CHORUS Deliverable 4.5: Report of the 3rd CHORUS Conference

The third and last CHORUS conference on Multimedia Search Engines took place from the 26th to the 27th of May 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. About 100 participants from 15 European countries, the US, Japan and Australia learned about the latest developments in the domain. An exhibition of 13 stands presented 16 research projects currently ongoing around the world

The NBA and the Single Entity Defense: A Better Case?

This Article will explore the relationship between the National Basketball Association, its independently-owned teams, and associated corporate entities, including the Women’s NBA, NBA Properties, NBA Developmental League, NBA China, and single entity analysis under section 1 of the Sherman Act. Section 1 chiefly aims to prevent competitors from combining their economic power in ways that unduly impair competition or harm consumers, be it in terms of raised prices, diminished quality, or limited choices. Single entities are exempt from section 1 because they are considered “one,” rather than competitors, and thus their collaboration does not implicate anticompetitive concerns. In American Needle v. NFL, the Supreme Court will decide whether the National Football League, its teams, and associated corporate entities, constitute a single entity. Other leagues, including the NBA, may be impacted by the Court’s decision. If the NBA were a single entity, it could potentially execute exclusive contracts with video game companies and apparel companies, restrain players’ salaries and employment autonomy, and impose heightened age restrictions on amateur players who seek employment in the NBA, all without concern for section 1 scrutiny. In a recent feature in the Yale Law Journal, I discourage the Court from recognizing the NFL as a single entity but recommend that Congress consider targeted, sports league-related exemptions from section 1. In this Article, I survey whether the NBA’s globalized business agenda and the league’s exposure to competition from foreign professional basketball leagues necessitate that NBA teams act in unison and with a “shared consciousness.” The necessity of cooperation, at least for certain international endeavors, may distinguish NBA teams from teams in NFL, which remain more anchored to domestic operations. To the extent Congress considers legislative exemptions for professional sports leagues, the experience of the NBA, a trailblazer in promoting a league product abroad, may lend insight on how antitrust law should regulate leagues in the years ahead

Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

CREATe 2012-2016: Impact on society, industry and policy through research excellence and knowledge exchange

On the eve of the CREATe Festival May 2016, the Centre published this legacy report (edited by Kerry Patterson & Sukhpreet Singh with contributions from consortium researchers)

Chronic administration of Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists improves trabecular bone mass and architecture in ovariectomised mice

Some anti-diabetic therapies can have adverse effects on bone health and increase fracture risk. In this study, we tested the skeletal effects of chronic administration of two Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA), increasingly used for type 2 diabetes treatment, in a model of osteoporosis associated bone loss and examined the expression and activation of GLP-1R in bone cells. Mice were ovariectomised (OVX) to induce bone loss and four weeks later they were treated with Liraglutide (LIR) 0.3 mg/kg/day, Exenatide (Ex-4) 10 μg/kg/day or saline for four weeks. Mice were injected with calcein and alizarin red prior to euthanasia, to label bone-mineralising surfaces. Tibial micro-architecture was determined by micro-CT and bone formation and resorption parameters measured by histomorphometric analysis. Serum was collected to measure calcitonin and sclerostin levels, inhibitors of bone resorption and formation, respectively. GLP-1R mRNA and protein expression were evaluated in the bone, bone marrow and bone cells using RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry. Primary osteoclasts and osteoblasts were cultured to evaluate the effect of GLP-1RA on bone resorption and formation in vitro. GLP-1RA significantly increased trabecular bone mass, connectivity and structure parameters but had no effect on cortical bone. There was no effect of GLP-1RA on bone formation in vivo but an increase in osteoclast number and osteoclast surfaces was observed with Ex-4. GLP-1R was expressed in bone marrow cells, primary osteoclasts and osteoblasts and in late osteocytic cell line. Both Ex-4 and LIR stimulated osteoclastic differentiation in vitro but slightly reduced the area resorbed per osteoclast. They had no effect on bone nodule formation in vitro. Serum calcitonin levels were increased and sclerostin levels decreased by Ex-4 but not by LIR. Thus, GLP-1RA can have beneficial effects on bone and the expression of GLP-1R in bone cells may imply that these effects are exerted directly on the tissue

Business Case and Technology Analysis for 5G Low Latency Applications

A large number of new consumer and industrial applications are likely to change the classic operator's business models and provide a wide range of new markets to enter. This article analyses the most relevant 5G use cases that require ultra-low latency, from both technical and business perspectives. Low latency services pose challenging requirements to the network, and to fulfill them operators need to invest in costly changes in their network. In this sense, it is not clear whether such investments are going to be amortized with these new business models. In light of this, specific applications and requirements are described and the potential market benefits for operators are analysed. Conclusions show that operators have clear opportunities to add value and position themselves strongly with the increasing number of services to be provided by 5G.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

CHORUS Deliverable 4.3: Report from CHORUS workshops on national initiatives and metadata

Minutes of the following Workshops: • National Initiatives on Multimedia Content Description and Retrieval, Geneva, October 10th, 2007. • Metadata in Audio-Visual/Multimedia production and archiving, Munich, IRT, 21st – 22nd November 2007 Workshop in Geneva 10/10/2007 This highly successful workshop was organised in cooperation with the European Commission. The event brought together the technical, administrative and financial representatives of the various national initiatives, which have been established recently in some European countries to support research and technical development in the area of audio-visual content processing, indexing and searching for the next generation Internet using semantic technologies, and which may lead to an internet-based knowledge infrastructure. The objective of this workshop was to provide a platform for mutual information and exchange between these initiatives, the European Commission and the participants. Top speakers were present from each of the national initiatives. There was time for discussions with the audience and amongst the European National Initiatives. The challenges, communalities, difficulties, targeted/expected impact, success criteria, etc. were tackled. This workshop addressed how these national initiatives could work together and benefit from each other. Workshop in Munich 11/21-22/2007 Numerous EU and national research projects are working on the automatic or semi-automatic generation of descriptive and functional metadata derived from analysing audio-visual content. The owners of AV archives and production facilities are eagerly awaiting such methods which would help them to better exploit their assets.Hand in hand with the digitization of analogue archives and the archiving of digital AV material, metadatashould be generated on an as high semantic level as possible, preferably fully automatically. All users of metadata rely on a certain metadata model. All AV/multimedia search engines, developed or under current development, would have to respect some compatibility or compliance with the metadata models in use. The purpose of this workshop is to draw attention to the specific problem of metadata models in the context of (semi)-automatic multimedia search