182 research outputs found

    24th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics (NoDaLiDa)

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    Integer and Fractional Charge Transfer in the Doping of Poly- and Oligothiophenes

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    In the p-doping of organic semiconductors with small molecular dopants integer-charge transfer forming ion-pairs (IPAs) and fractional charge transfer through the formation of ground state charge-transfer complexes (CPXs) have been identified as competing fundamental processes. IPAs and CPXs differently affect the performance of doped organic electronic devices, however, the conditions leading to either phenomenon are still to be fully understood. This thesis focuses on the conjugated polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) p-doped with the strong molecular electron acceptor tetrafluorotetracyanoquinodimethane (F4TCNQ) and its derivatives of lower electron affinity (F2TCNQ, FTCNQ, TCNQ). Under consideration of their different dopant strengths, the role of the critical dopant concentration promoting the one phenomenon over the other is investigated. Cyclic voltammetry is used to determine ionization energy and electron affinity values of the materials involved to gauge their influence on IPA and CPX occurrence, as identified through optical and vibrational spectroscopy. Supported by electrostatic modeling taking into account the width of the Gaussian density of states (DOS) related to the highest occupied molecular orbital in P3HT, DOS broadening upon doping is considered to explain IPA formation with weaker dopants. Grazing incidence x-ray diffraction is employed toassess the interplay between the supramolecular structure and the two doping phenomena, supporting the hypothesis that a CPX polymorph can occurs that effectively prevents IPA formation for a given host-dopant stoichiometry. Conductivity data on doped films highlights the application-related impacts of these findings. Finally, for a series of custom thiophene oligomers of different lengths, instead of P3HT, the common observation of CPX formation being promoted in the molecular doping of (small) conjugated molecules is investigated. The threshold of transition into the doping phenomenology of the polymer limit is observed at a chain length of 10 thiophene units - a parameter to be considered when employing oligothiophene semiconductors in applications demanding molecular doping. Overall, due the multi-technique approach targeting doping phenomena and mechanisms of a prototypical polymer and oligomer equivalents doped with a systematic series of p-dopants, the database presented here provides a consistent and coherent point of reference for assessing the performance and phenomenology encountered with novel dopants

    Spatial Queries for Indoor Location-based Services

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    Indoor Location-based Services (LBS) facilitate people in indoor scenarios such as airports, train stations, shopping malls, and office buildings. Indoor spatial queries are the foundation to support indoor LBSs. However, the existing techniques for indoor spatial queries are limited to support more advanced queries that consider semantic information, temporal variations, and crowd influence. This work studies indoor spatial queries for indoor LBSs. Some typical proposals for indoor spatial queries are compared theoretically and experimentally. Then, it studies three advanced indoor spatial queries, a) Indoor Keyword-aware Routing Query. b) Indoor Temporal-variation aware Routing Query. c) Indoor Crowd-aware Routing Query. A series of techniques are proposed to solve these problems.</p

    State of the Art of Audio- and Video-Based Solutions for AAL

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    It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters. Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals. Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely lifelogging and self-monitoring, remote monitoring of vital signs, emotional state recognition, food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, activity and personal assistance, gesture recognition, fall detection and prevention, mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed

    State of the art of audio- and video based solutions for AAL

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    Working Group 3. Audio- and Video-based AAL ApplicationsIt is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters (e.g., heart rate, respiratory rate). Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals (e.g., speech recordings). Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary 4 debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely (i) lifelogging and self-monitoring, (ii) remote monitoring of vital signs, (iii) emotional state recognition, (iv) food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, (v) activity and personal assistance, (vi) gesture recognition, (vii) fall detection and prevention, (viii) mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and (ix) cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed.publishedVersio

    Proceedings of the 36th International Workshop Statistical Modelling July 18-22, 2022 - Trieste, Italy

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    The 36th International Workshop on Statistical Modelling (IWSM) is the first one held in presence after a two year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This edition was quite lively, with 60 oral presentations and 53 posters, covering a vast variety of topics. As usual, the extended abstracts of the papers are collected in the IWSM proceedings, but unlike the previous workshops, this year the proceedings will be not printed on paper, but it is only online. The workshop proudly maintains its almost unique feature of scheduling one plenary session for the whole week. This choice has always contributed to the stimulating atmosphere of the conference, combined with its informal character, encouraging the exchange of ideas and cross-fertilization among different areas as a distinguished tradition of the workshop, student participation has been strongly encouraged. This IWSM edition is particularly successful in this respect, as testified by the large number of students included in the program

    Distributed Partitioning and Processing of Large Spatial Datasets

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    Data collection is one of the most common practices in today’s world. The data collection rate has rapidly increased over the past decade and is not showing any signs of decline. Data sources are many; the Internet of Things devices, mobile gadgets, social media posts, connected cars, and web servers constantly report on their users’ interactions and habits. Much of the collected data is spatial data which contains attributes that denote the physical origin of the data. As a result of the tremendous growth in data collection, higher demand for new techniques emerged to efficiently process and extract valuable insights in a relatively acceptable time frame. The current standard approach to large-scale data analysis uses distributed parallel processing systems like Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark. However, these systems are designed for general-purpose parallel processing and require an additional layer to recognize and efficiently process spatial datasets. Motivated by its many applications, we examine the several challenges facing spatial data partitioning and processing and propose solutions customized for each task. We detail our techniques for building spatial partitioners over large datasets for use with spatial queries like map-matching and kNN spatial join. Additionally, we present an accuracy benchmarking framework for comparing and classifying the results of two input files based on specific criteria. Our proposed work targets batch processing of large spatial datasets, including structured, unstructured, and semi-structured datasets

    Desarrollo de membranas de doble capa y reciclaje de módulos de membrana de ósmosis inversa para tratamiento de aguas

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    Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, leída el 10-12-2021Nowadays, water scarcity is a problem that important organizations such as the United Nations (UN) warn about, indicating that only less than two-thirds of the world's population has adequate access to safe and drinking water. Membrane technologies and mainly desalination by reverse osmosis (RO) process, are being applied worldwide as mechanisms to obtain drinking water. However, RO has still some problems that require an immediate solution, such as the treatment and management of the produced brines and wastes caused by discarded RO membrane modules. Other membrane processes of emerging interest such as forward osmosis (FO), pervaporation (PV) or membrane distillation (MD), also need focused efforts for their proper development and subsequent large scale application.The main objective of this PhD thesis is twofold. On one hand, dual-layer polymeric membranes (DLMs) are developed using different membrane preparation techniques in order to improve the performance of membrane separation processes of emerging interest such as PV and MD; and on other hand, attempts are made to recycle discarded RO modules in order to extend the useful life of their components making them suitable for water treatment by other membrane processes, contributing therefore to the circular economy of membrane science and protection of the environment...En la actualidad la escasez de agua es un problema del que alertan importantes organizaciones como la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), indicando que solo menos de dos tercios de la población mundial tiene acceso adecuado a agua potable y segura. Las tecnologías de membrana y principalmente la desalación mediante el proceso de separación ósmosis inversa (OI), están siendo aplicadas en todo el mundo como mecanismos para la obtención de agua potable. Sin embargo, la OI presenta algunos problemas que requieren una inmediata solución como el tratamiento y la gestión de las salmueras producidas y el adecuado manejo de los residuos ocasionados por los módulos de membrana desechados. Otros procesos de membrana de interés emergente como la osmosis directa (OD), la pervaporación (PV) o la destilación en membrana (DM), también necesitan la focalización de esfuerzos para su adecuado desarrollo y posterior aplicación a gran escala. El objetivo principal de esta tesis doctoral es doble. Por un lado se estudia el desarrollo de membranas poliméricas de doble capa (MDCs) aplicando diferentes técnicas de preparación de membranas, con el objeto de mejorar el rendimiento de procesos de separación por membranas emergentes como la PV y la DM; y por otro lado se reciclan módulos de OI descartados con el objeto de alargar la vida útil de sus componentes para aplicaciones en otros procesos de membrana para el tratamiento de aguas, contribuyendo en la economía circular de la ciencia de membranas y protección del medio ambiente...Fac. de Ciencias FísicasTRUEunpu
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