An Intelligent Monitoring System of Vehicles on Highway Traffic

Vehicle speed monitoring and management of highways is the critical problem of the road in this modern age of growing technology and population. A poor management results in frequent traffic jam, traffic rules violation and fatal road accidents. Using traditional techniques of RADAR, LIDAR and LASAR to address this problem is time-consuming, expensive and tedious. This paper presents an efficient framework to produce a simple, cost efficient and intelligent system for vehicle speed monitoring. The proposed method uses an HD (High Definition) camera mounted on the road side either on a pole or on a traffic signal for recording video frames. On the basis of these frames, a vehicle can be tracked by using radius growing method, and its speed can be calculated by calculating vehicle mask and its displacement in consecutive frames. The method uses pattern recognition, digital image processing and mathematical techniques for vehicle detection, tracking and speed calculation. The validity of the proposed model is proved by testing it on different highways.Comment: 5 page

An intelligent use of stemmer and morphology analysis for Arabic information retrieval

Arabic Information Retrieval has gained significant attention due to an increasing usage of Arabic text on the web and social media networks. This paper discusses a new approach for Arabic stem, called Arabic Morphology Information Retrieval (AMIR), to generate/extract stems by applying a set of rules regarding the relationship among Arabic letters to find the root/stem of the respective words used as indexing terms for the text search in Arabic retrieval systems. To demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed algorithm, we highlight the benefits of the proposed rules for different Arabic information retrieval systems. Finally, we have evaluated AMIR system by comparing its performance with LUCENE, FARASA, and no-stemmer counterpart system in terms of mean average precisions. The results obtained demonstrate that AMIR has achieved a mean average precision of 0.34% while LUCENE, FARASA and no stemmer giving 0.27%, 0.28% and 0.21, respectively. This demonstrates that AMIR is able to improve Arabic stemmer and increases retrieval as well as being strong against any type of stem

Evidencing the experience of violence and loss of dignity among the forcibly displaced Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

This research offers a detailed account of the Rohingya peoples’ experience of exclusion, discrimination and violence in Myanmar and their journey to Bangladesh to escape that violence and how/whether this has contributed to the loss of their dignity. It also documents their experiences of living as a forcibly displaced group in Bangladesh (since they are not officially recognised by Bangladesh as refugees) and the extent to which their dignity has been restored before going on to consider medium- and long-term solutions for the crisis they find themselves in. It is important to note that the Government of Bangladesh does not officially recognise the Rohingyas as refugees. However, the international community, certainly the UN has extended them refugee status. The Rohingyas themselves often refer to themselves as refugees. This report will generally identify them as refugees though may also use the term displaced Rohingya. The field research highlights what realistic changes would make a positive difference to leading safe and peaceful lives for the Rohingya. In essence they need a permanent home where they will be awarded full citizenship and treated with dignity, justice and equality and be supported out of poverty and to re-build their lives and positive communities. In doing so, it is necessary to recognise and address issues that are important to the dignity and well-being of those being helped. It is thus imperative to understand what the Rohingya refugees perceive as dignity (or its loss) and how it underpins their calls for supporting their future. The main objectives of this research focused on understanding: the pattern of oppressions the Rohingya experienced in Myanmar before 2017; the nature of violence experienced by the Rohingya in 2017 in Myanmar: the causes of their displacement and their displacement journey; how the Rohingya conceptualise their sense of dignity, and loss of dignity; the socioeconomic conditions the Rohingya are living in and the impact of displacement and delivery of assistance on the physical and psychological wellbeing of the Rohingya and on their dignity in the camps; the conceptualisations of dignity among those working to deliver aid to the Rohingya refugees and among Bangladesh Government representatives and their experiences of providing assistance; ways in which dignity might be improved and how they might find medium-tolong-term solutions to the Rohingya refugee crisis in Cox’s Bazar as suggested by respondents from the Rohingya camps, international humanitarian aid organisations and representatives of the Government of Bangladesh; and how to begin to deliver durable solutions which are meaningful to the Rohingya - to recommend actionable policy recommendation

Comparative effectiveness of drugs used to constrict the patent ductus arteriosus: a secondary analysis of the PDA-TOLERATE trial (NCT01958320).

ObjectiveTo evaluate the effectiveness of drugs used to constrict patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) in newborns < 28 weeks.MethodsWe performed a secondary analysis of the multi-center PDA-TOLERATE trial (NCT01958320). Infants with moderate-to-large PDAs were randomized 1:1 at 8.1 ± 2.1 days to either Drug treatment (n = 104) or Conservative management (n = 98). Drug treatments were assigned by center rather than within center (acetaminophen: 5 centers, 27 infants; ibuprofen: 7 centers, 38 infants; indomethacin: 7 centers, 39 infants).ResultsIndomethacin produced the greatest constriction (compared with spontaneous constriction during Conservative management): RR (95% CI) = 3.21 (2.05-5.01)), followed by ibuprofen = 2.03 (1.05-3.91), and acetaminophen = 1.33 (0.55-3.24). The initial rate of acetaminophen-induced constriction was 27%. Infants with persistent moderate-to-large PDA after acetaminophen were treated with indomethacin. The final rate of constriction after acetaminophen ± indomethacin was 60% (similar to the rate in infants receiving indomethacin-alone (62%)).ConclusionIndomethacin was more effective than acetaminophen in producing ductus constriction

A New Era in the Quest for Dark Matter

There is a growing sense of `crisis' in the dark matter community, due to the absence of evidence for the most popular candidates such as weakly interacting massive particles, axions, and sterile neutrinos, despite the enormous effort that has gone into searching for these particles. Here, we discuss what we have learned about the nature of dark matter from past experiments, and the implications for planned dark matter searches in the next decade. We argue that diversifying the experimental effort, incorporating astronomical surveys and gravitational wave observations, is our best hope to make progress on the dark matter problem.Comment: Published in Nature, online on 04 Oct 2018. 13 pages, 1 figur

Prevalence and socio-economic determinants of inadequate dietary diversity among adolescent girls and boys in Bangladesh: findings from a nationwide cross-sectional survey.

Malnutrition among adolescents is often associated with inadequate dietary diversity (DD). We aimed to explore the prevalence of inadequate DD and its socio-economic determinants among adolescent girls and boys in Bangladesh. A cross-sectional survey was conducted during the 2018-19 round of national nutrition surveillance in Bangladesh. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression was performed to identify the determinants of inadequate DD among adolescent girls and boys separately. This population-based survey covered eighty-two rural, non-slum urban and slum clusters from all divisions of Bangladesh. A total of 4865 adolescent girls and 4907 adolescent boys were interviewed. The overall prevalence of inadequate DD was higher among girls (55⋅4 %) than the boys (50⋅6 %). Moreover, compared to boys, the prevalence of inadequate DD was higher among the girls for almost all socio-economic categories. Poor educational attainment, poor maternal education, female-headed household, household food insecurity and poor household wealth were associated with increased chances of having inadequate DD in both sexes. In conclusion, more than half of the Bangladeshi adolescent girls and boys consumed an inadequately diversified diet. The socio-economic determinants of inadequate DD should be addressed through context-specific multisectoral interventions