Models of everywhere revisited: a technological perspective

The concept ‘models of everywhere’ was first introduced in the mid 2000s as a means of reasoning about the environmental science of a place, changing the nature of the underlying modelling process, from one in which general model structures are used to one in which modelling becomes a learning process about specific places, in particular capturing the idiosyncrasies of that place. At one level, this is a straightforward concept, but at another it is a rich multi-dimensional conceptual framework involving the following key dimensions: models of everywhere, models of everything and models at all times, being constantly re-evaluated against the most current evidence. This is a compelling approach with the potential to deal with epistemic uncertainties and nonlinearities. However, the approach has, as yet, not been fully utilised or explored. This paper examines the concept of models of everywhere in the light of recent advances in technology. The paper argues that, when first proposed, technology was a limiting factor but now, with advances in areas such as Internet of Things, cloud computing and data analytics, many of the barriers have been alleviated. Consequently, it is timely to look again at the concept of models of everywhere in practical conditions as part of a trans-disciplinary effort to tackle the remaining research questions. The paper concludes by identifying the key elements of a research agenda that should underpin such experimentation and deployment

Action Recognition in Videos: from Motion Capture Labs to the Web

This paper presents a survey of human action recognition approaches based on visual data recorded from a single video camera. We propose an organizing framework which puts in evidence the evolution of the area, with techniques moving from heavily constrained motion capture scenarios towards more challenging, realistic, "in the wild" videos. The proposed organization is based on the representation used as input for the recognition task, emphasizing the hypothesis assumed and thus, the constraints imposed on the type of video that each technique is able to address. Expliciting the hypothesis and constraints makes the framework particularly useful to select a method, given an application. Another advantage of the proposed organization is that it allows categorizing newest approaches seamlessly with traditional ones, while providing an insightful perspective of the evolution of the action recognition task up to now. That perspective is the basis for the discussion in the end of the paper, where we also present the main open issues in the area.Comment: Preprint submitted to CVIU, survey paper, 46 pages, 2 figures, 4 table

Multiscale molecular simulations of the formation and structure of polyamide membranes created by interfacial polymerization

Large scale molecular simu lations to model the formation of polyamide membranes have been carried out using a procedure that mimics experimental interfacial polymerization of trimesoyl chloride (TMC) and metaphenylene diamine (MPD) monomers. A coarse - grained representation of the m onomers has been developed to facilitate these simulations, which captures essential features of the stereochemistry of the monomers and of amide bonding between them. Atomic models of the membranes are recreated from the final coarse - grained representatio ns. Consistent with earlier treatments, membranes are formed through the growth and aggregation of oligomer clusters. The membranes are inhomogeneous, displaying opposing gradients of trapped carboxyl and amine side groups, local density variations, and r egions where the density of amide bonding is reduced as a result of the aggregation process. We observe the interfacial polymerization reaction is self - limiting and the simulated membranes display a thickness of 5 – 10 nm. They also display a surface roughn ess of 1 – 4 nm. Comparisons are made with recently published experimental results on the structure and chemistry of these membranes and some interesting similarities and differences are found