5,328 research outputs found
Formal models, usability and related work in IR (editorial for special edition)
The Glasgow IR group has carried out both theoretical and empirical work, aimed at giving end users efficient and effective access to large collections of multimedia data
Point-wise Map Recovery and Refinement from Functional Correspondence
Since their introduction in the shape analysis community, functional maps
have met with considerable success due to their ability to compactly represent
dense correspondences between deformable shapes, with applications ranging from
shape matching and image segmentation, to exploration of large shape
collections. Despite the numerous advantages of such representation, however,
the problem of converting a given functional map back to a point-to-point map
has received a surprisingly limited interest. In this paper we analyze the
general problem of point-wise map recovery from arbitrary functional maps. In
doing so, we rule out many of the assumptions required by the currently
established approach -- most notably, the limiting requirement of the input
shapes being nearly-isometric. We devise an efficient recovery process based on
a simple probabilistic model. Experiments confirm that this approach achieves
remarkable accuracy improvements in very challenging cases
Residue analyses and exposure assessment of the Irish population to nitrofuran metabolites from different food commodities in 2009–2010
peer-reviewedAn exposure assessment to nitrofuran residues was performed for three human populations (adults, teenagers and children),
based on residue analyses of foods of animal origin (liver, honey, eggs and aquaculture) covering the 2-year period 2009–
2010. The occurrence of nitrofuran metabolites in food on the Irish market was determined for the selected period using the
data from Ireland’s National Food Residue Database (NFRD) and from results obtained from the analysis of retail samples
(aquaculture and honey). Laboratory analyses of residues were performed by methods validated in accordance with
Commission Decision 2002/657/EC regarding performance of the analytical method and interpretation of results.
Semicarbazide (SEM) was the contaminant most frequently identified and its content ranged from 0.09 to 1.27 μg kg−1.
SEM is currently used as a marker of nitrofuran abuse, but it may also occur from other sources. The presence of nitrofuran
metabolite 3-amino-2-oxazolidinone (AOZ) was detected in two aquaculture samples (prawns) at 1.63 and 1.14 μg kg−1, but
such a low number of positive cases did not present sufficient data for a full AOZ exposure assessment. Therefore, the
evaluation of exposure was focused on SEM-containing food groups only. Exposure assessments were completed using a
probabilistic approach that generated 10 iterations. The results of both the upper- and lower-bound exposure assessments
demonstrate that SEM exposure for Irish adults, teenagers and children from selected food commodities are well below
EFSA-estimated safe levels.This research was funded by the Food for Health Research Initiative (FHRI) administered by the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Health Research Board (Contract 07FHRIAFRC5
Assistive Planning in Complex, Dynamic Environments: a Probabilistic Approach
We explore the probabilistic foundations of shared control in complex dynamic
environments. In order to do this, we formulate shared control as a random
process and describe the joint distribution that governs its behavior. For
tractability, we model the relationships between the operator, autonomy, and
crowd as an undirected graphical model. Further, we introduce an interaction
function between the operator and the robot, that we call "agreeability"; in
combination with the methods developed in~\cite{trautman-ijrr-2015}, we extend
a cooperative collision avoidance autonomy to shared control. We therefore
quantify the notion of simultaneously optimizing over agreeability (between the
operator and autonomy), and safety and efficiency in crowded environments. We
show that for a particular form of interaction function between the autonomy
and the operator, linear blending is recovered exactly. Additionally, to
recover linear blending, unimodal restrictions must be placed on the models
describing the operator and the autonomy. In turn, these restrictions raise
questions about the flexibility and applicability of the linear blending
framework. Additionally, we present an extension of linear blending called
"operator biased linear trajectory blending" (which formalizes some recent
approaches in linear blending such as~\cite{dragan-ijrr-2013}) and show that
not only is this also a restrictive special case of our probabilistic approach,
but more importantly, is statistically unsound, and thus, mathematically,
unsuitable for implementation. Instead, we suggest a statistically principled
approach that guarantees data is used in a consistent manner, and show how this
alternative approach converges to the full probabilistic framework. We conclude
by proving that, in general, linear blending is suboptimal with respect to the
joint metric of agreeability, safety, and efficiency
State-of-the-art in aerodynamic shape optimisation methods
Aerodynamic optimisation has become an indispensable component for any aerodynamic design over the past 60 years, with applications to aircraft, cars, trains, bridges, wind turbines, internal pipe flows, and cavities, among others, and is thus relevant in many facets of technology. With advancements in computational power, automated design optimisation procedures have become more competent, however, there is an ambiguity and bias throughout the literature with regards to relative performance of optimisation architectures and employed algorithms. This paper provides a well-balanced critical review of the dominant optimisation approaches that have been integrated with aerodynamic theory for the purpose of shape optimisation. A total of 229 papers, published in more than 120 journals and conference proceedings, have been classified into 6 different optimisation algorithm approaches. The material cited includes some of the most well-established authors and publications in the field of aerodynamic optimisation. This paper aims to eliminate bias toward certain algorithms by analysing the limitations, drawbacks, and the benefits of the most utilised optimisation approaches. This review provides comprehensive but straightforward insight for non-specialists and reference detailing the current state for specialist practitioners
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