Model-based human upper body tracking using interest points in real-time video

Vision-based human motion analysis has received huge attention from researchers because of the number of applications, such as automated surveillance, video indexing, human machine interaction, traffic monitoring, and vehicle navigation. However, it contains several open problems. To date, despite very promising proposed approaches, no explicit solution has been found to solve these open problems efficiently. In this regard, this thesis presents a model-based human upper body pose estimation and tracking system using interest points (IPs) in real-time video. In the first stage, we propose a novel IP-based background-subtraction algorithm to segment the foreground IPs of each frame from the background ones. Afterwards, the foreground IPs of any two consecutive frames are matched to each other using a dynamic hybrid localspatial IP matching algorithm, proposed in this research. The IP matching algorithm starts by using the local feature descriptors of the IPs to find an initial set of possible matches. Then two filtering steps are applied to the results to increase the precision by deleting the mismatched pairs. To improve the recall, a spatial matching process is applied to the remaining unmatched points. Finally, a two-stage hierarchical-global model-based pose estimation and tracking algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimiation (PSO) is proposed to track the human upper body through consecutive frames. Given the pose and the foreground IPs in the previous frame and the matched points in the current frame, the proposed PSO-based pose estimation and tracking algorithm estimates the current pose hierarchically by minimizing the discrepancy between the hypothesized pose and the real matched observed points in the first stage. Then a global PSO is applied to the pose estimated by the first stage to do a consistency check and pose refinement

Bilateral Angle-Closure Glaucoma in a Young Female Receiving Cabergoline: A Case Report

Purpose: To report a case of bilateral acute angle-closure glaucoma after oral administration of cabergoline for the treatment of galactorrhea. Methods: A diagnosis of secondary drug-induced angle-closure glaucoma was made in a patient with elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) and myopic refractive shift, which was confirmed by ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) of the ciliary body and anterior segment, sonography, and optical coherence tomography. The treatment included the discontinuation of the culprit drug and the administration of topical anti-glaucoma drops. The treatment course was followed with serial measurements of the IOP and refraction, and with performing UBM. Results: Five hours after he received a single 0.5-mg oral cabergoline tablet, the patient suffered from acute secondary angle-closure glaucoma and myopic refractive error. UBM demonstrated both effusion of the ciliary body and an anterior rotation of the iris-ciliary body. IOP was reduced 8 h after cessation of the causative agent and administration of anti-glaucoma drops. Refractive errors returned to normal levels after 8 days. Conclusion: Secondary acute angle-closure glaucoma has been reported to occur after the administration of some drugs. In this report, an attempt has been made to describe this adverse reaction after oral cabergoline intake

The model of workforce agility dependent on drivers, strategies, practices, and results

For the time being, organizations throughout the world are in an environment that is constantly changing in various aspects including technological developments, customers’ preferences, emerging markets, and globalization. In this environment, the concept of agility, especially workforce agility is a valuable tool for organizations and can assist them considerably to cope with this situation. Given a substantial number of scholars have studied the concept of agility from the technical point of view up until now, and have neglected the human resource aspect, this study aims to, first of all, investigate the concept of workforce agility through a model incorporating drivers, practices, strategies advocating and stimulating the implementation of this concept and examine the relationships between these variables and second of all determine the results of implementing workforce agility system. The sample of the present study was selected from the staff and managers of the Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran, who had a bachelor's degree or higher and were working in the field of human resource management. Besides, we used a questionnaire to evaluate the variable. According to the findings, except for the relationship between drivers and implementation results all other relationships between drivers, practices, strategies, and results have been supported

El modelo de agilidad de la fuerza laboral dependiente de los conductores, estrategias, prácticas y resultados

For the time being, organizations throughout the world are in an environment that is constantly changing in various aspects including technological developments, customers’ preferences, emerging markets, and globalization. In this environment, the concept of agility, especially workforce agility is a valuable tool for organizations and can assist them considerably to cope with this situation. Given a substantial number of scholars have studied the concept of agility from the technical point of view up until now, and have neglected the human resource aspect, this study aims to, first of all, investigate the concept of workforce agility through a model incorporating drivers, practices, strategies advocating and stimulating the implementation of this concept and examine the relationships between these variables and second of all determine the results of implementing workforce agility system. The sample of the present study was selected from the staff and managers of the Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran, who had a bachelor's degree or higher and were working in the field of human resource management. Besides, we used a questionnaire to evaluate the variable. According to the findings, except for the relationship between drivers and implementation results all other relationships between drivers, practices, strategies, and results have been supported.         Por el momento, las organizaciones de todo el mundo se encuentran en un entorno que cambia constantemente en varios aspectos, incluidos los desarrollos tecnológicos, las preferencias de los clientes, los mercados emergentes y la globalización. En este entorno, el concepto de agilidad, especialmente la agilidad de la fuerza laboral, es una herramienta valiosa para las organizaciones y puede ayudarlas considerablemente a hacer frente a esta situación. Dado que un número sustancial de académicos han estudiado el concepto de agilidad desde el punto de vista técnico hasta ahora, y han descuidado el aspecto de recursos humanos, este estudio tiene como objetivo, en primer lugar, investigar el concepto de agilidad de la fuerza laboral a través de un modelo que incorpora impulsores. , prácticas, estrategias que propugnan y estimulan la implementación de este concepto y examinan las relaciones entre estas variables y, en segundo lugar, determinan los resultados de la implementación del sistema de agilidad laboral. La muestra del presente estudio fue seleccionada entre el personal y los gerentes de la Organización de Puertos y Marítima de Irán, que tenían una licenciatura o un título superior y trabajaban en el campo de la gestión de recursos humanos. Además, utilizamos un cuestionario para evaluar la variable. Según los hallazgos, a excepción de la relación entre los impulsores y los resultados de la implementación, se han respaldado todas las demás relaciones entre los impulsores, las prácticas, las estrategias y los resultados

Human-activity-centered measurement system:challenges from laboratory to the real environment in assistive gait wearable robotics

Assistive gait wearable robots (AGWR) have shown a great advancement in developing intelligent devices to assist human in their activities of daily living (ADLs). The rapid technological advancement in sensory technology, actuators, materials and computational intelligence has sped up this development process towards more practical and smart AGWR. However, most assistive gait wearable robots are still confined to be controlled, assessed indoor and within laboratory environments, limiting any potential to provide a real assistance and rehabilitation required to humans in the real environments. The gait assessment parameters play an important role not only in evaluating the patient progress and assistive device performance but also in controlling smart self-adaptable AGWR in real-time. The self-adaptable wearable robots must interactively conform to the changing environments and between users to provide optimal functionality and comfort. This paper discusses the performance parameters, such as comfortability, safety, adaptability, and energy consumption, which are required for the development of an intelligent AGWR for outdoor environments. The challenges to measuring the parameters using current systems for data collection and analysis using vision capture and wearable sensors are presented and discussed

Trbušna kila u smeđe mine (Acridotheres tristis)

Hernias are often related to breeding, hormonal inflfl uences, or other reasons for space-occupying coelomic masses. This is a diffifi cult problem which is more common in obese female birds. A 2-year-old female common Myna (Acridotheres tristis) was presented to the Veterinary teaching hospital, School of Veterinary Medicine, Shiraz University with abdominal swelling and lethargy because of a cage fall from 2 meters six days earlier. After diagnosis of the ventral abdominal hernia, under local aesthesia the contents of the hernial sac were reduced into the abdominal cavity and the linea alba tear was sutured by a simple continuous suture pattern using Vicryl no. 5/0 in two layers. The follow up study for two months revealed no complications.Kile su često povezane s uzgajanjem, hormonalnim utjecajem ili drugim razlozima nedostatka prostora u trbušnoj šupljini. One predstavljaju sve teži problem u uzgojenih ptica. Ženka smeđe mine (Acridotheres tristis) u dobi od dvije godine primljena je na kliniku Fakulteta veterinarske medicine, Sveučilišta Shiraz u Iranu jer je imala oteklinu u području trbuha i bila je potištena nakon pada s visine od dva metra šest dana prije primitka na kliniku. Nakon dijagnoze trbušne kile sadržaj hernijalne vreće bio je pod lokalnom anestezijom vraćen u trbušnu šupljinu. Poderotina u području bijele linije bila je sašivena jednostavnim neprekidnim dvoslojnim šavom upotrebom Vicryl-a 5/0. Nisu ustanovljene komplikacije tijekom dva mjeseca promatranja nakon operacije

Single-dose Intravitreal Bevacizumab after Complete Panretinal Photocoagulation in Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy: an Effective Adjunctive Treatment

Patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) who are refractory to complete panretinal photocoagulation (PRP) have a high risk of severe vision loss. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of single-dose intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB) after complete PRP in patients with refractory PDR. Patients with retinal neovascularization (NV) secondary to diabetes mellitus and refractory to complete PRP were enrolled in this study. All patients received a single dose of 1.25 mg IVB at 3 months after completing the PRP. Patients underwent complete ophthalmic evaluation and fluorescein angiography (FA) at baseline and 1 month after injection. The main outcome measure was a reduction in the areas of leakage (mm2) on FA. All patients were evaluated at baseline and on every visit at 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month after the injection. A total of 21 consecutive patients (32 eyes) with PDR completed this study. Thirteen (61.9%) patients were female. The mean ± standard deviation (SD) age was 64.1 ± 5.6 years. Complete and partial response of angiographic leakage of NV was noted in 7 (21.9%) and 18 (56.2%) of 32 eyes after a single IVB injection, respectively. No satisfactory response of retinal NV was observed in 7 eyes (21.9%) at 1 month after the injection. There was a significant difference in age between response groups (partial and complete; 61.9 ± 4.4 years) versus the no-satisfactory response group (67.7 ± 5.9 years) (P = 0.007). No significant ocular or systemic adverse events were observed. A single-dose of IVB could be associated with a satisfactory response of retinal NV, secondary to PDR, in patients who are refractory to complete PRP.Â

Coexistence of Atrioventricular Nodal Reentrant Tachycardia and Idiopathic Left Ventricular Outflow-Tract Tachycardia

Double tachycardia is a relatively rare condition. We describe a 21 year old woman with history of frequent palpitations. In one of these episodes, she had wide complex tachycardia with right bundle branch and inferior axis morphology. A typical atrioventricular nodal tachycardia was induced during electrophysiologic study, aimed at induction of clinically documented tachycardia. Initially no ventricular tachycardia was inducible. After successful ablation of slow pathway, a wide complex tachycardia was induced by programmed stimulation from right ventricular outflow tract. Mapping localized the focus of tachycardia in left ventricular outflow tract and successfully ablated via retrograde aortic approach. During 7 month's follow-up, she has been symptom free with no recurrence. This work describes successful ablation of rare combination of typical atrioventricular nodal tachycardia and left ventricular outflow tract tachycardia in the same patient during one session

3D Object Recognition Based on Volumetric Representation Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Following the success of Convolutional Neural Networks on object recognition and image classification using 2D images; in this work the framework has been extended to process 3D data. However, many current systems require huge amount of computation cost for dealing with large amount of data. In this work, we introduce an efficient 3D volumetric representation for training and testing CNNs and we also build several datasets based on the volumetric representation of 3D digits, different rotations along the x, y and z axis are also taken into account. Unlike the normal volumetric representation, our datasets are much less memory usage. Finally, we introduce a model based on the combination of CNN models, the structure of the model is based on the classical LeNet. The accuracy result achieved is beyond the state of art and it can classify a 3D digit in around 9 ms

Comparing alveolar bone regeneration using Bio-Oss and autogenous bone grafts in humans: a systematic review and meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION: Bone regeneration grafts (BRG) are widely used in the treatment of osseous defects and oral surgery. The various techniques and associated success rates of bone augmentation require evaluation by systematic review and meta-analysis of eligible studies. The aim of this systematic review was to compare alveolar bone regeneration in humans using Bio-Oss and autogenous bone graft. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The computerized bibliographical databases including Pubmed, Google, ScienceDirect and Cochrane were searched for randomized and cohort studies in which autogenous grafts were compared to Bio-Oss in the treatment of periodontal defects. The inclusion criteria were human studies in English that were published 1998-2009. Exclusion criteria included non randomized observation and cohort studies, papers which provided summary statistics without the variance estimates, and studies that did not use BRG intervention alone, were excluded. The screening of eligible studies, assessment of the methodological quality of the trials and data extraction were collected by two observers independently. For comparing autogenous grafts used alone against Bio-Oss used alone 5 situations were investigated. Thirteen studies were included in the review which compared autogenous against Bio-Oss, autogenous combined with guided tissue regeneration (GTR) against GTR, Bio-Oss combined with GTR versus GTR, autogenous alone versus Open Flap Debridement (OFD), Bio-Oss versus OFD. In meta-analysis, changes in bone level (bone fill) was used as the measure. Data were analyzed using Bayesian meta-analysis by WinBUGS and Boa software. RESULTS: Only one comparison demonstrated that the difference in bone augmentation between Bio-Oss and OFD was statistically significant. CONCLUSION: There is insufficient evidence to show that Bio-Oss is superior to autogenous grafts in bone augmentation techniques however autogenous bone involves donor site surgery and thus donor site morbidity, so we can conclude that Bio-Oss is better than autogenous for alveolar regeneration. [Iranian Endodontic Journal 2009;4(4):125-30