8,064 research outputs found
Real-time 3D Tracking of Articulated Tools for Robotic Surgery
In robotic surgery, tool tracking is important for providing safe tool-tissue
interaction and facilitating surgical skills assessment. Despite recent
advances in tool tracking, existing approaches are faced with major
difficulties in real-time tracking of articulated tools. Most algorithms are
tailored for offline processing with pre-recorded videos. In this paper, we
propose a real-time 3D tracking method for articulated tools in robotic
surgery. The proposed method is based on the CAD model of the tools as well as
robot kinematics to generate online part-based templates for efficient 2D
matching and 3D pose estimation. A robust verification approach is incorporated
to reject outliers in 2D detections, which is then followed by fusing inliers
with robot kinematic readings for 3D pose estimation of the tool. The proposed
method has been validated with phantom data, as well as ex vivo and in vivo
experiments. The results derived clearly demonstrate the performance advantage
of the proposed method when compared to the state-of-the-art.Comment: This paper was presented in MICCAI 2016 conference, and a DOI was
linked to the publisher's versio
Viscosity of High Energy Nuclear Fluids
Relativistic high energy heavy ion collision cross sections have been
interpreted in terms of almost ideal liquid droplets of nuclear matter. The
experimental low viscosity of these nuclear fluids have been of considerable
recent quantum chromodynamic interest. The viscosity is here discussed in terms
of the string fragmentation models wherein the temperature dependence of the
nuclear fluid viscosity obeys the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann law.Comment: 6 pages, ReVTeX 4 format, two figures, *.eps forma
Upaya Peningkatan Kualitas Pelayanan Pelanggan Dengan Integrasi Service Quality (Servqual) Dan Quality Function Deployment (Qfd)
Intensitas persaingan dan jumlah pesaing menuntut setiap Perusahaan termasuk Swalayan KPRI UB untuk selalu memperhatikan keinginan pelanggan serta berusaha memenuhi apa yang mereka harapkan. Tujuan dari metode servqual, IPA, dan QFD dalam penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui persepsi dan harapan pelanggan, memperoleh atribut yang masuk dalam kategori kritis, serta rekomendasi yang dapat diberikan untuk memperbaiki kualitas pelayanan.Hasil penelitian menunjukkan atribut pada dimensi tangible, yaitu pencahayaan ruangan swalayan yang terang memiliki memiliki tingkat persepsi 2,57 dan tingkat harapan 4,17 sehingga atribut tersebut memiliki nilai gap negatif terbesar, yaitu -1,6, berdasarkan analisis metode IPA terdapat 8 atribut kualitas pelayanan yang masuk dalam kategori kritis dan harus diperbaiki. Rekomendasi berdasarkan prioritas utama yang perlu ditingkatkan dan dikembangkan terlebih dahulu berdasarkan metode QFD adalah pendayagunaan lampu yang tersedia di swalayan, melakukan re-layout tata letak ruangan swalayan, dan peningkatan daya listrik di KPRI UB, hal tersebut dilakukan terlebih dahulu karena pada atribut pencahayaan ruangan swalayan yang terang memiliki nilai normalized raw weight tertinggi berdasarkan analisis QFD yaitu sebesar 0,1352 atau 13,52% dari keseluruhan nilai normalized raw weight pada house of quality
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Mineral Resource Assessment. Big Bend RanchState Natural Area, Presidio and Brewster Counties, Texas - Final Report
The Big Bend Ranch State Natural Area has a diverse geology reflecting
nearly 600 million years of geologic evolution. Major geologic events include
(1) deposition of elastic sedimentary rocks during the Paleozoic and their
deformation (folding and faulting) at the end of the Paleozoic; (2) deposition of
limestone and elastic rocks during the Cretaceous and their deformation during
the early Tertiary; (3) intense extrusive and intrusive igneous activity during the
middle Tertiary; and (4) major normal faulting during the late Tertiary.
Almost all mineral potential of the area is associated with mid-Tertiary
igneous activity. The only significant mineral production within the Ranch area
was from the Fresno Mine in the western part of the Terlingua mercury district,
one of the largest mining districts in Texas. This mine produced approximately
3500 flasks of mercury, mostly during World War II. Other production was
minor and included some additional mercury from localities near the Fresno Mine,
as well as silver-lead ore containing minor gold from a small mine in the
Solitario.Bureau of Economic Geolog
Cephalosporin-3’-diazeniumdiolate NO-donor prodrug PYRRO-C3D enhances azithromycin susceptibility of non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae biofilms
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Objectives: PYRRO-C3D is a cephalosporin-3-diazeniumdiolate nitric oxide (NO)-donor prodrug designed to selectively deliver NO to bacterial infection sites. The objective of this study was to assess the activity of PYRRO-C3D against non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) biofilms and examine the role of NO in reducing biofilm-associated antibiotic tolerance.
Methods: The activity of PYRRO-C3D on in vitro NTHi biofilms was assessed through CFU enumeration and confocal microscopy. NO release measurements were performed using an ISO-NO probe. NTHi biofilms grown on primary ciliated respiratory epithelia at an air-liquid interface were used to investigate the effects of PYRRO-C3D in the presence of host tissue. Label-free LC/MS proteomic analyses were performed to identify differentially expressed proteins following NO treatment.
Results: PYRRO-C3D specifically released NO in the presence of NTHi, while no evidence of spontaneous NO release was observed when the compound was exposed to primary epithelial cells. NTHi lacking β-lactamase activity failed to trigger NO release. Treatment significantly increased the susceptibility of in vitro NTHi biofilms to azithromycin, causing a log-fold reduction in viability (p<0.05) relative to azithromycin alone. The response was more pronounced for biofilms grown on primary respiratory epithelia, where a 2-log reduction was observed (p<0.01). Label-free proteomics showed that NO increased expression of sixteen proteins involved in metabolic and transcriptional/translational functions.
Conclusions: NO release from PYRRO-C3D enhances the efficacy of azithromycin against NTHi biofilms, putatively via modulation of NTHi metabolic activity. Adjunctive therapy with NO mediated through PYRRO-C3D represents a promising approach for reducing biofilm associated antibiotic tolerance
Computational studies of light acceptance and propagation in straight and curved multimodal active fibres
A Monte Carlo simulation has been performed to track light rays in
cylindrical multimode fibres by ray optics. The trapping efficiencies for skew
and meridional rays in active fibres and distributions of characteristic
quantities for all trapped light rays have been calculated. The simulation
provides new results for curved fibres, where the analytical expressions are
too complex to be solved. The light losses due to sharp bending of fibres are
presented as a function of the ratio of curvature to fibre radius and bending
angle. It is shown that a radius of curvature to fibre radius ratio of greater
than 65 results in a light loss of less than 10% with the loss occurring in a
transition region at bending angles of pi/8 rad.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figure
Causality, Analyticity and an IR Obstruction to UV Completion
We argue that certain apparently consistent low-energy effective field
theories described by local, Lorentz-invariant Lagrangians, secretly exhibit
macroscopic non-locality and cannot be embedded in any UV theory whose S-matrix
satisfies canonical analyticity constraints. The obstruction involves the signs
of a set of leading irrelevant operators, which must be strictly positive to
ensure UV analyticity. An IR manifestation of this restriction is that the
"wrong" signs lead to superluminal fluctuations around non-trivial backgrounds,
making it impossible to define local, causal evolution, and implying a
surprising IR breakdown of the effective theory. Such effective theories can
not arise in quantum field theories or weakly coupled string theories, whose
S-matrices satisfy the usual analyticity properties. This conclusion applies to
the DGP brane-world model modifying gravity in the IR, giving a simple
explanation for the difficulty of embedding this model into controlled stringy
backgrounds, and to models of electroweak symmetry breaking that predict
negative anomalous quartic couplings for the W and Z. Conversely, any
experimental support for the DGP model, or measured negative signs for
anomalous quartic gauge boson couplings at future accelerators, would
constitute direct evidence for the existence of superluminality and macroscopic
non-locality unlike anything previously seen in physics, and almost
incidentally falsify both local quantum field theory and perturbative string
theory.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures; v2: analyticity arguments improved, discussion
on non-commutative theories and minor clarifications adde
Advocacy in the tail: Exploring the implications of ‘climategate’ for science journalism and public debate in the digital age
This paper explores the evolving practices of science journalism and public debate in the digital age. The vehicle for this study is the release of digitally stored email correspondence, data and documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the weeks immediately prior to the United Nations Copenhagen Summit (COP-15) in December 2009. Described using the journalistic shorthand of ‘climategate’, and initially promoted through socio-technical networks of bloggers, this episode became a global news story and the subject of several formal reviews. ‘Climategate’ illustrates that media literate critics of anthropogenic explanations of climate change used digital tools to support their cause, making visible selected, newsworthy aspects of scientific information and the practices of scientists. In conclusion, I argue that ‘climategate’ may have profound implications for the production and distribution of science news, and how climate science is represented and debated in the digitally-mediated public sphere
Coherent pairing states for the Hubbard model
We consider the Hubbard model and its extensions on bipartite lattices. We
define a dynamical group based on the -pairing operators introduced by
C.N.Yang, and define coherent pairing states, which are combinations of
eigenfunctions of -operators. These states permit exact calculations of
numerous physical properties of the system, including energy, various
fluctuations and correlation functions, including pairing ODLRO to all orders.
This approach is complementary to BCS, in that these are superconducting
coherent states associated with the exact model, although they are not
eigenstates of the Hamiltonian.Comment: 5 pages, RevTe
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