Binder Identification Using Pattern Recognition on Phantom Measurements

This paper proposes an automatic method for the identification of twisted pairs (TPs) sharing the same binder, based on the analysis of phantom circuit measurements. This type of circuit is often used for improving data transmission rates in communication systems, but in this paper, phantoming is used to reveal if a four-wire loop composed of two TPs is close enough and well balanced in order to be considered in the same binder. The method uses four features extracted from scattering parameter measures in phantom-mode between two TPs. These features are related to the presence of periodicities and impedance mismatch between the measurement device and the four-wire transmission line. The identification is done via application of two pattern recognition techniques, support vector machines and K-means, on scattering parameter obtained from the phantom-mode measurement of two TPs. This paper also describes a method to determine the length of the two TPs that share the same binder. Laboratory results confirm the accuracy of the proposed methods

Urban strategies for Waste Management in Tourist Cities. D2.5: Status quo (baseline) assessment report

This report (Deliverable D2.5) refers to URBANWASTE Work Package 2, Task 2.6. Within this deliverable the present situation of waste management in the selected pilot cases ("the baseline") is described. Main goal of the task is the quantification of the status quo with respect to tourist waste production and to the total urban production of waste in the pilot cities before the implementation of the URBANWASTE strategies (developed in WP 4). The actual waste generation and treatment of each pilot case also considering spatial data is described and an assessment of environmental, social and economic impacts is performed.Further, the results of this work package serve as a basis for further decision- making. The output of this status quo assessment shall assist the decision-making process within WP 4 to set specific targets for each pilot case. It shall support the development of strategies in waste prevention and management policies within WP 4. Selected waste prevention and management measures will be implemented in each pilot case within WP6 and they will be subsequently assessed within WP 7 aiming at displaying improvements (reduced impacts by implementing innovative waste management strategies in touristic processes).The database of the selected pilot cases (Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Florence, Kavala, Lisbon, Nice, Nicosia, Ponta Delgada, Syracuse, Tenerife) generated within Task 2.5 is critically reviewed, inconsistencies are clarified and missing data are included. The database is assessed by a benchmarking process with three cities (Berlin, Vienna, Zurich) providing reliable waste management data and showing best‐practice examples in waste prevention and management. This comparison allowed a plausibility check of the background data and indicator sets.Based on the results of the analysis of the database, differences and similarities regarding the material, waste and energy flows, touristic processes and background conditions of the selected pilot cities are described.The last aspect in this report is the general evaluation of touristic impact on waste generation. The evaluation of the environmental impacts of waste management practise in selected pilot cities is carried out by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This gives the possibility to figure out on the one hand hotspots of environmental impacts and on the other hand, to identify the most promising waste prevention and recycling measures in terms of environmental impacts resulting from tourist waste.OLD Urban and Regional Developmen

Urban strategies for Waste Management in Tourist Cities. D2.5: Status quo (baseline) assessment report

This report (Deliverable D2.5) refers to URBANWASTE Work Package 2, Task 2.6. Within this deliverable the present situation of waste management in the selected pilot cases ("the baseline") is described. Main goal of the task is the quantification of the status quo with respect to tourist waste production and to the total urban production of waste in the pilot cities before the implementation of the URBANWASTE strategies (developed in WP 4). The actual waste generation and treatment of each pilot case also considering spatial data is described and an assessment of environmental, social and economic impacts is performed.Further, the results of this work package serve as a basis for further decision- making. The output of this status quo assessment shall assist the decision-making process within WP 4 to set specific targets for each pilot case. It shall support the development of strategies in waste prevention and management policies within WP 4. Selected waste prevention and management measures will be implemented in each pilot case within WP6 and they will be subsequently assessed within WP 7 aiming at displaying improvements (reduced impacts by implementing innovative waste management strategies in touristic processes).The database of the selected pilot cases (Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Florence, Kavala, Lisbon, Nice, Nicosia, Ponta Delgada, Syracuse, Tenerife) generated within Task 2.5 is critically reviewed, inconsistencies are clarified and missing data are included. The database is assessed by a benchmarking process with three cities (Berlin, Vienna, Zurich) providing reliable waste management data and showing best‐practice examples in waste prevention and management. This comparison allowed a plausibility check of the background data and indicator sets.Based on the results of the analysis of the database, differences and similarities regarding the material, waste and energy flows, touristic processes and background conditions of the selected pilot cities are described.The last aspect in this report is the general evaluation of touristic impact on waste generation. The evaluation of the environmental impacts of waste management practise in selected pilot cities is carried out by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This gives the possibility to figure out on the one hand hotspots of environmental impacts and on the other hand, to identify the most promising waste prevention and recycling measures in terms of environmental impacts resulting from tourist waste.OLD Urban and Regional Developmen

Situation and behavioural analysis of consume and waste behaviour and patterns

D3.2 aims at analysing the existing literature on tourism and waste behaviour of tourists. Based on this literature review and with the aim of filling the knowledge gap about waste behaviour of tourists, URBANWASTE has developed and circulated 3 surveys for 3 different categories: waste workers, tourismworkers and tourists. The surveys have been circulated among the 11 pilots of the project and the results of this survey has been analysed within this Deliverable.OLD Urban and Regional Developmen

The 1^st EQAsia External Quality Assessment trial:<i>Escherichia coli</i> and <i>Salmonella </i>spp. – 2021

The EQAsia project was launched in 2020 aiming to strengthen the provision of External Quality Assessment (EQA) services across the One Health sector among National Reference Laboratories/ Centres of Excellence in South and Southeast Asia. EQAsia is supported by the Fleming Fund and strives to increase the quality of laboratory-based surveillance of WHO GLASS pathogens and FAO priority pathogens.The EQAsia Consortium includes the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark (DTU Food) as the Lead Grantee, the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) in South Korea, the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Thailand and the Faculty of Veterinary Science, Chulalongkorn University (CU) in Thailand.EQASIA provides a state of the art EQA program free of charge for the South and Southeast Asian region through existing local providers (NIH Thailand and CU Thailand). The program, referred to as a “One-Shop EQA program”, is designed to enable the laboratories to select and participate in relevant proficiency tests of both pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST), in line with the requirements of the WHO GLASS. The EQA program is supported by an informatics module where laboratories can report their results and methods applied.Three EQA trials are taking place during Feb 2021 – Feb 2022. The EQA trials focus on the WHO GLASS pathogens and FAO priority pathogens (see Section 7. References): Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Shigella spp., Acinetobacter spp., Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Campylobacter (C. coli and C. jejuni), Enterococci (E. faecium and E. faecalis), Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. In addition, a Matrix EQA is offered, aligning with the scope of WHO Tricycle and suggested from FAO, aiming to assess the veterinary laboratories’ ability to detect ampC beta-lactamases (ampC), extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBL) and carbapenemase producing E. coli from animal caeca samples and food matrices.For a given organism, candidate strains are assessed and validated by DTU and the external partner (United States Food and Drug Administration, FDA). The validation includes both phenotypic minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination by broth microdilution, and whole genome sequencing (WGS) to detect antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes and chromosomal point mutations. The test strains are then selected based on the phenotypic AMR profile to include a heterogeneous panel, allowing for strain variation from almost pan-resistant to fully susceptible isolates.Each EQA trial encompasses the testing of a total of 11 test strains of a given organism. Of these, eight of the test strains are of the organism in focus (target organism), whereas three test strains are different from the targeted species (reported as non-[organism], e.g. non-Salmonella). For each of the 11 test strains, participants are requested to report which eight strains belong to the expected target organism. For the three organisms different from the expected, no further testing is required. For the remaining eight test strains of the target organism, results in relation to AST and serotyping (if relevant) are requested.This report contains results from the first EQA trial of the EQAsia project carried out in February-April 2021. This first EQA trial includes serotyping of Salmonella spp., as well as identification and AST of Salmonella spp. and Escherichia coli. The aim of this EQA trial is to monitor the quality of AST results produced by the participating laboratories and identify underperforming laboratories in need of assistance to improve their performance in AST.The evaluation of the participants’ results is based on international guidelines, namely the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) and the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). Interpretative criteria referring to both disk diffusion and MIC determination are listed in the EQA protocol (Appendix 1) and allow for the obtained results to be interpreted into categories as resistant or susceptible depending on the method used. Results in agreement with the expected interpretation are categorised as ‘1’ (correct), while results deviating from the expected interpretation are categorised as ‘0’ (incorrect). This standardized interpretation of results is necessary to allow comparison of performance between laboratories. Laboratory performance is considered acceptable if there are &lt; 5% deviation from expected results.Evaluation of a result as “deviating from the expected interpretation” should be carefully analysed in a route cause analysis procedure performed by individual participants (self-evaluation) when the EQA results are disclosed. The methods applied have limitations in reproducibility, thus, on repeated testing, the same strain/antimicrobial combination can result in different MIC or Inhibition Zone Diameter values differing by one-fold dilution or ±3mm, respectively. If the expected MIC/Zone Diameter is close to the threshold for categorising the strain as susceptible or resistant, a one-fold dilution/±3mm difference may result in different interpretations. Since this report evaluates the interpretations of MIC/Zone Diameter and not the values, some participants may find their results classified as incorrect even though the actual MIC/Zone Diameter measured is only one-fold dilution/±3mm different from the expected MIC/Zone Diameter. In these cases, the participants should be confident about the good quality of their AST performance.In this report, results from laboratories affiliated with the Human Health (HH) or the Animal Health (AH) Sectors are presented separately. The laboratories are identified by codes and each code is known only by the corresponding laboratory and the organizers. The full list of laboratory codes is confidential and known only by the EQAsia Consortium.This report is approved in its final version by a Technical Advisory Group composed by members of the EQAsia Consortium, and by the EQAsia Advisory Board members Navin Karan (Pacific Pathology Training Centre, New Zealand), Monica Lahra (WHO Collaborating Center for STI and AMR, NSW Health Pathology Microbiology, New South Wales, Australia) and Ben Howden (The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Australia).<br/

Evolving Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems from data streams (eTS+).

It is a well known fact that nowadays we are faced with not only large data sets that we need to process quickly, but with huge data streams (Domingos and Hulten, 2001). Special requirements are also placed by the fast growing sector of autonomous systems where systems that can re-train and adapt ‘on-fly’ are required (Patchett and Sastri, 2007). Similar requirements are enforced by the advanced process industries for self-developing and self-maintaining sensors (Qin et al., 1997). Now they even talk about self-learning industries (EC, 2007). All of these requirements cannot be met by using off-line methods and systems that can only adjust their parameters and/or are linear (Astroem and Wittenmark, 1989). These requirements call for a new type of systems that assumes the structure of non-linear, non-stationary systems to be adaptive and flexible. The author of this chapter started research work in this direction around the turn of the century (Angelov and Buswell, 2001; Angelov, 2002) and this research culminated in proposing with Dr. D. Filev the so called evolving Takagi-Sugeno (eTS) fuzzy system (Angelov and Filev, 2003). Since then a number of improvements of the original algorithm has been done, which require a systematic description in one publication. In this chapter an enhanced version of the eTS algorithm will be described which is called eTS+. It has been tested on a data stream from real engine test bench (data provided courtesy of Dr. E. Lughofer, Linz, Austria). The results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed enhanced approach for modeling real data stream in precision, simplicity and interpretability, and computational resources used. (c) IEEE Press and John Wiley and Son