Human Motion Trajectory Prediction: A Survey

With growing numbers of intelligent autonomous systems in human environments, the ability of such systems to perceive, understand and anticipate human behavior becomes increasingly important. Specifically, predicting future positions of dynamic agents and planning considering such predictions are key tasks for self-driving vehicles, service robots and advanced surveillance systems. This paper provides a survey of human motion trajectory prediction. We review, analyze and structure a large selection of work from different communities and propose a taxonomy that categorizes existing methods based on the motion modeling approach and level of contextual information used. We provide an overview of the existing datasets and performance metrics. We discuss limitations of the state of the art and outline directions for further research.Comment: Submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 37 page

The ngEHT Analysis Challenges

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).The next-generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT) will be a significant enhancement of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) array, with ∼10 new antennas and instrumental upgrades of existing antennas. The increased -coverage, sensitivity, and frequency coverage allow a wide range of new science opportunities to be explored. The ngEHT Analysis Challenges have been launched to inform the development of the ngEHT array design, science objectives, and analysis pathways. For each challenge, synthetic EHT and ngEHT datasets are generated from theoretical source models and released to the challenge participants, who analyze the datasets using image reconstruction and other methods. The submitted analysis results are evaluated with quantitative metrics. In this work, we report on the first two ngEHT Analysis Challenges. These have focused on static and dynamical models of M87* and Sgr A* and shown that high-quality movies of the extended jet structure of M87* and near-horizon hourly timescale variability of Sgr A* can be reconstructed by the reference ngEHT array in realistic observing conditions using current analysis algorithms. We identify areas where there is still room for improvement of these algorithms and analysis strategies. Other science cases and arrays will be explored in future challenges. © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.This research was supported by NSF grants AST-1935980 and AST-2034306. This work was supported by the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, made possible through the support of grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Moore or Templeton Foundations. Hendrik Müller received financial support for this research from the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne. This research is supported by the DFG research grant “Jet physics on horizon scales and beyond” (Grant No. FR 4069/2-1), the ERC synergy grant “BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes” (Grant No. 610058) and ERC advanced grant “JETSET: Launching, propagation and emission of relativistic jets from binary mergers and across mass scales” (Grant No. 884631). Jakob Knollmüller acknowledges funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2094—390783311. Razieh Emami acknowledges the support by the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics as well as grant numbers 21-atp21-0077, NSF AST-1816420 and HST-GO-16173.001-A for very generous support.With funding from the Spanish government through the "Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence" accreditation (CEX2021-001131-S).Peer reviewe

Intravenous and intramyocardial injection of apoptotic white blood cell suspensions prevents ventricular remodelling by increasing elastin expression in cardiac scar tissue after myocardial infarction

Congestive heart failure developing after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Clinical trials of cell-based therapy after AMI evidenced only a moderate benefit. We could show previously that suspensions of apoptotic peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) are able to reduce myocardial damage in a rat model of AMI. Here we experimentally examined the biochemical mechanisms involved in preventing ventricular remodelling and preserving cardiac function after AMI. Cell suspensions of apoptotic cells were injected intravenously or intramyocardially after experimental AMI induced by coronary artery ligation in rats. Administration of cell culture medium or viable PBMC served as controls. Immunohistological analysis was performed to analyse the cellular infiltrate in the ischaemic myocardium. Cardiac function was quantified by echocardiography. Planimetry of the infarcted hearts showed a significant reduction of infarction size and an improvement of post AMI remodelling in rats treated with suspensions of apoptotic PBMC (injected either intravenously or intramoycardially). Moreover, these hearts evidenced enhanced homing of macrophages and cells staining positive for c-kit, FLK-1, IGF-I and FGF-2 as compared to controls. A major finding in this study further was that the ratio of elastic and collagenous fibres within the scar tissue was altered in a favourable fashion in rats injected with apoptotic cells. Intravenous or intramyocardial injection of apoptotic cell suspensions results in attenuation of myocardial remodelling after experimental AMI, preserves left ventricular function, increases homing of regenerative cells and alters the composition of cardiac scar tissue. The higher expression of elastic fibres provides passive energy to the cardiac scar tissue and results in prevention of ventricular remodelling

Accretion Flow Morphology in Numerical Simulations of Black Holes from the ngEHT Model Library: The Impact of Radiation Physics

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).In the past few years, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has provided the first-ever event horizon-scale images of the supermassive black holes (BHs) M87∗ and Sagittarius A∗ (Sgr A∗ ). The next-generation EHT project is an extension of the EHT array that promises larger angular resolution and higher sensitivity to the dim, extended flux around the central ring-like structure, possibly connecting the accretion flow and the jet. The ngEHT Analysis Challenges aim to understand the science extractability from synthetic images and movies to inform the ngEHT array design and analysis algorithm development. In this work, we compare the accretion flow structure and dynamics in numerical fluid simulations that specifically target M87∗ and Sgr A∗, and were used to construct the source models in the challenge set. We consider (1) a steady-state axisymmetric radiatively inefficient accretion flow model with a time-dependent shearing hotspot, (2) two time-dependent single fluid general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations from the H-AMR code, (3) a two-temperature GRMHD simulation from the BHAC code, and (4) a two-temperature radiative GRMHD simulation from the KORAL code. We find that the different models exhibit remarkably similar temporal and spatial properties, except for the electron temperature, since radiative losses substantially cool down electrons near the BH and the jet sheath, signaling the importance of radiative cooling even for slowly accreting BHs such as M87∗. We restrict ourselves to standard torus accretion flows, and leave larger explorations of alternate accretion models to future work. © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.We thank the National Science Foundation (AST-1716536, AST-1935980 and AST-2034306) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF-10423) for financially supporting this work. This work was supported in part by the Black Hole Initiative, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation (JTF-61497) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF-8273) to Harvard University. K.C. is also supported in part by the Black Hole PIRE program (NSF grant OISE-1743747). R.E. acknowledges the support by the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics as well as grant numbers 21-atp21-0077, NSF AST-1816420, and HST-GO-16173.001-A for very generous supports. H.M. received financial support for this research from the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne. This research is supported by the DFG research grant “Jet physics on horizon scales and beyond” (Grant No. FR 4069/2-1), the ERC synergy grant “BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes” (Grant No. 610058), and ERC advanced grant “JETSET: Launching, propagation and emission of relativistic jets from binary mergers and across mass scales” (Grant No. 884631). J.K. acknowledges funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany´s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2094—390783311. Y.M. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12273022) and the Shanghai pilot program of international scientists for basic research (No. 22JC1410600).With funding from the Spanish government through the "Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence" accreditation (CEX2021-001131-S).Peer reviewe

QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories : challenges and perspectives

We highlight the progress, current status, and open challenges of QCD-driven physics, in theory and in experiment. We discuss how the strong interaction is intimately connected to a broad sweep of physical problems, in settings ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to strongly coupled, complex systems in particle and condensed-matter physics, as well as to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. We also discuss how success in describing the strong interaction impacts other fields, and, in turn, how such subjects can impact studies of the strong interaction. In the course of the work we offer a perspective on the many research streams which flow into and out of QCD, as well as a vision for future developments.Peer reviewe

The Holy Grail of timelapse cinematography : Options to create day to night timelapses with DSLRcameras

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem heiligen Gral der Zeitraffer Kinematografie. Es werden verschiedene Aufnahmemethoden vorgestellt, mit denen es möglich ist, einen Zeitraffer vom helllichten Tag bis in Nacht aufzunehmen. Bevor auf die Herausforderung einer solchen Aufnahme eingegangen wird und die Vor- und Nachteile jedes einzelnen Aufnahmeverfahrens aufgezeigt werden, sollen die Grundlagen zur Spiegelreflexkamera und allgemein zuZeitraffern geschaffen werden. Mit Hilfe von Experteninterviews und Testaufnahmen soll dem Leser ein Grundverständnis über die Arbeitstechniken für einen Holy Grail Zeitraffer näher gebracht werden und die Wahl der Aufnahmemethode erleichtert werden