The Method of Automatic Knuckle Image Acquisition for Continuous Verification Systems

The paper proposes a method of automatic knuckle image acquisition for continuous verification systems. The developed acquisition method is dedicated for verification systems in which the person being verified uses a computer keyboard. This manner of acquisition enables registration of the knuckle image without interrupting the user’s work for the time of acquisition. This is an important advantage, unprecedented in the currently known methods. The process of the automatic location of the finger knuckle can be considered as a pattern recognition approach and is based on the analysis of symmetry and similarity between the reference knuckle patterns and live camera image. The effectiveness of the aforesaid approach has been tested experimentally. The test results confirmed its high effectiveness. The effectiveness of the proposed method was also determined in a case where it is a part of a multi-biometric method

Improved Hands-Free Text Entry System

An input device is a hardware device which is used to send input data to a computer or which is used to control and interact with a computer system. Contemporary input mechanisms can be categorized by the input medium: Keyboards and mice are hand-operated, Siri and Alexa are voice-based, etc. The objective of this project was to come up with a head movement based input system that improves upon earlier such systems. Input entry based on head movements may help people with disabilities to interact with computers more easily. The system developed provides the flexibility to capture rigid and non- rigid motions. Unlike prior work, the organization of alphabet symbols in our design is based on the frequency of the characters in the English dictionary. We conducted experiments on our system and compared it to previous head movement systems

High Voltage Insulating Materials-Current State and Prospects

Studies on new solutions in the field of high-voltage insulating materials are presented in this book. Most of these works concern liquid insulation, especially biodegradable ester fluids; however, in a few cases, gaseous and solid insulation are also considered. Both fundamental research as well as research related to industrial applications are described. In addition, experimental techniques aimed at possibly finding new ways of analysing the experimental data are proposed to test dielectrics

WP3 – Innovation in Agriculture and Forestry Sector for Energetic Sustainability

The papers published in this Special Issue “WP3—Innovation in Agriculture and Forestry Sector for Energetic Sustainability” bring together some of the latest research results in the field of biomass valorization and the process of energy production and climate change and other areas relevant to energetic sustainability [1–20]. Moreover, several works address the very important topic of evaluating the safety aspects for energy plant use [21–24]. Responses to our call generated the following statistics:• Submissions (21);• Publications (15);• Rejections (6);• Article types: research articles (13), reviews (2). Of the submitted papers, 15 have been successfully published as articles. Reviewing and selecting the papers for this Special Issue was very inspiring and rewarding. We also thank the editorial staff and reviewers for their efforts and help during the process. For better comprehension, the contributions to this Special Issue are divided into sections, as follows