A serological-genetic study of Iranian and neighbouring populations.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D51998/84 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Smart Image Completion Using Internet Photo Collection

Tohoku University青木 孝

Turbulent Suspension of Sediments in Shallow Shelf Seas

The interaction between near-bed flow and sediment transport is one of the most attractive research areas for both hydraulic engineers and geomorphologists. Still, current knowledge on the suspension of sediment and near-bed sediment transport, are far from being resolved. This is due to the lack of understanding of near-bed hydrodynamics and the critical conditions at which the sediment starts to move. This thesis explores the near-bed flow-sediment interaction in highly dynamic coastal environments where the near-bed flow is governed by rotating tidal currents. During field campaigns in the German Bight in winter 2015, spring 2015 and summer 2016, data on the near-bed hydro- and sediment dynamics were collected using Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters and an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler in different water depths, with different sediment characteristics and tidal phases. State of the art methods were used to analyze the data on large (tens of minutes) and process (few seconds) time scales. To portray the hydrodynamic conditions in large time scales, bed shear stress, i.e. the force exerted from the water flow against the seabed, and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and Reynolds stress, i.e. the two most common turbulent statistics characterizing turbulent conditions, are studied. In addition, in process time scale, turbulent events, i.e. short energetic velocity fluctuations describing the turbulent flow, are investigated. On large time scales, thresholding of suspended sediment concentration variations was used to estimate critical suspension and deposition stresses. Comparison of the computed suspension stresses with empirical equations predicting the critical condition, illustrates that the movability-based predictors yielded higher accuracy in tidal environments. As the bed shear stresses exceed the critical suspension stress, both bed shear stress and suspended sediment concentration closely tracked each other until bed shear stress fell below the deposition threshold. Results explicitly showed that the bed shear stresses calculated from the turbulent statistics, in comparison to those calculated from the average velocity profile, correlate better with the suspended sediment concentrations. Next, the near-bed turbulence was scrutinized on process time scales to investigate its role in the vertical mixing of suspended sediment. Turbulent events are defined as a sequence of strong velocity fluctuations classified in a quadrant plane (u', w') contributing to 90% of the Reynolds stress. It is shown that, turbulent events only occur in 25% of the time, with the rest of the time being occupied by small background fluctuations. These events are able to induce higher stresses than the average bed shear stress, resulting in suspension of sediments below the critical conditions obtain from mean velocity. Apart from the significance of ejection and sweep events in near-bed sediment dynamics, this thesis further shows the importance of outward interactions in moving sediments away from the bed. This is achieved using turbulent events characterization by their type, strength, duration, length and concentration of associated suspended sediments. Finally, this thesis allows inference from process time scales to large time scale considerations of flow-sediment interaction. Being detected in only 25% of the time, the turbulent events are responsible for more than 60% of the total suspended sediment movements with the rest likely governed by settling velocity. Even though small background fluctuations cannot move sediment in the water column, they impose a large effect on turbulent statistics and reduce bulk TKE and Reynolds stress estimates up to 1.6 and 3 times, respectively. Therefore, this thesis suggests that for the study of large scale sediment dynamics, TKE is a more appropriate descriptor of turbulence. However, for accurate prediction of sediment transport, one needs to consider turbulent events on process time scales

Aesthetic image statistics vary with artistic genre

Research to date has not found strong evidence for a universal link between any single low-level image statistic, such as fractal dimension or Fourier spectral slope, and aesthetic ratings of images in general. This study assessed whether different image statistics are important for artistic images containing different subjects and used partial least squares regression (PLSR) to identify the statistics that correlated most reliably with ratings. Fourier spectral slope, fractal dimension and Shannon entropy were estimated separately for paintings containing landscapes, people, still life, portraits, nudes, animals, buildings and abstracts. Separate analyses were performed on the luminance and colour information in the images. PLSR fits showed shared variance of up to 75% between image statistics and aesthetic ratings. The most important statistics and image planes varied across genres. Variation in statistics may reflect characteristic properties of the different neural sub-systems that process different types of image

Spatial-temporal video quality metric based on an estimation of QoE

International audienceIn this work a new Reduced Reference (RR) Video Quality Metric (VQM) is proposed. The method takes advantage of the Human Visual System (HVS) sensitivity to sharp changes in the video. In the first step, the matching regions are calculated using a temporal approach. The quality of these regions are then evaluated using a spatial approach in the last step the quality of the video is calculated based on the parameters gathered in the spatial and temporal domain. An important improvement lies in taking into account the Quality of Experience (QoE) represented as the motion activity density of the reference video. Due to the spatial-temporal approach taken, the metric is named STAQ (Spatial-Temporal Assessment of Quality). The results show a great improvement in the case of H.264 and MPEG-2 compressed and IP distorted videos even when compared to state of the art Full Reference (FR) metrics

Predicting Survey Response with Quotation-based Modeling: A Case Study on Favorability towards the United States

The acquisition of survey responses is a crucial component in conducting research aimed at comprehending public opinion. However, survey data collection can be arduous, time-consuming, and expensive, with no assurance of an adequate response rate. In this paper, we propose a pioneering approach for predicting survey responses by examining quotations using machine learning. Our investigation focuses on evaluating the degree of favorability towards the United States, a topic of interest to many organizations and governments. We leverage a vast corpus of quotations from individuals across different nationalities and time periods to extract their level of favorability. We employ a combination of natural language processing techniques and machine learning algorithms to construct a predictive model for survey responses. We investigate two scenarios: first, when no surveys have been conducted in a country, and second when surveys have been conducted but in specific years and do not cover all the years. Our experimental results demonstrate that our proposed approach can predict survey responses with high accuracy. Furthermore, we provide an exhaustive analysis of the crucial features that contributed to the model's performance. This study has the potential to impact survey research in the field of data science by substantially decreasing the cost and time required to conduct surveys while simultaneously providing accurate predictions of public opinion.Comment: IEEE Swiss Conference on Data Science (SDS) 202

High dose insulin therapy, an evidence based approach to beta blocker/calcium channel blocker toxicity

Poison-induced cardiogenic shock (PICS) as a result of beta-blocker (?-blocker) or calcium channel blocker (CCB) overdose is a common and potentially life-threatening condition. Conventional therapies, including fluid resuscitation, atropine, cardiac pacing, calcium, glucagon, and vasopressors often fail to improve hemodynamic status. High-dose insulin (HDI) is an emerging therapeutic modality for PICS. In this article, we discuss the existing literature and highlight the therapeutic success and potential of HDI. Based on the current literature, which is limited primarily to case series and animal models, the authors conclude that HDI can be effective in restoring hemodynamic stability, and recommend considering its use in patients with PICS that is not responsive to traditional therapies. Future studies should be undertaken to determine the optimal dose and duration of therapy for HDI in PICS