Hydra: An Accelerator for Real-Time Edge-Aware Permeability Filtering in 65nm CMOS

Many modern video processing pipelines rely on edge-aware (EA) filtering methods. However, recent high-quality methods are challenging to run in real-time on embedded hardware due to their computational load. To this end, we propose an area-efficient and real-time capable hardware implementation of a high quality EA method. In particular, we focus on the recently proposed permeability filter (PF) that delivers promising quality and performance in the domains of HDR tone mapping, disparity and optical flow estimation. We present an efficient hardware accelerator that implements a tiled variant of the PF with low on-chip memory requirements and a significantly reduced external memory bandwidth (6.4x w.r.t. the non-tiled PF). The design has been taped out in 65 nm CMOS technology, is able to filter 720p grayscale video at 24.8 Hz and achieves a high compute density of 6.7 GFLOPS/mm2 (12x higher than embedded GPUs when scaled to the same technology node). The low area and bandwidth requirements make the accelerator highly suitable for integration into SoCs where silicon area budget is constrained and external memory is typically a heavily contended resource

Assessment of water quality in distribution networks through the lens of disinfection by-product rules

Disinfection with chlorine is a common practice to ensure secured drinking water, but results in  potentially harmful disinfection by-products (DBPs), when excess chlorination is done. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) has established Stage 1 and Stage 2 disinfection by-product Rules (DBP rules) to control DBP exposure. A modified version of the Canadian Council of Ministries of the Environment water quality index (CCME WQI) is used to assess water quality. CCME WQI is a  globally accepted index to assess water quality, but is too generic to be used for DBP rules. The study developed a scheme to make the index suitable for DBP rules. A scoring method based on an analytic  hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to assign weights based on DBP rules. A previously modified CCME WQI (Islam et al., 2014) is adapted along with the weights to perform the assessment at the distribution network (DN). A case study was performed on 7 sampling stations in a Québec City DN. The spatial water quality variations are presented using kriging – a geostatistical method, which identifies the regions with relatively poor water quality and highlights the potential locations for re-chlorination points. The proposed assessment formulation is flexible to handle situations with limited data, which makes it especially suited to smaller municipalities.Keywords: CCME water quality index, Stage 1 DBP Rule, Stage 2 DBP Rule, chlorinatio

Molecular dynamics and thermodynamical modelling using SAFT-VR to predict hydrate phase equilibria : application to CO2 hydrates

This work was dedicated to the prediction of the three phase coexistence line (CO2 hydrate–liquid H2Oliquid/vapour CO2) for the H2O+CO2 binary mixture by using (i) molecular dynamics simulations, and (ii) the well known van der Waals-Platteeuw (vdWP) model combined with the SAFT-VR equation of state. Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed using the simulation package GROMACS. The temperature at which the three phases are in equilibrium was determined for different pressures, by using direct coexistence simulations. Carbon dioxide was modelled as a linear-rigid chain molecule with three chemical units, the well-known version TraPPE molecular model. The TIP4P/Ice model was used for water. To perform the thermodynamical modelling, the SAFT-VR EOS was incorporated in the vdWP framework. The values of the cell model parameters were regressed and discussed together with the influence of some assumptions of the vdWP model. Since SAFT-VR can describe most of fluids involved in hydrate modelling (inhibitors, salts…), this study is a first step in the description of hydrate forming conditions of more complex systems. Finally, the three-phase coexistence temperatures obtained with both simulations and theory at different pressures were compared with experimental result

Aportaciones de la retórica a la escritura creativa en cuanto disciplina docente universitaria: una propuesta

Creative writing is a term that recurs to various educational and training possibilities through the medium of writing. For its specific realization, it resorts to resources and orientations coming from diverse knowledge and disciplines. Our proposal is to select one of these meanings of creative writing and show its relationship to rhetoric, a discipline that can contribute significant elements to the formative purposes of creative writing as we have delimited it. For this determination of meaning, we first briefly relate the story of its creation and then its purpose as a formative reality. On the basis of this objective, we broadly define the discipline of rhetoric and present its possible contributions to creative writing.Escritura creativa es un término que apela a diversas posibilidades educativas y formativas a través del medio de la escritura. Para su realización concreta recurre a recursos y orientaciones procedentes de diversos saberes y disciplinas. Nuestra propuesta es acotar uno de estos significados de la escritura creativa y presentar su relación con la retórica, disciplina que puede aportar elementos significativos a los fines formativos de la escritura creativa, tal como la hemos acotado. Para esta acotación del significado narraremos primero brevemente la historia de su constitución, y a continuación su finalidad como realidad formativa. Sobre la base de esta finalidad delimitaremos a grandes rasgos la disciplina de la retórica y presentaremos sus posibles aportaciones a la escritura creativa

Gravity and observer's body orientation influence the visual perception of human body postures

Since human behavior and perception have evolved within the Earth's gravitational field, humans possess an internal model of gravity. Although gravity is known to influence the visual perception of moving objects, the evidence is less clear concerning the visual perception of static objects. We investigated whether a visual judgment of the stability of human body postures (static postures of a human standing on a platform and tilted in the roll plane) may also be influenced by gravity and by the participant's orientation. Pictures of human body postures were presented in different orientations with respect to gravity and the participant's body. The participant's body was aligned to gravity (upright) or not (lying on one side). Participants performed stability judgments with respect to the platform, imagining that gravity operates in the direction indicated by the platform (that was or was not concordant with physical gravity). Such visual judgments were influenced by the picture's orientation with respect to physical gravity. When pictures were tilted by 90-with respect to physical gravity, the human postures that were tilted toward physical gravity (down) were perceived as more unstable than similar postures tilted away from physical gravity (up). Stability judgments were also influenced by the picture's orientation with respect to the participant's body. This indicates that gravity and the participant's body position may influence the visual perception of static objects