Near Real-time Privacy Protection: Automated Location-dependent Video Blurring in UAV live-streams

In today’s world, privacy is becoming a major concern, especially with the use of drones for surveillance and recreational purposes. This paper presents a novel approach to privacy protection in UAV live-streaming by introducing an automated video blurring system that operates in near real-time, replacing time-consuming operations in the post-processing stage. Our method leverages the Scale Invariant Feature Transform algorithm to match live footage with a pre-constructed aerial template image, enabling the blurring of private properties in near real-time, allowing our UAV greater freedom of mobility whilst preserving the privacy of residents at ground level. This solution aligns with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), balancing utility and privacy rights. This proposed framework has the potential to significantly aid the UAV industry by providing a practical tool for privacy preservation during aerial surveys and recreation drone flights.The authors express their sincerest gratitude to the BOF/BILA program of UHasselt for funding this research

All-inorganic CsPbI2Br perovskite solar cells with thermal stability at 250 8C and moisture-resilience via polymeric protection layers

All-inorganic perovskites, such as CsPbI2Br, have emerged as promising compositions due to their enhanced thermal stability. However, they face significant challenges due to their susceptibility to humidity. In this work, CsPbI2Br perovskite is treated with poly(3-hexylthiophen-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) during the crystallization resulting in significant stability improvements against thermal, moisture and steady-state operation stressors. The perovskite solar cell retains similar to 90% of the initial efficiency under relative humidity (RH) at similar to 60% for 30 min, which is among the most stable all-inorganic perovskite devices to date under such harsh conditions. Furthermore, the P3HT treatment ensures high thermal stress tolerance at 250 degrees C for over 5 h. In addition to the stability enhancements, the champion P3HT-treated device shows a higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 13.5% compared to 12.7% (reference) with the stabilized power output (SPO) for 300 s. In addition, the P3HT-protected perovskite layer in ambient conditions shows similar to 75% of the initial efficiency compared to the unprotected devices with similar to 28% of their initial efficiency after 7 days of shelf life.ProperPhotoMile; Spanish Ministry of Science and Education; AE

Detection of Outlying Correlation Coefficients in Multicenter Clinical Trials

Central statistical monitoring aims at finding centers whose data distribution differs significantly from the other centers in multicentric clinical trials. Such differences may point to data quality issues due to negligence, misconduct, or fraud. Data distributions can be compared across centers in many different ways, depending on the type of data (e.g., numerical or categorical), whether a univariate or a multivariate comparison is performed, and so on. In that framework, we present two methods aimed at detecting centers with outlying bivariate Pearson correlation coefficients. One of the methods directly compares the correlations across centers. The other method conditions the test on one of the marginal standard deviations, which makes the test on correlation independent of the centers' standard deviations. Both methods are shown to perform equally well on simulated data. They are also applied on real world data, where they identify centers with outlying correlations. The findings of the two tests are compared, showing that they concord for centers with average standard deviations, but differ for centers with extreme standard deviations. While the focus here is on central statistical monitoring, the methods are general and can be used in other settings.The authors thank Drs Akhtar-Danesh and Dehghan-Kooshkghazi for providing the datasets of fabricated data used in Section 5.1 of this paper

Air pollution exposure and incidence of cardiometabolic diseases: Exploring the modifying role of dietary antioxidant intake in adults

While the antioxidative potential of certain vitamins and minerals in cardio-protection has garnered increasing interest, their ability to attenuate associations between air pollution exposure and cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) remains unexplored. This study examined the associations of air pollution (particulate matter including ultrafine particles (UFP), and nitrogen oxides, including NO2 and NOx) and six dietary antioxidants with incident non-fatal CMDs in 30,519 EPIC-NL study participants. Data on CMD incidence (total cardiovascular disease (CVD), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), coronary heart disease (CHD) and heart failure (HF)) and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) diagnoses were obtained from medical registries. Annual average ambient concentrations of air pollutants at the participants' baseline residential addresses were predicted using land use regression models. Dietary intake of antioxidants was assessed via a food frequency questionnaire. Multivariable Cox regression models were used to explore associations. Exposures to NO2 and UFP were associated with elevated HF risk (Hazard Ratio (HR) (95 % CI): 1.24 (1.00, 1.54) and 1.69 (1.04, 2.76), respectively). Higher beta-carotene intake was associated with reduced risk of total CVD and CHD incidence (HR (95 % CI): 0.94 (0.89, 0.99) and 0.92 (0.84, 0.99), respectively), whereas, in general, antioxidant intake was positively associated with incident T2DM. Interaction analyses indicated some variability in CMD risk by antioxidant intake, but none of these interactions remained significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. These findings indicate that the associations of air pollution with incident CMD do not differ by dietary antioxidant intake.The EPIC-NL study was funded by “Europe against Cancer” Program of the European Commission (DG SANCO); the Dutch Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sports (VWS); the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw); and the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). The present study has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program ‘SURREAL’ under grant agreement No 956780. TSN holds funding by Methusalem. IV and EJT are supported by an NWO Gravitation Grant (Exposome-NL, 024.004.017). The funding bodies had no role in the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, in writing of the manuscript and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication

Business Applications of Cargo Drones in the EU

Drones have become ubiquitous in various industries due to their versatility and efficiency in performing various tasks, from agricultural operations to search and rescue missions. This paper explores the use of drones, particularly cargo drones, in revolutionizing logistics and transportation systems. Medium-range cargo drones offer the potential to transform freight transportation by offering independence from traditional infrastructure and potentially reducing environmental impact. However, the integration of UAVs into existing logistical operations faces several challenges, including regulatory hurdles, technological limitations, and public perception issues. Drones can become a viable form of cargo transportation given that the regulatory challenges are addressed and can be efficiently integrated into the existing logistic operations. It would ultimately result in an efficient last-mile delivery option and will revolutionize the logistics industry

Schema Matching with Large Language Models: an Experimental Study

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown useful applications in a variety of tasks, including data wrangling. In this paper, we investigate the use of an off-the-shelf LLM for schema matching. Our objective is to identify semantic correspondences between elements of two relational schemas using only names and descriptions. Using a newly created benchmark from the health domain, we propose different so-called task scopes. These are methods for prompting the LLM to do schema matching, which vary in the amount of context information contained in the prompt. Using these task scopes we compare LLM-based schema matching against a string similarity baseline, investigating matching quality, verification effort, decisiveness, and complementarity of the approaches. We find that matching quality suffers from a lack of context information, but also from providing too much context information. In general, using newer LLM versions increases decisiveness. We identify task scopes that have acceptable verification effort and succeed in identifying a significant number of true semantic matches. Our study shows that LLMs have potential in bootstrapping the schema matching process and are able to assist data engineers in speeding up this task solely based on schema element names and descriptions without the need for data instances.S. Vansummeren was supported by the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (BOF) of Hasselt University under Grant No. BOF20ZAP02. This research received funding from the Flemish Government under the “Onderzoeksprogramma Artificiële Intelligentie (AI) Vlaanderen” programme. This work was supported by Research Foundation—Flanders(FWO)forELIXIRBelgium(I002819N).Theresources and services used in this work were provided by the VSC (Flemish Supercomputer Center), funded by the Research FoundationFlanders (FWO) and the Flemish Government

Deconstructing Binaries: Demolition and the limits of reuse

Contemporary architectural practice – in Western Europe at least – is by necessity moving away from previously dominant, tabula rasa models of demolition and reconstruction, towards approaches based on the care, repair and transformation of existing buildings. In this transition, it is important not to fall into the trap of viewing practices of adaptive reuse through the reductive lens of a preservation/demolition binary. If anything, reuse projects call precisely such ‘either/or’ binary oppositions into question, deconstructing absolute dualities like past/future, old/new, and finished/open-ended to create spaces characterised by hybridity and ambiguity. Likewise, “Ne jamais démolir”, a manifesto for reuse as an ecologically and socially sustainable alternative to wholesale demolition, does not aim to rule out or preclude localised acts of surgical demolition that contribute to maintaining, transforming and extending the life of a building. On the contrary, Lacaton & Vassal insist that nothing should prevent the architect from “‘doing just what is needed’. In other words, what is essential for the project”. Determining exactly what is needed most often relies not on one single, overarching strategy, but on a whole series of decisions linked to specific architectural interventions or gestures that combine to realise the project. Like all architecture, projects of adaptive reuse are dictated and shaped by an array of limiting factors. Some – such as financial or legislative constraints – fluctuate over time and can therefore be more easily navigated. Others are more structural: for example, the buildings currently most threatened with destruction are those built during the last 50 years, since neoliberal maximisation of profit at any cost has seen floor areas and ceiling heights become much less generous and therefore less easily adaptable. Targeted approaches of partial demolition and deconstruction offer a way to transgress both physical and nonmaterial limits by permitting the investigation, unlocking and resetting of spaces without resorting to wholesale demolition. Such operations face their own set of challenges: on one hand, heritage concerns that insist on preservation over adaptation impose an stranglehold on buildings that could otherwise find a new lease of life through critical and careful interventions. At the other extreme, valid questions should be raised regarding how much original fabric can be demolished and removed before a building ceases to be a project of reuse but in essence represents a new construction. Furthermore, deeply-ingrained, narrow societal expectations of what constitutes ‘new’ or ‘finished’ architecture often mean experimental projects featuring hybrid constructions or material juxtapositions are resisted and even rejected on aesthetic grounds. This paper examines the extent to which the preservation/demolition binary represents a false dichotomy that hinders adaptive reuse by unnecessarily limiting the options available to practitioners. It draws on current research undertaken as part of the PhD project Adapt, Reuse, a hybrid, embodied practice of reuse that engages equally with theory and practice in a reciprocal relay. Combining first-hand experience, conversations with practitioners and critical analysis of selected built projects, the paper investigates the work of a number of practices whose creative demolitions trace and identify the limits of reuse in order to test how they might be pushed further. This ongoing research focuses on reference cases at the scale of the architectural intervention rather than at the scale of the project, as a way of identifying approaches, attitudes or gestures that taken together might suggest and enable the development of a wider conceptual framework for adaptive reuse

Polymer dynamics under tension: mean first passage time for looping

This study deals with polymer looping, an important process in many chemical and biological systems. We investigate basic questions on the looping dynamics of a polymer under tension using the freely-jointed chain (FJC) model. Previous theoretical approaches to polymer looping under tension have relied on barrier escape methods, which assume local equilibrium, an assumption that may not always hold. As a starting point we use an analytical expression for the equilibrium looping probability as a function of the number of monomers and applied force, predicting an inverse relationship between looping time and looping probability. Using molecular dynamics simulations the predictions of this theoretical approach are validated within the numerical precision achieved. We compare our predictions to those of the barrier escape approach, by way of a calculation of the mean first passage time (MFPT) for the ends of a polymer to cross. For this purpose, we derive the exact free energy landscape, but resulting temporal predictions do not agree with the observed inverse scaling. We conclude that the traditional barrier escape approach does not provide satisfactory predictions for polymer looping dynamics and that the inverse scaling with looping probability offers a more reliable alternative

Exploring Expert Behavior of Process Mining Analysts

Within the field of Process Mining, the research topic known as Process of Process Mining emerged. Process of Process Mining seeks to comprehend process mining analysts' thought processes and behavioral patterns. A better understanding of the analysts' behavior allows for the design of more effective process mining tools and the construction of more efficient process mining training. The behavioral differences between expert and non-expert process mining analysts have not yet been studied within this domain. Therefore, my PhD research aims to conceptualize behavior in Process of Process Mining research and identify expertise-related behavioral differences among process mining analysts