Impact of In-Air Gestures on In-Car Task’s Diver Distraction

As in-vehicle information systems (IVIS) grow increasingly complex, the demand for innovative artificial intelligence-based interaction methods that enhance cybersecurity becomes more crucial. In-air gestures offer a promising solution due to their intuitiveness and individual uniqueness, potentially improving security in human–computer interactions. However, the impact of in-air gestures on driver distraction during in-vehicle tasks and the scarcity of skeleton-based in-air gesture recognition methods in IVIS remain largely unexplored. To address these challenges, we developed a skeleton-based framework specifically tailored for IVIS that recognizes in-air gestures, classifying them as static or dynamic. Our gesture model, tested on the large-scale AUTSL dataset, demonstrates accuracy comparable to state-of-the-art methods and increased efficiency on mobile devices. In comparative experiments between in-air gestures and touch interactions within a driving simulation environment, we established an evaluation system to assess the driver’s attention level during driving. Our findings indicate that in-air gestures provide a more efficient and less distracting interaction solution for IVIS in multi-goal driving environments, significantly improving driving performance by 65%. The proposed framework can serve as a valuable tool for designing future in-air gesture-based interfaces for IVIS, contributing to enhanced cybersecurity

Review: Porous Metal Filters and Membranes for Oil–Water Separation

Abstract In recent years, oil–water separation has been widely researched to reduce the influences of industrial wastewater and offshore oil spills. A filter membrane with special wettability can achieve the separation because of its opposite wettability for water phase and oil phase. In the field of filter membrane with special wettability, porous metal filter membranes have been much investigated because of the associated high efficiency, portability, high plasticity, high thermal stability, and low cost. This article provides an overview of the research progress of the porous metal filter membrane fabrication and discusses the future developments in this field

Performance portability across heterogeneous SoCs using a generalized library-based approach

Because of tight power and energy constraints, industry is progressively shifting toward heterogeneous system-on-chip (SoC) architectures composed of a mix of general-purpose cores along with a number of accelerators. However, such SoC architectures can be very challenging to efficiently program for the vast majority of programmers, due to numerous programming approaches and languages. Libraries, on the other hand, provide a simple way to let programmers take advantage of complex architectures, which does not require programmers to acquire new accelerator-specific or domain-specific languages. Increasingly, library-based, also called algorithm-centric, programming approaches propose to generalize the usage of libraries and to compose programs around these libraries, instead of using libraries as mere complements. In this article, we present a software framework for achieving performance portability by leveraging a generalized library-based approach. Inspired by the notion of a component, as employed in software engineering and HW/SW codesign, we advocate nonexpert programmers to write simple wrapper code around existing libraries to provide simple but necessary semantic information to the runtime. To achieve performance portability, the runtime employs machine learning (simulated annealing) to select the most appropriate accelerator and its parameters for a given algorithm. This selection factors in the possibly complex composition of algorithms used in the application, the communication among the various accelerators, and the tradeoff between different objectives (i.e., accuracy, performance, and energy). Using a set of benchmarks run on a real heterogeneous SoC composed of a multicore processor and a GPU, we show that the runtime overhead is fairly small at 5.1% for the GPU and 6.4% for the multi-core. We then apply our accelerator selection approach to a simulated SoC platform containing multiple inexact accelerators. We show that accelerator selection together with hardware parameter tuning achieves an average 46.2% energy reduction and a speedup of 2.1× while meeting the desired application error target

A Novel Canine Model of Acute Vertebral Artery Occlusion

<div><p>Background</p><p>The extended time window and theoretic reduction in hemorrhage make mechanical strategies an attractive approach for the treatment of patients with ischemic stroke. However, a limited availability of suitable animal models of cerebrovascular thrombosis has hampered the study of novel endovascular interventions. The aim of the present study was to develop a new technique for site-specific placement of a thrombus in a canine model that would allow for the evaluation of mechanical thrombectomy and clot retrieval methods and the visualization of thrombus dislocation or fragmentation during angiographic manipulation.</p><p>Methods</p><p>Angiography and embolization with a preformed thrombus were performed in 12 canines. Under fluoroscopic guidance, an embolism protection device (EPD) was anchored to the middle segment of the left vertebral artery (VA) via the left femoral arterial sheath. A preformed radiopaque clot was injected through the guide catheter into the left VA, via the contralateral femoral artery, proximal to the EPD. After 15 min of occlusion, the EPD was removed and persistent occlusion of the VA was documented angiographically.</p><p>Results</p><p>Angiography performed during the observation period confirmed the persistence of VA occlusion in each case, and displacement of the radiopaque clots did not occur during the 3-hour observation period. The technique allowed selective embolization of targeted vessels without thrombus fragmentation.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>This study demonstrates, for the first time, a canine model of post-circulation embolism induced by autologous blood clot placement. This model can be rapidly formed and easily operated, and the site of thrombosis can be readily controlled.</p></div

Representative angiographic images from a dog showing the successful establishment of left vertebral artery occlusion.

<p>A, B: Antero-posterior images of the left vertebral artery after injection of contrast. C, D: A custom-designed, dedicated, self-expanding thrombus filter (length 10 mm, diameter 4 mm; white arrows, panel C) was pre-deployed into the middle segment of the left vertebral artery. E: The non-subtracted image shows adequate radiopacity of the injected barium sulfate-marked thrombus. F: Digital subtraction image showing complete occlusion of the left vertebral artery. G: Complete occlusion of the vessel was confirmed 45 min later. Vertebrobasilar embolism did not occur distal to the thrombus filter.</p