has been performed as designed and the original samples are not substituted with samples produced with other equipment at another site. One such method is to label the samples with an unequivocal tag. In addition, the inspection personnel must have the capability to remotely monitor and access the automated environmental air sampling system through the use of various sensors and video imagery equipment. A unique aspect to this project is the network integration of remote monitoring equipment with a STUK radiation monitoring system. This integration will allow inspectors to remotely view air sampler radiation data and sensor/image data through separate software applications on the same review station. A sensor network and video system will be integrated with the SNL developed Modular Integrated Monitoring System (MIMS) to provide a comprehensive remote monitoring approach for safeguards purposes. This field trial system is being implemented through a multiphase approach for use by STUK, SNL, and for possible future use by the IAEA

Challenges in assessing food environments in northern and remote communities in Canada.

Science.gov (United States)

Skinner, Kelly; Burnett, Kristin; Williams, Patricia; Martin, Debbie; Stothart, Christopher; LeBlanc, Joseph; Veeraraghavan, Gigi; Sheedy, Amanda

2016-06-09

Effective tools for retail food environments in northern and remote communities are lacking. This paper examines the challenges of conducting food environment assessments in northern and remote communities in Canada encountered during our experience with a food costing project. One of the goals of the Paying for Nutrition in the North project is to develop guidelines to improve current food costing tools for northern Canada. Paying for Nutrition illustrates the complex context of measuring food environments in northern and remote communities. Through the development of a food costing methodology guide to assess northern food environments, several contextual issues emerged, including retail store oligopolies in communities; the importance of assessing food quality; informal social food economies; and the challenge of costing the acquisition and consumption of land- and water-based foods. Food environment measures designed for northern and remote communities need to reflect the geographic context in which they are being employed and must include input from local residents.

Advances in Remote Respiratory Assessments for People with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Systematic Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Baroi, Sidney; McNamara, Renae J; McKenzie, David K; Gandevia, Simon; Brodie, Matthew A

2018-06-01

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of mortality. Advances in remote technologies and telemedicine provide new ways to monitor respiratory function and improve chronic disease management. However, telemedicine does not always include remote respiratory assessments, and the current state of knowledge for people with COPD has not been evaluated. Systematically review the use of remote respiratory assessments in people with COPD, including the following questions: What devices have been used? Can acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) be predicted by using remote devices? Do remote respiratory assessments improve health-related outcomes? The review protocol was registered (PROSPERO 2016:CRD42016049333). MEDLINE, EMBASE, and COMPENDEX databases were searched for studies that included remote respiratory assessments in people with COPD. A narrative synthesis was then conducted by two reviewers according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria. Forced expiratory volume assessed daily by using a spirometer was the most common modality. Other measurements included resting respiratory rate, respiratory sounds, and end-tidal carbon dioxide level. Remote assessments had high user satisfaction. Benefits included early detection of AECOPD, improved health-related outcomes, and the ability to replace hospital care with a virtual ward. Remote respiratory assessments are feasible and when combined with sufficient organizational backup can improve health-related outcomes in some but not all cohorts. Future research should focus on the early detection, intervention, and rehabilitation for AECOPD in high-risk people who have limited access to best care and investigate continuous as well as intermittent monitoring.

Research and Implementation of Software Used for the Remote Control for VM700T Video Measuring Instrument

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Song Wenjie

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, the measurement software which can be used to realize remote control of the VM700T video measuring instrument is introduced. The authors can operate VM700T by a virtual panel on the client computer, select the results that the measuring equipment displayed to transmit it, and then display the image on the VM700T virtual panel in real time. The system does have some practical values and play an important role in distance learning. The functions that the system realized mainly includes four aspects: the real-time transmission of message based on the socket technology, the serial connection between server PC and VM700T measuring equipment, the image acquisition based on VFW technology and JPEG compression and decompression, and the network transmission of image files. The actual network transmission test is shown that the data acquisition method of this thesis is flexible and convenient, and the system is of extraordinary stability. It can display the measurement results in real time and basically realize the requirements of remote control. In the content, this paper includes a summary of principle, the detailed introduction of the system realization process and some related technology.

Compensating for Type-I Errors in Video Quality Assessment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brunnström, Kjell; Tavakoli, Samira; Søgaard, Jacob

2015-01-01

This paper analyzes the impact on compensating for Type-I errors in video quality assessment. A Type-I error is to incorrectly conclude that there is an effect. The risk increases with the number of comparisons that are performed in statistical tests. Type-I errors are an issue often neglected...

vm119_0601b-- Video mosaic segments

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The Canadian ROPOS remotely operated vehicle (ROV) outfitted with video equipment (and other devices) was deployed from the NOAA Ship McAurthurII during May-June...

Through the Looking Glass: Real-Time Video Using 'Smart' Technology Provides Enhanced Intraoperative Logistics.

Science.gov (United States)

Baldwin, Andrew C W; Mallidi, Hari R; Baldwin, John C; Sandoval, Elena; Cohn, William E; Frazier, O H; Singh, Steve K

2016-01-01

In the setting of increasingly complex medical therapies and limited physician resources, the recent emergence of 'smart' technology offers tremendous potential for improved logistics, efficiency, and communication between medical team members. In an effort to harness these capabilities, we sought to evaluate the utility of this technology in surgical practice through the employment of a wearable camera device during cardiothoracic organ recovery. A single procurement surgeon was trained for use of an Explorer Edition Google Glass (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA) during the recovery process. Live video feed of each procedure was securely broadcast to allow for members of the home transplant team to remotely participate in organ assessment. Primary outcomes involved demonstration of technological feasibility and validation of quality assurance through group assessment. The device was employed for the recovery of four organs: a right single lung, a left single lung, and two bilateral lung harvests. Live video of the visualization process was remotely accessed by the home transplant team, and supplemented final verification of organ quality. In each case, the organs were accepted for transplant without disruption of standard procurement protocols. Media files generated during the procedures were stored in a secure drive for future documentation, evaluation, and education purposes without preservation of patient identifiers. Live video streaming can improve quality assurance measures by allowing off-site members of the transplant team to participate in the final assessment of donor organ quality. While further studies are needed, this project suggests that the application of mobile 'smart' technology offers not just immediate value, but the potential to transform our approach to the practice of medicine.

Video-based intervention for children with autism: towards improved assessment of pre-requisite imitation skills.

Science.gov (United States)

Rayner, Christopher

2015-04-01

To explore the relationship between responses to imitation assessment and video-based intervention (VBI) in children with autism. Interview- and observation-based imitation assessments were conducted for five boys with autism prior to VBI across three studies. In two of the three studies, the boys' imitative responses to videos with an animated model and a human model were also compared. Participants who were assessed to have strong imitation skills were also those who responded more positively to VBI. No clear differences were reported in the boys' responses to the equivalent videos with the animated model and the human model. The level of imitation skills required for successful VBI is relative to the target behaviour. Revision of existing imitation assessment measures, as well as development and validation of more comprehensive measures is warranted for use in conjunction with VBI.

User's guide for remote access of the Performance Assessment Center

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Peterson, C.R.; Kostelnik, K.M.

1991-03-01

The Performance Assessment Center (PAC) was established by the Department of Energy's National Low-Level Waste Management Program to provide technical assistance to support the development of low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities. This user's manual provides guidance to remote users of the PAC. Information is presented on how remote users may most effectively access and use the systems available at the Performance Assessment Center in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Access requirements and operating procedures are presented to assist the first-time PAC user. This manual also provides brief descriptions of each code available on the system

No-reference pixel based video quality assessment for HEVC decoded video

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Huang, Xin; Søgaard, Jacob; Forchhammer, Søren

2017-01-01

the quantization step used in the Intra coding is estimated. We map the obtained HEVC features using an Elastic Net to predict subjective video quality scores, Mean Opinion Scores (MOS). The performance is verified on a dataset consisting of HEVC coded 4 K UHD (resolution equal to 3840 x 2160) video sequences...

Using video games to combine learning and assessment in mathematics education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kristian Juha Mikael Kiili

2015-12-01

Full Text Available One problem with most education systems is that learning and (summative assessment are generally treated as quite separate things in schools. We argue that video games can provide an opportunity to combine these processes in an engaging and effective way. The present study focuses on investigating the effectiveness and the assessment power of two different mathematics video games, Semideus and Wuzzit Trouble. In the current study, we validated the Semideus game as a rational number test instrument. We used it as a pre- and a post-test for a three-hour intervention in which we studied the effectiveness of Wuzzit Trouble, a game built on whole number arithmetic and designed to enhance mathematical thinking and problem solving skills. The results showed that (1 games can be used to assess mathematical knowledge validly, and (2 even short game-based interventions can be very effective. Based on the results, we argue that game-based assessment can create a more complete picture of mathematical knowledge than simply measuring students' accuracy, providing indicators of student misconceptions and conceptual change processes

Remote sensing in Michigan for land resource management: Highway impact assessment

Science.gov (United States)

1972-01-01

An existing section of M-14 freeway constructed in 1964 and a potential extension from Ann Arbor to Plymouth, Michigan provided an opportunity for investigating the potential uses of remote sensing techniques in providing projective information needed for assessing the impact of highway construction. Remote sensing data included multispectral scanner imagery and aerial photography. Only minor effects on vegetation, soils, and land use were found to have occurred in the existing corridor. Adverse changes expected to take place in the corridor proposed for extension of the freeway can be minimized by proper design of drainage ditches and attention to good construction practices. Remote sensing can be used to collect and present many types of data useful for highway impact assessment on land use, vegetation categories and species, soil properties and hydrologic characteristics.

A remote assessment system with a vision robot and wearable sensors.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Tong; Wang, Jue; Ren, Yumiao; Li, Jianjun

2004-01-01

This paper describes an ongoing researched remote rehabilitation assessment system that has a 6-freedom double-eyes vision robot to catch vision information, and a group of wearable sensors to acquire biomechanical signals. A server computer is fixed on the robot, to provide services to the robot's controller and all the sensors. The robot is connected to Internet by wireless channel, and so do the sensors to the robot. Rehabilitation professionals can semi-automatically practise an assessment program via Internet. The preliminary results show that the smart device, including the robot and the sensors, can improve the quality of remote assessment, and reduce the complexity of operation at a distance.

Headlines: Planet Earth: Improving Climate Literacy with Short Format News Videos

Science.gov (United States)

Tenenbaum, L. F.; Kulikov, A.; Jackson, R.

2012-12-01

One of the challenges of communicating climate science is the sense that climate change is remote and unconnected to daily life--something that's happening to someone else or in the future. To help face this challenge, NASA's Global Climate Change website http://climate.nasa.gov has launched a new video series, "Headlines: Planet Earth," which focuses on current climate news events. This rapid-response video series uses 3D video visualization technology combined with real-time satellite data and images, to throw a spotlight on real-world events.. The "Headlines: Planet Earth" news video products will be deployed frequently, ensuring timeliness. NASA's Global Climate Change Website makes extensive use of interactive media, immersive visualizations, ground-based and remote images, narrated and time-lapse videos, time-series animations, and real-time scientific data, plus maps and user-friendly graphics that make the scientific content both accessible and engaging to the public. The site has also won two consecutive Webby Awards for Best Science Website. Connecting climate science to current real-world events will contribute to improving climate literacy by making climate science relevant to everyday life.

348 A GIS AND REMOTE SENSING APPROACH TO ASSESSMENT ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Osondu

A GIS AND REMOTE SENSING APPROACH TO ASSESSMENT OF DEFORESTATION IN ... This study measured and analyzed deforestation in Uyo and examined the possible effects of the ..... the Burkill technique, (1985, 1994, 1995, 1997.

Rapid, low-cost, image analysis through video processing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Levinson, R.A.; Marrs, R.W.; Grantham, D.G.

1976-01-01

Remote Sensing now provides the data necessary to solve many resource problems. However, many of the complex image processing and analysis functions used in analysis of remotely-sensed data are accomplished using sophisticated image analysis equipment. High cost of this equipment places many of these techniques beyond the means of most users. A new, more economical, video system capable of performing complex image analysis has now been developed. This report describes the functions, components, and operation of that system. Processing capability of the new video image analysis system includes many of the tasks previously accomplished with optical projectors and digital computers. Video capabilities include: color separation, color addition/subtraction, contrast stretch, dark level adjustment, density analysis, edge enhancement, scale matching, image mixing (addition and subtraction), image ratioing, and construction of false-color composite images. Rapid input of non-digital image data, instantaneous processing and display, relatively low initial cost, and low operating cost gives the video system a competitive advantage over digital equipment. Complex pre-processing, pattern recognition, and statistical analyses must still be handled through digital computer systems. The video system at the University of Wyoming has undergone extensive testing, comparison to other systems, and has been used successfully in practical applications ranging from analysis of x-rays and thin sections to production of color composite ratios of multispectral imagery. Potential applications are discussed including uranium exploration, petroleum exploration, tectonic studies, geologic mapping, hydrology sedimentology and petrography, anthropology, and studies on vegetation and wildlife habitat

Remote repair appliance

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heumann, F.K.; Wilkinson, J.C.; Wooding, D.R.

1997-01-01

A remote appliance for supporting a tool for performing work at a work site on a substantially circular bore of a work piece and for providing video signals of the work site to a remote monitor comprises: a base plate having an inner face and an outer face; a plurality of rollers, wherein each roller is rotatably and adjustably attached to the inner face of the base plate and positioned to roll against the bore of the work piece when the base plate is positioned against the mouth of the bore such that the appliance may be rotated about the bore in a plane substantially parallel to the base plate; a tool holding means for supporting the tool, the tool holding means being adjustably attached to the outer face of the base plate such that the working end of the tool is positioned on the inner face side of the base plate; a camera for providing video signals of the work site to the remote monitor; and a camera holding means for supporting the camera on the inner face side of the base plate, the camera holding means being adjustably attached to the outer face of the base plate. In a preferred embodiment, roller guards are provided to protect the rollers from debris and a bore guard is provided to protect the bore from wear by the rollers and damage from debris. 5 figs

Assessing the Content of YouTube Videos in Educating Patients Regarding Common Imaging Examinations.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenkrantz, Andrew B; Won, Eugene; Doshi, Ankur M

2016-12-01

To assess the content of currently available YouTube videos seeking to educate patients regarding commonly performed imaging examinations. After initial testing of possible search terms, the first two pages of YouTube search results for "CT scan," "MRI," "ultrasound patient," "PET scan," and "mammogram" were reviewed to identify educational patient videos created by health organizations. Sixty-three included videos were viewed and assessed for a range of features. Average views per video were highest for MRI (293,362) and mammography (151,664). Twenty-seven percent of videos used a nontraditional format (eg, animation, song, humor). All videos (100.0%) depicted a patient undergoing the examination, 84.1% a technologist, and 20.6% a radiologist; 69.8% mentioned examination lengths, 65.1% potential pain/discomfort, 41.3% potential radiation, 36.5% a radiology report/results, 27.0% the radiologist's role in interpretation, and 13.3% laboratory work. For CT, 68.8% mentioned intravenous contrast and 37.5% mentioned contrast safety. For MRI, 93.8% mentioned claustrophobia, 87.5% noise, 75.0% need to sit still, 68.8% metal safety, 50.0% intravenous contrast, and 0.0% contrast safety. For ultrasound, 85.7% mentioned use of gel. For PET, 92.3% mentioned radiotracer injection, 61.5% fasting, and 46.2% diabetic precautions. For mammography, unrobing, avoiding deodorant, and possible additional images were all mentioned by 63.6%; dense breasts were mentioned by 0.0%. Educational patient videos on YouTube regarding common imaging examinations received high public interest and may provide a valuable patient resource. Videos most consistently provided information detailing the examination experience and less consistently provided safety information or described the presence and role of the radiologist. Copyright © 2016 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Applying HAZOP analysis in assessing remote handling compatibility of ITER port plugs

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Duisings, L. P. M.; van Til, S.; Magielsen, A. J.; Ronden, D. M. S.; Elzendoorn, B. S. Q.; Heemskerk, C. J. M.

2013-01-01

This paper describes the application of a Hazard and Operability Analysis (HAZOP) methodology in assessing the criticality of remote handling maintenance activities on port plugs in the ITER Hot Cell facility. As part of the ECHUL consortium, the remote handling team at the DIFFER Institute is

Feasibility study for remote assessment of cognitive function in multiple sclerosis.

Science.gov (United States)

George, Michaela F; Holingue, Calliope B; Briggs, Farren B S; Shao, Xiaorong; Bellesis, Kalliope H; Whitmer, Rachel A; Schaefer, Catherine; Benedict, Ralph Hb; Barcellos, Lisa F

2016-01-01

Cognitive impairment is common in multiple sclerosis (MS), and affects employment and quality of life. Large studies are needed to identify risk factors for cognitive decline. Currently, a MS-validated remote assessment for cognitive function does not exist. Studies to determine feasibility of large remote cognitive function investigations in MS have not been published. To determine whether MS patients would participate in remote cognitive studies. We utilized the Modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS-M), a previously validated phone assessment for cognitive function in healthy elderly populations to detect mild cognitive impairment. We identified factors that influenced participation rates. We investigated the relationship between MS risk factors and TICS-M score in cases, and score differences between cases and control individuals. The TICS-M was administered to MS cases and controls. Linear and logistic regression models were utilized. 11.5% of eligible study participants did not participate in cognitive testing. MS cases, females and individuals with lower educational status were more likely to refuse (pTICS-M score among cases (pTICS-M score was significantly lower in cases compared to controls (p=0.007). Our results demonstrate convincingly that a remotely administered cognitive assessment is quite feasible for conducting large epidemiologic studies in MS, and lay the much needed foundation for future work that will utilize MS-validated cognitive measures.

Support and development for remote collaborations in fusion research

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Casper, T.A.; Jong, R.A.; Meyer, W.H.; Moller, J.M.

2000-01-01

Major fusion experiments and modeling efforts rely on joint research of scientists from several locations around the world. A variety of software tools are in use to provide remote interactive access to facilities and data are routinely available over wide-area-network connections to researchers. Audio and video communications, monitoring of control room information and synchronization of remote sites with experimental operations all enhance participation during experiments. Remote distributed computing capabilities allow utilization of off-site computers that now help support the demands of control room analyses and plasma modeling. A collaborative software development project is currently using object technologies with CORBA-based communications to build a network executable transport code that further demonstrates the ability to utilize geographically dispersed resources. Development to extend these concepts with security and naming services and possible applications to instrumentation systems has been initiated. An Information Technology Initiative is deploying communication systems, ISDN (telephone) and IP (network) audio/video (A/V) and web browser-based, to build the infrastructure needed to support remote physics meetings, seminars and interactive discussions

Support and development for remote collaboration in fusion research

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Casper, T A; Jong, R A; Meyer, W H; Moller, J M

1999-01-01

Major fusion experiments and modeling efforts rely on joint research of scientists from several locations around the world. A variety of software tools are in use to provide remote interactive access to facilities and data are routinely available over wide-area-network connections to researchers. Audio and video communications, monitoring of control room information and synchronization of remote sites with experimental operations all enhance participation during experiments. Remote distributed computing capabilities allow utilization of off-site computers that now help support the demands of control room analyses and plasma modeling. A collaborative software development project is currently using object technologies with CORBA-based communications to build a network executable transport code that further demonstrates the ability to utilize geographically dispersed resources. Development to extend these concepts with security and naming services and possible applications to instrumentation systems has been initiated. An Information Technology Initiative is deploying communication systems, ISDN (telephone) and IP (network) audio/video (A/V) and web browser-based, to build the infrastructure needed to support remote physics meetings, seminars and interactive discussions

Wearable technologies for soldier first responder assessment and remote monitoring (Conference Presentation)

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Stephen

2017-05-01

Embedded combat medical personnel require accurate and timely biometric data to ensure appropriate life saving measures. Injured warfighter's operating in remote environments require both assessment and monitoring often while still engaged with enemy forces. Small wearable devices that can be placed on injured personnel capable of collecting essential biometric data, including the capacity to remotely deliver collected data in real-time, would allow additional medical monitoring and triage that will greatly help the medic in the battlefield. These new capabilities will provide a force multiplier through remote assessment, increased survivability, and in freeing engaged warfighter's from direct monitoring thus improving combat effectiveness and increasing situational awareness. Key questions around what information does the medic require and how effective it can be relayed to support personnel are at their early stages of development. A low power biometric wearable device capable of reliable electrocardiogram (EKG) rhythm, temperature, pulse, and other vital data collection which can provide real-time remote monitoring are in development for the Soldier.

Advanced digital video surveillance for safeguard and physical protection

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kumar, R.

2002-01-01

Full text: Video surveillance is a very crucial component in safeguard and physical protection. Digital technology has revolutionized the surveillance scenario and brought in various new capabilities like better image quality, faster search and retrieval of video images, less storage space for recording, efficient transmission and storage of video, better protection of recorded video images, and easy remote accesses to live and recorded video etc. The basic safeguard requirement for verifiably uninterrupted surveillance has remained largely unchanged since its inception. However, changes to the inspection paradigm to admit automated review and remote monitoring have dramatically increased the demands on safeguard surveillance system. Today's safeguard systems can incorporate intelligent motion detection with very low rate of false alarm and less archiving volume, embedded image processing capability for object behavior and event based indexing, object recognition, efficient querying and report generation etc. It also demands cryptographically authenticating, encrypted, and highly compressed video data for efficient, secure, tamper indicating and transmission. In physical protection, intelligent on robust video motion detection, real time moving object detection and tracking from stationary and moving camera platform, multi-camera cooperative tracking, activity detection and recognition, human motion analysis etc. is going to play a key rote in perimeter security. Incorporation of front and video imagery exploitation tools like automatic number plate recognition, vehicle identification and classification, vehicle undercarriage inspection, face recognition, iris recognition and other biometric tools, gesture recognition etc. makes personnel and vehicle access control robust and foolproof. Innovative digital image enhancement techniques coupled with novel sensor design makes low cost, omni-directional vision capable, all weather, day night surveillance a reality

Video Review in Self-Assessment of Pharmacy Students' Communication Skills

Science.gov (United States)

Volino, Lucio R.; Das, Rolee Pathak

2014-01-01

The objectives of this study were to develop a student self-assessment activity of a video-recorded counseling session and evaluate its impact on student self-perceptions of specific communication skills. This activity was incorporated into a core-communications course within the third professional year of a Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum. Student…

Robotics and remote systems applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rabold, D.E.

1996-01-01

This article is a review of numerous remote inspection techniques in use at the Savannah River (and other) facilities. These include: (1) reactor tank inspection robot, (2) californium waste removal robot, (3) fuel rod lubrication robot, (4) cesium source manipulation robot, (5) tank 13 survey and decontamination robots, (6) hot gang valve corridor decontamination and junction box removal robots, (7) lead removal from deionizer vessels robot, (8) HB line cleanup robot, (9) remote operation of a front end loader at WIPP, (10) remote overhead video extendible robot, (11) semi-intelligent mobile observing navigator, (12) remote camera systems in the SRS canyons, (13) cameras and borescope for the DWPF, (14) Hanford waste tank camera system, (15) in-tank precipitation camera system, (16) F-area retention basin pipe crawler, (17) waste tank wall crawler and annulus camera, (18) duct inspection, and (19) deionizer resin sampling

SIRSALE: integrated video database management tools

Science.gov (United States)

Brunie, Lionel; Favory, Loic; Gelas, J. P.; Lefevre, Laurent; Mostefaoui, Ahmed; Nait-Abdesselam, F.

2002-07-01

Video databases became an active field of research during the last decade. The main objective in such systems is to provide users with capabilities to friendly search, access and playback distributed stored video data in the same way as they do for traditional distributed databases. Hence, such systems need to deal with hard issues : (a) video documents generate huge volumes of data and are time sensitive (streams must be delivered at a specific bitrate), (b) contents of video data are very hard to be automatically extracted and need to be humanly annotated. To cope with these issues, many approaches have been proposed in the literature including data models, query languages, video indexing etc. In this paper, we present SIRSALE : a set of video databases management tools that allow users to manipulate video documents and streams stored in large distributed repositories. All the proposed tools are based on generic models that can be customized for specific applications using ad-hoc adaptation modules. More precisely, SIRSALE allows users to : (a) browse video documents by structures (sequences, scenes, shots) and (b) query the video database content by using a graphical tool, adapted to the nature of the target video documents. This paper also presents an annotating interface which allows archivists to describe the content of video documents. All these tools are coupled to a video player integrating remote VCR functionalities and are based on active network technology. So, we present how dedicated active services allow an optimized video transport for video streams (with Tamanoir active nodes). We then describe experiments of using SIRSALE on an archive of news video and soccer matches. The system has been demonstrated to professionals with a positive feedback. Finally, we discuss open issues and present some perspectives.

Privacy enabling technology for video surveillance

Science.gov (United States)

Dufaux, Frédéric; Ouaret, Mourad; Abdeljaoued, Yousri; Navarro, Alfonso; Vergnenègre, Fabrice; Ebrahimi, Touradj

2006-05-01

In this paper, we address the problem privacy in video surveillance. We propose an efficient solution based on transformdomain scrambling of regions of interest in a video sequence. More specifically, the sign of selected transform coefficients is flipped during encoding. We address more specifically the case of Motion JPEG 2000. Simulation results show that the technique can be successfully applied to conceal information in regions of interest in the scene while providing with a good level of security. Furthermore, the scrambling is flexible and allows adjusting the amount of distortion introduced. This is achieved with a small impact on coding performance and negligible computational complexity increase. In the proposed video surveillance system, heterogeneous clients can remotely access the system through the Internet or 2G/3G mobile phone network. Thanks to the inherently scalable Motion JPEG 2000 codestream, the server is able to adapt the resolution and bandwidth of the delivered video depending on the usage environment of the client.

Healthcare Supported by Data Mule Networks in Remote Communities of the Amazon Region

OpenAIRE

Coutinho, Mauro Margalho; Efrat, Alon; Johnson, Thienne; Richa, Andrea; Liu, Mengxue

2014-01-01

This paper investigates the feasibility of using boats as data mule nodes, carrying medical ultrasound videos from remote and isolated communities in the Amazon region in Brazil, to the main city of that area. The videos will be used by physicians to perform remote analysis and follow-up routine of prenatal examinations of pregnant women. Two open source simulators (the ONE and NS-2) were used to evaluate the results obtained utilizing a CoDPON (continuous displacement plan oriented network)....

A Componentizable Server-Side Framework for Building Remote and Virtual Laboratories

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jesús Luis Muros-Cobos

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract—Currently, virtual/remotes laboratories are often being built to improve learning and researching capabilities in some areas of knowledge. Generally these virtual/remotes laboratories are built from scratch again and again, instead of reusing software and hardware infrastructures. This paper presents a new framework, RVLab, to help developers building flexible and robust server-side virtual and remotes laboratories quickly. RVLab affords support for the basic requirements of these systems such as the user management or the resources (instruments and devices reservation. Unlike other lab systems, RVLab is adapted to devices and instruments of any real laboratory due to a secure and robust mechanism that allows the remote execution of lab programs. Moreover, it improves the user interaction with real labs, providing a real-time visualization of experiments and lab instruments by means of the control of video camera placed into lab, and the transmission of video streaming with different quality to users.

Remote Laboratory and Animal Behaviour: An Interactive Open Field System

Science.gov (United States)

Fiore, Lorenzo; Ratti, Giovannino

2007-01-01

Remote laboratories can provide distant learners with practical acquisitions which would otherwise remain precluded. Our proposal here is a remote laboratory on a behavioural test (open field test), with the aim of introducing learners to the observation and analysis of stereotyped behaviour in animals. A real-time video of a mouse in an…

Video calls from lay bystanders to dispatch centers - risk assessment of information security.

Science.gov (United States)

Bolle, Stein R; Hasvold, Per; Henriksen, Eva

2011-09-30

Video calls from mobile phones can improve communication during medical emergencies. Lay bystanders can be instructed and supervised by health professionals at Emergency Medical Communication Centers. Before implementation of video mobile calls in emergencies, issues of information security should be addressed. Information security was assessed for risk, based on the information security standard ISO/IEC 27005:2008. A multi-professional team used structured brainstorming to find threats to the information security aspects confidentiality, quality, integrity, and availability. Twenty security threats of different risk levels were identified and analyzed. Solutions were proposed to reduce the risk level. Given proper implementation, we found no risks to information security that would advocate against the use of video calls between lay bystanders and Emergency Medical Communication Centers. The identified threats should be used as input to formal requirements when planning and implementing video calls from mobile phones for these call centers.

Assessing Video Games to Improve Driving Skills: A Literature Review and Observational Study

OpenAIRE

Sue, Damian; Ray, Pradeep; Talaei-Khoei, Amir; Jonnagaddala, Jitendra; Vichitvanichphong, Suchada

2014-01-01

Background For individuals, especially older adults, playing video games is a promising tool for improving their driving skills. The ease of use, wide availability, and interactivity of gaming consoles make them an attractive simulation tool. Objective The objective of this study was to look at the feasibility and effects of installing video game consoles in the homes of individuals looking to improve their driving skills. Methods A systematic literature review was conducted to assess the eff...

No-Reference Video Quality Assessment Based on Statistical Analysis in 3D-DCT Domain.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Xuelong; Guo, Qun; Lu, Xiaoqiang

2016-05-13

It is an important task to design models for universal no-reference video quality assessment (NR-VQA) in multiple video processing and computer vision applications. However, most existing NR-VQA metrics are designed for specific distortion types which are not often aware in practical applications. A further deficiency is that the spatial and temporal information of videos is hardly considered simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a new NR-VQA metric based on the spatiotemporal natural video statistics (NVS) in 3D discrete cosine transform (3D-DCT) domain. In the proposed method, a set of features are firstly extracted based on the statistical analysis of 3D-DCT coefficients to characterize the spatiotemporal statistics of videos in different views. These features are used to predict the perceived video quality via the efficient linear support vector regression (SVR) model afterwards. The contributions of this paper are: 1) we explore the spatiotemporal statistics of videos in 3DDCT domain which has the inherent spatiotemporal encoding advantage over other widely used 2D transformations; 2) we extract a small set of simple but effective statistical features for video visual quality prediction; 3) the proposed method is universal for multiple types of distortions and robust to different databases. The proposed method is tested on four widely used video databases. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is competitive with the state-of-art NR-VQA metrics and the top-performing FR-VQA and RR-VQA metrics.

Researching Human Experience: video intervention/prevention assessment (VIA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jennifer Patashnick

2005-05-01

Full Text Available Human experience is a critical subject for research. By discussing Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA, a patient-centered health research method where patients teach their clinicians about living with a chronic condition through the creation of visual illness narratives, this paper examines the value of qualitative inquiry and why human experience rarely is investigated directly. An analysis of a sample VIA data is presented to demonstrate how, by utilizing grounded theory and qualitative analysis, one can derive rich and unique information from human experience.

A comparison of Google Glass and traditional video vantage points for bedside procedural skill assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Evans, Heather L; O'Shea, Dylan J; Morris, Amy E; Keys, Kari A; Wright, Andrew S; Schaad, Douglas C; Ilgen, Jonathan S

2016-02-01

This pilot study assessed the feasibility of using first person (1P) video recording with Google Glass (GG) to assess procedural skills, as compared with traditional third person (3P) video. We hypothesized that raters reviewing 1P videos would visualize more procedural steps with greater inter-rater reliability than 3P rating vantages. Seven subjects performed simulated internal jugular catheter insertions. Procedures were recorded by both Google Glass and an observer's head-mounted camera. Videos were assessed by 3 expert raters using a task-specific checklist (CL) and both an additive- and summative-global rating scale (GRS). Mean scores were compared by t-tests. Inter-rater reliabilities were calculated using intraclass correlation coefficients. The 1P vantage was associated with a significantly higher mean CL score than the 3P vantage (7.9 vs 6.9, P = .02). Mean GRS scores were not significantly different. Mean inter-rater reliabilities for the CL, additive-GRS, and summative-GRS were similar between vantages. 1P vantage recordings may improve visualization of tasks for behaviorally anchored instruments (eg, CLs), whereas maintaining similar global ratings and inter-rater reliability when compared with conventional 3P vantage recordings. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

DARLA: Data Assimilation and Remote Sensing for Littoral Applications

Science.gov (United States)

2017-03-01

at reasonable logistical or financial costs . Remote sensing provides an attractive alternative. We discuss the range of different sensors that are...DARLA: Data Assimilation and Remote Sensing for Littoral Applications Final Report Award Number: N000141010932 Andrew T. Jessup Chris Chickadel...20. Radermacher, M., M. Wengrove, J. V. de Vries, and R. Holman (2014), Applicability of video-derived bathymetry estimates to nearshore current

Remote sensing entropy to assess the sustainability of rainfall in tropical catchment

Science.gov (United States)

Mahmud, M. R.; Reba, M. N. M.; Wei, J. S.; Razak, N. H. Abdul

2018-02-01

This study demonstrated the utility of entropy computation using the satellite precipitation remote sensing data to assess the sustainability of rainfall in tropical catchments. There were two major issues need to be anticipated in monitoring the tropical catchments; first is the frequent monitoring of the rainfall and second is the appropriate indicator that sensitive to rainfall pattern changes or disorder. For the first issue, the use of satellite remote sensing precipitation data is suggested. Meanwhile for the second issue, the utilization of entropy concept in interpreting the disorder of temporal rainfall can be used to assess the sustain ability had been successfully adopted in some studies. Therefore, we hypothesized that the use of satellite precipitation as main data to compute entropy can be a novel tool in anticipating the above-mentioned conflict earlier. The remote sensing entropy results and in-situ river level showed good agreement indicating its reliability. 72% of the catchment has moderate to good rainfall supply during normal or non-drought condition. However, our result showed that the catchments were highly sensitive to drought especially in the west coast and southern part of the Peninsular Malaysia. High resiliency was identified in the east coast. We summarized that the proposed entropy-quantity scheme was a useful tool for cost-effective, quick, and operational sustainability assessment This study demonstrated the utility of entropy computation using the satellite precipitation remote sensing data to assess the sustainability of rainfall in tropical catchments.

Remote measurements of radioactivity distribution with BROKK robotic system - 16147

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ivanov, Oleg; Danilovich, Alexey; Stepanov, Vyacheslav; Smirnov, Sergey; Potapov, Victor

2009-01-01

Robotic system for the remote measurement of radioactivity in the reactor areas was developed. The BROKK robotic system replaces hand-held radiation measuring tools. The system consists of a collimated gamma detector, a standard gamma detector, color CCD video camera and searchlights, all mounted on a robotic platform (BROKK). The signals from the detectors are coupled with the video signals and are transferred to an operator's console via a radio channel or a cable. Operator works at a safe position. The video image of the object with imposed exposure dose rate from the detectors generates an image on the monitor screen, and the images are recorded for subsequent analysis. Preliminary work has started for the decommissioning of a research reactor at the RRC 'Kurchatov Institute'. Results of the remote radioactivity measurements with new system during radiation inspection waste storage of this reactor are presented and discussed. (authors)

Intelligent trainee behavior assessment system for medical training employing video analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Han, Jungong; With, de P.H.N.; Merién, A.E.R.; Oei, S.G.

2012-01-01

This paper addresses the problem of assessing a trainee’s performance during a simulated delivery training by employing automatic analysis of a video camera signal. We aim at providing objective statistics reflecting the trainee’s behavior, so that the instructor is able to give valuable suggestions

Assessing Fish and Motile Fauna around Offshore Windfarms Using Stereo Baited Video.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ross A Griffin

Full Text Available There remains limited knowledge of how offshore windfarm developments influence fish assemblages, particularly at a local scale around the turbine structures. Considering the existing levels of anthropogenic pressures on coastal fish populations it is becoming increasingly important for developers and environmental regulators to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing fish assemblages. Improving our ability to assess such fish populations in close proximity to structures will assist in increasing this knowledge. In the present study we provide the first trial use of Baited Remote Underwater Stereo-Video systems (stereo BRUVs for the quantification of motile fauna in close proximity to offshore wind turbines. The study was conducted in the Irish Sea and finds the technique to be a viable means of assessing the motile fauna of such environments. The present study found a mixture of species including bottom dwellers, motile crustaceans and large predatory fish. The majority of taxa observed were found to be immature individuals with few adult individuals recorded. The most abundant species were the angular crab (Goneplax rhomboides and the small-spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula. Of note in this study was the generally low abundance and diversity of taxa recorded across all samples, we hypothesise that this reflects the generally poor state of the local fauna of the Irish Sea. The faunal assemblages sampled in close proximity to turbines were observed to alter with increasing distance from the structure, species more characteristic of hard bottom environments were in abundance at the turbines (e.g. Homarus gammarus, Cancer pagarus, Scyliorhinus spp. and those further away more characteristic of soft bottoms (e.g. Norwegian Lobster. This study highlights the need for the environmental impacts of offshore renewables on motile fauna to be assessed using targeted and appropriate tools. Stereo BRUVs provide one of those

Feasibility and reliability of remote assessment of PALS psychomotor skills via interactive videoconferencing.

Science.gov (United States)

Weeks, Douglas L; Molsberry, Dianne M

2009-03-01

This study determined inter-rater agreement between skill assessments provided by on-site PALS evaluators with ratings from evaluators at a remote site viewing the same skill performance over a videoconferencing network. Judgments about feasibility of remote evaluation were also obtained from the evaluators and PALS course participants. Two remote and two on-site instructors independently rated performance of 27 course participants who performed cardiac and shock/respiratory emergency core cases. Inter-rater reliability was assessed with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Feasibility was assessed with surveys of evaluators and course participants. Core cases were under the direction of the remote evaluators. The ICC for overall agreement on pass/fail decisions was 0.997 for the cardiac cases and 0.998 for the shock/respiratory cases. Perfect agreement was reached on 52 of 54 pass/fail decisions. Across all evaluators, all core cases, and all participants, 2584 ratings of individual skill criteria were provided, of which 21 (0.8%) were ratings in which a single evaluator disagreed with the other three evaluators. No trends emerged for location of the disagreeing evaluator. Survey responses indicated that remote evaluation was acceptable and feasible to course participants and to the evaluators. Videoconferencing technology was shown to provide adequate spatial and temporal resolution for PALS evaluators at-a-distance from course participants to agree with ratings of on-site evaluators.

EVA: laparoscopic instrument tracking based on Endoscopic Video Analysis for psychomotor skills assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Oropesa, Ignacio; Sánchez-González, Patricia; Chmarra, Magdalena K; Lamata, Pablo; Fernández, Alvaro; Sánchez-Margallo, Juan A; Jansen, Frank Willem; Dankelman, Jenny; Sánchez-Margallo, Francisco M; Gómez, Enrique J

2013-03-01

The EVA (Endoscopic Video Analysis) tracking system is a new system for extracting motions of laparoscopic instruments based on nonobtrusive video tracking. The feasibility of using EVA in laparoscopic settings has been tested in a box trainer setup. EVA makes use of an algorithm that employs information of the laparoscopic instrument's shaft edges in the image, the instrument's insertion point, and the camera's optical center to track the three-dimensional position of the instrument tip. A validation study of EVA comprised a comparison of the measurements achieved with EVA and the TrEndo tracking system. To this end, 42 participants (16 novices, 22 residents, and 4 experts) were asked to perform a peg transfer task in a box trainer. Ten motion-based metrics were used to assess their performance. Construct validation of the EVA has been obtained for seven motion-based metrics. Concurrent validation revealed that there is a strong correlation between the results obtained by EVA and the TrEndo for metrics, such as path length (ρ = 0.97), average speed (ρ = 0.94), or economy of volume (ρ = 0.85), proving the viability of EVA. EVA has been successfully validated in a box trainer setup, showing the potential of endoscopic video analysis to assess laparoscopic psychomotor skills. The results encourage further implementation of video tracking in training setups and image-guided surgery.

Video monitoring system for enriched uranium casting furnaces

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Turner, P.C.

1978-03-01

A closed-circuit television (CCTV) system was developed to upgrade the remote-viewing capability on two oralloy (highly enriched uranium) casting furnaces in the Y-12 Plant. A silicon vidicon CCTV camera with a remotely controlled lens and infrared filtering was provided to yield a good-quality video presentation of the furnace crucible as the oralloy material is heated from 25 to 1300 0 C. Existing tube-type CCTV monochrome monitors were replaced with solid-state monitors to increase the system reliability

In Situ/Remote Sensing Integration to Assess Forest Health—A Review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marion Pause

2016-06-01

Full Text Available For mapping, quantifying and monitoring regional and global forest health, satellite remote sensing provides fundamental data for the observation of spatial and temporal forest patterns and processes. While new remote-sensing technologies are able to detect forest data in high quality and large quantity, operational applications are still limited by deficits of in situ verification. In situ sampling data as input is required in order to add value to physical imaging remote sensing observations and possibilities to interlink the forest health assessment with biotic and abiotic factors. Numerous methods on how to link remote sensing and in situ data have been presented in the scientific literature using e.g. empirical and physical-based models. In situ data differs in type, quality and quantity between case studies. The irregular subsets of in situ data availability limit the exploitation of available satellite remote sensing data. To achieve a broad implementation of satellite remote sensing data in forest monitoring and management, a standardization of in situ data, workflows and products is essential and necessary for user acceptance. The key focus of the review is a discussion of concept and is designed to bridge gaps of understanding between forestry and remote sensing science community. Methodological approaches for in situ/remote-sensing implementation are organized and evaluated with respect to qualifying for forest monitoring. Research gaps and recommendations for standardization of remote-sensing based products are discussed. Concluding the importance of outstanding organizational work to provide a legally accepted framework for new information products in forestry are highlighted.

Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games

Science.gov (United States)

Rice, John

2007-01-01

Computer video games have become highly interesting to educators and researchers since their sophistication has improved considerably over the last decade. Studies indicate simple video games touting educational benefits are common in classrooms. However, a need for identifying truly useful games for educational purposes exists. This article…

Human engineering guidelines for the evaluation and assessment of Video Display Units

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gilmore, W.E.

1985-07-01

This report provides the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with a single source that documents known guidelines for conducting formal Human Factors evaluations of Video Display Units (VDUs). The handbook is a ''cookbook'' of acceptance guidelines for the reviewer faced with the task of evaluating VDUs already designed or planned for service in the control room. The areas addressed are video displays, controls, control/display integration, and workplace layout. Guidelines relevant to each of those areas are presented. The existence of supporting research is also indicated for each guideline. A Comment section and Method for Assessment section are provided for each set of guidelines

Remote monitoring of radioactive sources based on i.MX27 platform

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li Defeng; Wang Renbo; Lin Gangyong; Ding Yufei

2012-01-01

It based on the ASIC solutions, has chosen Freescale's i.MX27 development system as a platform for designing video capture and transmission system. The article uses the latest H.264 video compression standard and complete the entire system of hardware and software design, which is successfully applied to remote monitoring of radioactive sources. (authors)

Is Tickling Torture? Assessing Welfare towards Slow Lorises (Nycticebus spp.) within Web 2.0 Videos.

Science.gov (United States)

Nekaris, K Anne I; Musing, Louisa; Vazquez, Asier Gil; Donati, Giuseppe

2015-01-01

Videos, memes and images of pet slow lorises have become increasingly popular on the Internet. Although some video sites allow viewers to tag material as 'animal cruelty', no site has yet acknowledged the presence of cruelty in slow loris videos. We examined 100 online videos to assess whether they violated the 'five freedoms' of animal welfare and whether presence or absence of these conditions contributed to the number of thumbs up and views received by the videos. We found that all 100 videos showed at least 1 condition known as negative for lorises, indicating absence of the necessary freedom; 4% showed only 1 condition, but in nearly one third (31.3%) all 5 chosen criteria were present, including human contact (57%), daylight (87%), signs of stress/ill health (53%), unnatural environment (91%) and isolation from conspecifics (77%). The public were more likely to like videos where a slow loris was kept in the light or displayed signs of stress. Recent work on primates has shown that imagery of primates in a human context can cause viewers to perceive them as less threatened. Prevalence of a positive public opinion of such videos is a real threat towards awareness of the conservation crisis faced by slow lorises. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Toward a consensus definition of pathological video-gaming: a systematic review of psychometric assessment tools.

Science.gov (United States)

King, Daniel L; Haagsma, Maria C; Delfabbro, Paul H; Gradisar, Michael; Griffiths, Mark D

2013-04-01

Pathological video-gaming, or its proposed DSM-V classification of "Internet Use Disorder", is of increasing interest to scholars and practitioners in allied health disciplines. This systematic review was designed to evaluate the standards in pathological video-gaming instrumentation, according to Cicchetti (1994) and Groth-Marnat's (2009) criteria and guidelines for sound psychometric assessment. A total of 63 quantitative studies, including eighteen instruments and representing 58,415 participants, were evaluated. Results indicated that reviewed instrumentation may be broadly characterized as inconsistent. Strengths of available measures include: (i) short length and ease of scoring, (ii) excellent internal consistency and convergent validity, and (iii) potentially adequate data for development of standardized norms for adolescent populations. However, key limitations included: (a) inconsistent coverage of core addiction indicators, (b) varying cut-off scores to indicate clinical status, (c) a lack of a temporal dimension, (d) untested or inconsistent dimensionality, and (e) inadequate data on predictive validity and inter-rater reliability. An emerging consensus suggests that pathological video-gaming is commonly defined by (1) withdrawal, (2) loss of control, and (3) conflict. It is concluded that a unified approach to assessment of pathological video-gaming is needed. A synthesis of extant research efforts by meta-analysis may be difficult in the context of several divergent approaches to assessment. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Assessing video games to improve driving skills: a literature review and observational study.

Science.gov (United States)

Sue, Damian; Ray, Pradeep; Talaei-Khoei, Amir; Jonnagaddala, Jitendra; Vichitvanichphong, Suchada

2014-08-07

For individuals, especially older adults, playing video games is a promising tool for improving their driving skills. The ease of use, wide availability, and interactivity of gaming consoles make them an attractive simulation tool. The objective of this study was to look at the feasibility and effects of installing video game consoles in the homes of individuals looking to improve their driving skills. A systematic literature review was conducted to assess the effect of playing video games on improving driving skills. An observatory study was performed to evaluate the feasibility of using an Xbox 360 Kinect console for improving driving skills. Twenty-nine articles, which discuss the implementation of video games in improving driving skills were found in literature. On our study, it was found the Xbox 360 with Kinect is capable of improving physical and mental activities. Xbox Video games were introduced to engage players in physical, visual and cognitive activities including endurance, postural sway, reaction time, eyesight, eye movement, attention and concentration, difficulties with orientation, and semantic fluency. However, manual dexterity, visuo-spatial perception and binocular vision could not be addressed by these games. It was observed that Xbox Kinect (by incorporating Kinect sensor facilities) combines physical, visual and cognitive engagement of players. These results were consistent with those from the literature review. From the research that has been carried out, we can conclude that video game consoles are a viable solution for improving user's physical and mental state. In future we propose to carry a thorough evaluation of the effects of video games on driving skills in elderly people.

Remote Inspection, Measurement and Handling for LHC

CERN Document Server

Kershaw, K; Coin, A; Delsaux, F; Feniet, T; Grenard, J L; Valbuena, R

2007-01-01

Personnel access to the LHC tunnel will be restricted to varying extents during the life of the machine due to radiation, cryogenic and pressure hazards. The ability to carry out visual inspection, measurement and handling activities remotely during periods when the LHC tunnel is potentially hazardous offers advantages in terms of safety, accelerator down time, and costs. The first applications identified were remote measurement of radiation levels at the start of shut-down, remote geometrical survey measurements in the collimation regions, and remote visual inspection during pressure testing and initial machine cool-down. In addition, for remote handling operations, it will be necessary to be able to transmit several real-time video images from the tunnel to the control room. The paper describes the design, development and use of a remotely controlled vehicle to demonstrate the feasibility of meeting the above requirements in the LHC tunnel. Design choices are explained along with operating experience to-dat...

[Remote intelligent Brunnstrom assessment system for upper limb rehabilitation for post-stroke based on extreme learning machine].

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Yue; Yu, Lei; Fu, Jianming; Fang, Qiang

2014-04-01

In order to realize an individualized and specialized rehabilitation assessment of remoteness and intelligence, we set up a remote intelligent assessment system of upper limb movement function of post-stroke patients during rehabilitation. By using the remote rehabilitation training sensors and client data sampling software, we collected and uploaded the gesture data from a patient's forearm and upper arm during rehabilitation training to database of the server. Then a remote intelligent assessment system, which had been developed based on the extreme learning machine (ELM) algorithm and Brunnstrom stage assessment standard, was used to evaluate the gesture data. To evaluate the reliability of the proposed method, a group of 23 stroke patients, whose upper limb movement functions were in different recovery stages, and 4 healthy people, whose upper limb movement functions were normal, were recruited to finish the same training task. The results showed that, compared to that of the experienced rehabilitation expert who used the Brunnstrom stage standard table, the accuracy of the proposed remote Brunnstrom intelligent assessment system can reach a higher level, as 92.1%. The practical effects of surgery have proved that the proposed system could realize the intelligent assessment of upper limb movement function of post-stroke patients remotely, and it could also make the rehabilitation of the post-stroke patients at home or in a community care center possible.

Online video game therapy for mental health concerns: a review.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilkinson, Nathan; Ang, Rebecca P; Goh, Dion H

2008-07-01

There has been research on the use of offline video games for therapeutic purposes but online video game therapy is still fairly under-researched. Online therapeutic interventions have only recently included a gaming component. Hence, this review represents a timely first step toward taking advantage of these recent technological and cultural innovations, particularly for the treatment of special-needs groups such as the young, the elderly and people with various conditions such as ADHD, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders. A review integrating research findings on two technological advances was conducted: the home computer boom of the 1980s, which triggered a flood of research on therapeutic video games for the treatment of various mental health conditions; and the rise of the internet in the 1990s, which caused computers to be seen as conduits for therapeutic interaction rather than replacements for the therapist. We discuss how video games and the internet can now be combined in therapeutic interventions, as attested by a consideration of pioneering studies. Future research into online video game therapy for mental health concerns might focus on two broad types of game: simple society games, which are accessible and enjoyable to players of all ages, and online worlds, which offer a unique opportunity for narrative content and immersive remote interaction with therapists and fellow patients. Both genres might be used for assessment and training purposes, and provide an unlimited platform for social interaction. The mental health community can benefit from more collaborative efforts between therapists and engineers, making such innovations a reality.

Remote assessment and guidance of liver harvesting for transplantation.

OpenAIRE

Eadie, L. H.

2005-01-01

The harvesting of livers for transplantation involves assessment of the liver's suitability, including an examination of the colour and general appearance of the liver. If the organ is to be split for transplantation into two recipients, the vasculature of the liver must be studied and recorded. Remote assessment of livers and telesurgical guidance could save time and money. This thesis highlights the importance of colour in liver diagnosis, using animal and human models to examine the colour...

Provocative Video Scenarios

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Caglio, Agnese

This paper presents the use of ”provocative videos”, as a tool to support and deepen findings from ethnographic investigation on the theme of remote videocommunication. The videos acted as a resource to also investigate potential for novel technologies supporting continuous connection between...... households. They were deployed online as part of a 6 months research project in collaboration with the Danish electronics manifacturer Bang & Olufsen, involving participants from different continents. The intention is to propose the integration of tools that have been always seen as part of the design domain...

Telepsychiatry clinical decision support system used by non-psychiatrists in remote areas: Validity & reliability of diagnostic module

Science.gov (United States)

Malhotra, Savita; Chakrabarti, Subho; Shah, Ruchita; Sharma, Minali; Sharma, Kanu Priya; Malhotra, Akanksha; Upadhyaya, Suneet K.; Margoob, Mushtaq A.; Maqbool, Dar; Jassal, Gopal D.

2017-01-01

Background & objectives: A knowledge-based, logically-linked online telepsychiatric decision support system for diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders was developed and validated. We evaluated diagnostic accuracy and reliability of the application at remote sites when used by non-psychiatrists who underwent a brief training in its use through video-conferencing. Methods: The study was conducted at a nodal telepsychiatry centre, and three geographically remote peripheral centres. The diagnostic tool of application had a screening followed by detailed criteria-wise diagnostic modules for 18 psychiatric disorders. A total of 100 consecutive consenting adult outpatients attending remote telepsychiatry centres were included. To assess inter-rater reliability, patients were interviewed face to face by non-specialists at remote sites using the application (active interviewer) and simultaneously on online application via video-conferencing by a passive assessor at nodal centre. Another interviewer at the nodal centre rated the patient using Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) for diagnostic validation. Results: Screening sub-module had high sensitivity (80-100%), low positive predictive values (PPV) (0.10-0.71) but high negative predictive value (NPV) (0.97-1) for most disorders. For the diagnostic sub-modules, Cohen's kappa was >0.4 for all disorders, with kappa of 0.7-1.0 for most disorders. PPV and NPV were high for most disorders. Inter-rater agreement analysis revealed kappa >0.6 for all disorders. Interpretation & conclusions: Diagnostic tool showed acceptable to good validity and reliability when used by non-specialists at remote sites. Our findings show that diagnostic tool of the telepsychiatry application has potential to empower non-psychiatrist doctors and paramedics to diagnose psychiatric disorders accurately and reliably in remote sites. PMID:29265020

Remotely operated excavator needs assessment/site visit summary

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Straub, J.; Haller, S.; Worsley, R. [Westinghouse Environmental Management Co. of Ohio, Cincinnati, OH (United States); King, M. [THETA Technology Inc. (United States)

1992-12-02

The Uranium in Soils Integrated Demonstration requested an assessment of soil excavation needs relative to soil remediation. The following list identifies the DOE sites assessed: Mound Laboratory, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Nevada Test Site, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Rocky Flats Plant, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Hanford Site, and Fernald Site. The reviewed sites fall into one or more of the following three categories: production, EPA National Priorities List, or CERCLA (superfund) designation. Only three of the sites appear to have the need for a remotely operated excavator rope. Hanford and Idaho Falls have areas of high-level radioactive contamination either buried or in/under buildings. The Fernald site has a need for remote operated equipment of different types. It is their feeling that remote equipment can be used to remove the health dangers to humans by removing them from the area. Most interviewees stated that characterization technologies needs are more immediate concern over excavation. In addition, the sites do not have similar geographic conditions which would aid in the development of a generic precision excavator. The sites visited were not ready to utilize or provide the required design information necessary to draft a performance specification. This creates a strong case against the development of one type of ROPE for use at these sites. Assuming soil characterization technology/methodology is improved sufficiently to allow accurate and real time field characterization then development of a precision excavator might be pursued based on FEMP needs, since the FEMP`s sole scope of work is remediation. The excavator could then be used/tested and then later modified for other sites as warranted.

Informal Physics Learning from Video Games: A Case Study Using Gameplay Videos

Science.gov (United States)

Croxton, DeVaughn; Kortemeyer, Gerd

2018-01-01

Researching informal gameplay can be challenging, since as soon as a formal study design is imposed, it becomes neither casual nor self-motivated. As a case study of a non-invasive design, we analyze publicly posted gameplay videos to assess the effectiveness of a physics educational video game on special relativity. These videos offer unique…

Some Insights on Grassland Health Assessment Based on Remote Sensing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dandan Xu

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Grassland ecosystem is one of the largest ecosystems, which naturally occurs on all continents excluding Antarctica and provides both ecological and economic functions. The deterioration of natural grassland has been attracting many grassland researchers to monitor the grassland condition and dynamics for decades. Remote sensing techniques, which are advanced in dealing with the scale constraints of ecological research and provide temporal information, become a powerful approach of grassland ecosystem monitoring. So far, grassland health monitoring studies have mostly focused on different areas, for example, productivity evaluation, classification, vegetation dynamics, livestock carrying capacity, grazing intensity, natural disaster detecting, fire, climate change, coverage assessment and soil erosion. However, the grassland ecosystem is a complex system which is formed by soil, vegetation, wildlife and atmosphere. Thus, it is time to consider the grassland ecosystem as an entity synthetically and establish an integrated grassland health monitoring system to combine different aspects of the complex grassland ecosystem. In this review, current grassland health monitoring methods, including rangeland health assessment, ecosystem health assessment and grassland monitoring by remote sensing from different aspects, are discussed along with the future directions of grassland health assessment.

Some insights on grassland health assessment based on remote sensing.

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Dandan; Guo, Xulin

2015-01-29

Grassland ecosystem is one of the largest ecosystems, which naturally occurs on all continents excluding Antarctica and provides both ecological and economic functions. The deterioration of natural grassland has been attracting many grassland researchers to monitor the grassland condition and dynamics for decades. Remote sensing techniques, which are advanced in dealing with the scale constraints of ecological research and provide temporal information, become a powerful approach of grassland ecosystem monitoring. So far, grassland health monitoring studies have mostly focused on different areas, for example, productivity evaluation, classification, vegetation dynamics, livestock carrying capacity, grazing intensity, natural disaster detecting, fire, climate change, coverage assessment and soil erosion. However, the grassland ecosystem is a complex system which is formed by soil, vegetation, wildlife and atmosphere. Thus, it is time to consider the grassland ecosystem as an entity synthetically and establish an integrated grassland health monitoring system to combine different aspects of the complex grassland ecosystem. In this review, current grassland health monitoring methods, including rangeland health assessment, ecosystem health assessment and grassland monitoring by remote sensing from different aspects, are discussed along with the future directions of grassland health assessment.

Use of telemedicine in the remote programming of cochlear implants.

Science.gov (United States)

Ramos, Angel; Rodriguez, Carina; Martinez-Beneyto, Paz; Perez, Daniel; Gault, Alexandre; Falcon, Juan Carlos; Boyle, Patrick

2009-05-01

Remote cochlear implant (CI) programming is a viable, safe, user-friendly and cost-effective procedure, equivalent to standard programming in terms of efficacy and user's perception, which can complement the standard procedures. The potential benefits of this technique are outlined. We assessed the technical viability, risks and difficulties of remote CI programming; and evaluated the benefits for the user comparing the standard on-site CI programming versus the remote CI programming. The Remote Programming System (RPS) basically consists of completing the habitual programming protocol in a regular CI centre, assisted by local staff, although guided by a remote expert, who programs the CI device using a remote programming station that takes control of the local station through the Internet. A randomized prospective study has been designed with the appropriate controls comparing RPS to the standard on-site CI programming. Study subjects were implanted adults with a HiRes 90K(R) CI with post-lingual onset of profound deafness and 4-12 weeks of device use. Subjects underwent two daily CI programming sessions either remote or standard, on 4 programming days separated by 3 month intervals. A total of 12 remote and 12 standard sessions were completed. To compare both CI programming modes we analysed: program parameters, subjects' auditory progress, subjects' perceptions of the CI programming sessions, and technical aspects, risks and difficulties of remote CI programming. Control of the local station from the remote station was carried out successfully and remote programming sessions were achieved completely and without incidents. Remote and standard program parameters were compared and no significant differences were found between the groups. The performance evaluated in subjects who had been using either standard or remote programs for 3 months showed no significant difference. Subjects were satisfied with both the remote and standard sessions. Safety was proven by

Remote Sensing and GIS Assessment of Flood Vulnerability of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Lokoja, the Kogi state capital, is located at the Niger-Benue confluence. Hazards erupt when human activities in the confluence area are not properly managed. This article uses the Remote Sensing and GIS technique to assess the flood vulnerability zones of the town using the bench mark minimum and maximum water ...

"I Forgot I Wasn't Saving the World": the Use of Formative and Summative Assessment in Instructional Video Games for Undergraduate Biology

Science.gov (United States)

Lookadoo, Kathryn L.; Bostwick, Eryn N.; Ralston, Ryan; Elizondo, Francisco Javier; Wilson, Scott; Shaw, Tarren J.; Jensen, Matthew L.

2017-12-01

This study examined the role of formative and summative assessment in instructional video games on student learning and engagement. A 2 (formative feedback: present vs absent) × 2 (summative feedback: present vs absent) factorial design with an offset control (recorded lecture) was conducted to explore the impacts of assessment in video games. A total of 172 undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of four instructional video game conditions or the control. Results found that knowledge significantly increased from the pretest for players in all game conditions. Participants in summative assessment conditions learned more than players without summative assessment. In terms of engagement outcomes, formative assessment conditions did not significantly produce better learning engagement outcomes than conditions without formative assessment. However, summative assessment conditions were associated with higher temporal disassociation than non-summative conditions. Implications for future instructional video game development and testing are discussed in the paper.

Remote in vivo stress assessment of aquatic animals with microencapsulated biomarkers for environmental monitoring

Science.gov (United States)

Gurkov, Anton; Shchapova, Ekaterina; Bedulina, Daria; Baduev, Boris; Borvinskaya, Ekaterina; Meglinski, Igor; Timofeyev, Maxim

2016-11-01

Remote in vivo scanning of physiological parameters is a major trend in the development of new tools for the fields of medicine and animal physiology. For this purpose, a variety of implantable optical micro- and nanosensors have been designed for potential medical applications. At the same time, the important area of environmental sciences has been neglected in the development of techniques for remote physiological measurements. In the field of environmental monitoring and related research, there is a constant demand for new effective and quick techniques for the stress assessment of aquatic animals, and the development of proper methods for remote physiological measurements in vivo may significantly increase the precision and throughput of analyses in this field. In the present study, we apply pH-sensitive microencapsulated biomarkers to remotely monitor the pH of haemolymph in vivo in endemic amphipods from Lake Baikal, and we compare the suitability of this technique for stress assessment with that of common biochemical methods. For the first time, we demonstrate the possibility of remotely detecting a change in a physiological parameter in an aquatic organism under ecologically relevant stressful conditions and show the applicability of techniques using microencapsulated biomarkers for remote physiological measurements in environmental monitoring.

Video-based noncooperative iris image segmentation.

Science.gov (United States)

Du, Yingzi; Arslanturk, Emrah; Zhou, Zhi; Belcher, Craig

2011-02-01

In this paper, we propose a video-based noncooperative iris image segmentation scheme that incorporates a quality filter to quickly eliminate images without an eye, employs a coarse-to-fine segmentation scheme to improve the overall efficiency, uses a direct least squares fitting of ellipses method to model the deformed pupil and limbic boundaries, and develops a window gradient-based method to remove noise in the iris region. A remote iris acquisition system is set up to collect noncooperative iris video images. An objective method is used to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of the segmentation results. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method. The proposed method would make noncooperative iris recognition or iris surveillance possible.

Simulation videos presented in a blended learning platform to improve Australian nursing students' knowledge of family assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Coyne, Elisabeth; Frommolt, Valda; Rands, Hazel; Kain, Victoria; Mitchell, Marion

2018-07-01

The provision of simulation to enhance learning is becoming common practice as clinical placement becomes harder to secure within Bachelor of Nursing programs. The use of simulation videos within a blended learning platform enables students to view best practice and provides relevant links between theory and practice. Four simulation videos depicting family assessment viewed by a cohort of Australian undergraduate nursing students were evaluated. These videos were professionally developed using actors and experienced family nurses. Surveys were used to explore the students' self-assessed knowledge, confidence and learning preferences before and after exposure to blended learning resources. Students' engagement with the simulated videos was captured via the Learning Management System. Time 1 survey was completed by 163 students and Time 2 by 91 students. There was a significant increase in students' perceived knowledge of family theory Item 1 from a mean 4.13 (SD = 1.04) at Time 1 to 4.74 (SD = 0.89) (Z = -4.54 p blended learning resource increases the students' understanding of family assessment and is worth incorporating into future development of courses. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An integrable, web-based solution for easy assessment of video-recorded performances

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Subhi, Yousif; Todsen, Tobias; Konge, Lars

2014-01-01

, and access to this information should be restricted to select personnel. A local software solution may also ease the need for customization to local needs and integration into existing user databases or project management software. We developed an integrable web-based solution for easy assessment of video...

A novel no-reference objective stereoscopic video quality assessment method based on visual saliency analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Xinyan; Zhao, Wei; Ye, Long; Zhang, Qin

2017-07-01

This paper proposes a no-reference objective stereoscopic video quality assessment method with the motivation that making the effect of objective experiments close to that of subjective way. We believe that the image regions with different visual salient degree should not have the same weights when designing an assessment metric. Therefore, we firstly use GBVS algorithm to each frame pairs and separate both the left and right viewing images into the regions with strong, general and week saliency. Besides, local feature information like blockiness, zero-crossing and depth are extracted and combined with a mathematical model to calculate a quality assessment score. Regions with different salient degree are assigned with different weights in the mathematical model. Experiment results demonstrate the superiority of our method compared with the existed state-of-the-art no-reference objective Stereoscopic video quality assessment methods.

Toward feasible, valid, and reliable video-based assessments of technical surgical skills in the operating room

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Aggarwal, R.; Grantcharov, T.; Moorthy, K.

2008-01-01

.72). Conclusions: Video-based technical skills evaluation in the operating room is feasible, valid and reliable. Global rating scales hold promise for summative assessment, though further work is necessary to elucidate the value of procedural rating scales Udgivelsesdato: 2008/2......Objective: To determine the feasibility, validity, inter-rater, and intertest reliability of 4 previously published video-based rating scales, for technical skills assessment on a benchmark laparoscopic procedure. Summary Background Data: Assessment of technical skills is crucial...... to the demonstration and maintenance of competent healthcare practitioners. Traditional assessment methods are prone to subjectivity through a lack of proven validity and reliability. Methods: Nineteen surgeons (6 novice and 13 experienced) performed a median of 2 laparoscopic cholecystectomies each (range 1-5) on 53...

Real-time video streaming of sonographic clips using domestic internet networks and free videoconferencing software.

Science.gov (United States)

Liteplo, Andrew S; Noble, Vicki E; Attwood, Ben H C

2011-11-01

As the use of point-of-care sonography spreads, so too does the need for remote expert over-reading via telesonogrpahy. We sought to assess the feasibility of using familiar, widespread, and cost-effective existent technology to allow remote over-reading of sonograms in real time and to compare 4 different methods of transmission and communication for both the feasibility of transmission and image quality. Sonographic video clips were transmitted using 2 different connections (WiFi and 3G) and via 2 different videoconferencing modalities (iChat [Apple Inc, Cupertino, CA] and Skype [Skype Software Sàrl, Luxembourg]), for a total of 4 different permutations. The clips were received at a remote location and recorded and then scored by expert reviewers for image quality, resolution, and detail. Wireless transmission of sonographic clips was feasible in all cases when WiFi was used and when Skype was used over a 3G connection. Images transmitted via a WiFi connection were statistically superior to those transmitted via 3G in all parameters of quality (average P = .031), and those sent by iChat were superior to those sent by Skype but not statistically so (average P = .057). Wireless transmission of sonographic video clips using inexpensive hardware, free videoconferencing software, and domestic Internet networks is feasible with retention of image quality sufficient for interpretation. WiFi transmission results in greater image quality than transmission by a 3G network.

Assessment of radioisotope heaters for remote terrestrial applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Uherka, K.L.

1987-05-01

This paper examines the feasibility of using radioisotope byproducts for special heating applications at remote sites in Alaska and other cold regions. The investigation included assessment of candidate radioisotope materials for heater applications, identification of the most promising cold region applications, evaluation of key technical issues and implementation constraints, and development of conceptual heater designs for candidate applications. Strontium-90 (Sr-90) was selected as the most viable fuel for radioisotopic heaters used in terrestrial applications. Opportunities for the application of radioisotopic heaters were determined through site visits to representative Alaska installations. Candidate heater applications included water storage tanks, sludge digesters, sewage lagoons, water piping systems, well-head pumping stations, emergency shelters, and fuel storage tank deicers. Radioisotopic heaters for water storage tank freeze-up protection and for enhancement of biological waste treatment processes at remote sites were selected as the most promising applications

A blinded assessment of video quality in wearable technology for telementoring in open surgery: the Google Glass experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Hashimoto, Daniel A; Phitayakorn, Roy; Fernandez-del Castillo, Carlos; Meireles, Ozanan

2016-01-01

The goal of telementoring is to recreate face-to-face encounters with a digital presence. Open-surgery telementoring is limited by lack of surgeon's point-of-view cameras. Google Glass is a wearable computer that looks like a pair of glasses but is equipped with wireless connectivity, a camera, and viewing screen for video conferencing. This study aimed to assess the safety of using Google Glass by assessing the video quality of a telementoring session. Thirty-four (n = 34) surgeons at a single institution were surveyed and blindly compared via video captured with Google Glass versus an Apple iPhone 5 during the open cholecystectomy portion of a Whipple. Surgeons were asked to evaluate the quality of the video and its adequacy for safe use in telementoring. Thirty-four of 107 invited surgical attendings (32%) responded to the anonymous survey. A total of 50% rated the Google Glass video as fair with the other 50% rating it as bad to poor. A total of 52.9% of respondents rated the Apple iPhone video as good. A significantly greater proportion of respondents felt Google Glass video quality was inadequate for telementoring versus the Apple iPhone's (82.4 vs 26.5%, p safe telementoring. As the device is still in initial phases of development, future iterations or competitor devices may provide a better telementoring application for wearable devices.

Assessment of remote maintenance technologies and their potential application in the Federal Waste Management System [FWMS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kring, C.T.; Meacham, S.A.; Peishel, F.L.

1988-10-01

The 40 plus years of remote operating experience in nuclear facilities are summarized, with emphasis on the evolution and capabilities of the remote systems. Current commercially available systems and major development activities are described. The advanced servomanipulator is described, which represents new remote technology that has been developed for the Department of Energy-Nuclear Energy and that can significantly improve remote operations by extending the range of admissible remote tasks and increasing remote work efficiency. Also based upon past ORNL experience with remote facilities for reprocessing fuel, the guidelines and concepts that are utilized in the design, fabrication, and remote operation of mechanical process equipment and facilities are outlined. The currently available remote handling systems that can be applied, in various combinations, to large-volume in-cell operations are described, and requirements for waste storage facilities are reviewed. A basic trade-off analysis of these remote systems considering waste plant requirements is given. Justification is given for selecting the overhead crane/servomanipulator-based maintenance concept as the option most desirable for future waste processing plant in-cell maintenance. The Robotics/Remote Handling workshop that was implemented by the Office of Storage and Transportation System during the period that this assessment was being performed, helped focus the remaining time allocated to this effort on the future implementation of an overall program plan using a total systems approach. The concluding recommendation of this assessment is that this Robotics/Remote Handling program plan be developed and implemented as soon as possible. 43 refs., 17 figs., 9 tabs

Assessment of remote maintenance technologies and their potential application in the Federal Waste Management System (FWMS)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kring, C.T.; Meacham, S.A.; Peishel, F.L.

1988-10-01

The 40 plus years of remote operating experience in nuclear facilities are summarized, with emphasis on the evolution and capabilities of the remote systems. Current commercially available systems and major development activities are described. The advanced servomanipulator is described, which represents new remote technology that has been developed for the Department of Energy-Nuclear Energy and that can significantly improve remote operations by extending the range of admissible remote tasks and increasing remote work efficiency. Also based upon past ORNL experience with remote facilities for reprocessing fuel, the guidelines and concepts that are utilized in the design, fabrication, and remote operation of mechanical process equipment and facilities are outlined. The currently available remote handling systems that can be applied, in various combinations, to large-volume in-cell operations are described, and requirements for waste storage facilities are reviewed. A basic trade-off analysis of these remote systems considering waste plant requirements is given. Justification is given for selecting the overhead crane/servomanipulator-based maintenance concept as the option most desirable for future waste processing plant in-cell maintenance. The Robotics/Remote Handling workshop that was implemented by the Office of Storage and Transportation System during the period that this assessment was being performed, helped focus the remaining time allocated to this effort on the future implementation of an overall program plan using a total systems approach. The concluding recommendation of this assessment is that this Robotics/Remote Handling program plan be developed and implemented as soon as possible. 43 refs., 17 figs., 9 tabs.

Computer-Aided Video Differential Planimetry

Science.gov (United States)

Tobin, Michael; Djoleto, Ben D.

1984-08-01

THE VIDEO DIFFERENTIAL PLANIMETER (VDP)1 is a re-mote sensing instrument that can measure minute changes in the area of any object seen by an optical scanning system. The composite video waveforms obtained by scanning the object against a contrasting back-ground are amplified and shaped to yield a sequence of constant amplitude pulses whose polarity distinguishes the studied area from its background and whose varying widths reflect the dynamics of the viewed object. These pulses are passed through a relatively long time-constant capacitor-resistor circuit and are then fed into an integrator. The net integration voltage resulting from the most recent sequence of object-background time pulses is recorded and the integrator is returned to zero at the end of each video frame. If the object's area remains constant throughout the following frame, the integrator's summation will also remain constant. However, if the object's area varies, the positive and negative time pulses entering the integrator will change, and the integrator's summation will vary proportionately. The addition of a computer interface and a video recorder enhances the versatility and the resolving power of the VDP by permitting the repeated study and analysis of selected portions of the recorded data, thereby uncovering the major sources of the object's dynamics. Among the medical and biological procedures for which COMPUTER-AIDED VIDEO DIFFERENTIAL PLANIMETRY is suitable are Ophthalmoscopy, Endoscopy, Microscopy, Plethysmography, etc. A recent research study in Ophthalmoscopy2 will be cited to suggest a useful application of Video Differential Planimetry.

Effect of a novel video game on stroke knowledge of 9- to 10-year-old, low-income children.

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Olajide; Hecht, Mindy F; DeSorbo, Alexandra L; Huq, Saima; Noble, James M

2014-03-01

Improving actionable stroke knowledge of a witness or bystander, which in some cases are children, may improve response to an acute stroke event. We used a quasiexperimental pre-test post-test design to evaluate actionable stroke knowledge of 210 children aged 9 to 10 years in response to a single, 15-minute exposure to a stroke education video game conducted in the school computer laboratory. After immediate post-test, we provided remote password-protected online video game access and encouraged children to play at their leisure from home. An unannounced delayed post-test occurred 7 weeks later. Two hundred ten children completed pretest, 205 completed immediate post-test, whereas 198 completed delayed post-test. One hundred fifty-six (74%) children had Internet access at home, and 41 (26%), mostly girls, played the video game remotely. There was significant improvement in stroke symptom composite scores, calling 911, and all individual stroke knowledge items, including a distractor across the testing sequence (PChildren who played the video game remotely demonstrated significant improvement in knowledge of 1 symptom (sudden imbalance) compared with children who did not (Pgames may represent novel means for improving and sustaining actionable stroke knowledge of children.

Needs Assessment for the Use of NASA Remote Sensing Data for Regulatory Water Quality

Science.gov (United States)

Spiering, Bruce; Underwood, Lauren

2010-01-01

This slide presentation reviews the assessment of the needs that NASA can use for the remote sensing of water quality. The goal of this project is to provide information for decision-making activities (water quality standards) using remotely sensed/satellite based water quality data from MODIS and Landsat data.

A novel biometric signature: multi-site, remote (> 100 m) photo-plethysmography using ambient light

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verkruijsse, W.; Bodlaender, M.P.

2010-01-01

We propose a novel biometric signature based on the principle of multi-site remote photo-plethysmography (remote PPG). This signature can be measured using video cameras. Traditional PPG uses a contact sensor to measure slight skin color changes that occur with every heartbeat. Recently we have

Assessing the importance of audio/video synchronization for simultaneous translation of video sequences

OpenAIRE

Staelens, Nicolas; De Meulenaere, Jonas; Bleumers, Lizzy; Van Wallendael, Glenn; De Cock, Jan; Geeraert, Koen; Vercammen, Nick; Van den Broeck, Wendy; Vermeulen, Brecht; Van de Walle, Rik; Demeester, Piet

2012-01-01

Lip synchronization is considered a key parameter during interactive communication. In the case of video conferencing and television broadcasting, the differential delay between audio and video should remain below certain thresholds, as recommended by several standardization bodies. However, further research has also shown that these thresholds can be relaxed, depending on the targeted application and use case. In this article, we investigate the influence of lip sync on the ability to perfor...

Assessing forest resources in Denmark using wall-to-wall remote sensing data

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schumacher, Johannes

then be applied to estimate resources on both small and large scales. Numerous studies have investigated the possibilities of using remote sensing data for forest monitoring at plot or single tree levels. However, experience of estimating these properties for larger areas, for example regional or country...... assessments, is lacking. In this thesis wall-to-wall remote sensing data (from aerial images, airborne LiDAR, and space-borne SAR) were combined with ground reference data (from NFI plots and tree species experiments) to build and evaluate models estimating properties such as basal area, timber volume......, the thesis extends the application of remote sensing methods to estimate important variables with relevance to water catchment management....

Video Capture of Plastic Surgery Procedures Using the GoPro HERO 3+.

Science.gov (United States)

Graves, Steven Nicholas; Shenaq, Deana Saleh; Langerman, Alexander J; Song, David H

2015-02-01

Significant improvements can be made in recoding surgical procedures, particularly in capturing high-quality video recordings from the surgeons' point of view. This study examined the utility of the GoPro HERO 3+ Black Edition camera for high-definition, point-of-view recordings of plastic and reconstructive surgery. The GoPro HERO 3+ Black Edition camera was head-mounted on the surgeon and oriented to the surgeon's perspective using the GoPro App. The camera was used to record 4 cases: 2 fat graft procedures and 2 breast reconstructions. During cases 1-3, an assistant remotely controlled the GoPro via the GoPro App. For case 4 the GoPro was linked to a WiFi remote, and controlled by the surgeon. Camera settings for case 1 were as follows: 1080p video resolution; 48 fps; Protune mode on; wide field of view; 16:9 aspect ratio. The lighting contrast due to the overhead lights resulted in limited washout of the video image. Camera settings were adjusted for cases 2-4 to a narrow field of view, which enabled the camera's automatic white balance to better compensate for bright lights focused on the surgical field. Cases 2-4 captured video sufficient for teaching or presentation purposes. The GoPro HERO 3+ Black Edition camera enables high-quality, cost-effective video recording of plastic and reconstructive surgery procedures. When set to a narrow field of view and automatic white balance, the camera is able to sufficiently compensate for the contrasting light environment of the operating room and capture high-resolution, detailed video.

Remote sensing data in Rangeland assessment and monitoring

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hamid, Amna Ahmed; Ali, Mohamed M.

1999-01-01

The main objective of the paper is to illustrate the potential of remote sensing data in the study and monitoring of environmental changes in western Sudan where considerable part of the area is under rangeland use. Data from NOAA satellite AVHRR sensor as well as thematic mapper Tm was used to assess the environment of the area during 1982-1997. The AVHRR data was processed into vegetation index (NDVI) images. Image analysis and classification was done using image display and analysis (IDA) GIS method to study vegetation condition in time series. The obtained information from field observations. The result showed high correlation between the information the work concluded the followings: NDVI images and thematic mapper data proved to be efficient in environment change analysis. NOAA AVHRR satellite data can provide an early-warning indicator of an approaching disaster. Remote sensing integrated into a GIS can contribute effectively to improve land management through better understanding of environment variability.(Author)

Pre-conceptual design assessment of DEMO remote maintenance

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Loving, A., E-mail: antony.loving@ccfe.ac.uk [EURATOM/Culham Center Fusion Energy, Culham Science Centre, OX14 3DB, Abingdon (United Kingdom); Crofts, O.; Sykes, N.; Iglesias, D.; Coleman, M.; Thomas, J. [EURATOM/Culham Center Fusion Energy, Culham Science Centre, OX14 3DB, Abingdon (United Kingdom); Harman, J. [EFDA Close Support Unit Garching, Boltzmannstaße 2, D-85748 Garching Bei München (Germany); Fischer, U. [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, D-76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen (Germany); Sanz, J. [Instituto de Fusión Nuclear/UPM, Madrid (Spain); Siuko, M. [VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, P.O. Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT (Finland); Mittwollen, M. [Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institut für Fördertechnik und Logistiksysteme, Gotthard-Franz-Straße 8, Geb.50.38, 76131 Karlsruhe (Germany)

2014-10-15

EDFA, as part of the Power Plant Physics and Technology programme, has been working on the pre-conceptual design of a Demonstration Power Plant (DEMO). As part of this programme, a review of the remote maintenance strategy considered maintenance solutions compatible with expected environmental conditions, whilst showing potential for meeting the plant availability targets. A key finding was that, for practical purposes, the expected radiation levels prohibit the use of complex remote handling operations to replace the first wall. In 2012/2013, these remote maintenance activities were further extended, providing an insight into the requirements, constraints and challenges. In particular, the assessment of blanket and divertor maintenance, in light of the expected radiation conditions and availability, has elaborated the need for a very different approach from that of ITER. This activity has produced some very informative virtual reality simulations of the blanket segments and pipe removal that are exceptionally valuable in communicating the complexity and scale of the required operations. Through these simulations, estimates of the maintenance task durations have been possible demonstrating that a full replacement of the blankets within 6 months could be achieved. The design of the first wall, including the need to use sacrificial limiters must still be investigated. In support of the maintenance operations, a first indication of the requirements of an Active Maintenance Facility (AMF) has been elaborated.

Tv & video engineer's reference book

CERN Document Server

Jackson, K G

1991-01-01

TV & Video Engineer's Reference Book presents an extensive examination of the basic television standards and broadcasting spectrum. It discusses the fundamental concepts in analogue and digital circuit theory. It addresses studies in the engineering mathematics, formulas, and calculations. Some of the topics covered in the book are the conductors and insulators, passive components, alternating current circuits; broadcast transmission; radio frequency propagation; electron optics in cathode ray tube; color encoding and decoding systems; television transmitters; and remote supervision of unatten

Virtual displays for 360-degree video

Science.gov (United States)

Gilbert, Stephen; Boonsuk, Wutthigrai; Kelly, Jonathan W.

2012-03-01

In this paper we describe a novel approach for comparing users' spatial cognition when using different depictions of 360- degree video on a traditional 2D display. By using virtual cameras within a game engine and texture mapping of these camera feeds to an arbitrary shape, we were able to offer users a 360-degree interface composed of four 90-degree views, two 180-degree views, or one 360-degree view of the same interactive environment. An example experiment is described using these interfaces. This technique for creating alternative displays of wide-angle video facilitates the exploration of how compressed or fish-eye distortions affect spatial perception of the environment and can benefit the creation of interfaces for surveillance and remote system teleoperation.

Web based remote monitoring and controlling system for vulnerable environments

Science.gov (United States)

Thomas, Aparna; George, Minu

2016-03-01

The two major areas of concern in industrial establishments are monitoring and security. The remote monitoring and controlling can be established with the help of Web technology. Managers can monitor and control the equipment in the remote area through a web browser. The targeted area includes all type of susceptible environment like gas filling station, research and development laboratories. The environmental parameters like temperature, light intensity, gas etc. can be monitored. Security is a very important factor in an industrial setup. So motion detection feature is added to the system to ensure the security. The remote monitoring and controlling system makes use of the latest, less power consumptive and fast working microcontroller like S3C2440. This system is based on ARM9 and Linux operating system. The ARM9 will collect the sensor data and establish real time video monitoring along with motion detection feature. These captured video data as well as environmental data is transmitted over internet using embedded web server which is integrated within the ARM9 board.

Demonstrations of video processing of image data for uranium resource assessments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Marrs, R.W.; King, J.K.

1978-01-01

Video processing of LANDSAT imagery was performed for nine areas in the western United States to demonstrate the applicability of such analyses for regional uranium resource assessment. The results of these tests, in areas of diverse geology, topography, and vegetation, were mixed. The best success was achieved in arid areas because vegetation cover is extremely limiting in any analysis dealing primarily with rocks and soils. Surface alteration patterns of large areal extent, involving transformation or redistribution of iron oxides, and reflectance contrasts were the only type of alteration consistently detected by video processing of LANDSAT imagery. Alteration often provided the only direct indication of mineralization. Other exploration guides, such as lithologic changes, can often be detected, even in heavily vegetated regions. Structural interpretation of the imagery proved far more successful than spectral analyses as an indicator of regions of possible uranium enrichment

Moving object detection in video satellite image based on deep learning

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xueyang; Xiang, Junhua

2017-11-01

Moving object detection in video satellite image is studied. A detection algorithm based on deep learning is proposed. The small scale characteristics of remote sensing video objects are analyzed. Firstly, background subtraction algorithm of adaptive Gauss mixture model is used to generate region proposals. Then the objects in region proposals are classified via the deep convolutional neural network. Thus moving objects of interest are detected combined with prior information of sub-satellite point. The deep convolution neural network employs a 21-layer residual convolutional neural network, and trains the network parameters by transfer learning. Experimental results about video from Tiantuo-2 satellite demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.

The Use of Smart Glasses for Surgical Video Streaming.

Science.gov (United States)

Hiranaka, Takafumi; Nakanishi, Yuta; Fujishiro, Takaaki; Hida, Yuichi; Tsubosaka, Masanori; Shibata, Yosaku; Okimura, Kenjiro; Uemoto, Harunobu

2017-04-01

Observation of surgical procedures performed by experts is extremely important for acquisition and improvement of surgical skills. Smart glasses are small computers, which comprise a head-mounted monitor and video camera, and can be connected to the internet. They can be used for remote observation of surgeries by video streaming. Although Google Glass is the most commonly used smart glasses for medical purposes, it is still unavailable commercially and has some limitations. This article reports the use of a different type of smart glasses, InfoLinker, for surgical video streaming. InfoLinker has been commercially available in Japan for industrial purposes for more than 2 years. It is connected to a video server via wireless internet directly, and streaming video can be seen anywhere an internet connection is available. We have attempted live video streaming of knee arthroplasty operations that were viewed at several different locations, including foreign countries, on a common web browser. Although the quality of video images depended on the resolution and dynamic range of the video camera, speed of internet connection, and the wearer's attention to minimize image shaking, video streaming could be easily performed throughout the procedure. The wearer could confirm the quality of the video as the video was being shot by the head-mounted display. The time and cost for observation of surgical procedures can be reduced by InfoLinker, and further improvement of hardware as well as the wearer's video shooting technique is expected. We believe that this can be used in other medical settings.

Remote-handled transuranic system assessment appendices. Volume 2

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1995-11-01

Volume 2 of this report contains six appendices to the report: Inventory and generation of remote-handled transuranic waste; Remote-handled transuranic waste site storage; Characterization of remote-handled transuranic waste; RH-TRU waste treatment alternatives system analysis; Packaging and transportation study; and Remote-handled transuranic waste disposal alternatives.

Remote-handled transuranic system assessment appendices. Volume 2

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-11-01

Volume 2 of this report contains six appendices to the report: Inventory and generation of remote-handled transuranic waste; Remote-handled transuranic waste site storage; Characterization of remote-handled transuranic waste; RH-TRU waste treatment alternatives system analysis; Packaging and transportation study; and Remote-handled transuranic waste disposal alternatives

The accuracy and reproducibility of video assessment in the pitch-side management of concussion in elite rugby.

Science.gov (United States)

Fuller, G W; Kemp, S P T; Raftery, M

2017-03-01

To investigate the accuracy and reliability of side-line video review of head impact events to aid identification of concussion in elite sport. Diagnostic accuracy and inter-rater agreement study. Immediate care, match day and team doctors involved in the 2015 Rugby Union World Cup viewed 20 video clips showing broadcaster's footage of head impact events occurring during elite Rugby matches. Subjects subsequently recorded whether any criteria warranting permanent removal from play or medical room head injury assessment were present. The accuracy of these ratings were compared to consensus expert opinion by calculating mean sensitivity and specificity across raters. The reproducibility of doctor's decisions was additionally assessed using raw agreement and Gwets AC1 chance corrected agreement coefficient. Forty rugby medicine doctors were included in the study. Compared to the expert reference standard overall sensitivity and specificity of doctors decisions were 77.5% (95% CI 73.1-81.5%) and 53.3% (95% CI 48.2-58.2%) respectively. Overall there was raw agreement of 67.8% (95% CI 57.9-77.7%) between doctors across all video clips. Chance corrected Gwets AC1 agreement coefficient was 0.39 (95% CI 0.17-0.62), indicating fair agreement. Rugby World Cup doctors' demonstrated moderate accuracy and fair reproducibility in head injury event decision making when assessing video clips of head impact events. The use of real-time video may improve the identification, decision making and management of concussion in elite sports. Copyright © 2016 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Examining the Impact of Video Modeling Techniques on the Efficacy of Clinical Voice Assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Werner, Cara; Bowyer, Samantha; Weinrich, Barbara; Gottliebson, Renee; Brehm, Susan Baker

2017-01-01

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether or not presenting patients with a video model improves efficacy of the assessment as defined by efficiency and decreased variability in trials during the acoustic component of voice evaluations. Twenty pediatric participants with a mean age of 7.6 years (SD = 1.50; range = 6-11 years), 32 college-age participants with a mean age of 21.32 years (SD = 1.61; range = 18-30 years), and 17 adult participants with a mean age of 54.29 years (SD = 2.78; range = 50-70 years) were included in the study and divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group viewed a training video prior to receiving verbal instructions and performing acoustic assessment tasks, whereas the control group received verbal instruction only prior to completing the acoustic assessment. Primary measures included the number of clinician cues required and instructional time. Standard deviations of acoustic measurements (eg, minimum and maximum frequency) were also examined to determine effects on stability. Individuals in the experimental group required significantly less cues, P = 0.012, compared to the control group. Although some trends were observed in instructional time and stability of measurements, no significant differences were observed. The findings of this study may be useful for speech-language pathologists in regard to improving assessment of patients' voice disorders with the use of video modeling. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lights, camera…citizen science: assessing the effectiveness of smartphone-based video training in invasive plant identification.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jared Starr

Full Text Available The rapid growth and increasing popularity of smartphone technology is putting sophisticated data-collection tools in the hands of more and more citizens. This has exciting implications for the expanding field of citizen science. With smartphone-based applications (apps, it is now increasingly practical to remotely acquire high quality citizen-submitted data at a fraction of the cost of a traditional study. Yet, one impediment to citizen science projects is the question of how to train participants. The traditional "in-person" training model, while effective, can be cost prohibitive as the spatial scale of a project increases. To explore possible solutions, we analyze three training models: 1 in-person, 2 app-based video, and 3 app-based text/images in the context of invasive plant identification in Massachusetts. Encouragingly, we find that participants who received video training were as successful at invasive plant identification as those trained in-person, while those receiving just text/images were less successful. This finding has implications for a variety of citizen science projects that need alternative methods to effectively train participants when in-person training is impractical.

Are we in Sync? Synchronization Requirements for Watching Online Video Together

NARCIS (Netherlands)

D. Geerts (David); I. Vaishnavi (Ishan); R.N. Mekuria (Rufael); M.O. van Deventer (Oskar); P.S. Cesar Garcia (Pablo Santiago)

2011-01-01

htmlabstractSynchronization between locations is an important factor for enabling remote shared experiences. Still, experimental data on what is the acceptable synchronization level is scarce. This paper discusses the synchronization requirements for watching online videos together - a popular set

Learning to Swim Using Video Modelling and Video Feedback within a Self-Management Program

Science.gov (United States)

Lao, So-An; Furlonger, Brett E.; Moore, Dennis W.; Busacca, Margherita

2016-01-01

Although many adults who cannot swim are primarily interested in learning by direct coaching there are options that have a focus on self-directed learning. As an alternative a self-management program combined with video modelling, video feedback and high quality and affordable video technology was used to assess its effectiveness to assisting an…

Blind prediction of natural video quality.

Science.gov (United States)

Saad, Michele A; Bovik, Alan C; Charrier, Christophe

2014-03-01

We propose a blind (no reference or NR) video quality evaluation model that is nondistortion specific. The approach relies on a spatio-temporal model of video scenes in the discrete cosine transform domain, and on a model that characterizes the type of motion occurring in the scenes, to predict video quality. We use the models to define video statistics and perceptual features that are the basis of a video quality assessment (VQA) algorithm that does not require the presence of a pristine video to compare against in order to predict a perceptual quality score. The contributions of this paper are threefold. 1) We propose a spatio-temporal natural scene statistics (NSS) model for videos. 2) We propose a motion model that quantifies motion coherency in video scenes. 3) We show that the proposed NSS and motion coherency models are appropriate for quality assessment of videos, and we utilize them to design a blind VQA algorithm that correlates highly with human judgments of quality. The proposed algorithm, called video BLIINDS, is tested on the LIVE VQA database and on the EPFL-PoliMi video database and shown to perform close to the level of top performing reduced and full reference VQA algorithms.

Informal physics learning from video games: a case study using gameplay videos

Science.gov (United States)

Croxton, DeVaughn; Kortemeyer, Gerd

2018-01-01

Researching informal gameplay can be challenging, since as soon as a formal study design is imposed, it becomes neither casual nor self-motivated. As a case study of a non-invasive design, we analyze publicly posted gameplay videos to assess the effectiveness of a physics educational video game on special relativity. These videos offer unique insights into informal learning through gaming, as players do not only describe the gameplay mechanics, but also explore physics concepts in a think-aloud fashion while they ponder the experience and effects. We find that while this methodology has substantial limitations, it is complementary when it comes to assessing motivations and attitudes, as well as to gathering data on conceptual hurdles.

eComLab: remote laboratory platform

Science.gov (United States)

Pontual, Murillo; Melkonyan, Arsen; Gampe, Andreas; Huang, Grant; Akopian, David

2011-06-01

Hands-on experiments with electronic devices have been recognized as an important element in the field of engineering to help students get familiar with theoretical concepts and practical tasks. The continuing increase the student number, costly laboratory equipment, and laboratory maintenance slow down the physical lab efficiency. As information technology continues to evolve, the Internet has become a common media in modern education. Internetbased remote laboratory can solve a lot of restrictions, providing hands-on training as they can be flexible in time and the same equipment can be shared between different students. This article describes an on-going remote hands-on experimental radio modulation, network and mobile applications lab project "eComLab". Its main component is a remote laboratory infrastructure and server management system featuring various online media familiar with modern students, such as chat rooms and video streaming.

Medical students¿ assessment of pediatric patients - teaching and evaluation using video cases

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Malon, Michelle; Cortes, Dina; Greisen, Gorm

2014-01-01

and examination for pediatric medicine.MethodsMedical students on a pediatric clerkship at the University of Copenhagen assessed eight short pediatric video cases during autumn 2011 and spring 2012. Two independent observers evaluated a subset of records in a pilot study. A blind evaluation was made...

The first-step of EAST remote participation system

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sun, Xiaoyang, E-mail: xysun@ipp.ac.cn; Ji, Zhenshan; Wang, Feng; Li, Shi; Wang, Yong

2016-11-15

Highlights: • A new design for remote participation system for EAST tokamak is proposed. • Rich Internet Application (RIA) and NoSQL Database was select to implement the system. • Two kind of technique for accessing EPICS PV data remotely through Internet was proposed. - Abstract: The EAST Tokamak at Institute of Plasma Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIPP) is the first fully-superconducting Tokamak facility. International collaboration can improve the quality and impact of fusion research. It is a key feature for EAST research. During 2014 EAST campaign, more than 60 physicists and experts visited CASIPP and participated in EAST discharging experiment. With an increasing number of collaborations, remote participation becomes important as an economical and effective alternative to traditional way. This paper presents an overview of the first-step development work of the EAST Remote Participation System (EAST RPS). At current stage, the EAST RPS is focused on remote access to engineering data, NoSQL-based data archiving engine, message service and video service.

The first-step of EAST remote participation system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sun, Xiaoyang; Ji, Zhenshan; Wang, Feng; Li, Shi; Wang, Yong

2016-01-01

Highlights: • A new design for remote participation system for EAST tokamak is proposed. • Rich Internet Application (RIA) and NoSQL Database was select to implement the system. • Two kind of technique for accessing EPICS PV data remotely through Internet was proposed. - Abstract: The EAST Tokamak at Institute of Plasma Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIPP) is the first fully-superconducting Tokamak facility. International collaboration can improve the quality and impact of fusion research. It is a key feature for EAST research. During 2014 EAST campaign, more than 60 physicists and experts visited CASIPP and participated in EAST discharging experiment. With an increasing number of collaborations, remote participation becomes important as an economical and effective alternative to traditional way. This paper presents an overview of the first-step development work of the EAST Remote Participation System (EAST RPS). At current stage, the EAST RPS is focused on remote access to engineering data, NoSQL-based data archiving engine, message service and video service.

Critical Assessment of Video Production in Teacher Education: Can Video Production Foster Community-Engaged Scholarship?

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Kyung-Hwa

2014-01-01

In the theoretical framework of production pedagogy, I reflect on a video production project conducted in a teacher education program and discuss the potential of video production to foster community-engaged scholarship among pre-service teachers. While the importance of engaging learners in creating media has been emphasized, studies show little…

Video Links from Prison: Permeability and the Carceral World

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carolyn McKay

2016-03-01

Full Text Available As audio visual communication technologies are installed in prisons, these spaces of incarceration are networked with courtrooms and other non-contiguous spaces, potentially facilitating a process of permeability. Jurisdictions around the world are embracing video conferencing and the technology is becoming a major interface for prisoners’ interactions with courts and legal advisers. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork interviews with prisoners from two correction centres in New South Wales, Australia, to understand their subjective and sensorial experiences of using video links as a portal to the outside world. These interviews raised many issues including audio permeability: a soundtrack of incarceration sometimes infiltrates into the prison video studio and then the remote courtroom, framing the prisoner in the context of their detention, intruding on legal process, and affecting prisoners’ comprehension and participation.

The reliability and validity of video analysis for the assessment of the clinical signs of concussion in Australian football.

Science.gov (United States)

Makdissi, Michael; Davis, Gavin

2016-10-01

The objective of this study was to determine the reliability and validity of identifying clinical signs of concussion using video analysis in Australian football. Prospective cohort study. All impacts and collisions potentially resulting in a concussion were identified during 2012 and 2013 Australian Football League seasons. Consensus definitions were developed for clinical signs associated with concussion. For intra- and inter-rater reliability analysis, two experienced clinicians independently assessed 102 randomly selected videos on two occasions. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were calculated based on the diagnosis provided by team medical staff. 212 incidents resulting in possible concussion were identified in 414 Australian Football League games. The intra-rater reliability of the video-based identification of signs associated with concussion was good to excellent. Inter-rater reliability was good to excellent for impact seizure, slow to get up, motor incoordination, ragdoll appearance (2 of 4 analyses), clutching at head and facial injury. Inter-rater reliability for loss of responsiveness and blank and vacant look was only fair and did not reach statistical significance. The feature with the highest sensitivity was slow to get up (87%), but this sign had a low specificity (19%). Other video signs had a high specificity but low sensitivity. Blank and vacant look (100%) and motor incoordination (81%) had the highest positive predictive value. Video analysis may be a useful adjunct to the side-line assessment of a possible concussion. Video analysis however should not replace the need for a thorough multimodal clinical assessment. Copyright © 2016 Sports Medicine Australia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An Evaluation of Video Modeling with Embedded Instructions to Teach Implementation of Stimulus Preference Assessments

Science.gov (United States)

Rosales, Rocío; Gongola, Leah; Homlitas, Christa

2015-01-01

A multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the effects of video modeling with embedded instructions on training teachers to implement 3 preference assessments. Each assessment was conducted with a confederate learner or a child with autism during generalization probes. All teachers met the predetermined mastery criterion,…

High resolution remote sensing for reducing uncertainties in urban forest carbon offset life cycle assessments.

Science.gov (United States)

Tigges, Jan; Lakes, Tobia

2017-10-04

Urban forests reduce greenhouse gas emissions by storing and sequestering considerable amounts of carbon. However, few studies have considered the local scale of urban forests to effectively evaluate their potential long-term carbon offset. The lack of precise, consistent and up-to-date forest details is challenging for long-term prognoses. Therefore, this review aims to identify uncertainties in urban forest carbon offset assessment and discuss the extent to which such uncertainties can be reduced by recent progress in high resolution remote sensing. We do this by performing an extensive literature review and a case study combining remote sensing and life cycle assessment of urban forest carbon offset in Berlin, Germany. Recent progress in high resolution remote sensing and methods is adequate for delivering more precise details on the urban tree canopy, individual tree metrics, species, and age structures compared to conventional land use/cover class approaches. These area-wide consistent details can update life cycle inventories for more precise future prognoses. Additional improvements in classification accuracy can be achieved by a higher number of features derived from remote sensing data of increasing resolution, but first studies on this subject indicated that a smart selection of features already provides sufficient data that avoids redundancies and enables more efficient data processing. Our case study from Berlin could use remotely sensed individual tree species as consistent inventory of a life cycle assessment. However, a lack of growth, mortality and planting data forced us to make assumptions, therefore creating uncertainty in the long-term prognoses. Regarding temporal changes and reliable long-term estimates, more attention is required to detect changes of gradual growth, pruning and abrupt changes in tree planting and mortality. As such, precise long-term urban ecological monitoring using high resolution remote sensing should be intensified

Risk assessment of storm surge disaster based on numerical models and remote sensing

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Qingrong; Ruan, Chengqing; Zhong, Shan; Li, Jian; Yin, Zhonghui; Lian, Xihu

2018-06-01

Storm surge is one of the most serious ocean disasters in the world. Risk assessment of storm surge disaster for coastal areas has important implications for planning economic development and reducing disaster losses. Based on risk assessment theory, this paper uses coastal hydrological observations, a numerical storm surge model and multi-source remote sensing data, proposes methods for valuing hazard and vulnerability for storm surge and builds a storm surge risk assessment model. Storm surges in different recurrence periods are simulated in numerical models and the flooding areas and depth are calculated, which are used for assessing the hazard of storm surge; remote sensing data and GIS technology are used for extraction of coastal key objects and classification of coastal land use are identified, which is used for vulnerability assessment of storm surge disaster. The storm surge risk assessment model is applied for a typical coastal city, and the result shows the reliability and validity of the risk assessment model. The building and application of storm surge risk assessment model provides some basis reference for the city development plan and strengthens disaster prevention and mitigation.

Comprehensive, integrated, remote sensing at DOE sites

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lackey, J.G.; Burson, Z.G.

1985-01-01

The Department of Energy has established a program called Comprehensive, Integrated Remote Sensing (CIRS). The overall objective of the program is to provide a state-of-the-art data base of remotely sensed data for all users of such information at large DOE sites. The primary types of remote sensing provided, at present, consist of the following: large format aerial photography, video from aerial platforms, multispectral scanning, and airborne nuclear radiometric surveys. Implementation of the CIRS Program by EG and G Energy Measurements, Inc. began with field operations at the Savannah River Plant in 1982 and is continuing at that DOE site at a level of effort of about $1.5 m per year. Integrated remote sensing studies were subsequently extended to the West Valley Demonstration Project in this summer and fall of 1984. It is expected that the Program will eventually be extended to cover all large DOE sites on a continuing basis

Detection of Visual Events in Underwater Video Using a Neuromorphic Saliency-based Attention System

Science.gov (United States)

Edgington, D. R.; Walther, D.; Cline, D. E.; Sherlock, R.; Salamy, K. A.; Wilson, A.; Koch, C.

2003-12-01

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) uses high-resolution video equipment on remotely operated vehicles (ROV) to obtain quantitative data on the distribution and abundance of oceanic animals. High-quality video data supplants the traditional approach of assessing the kinds and numbers of animals in the oceanic water column through towing collection nets behind ships. Tow nets are limited in spatial resolution, and often destroy abundant gelatinous animals resulting in species undersampling. Video camera-based quantitative video transects (QVT) are taken through the ocean midwater, from 50m to 4000m, and provide high-resolution data at the scale of the individual animals and their natural aggregation patterns. However, the current manual method of analyzing QVT video by trained scientists is labor intensive and poses a serious limitation to the amount of information that can be analyzed from ROV dives. Presented here is an automated system for detecting marine animals (events) visible in the videos. Automated detection is difficult due to the low contrast of many translucent animals and due to debris ("marine snow") cluttering the scene. Video frames are processed with an artificial intelligence attention selection algorithm that has proven a robust means of target detection in a variety of natural terrestrial scenes. The candidate locations identified by the attention selection module are tracked across video frames using linear Kalman filters. Typically, the occurrence of visible animals in the video footage is sparse in space and time. A notion of "boring" video frames is developed by detecting whether or not there is an interesting candidate object for an animal present in a particular sequence of underwater video -- video frames that do not contain any "interesting" events. If objects can be tracked successfully over several frames, they are stored as potentially "interesting" events. Based on low-level properties, interesting events are

Task-oriented quality assessment and adaptation in real-time mission critical video streaming applications

Science.gov (United States)

Nightingale, James; Wang, Qi; Grecos, Christos

2015-02-01

In recent years video traffic has become the dominant application on the Internet with global year-on-year increases in video-oriented consumer services. Driven by improved bandwidth in both mobile and fixed networks, steadily reducing hardware costs and the development of new technologies, many existing and new classes of commercial and industrial video applications are now being upgraded or emerging. Some of the use cases for these applications include areas such as public and private security monitoring for loss prevention or intruder detection, industrial process monitoring and critical infrastructure monitoring. The use of video is becoming commonplace in defence, security, commercial, industrial, educational and health contexts. Towards optimal performances, the design or optimisation in each of these applications should be context aware and task oriented with the characteristics of the video stream (frame rate, spatial resolution, bandwidth etc.) chosen to match the use case requirements. For example, in the security domain, a task-oriented consideration may be that higher resolution video would be required to identify an intruder than to simply detect his presence. Whilst in the same case, contextual factors such as the requirement to transmit over a resource-limited wireless link, may impose constraints on the selection of optimum task-oriented parameters. This paper presents a novel, conceptually simple and easily implemented method of assessing video quality relative to its suitability for a particular task and dynamically adapting videos streams during transmission to ensure that the task can be successfully completed. Firstly we defined two principle classes of tasks: recognition tasks and event detection tasks. These task classes are further subdivided into a set of task-related profiles, each of which is associated with a set of taskoriented attributes (minimum spatial resolution, minimum frame rate etc.). For example, in the detection class

Exploring the Gap between Evidence and Judgement: Using Video Vignettes for Practice-based Assessment of Physiotherapy Undergraduates.

Science.gov (United States)

Cross, Vinette; Hicks, Carolyn; Barwell, Fred

2001-01-01

Using videos of physiotherapy students, compared two assessment forms for validity and reliability (the first currently used by an academic program and the second developed from practitioners' perceptions of competence). Also investigated effects of training on assessment decisions. Found wide differences in individual ability to assess students…

Appendix E: Research papers. Use of remote sensing in landscape stratification for environmental impact assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Stanturf, J. A.; Heimbuch, D. G.

1980-01-01

A refinement to the matrix approach to environmental impact assessment is to use landscape units in place of separate environmental elements in the analysis. Landscape units can be delineated by integrating remotely sensed data and available single-factor data. A remote sensing approach to landscape stratification is described and the conditions under which it is superior to other approaches that require single-factor maps are indicated. Flowcharts show the steps necessary to develop classification criteria, delineate units and a map legend, and use the landscape units in impact assessment. Application of the approach to assessing impacts of a transmission line in Montana is presented to illustrate the method.

Video performance for high security applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Connell, Jack C.; Norman, Bradley C.

2010-01-01

The complexity of physical protection systems has increased to address modern threats to national security and emerging commercial technologies. A key element of modern physical protection systems is the data presented to the human operator used for rapid determination of the cause of an alarm, whether false (e.g., caused by an animal, debris, etc.) or real (e.g., a human adversary). Alarm assessment, the human validation of a sensor alarm, primarily relies on imaging technologies and video systems. Developing measures of effectiveness (MOE) that drive the design or evaluation of a video system or technology becomes a challenge, given the subjectivity of the application (e.g., alarm assessment). Sandia National Laboratories has conducted empirical analysis using field test data and mathematical models such as binomial distribution and Johnson target transfer functions to develop MOEs for video system technologies. Depending on the technology, the task of the security operator and the distance to the target, the Probability of Assessment (PAs) can be determined as a function of a variety of conditions or assumptions. PAs used as an MOE allows the systems engineer to conduct trade studies, make informed design decisions, or evaluate new higher-risk technologies. This paper outlines general video system design trade-offs, discusses ways video can be used to increase system performance and lists MOEs for video systems used in subjective applications such as alarm assessment.

Assessing the Interdisciplinary Use of Socioeconomic and Remote Sensing Data in the Earth Sciences

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, R. S.; Downs, R. R.; Schumacher, J.

2013-12-01

Remotely sensed data are widely used in Earth science research and applications not just to improve understanding of natural systems but also to elucidate interactions between natural and human systems and to model and predict human impacts on the environment, whether planned or unplanned. It is therefore often necessary for both remote sensing and socioeconomic data to be used together in both Earth science and social science research, for example in modeling past, present, and future land cover change, in assessing societal vulnerability to geophysical and climatological hazards, in measuring the human health impacts of air and water pollution, or in developing improved approaches to managing water, ecological, and other resources. The NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) was established as part of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) to facilitate access to and use of socioeconomic data in conjunction with remote sensing data in both research and applications. SEDAC provides access both to socioeconomic data that have been transformed into forms more readily usable by Earth scientists and other users, and to integrated datasets that incorporate both socioeconomic and remote sensing data. SEDAC data have been cited in at least 2,000 scientific papers covering a wide range of scientific disciplines and problem areas. In many cases, SEDAC data are cited in these papers along with other remote sensing datasets available from NASA or other sources. However, such citations do not necessarily indicate significant, integrated use of SEDAC and remote sensing data. To assess the level and type of integrated data use, we analyze a selection of recent SEDAC data citations in Earth science journals to characterize the ways in which SEDAC data have been used in the underlying research project and the paper itself. Papers were selected based on the presence of a SEDAC data citation and one or more keywords related to a remote

The remote characterization of vegetation using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle photography

Science.gov (United States)

Rango, A.; Laliberte, A.; Winters, C.; Maxwell, C.; Steele, C.

2008-12-01

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can fly in place of piloted aircraft to gather remote sensing information on vegetation characteristics. The type of sensors flown depends on the instrument payload capacity available, so that, depending on the specific UAV, it is possible to obtain video, aerial photographic, multispectral and hyperspectral radiometric, LIDAR, and radar data. The characteristics of several small UAVs less than 55lbs (25kg)) along with some payload instruments will be reviewed. Common types of remote sensing coverage available from a small, limited-payload UAV are video and hyperspatial, digital photography. From evaluation of these simple types of remote sensing data, we conclude that UAVs can play an important role in measuring and monitoring vegetation health and structure of the vegetation/soil complex in rangelands. If we fly our MLB Bat-3 at an altitude of 700ft (213m), we can obtain a digital photographic resolution of 6cm. The digital images acquired cover an area of approximately 29,350sq m. Video imaging is usually only useful for monitoring the flight path of the UAV in real time. In our experiments with the 6cm resolution data, we have been able to measure vegetation patch size, crown width, gap sizes between vegetation, percent vegetation and bare soil cover, and type of vegetation. The UAV system is also being tested to acquire height of the vegetation canopy using shadow measurements and a digital elevation model obtained with stereo images. Evaluation of combining the UAV digital photography with LIDAR data of the Jornada Experimental Range in south central New Mexico is ongoing. The use of UAVs is increasing and is becoming a very promising tool for vegetation assessment and change, but there are several operational components to flying UAVs that users need to consider. These include cost, a whole set of, as yet, undefined regulations regarding flying in the National Air Space(NAS), procedures to gain approval for flying in the NAS

Using GoPro to Give Video-Assisted Operative Feedback for Surgery Residents: A Feasibility and Utility Assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Maureen D; Abelson, Jonathan S; O'Mahoney, Paul; Bagautdinov, Iskander; Yeo, Heather; Watkins, Anthony C

As an adjunct to simulation-based teaching, laparoscopic video-based surgical coaching has been an effective tool to augment surgical education. However, the wide use of video review in open surgery has been limited primarily due to technological and logistical challenges. The aims of our study were to (1) evaluate perceptions of general surgery (GS) residents on video-assisted operative instruction and (2) conduct a pilot study using a head-mounted GoPro in conjunction with the operative performance rating system to assess feasibility of providing video review to enhance operative feedback during open procedures. GS residents were anonymously surveyed to evaluate their perceptions of oral and written operative feedback and use of video-based operative resources. We then conducted a pilot study of 10 GS residents to assess the utility and feasibility of using a GoPro to record resident performance of an arteriovenous fistula creation with an attending surgeon. Categorical variables were analyzed using the chi-square test. Academic, tertiary medical center. GS residents and faculty. A total of 59 GS residents were anonymously surveyed (response rate = 65.5%). A total of 40% (n = 24) of residents reported that structured evaluations rarely or never provided meaningful feedback. When feedback was received, 55% (n = 32) residents reported that it was only rarely or sometimes in regard to their operative skills. There was no significant difference in surveyed responses among junior postgraduate year (PGY 1-2), senior (PGY 3-4), or chief residents (PGY-5). A total of 80% (n = 8) of residents found the use of GoPro video review very or extremely useful for education; they also deemed video review more useful for operative feedback than written or communicative feedback. An overwhelming majority (90%, n = 9) felt that video review would lead to improved technical skills, wanted to review the video with the attending surgeon for further feedback, and desired expansion of

Digital, remote control system for a 2-MW research reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Battle, R.E.; Corbett, G.K.

1988-01-01

A fault-tolerant programmable logic controller (PLC) and operator workstations have been programmed to replace the hard-wired relay control system in the 2-MW Bulk Shielding Reactor (BSR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In addition to the PLC and remote and local operator workstations, auxiliary systems for remote operation include a video system, an intercom system, and a fiber optic communication system. The remote control station, located at the High Flux Isotope Reactor 2.5 km from the BSR, has the capability of rector startup and power control. The system was designed with reliability and fail-safe features as important considerations. 4 refs., 3 figs

Agreement Between Face-to-Face and Free Software Video Analysis for Assessing Hamstring Flexibility in Adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Moral-Muñoz, José A; Esteban-Moreno, Bernabé; Arroyo-Morales, Manuel; Cobo, Manuel J; Herrera-Viedma, Enrique

2015-09-01

The objective of this study was to determine the level of agreement between face-to-face hamstring flexibility measurements and free software video analysis in adolescents. Reduced hamstring flexibility is common in adolescents (75% of boys and 35% of girls aged 10). The length of the hamstring muscle has an important role in both the effectiveness and the efficiency of basic human movements, and reduced hamstring flexibility is related to various musculoskeletal conditions. There are various approaches to measuring hamstring flexibility with high reliability; the most commonly used approaches in the scientific literature are the sit-and-reach test, hip joint angle (HJA), and active knee extension. The assessment of hamstring flexibility using video analysis could help with adolescent flexibility follow-up. Fifty-four adolescents from a local school participated in a descriptive study of repeated measures using a crossover design. Active knee extension and HJA were measured with an inclinometer and were simultaneously recorded with a video camera. Each video was downloaded to a computer and subsequently analyzed using Kinovea 0.8.15, a free software application for movement analysis. All outcome measures showed reliability estimates with α > 0.90. The lowest reliability was obtained for HJA (α = 0.91). The preliminary findings support the use of a free software tool for assessing hamstring flexibility, offering health professionals a useful tool for adolescent flexibility follow-up.

Expert operator preferences in remote manipulator control systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sundstrom, E.; Draper, J.V.; Fausz, A.; Woods, H.

1995-06-01

This report describes a survey of expert remote manipulator operators designed to identify features of control systems related to operator efficiency and comfort. It provides information for designing the control center for the Single-Shell Tank Waste Retrieval Manipulator System (TWRMS) Test Bed, described in a separate report. Research questions concerned preferred modes of control, optimum work sessions, sources of operator fatigue, importance of control system design features, and desired changes in control rooms. Participants comprised four expert remote manipulator operators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who individually have from 9 to 20 years of experience using teleoperators. The operators had all used rate and position control, and all preferred bilateral (force-reflecting) position control. They reported spending an average of 2.75 h in control of a teleoperator system during a typical shift. All were accustomed to working in a crew of two and alternating control and support roles in 2-h rotations in an 8-h shift. Operators reported that fatigue in using remote manipulator systems came mainly from watching TV monitors and making repetitive motions. Three of four experienced symptoms, including headaches and sore eyes, wrists, and back. Of 17 features of control rooms rated on importance, highest ratings went to comfort and support provided by the operator chair, location of controls, location of video monitors, video image clarity, types of controls, and control modes. When asked what they wanted to change, operators said work stations designed for comfort; simpler, lighter hand-controls; separate controls for each camera; better placement of remote camera; color monitors; and control room layouts that support crew interaction. Results of this small survey reinforced the importance of ergonomic factors in remote manipulation

Application of Remote Sensing in Building Damages Assessment after Moderate and Strong Earthquake

Science.gov (United States)

Tian, Y.; Zhang, J.; Dou, A.

2003-04-01

- Earthquake is a main natural disaster in modern society. However, we still cannot predict the time and place of its occurrence accurately. Then it is of much importance to survey the damages information when an earthquake occurs, which can help us to mitigate losses and implement fast damage evaluation. In this paper, we use remote sensing techniques for our purposes. Remotely sensed satellite images often view a large scale of land at a time. There are several kinds of satellite images, which of different spatial and spectral resolutions. Landsat-4/5 TM sensor can view ground at 30m resolution, while Landsat-7 ETM Plus has a resolution of 15m in panchromatic waveband. SPOT satellite can provide images with higher resolutions. Those images obtained pre- and post-earthquake can help us greatly in identifying damages of moderate and large-size buildings. In this paper, we bring forward a method to implement quick damages assessment by analyzing both pre- and post-earthquake satellite images. First, those images are geographically registered together with low RMS (Root Mean Square) error. Then, we clip out residential areas by overlaying images with existing vector layers through Geographic Information System (GIS) software. We present a new change detection algorithm to quantitatively identify damages degree. An empirical or semi-empirical model is then established by analyzing the real damage degree and changes of pixel values of the same ground objects. Experimental result shows that there is a good linear relationship between changes of pixel values and ground damages, which proves the potentials of remote sensing in post-quake fast damage assessment. Keywords: Damages Assessment, Earthquake Hazard, Remote Sensing

First operation of the wide-area remote experiment system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Furukawa, Y.; Hasegawa, K.; Ueno, G.

2012-01-01

The Wide-area Remote Experiment System (WRES) at Spring-8 has been successfully developed. The system communicates with remote users on the basis of SSL/TLS with bi-directional authentication to avoid interference from unauthorized access to the system. The system has a message-filtering system to allow remote users access only to the corresponding beamline equipment and safety interlock system. This is to protect persons inside the experimental station from injury from any accidental motion of heavy equipment. The system also has a video streaming system to monitor samples or experimental equipment. We have tested the system from the point of view of safety, stability, reliability etc. and successfully performed the first experiment from a remote site, i.e., RIKEN's Wako campus, which is 480 km away from Spring-8, at the end of October 2010. (authors)

NASA Fluid Lensing & MiDAR: Next-Generation Remote Sensing Technologies for Aquatic Remote Sensing

Science.gov (United States)

Chirayath, Ved

2018-01-01

We present two recent instrument technology developments at NASA, Fluid Lensing and MiDAR, and their application to remote sensing of Earth's aquatic systems. Fluid Lensing is the first remote sensing technology capable of imaging through ocean waves in 3D at sub-cm resolutions. MiDAR is a next-generation active hyperspectral remote sensing and optical communications instrument capable of active fluid lensing. Fluid Lensing has been used to provide 3D multispectral imagery of shallow marine systems from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones), including coral reefs in American Samoa and stromatolite reefs in Hamelin Pool, Western Australia. MiDAR is being deployed on aircraft and underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to enable a new method for remote sensing of living and nonliving structures in extreme environments. MiDAR images targets with high-intensity narrowband structured optical radiation to measure an objectâ€"TM"s non-linear spectral reflectance, image through fluid interfaces such as ocean waves with active fluid lensing, and simultaneously transmit high-bandwidth data. As an active instrument, MiDAR is capable of remotely sensing reflectance at the centimeter (cm) spatial scale with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) multiple orders of magnitude higher than passive airborne and spaceborne remote sensing systems with significantly reduced integration time. This allows for rapid video-frame-rate hyperspectral sensing into the far ultraviolet and VNIR wavelengths. Previously, MiDAR was developed into a TRL 2 laboratory instrument capable of imaging in thirty-two narrowband channels across the VNIR spectrum (400-950nm). Recently, MiDAR UV was raised to TRL4 and expanded to include five ultraviolet bands from 280-400nm, permitting UV remote sensing capabilities in UV A, B, and C bands and enabling mineral identification and stimulated fluorescence measurements of organic proteins and compounds, such as green fluorescent proteins in terrestrial and

Development of an emergency medical video multiplexing transport system. Aiming at the nation wide prehospital care on ambulance.

Science.gov (United States)

Nagatuma, Hideaki

2003-04-01

The Emergency Medical Video Multiplexing Transport System (EMTS) is designed to support prehospital cares by delivering high quality live video streams of patients in an ambulance to emergency doctors in a remote hospital via satellite communications. The important feature is that EMTS divides a patient's live video scene into four pieces and transports the four video streams on four separate network channels. By multiplexing four video streams, EMTS is able to transport high quality videos through low data transmission rate networks such as satellite communications and cellular phone networks. In order to transport live video streams constantly, EMTS adopts Real-time Transport Protocol/Real-time Control Protocol as a network protocol and video stream data are compressed by Moving Picture Experts Group 4 format. As EMTS combines four video streams with checking video frame numbers, it uses a refresh packet that initializes server's frame numbers to synchronize the four video streams.

Summarization of Surveillance Video Sequences Using Face Quality Assessment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nasrollahi, Kamal; Moeslund, Thomas B.; Rahmati, Mohammad

2011-01-01

Constant working surveillance cameras in public places, such as airports and banks, produce huge amount of video data. Faces in such videos can be extracted in real time. However, most of these detected faces are either redundant or useless. Redundant information adds computational costs to facial...

Data Reduction and Control Software for Meteor Observing Stations Based on CCD Video Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Madiedo, J. M.; Trigo-Rodriguez, J. M.; Lyytinen, E.

2011-01-01

The SPanish Meteor Network (SPMN) is performing a continuous monitoring of meteor activity over Spain and neighbouring countries. The huge amount of data obtained by the 25 video observing stations that this network is currently operating made it necessary to develop new software packages to accomplish some tasks, such as data reduction and remote operation of autonomous systems based on high-sensitivity CCD video devices. The main characteristics of this software are described here.

Remote video registration of seals at Rødsand seal sanctuary

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Edren, Susi M.C.; Teilmann, J.; Dietz, R.

This report describes the preliminary use of a remote-controlled webbased camera system in the Rødsand seal sanctuary. The camera system powered by solar and wind energy is designed to operate under extreme weather conditions. Live images and still photos are transmitted to a land station, from...

Computed Quality Assessment of MPEG4-compressed DICOM Video Data.

Science.gov (United States)

Frankewitsch, Thomas; Söhnlein, Sven; Müller, Marcel; Prokosch, Hans-Ulrich

2005-01-01

Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) has become one of the most popular standards in medicine. This standard specifies the exact procedures in which digital images are exchanged between devices, either using a network or storage medium. Sources for images vary; therefore there exist definitions for the exchange for CR, CT, NMR, angiography, sonography and so on. With its spreading, with the increasing amount of sources included, data volume is increasing, too. This affects storage and traffic. While for long-time storage data compression is generally not accepted at the moment, there are many situations where data compression is possible: Telemedicine for educational purposes (e.g. students at home using low speed internet connections), presentations with standard-resolution video projectors, or even the supply on wards combined receiving written findings. DICOM comprises compression: for still image there is JPEG, for video MPEG-2 is adopted. Within the last years MPEG-2 has been evolved to MPEG-4, which squeezes data even better, but the risk of significant errors increases, too. Within the last years effects of compression have been analyzed for entertainment movies, but these are not comparable to videos of physical examinations (e.g. echocardiography). In medical videos an individual image plays a more important role. Erroneous single images affect total quality even more. Additionally, the effect of compression can not be generalized from one test series to all videos. The result depends strongly on the source. Some investigations have been presented, where different MPEG-4 algorithms compressed videos have been compared and rated manually. But they describe only the results in an elected testbed. In this paper some methods derived from video rating are presented and discussed for an automatically created quality control for the compression of medical videos, primary stored in DICOM containers.

Toward 3D-IPTV: design and implementation of a stereoscopic and multiple-perspective video streaming system

Science.gov (United States)

Petrovic, Goran; Farin, Dirk; de With, Peter H. N.

2008-02-01

3D-Video systems allow a user to perceive depth in the viewed scene and to display the scene from arbitrary viewpoints interactively and on-demand. This paper presents a prototype implementation of a 3D-video streaming system using an IP network. The architecture of our streaming system is layered, where each information layer conveys a single coded video signal or coded scene-description data. We demonstrate the benefits of a layered architecture with two examples: (a) stereoscopic video streaming, (b) monoscopic video streaming with remote multiple-perspective rendering. Our implementation experiments confirm that prototyping 3D-video streaming systems is possible with today's software and hardware. Furthermore, our current operational prototype demonstrates that highly heterogeneous clients can coexist in the system, ranging from auto-stereoscopic 3D displays to resource-constrained mobile devices.

Adaptive testing for video quality assessment

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Menkovski, V.; Exarchakos, G.; Liotta, A.; Damásio, M.J.; Cardoso, G.; Quico, C.; Geerts, D.

2011-01-01

Optimizing the Quality of Experience and avoiding under or over provisioning in video delivery services requires understanding of how different resources affect the perceived quality. The utility of resources, such as bit-rate, is directly calculated by proportioningthe improvement in quality over

Knowledge-Based Detection and Assessment of Damaged Roads Using Post-Disaster High-Resolution Remote Sensing Image

OpenAIRE

Wang, Jianhua; Qin, Qiming; Zhao, Jianghua; Ye, Xin; Feng, Xiao; Qin, Xuebin; Yang, Xiucheng

2015-01-01

Road damage detection and assessment from high-resolution remote sensing image is critical for natural disaster investigation and disaster relief. In a disaster context, the pairing of pre-disaster and post-disaster road data for change detection and assessment is difficult to achieve due to the mismatch of different data sources, especially for rural areas where the pre-disaster data (i.e., remote sensing imagery or vector map) are hard to obtain. In this study, a knowledge-based method for ...

Validation of 24-hour ambulatory gait assessment in Parkinson's disease with simultaneous video observation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dilda Valentina

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Parkinson's disease (PD is a neurodegenerative disorder resulting in motor disturbances that can impact normal gait. Although PD initially responds well to pharmacological treatment, as the disease progresses efficacy often fluctuates over the course of the day, and clinical management would benefit from long-term objective measures of gait. We have previously described a small device worn on the shank that uses acceleration and angular velocity sensors to calculate stride length and identify freezing of gait in PD patients. In this study we extend validation of the gait monitor to 24-h using simultaneous video observation of PD patients. Methods A sleep laboratory was adapted to perform 24-hr video monitoring of patients while wearing the device. Continuous video monitoring of a sleep lab, hallway, kitchen and conference room was performed using a 4-camera security system and recorded to hard disk. Subjects (3 wore the gait monitor on the left shank (just above the ankle for a 24-h period beginning around 5 pm in the evening. Accuracy of stride length measures were assessed at the beginning and end of the 24-h epoch. Two independent observers rated the video logs to identify when subjects were walking or lying down. Results The mean error in stride length at the start of recording was 0.05 m (SD 0 and at the conclusion of the 24 h epoch was 0.06 m (SD 0.026. There was full agreement between observer coding of the video logs and the output from the gait monitor software; that is, for every video observation of the subject walking there was a corresponding pulse in the monitor data that indicated gait. Conclusions The accuracy of ambulatory stride length measurement was maintained over the 24-h period, and there was 100% agreement between the autonomous detection of locomotion by the gait monitor and video observation.

Internet-based remote consultations - general practitioner experience and attitudes in Norway and Germany.

Science.gov (United States)

Kampik, Timotheus; Larsen, Frank; Bellika, Johan Gustav

2015-01-01

The objective of the study was to identify experiences and attitudes of German and Norwegian general practitioners (GPs) towards Internet-based remote consultation solutions supporting communication between GPs and patients in the context of the German and Norwegian healthcare systems. Interviews with four German and five Norwegian GPs were conducted. The results were qualitatively analyzed. All interviewed GPs stated they would like to make use of Internet-based remote consultations in the future. Current experiences with remote consultations are existent to a limited degree. No GP reported to use a comprehensive remote consultation solution. The main features GPs would like to see in a remote consultation solution include asynchronous exchange of text messages, video conferencing with text chat, scheduling of remote consultation appointments, secure login and data transfer and the integration of the remote consultation solution into the GP's EHR system.

A remotely piloted aircraft system in major incident management: concept and pilot, feasibility study.

Science.gov (United States)

Abrahamsen, Håkon B

2015-06-10

Major incidents are complex, dynamic and bewildering task environments characterised by simultaneous, rapidly changing events, uncertainty and ill-structured problems. Efficient management, communication, decision-making and allocation of scarce medical resources at the chaotic scene of a major incident is challenging and often relies on sparse information and data. Communication and information sharing is primarily voice-to-voice through phone or radio on specified radio frequencies. Visual cues are abundant and difficult to communicate between teams and team members that are not co-located. The aim was to assess the concept and feasibility of using a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) system to support remote sensing in simulated major incident exercises. We carried out an experimental, pilot feasibility study. A custom-made, remotely controlled, multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle with vertical take-off and landing was equipped with digital colour- and thermal imaging cameras, a laser beam, a mechanical gripper arm and an avalanche transceiver. We collected data in five simulated exercises: 1) mass casualty traffic accident, 2) mountain rescue, 3) avalanche with buried victims, 4) fisherman through thin ice and 5) search for casualties in the dark. The unmanned aerial vehicle was remotely controlled, with high precision, in close proximity to air space obstacles at very low levels without compromising work on the ground. Payload capacity and tolerance to wind and turbulence were limited. Aerial video, shot from different altitudes, and remote aerial avalanche beacon search were streamed wirelessly in real time to a monitor at a ground base. Electromagnetic interference disturbed signal reception in the ground monitor. A small remotely piloted aircraft can be used as an effective tool carrier, although limited by its payload capacity, wind speed and flight endurance. Remote sensing using already existing remotely piloted aircraft technology in pre

[Is video game addiction a reality ?

Science.gov (United States)

Thorens, Gabriel; Achab, Sophia; Rothen, Stephane; Khazaal, Yasser; Zullino, Daniele

2016-09-21

Video games are widely practiced. Questions about their potential health risks arise, including the risk of addiction. If there is at present no official diagnosis of video games addiction, the DSM-5 proposes temporary criteria based on pathological gambling. Video game addiction affects a minority of at risk individuals. The proposed treatments are essentially psychotherapeutic. Video games practices can be non problematic and they may also have potential beneficial effects on individuals. It is therefore recommended, when assessing video games practices, to take into account the positive and negative impacts of their use.

Examining in vivo tympanic membrane mobility using smart phone video-otoscopy and phase-based Eulerian video magnification

Science.gov (United States)

Janatka, Mirek; Ramdoo, Krishan S.; Tatla, Taran; Pachtrachai, Krittin; Elson, Daniel S.; Stoyanov, Danail

2017-03-01

The tympanic membrane (TM) is the bridging element between the pressure waves of sound in air and the ossicular chain. It allows for sound to be conducted into the inner ear, achieving the human sense of hearing. Otitis media with effusion (OME, commonly referred to as `glue ear') is a typical condition in infants that prevents the vibration of the TM and causes conductive hearing loss, this can lead to stunting early stage development if undiagnosed. Furthermore, OME is hard to identify in this age group; as they cannot respond to typical audiometry tests. Tympanometry allows for the mobility of the TM to be examined without patient response, but requires expensive apparatus and specialist training. By combining a smartphone equipped with a 240 frames per second video recording capability with an otoscopic clip-on accessory, this paper presents a novel application of Eulerian Video Magnification (EVM) to video-otology, that could provide assistance in diagnosing OME. We present preliminary results showing a spatio-temporal slice taken from an exaggerated video visualization of the TM being excited in vivo on a healthy ear. Our preliminary results demonstrate the potential for using such an approach for diagnosing OME under visual inspection as alternative to tympanometry, which could be used remotely and hence help diagnosis in a wider population pool.

The remote characterization of vegetation using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle photography

Science.gov (United States)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can fly in place of piloted aircraft to gather remote sensing information on vegetation characteristics. The type of sensors flown depends on the instrument payload capacity available, so that, depending on the specific UAV, it is possible to obtain video, aerial phot...

Challenges of assessing fire and burn severity using field measures, remote sensing and modelling

Science.gov (United States)

Penelope Morgan; Robert E. Keane; Gregory K. Dillon; Theresa B. Jain; Andrew T. Hudak; Eva C. Karau; Pamela G. Sikkink; Zachery A. Holden; Eva K. Strand

2014-01-01

Comprehensive assessment of ecological change after fires have burned forests and rangelands is important if we are to understand, predict and measure fire effects. We highlight the challenges in effective assessment of fire and burn severity in the field and using both remote sensing and simulation models. We draw on diverse recent research for guidance on assessing...

Needs Assessment for the Use of NASA Remote Sensing Data in the Development and Implementation of Estuarine and Coastal Water Quality Standards

Science.gov (United States)

Spiering, Bruce; Underwood, Lauren; Ellis, Chris; Lehrter, John; Hagy, Jim; Schaeffer, Blake

2010-01-01

The goals of the project are to provide information from satellite remote sensing to support numeric nutrient criteria development and to determine data processing methods and data quality requirements to support nutrient criteria development and implementation. The approach is to identify water quality indicators that are used by decision makers to assess water quality and that are related to optical properties of the water; to develop remotely sensed data products based on algorithms relating remote sensing imagery to field-based observations of indicator values; to develop methods to assess estuarine water quality, including trends, spatial and temporal variability, and seasonality; and to develop tools to assist in the development and implementation of estuarine and coastal nutrient criteria. Additional slides present process, criteria development, typical data sources and analyses for criteria process, the power of remote sensing data for the process, examples from Pensacola Bay, spatial and temporal variability, pixel matchups, remote sensing validation, remote sensing in coastal waters, requirements for remotely sensed data products, and needs assessment. An additional presentation examines group engagement and information collection. Topics include needs assessment purpose and objectives, understanding water quality decision making, determining information requirements, and next steps.

Unattended digital video surveillance: A system prototype for EURATOM safeguards

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chare, P.; Goerten, J.; Wagner, H.; Rodriguez, C.; Brown, J.E.

1994-01-01

Ever increasing capabilities in video and computer technology have changed the face of video surveillance. From yesterday's film and analog video tape-based systems, we now emerge into the digital era with surveillance systems capable of digital image processing, image analysis, decision control logic, and random data access features -- all of which provide greater versatility with the potential for increased effectiveness in video surveillance. Digital systems also offer other advantages such as the ability to ''compress'' data, providing increased storage capacities and the potential for allowing longer surveillance Periods. Remote surveillance and system to system communications are also a benefit that can be derived from digital surveillance systems. All of these features are extremely important in today's climate Of increasing safeguards activity and decreasing budgets -- Los Alamos National Laboratory's Safeguards Systems Group and the EURATOM Safeguards Directorate have teamed to design and implement a period surveillance system that will take advantage of the versatility of digital video for facility surveillance system that will take advantage of the versatility of digital video for facility surveillance and data review. In this Paper we will familiarize you with system components and features and report on progress in developmental areas such as image compression and region of interest processing

Video-based Mobile Mapping System Using Smartphones

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Hamad, A.; Moussa, A.; El-Sheimy, N.

2014-11-01

The last two decades have witnessed a huge growth in the demand for geo-spatial data. This demand has encouraged researchers around the world to develop new algorithms and design new mapping systems in order to obtain reliable sources for geo-spatial data. Mobile Mapping Systems (MMS) are one of the main sources for mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data. MMS integrate various remote sensing sensors, such as cameras and LiDAR, along with navigation sensors to provide the 3D coordinates of points of interest from moving platform (e.g. cars, air planes, etc.). Although MMS can provide accurate mapping solution for different GIS applications, the cost of these systems is not affordable for many users and only large scale companies and institutions can benefits from MMS systems. The main objective of this paper is to propose a new low cost MMS with reasonable accuracy using the available sensors in smartphones and its video camera. Using the smartphone video camera, instead of capturing individual images, makes the system easier to be used by non-professional users since the system will automatically extract the highly overlapping frames out of the video without the user intervention. Results of the proposed system are presented which demonstrate the effect of the number of the used images in mapping solution. In addition, the accuracy of the mapping results obtained from capturing a video is compared to the same results obtained from using separate captured images instead of video.

A First Step Towards Synthesising Rubrics and Video for the Formative Assessment of Complex Skills

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ackermans, Kevin; Rusman, Ellen; Brand-Gruwel, Saskia; Specht, Marcus

2016-01-01

Abstract. The performance objectives used for the formative assessment of com- plex skills are generally set through text-based analytic rubrics[1]. Moreover, video modeling examples are a widely applied method of observational learning, providing students with context-rich modeling examples of

Detection Thresholds for Rotation and Translation Gains in 360° Video-Based Telepresence Systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jingxin; Langbehn, Eike; Krupke, Dennis; Katzakis, Nicholas; Steinicke, Frank

2018-04-01

Telepresence systems have the potential to overcome limits and distance constraints of the real-world by enabling people to remotely visit and interact with each other. However, current telepresence systems usually lack natural ways of supporting interaction and exploration of remote environments (REs). In particular, single webcams for capturing the RE provide only a limited illusion of spatial presence, and movement control of mobile platforms in today's telepresence systems are often restricted to simple interaction devices. One of the main challenges of telepresence systems is to allow users to explore a RE in an immersive, intuitive and natural way, e.g., by real walking in the user's local environment (LE), and thus controlling motions of the robot platform in the RE. However, the LE in which the user's motions are tracked usually provides a much smaller interaction space than the RE. In this context, redirected walking (RDW) is a very suitable approach to solve this problem. However, so far there is no previous work, which explored if and how RDW can be used in video-based 360° telepresence systems. In this article, we conducted two psychophysical experiments in which we have quantified how much humans can be unknowingly redirected on virtual paths in the RE, which are different from the physical paths that they actually walk in the LE. Experiment 1 introduces a discrimination task between local and remote translations, and in Experiment 2 we analyzed the discrimination between local and remote rotations. In Experiment 1 participants performed straightforward translations in the LE that were mapped to straightforward translations in the RE shown as 360° videos, which were manipulated by different gains. Then, participants had to estimate if the remotely perceived translation was faster or slower than the actual physically performed translation. Similarly, in Experiment 2 participants performed rotations in the LE that were mapped to the virtual rotations

Social Media Usage Combined with TV/Video Watching: Opportunities and Associated Challenges

NARCIS (Netherlands)

M.A. Montagud Climent (Mario); P.S. Cesar Garcia (Pablo Santiago); F. Boronat (Fernando); D. Marfil (Dani)

2015-01-01

htmlabstractThis paper provides an overview of the impact and opportunities provided by Social Media and other social interaction tools when watching TV/video content. The analysis has been conducted from the viewpoints of both individual and shared media experiences between remote users. On the one

Remote control of an MR imaging study via tele-collaboration tools

Science.gov (United States)

Sullivan, John M., Jr.; Mullen, Julia S.; Benz, Udo A.; Schmidt, Karl F.; Murugavel, Murali; Chen, Wei; Ghadyani, Hamid

2005-04-01

In contrast to traditional 'video conferencing' the Access Grid (AG), developed by Argonne National Laboratory, is a collaboration of audio, video and shared application tools which provide the 'persistent presence' of each participant. Among the shared application tools are the ability to share viewing and control of presentations, browsers, images and movies. When used in conjunction with Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software, an investigator can interact with colleagues at a remote site, and control remote systems via local keyboard and mouse commands. This combination allows for effective viewing and discussion of information, i.e. data, images, and results. It is clear that such an approach when applied to the medical sciences will provide a means by which a team of experts can not only access, but interact and control medical devices for the purpose of experimentation, diagnosis, surgery and therapy. We present the development of an application node at our 4.7 Tesla MR magnet facility, and a demonstration of remote investigator control of the magnet. A local magnet operator performs manual tasks such as loading the test subject into the magnet and administering the stimulus associated with the functional MRI study. The remote investigator has complete control of the magnet console. S/he can adjust the gradient coil settings, the pulse sequence, image capture frequency, etc. A geographically distributed audience views and interacts with the remote investigator and local MR operator. This AG demonstration of MR magnet control illuminates the potential of untethered medical experiments, procedures and training.

Vroom: designing an augmented environment for remote collaboration in digital cinema production

Science.gov (United States)

Margolis, Todd; Cornish, Tracy

2013-03-01

As media technologies become increasingly affordable, compact and inherently networked, new generations of telecollaborative platforms continue to arise which integrate these new affordances. Virtual reality has been primarily concerned with creating simulations of environments that can transport participants to real or imagined spaces that replace the "real world". Meanwhile Augmented Reality systems have evolved to interleave objects from Virtual Reality environments into the physical landscape. Perhaps now there is a new class of systems that reverse this precept to enhance dynamic media landscapes and immersive physical display environments to enable intuitive data exploration through collaboration. Vroom (Virtual Room) is a next-generation reconfigurable tiled display environment in development at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego. Vroom enables freely scalable digital collaboratories, connecting distributed, high-resolution visualization resources for collaborative work in the sciences, engineering and the arts. Vroom transforms a physical space into an immersive media environment with large format interactive display surfaces, video teleconferencing and spatialized audio built on a highspeed optical network backbone. Vroom enables group collaboration for local and remote participants to share knowledge and experiences. Possible applications include: remote learning, command and control, storyboarding, post-production editorial review, high resolution video playback, 3D visualization, screencasting and image, video and multimedia file sharing. To support these various scenarios, Vroom features support for multiple user interfaces (optical tracking, touch UI, gesture interface, etc.), support for directional and spatialized audio, giga-pixel image interactivity, 4K video streaming, 3D visualization and telematic production. This paper explains the design process that

Assessing video presentations as environmental enrichment for laboratory birds.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marion Coulon

Full Text Available The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of video presentations of natural landscapes on European starlings' (Sturnus vulgaris stereotypic behaviours (SBs and other abnormal repetitive behaviours (ARBs and to evaluate the impact of past experience by comparing wild-caught and hand-reared starlings' reactions. Ten wild-caught and five hand-reared starlings were presented 1-hour videos of landscapes twice a day for five successive days, while a control group of eight wild-caught and four hand-reared starlings was presented a grey screen for the same amount of time. The analysis of the starlings' behaviour revealed that the video presentations of landscapes appeared to have a positive but limited and experience-dependent effect on starlings' SBs and other ARBs compared to the controls. Indeed, whereas video presentations seemed to modulate high rates of SBs and ARBs, they did not appear to be enriching enough to prevent the emergence or the development of SBs and ARBs in an impoverished environment. They even appeared to promote a particular type of SB (somersaulting that is thought to be linked to escape motivation. The fact that this effect was observed in hand-reared starlings suggests that videos of landscapes could elicit motivation to escape even in birds that never experienced outdoor life. These results highlight the importance of investigating stereotypic behaviour both quantitatively and qualitatively in order to provide crucial clues on animal welfare.

Effect of a Neonatal Resuscitation Course on Healthcare Providers' Performances Assessed by Video Recording in a Low-Resource Setting.

Science.gov (United States)

Trevisanuto, Daniele; Bertuola, Federica; Lanzoni, Paolo; Cavallin, Francesco; Matediana, Eduardo; Manzungu, Olivier Wingi; Gomez, Ermelinda; Da Dalt, Liviana; Putoto, Giovanni

2015-01-01

We assessed the effect of an adapted neonatal resuscitation program (NRP) course on healthcare providers' performances in a low-resource setting through the use of video recording. A video recorder, mounted to the radiant warmers in the delivery rooms at Beira Central Hospital, Mozambique, was used to record all resuscitations. One-hundred resuscitations (50 before and 50 after participation in an adapted NRP course) were collected and assessed based on a previously published score. All 100 neonates received initial steps; from these, 77 and 32 needed bag-mask ventilation (BMV) and chest compressions (CC), respectively. There was a significant improvement in resuscitation scores in all levels of resuscitation from before to after the course: for "initial steps", the score increased from 33% (IQR 28-39) to 44% (IQR 39-56), pproviders improved after participation in an adapted NRP course. Video recording was well-accepted by the staff, useful for objective assessment of performance during resuscitation, and can be used as an educational tool in a low-resource setting.

The effect of visual information on verbal communication process in remote conversation

OpenAIRE

國田, 祥子; 中條, 和光

2005-01-01

This article examined how visual information affects verbal communication process in remote communication. In the experiment twenty pairs of subjects performed a collaborative task remotely via video and audio links or audio link only. During the task used in this experiment one of a pair (an instruction-giver) gave direction with a map to the other of the pair (an instruction-receiver). We recorded and analyzed contents of utterances. Consequently, the existence of visual information did not...

An ecological assessment of pasturelands in the Balkhash area of Kazakhstan with remote sensing and models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lebed, L; Qi, J; Heilman, P

2012-01-01

The 187 million hectares of pasturelands in Kazakhstan play a key role in the nation’s economy, as livestock production accounted for 54% of total agricultural production in 2010. However, more than half of these lands have been degraded as a result of unregulated grazing practices. Therefore, effective long term ecological monitoring of pasturelands in Kazakhstan is imperative to ensure sustainable pastureland management. As a case study in this research, we demonstrated how the ecological conditions could be assessed with remote sensing technologies and pastureland models. The example focuses on the southern Balkhash area with study sites on a foothill plain with Artemisia-ephemeral plants and a sandy plain with psammophilic vegetation in the Turan Desert. The assessment was based on remotely sensed imagery and meteorological data, a geobotanical archive and periodic ground sampling. The Pasture agrometeorological model was used to calculate biological, ecological and economic indicators to assess pastureland condition. The results showed that field surveys, meteorological observations, remote sensing and ecological models, such as Pasture, could be combined to effectively assess the ecological conditions of pasturelands and provide information about forage production that is critically important for balancing grazing and ecological conservation. (letter)

Multi-frame super-resolution with quality self-assessment for retinal fundus videos.

Science.gov (United States)

Köhler, Thomas; Brost, Alexander; Mogalle, Katja; Zhang, Qianyi; Köhler, Christiane; Michelson, Georg; Hornegger, Joachim; Tornow, Ralf P

2014-01-01

This paper proposes a novel super-resolution framework to reconstruct high-resolution fundus images from multiple low-resolution video frames in retinal fundus imaging. Natural eye movements during an examination are used as a cue for super-resolution in a robust maximum a-posteriori scheme. In order to compensate heterogeneous illumination on the fundus, we integrate retrospective illumination correction for photometric registration to the underlying imaging model. Our method utilizes quality self-assessment to provide objective quality scores for reconstructed images as well as to select regularization parameters automatically. In our evaluation on real data acquired from six human subjects with a low-cost video camera, the proposed method achieved considerable enhancements of low-resolution frames and improved noise and sharpness characteristics by 74%. In terms of image analysis, we demonstrate the importance of our method for the improvement of automatic blood vessel segmentation as an example application, where the sensitivity was increased by 13% using super-resolution reconstruction.

Remote intelligent nuclear facility monitoring in LabVIEW

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kucewicz, J.C.; Argo, P.E.; Caffrey, M.; Loveland, R.C.; McNeil, P.J.

1996-01-01

A prototype system implemented in LabVIEW for the intelligent monitoring of the movement of radioactive' material within a nuclear facility is presented. The system collects and analyzes radiation sensor and video data to identify suspicious movement of material within the facility. The facility system also transmits wavelet- compressed data to a remote system for concurrent monitoring. 2 refs., 2 figs

Remote operations and viewing using the monitor system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Grisham, D.L.; Lambert, J.E.; Baldwin, T.S.; Ekberg, E.L.; Hernandez, T.R.; Raybun, J.L.

1984-01-01

Over the past two years, major rebuilding operations were conducted at the Clinton P. Anderson Meson Physics Facility (LAMPF). These operations involved replacement of complex experimental apparatus in high-radiation areas using servomanipulators and video viewing. All remote tasks were completed on or ahead of allotted schedules. This success is attributed to continuing improvement of manipulators, viewing systems, and operating techniques

Video compression and DICOM proxies for remote viewing of DICOM images

Science.gov (United States)

Khorasani, Elahe; Sheinin, Vadim; Paulovicks, Brent; Jagmohan, Ashish

2009-02-01

Digital medical images are rapidly growing in size and volume. A typical study includes multiple image "slices." These images have a special format and a communication protocol referred to as DICOM (Digital Imaging Communications in Medicine). Storing, retrieving, and viewing these images are handled by DICOM-enabled systems. DICOM images are stored in central repository servers called PACS (Picture Archival and Communication Systems). Remote viewing stations are DICOM-enabled applications that can query the PACS servers and retrieve the DICOM images for viewing. Modern medical images are quite large, reaching as much as 1 GB per file. When the viewing station is connected to the PACS server via a high-bandwidth local LAN, downloading of the images is relatively efficient and does not cause significant wasted time for physicians. Problems arise when the viewing station is located in a remote facility that has a low-bandwidth link to the PACS server. If the link between the PACS and remote facility is in the range of 1 Mbit/sec, downloading medical images is very slow. To overcome this problem, medical images are compressed to reduce the size for transmission. This paper describes a method of compression that maintains diagnostic quality of images while significantly reducing the volume to be transmitted, without any change to the existing PACS servers and viewer software, and without requiring any change in the way doctors retrieve and view images today.

Diagnosing subtle palatal anomalies: Validation of video-analysis and assessment protocol for diagnosing occult submucous cleft palate.

Science.gov (United States)

Rourke, Ryan; Weinberg, Seth M; Marazita, Mary L; Jabbour, Noel

2017-09-01

Submucous cleft palate (SMCP) classically involves bifid uvula, zona pellucida, and notched hard palate. However, patients may present with more subtle anatomic abnormalities. The ability to detect these abnormalities is important for surgeons managing velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) or considering adenoidectomy. Validate an assessment protocol for diagnosis of occult submucous cleft palate (OSMCP) and identify physical examination features present in patients with OSMCP in the relaxed and activated palate positions. Study participants included patients referred to a pediatric VPD clinic with concern for hypernasality or SMCP. Using an appropriately encrypted iPod touch, transoral video was obtained for each patient with the palate in the relaxed and activated positions. The videos were reviewed by two otolaryngologists in normal speed and slow-motion, as needed, and a questionnaire was completed by each reviewer pertaining to the anatomy and function of the palate. 47 patients, with an average age of 4.6 years, were included in the study over a one-year period. Four videos were unusable due to incomplete view of the palate. The most common palatal abnormality noted was OSMCP, diagnosed by each reviewer in 26/43 and 30/43 patients respectively. Using the assessment protocol, agreement on palatal diagnosis was 83.7% (kappa = 0.68), indicating substantial agreement, with the most prevalent anatomic features being vaulted palate elevation (96%) and visible notching of hard palate (75%). The diagnosis of subtle palatal anomalies is difficult and can be subjective. Using the proposed video-analysis method and assessment protocol may improve reliability of diagnosis of OSMCP. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Remote observing with the Keck Telescopes from the U.S. mainland

Science.gov (United States)

Kibrick, Robert I.; Allen, Steve L.; Conrad, Albert

2000-06-01

We describe the current status of efforts to establish a high-bandwidth network from the U.S. mainland to Mauna Kea and a facility in California to support Keck remote observing and engineering via the Internet. The California facility will be an extension of the existing Keck remote operations facility located in Waimea, Hawaii. It will be targeted towards short-duration observing runs which now comprise roughly half of all scheduled science runs on the Keck Telescope. Keck technical staff in Hawaii will support remote observers on the mainland via video conferencing and collaborative software tools. Advantages and disadvantages of remote operation from California versus Hawaii are explored, and costs of alternative communication paths examined. We describe a plan for a backup communications path to protect against failure of the primary network. Alternative software models for remote operation are explored, and recent operational results described.

Remote handling assessment of attachment concepts for DEMO blanket segments

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Iglesias, Daniel, E-mail: daniel.iglesias@ccfe.ac.uk [CCFE, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 3DB (United Kingdom); Bastow, Roger; Cooper, Dave; Crowe, Robert; Middleton-Gear, Dave [CCFE, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 3DB (United Kingdom); Sibois, Romain [VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland, Industrial Systems, ROViR, Tampere (Finland); Carloni, Dario [Institute of Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Germany); Vizvary, Zsolt; Crofts, Oliver [CCFE, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 3DB (United Kingdom); Harman, Jon [EFDA Close Support Unit Garching, Boltzmannstaße 2, D-85748 Garching bei München (Germany); Loving, Antony [CCFE, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 3DB (United Kingdom)

2015-10-15

Highlights: • Challenges are identified for the remote handling of blanket segments’ attachments. • Two attachment design approaches are assessed for remote handling (RH) feasibility. • An alternative is proposed, which potentially simplifies and speeds-up RH operations. • Up to three different assemblies are proposed for the remote handling of the attachments. • Proposed integrated design of upper port is compatible with the attachment systems. - Abstract: The replacement strategy of the massive Multi-Module Blanket Segments (MMS) is a key driver in the design of several DEMO systems. These include the blankets themselves, the vacuum vessel (VV) and its ports and the Remote Maintenance System (RMS). Common challenges to any blanket attachment system have been identified, such as the need for applying a preload to the MMS manifold, the effects of the decay heat and several uncertainties related to permanent deformations when removing the blanket segments after service. The WP12 kinematics of the MMS in-vessel transportation was adapted to the requirements of each of the supports during 2013 and 2014 design activities. The RM equipment envisaged for handling attachments and earth connections may be composed of up to three different assemblies. An In-Vessel Mover at the divertor level handles the lower support and earth bonding, and could stabilize the MMS during transportation. A Shield Plug crane with a 6 DoF manipulator operates the upper attachment and earth straps. And a Vertical Maintenance Crane is responsible for the in-vessel MMS transportation and can handle the removable upper support pins. A final proposal is presented which can potentially reduce the number of required systems, at the same time that speeds-up the RMS global operations.

Video game addiction: Impact on teenagers' lifestyle.

Science.gov (United States)

Sharma, Manoj Kumar; Mahindru, Poornima

2015-01-01

Use of video games as a leisure-time activity has increased among teenagers. Excessive use of video games is associated with psychosocial dysfunctions in the user's life. Two teenagers came for consultation to our Service for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic for management of addiction due to video games. They were assessed using a clinical interview as well as the General Health Questionnaire and Griffith criteria for video games. The cases emphasize the addictive potential of video games and their association with lifestyle changes. Addiction to video games has implications for screening and intervention among teenagers. Copyright 2015, NMJI.

Roadside video data analysis deep learning

CERN Document Server

Verma, Brijesh; Stockwell, David

2017-01-01

This book highlights the methods and applications for roadside video data analysis, with a particular focus on the use of deep learning to solve roadside video data segmentation and classification problems. It describes system architectures and methodologies that are specifically built upon learning concepts for roadside video data processing, and offers a detailed analysis of the segmentation, feature extraction and classification processes. Lastly, it demonstrates the applications of roadside video data analysis including scene labelling, roadside vegetation classification and vegetation biomass estimation in fire risk assessment.

Video content analysis of surgical procedures.

Science.gov (United States)

Loukas, Constantinos

2018-02-01

In addition to its therapeutic benefits, minimally invasive surgery offers the potential for video recording of the operation. The videos may be archived and used later for reasons such as cognitive training, skills assessment, and workflow analysis. Methods from the major field of video content analysis and representation are increasingly applied in the surgical domain. In this paper, we review recent developments and analyze future directions in the field of content-based video analysis of surgical operations. The review was obtained from PubMed and Google Scholar search on combinations of the following keywords: 'surgery', 'video', 'phase', 'task', 'skills', 'event', 'shot', 'analysis', 'retrieval', 'detection', 'classification', and 'recognition'. The collected articles were categorized and reviewed based on the technical goal sought, type of surgery performed, and structure of the operation. A total of 81 articles were included. The publication activity is constantly increasing; more than 50% of these articles were published in the last 3 years. Significant research has been performed for video task detection and retrieval in eye surgery. In endoscopic surgery, the research activity is more diverse: gesture/task classification, skills assessment, tool type recognition, shot/event detection and retrieval. Recent works employ deep neural networks for phase and tool recognition as well as shot detection. Content-based video analysis of surgical operations is a rapidly expanding field. Several future prospects for research exist including, inter alia, shot boundary detection, keyframe extraction, video summarization, pattern discovery, and video annotation. The development of publicly available benchmark datasets to evaluate and compare task-specific algorithms is essential.

Observing incidental harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena bycatch by remote electronic monitoring

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kindt-Larsen, Lotte; Dalskov, Jørgen; Stage, Bjarne

2012-01-01

to document bycatch of marine mammals, 6 Danish commercial gillnetters (10 to15 m in length) operating under the Danish catch quota management system were equipped with Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) systems. The REM systems provided video footage, time and position of all net hauls and bycatches...

ONLINE LEARNING: CAN VIDEOS ENHANCE LEARNING?

OpenAIRE

HAJHASHEMI, Karim; ANDERSON, Neil; JACKSON, Cliff; CALTABIANO, Nerina

2015-01-01

Highereducation lecturers integrate different media into their courses. Internet-basededucational video clips have gained prominence, as this media is perceived topromote deeper thought processes, communication and interaction among users,and makeclassroom content more diverse.This paper provides a literature overview of the increasing importance ofonline videos across all modes of instruction. It discusses a quantitative andqualitative research design that was used to assess on-line video pe...

Needs assessment for remote systems technology at the Chornobyl Unit 4 shelter

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Carteret, B.A.; Holliday, M.A.; Jones, E.D.

1997-12-01

The accident at Chornobyl Unit 4 on April 26, 1986, resulted in a series of unprecedented scientific and technical challenges. The reactor building was damaged extensively. Following the accident, immediate action was needed to seal off the gaping crater created by the accident, which was a continuing source of airborne contamination. Under extreme conditions, a structure called the open-quotes Shelterclose quotes was built over the remains of the reactor building. The Shelter, which was quickly completed in November 1986, was meant to provide immediate but temporary containment. Now, 11 years later, there are significant concerns about its structural integrity and projected life expectancy. The United States and other participating G-7 countries are supporting nuclear safety upgrade efforts in Eastern Europe with a primary focus on placing the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) Unit 4 Shelter in a stable and environmentally acceptable condition. Application of remote systems technologies will play an important part in achieving the goals of this program. The G-7 nations have agreed to support these efforts, including the identification and development of remote system technologies for fuel removal. However at this time they have taken a firm stance against funding actual fuel removal activities. The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology requested that a needs assessment be performed to evaluate the requirements for applying remote systems, including robotics, at the Shelter. This document is intended to be used to identify remote systems needs and requirements at the Shelter and to provide general information on the conditions in the Shelter that could impact the use of remote systems. This document is intended as a source of information to assist those who will be implementing the Shelter Implementation Plan tasks. The document provides background information and general guidance on the application of remote systems

Recommendations to enhance constructivist-based learning in Interprofessional Education using video-based self-assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dahmen, Uta

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Interprofessional collaboration is crucial to the optimization of patient care.Aim: This paper aims to provide recommendations for implementing an innovative constructivist educational concept with the core element of video-based self-assessment.Methodology: A course for students in medicine, physiotherapy, and nursing was developed through interprofessional, cross-institutional collaboration. The course consisted of We evaluated the preparation and implementation of the three courses conducted thus far. Concrete recommendations for implementation were made based on evaluation sheets (students, open discussions (tutors, instructors, institutions and recorded meeting minutes (project managers, project participants.Results: Basic recommendations for implementation include: selecting appropriate criteria for self-assessment and a simulated situation that offers members of each professional group an equal opportunity to act in the role play. In terms of administrative implementation we recommend early coordination among the professions and educational institutions regarding the target groups, scheduling and attendance policy to ensure participant recruitment across all professions. Procedural planning should include developing teaching materials, such as the case vignette and treatment scenario, and providing technical equipment that can be operated intuitively in order to ensure efficient recording.Conclusion: These recommendations serve as an aid for implementing an innovative constructivist educational concept with video-based self-assessment at its core.

Forest structural assessment using remote sensing technologies: an ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

-Natal and MONDI Business Paper have recently embarked on a remote sensing cooperative. The primary focus of this cooperative is to explore the potential benefits associated with using remote sensing for forestry-related activities.

ASSESSING LAND COVER CHANGES CAUSED BY GRANITE QUARRYING USING REMOTE SENSING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

R. S. Moeletsi

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Dimension stone quarrying in the area between Rustenburg and Brits in the North West Province of South Africa has been in existence for over 70 decades. The unique characteristics of the granite deposits in South Africa resulted in making the country a global producer of the granite rocks. This led to intensified quarrying activities between Rustenburg and Brits town. However, this surface mining method, has a potential to impact the environment in a negative way causing loss in vegetation, depletion of natural resources, loss of scenic beauty and contamination of surface water resources. To assess the land cover changes caused by granite quarrying activities, remotely sensed data in the form of Landsat images between 1998 and 2015 were used. Supervised classification was used to create maps. Accuracy assessment using Google EarthTM as a reference data yielded an overall accuracy of 78 %. The post classification change detection method was used to assess land cover changes within the granite quarries. Granite quarries increased by 1174.86 ha while formation of quarry lakes increased to 5.3 ha over the 17-year period. Vegetation cover decreased by 1308 ha in area while 18.3 ha bare land was lost during the same period. This study demonstrated the utility of remote sensing to detect changes in land cover within granite quarries.

Using Web-Based Video as an Assessment Tool for Student Performance in Organic Chemistry

Science.gov (United States)

Tierney, John; Bodek, Matthew; Fredricks, Susan; Dudkin, Elizabeth; Kistler, Kurt

2014-01-01

This article shows the potential for using video responses to specific questions as part of the assessment process in an organic chemistry class. These exercises have been used with a postbaccalaureate cohort of 40 students, learning in an online environment, over a period of four years. A second cohort of 25 second-year students taking the…

A simple, remote, video based breathing monitor.

Science.gov (United States)

Regev, Nir; Wulich, Dov

2017-07-01

Breathing monitors have become the all-important cornerstone of a wide variety of commercial and personal safety applications, ranging from elderly care to baby monitoring. Many such monitors exist in the market, some, with vital signs monitoring capabilities, but none remote. This paper presents a simple, yet efficient, real time method of extracting the subject's breathing sinus rhythm. Points of interest are detected on the subject's body, and the corresponding optical flow is estimated and tracked using the well known Lucas-Kanade algorithm on a frame by frame basis. A generalized likelihood ratio test is then utilized on each of the many interest points to detect which is moving in harmonic fashion. Finally, a spectral estimation algorithm based on Pisarenko harmonic decomposition tracks the harmonic frequency in real time, and a fusion maximum likelihood algorithm optimally estimates the breathing rate using all points considered. The results show a maximal error of 1 BPM between the true breathing rate and the algorithm's calculated rate, based on experiments on two babies and three adults.

The reliability and criterion validity of 2D video assessment of single leg squat and hop landing.

Science.gov (United States)

Herrington, Lee; Alenezi, Faisal; Alzhrani, Msaad; Alrayani, Hasan; Jones, Richard

2017-06-01

The objective was to assess the intra-tester, within and between day reliability of measurement of hip adduction (HADD) and frontal plane projection angles (FPPA) during single leg squat (SLS) and single leg landing (SLL) using 2D video and the validity of these measurements against those found during 3D motion capture. 15 healthy subjects had their SLS and SLL assessed using 3D motion capture and video analysis. Inter-tester reliability for both SLS and SLL when measuring FPPA and HADD show excellent correlations (ICC 2,1 0.97-0.99). Within and between day assessment of SLS and SLL showed good to excellent correlations for both variables (ICC 3,1 0.72-91). 2D FPPA measures were found to have good correlation with knee abduction angle in 3-D (r=0.79, p=0.008) during SLS, and also to knee abduction moment (r=0.65, p=0.009). 2D HADD showed very good correlation with 3D HADD during SLS (r=0.81, p=0.001), and a good correlation during SLL (r=0.62, p=0.013). All other associations were weak (r<0.4). This study suggests that 2D video kinematics have a reasonable association to what is being measured with 3D motion capture. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

What do we do with all this video? Better understanding public engagement for image and video annotation

Science.gov (United States)

Wiener, C.; Miller, A.; Zykov, V.

2016-12-01

Advanced robotic vehicles are increasingly being used by oceanographic research vessels to enable more efficient and widespread exploration of the ocean, particularly the deep ocean. With cutting-edge capabilities mounted onto robotic vehicles, data at high resolutions is being generated more than ever before, enabling enhanced data collection and the potential for broader participation. For example, high resolution camera technology not only improves visualization of the ocean environment, but also expands the capacity to engage participants remotely through increased use of telepresence and virtual reality techniques. Schmidt Ocean Institute is a private, non-profit operating foundation established to advance the understanding of the world's oceans through technological advancement, intelligent observation and analysis, and open sharing of information. Telepresence-enabled research is an important component of Schmidt Ocean Institute's science research cruises, which this presentation will highlight. Schmidt Ocean Institute is one of the only research programs that make their entire underwater vehicle dive series available online, creating a collection of video that enables anyone to follow deep sea research in real time. We encourage students, educators and the general public to take advantage of freely available dive videos. Additionally, other SOI-supported internet platforms, have engaged the public in image and video annotation activities. Examples of these new online platforms, which utilize citizen scientists to annotate scientific image and video data will be provided. This presentation will include an introduction to SOI-supported video and image tagging citizen science projects, real-time robot tracking, live ship-to-shore communications, and an array of outreach activities that enable scientists to interact with the public and explore the ocean in fascinating detail.

Implementation of smart phone video plethysmography and dependence on lighting parameters.

Science.gov (United States)

Fletcher, Richard Ribón; Chamberlain, Daniel; Paggi, Nicholas; Deng, Xinyue

2015-08-01

The remote measurement of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) via a digital camera (video plethysmography) has emerged as an area of great interest for biomedical and health applications. While a few implementations of video plethysmography have been demonstrated on smart phones under controlled lighting conditions, it has been challenging to create a general scalable solution due to the large variability in smart phone hardware performance, software architecture, and the variable response to lighting parameters. In this context, we present a selfcontained smart phone implementation of video plethysmography for Android OS, which employs both stochastic and deterministic algorithms, and we use this to study the effect of lighting parameters (illuminance, color spectrum) on the accuracy of the remote HR measurement. Using two different phone models, we present the median HR error for five different video plethysmography algorithms under three different types of lighting (natural sunlight, compact fluorescent, and halogen incandescent) and variations in brightness. For most algorithms, we found the optimum light brightness to be in the range 1000-4000 lux and the optimum lighting types to be compact fluorescent and natural light. Moderate errors were found for most algorithms with some devices under conditions of low-brightness (4000 lux). Our analysis also identified camera frame rate jitter as a major source of variability and error across different phone models, but this can be largely corrected through non-linear resampling. Based on testing with six human subjects, our real-time Android implementation successfully predicted the measured HR with a median error of -0.31 bpm, and an inter-quartile range of 2.1bpm.

Remote sensing techniques to assess active fire characteristics and post-fire effects

Science.gov (United States)

Leigh B. Lentile; Zachary A. Holden; Alistair M. S. Smith; Michael J. Falkowski; Andrew T. Hudak; Penelope Morgan; Sarah A. Lewis; Paul E. Gessler; Nate C. Benson

2006-01-01

Space and airborne sensors have been used to map area burned, assess characteristics of active fires, and characterize post-fire ecological effects. Confusion about fire intensity, fire severity, burn severity, and related terms can result in the potential misuse of the inferred information by land managers and remote sensing practitioners who require unambiguous...

Assessing climate change impacts on water resources in remote mountain regions

Science.gov (United States)

Buytaert, Wouter; De Bièvre, Bert

2013-04-01

From a water resources perspective, remote mountain regions are often considered as a basket case. They are often regions where poverty is often interlocked with multiple threats to water supply, data scarcity, and high uncertainties. In these environments, it is paramount to generate locally relevant knowledge about water resources and how they impact local livelihoods. This is often problematic. Existing environmental data collection tends to be geographically biased towards more densely populated regions, and prioritized towards strategic economic activities. Data may also be locked behind institutional and technological barriers. These issues create a "knowledge trap" for data-poor regions, which is especially acute in remote and hard-to-reach mountain regions. We present lessons learned from a decade of water resources research in remote mountain regions of the Andes, Africa and South Asia. We review the entire tool chain of assessing climate change impacts on water resources, including the interrogation and downscaling of global circulation models, translating climate variables in water availability and access, and assessing local vulnerability. In global circulation models, mountain regions often stand out as regions of high uncertainties and lack of agreement of future trends. This is partly a technical artifact because of the different resolution and representation of mountain topography, but it also highlights fundamental uncertainties in climate impacts on mountain climate. This problem also affects downscaling efforts, because regional climate models should be run in very high spatial resolution to resolve local gradients, which is computationally very expensive. At the same time statistical downscaling methods may fail to find significant relations between local climate properties and synoptic processes. Further uncertainties are introduced when downscaled climate variables such as precipitation and temperature are to be translated in hydrologically

Tools for remote collaboration on the DIII-D national fusion facility

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

McHarg, B.B. Jr.; Greenwood, D.

1999-01-01

The DIII-D national fusion facility, a tokamak experiment funded by the US Department of Energy and operated by General Atomics (GA), is an international resource for plasma physics and fusion energy science research. This facility has a long history of collaborations with scientists from a wide variety of laboratories and universities from around the world. That collaboration has mostly been conducted by travel to and participation at the DIII-D site. Many new developments in the computing and technology fields are now facilitating collaboration from remote sites, thus reducing some of the needs to travel to the experiment. Some of these developments include higher speed wide area networks, powerful workstations connected within a distributed computing environment, network based audio/video capabilities, and the use of the world wide web. As the number of collaborators increases, the need for remote tools become important options to efficiently utilize the DIII-D facility. In the last two years a joint study by GA, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has introduced remote collaboration tools into the DIII-D environment and studied their effectiveness. These tools have included the use of audio/video for communication from the DIII-D control room, the broadcast of meetings, use of inter-process communication software to post events to the network during a tokamak shot, the creation of a DCE (distributed computing environment) cell for creating a common collaboratory environment, distributed use of computer cycles, remote data access, and remote display of results. This study also included sociological studies of how scientists in this environment work together as well as apart. (orig.)

Mobile Augmented Communication for Remote Collaboration in a Physical Work Context

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Pejoska-Laajola, Jana; Reponen, Sanna; Virnes, Marjo; Leinonen, Teemu

2017-01-01

Informal learning in a physical work context requires communication and collaboration that build on a common ground and an active awareness of a situation. We explored whether mobile video conversations augmented with on-screen drawing features were beneficial for improving communication and remote collaboration practices in the construction and…

Remote and unattended monitoring techniques

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Abedin-Zadeh, R.; Whichello, J.

1998-01-01

In the last years, there has been a tremendous growth in the number of unattended assay and monitoring systems in the field. These systems have enabled reduced presence of inspectors while increasing the verification coverage. As part of the Strengthened safeguards System and in particular as part of the measures to improve the cost-effectiveness of safeguards, the possibility of remote transfer of authenticated and encrypted video surveillance, seals and radiation sensor data via telephone or special satellite links have been demonstrated and the necessary arrangements and infrastructure have been prepared. The evaluation of field trials of the remote monitoring systems have shown that the systems are effective in monitoring events of safeguards relevance in near real times. The systems are competitive from a cost standpoint when compared to current methods. The reduction of inspection efforts can be realized by application of remote monitoring technique with scheduled inspections and more effectively with the short notice or unannounced random inspections. It is expected that, upon completion of the necessary arrangements with the Member States authorities, the safeguards department will implement the technique widely before the year 2000

Survey of WBSNs for Pre-Hospital Assistance: Trends to Maximize the Network Lifetime and Video Transmission Techniques

Science.gov (United States)

Gonzalez, Enrique; Peña, Raul; Vargas-Rosales, Cesar; Avila, Alfonso; Perez-Diaz de Cerio, David

2015-01-01

This survey aims to encourage the multidisciplinary communities to join forces for innovation in the mobile health monitoring area. Specifically, multidisciplinary innovations in medical emergency scenarios can have a significant impact on the effectiveness and quality of the procedures and practices in the delivery of medical care. Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) are a promising technology capable of improving the existing practices in condition assessment and care delivery for a patient in a medical emergency. This technology can also facilitate the early interventions of a specialist physician during the pre-hospital period. WBSNs make possible these early interventions by establishing remote communication links with video/audio support and by providing medical information such as vital signs, electrocardiograms, etc. in real time. This survey focuses on relevant issues needed to understand how to setup a WBSN for medical emergencies. These issues are: monitoring vital signs and video transmission, energy efficient protocols, scheduling, optimization and energy consumption on a WBSN. PMID:26007741

Survey of WBSNs for Pre-Hospital Assistance: Trends to Maximize the Network Lifetime and Video Transmission Techniques

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Enrique Gonzalez

2015-05-01

Full Text Available This survey aims to encourage the multidisciplinary communities to join forces for innovation in the mobile health monitoring area. Specifically, multidisciplinary innovations in medical emergency scenarios can have a significant impact on the effectiveness and quality of the procedures and practices in the delivery of medical care. Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs are a promising technology capable of improving the existing practices in condition assessment and care delivery for a patient in a medical emergency. This technology can also facilitate the early interventions of a specialist physician during the pre-hospital period. WBSNs make possible these early interventions by establishing remote communication links with video/audio support and by providing medical information such as vital signs, electrocardiograms, etc. in real time. This survey focuses on relevant issues needed to understand how to setup a WBSN for medical emergencies. These issues are: monitoring vital signs and video transmission, energy efficient protocols, scheduling, optimization and energy consumption on a WBSN.

Illusory control, gambling, and video gaming: an investigation of regular gamblers and video game players.

Science.gov (United States)

King, Daniel L; Ejova, Anastasia; Delfabbro, Paul H

2012-09-01

There is a paucity of empirical research examining the possible association between gambling and video game play. In two studies, we examined the association between video game playing, erroneous gambling cognitions, and risky gambling behaviour. One hundred and fifteen participants, including 65 electronic gambling machine (EGM) players and 50 regular video game players, were administered a questionnaire that examined video game play, gambling involvement, problem gambling, and beliefs about gambling. We then assessed each groups' performance on a computerised gambling task that involved real money. A post-game survey examined perceptions of the skill and chance involved in the gambling task. The results showed that video game playing itself was not significantly associated with gambling involvement or problem gambling status. However, among those persons who both gambled and played video games, video game playing was uniquely and significantly positively associated with the perception of direct control over chance-based gambling events. Further research is needed to better understand the nature of this association, as it may assist in understanding the impact of emerging digital gambling technologies.

Assessing hospital disaster preparedness: a comparison of an on-site survey, directly observed drill performance, and video analysis of teamwork.

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Kaji, Amy H; Langford, Vinette; Lewis, Roger J

2008-09-01

There is currently no validated method for assessing hospital disaster preparedness. We determine the degree of correlation between the results of 3 methods for assessing hospital disaster preparedness: administration of an on-site survey, drill observation using a structured evaluation tool, and video analysis of team performance in the hospital incident command center. This was a prospective, observational study conducted during a regional disaster drill, comparing the results from an on-site survey, a structured disaster drill evaluation tool, and a video analysis of teamwork, performed at 6 911-receiving hospitals in Los Angeles County, CA. The on-site survey was conducted separately from the drill and assessed hospital disaster plan structure, vendor agreements, modes of communication, medical and surgical supplies, involvement of law enforcement, mutual aid agreements with other facilities, drills and training, surge capacity, decontamination capability, and pharmaceutical stockpiles. The drill evaluation tool, developed by Johns Hopkins University under contract from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, was used to assess various aspects of drill performance, such as the availability of the hospital disaster plan, the geographic configuration of the incident command center, whether drill participants were identifiable, whether the noise level interfered with effective communication, and how often key information (eg, number of available staffed floor, intensive care, and isolation beds; number of arriving victims; expected triage level of victims; number of potential discharges) was received by the incident command center. Teamwork behaviors in the incident command center were quantitatively assessed, using the MedTeams analysis of the video recordings obtained during the disaster drill. Spearman rank correlations of the results between pair-wise groupings of the 3 assessment methods were calculated. The 3 evaluation methods demonstrated

Recommendations to enhance constructivist-based learning in Interprofessional Education using video-based self-assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Dahmen, Uta; Schulze, Christine; Schindler, Claudia; Wick, Katharina; Schwartze, Dominique; Veit, Andrea; Smolenski, Ulrich

2016-01-01

Interprofessional collaboration is crucial to the optimization of patient care. This paper aims to provide recommendations for implementing an innovative constructivist educational concept with the core element of video-based self-assessment. A course for students in medicine, physiotherapy, and nursing was developed through interprofessional, cross-institutional collaboration. The course consisted of drawing on prior knowledge about the work done by each professional group in regard to a specific clinical scenario and an interprofessional treatment situation, filming a role play of this treatment situation, and a structured self-assessment of the role play. We evaluated the preparation and implementation of the three courses conducted thus far. Concrete recommendations for implementation were made based on evaluation sheets (students), open discussions (tutors, instructors, institutions) and recorded meeting minutes (project managers, project participants). Basic recommendations for implementation include: selecting appropriate criteria for self-assessment and a simulated situation that offers members of each professional group an equal opportunity to act in the role play. In terms of administrative implementation we recommend early coordination among the professions and educational institutions regarding the target groups, scheduling and attendance policy to ensure participant recruitment across all professions. Procedural planning should include developing teaching materials, such as the case vignette and treatment scenario, and providing technical equipment that can be operated intuitively in order to ensure efficient recording. These recommendations serve as an aid for implementing an innovative constructivist educational concept with video-based self-assessment at its core.

Distant peer-tutoring of clinical skills, using tablets with instructional videos and Skype: A pilot study in the UK and Malaysia.

Science.gov (United States)

O'Donovan, James; Maruthappu, Mahiben

2015-05-01

To assess the feasibility and impact of using low-cost Android tablets to deliver video tutorials and remote online peer-tutoring for clinical skills between two countries. Nine junior medical students from Malaysia were paired with five senior medical students from the UK, who played the role of peer-tutors. Students from Malaysia were given a low-cost Android tablet from which they could access instructional video tutorials. At the end of each week, the peer-tutors would observe their peer-learners as they performed a clinical examination. Tutors would then provide individual feedback using a videoconferencing tool. Outcomes were assessed using Observed Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) scores, post-study questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with participants. Peer-learners reported an increased confidence in clinical examination of 8.4 (±1.0) on a 10-point scale and all nine said they would recommend the scheme to their peers. Both peer-tutors and peer-learners were able to establish a strong rapport over video, rating it as 8.4 (±0.6) and 8.4 (±0.9), respectively. Peer-learners' rated the sound and video quality of the tablet as 7.0 (±1.1) but were less satisfied with the screen resolution of the tablet, rating this as 4.0 (±1.5). This preliminary pilot study presents an innovative, low cost approach to international medical education with significant potential for future development.

Wind generation systems for remote communities: market assessment and guidelines for wind turbines selection

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Brothers, C.

1993-06-01

Wind technology and its market potential in remote communities of the Canadian North were discussed. These communities, unserviced by the main utility electricity grid, generate their own electricity using high quality, expensive diesel fuel to power diesel driven generators. The logistics of delivering fuel to these remote communities is an expensive operation. Wind resource in many of these communities is substantial and wind energy is seen as a prime candidate for supplying electricity to many potential sites in the Arctic and also areas in Quebec and Newfoundland. However, the severe service (i.e., cold climate, remote locations with limited facilities) requires special considerations to ensure that equipment installed performs reliably. This report described some demonstration projects in northern Canada over the last ten years, where an understanding of the special needs of wind turbines in remote areas has been developed. A guide which assessed the suitability of wind turbines for Arctic applications was included to assist organisations in preparing requirements to be used in acquiring wind turbines for use in cold regions. Refs., tabs., figs

Prognostic Significance of Remote Myocardium Alterations Assessed by Quantitative Noncontrast T1 Mapping in ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction.

Science.gov (United States)

Reinstadler, Sebastian J; Stiermaier, Thomas; Liebetrau, Johanna; Fuernau, Georg; Eitel, Charlotte; de Waha, Suzanne; Desch, Steffen; Reil, Jan-Christian; Pöss, Janine; Metzler, Bernhard; Lücke, Christian; Gutberlet, Matthias; Schuler, Gerhard; Thiele, Holger; Eitel, Ingo

2018-03-01

This study assessed the prognostic significance of remote zone native T1 alterations for the prediction of clinical events in a population with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) who were treated by primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) and compared it with conventional markers of infarct severity. The exact role and incremental prognostic relevance of remote myocardium native T1 mapping alterations assessed by cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) after STEMI remains unclear. We included 255 consecutive patients with STEMI who were reperfused within 12 h after symptom onset. CMR core laboratory analysis was performed to assess left ventricular (LV) function, standard infarct characteristics, and native T1 values of the remote, noninfarcted myocardium. The primary endpoint was a composite of death, reinfarction, and new congestive heart failure within 6 months (major adverse cardiac events [MACE]). Patients with increased remote zone native T1 values (>1,129 ms) had significantly larger infarcts (p = 0.012), less myocardial salvage (p = 0.002), and more pronounced LV dysfunction (p = 0.011). In multivariable analysis, remote zone native T1 was independently associated with MACE after adjusting for clinical risk factors (p = 0.001) or other CMR variables (p = 0.007). In C-statistics, native T1 of remote myocardium provided incremental prognostic information beyond clinical risk factors, LV ejection fraction, and other markers of infarct severity (all p remote zone native T1 to a model of prognostic CMR parameters (ejection fraction, infarct size, and myocardial salvage index) led to net reclassification improvement of 0.82 (95% confidence interval: 0.46 to 1.17; p remote zone alterations by quantitative noncontrast T1 mapping provided independent and incremental prognostic information in addition to clinical risk factors and traditional CMR outcome markers. Remote zone alterations may thus represent a novel therapeutic target and a

HAITI EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE ASSESSMENT: REVIEW OF THE REMOTE SENSING ROLE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

P. Boccardo

2012-08-01

In a few days several map products based on the aforementioned analysis were delivered to end users: a review of the different types and purposes of this products will be provided and discussed. An assessment of the thematic accuracy of remotely sensed based products will be carried out on the basis of a review of the several available studies focused on this issue, including the main outcomes of a validation based on a comparison with in-situ data performed by the authors.

Video-task assessment of learning and memory in Macaques (Macaca mulatta) - Effects of stimulus movement on performance

Science.gov (United States)

Washburn, David A.; Hopkins, William D.; Rumbaugh, Duane M.

1989-01-01

Effects of stimulus movement on learning, transfer, matching, and short-term memory performance were assessed with 2 monkeys using a video-task paradigm in which the animals responded to computer-generated images by manipulating a joystick. Performance on tests of learning set, transfer index, matching to sample, and delayed matching to sample in the video-task paradigm was comparable to that obtained in previous investigations using the Wisconsin General Testing Apparatus. Additionally, learning, transfer, and matching were reliably and significantly better when the stimuli or discriminanda moved than when the stimuli were stationary. External manipulations such as stimulus movement may increase attention to the demands of a task, which in turn should increase the efficiency of learning. These findings have implications for the investigation of learning in other populations, as well as for the application of the video-task paradigm to comparative study.

Using Video-Based Self-Assessment to Develop Effective Conferencing Skills

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcia Knoll

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Conferencing is the commonly used vehicle for improving instruction by providing feedback to teachers. However, it is the nature of the feedback given to the teacher and how it is delivered, using effective conferencing strategies and techniques, that will actually involve the teacher in understanding, accepting, agreeing and initiating changes, or make him angry and hostile. This article focuses on defining effective conferencing strategies, and the process that was used to help program participants preparing for leadership certification to practice these strategies in a clinical setting. The leadership program at Hunter College prepares educators for certification as school building and district leaders. Supervision of instruction for student achievement is considered the heart of the work of the school and district leader. Therefore a major focus for program participants seeking leadership certification is on content and practice for conferencing effectiveness. Participants learn and practice these skills in simulations, and then implement them by trying out their abilities in the field in real observation and conferencing experiences with a practicing classroom teacher. Participants video-tape themselves conducing conferences with their practicing classroom teacher clients following an observation. They then view the video of their conference performance and self-assess their conferencing skills by electronically recording the behaviors they observe using a set of criteria and design a growth plan for the further development of their conferencing skills.

Self-Assessed Competence of Experienced Expatriate Nurses in a Rural and Remote Setting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Salah Aqtash

2017-04-01

Full Text Available We aimed to measure the self-assessed level of competence among nurses working in the public hospitals of Al-Gharbia Region, a remote rural region of United Arab Emirates, and to explore the factors associated with the nurses’ self-perceived competency. The Nurse Competency Scale, which measures the self-assessed level of competency of nurses, has been validated in a variety of clinical settings, in facilities of various sizes, and in small and large cohorts. However, its application among an expatriate nursing workforce working in small hospitals and health facilities in remote and rural areas has not been examined. We used the Nurse Competency Scale to survey the nursing workforce in Al-Gharbia’s public hospitals in United Arab Emirates. All 435 practicing registered nurses with more than 3 months clinical experience in the network were invited to participate. Data were collected electronically and analyzed by international collaborators. Statistical analysis included analysis of variance, Kruskal–Wallis, multiple linear regression, χ 2 test of independence, and Cronbach’s α. Totally, 189 responses were analyzed (43.4% response rate. Overall self-assessed levels of competence were uniformly “very good” across all competence categories. The overall score (84.3 was higher than those found in most other studies. Frequency of use was the most outstanding variable influencing self-assessed competence. Total years of experience were the next significant variable. Some items of the scale were not yet applicable to activities in the region, particularly those relating to supervision of students. The high scores achieved by expatriate nurses in the small hospitals of Al-Gharbia reflect well on the rigor of the recruitment process, ongoing cross-training and functional competency assessment. Policies and practices aimed at recruiting experienced expatriate nurses and providing opportunities to use competencies continue to be critical in

Interactive Videos Enhance Learning about Socio-Ecological Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Smithwick, Erica; Baxter, Emily; Kim, Kyung; Edel-Malizia, Stephanie; Rocco, Stevie; Blackstock, Dean

2018-01-01

Two forms of interactive video were assessed in an online course focused on conservation. The hypothesis was that interactive video enhances student perceptions about learning and improves mental models of social-ecological systems. Results showed that students reported greater learning and attitudes toward the subject following interactive video.…

Comparative assessment of H.265/MPEG-HEVC, VP9, and H.264/MPEG-AVC encoders for low-delay video applications

Science.gov (United States)

Grois, Dan; Marpe, Detlev; Nguyen, Tung; Hadar, Ofer

2014-09-01

The popularity of low-delay video applications dramatically increased over the last years due to a rising demand for realtime video content (such as video conferencing or video surveillance), and also due to the increasing availability of relatively inexpensive heterogeneous devices (such as smartphones and tablets). To this end, this work presents a comparative assessment of the two latest video coding standards: H.265/MPEG-HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), H.264/MPEG-AVC (Advanced Video Coding), and also of the VP9 proprietary video coding scheme. For evaluating H.264/MPEG-AVC, an open-source x264 encoder was selected, which has a multi-pass encoding mode, similarly to VP9. According to experimental results, which were obtained by using similar low-delay configurations for all three examined representative encoders, it was observed that H.265/MPEG-HEVC provides significant average bit-rate savings of 32.5%, and 40.8%, relative to VP9 and x264 for the 1-pass encoding, and average bit-rate savings of 32.6%, and 42.2% for the 2-pass encoding, respectively. On the other hand, compared to the x264 encoder, typical low-delay encoding times of the VP9 encoder, are about 2,000 times higher for the 1-pass encoding, and are about 400 times higher for the 2-pass encoding.

Reliability of widefield nailfold capillaroscopy and video capillaroscopy in the assessment of patients with Raynaud’s phenomenon.

Science.gov (United States)

Sekiyama, Juliana Y; Camargo, Cintia Z; Eduardo, Luís; Andrade, C; Kayser, Cristiane

2013-11-01

To analyze the diagnostic performance and reliability of different parameters evaluated by widefield nailfold capillaroscopy (NFC) with those obtained by video capillaroscopy in patients with Raynaud’s phenomenon (RP). Two hundred fifty-two individuals were assessed, including 101 systemic sclerosis (SSc; scleroderma) patients,61 patients with undifferentiated connective tissue disease, 37 patients with primary RP, and 53 controls. Widefield NFC was performed using a stereomicroscope under 10–25 x magnification and direct measurement of all parameters. Video capillaroscopy was performed under 200 x magnification, with the acquirement of 32 images per individual (4 fields per finger in 8 fingers). The following parameters were analyzed in 8 fingers of the hands (excluding thumbs) by both methods: number of capillaries/mm, number of enlarged and giant capillaries, microhemorrhages, and avascular score.Intra- and interobserver reliability was evaluated by performing both examinations in 20 individuals on 2 different days and by 2 long-term experienced observers. There was a significant correlation (P capillaroscopy in the comparison of all parameters. Kappa values and intraclass correlation coefficient analysis showed excellent intra- and interobserver reproducibility for all parameters evaluated by widefield NFC and video capillaroscopy. Bland-Altman analysis showed high agreement of all parameters evaluated in both methods. According to receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, both methods showed a similar performance in discriminating SSc patients from controls. Widefield NFC and video capillaroscopy are reliable and accurate methods and can be used equally for assessing peripheral microangiopathy in RP and SSc patients. Nonetheless, the high reliability obtained may not be similar for less experienced examiners.

Applying HAZOP analysis in assessing remote handling compatibility of ITER port plugs

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Duisings, L.P.M.; Til, S. van; Magielsen, A.J.; Ronden, D.M.S.; Elzendoorn, B.S.Q.; Heemskerk, C.J.M.

2013-01-01

Highlights: ► We applied HAZOP analysis to assess the criticality of remote handling maintenance activities on port plugs in the ITER Hot Cell facility. ► We identified several weak points in the general upper port plug maintenance concept. ► We made clear recommendations on redesign in port plug design, operational sequence and Hot Cell equipment. ► The use of a HAZOP approach for the ECH UL port can also be applied to ITER port plugs in general. -- Abstract: This paper describes the application of a Hazard and Operability Analysis (HAZOP) methodology in assessing the criticality of remote handling maintenance activities on port plugs in the ITER Hot Cell facility. As part of the ECHUL consortium, the remote handling team at the DIFFER Institute is developing maintenance tools and procedures for critical components of the ECH Upper launcher (UL). Based on NRG's experience with nuclear risk analysis and Hot Cell procedures, early versions of these tool concepts and maintenance procedures were subjected to a HAZOP analysis. The analysis identified several weak points in the general upper port plug maintenance concept and led to clear recommendations on redesigns in port plug design, the operational sequence and ITER Hot Cell equipment. The paper describes the HAZOP methodology and illustrates its application with specific procedures: the Steering Mirror Assembly (SMA) replacement and the exchange of the Mid Shield Optics (MSO) in the ECH UPL. A selection of recommended changes to the launcher design associated with the accessibility, maintainability and manageability of replaceable components are presented

Watermarking textures in video games

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Huajian; Berchtold, Waldemar; Schäfer, Marcel; Lieb, Patrick; Steinebach, Martin

2014-02-01

Digital watermarking is a promising solution to video game piracy. In this paper, based on the analysis of special challenges and requirements in terms of watermarking textures in video games, a novel watermarking scheme for DDS textures in video games is proposed. To meet the performance requirements in video game applications, the proposed algorithm embeds the watermark message directly in the compressed stream in DDS files and can be straightforwardly applied in watermark container technique for real-time embedding. Furthermore, the embedding approach achieves high watermark payload to handle collusion secure fingerprinting codes with extreme length. Hence, the scheme is resistant to collusion attacks, which is indispensable in video game applications. The proposed scheme is evaluated in aspects of transparency, robustness, security and performance. Especially, in addition to classical objective evaluation, the visual quality and playing experience of watermarked games is assessed subjectively in game playing.

Use of land surface remotely sensed satellite and airborne data for environmental exposure assessment in cancer research

Science.gov (United States)

Maxwell, S.K.; Meliker, J.R.; Goovaerts, P.

2010-01-01

In recent years, geographic information systems (GIS) have increasingly been used for reconstructing individual-level exposures to environmental contaminants in epidemiological research. Remotely sensed data can be useful in creating space-time models of environmental measures. The primary advantage of using remotely sensed data is that it allows for study at the local scale (e.g., residential level) without requiring expensive, time-consuming monitoring campaigns. The purpose of our study was to identify how land surface remotely sensed data are currently being used to study the relationship between cancer and environmental contaminants, focusing primarily on agricultural chemical exposure assessment applications. We present the results of a comprehensive literature review of epidemiological research where remotely sensed imagery or land cover maps derived from remotely sensed imagery were applied. We also discuss the strengths and limitations of the most commonly used imagery data (aerial photographs and Landsat satellite imagery) and land cover maps.

A highly sensitive underwater video system for use in turbid aquaculture ponds.

Science.gov (United States)

Hung, Chin-Chang; Tsao, Shih-Chieh; Huang, Kuo-Hao; Jang, Jia-Pu; Chang, Hsu-Kuang; Dobbs, Fred C

2016-08-24

The turbid, low-light waters characteristic of aquaculture ponds have made it difficult or impossible for previous video cameras to provide clear imagery of the ponds' benthic habitat. We developed a highly sensitive, underwater video system (UVS) for this particular application and tested it in shrimp ponds having turbidities typical of those in southern Taiwan. The system's high-quality video stream and images, together with its camera capacity (up to nine cameras), permit in situ observations of shrimp feeding behavior, shrimp size and internal anatomy, and organic matter residues on pond sediments. The UVS can operate continuously and be focused remotely, a convenience to shrimp farmers. The observations possible with the UVS provide aquaculturists with information critical to provision of feed with minimal waste; determining whether the accumulation of organic-matter residues dictates exchange of pond water; and management decisions concerning shrimp health.

Candid camera : video surveillance system can help protect assets

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Harrison, L.

2009-11-15

By combining closed-circuit cameras with sophisticated video analytics to create video sensors for use in remote areas, Calgary-based IntelliView Technologies Inc.'s explosion-proof video surveillance system can help the oil and gas sector monitor its assets. This article discussed the benefits, features, and applications of IntelliView's technology. Some of the benefits include a reduced need for on-site security and operating personnel and its patented analytics product known as the SmrtDVR, where the camera's images are stored. The technology can be used in temperatures as cold as minus 50 degrees Celsius and as high as 50 degrees Celsius. The product was commercialized in 2006 when it was used by Nexen Inc. It was concluded that false alarms set off by natural occurrences such as rain, snow, glare and shadows were a huge problem with analytics in the past, but that problem has been solved by IntelliView, which has its own source code, and re-programmed code. 1 fig.

A laboratory evaluation of color video monitors

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Terry, P.L.

1993-07-01

Sandia National Laboratories has considerable experience with monochrome video monitors used in alarm assessment video systems. Most of these systems, used for perimeter protection, were designed to classify rather than to identify intruders. There is a growing interest in the identification function of security video systems for both access control and insider protection. Because color video technology is rapidly changing and because color information is useful for identification purposes, Sandia National Laboratories established a program to evaluate the newest relevant color video equipment. This report documents the evaluation of an integral component, color monitors. It briefly discusses a critical parameter, dynamic range, details test procedures, and evaluates the results.

A laboratory evaluation of color video monitors

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Terry, P.L.

1993-07-01

Sandia National Laboratories has considerable experience with monochrome video monitors used in alarm assessment video systems. Most of these systems, used for perimeter protection, were designed to classify rather than to identify intruders. There is a growing interest in the identification function of security video systems for both access control and insider protection. Because color video technology is rapidly changing and because color information is useful for identification purposes, Sandia National Laboratories established a program to evaluate the newest relevant color video equipment. This report documents the evaluation of an integral component, color monitors. It briefly discusses a critical parameter, dynamic range, details test procedures, and evaluates the results

Problem Video Game Use and Dimensions of Psychopathology

Science.gov (United States)

Starcevic, Vladan; Berle, David; Porter, Guy; Fenech, Pauline

2011-01-01

The objective of this study was to examine associations between problem video game use and psychopathology. The Video Game Use Questionnaire (VGUQ) and the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) were administered in an international anonymous online survey. The VGUQ was used to identify problem video game users and SCL-90 assessed dimensions of…

Remote-Sensing Time Series Analysis, a Vegetation Monitoring Tool

Science.gov (United States)

McKellip, Rodney; Prados, Donald; Ryan, Robert; Ross, Kenton; Spruce, Joseph; Gasser, Gerald; Greer, Randall

2008-01-01

The Time Series Product Tool (TSPT) is software, developed in MATLAB , which creates and displays high signal-to- noise Vegetation Indices imagery and other higher-level products derived from remotely sensed data. This tool enables automated, rapid, large-scale regional surveillance of crops, forests, and other vegetation. TSPT temporally processes high-revisit-rate satellite imagery produced by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and by other remote-sensing systems. Although MODIS imagery is acquired daily, cloudiness and other sources of noise can greatly reduce the effective temporal resolution. To improve cloud statistics, the TSPT combines MODIS data from multiple satellites (Aqua and Terra). The TSPT produces MODIS products as single time-frame and multitemporal change images, as time-series plots at a selected location, or as temporally processed image videos. Using the TSPT program, MODIS metadata is used to remove and/or correct bad and suspect data. Bad pixel removal, multiple satellite data fusion, and temporal processing techniques create high-quality plots and animated image video sequences that depict changes in vegetation greenness. This tool provides several temporal processing options not found in other comparable imaging software tools. Because the framework to generate and use other algorithms is established, small modifications to this tool will enable the use of a large range of remotely sensed data types. An effective remote-sensing crop monitoring system must be able to detect subtle changes in plant health in the earliest stages, before the effects of a disease outbreak or other adverse environmental conditions can become widespread and devastating. The integration of the time series analysis tool with ground-based information, soil types, crop types, meteorological data, and crop growth models in a Geographic Information System, could provide the foundation for a large-area crop-surveillance system that could identify

Remote maintenance of Compact Ignition Tokamak ex-vessel systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

DePew, R.E.; Macdonald, D.

1989-01-01

The use of deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel in the Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT) will require applying remote handling technology for ex-vessel maintenance and replacement of machine components. Highly activated and contaminated components of the fusion device's auxiliary systems, such as diagnostics and RF heating, must be replaced using remotely operated maintenance equipment in the test cell. Throughout the CIT remote maintenance (RM) studies conducted to date, computer modeling has been used extensively to investigate manipulator access in these complex, tightly packed, and cluttered surroundings. A recent refinement of computer modeling involves the use of an intelligent engineering work station for realtime interactive display of task simulations. This paper discusses the use of three-dimensional (3-D) kinematic computer models of the CIT machines that are proving to be powerful tools in our efforts to evaluate RM requirements. This presentation includes a video-taped simulation of remote replacement of a plasma viewing assembly. The simulation illustrates some of the constraints associated with typical RM activities and the ways in which computer modeling enhances the design process. 1 ref., 3 figs

Remote RemoteRemoteRemote sensing potential for sensing ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Remote RemoteRemoteRemote sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing p. A Ngie, F Ahmed, K Abutaleb ...

Development and validation of a remote home safety protocol.

Science.gov (United States)

Romero, Sergio; Lee, Mi Jung; Simic, Ivana; Levy, Charles; Sanford, Jon

2018-02-01

Environmental assessments and subsequent modifications conducted by healthcare professionals can enhance home safety and promote independent living. However, travel time, expense and the availability of qualified professionals can limit the broad application of this intervention. Remote technology has the potential to increase access to home safety evaluations. This study describes the development and validation of a remote home safety protocol that can be used by a caregiver of an elderly person to video-record their home environment for later viewing and evaluation by a trained professional. The protocol was developed based on literature reviews and evaluations from clinical and content experts. Cognitive interviews were conducted with a group of six caregivers to validate the protocol. The final protocol included step-by-step directions to record indoor and outdoor areas of the home. The validation process resulted in modifications related to safety, clarity of the protocol, readability, visual appearance, technical descriptions and usability. Our final protocol includes detailed instructions that a caregiver should be able to follow to record a home environment for subsequent evaluation by a home safety professional. Implications for Rehabilitation The results of this study have several implications for rehabilitation practice The remote home safety evaluation protocol can potentially improve access to rehabilitation services for clients in remote areas and prevent unnecessary delays for needed care. Using our protocol, a patient's caregiver can partner with therapists to quickly and efficiently evaluate a patient's home before they are released from the hospital. Caregiver narration, which reflects a caregiver's own perspective, is critical to evaluating home safety. In-home safety evaluations, currently not available to all who need them due to access barriers, can enhance a patient's independence and provide a safer home environment.

If a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words Is Video Worth a Million? Differences in Affective and Cognitive Processing of Video and Text Cases

Science.gov (United States)

Yadav, Aman; Phillips, Michael M.; Lundeberg, Mary A.; Koehler, Matthew J.; Hilden, Katherine; Dirkin, Kathryn H.

2011-01-01

In this investigation we assessed whether different formats of media (video, text, and video + text) influenced participants' engagement, cognitive processing and recall of non-fiction cases of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. For each of the cases used in the study, we designed three informationally-equivalent versions: video, text, and video +…

State of the art in video system performance

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Michael J.

1990-01-01

The closed circuit television (CCTV) system that is onboard the Space Shuttle has the following capabilities: camera, video signal switching and routing unit (VSU); and Space Shuttle video tape recorder. However, this system is inadequate for use with many experiments that require video imaging. In order to assess the state-of-the-art in video technology and data storage systems, a survey was conducted of the High Resolution, High Frame Rate Video Technology (HHVT) products. The performance of the state-of-the-art solid state cameras and image sensors, video recording systems, data transmission devices, and data storage systems versus users' requirements are shown graphically.

Motion based parsing for video from observational psychology

Science.gov (United States)

Kokaram, Anil; Doyle, Erika; Lennon, Daire; Joyeux, Laurent; Fuller, Ray

2006-01-01

In Psychology it is common to conduct studies involving the observation of humans undertaking some task. The sessions are typically recorded on video and used for subjective visual analysis. The subjective analysis is tedious and time consuming, not only because much useless video material is recorded but also because subjective measures of human behaviour are not necessarily repeatable. This paper presents tools using content based video analysis that allow automated parsing of video from one such study involving Dyslexia. The tools rely on implicit measures of human motion that can be generalised to other applications in the domain of human observation. Results comparing quantitative assessment of human motion with subjective assessment are also presented, illustrating that the system is a useful scientific tool.

Speed Biases With Real-Life Video Clips

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Federica Rossi

2018-03-01

Full Text Available We live almost literally immersed in an artificial visual world, especially motion pictures. In this exploratory study, we asked whether the best speed for reproducing a video is its original, shooting speed. By using adjustment and double staircase methods, we examined speed biases in viewing real-life video clips in three experiments, and assessed their robustness by manipulating visual and auditory factors. With the tested stimuli (short clips of human motion, mixed human-physical motion, physical motion and ego-motion, speed underestimation was the rule rather than the exception, although it depended largely on clip content, ranging on average from 2% (ego-motion to 32% (physical motion. Manipulating display size or adding arbitrary soundtracks did not modify these speed biases. Estimated speed was not correlated with estimated duration of these same video clips. These results indicate that the sense of speed for real-life video clips can be systematically biased, independently of the impression of elapsed time. Measuring subjective visual tempo may integrate traditional methods that assess time perception: speed biases may be exploited to develop a simple, objective test of reality flow, to be used for example in clinical and developmental contexts. From the perspective of video media, measuring speed biases may help to optimize video reproduction speed and validate “natural” video compression techniques based on sub-threshold temporal squeezing.

Video motion detection for physical security applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Matter, J.C.

1990-01-01

Physical security specialists have been attracted to the concept of video motion detection for several years. Claimed potential advantages included additional benefit from existing video surveillance systems, automatic detection, improved performance compared to human observers, and cost-effectiveness. In recent years, significant advances in image-processing dedicated hardware and image analysis algorithms and software have accelerated the successful application of video motion detection systems to a variety of physical security applications. Early video motion detectors (VMDs) were useful for interior applications of volumetric sensing. Success depended on having a relatively well-controlled environment. Attempts to use these systems outdoors frequently resulted in an unacceptable number of nuisance alarms. Currently, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is developing several advanced systems that employ image-processing techniques for a broader set of safeguards and security applications. The Target Cueing and Tracking System (TCATS), the Video Imaging System for Detection, Tracking, and Assessment (VISDTA), the Linear Infrared Scanning Array (LISA); the Mobile Intrusion Detection and Assessment System (MIDAS), and the Visual Artificially Intelligent Surveillance (VAIS) systems are described briefly

The feasibility of utilizing remotely sensed data to assess and monitor oceanic gamefish

Science.gov (United States)

Savastano, K. J.; Leming, T. D.

1975-01-01

An investigation was conducted to establish the feasibility of utilizing remotely sensed data acquired from aircraft and satellite platforms to provide information concerning the distribution and abundance of oceanic gamefish. The data from the test area was jointly acquired by NASA, the Navy, the Air Force and NOAA/NMFS elements and private and professional fishermen in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. The data collected has made it possible to identify fisheries significant environmental parameters for white marlin. Prediction models, based on catch data and surface truth information, were developed and demonstrated a potential for significantly reducing search by identifying areas that have a high probability of productivity. Three of the parameters utilized by the models, chlorophyll-a, sea surface temperature, and turbidity were inferred from aircraft sensor data and were tested. Effective use of Skylab data was inhibited by cloud cover and delayed delivery. Initial efforts toward establishing the feasibility of utilizing remotely sensed data to assess and monitor the distribution of oceanic gamefish has successfully identified fisheries significant oceanographic parameters and demonstrated the capability of remotely measuring most of the parameters.

Using a Bedside Video-assisted Test Tube Test to Assess Stoma Viability: A Report of 4 Cases.

Science.gov (United States)

Ahmad, Sarwat; Turner, Keli; Shah, Paulesh; Diaz, Jose

2016-07-01

Mucosal discoloration of an intestinal stoma may indicate self-limited venous congestion or necrosis necessitating operative revision. A common bedside technique to assess stoma viability is the "test tube test". A clear tube is inserted into the stoma and a hand-held light is used to assess the color of the stoma. A technique (video-assisted test tube test [VATTT]) developed by the authors utilizes a standard video bronchoscope inserted into a clear plastic blood collection tube to visually inspect and assess the mucosa. This technique was evaluated in 4 patients (age range 49-72 years, all critically ill) with a discolored stoma after emergency surgery. In each case, physical exam revealed ischemic mucosa at the surface either immediately after surgery or after worsening hypotension weeks later. Serial test tube test assessments were ambiguous when trying to assess deeper mucosa. The VATTT assessment showed viable pink mucosa beneath the surface and until the fascia was revealed in 3 patients. One (1) patient had mucosal ischemia down to the fascia, which prompted operative revision of the stoma. The new stoma was assessed with a VATTT and was viable for the entire length of the stoma. VATTT provided an enhanced, magnified, and clearer way to visually assess stoma viability in the postoperative period that can be performed at the bedside with no adverse events. It may prevent unnecessary relaparotomy or enable earlier diagnosis of deep ostomy necrosis. Validity and reliability studies are warranted.

Fish4Knowledge collecting and analyzing massive coral reef fish video data

CERN Document Server

Chen-Burger, Yun-Heh; Giordano, Daniela; Hardman, Lynda; Lin, Fang-Pang

2016-01-01

This book gives a start-to-finish overview of the whole Fish4Knowledge project, in 18 short chapters, each describing one aspect of the project. The Fish4Knowledge project explored the possibilities of big video data, in this case from undersea video. Recording and analyzing 90 thousand hours of video from ten camera locations, the project gives a 3 year view of fish abundance in several tropical coral reefs off the coast of Taiwan. The research system built a remote recording network, over 100 Tb of storage, supercomputer processing, video target detection and tracking, fish species recognition and analysis, a large SQL database to record the results and an efficient retrieval mechanism. Novel user interface mechanisms were developed to provide easy access for marine ecologists, who wanted to explore the dataset. The book is a useful resource for system builders, as it gives an overview of the many new methods that were created to build the Fish4Knowledge system in a manner that also allows readers to see ho...

A geometric method for computing ocular kinematics and classifying gaze events using monocular remote eye tracking in a robotic environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Singh, Tarkeshwar; Perry, Christopher M; Herter, Troy M

2016-01-26

Robotic and virtual-reality systems offer tremendous potential for improving assessment and rehabilitation of neurological disorders affecting the upper extremity. A key feature of these systems is that visual stimuli are often presented within the same workspace as the hands (i.e., peripersonal space). Integrating video-based remote eye tracking with robotic and virtual-reality systems can provide an additional tool for investigating how cognitive processes influence visuomotor learning and rehabilitation of the upper extremity. However, remote eye tracking systems typically compute ocular kinematics by assuming eye movements are made in a plane with constant depth (e.g. frontal plane). When visual stimuli are presented at variable depths (e.g. transverse plane), eye movements have a vergence component that may influence reliable detection of gaze events (fixations, smooth pursuits and saccades). To our knowledge, there are no available methods to classify gaze events in the transverse plane for monocular remote eye tracking systems. Here we present a geometrical method to compute ocular kinematics from a monocular remote eye tracking system when visual stimuli are presented in the transverse plane. We then use the obtained kinematics to compute velocity-based thresholds that allow us to accurately identify onsets and offsets of fixations, saccades and smooth pursuits. Finally, we validate our algorithm by comparing the gaze events computed by the algorithm with those obtained from the eye-tracking software and manual digitization. Within the transverse plane, our algorithm reliably differentiates saccades from fixations (static visual stimuli) and smooth pursuits from saccades and fixations when visual stimuli are dynamic. The proposed methods provide advancements for examining eye movements in robotic and virtual-reality systems. Our methods can also be used with other video-based or tablet-based systems in which eye movements are performed in a peripersonal

The Contribution of Game Genre and other Use Patterns to Problem Video Game Play among Adult Video Gamers.

Science.gov (United States)

Elliott, Luther; Ream, Geoffrey; McGinsky, Elizabeth; Dunlap, Eloise

2012-12-01

AIMS: To assess the contribution of patterns of video game play, including game genre, involvement, and time spent gaming, to problem use symptomatology. DESIGN: Nationally representative survey. SETTING: Online. PARTICIPANTS: Large sample (n=3,380) of adult video gamers in the US. MEASUREMENTS: Problem video game play (PVGP) scale, video game genre typology, use patterns (gaming days in the past month and hours on days used), enjoyment, consumer involvement, and background variables. FINDINGS: Study confirms game genre's contribution to problem use as well as demographic variation in play patterns that underlie problem video game play vulnerability. CONCLUSIONS: Identification of a small group of game types positively correlated with problem use suggests new directions for research into the specific design elements and reward mechanics of "addictive" video games. Unique vulnerabilities to problem use among certain groups demonstrate the need for ongoing investigation of health disparities related to contextual dimensions of video game play.

The Contribution of Game Genre and other Use Patterns to Problem Video Game Play among Adult Video Gamers

Science.gov (United States)

Ream, Geoffrey; McGinsky, Elizabeth; Dunlap, Eloise

2012-01-01

Aims To assess the contribution of patterns of video game play, including game genre, involvement, and time spent gaming, to problem use symptomatology. Design Nationally representative survey. Setting Online. Participants Large sample (n=3,380) of adult video gamers in the US. Measurements Problem video game play (PVGP) scale, video game genre typology, use patterns (gaming days in the past month and hours on days used), enjoyment, consumer involvement, and background variables. Findings Study confirms game genre's contribution to problem use as well as demographic variation in play patterns that underlie problem video game play vulnerability. Conclusions Identification of a small group of game types positively correlated with problem use suggests new directions for research into the specific design elements and reward mechanics of “addictive” video games. Unique vulnerabilities to problem use among certain groups demonstrate the need for ongoing investigation of health disparities related to contextual dimensions of video game play. PMID:23284310

Independent Orbiter Assessment (IOA): Assessment of the EPD and C/remote manipulator system FMEA/CIL

Science.gov (United States)

Robinson, W. W.

1988-01-01

The results of the Independent Orbiter Assessment (IOA) of the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Critical Items List (CIL) are presented. The IOA effort first completed an analysis of the Electrical Power Distribution and Control (EPD and C)/Remote Manipulator System (RMS) hardware, generating draft failure modes and potential critical items. To preserve independence, this analysis was accomplished without reliance upon the results contained within the NASA FMEA/CIL documentation. The IOA analysis of the EPD and C/RMS hardware initially generated 345 failure mode worksheets and identified 117 Potential Critical Items (PCIs) before starting the assessment process. These analysis results were compared to the proposed NASA Post 51-L baseline of 132 FMEAs and 66 CIL items.

Assessment of sensors and aircraft for oil spill remote sensing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fingas, M.F.; Fruhwirth, M.

1993-01-01

Environment Canada has assessed sensors and aircraft suitable for remote sensing, particularly the capability of sensors to detect oil and to discriminate oil from background targets. The assessment was based on past experience and technical considerations. The first sensor recommended for use is an infrared camera or an IR/UV system. This recommendation is based on the system's ability to detect oil and discriminate this from the background, and the low cost of these sensors. The laser fluorosensor is recommended as the second device, as it is the only unit capable of positively discriminating oil on water, among weeds, and in sediment or beach material. Cameras operating in the visible region of the spectrum are recommended for two functions: documentation and providing background or location imagery for other sensors. Imaging radars, be they SAR or SLAR, are recommended for long-range searches or for oil spill work at night or when fog is present. Radars are expensive and require dedicated aircraft. Passive microwave devices are currently being developed but have not been proven as an alternative to radar or for measuring slick thickness. A laser based thickness sensor is under development. Satellite systems were also assessed. Satellite sensors operating in the visible spectrum have only limited application to major oil spills. New radar sensors show limited potential. The major limitation of any satellite system is the limited coverage time that is a function of its orbit. A study of aircraft and aircraft modifications was carried out to catalog aircraft modifications necessary to operate oil spill remote sensors. A potential user could select modifications that are already approved and thus save the high costs of aircraft modification design. The modifications already approved in Canada and the US for a given aircraft provide criteria for the selection of an aircraft

Computerized nailfold video capillaroscopy--a new tool for assessment of Raynaud's phenomenon.

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, Marina E; Allen, P Danny; Moore, Tonia; Hillier, Val; Taylor, Christopher J; Herrick, Ariane L

2005-05-01

To develop a computer based nailfold video capillaroscopy system with enhanced image quality and to assess its disease-subgroup resolving power in patients with primary and secondary Raynaud's phenomenon (RP). Using frame registration software, digitized video images from the microscope were combined to form a panoramic mosaic of the nailfold. Capillary dimensions (apex, arterial, venous, and total width) and density were measured onscreen. Significantly, the new system could guarantee analysis of the same set of capillaries by 2 observers. Forty-eight healthy control subjects, 21 patients with primary RP, 40 patients with limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis (lcSSc), and 11 patients with diffuse cutaneous SSc (dcSSc) were studied. Intra- and interobserver variability were calculated in a subset of 30 subjects. The number of loops/mm was significantly lower, and all 4 capillary dimensions significantly greater, in SSc patients versus controls plus primary RP patients (p nailfold capillary measurements by allowing reidentification of the same capillaries by different observers. By allowing access to previous measurements, the new system should improve reliability in longitudinal studies, and therefore has the potential of being a valuable outcome measure of microvessel disease/involvement in clinical trials of scleroderma spectrum disorders.

Simplified Fiber-Wireless Distribution of HD Video in Passive and Active W-band Close Proximity Terminals

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lebedev, Alexander; Rodes Lopez, Roberto; Yu, Xianbin

2012-01-01

We experimentally demonstrate uncompressed high-definition (HD) video distribution at 84 GHz Radio over Fiber link achieving up to 3 meters of wireless transmission. We experimentally emulate Metro-Access architecture by deploying single/multimode fibers. Passive and active approaches for remote...... antenna unit (RAU) are experimentally investigated. The bit error rate (BER) performance of the optical and wireless channels is reported. A successful transmission of uncompressed HD video in the W-band wireless channel is demonstrated with prospects to pave the way for application-focused fiber-wireless...

Automatic Assessment of Acquisition and Transmission Losses in Indian Remote Sensing Satellite Data

Science.gov (United States)

Roy, D.; Purna Kumari, B.; Manju Sarma, M.; Aparna, N.; Gopal Krishna, B.

2016-06-01

The quality of Remote Sensing data is an important parameter that defines the extent of its usability in various applications. The data from Remote Sensing satellites is received as raw data frames at the ground station. This data may be corrupted with data losses due to interferences during data transmission, data acquisition and sensor anomalies. Thus it is important to assess the quality of the raw data before product generation for early anomaly detection, faster corrective actions and product rejection minimization. Manual screening of raw images is a time consuming process and not very accurate. In this paper, an automated process for identification and quantification of losses in raw data like pixel drop out, line loss and data loss due to sensor anomalies is discussed. Quality assessment of raw scenes based on these losses is also explained. This process is introduced in the data pre-processing stage and gives crucial data quality information to users at the time of browsing data for product ordering. It has also improved the product generation workflow by enabling faster and more accurate quality estimation.

About subjective evaluation of adaptive video streaming

Science.gov (United States)

Tavakoli, Samira; Brunnström, Kjell; Garcia, Narciso

2015-03-01

The usage of HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) technology by content providers is increasing rapidly. Having available the video content in multiple qualities, using HAS allows to adapt the quality of downloaded video to the current network conditions providing smooth video-playback. However, the time-varying video quality by itself introduces a new type of impairment. The quality adaptation can be done in different ways. In order to find the best adaptation strategy maximizing users perceptual quality it is necessary to investigate about the subjective perception of adaptation-related impairments. However, the novelties of these impairments and their comparably long time duration make most of the standardized assessment methodologies fall less suited for studying HAS degradation. Furthermore, in traditional testing methodologies, the quality of the video in audiovisual services is often evaluated separated and not in the presence of audio. Nevertheless, the requirement of jointly evaluating the audio and the video within a subjective test is a relatively under-explored research field. In this work, we address the research question of determining the appropriate assessment methodology to evaluate the sequences with time-varying quality due to the adaptation. This was done by studying the influence of different adaptation related parameters through two different subjective experiments using a methodology developed to evaluate long test sequences. In order to study the impact of audio presence on quality assessment by the test subjects, one of the experiments was done in the presence of audio stimuli. The experimental results were subsequently compared with another experiment using the standardized single stimulus Absolute Category Rating (ACR) methodology.

Remote sensing and GIS-based prediction and assessment of copper-gold resources in Thailand

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yang, Shasha; Wang, Gongwen; Du, Wenhui; Huang, Luxiong

2014-01-01

Quantitative integration of geological information is a frontier and hotspot of prospecting decision research in the world. The forming process of large scale Cu-Au deposits is influenced by complicated geological events and restricted by various geological factors (stratum, structure and alteration). In this paper, using Thailand's copper-gold deposit district as a case study, geological anomaly theory is used along with the typical copper and gold metallogenic model, ETM+ remote sensing images, geological maps and mineral geology database in study area are combined with GIS technique. These techniques create ore-forming information such as geological information (strata, line-ring faults, intrusion), remote sensing information (hydroxyl alteration, iron alteration, linear-ring structure) and the Cu-Au prospect targets. These targets were identified using weights of evidence model. The research results show that the remote sensing and geological data can be combined to quickly predict and assess for exploration of mineral resources in a regional metallogenic belt

Remote participation technologies in the EFDA Laboratories - status and prospects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schmidt, V.; How, J.A.

2003-01-01

More than 25 laboratories of the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) have been increasingly using remote participation (RP) technologies for collaborative work on several experiments. We present an overview of the technologies that are employed to provide remote data access, remote computer access, and tele-conference. We also deal with computer network requirements, and support and documentation needs. The biggest application of these tools has been the joint scientific exploitation of the JET Facilities. Increasingly other experiments are operated as shared facilities, and the RP tools are being used in this context. For remote data access there is a clear trend towards MDSplus as common data access layer for multi-experiment data access. Secure Remote Computer access is converging on two different solutions. Video-conference is also converging on two partially inter-operable solutions, whereas the sharing of presentation material is converging on one solution. Remote Control Room participation is being used in two laboratories. Network monitoring has been developed and is now in routine use. The RP work is being done at many laboratories and is co-ordinated by EFDA. A number of items in several fields need still to be tackled and an overview of these is presented. (authors)

Remote participation technologies in the EFDA Laboratories - status and prospects

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Schmidt, V. [Associazione EURATOM-ENEA sulla Fusione, Consorzio RFX, Padova (Italy); How, J.A. [Association Euratom-CEA Cadarache, 13 - Saint-Paul-lez-Durance (France). Dept. de Recherches sur la Fusion Controlee

2003-07-01

More than 25 laboratories of the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) have been increasingly using remote participation (RP) technologies for collaborative work on several experiments. We present an overview of the technologies that are employed to provide remote data access, remote computer access, and tele-conference. We also deal with computer network requirements, and support and documentation needs. The biggest application of these tools has been the joint scientific exploitation of the JET Facilities. Increasingly other experiments are operated as shared facilities, and the RP tools are being used in this context. For remote data access there is a clear trend towards MDSplus as common data access layer for multi-experiment data access. Secure Remote Computer access is converging on two different solutions. Video-conference is also converging on two partially inter-operable solutions, whereas the sharing of presentation material is converging on one solution. Remote Control Room participation is being used in two laboratories. Network monitoring has been developed and is now in routine use. The RP work is being done at many laboratories and is co-ordinated by EFDA. A number of items in several fields need still to be tackled and an overview of these is presented. (authors)

Validity and applicability of a video-based animated tool to assess mobility in elderly Latin American populations.

Science.gov (United States)

Guerra, Ricardo Oliveira; Oliveira, Bruna Silva; Alvarado, Beatriz Eugenia; Curcio, Carmen Lucia; Rejeski, W Jack; Marsh, Anthony P; Ip, Edward H; Barnard, Ryan T; Guralnik, Jack M; Zunzunegui, Maria Victoria

2014-10-01

To assess the reliability and the validity of Portuguese- and Spanish-translated versions of the video-based short-form Mobility Assessment Tool in assessing self-reported mobility, and to provide evidence for the applicability of these videos in elderly Latin American populations as a complement to physical performance measures. The sample consisted of 300 elderly participants (150 from Brazil, 150 from Colombia) recruited at neighborhood social centers. Mobility was assessed with the Mobility Assessment Tool, and compared with the Short Physical Performance Battery score and self-reported functional limitations. Reliability was calculated using intraclass correlation coefficients. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to assess associations among mobility assessment tools and health, and sociodemographic variables. A significant gradient of increasing Mobility Assessment Tool score with better physical function was observed for both self-reported and objective measures, and in each city. Associations between self-reported mobility and health were strong, and significant. Mobility Assessment Tool scores were lower in women at both sites. Intraclass correlation coefficients of the Mobility Assessment Tool were 0.94 (95% confidence interval 0.90-0.97) in Brazil and 0.81 (95% confidence interval 0.66-0.91) in Colombia. Mobility Assessment Tool scores were lower in Manizales than in Natal after adjustment by Short Physical Performance Battery, self-rated health and sex. These results provide evidence for high reliability and good validity of the Mobility Assessment Tool in its Spanish and Portuguese versions used in Latin American populations. In addition, the Mobility Assessment Tool can detect mobility differences related to environmental features that cannot be captured by objective performance measures. © 2013 Japan Geriatrics Society.

Engineering task plan for Tanks 241-AN-103, 104, 105 color video camera systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kohlman, E.H.

1994-01-01

This Engineering Task Plan (ETP) describes the design, fabrication, assembly, and installation of the video camera systems into the vapor space within tanks 241-AN-103, 104, and 105. The one camera remotely operated color video systems will be used to observe and record the activities within the vapor space. Activities may include but are not limited to core sampling, auger activities, crust layer examination, monitoring of equipment installation/removal, and any other activities. The objective of this task is to provide a single camera system in each of the tanks for the Flammable Gas Tank Safety Program

Time-sensitive remote sensing

CERN Document Server

Lippitt, Christopher; Coulter, Lloyd

2015-01-01

This book documents the state of the art in the use of remote sensing to address time-sensitive information requirements. Specifically, it brings together a group of authors who are both researchers and practitioners, who work toward or are currently using remote sensing to address time-sensitive information requirements with the goal of advancing the effective use of remote sensing to supply time-sensitive information. The book addresses the theoretical implications of time-sensitivity on the remote sensing process, assessments or descriptions of methods for expediting the delivery and improving the quality of information derived from remote sensing, and describes and analyzes time-sensitive remote sensing applications, with an emphasis on lessons learned. This book is intended for remote sensing scientists, practitioners (e.g., emergency responders or administrators of emergency response agencies), and students, but will also be of use to those seeking to understand the potential of remote sensing to addres...

VideoSET: Video Summary Evaluation through Text

OpenAIRE

Yeung, Serena; Fathi, Alireza; Fei-Fei, Li

2014-01-01

In this paper we present VideoSET, a method for Video Summary Evaluation through Text that can evaluate how well a video summary is able to retain the semantic information contained in its original video. We observe that semantics is most easily expressed in words, and develop a text-based approach for the evaluation. Given a video summary, a text representation of the video summary is first generated, and an NLP-based metric is then used to measure its semantic distance to ground-truth text ...

Status of EFDA Remote Participation Tools and Needs

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Giese, P. [Association Euratom HAS /KFKI-RMKI, Budapest (Hungary); Castro, R.; Vega, J. [Asociation Euratom/CIEMAT para Fusion, Madrid (Spain); Schwenn, U. [Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik, Garching (Germany)

2009-07-01

Remote Participation is key to the success of the activities carried out under JET, EFDA Task Forces and Topical Groups. The Remote Participation Technology enables work and collaborations, irrespective of the physical location of the participants. These activities include 5 broad topics. 1) Remote Data and Computer Access: the main methods used in remote computer access are VPN, SSH and Citrix. There is no strong desire to move towards a standard access method. With regards to remote data access MDSplus has become de-facto standard. Thus, it would seem sensible for data access to/from the ITM gateway to also use MDSPlus. 2) Networking: All EFDA relevant NRENs, as well as GEANT2 and Internet2 work close to perfection. There is no real need for global QoS tools. Some of the LANs have to be improved, since some Associates lack proper connections to GEANT2. 3) Distance conferences and Telecommunication: To achieve an adequate quality of remote conferences the use of H.323 based equipment together with EFDATV is recommended within the EFDA community. Several MCUs (DFNVC, ITER, F4E, NIIF) provide multipoint conference services for EFDA. 4) Collaborative Services: Collaborative environments must provide partners with resources to allow them an easy exchange of information: documents, data and audio/video streams. The EFDA Wiki tool developed for exchange of information among the technical contact persons will be open for other users groups. 5) Remote Experiment Participation: Although Remote experiment tools are still rarely implemented, some are well established and stable. The remote real time experiment data access project, which is being developed by CIEMAT, UPM University and JET CODAS, is very interesting for the users community and its results could be an important base for future developments in this field. This document is composed of an abstract followed by the presentation transparencies. (authors)

Evaluation of a telehealth training package to remotely train staff to conduct a preference assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Higgins, William J; Luczynski, Kevin C; Carroll, Regina A; Fisher, Wayne W; Mudford, Oliver C

2017-04-01

Recent advancements in telecommunication technologies make it possible to conduct a variety of healthcare services remotely (e.g., behavioral-analytic intervention services), thereby bridging the gap between qualified providers and consumers in isolated locations. In this study, web-based telehealth technologies were used to remotely train direct-care staff to conduct a multiple-stimulus-without-replacement preference assessment. The training package included three components: (a) a multimedia presentation; (b) descriptive feedback from previously recorded baseline sessions; and (c) scripted role-play with immediate feedback. A nonconcurrent, multiple-baseline-across-participants design was used to demonstrate experimental control. Training resulted in robust and immediate improvements, and these effects maintained during 1- to 2-month follow-up observations. In addition, participants expressed high satisfaction with the web-based materials and the overall remote-training experience. © 2017 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Regional Assessment of Remote Forests and Black Bear Habitat from Forest Resource Surveys

Science.gov (United States)

Victor A. Rudis; John B. Tansey

1995-01-01

We developed a spatially explicit modeling approach, using a county-scaled remote forest (i.e., forested area reserved from or having no direct human interference) assessment derived from 1984-1990 forest resource inventory data and a 1984 black bear (Ursus americantus) range map for 12 states in the southern United States.We defined minimum suitable and optimal black...

Mechanisms of video-game epilepsy.

Science.gov (United States)

Fylan, F; Harding, G F; Edson, A S; Webb, R M

1999-01-01

We aimed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying video-game epilepsy by comparing the flicker- and spatial-frequency ranges over which photic and pattern stimulation elicited photoparoxysmal responses in two different populations: (a) 25 patients with a history of seizures experienced while playing video games; and (b) 25 age- and medication-matched controls with a history of photosensitive epilepsy, but no history of video-game seizures. Abnormality ranges were determined by measuring photoparoxysmal EEG abnormalities as a function of the flicker frequency of patterned and diffuse intermittent photic stimulation (IPS) and the spatial frequency of patterns on a raster display. There was no significant difference between the groups in respect of the abnormality ranges elicited by patterned or diffuse IPS or by spatial patterns. When the groups were compared at one specific IPS frequency (-50 Hz), however, the flicker frequency of European television displays, the video-game patients were significantly more likely to be sensitive. The results suggest that video-game seizures are a manifestation of photosensitive epilepsy. The increased sensitivity of video-game patients to IPS at 50 Hz indicates that display flicker may underlie video-game seizures. The similarity in photic- and pattern-stimulation ranges over which abnormalities are elicited in video-game patients and controls suggests that all patients with photosensitive epilepsy may be predisposed toward video-game-induced seizures. Photosensitivity screening should therefore include assessment by using both IPS at 50 Hz and patterns displayed on a television or monitor with a 50-Hz frame rate.

Are violent video games harmful?

Science.gov (United States)

Porter, Guy; Starcevic, Vladan

2007-10-01

The aim of this paper is to revisit the controversial issue of the association of violent video games and aggressive behaviour. Several lines of evidence suggest that there is a link between exposure to violent video games and aggressive behaviour. However, methodological shortcomings of research conducted so far make several interpretations of this relationship possible. Thus, aggressive behaviour may be a consequence of playing violent video games, an expression of hostile traits that existed before exposure to these games, and/or it may be a result of several possible combinations of these and other factors. Mental health professionals need to be aware of these potentially negative effects of violent video games when assessing patients who present with aggression. There is a need for prospective, long-term studies similar to those evaluating the effects of television and film violence on children and adolescents.

First year midwifery students' experience with self-recorded and assessed video of selected midwifery practice skills at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand.

Science.gov (United States)

McIntosh, Carolyn; Patterson, Jean; Miller, Suzanne

2018-01-01

Studying undergraduate midwifery at a distance has advantages in terms of accessibility and community support but presents challenges for practice based competence assessment. Student -recorded videos provide opportunities for completing the assigned skills, self-reflection, and assessment by a lecturer. This research asked how midwifery students experienced the process of completing the Video Assessment of Midwifery Practice Skills (VAMPS) in 2014 and 2015. The aim of the survey was to identify the benefits and challenges of the VAMPS assessment and to identify opportunities for improvement from the students' perspective. All students who had participated in the VAMPS assessment during 2014 and 2015 were invited to complete an online survey. To maintain confidentiality for the students, the Qualtrics survey was administered and the data downloaded by the Organisational Research Officer. Ethical approval was granted by the organisational ethics committee. Descriptive statistics were generated and students' comments were collated. The VAMPS provided an accessible option for the competence assessment and the opportunity for self-reflection and re-recording to perfect their skill which the students appreciated. The main challenges related to the technical aspects of recording and uploading the assessment. This study highlighted some of the benefits and challenges experienced by the midwifery students and showed that practice skills can be successfully assessed at distance. The additional benefit of accessibility afforded by video assessment is a new and unique finding for undergraduate midwifery education and may resonate with other educators seeking ways to assess similar skill sets with cohorts of students studying at distance. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

High-definition television evaluation for remote handling task performance

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fujita, Y.; Omori, E.; Hayashi, S.; Draper, J.V.; Herndon, J.N.

1986-01-01

In a plant that employs remote handling techniques for equipment maintenance, operators perform maintenance tasks primarily by using the information from television systems. The efficiency of the television system has a significant impact on remote maintenance task performance. High-definition television (HDTV) transmits a video image with more than twice the number of horizontal scan lines as standard-resolution television (1125 for HDTV to 525 for standard-resolution NTSC television). The added scan lines dramatically improve the resolution of images on the HDTV monitors. This paper describes experiments designed to evaluate the impact of HDTV on the performance of typical remote tasks. The experiments described in this paper compared the performance of four operators using HDTV with their performance while using other television systems. The experiments included four television systems: (a) high-definition color television, (b) high-definition monochromatic television, (c) standard-resolution monochromatic television, and (d) standard-resolution stereoscopic monochromatic television

stil119_0601a -- Point coverage of locations of still frames extracted from video imagery which depict sediment types

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The Canadian ROPOS remotely operated vehicle (ROV) outfitted with video equipment (and other devices) was deployed from the NOAA Ship McAurthurII during May-June...

Use of point-of-sale data to assess food and nutrient quality in remote stores.

Science.gov (United States)

Brimblecombe, Julie; Liddle, Robyn; O'Dea, Kerin

2013-07-01

To examine the feasibility of using point-of-sale data to assess dietary quality of food sales in remote stores. A multi-site cross-sectional assessment of food and nutrient composition of food sales. Point-of-sale data were linked to Australian Food and Nutrient Data and compared across study sites and with nutrient requirements. Remote Aboriginal Australia. Six stores. Point-of-sale data were readily available and provided a low-cost, efficient and objective assessment of food and nutrient sales. Similar patterns in macronutrient distribution, food expenditure and key food sources of nutrients were observed across stores. In all stores, beverages, cereal and cereal products, and meat and meat products comprised approximately half of food sales (range 49–57 %). Fruit and vegetable sales comprised 10.4 (SD 1.9) % on average. Carbohydrate contributed 54.4 (SD 3.0) % to energy; protein 13.5 (SD 1.1) %; total sugars 28.9 (SD 4.3) %; and the contribution of total saturated fat to energy ranged from 11.0 to 14.4% across stores. Mg, Ca, K and fibre were limiting nutrients, and Na was four to five times higher than the midpoint of the average intake range. Relatively few foods were major sources of nutrients. Point-of-sale data enabled an assessment of dietary quality within stores and across stores with no burden on communities and at no cost, other than time required for analysis and reporting. Similar food spending patterns and nutrient profiles were observed across the six stores. This suggests potential in using point-of-sale data to monitor and evaluate dietary quality in remote Australian communities.

Reliable assessment of general surgeons' non-technical skills based on video-recordings of patient simulated scenarios.

Science.gov (United States)

Spanager, Lene; Beier-Holgersen, Randi; Dieckmann, Peter; Konge, Lars; Rosenberg, Jacob; Oestergaard, Doris

2013-11-01

Nontechnical skills are essential for safe and efficient surgery. The aim of this study was to evaluate the reliability of an assessment tool for surgeons' nontechnical skills, Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons dk (NOTSSdk), and the effect of rater training. A 1-day course was conducted for 15 general surgeons in which they rated surgeons' nontechnical skills in 9 video recordings of scenarios simulating real intraoperative situations. Data were gathered from 2 sessions separated by a 4-hour training session. Interrater reliability was high for both pretraining ratings (Cronbach's α = .97) and posttraining ratings (Cronbach's α = .98). There was no statistically significant development in assessment skills. The D study showed that 2 untrained raters or 1 trained rater was needed to obtain generalizability coefficients >.80. The high pretraining interrater reliability indicates that videos were easy to rate and Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons dk easy to use. This implies that Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons dk (NOTSSdk) could be an important tool in surgical training, potentially improving safety and quality for surgical patients. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Development of remote control software for multiformat test signal generator

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gao Yang

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The multi format test signal generator mentioned in this paper is the video signal generator named TG8000 produced by Tektronix Company. I will introduce the function about remote control for signal generator, how to connect the computer to the instrument, and how to remote control. My topic uses my computer to connect the instrument through the 10/100/1000 BASE-T port on the rear panel of TG8000. Then I write program to transmit SCPI (Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments to control TG8000. The application is running on the Windows operating system, the programming language is C#, development environment is Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, using the TCP/IP protocol based on Socket. And the method of remote control refers to the application called TGSetup which is developed by Tektronix Company. This paper includes a brief summary of the basic principle, and introduce for details about the process of remote control software development, and how to use my software. In the end, I will talk about the advantages of my software compared with another one.

Remote Sensing-Based Characterization of Settlement Structures for Assessing Local Potential of District Heat

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Nast

2011-07-01

Full Text Available In Europe, heating of houses and commercial areas is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. When considering the drastic impact of an increasing emission of greenhouse gases as well as the finiteness of fossil resources, the usage of efficient and renewable energy generation technologies has to be increased. In this context, small-scale heating networks are an important technical component, which enable the efficient and sustainable usage of various heat generation technologies. This paper investigates how the potential of district heating for different settlement structures can be assessed. In particular, we analyze in which way remote sensing and GIS data can assist the planning of optimized heat allocation systems. In order to identify the best suited locations, a spatial model is defined to assess the potential for small district heating networks. Within the spatial model, the local heat demand and the economic costs of the necessary heat allocation infrastructure are compared. Therefore, a first and major step is the detailed characterization of the settlement structure by means of remote sensing data. The method is developed on the basis of a test area in the town of Oberhaching in the South of Germany. The results are validated through detailed in situ data sets and demonstrate that the model facilitates both the calculation of the required input parameters and an accurate assessment of the district heating potential. The described method can be transferred to other investigation areas with a larger spatial extent. The study underlines the range of applications for remote sensing-based analyses with respect to energy-related planning issues.

Effects of video modeling with video feedback on vocational skills of adults with autism spectrum disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

English, Derek L; Gounden, Sadhana; Dagher, Richard E; Chan, Shu Fen; Furlonger, Brett E; Anderson, Angelika; Moore, Dennis W

2017-11-01

To examine the effectiveness of a video modeling (VM) with video feedback (VFB) intervention to teach vocational gardening skills to three adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A multiple probe design across skills was used to assess the effects of the intervention on the three participants' ability to perform skills accurately. The use of VM with VFB led to improvements across skills for two of the participants. The third participant required video prompting (VP) for successful skill acquisition. Skill performance generalized across personnel and settings for two of the participants, but it was not assessed for the third. Skill performance maintained at follow-up for all three participants. Social validity data gathered from participants, parents, and co-workers were positive. These findings suggest that VM with VFB and VP with VFB were effective and socially acceptable interventions for teaching vocational gardening skills to young adults with ASD.

Using Short Videos in an Introductory Programming Course

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nørmark, Kurt

2014-01-01

Video resources are gradually being introduced in a first year programming course. The course is about imperative programming in C. After each of the first two years with video lectures the students have been asked about their assessments and opinions. The main parts of the paper are based on evi...... experience we also carry out a discussion of future plans for using video resources in the course....

Teaching autistic children conversational speech using video modeling.

Science.gov (United States)

Charlop, M H; Milstein, J P

1989-01-01

We assessed the effects of video modeling on acquisition and generalization of conversational skills among autistic children. Three autistic boys observed videotaped conversations consisting of two people discussing specific toys. When criterion for learning was met, generalization of conversational skills was assessed with untrained topics of conversation; new stimuli (toys); unfamiliar persons, siblings, and autistic peers; and other settings. The results indicated that the children learned through video modeling, generalized their conversational skills, and maintained conversational speech over a 15-month period. Video modeling shows much promise as a rapid and effective procedure for teaching complex verbal skills such as conversational speech. PMID:2793634

Does Wearable Medical Technology With Video Recording Capability Add Value to On-Call Surgical Evaluations?

Science.gov (United States)

Gupta, Sameer; Boehme, Jacqueline; Manser, Kelly; Dewar, Jannine; Miller, Amie; Siddiqui, Gina; Schwaitzberg, Steven D

2016-10-01

Background Google Glass has been used in a variety of medical settings with promising results. We explored the use and potential value of an asynchronous, near-real time protocol-which avoids transmission issues associated with real-time applications-for recording, uploading, and viewing of high-definition (HD) visual media in the emergency department (ED) to facilitate remote surgical consults. Study Design First-responder physician assistants captured pertinent aspects of the physical examination and diagnostic imaging using Google Glass' HD video or high-resolution photographs. This visual media were then securely uploaded to the study website. The surgical consultation then proceeded over the phone in the usual fashion and a clinical decision was made. The surgeon then accessed the study website to review the uploaded video. This was followed by a questionnaire regarding how the additional data impacted the consultation. Results The management plan changed in 24% (11) of cases after surgeons viewed the video. Five of these plans involved decision making regarding operative intervention. Although surgeons were generally confident in their initial management plan, confidence scores increased further in 44% (20) of cases. In addition, we surveyed 276 ED patients on their opinions regarding concerning the practice of health care providers wearing and using recording devices in the ED. The survey results revealed that the majority of patients are amenable to the addition of wearable technology with video functionality to their care. Conclusions This study demonstrates the potential value of a medically dedicated, hands-free, HD recording device with internet connectivity in facilitating remote surgical consultation. © The Author(s) 2016.

A comparison of intellectual assessments over video conferencing and in-person for individuals with ID: preliminary data.

Science.gov (United States)

Temple, V; Drummond, C; Valiquette, S; Jozsvai, E

2010-06-01

Video conferencing (VC) technology has great potential to increase accessibility to healthcare services for those living in rural or underserved communities. Previous studies have had some success in validating a small number of psychological tests for VC administration; however, VC has not been investigated for use with persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). A comparison of test results for two well known and widely used assessment instruments was undertaken to establish if scores for VC administration would differ significantly from in-person assessments. Nineteen individuals with ID aged 23-63 were assessed once in-person and once over VC using the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) and the Beery-Buktenica Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI). Highly similar results were found for test scores. Full-scale IQ on the WASI and standard scores for the VMI were found to be very stable across the two administration conditions, with a mean difference of less than one IQ point/standard score. Video conferencing administration does not appear to alter test results significantly for overall score on a brief intelligence test or a test of visual-motor integration.

The next generation borescope -- Video imaging measurement systems as portable as a fiberscope

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Boyd, C.E.

1994-01-01

Today, Remote Visual Inspection (RVI) techniques routinely save industry the significant costs associated with unscheduled shutdowns and equipment disassembly by enabling visual inspection of otherwise inaccessible equipment surfaces with instruments called borescopes. Specific applications in the nuclear industry include heat exchangers, condensers, boiler tubes, steam generators, headers, and other general interior surface inspections. While borescope inspections have achieved widespread utility, their potential applicability and value have been limited by their inability to provide dimensional information about the objects seen. This paper presents a simple, but very accurate measurement technique that enables the inspector to make measurements of objects directly from the borescope image. While used effectively since 1990, the technique is designed for a video imaging borescope and has, therefore, not been available for the shorter length fiberscope applications--until now. On June 6, 1993 Welch Allyn introduced the VideoProbe XL, a video imaging borescope that is as portable and affordable as a one meter fiberscope. This breakthrough not only extends video imaging into the rest of the fiberscope world, but opens the door for them to this measurement capability as well

Video quality pooling adaptive to perceptual distortion severity.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Jincheol; Seshadrinathan, Kalpana; Lee, Sanghoon; Bovik, Alan Conrad

2013-02-01

It is generally recognized that severe video distortions that are transient in space and/or time have a large effect on overall perceived video quality. In order to understand this phenomena, we study the distribution of spatio-temporally local quality scores obtained from several video quality assessment (VQA) algorithms on videos suffering from compression and lossy transmission over communication channels. We propose a content adaptive spatial and temporal pooling strategy based on the observed distribution. Our method adaptively emphasizes "worst" scores along both the spatial and temporal dimensions of a video sequence and also considers the perceptual effect of large-area cohesive motion flow such as egomotion. We demonstrate the efficacy of the method by testing it using three different VQA algorithms on the LIVE Video Quality database and the EPFL-PoliMI video quality database.

Am I getting an accurate picture: a tool to assess clinical handover in remote settings?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Malcolm Moore

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Good clinical handover is critical to safe medical care. Little research has investigated handover in rural settings. In a remote setting where nurses and medical students give telephone handover to an aeromedical retrieval service, we developed a tool by which the receiving clinician might assess the handover; and investigated factors impacting on the reliability and validity of that assessment. Methods Researchers consulted with clinicians to develop an assessment tool, based on the ISBAR handover framework, combining validity evidence and the existing literature. The tool was applied ‘live’ by receiving clinicians and from recorded handovers by academic assessors. The tool’s performance was analysed using generalisability theory. Receiving clinicians and assessors provided feedback. Results Reliability for assessing a call was good (G = 0.73 with 4 assessments. The scale had a single factor structure with good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.8. The group mean for the global score for nurses and students was 2.30 (SD 0.85 out of a maximum 3.0, with no difference between these sub-groups. Conclusions We have developed and evaluated a tool to assess high-stakes handover in a remote setting. It showed good reliability and was easy for working clinicians to use. Further investigation and use is warranted beyond this setting.

Implementing video cases in clinical paediatric teaching increases medical students' self-assessed confidence

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Malon, Michelle; Cortes, Dina; Andersen, Jesper

2014-01-01

INTRODUCTION: Use of video cases in clinical education is rarely used systematically. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Medical students (n = 127) reported by questionnaire whether they had or had not seen a bedside case of each of 22 specific clinical conditions during their five-week clinical course...... the intervention, this share was 75% (218/289) (p = 0.06). Furthermore, internal as well as external examiners found video cases valuable, but the use of videos did not change the average examination grade. CONCLUSION: A video case supplement to teaching in clinical paediatrics was considered to be of value...... for teaching. We were successful in establishing an educational resource that students considered useful. Internal and external examiners found that a short video case was a valuable supplementary tool during the oral examination. FUNDING: The University of Copenhagen funded the study. TRIAL REGISTRATION...

OzBot and haptics: remote surveillance to physical presence

Science.gov (United States)

Mullins, James; Fielding, Mick; Nahavandi, Saeid

2009-05-01

This paper reports on robotic and haptic technologies and capabilities developed for the law enforcement and defence community within Australia by the Centre for Intelligent Systems Research (CISR). The OzBot series of small and medium surveillance robots have been designed in Australia and evaluated by law enforcement and defence personnel to determine suitability and ruggedness in a variety of environments. Using custom developed digital electronics and featuring expandable data busses including RS485, I2C, RS232, video and Ethernet, the robots can be directly connected to many off the shelf payloads such as gas sensors, x-ray sources and camera systems including thermal and night vision. Differentiating the OzBot platform from its peers is its ability to be integrated directly with haptic technology or the 'haptic bubble' developed by CISR. Haptic interfaces allow an operator to physically 'feel' remote environments through position-force control and experience realistic force feedback. By adding the capability to remotely grasp an object, feel its weight, texture and other physical properties in real-time from the remote ground control unit, an operator's situational awareness is greatly improved through Haptic augmentation in an environment where remote-system feedback is often limited.

The Contribution of Game Genre and Other Use Patterns to Problem Video Game Play among Adult Video Gamers

Science.gov (United States)

Elliott, Luther; Ream, Geoffrey; McGinsky, Elizabeth; Dunlap, Eloise

2012-01-01

A nationally representative online survey (n = 3,380) was used to assess the contribution of patterns of video game play to problem video game play (PVGP) symptomatology. Game genre, enjoyment, consumer involvement, time spent gaming (gaming days in the past month and hours on days used), and demographic variables were all examined. The study…

Using Video Modeling with Voice-over Instruction to Train Public School Staff to Implement a Preference Assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Bovi, Gina M Delli; Vladescu, Jason C; DeBar, Ruth M; Carroll, Regina A; Sarokoff, Randi A

2017-03-01

The identification of putative reinforcers is a critical component of programming for individuals with disabilities. A multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessment is one option for identifying putative reinforcers; however, staff must be trained on the steps necessary to conduct the assessment for it to be useful in practice. This study examined the effectiveness of using video modeling with voice-over instruction (VMVO) to train two public school staff to conduct this assessment. Results demonstrate that VMVO was effective in training, producing generalized responding, maintenance, and high social validity ratings.

Distributed computing testbed for a remote experimental environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Butner, D.N.; Casper, T.A.; Howard, B.C.; Henline, P.A.; Davis, S.L.; Barnes, D.

1995-01-01

Collaboration is increasing as physics research becomes concentrated on a few large, expensive facilities, particularly in magnetic fusion energy research, with national and international participation. These facilities are designed for steady state operation and interactive, real-time experimentation. We are developing tools to provide for the establishment of geographically distant centers for interactive operations; such centers would allow scientists to participate in experiments from their home institutions. A testbed is being developed for a Remote Experimental Environment (REE), a ''Collaboratory.'' The testbed will be used to evaluate the ability of a remotely located group of scientists to conduct research on the DIII-D Tokamak at General Atomics. The REE will serve as a testing environment for advanced control and collaboration concepts applicable to future experiments. Process-to-process communications over high speed wide area networks provide real-time synchronization and exchange of data among multiple computer networks, while the ability to conduct research is enhanced by adding audio/video communication capabilities. The Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment is being used to test concepts in distributed control, security, naming, remote procedure calls and distributed file access using the Distributed File Services. We are exploring the technology and sociology of remotely participating in the operation of a large scale experimental facility

Training value of laparoscopic colorectal videos on the World Wide Web: a pilot study on the educational quality of laparoscopic right hemicolectomy videos.

Science.gov (United States)

Celentano, V; Browning, M; Hitchins, C; Giglio, M C; Coleman, M G

2017-11-01

Instructive laparoscopy videos with appropriate exposition could be ideal for initial training in laparoscopic surgery, but unfortunately there are no guidelines for annotating these videos or agreed methods to measure the educational content and the safety of the procedure presented. Aim of this study is to systematically search the World Wide Web to determine the availability of laparoscopic colorectal surgery videos and to objectively establish their potential training value. A search for laparoscopic right hemicolectomy videos was performed on the three most used English language web search engines Google.com, Bing.com, and Yahoo.com; moreover, a survey among 25 local trainees was performed to identify additional websites for inclusion. All laparoscopic right hemicolectomy videos with an English language title were included. Videos of open surgery, single incision laparoscopic surgery, robotic, and hand-assisted surgery were excluded. The safety of the demonstrated procedure was assessed with a validated competency assessment tool specifically designed for laparoscopic colorectal surgery and data on the educational content of the video were extracted. Thirty-one websites were identified and 182 surgical videos were included. One hundred and seventy-three videos (95%) detailed the year of publication; this demonstrated a significant increase in the number of videos published per year from 2009. Characteristics of the patient were rarely presented, only 10 videos (5.4%) reported operating time and only 6 videos (3.2%) reported 30-day morbidity; 34 videos (18.6%) underwent a peer-review process prior to publication. Formal case presentation, the presence of audio narration, the use of diagrams, and snapshots and a step-by-step approach are all characteristics of peer-reviewed videos but no significant difference was found in the safety of the procedure. Laparoscopic videos can be a useful adjunct to operative training. There is a large and increasing amount of

A Remote Sensing-Derived Corn Yield Assessment Model

Science.gov (United States)

Shrestha, Ranjay Man

Agricultural studies and food security have become critical research topics due to continuous growth in human population and simultaneous shrinkage in agricultural land. In spite of modern technological advancements to improve agricultural productivity, more studies on crop yield assessments and food productivities are still necessary to fulfill the constantly increasing food demands. Besides human activities, natural disasters such as flood and drought, along with rapid climate changes, also inflect an adverse effect on food productivities. Understanding the impact of these disasters on crop yield and making early impact estimations could help planning for any national or international food crisis. Similarly, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA) insurance management utilizes appropriately estimated crop yield and damage assessment information to sustain farmers' practice through timely and proper compensations. Through County Agricultural Production Survey (CAPS), the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS) uses traditional methods of field interviews and farmer-reported survey data to perform annual crop condition monitoring and production estimations at the regional and state levels. As these manual approaches of yield estimations are highly inefficient and produce very limited samples to represent the entire area, NASS requires supplemental spatial data that provides continuous and timely information on crop production and annual yield. Compared to traditional methods, remote sensing data and products offer wider spatial extent, more accurate location information, higher temporal resolution and data distribution, and lower data cost--thus providing a complementary option for estimation of crop yield information. Remote sensing derived vegetation indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) provide measurable statistics of potential crop growth based on the spectral reflectance and could

The 3D Human Motion Control Through Refined Video Gesture Annotation

Science.gov (United States)

Jin, Yohan; Suk, Myunghoon; Prabhakaran, B.

In the beginning of computer and video game industry, simple game controllers consisting of buttons and joysticks were employed, but recently game consoles are replacing joystick buttons with novel interfaces such as the remote controllers with motion sensing technology on the Nintendo Wii [1] Especially video-based human computer interaction (HCI) technique has been applied to games, and the representative game is 'Eyetoy' on the Sony PlayStation 2. Video-based HCI technique has great benefit to release players from the intractable game controller. Moreover, in order to communicate between humans and computers, video-based HCI is very crucial since it is intuitive, easy to get, and inexpensive. On the one hand, extracting semantic low-level features from video human motion data is still a major challenge. The level of accuracy is really dependent on each subject's characteristic and environmental noises. Of late, people have been using 3D motion-capture data for visualizing real human motions in 3D space (e.g, 'Tiger Woods' in EA Sports, 'Angelina Jolie' in Bear-Wolf movie) and analyzing motions for specific performance (e.g, 'golf swing' and 'walking'). 3D motion-capture system ('VICON') generates a matrix for each motion clip. Here, a column is corresponding to a human's sub-body part and row represents time frames of data capture. Thus, we can extract sub-body part's motion only by selecting specific columns. Different from low-level feature values of video human motion, 3D human motion-capture data matrix are not pixel values, but is closer to human level of semantics.

Remote monitoring as a tool in condition assessment of a highway bridge

Science.gov (United States)

Tantele, Elia A.; Votsis, Renos A.; Onoufriou, Toula; Milis, Marios; Kareklas, George

2016-08-01

The deterioration of civil infrastructure and their subsequent maintenance is a significant problem for the responsible managing authorities. The ideal scenario is to detect deterioration and/or structural problems at early stages so that the maintenance cost is kept low and the safety of the infrastructure remains undisputed. The current inspection regimes implemented mostly via visual inspection are planned at specific intervals but are not always executed on time due to shortcomings in expert personnel and finance. However the introduction of technological advances in the assessment of infrastructures provides the tools to alleviate this problem. This study describes the assessment of a highway RC bridge's structural condition using remote structural health monitoring. A monitoring plan is implemented focusing on strain measurements; as strain is a parameter influenced by the environmental conditions supplementary data are provided from temperature and wind sensors. The data are acquired using wired sensors (deployed at specific locations) which are connected to a wireless sensor unit installed at the bridge. This WSN application enables the transmission of the raw data from the field to the office for processing and evaluation. The processed data are then used to assess the condition of the bridge. This case study, which is part of an undergoing RPF research project, illustrates that remote monitoring can alleviate the problem of missing structural inspections. Additionally, shows its potential to be the main part of a fully automated smart procedure of obtaining structural data, processed them and trigger an alarm when certain undesirable conditions are met.

Image quality assessment for video stream recognition systems

Science.gov (United States)

Chernov, Timofey S.; Razumnuy, Nikita P.; Kozharinov, Alexander S.; Nikolaev, Dmitry P.; Arlazarov, Vladimir V.

2018-04-01

Recognition and machine vision systems have long been widely used in many disciplines to automate various processes of life and industry. Input images of optical recognition systems can be subjected to a large number of different distortions, especially in uncontrolled or natural shooting conditions, which leads to unpredictable results of recognition systems, making it impossible to assess their reliability. For this reason, it is necessary to perform quality control of the input data of recognition systems, which is facilitated by modern progress in the field of image quality evaluation. In this paper, we investigate the approach to designing optical recognition systems with built-in input image quality estimation modules and feedback, for which the necessary definitions are introduced and a model for describing such systems is constructed. The efficiency of this approach is illustrated by the example of solving the problem of selecting the best frames for recognition in a video stream for a system with limited resources. Experimental results are presented for the system for identity documents recognition, showing a significant increase in the accuracy and speed of the system under simulated conditions of automatic camera focusing, leading to blurring of frames.

Internet-based remote counseling to support stress management: preventing interruptions to regular exercise in elderly people

Science.gov (United States)

Hashimoto, Sayuri; Munakata, Tsunestugu; Hashimoto, Nobuyuki; Okunaka, Jyunzo; Koga, Tatsuzo

2006-01-01

Our research showed that a high degree of life-stress has a negative mental health effect that may interrupt regular exercise. We used an internet based, remotely conducted, face to face, preventive counseling program using video monitors to reduce the source of life-stresses that interrupts regular exercise and evaluated the preventative effects of the program in elderly people. NTSC Video signals were converted to the IP protocol and facial images were transmitted to a PC display using the exclusive optical network lines of JGN2. Participants were 22 elderly people in Hokkaido, Japan, who regularly played table tennis. A survey was conducted before the intervention in August 2003. IT remote counseling was conducted on two occasions for one hour on each occasion. A post intervention survey was conducted in February 2004 and a follow-up survey was conducted in March 2005. Network quality was satisfactory with little data loss and high display quality. Results indicated that self-esteem increased significantly, trait anxiety decreased significantly, cognition of emotional support by people other than family members had a tendency to increase, and source of stress had a tendency to decrease after the intervention. Follow-up results indicated that cognition of emotional support by family increased significantly, and interpersonal dependency decreased significantly compared to before the intervention. These results suggest that face to face IT remote counseling using video monitors is useful to keep elderly people from feeling anxious and to make them confident to continue exercising regularly. Moreover, it has a stress management effect.

Some technical notes on using UAV-based remote sensing for post disaster assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Rokhmana, Catur Aries; Andaru, Ruli

2017-07-01

Indonesia is located in an area prone to disasters, which are various kinds of natural disasters happen. In disaster management, the geoinformation data are needed to be able to evaluate the impact area. The UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)-Based remote sensing technology is a good choice to produce a high spatial resolution of less than 15 cm, while the current resolution of the satellite imagery is still greater than 50 cm. This paper shows some technical notes that should be considered when using UAV-Based remote sensing system in post disaster for rapid assessment. Some cases are Aceh Earthquake in years 2013 for seeing infrastructure damages, Banjarnegara landslide in year 2014 for seeing the impact; and Kelud volcano eruption in year 2014 for seeing the impact and volumetric material calculation. The UAV-Based remote sensing system should be able to produce the Orthophoto image that can provide capabilities for visual interpretation the individual damage objects, and the changes situation. Meanwhile the DEM (digital Elevation model) product can derive terrain topography, and volumetric calculation with accuracy 3-5 pixel or sub-meter also. The UAV platform should be able for working remotely and autonomously in dangerous area and limited infrastructures. In mountainous or volcano area, an unconventional flight plan should implemented. Unfortunately, not all impact can be seen from above such as wall crack, some parcel boundaries, and many objects that covered by others higher object. The previous existing geoinformation data are also needed to be able to evaluate the change detection automatically.

Quality Assessment of Adaptive Bitrate Videos using Image Metrics and Machine Learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Søgaard, Jacob; Forchhammer, Søren; Brunnström, Kjell

2015-01-01

Adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming is widely used for distribution of videos over the internet. In this work, we investigate how well we can predict the quality of such videos using well-known image metrics, information about the bitrate levels, and a relatively simple machine learning method...

Content-based video retrieval by example video clip

Science.gov (United States)

Dimitrova, Nevenka; Abdel-Mottaleb, Mohamed

1997-01-01

This paper presents a novel approach for video retrieval from a large archive of MPEG or Motion JPEG compressed video clips. We introduce a retrieval algorithm that takes a video clip as a query and searches the database for clips with similar contents. Video clips are characterized by a sequence of representative frame signatures, which are constructed from DC coefficients and motion information (`DC+M' signatures). The similarity between two video clips is determined by using their respective signatures. This method facilitates retrieval of clips for the purpose of video editing, broadcast news retrieval, or copyright violation detection.

Range-Gated Laser Stroboscopic Imaging for Night Remote Surveillance

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xin-Wei, Wang; Yan, Zhou; Song-Tao, Fan; Jun, He; Yu-Liang, Liu

2010-01-01

For night remote surveillance, we present a method, the range-gated laser stroboscopic imaging(RGLSI), which uses a new kind of time delay integration mode to integrate target signals so that night remote surveillance can be realized by a low-energy illuminated laser. The time delay integration in this method has no influence on the video frame rate. Compared with the traditional range-gated laser imaging, RGLSI can reduce scintillation and target speckle effects and significantly improve the image signal-to-noise ratio analyzed. Even under low light level and low visibility conditions, the RGLSI system can effectively work. In a preliminary experiment, we have detected and recognized a railway bridge one kilometer away under a visibility of six kilometers, when the effective illuminated energy is 29.5 μJ