Appeal No. 0013: Baldwin Producing Corporation v. State of Ohio, acting by and through the Chief of the Division of Oil and Gas Department of Natural Resources

Adjudication Orders #130, and Amendments No.1 & 2 to Order #13

ManiFest: Manifold Deformation for Few-shot Image Translation

Most image-to-image translation methods require a large number of training images, which restricts their applicability. We instead propose ManiFest: a framework for few-shot image translation that learns a context-aware representation of a target domain from a few images only. To enforce feature consistency, our framework learns a style manifold between source and proxy anchor domains (assumed to be composed of large numbers of images). The learned manifold is interpolated and deformed towards the few-shot target domain via patch-based adversarial and feature statistics alignment losses. All of these components are trained simultaneously during a single end-to-end loop. In addition to the general few-shot translation task, our approach can alternatively be conditioned on a single exemplar image to reproduce its specific style. Extensive experiments demonstrate the efficacy of ManiFest on multiple tasks, outperforming the state-of-the-art on all metrics and in both the general- and exemplar-based scenarios. Our code is available at https://github.com/cv-rits/Manifest .Comment: ECCV 202

Rain rendering for evaluating and improving robustness to bad weather

Rain fills the atmosphere with water particles, which breaks the common assumption that light travels unaltered from the scene to the camera. While it is well-known that rain affects computer vision algorithms, quantifying its impact is difficult. In this context, we present a rain rendering pipeline that enables the systematic evaluation of common computer vision algorithms to controlled amounts of rain. We present three different ways to add synthetic rain to existing images datasets: completely physic-based; completely data-driven; and a combination of both. The physic-based rain augmentation combines a physical particle simulator and accurate rain photometric modeling. We validate our rendering methods with a user study, demonstrating our rain is judged as much as 73% more realistic than the state-of-theart. Using our generated rain-augmented KITTI, Cityscapes, and nuScenes datasets, we conduct a thorough evaluation of object detection, semantic segmentation, and depth estimation algorithms and show that their performance decreases in degraded weather, on the order of 15% for object detection, 60% for semantic segmentation, and 6-fold increase in depth estimation error. Finetuning on our augmented synthetic data results in improvements of 21% on object detection, 37% on semantic segmentation, and 8% on depth estimation.Comment: 19 pages, 19 figures, IJCV 2020 preprint. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1908.1033

A FEM-based model to study the behaviour of corroded RC beams shear repaired by NSM CFRP rods technique

This paper presents the main features of finite element FE numerical model developed using the computer code FEMIX to predict the near-surface mounted NSM carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer CFRP rods shear repair contribution to corroded reinforced concrete RC beams. In the RC beams shear repaired with NSM technique, the Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) rods are placed inside pre-cut grooves onto the concrete cover of the RC beam’s lateral faces and are bonded to the concrete with high epoxy adhesive. Experimental and 3D numerical modelling results are presented in this paper in terms of load-deflection curves, and failure modes for 4 short corroded beams: two corroded beams (A1CL3-B and A1CL3-SB) and two control beams (A1T-B and A1T-SB), the beams noted with B were let repaired in bending only with NSM CFRP rods while the ones noted with SB were repaired in both bending and shear with NSM technique. The corrosion of the tensile steel bars and its effect on the shear capacity of the RC beams was discussed. Results showed that the FE model was able to capture the main aspects of the experimental load-deflection curves of the RC beams, moreover it has presented the experimental failure modes and FE numerical modelling crack patterns and both gave similar results for non-shear repaired beams which failed in diagonal tension mode of failure and for shear-repaired beams which failed due to large flexural crack at the middle of the beams along with the concrete crushing, three dimensional crack patterns were produced for shear-repaired beams in order to investigate the splitting cracks occurred at the middle of the beams and near the support

RGB-D-E: Event Camera Calibration for Fast 6-DOF Object Tracking

Augmented reality devices require multiple sensors to perform various tasks such as localization and tracking. Currently, popular cameras are mostly frame-based (e.g. RGB and Depth) which impose a high data bandwidth and power usage. With the necessity for low power and more responsive augmented reality systems, using solely frame-based sensors imposes limits to the various algorithms that needs high frequency data from the environement. As such, event-based sensors have become increasingly popular due to their low power, bandwidth and latency, as well as their very high frequency data acquisition capabilities. In this paper, we propose, for the first time, to use an event-based camera to increase the speed of 3D object tracking in 6 degrees of freedom. This application requires handling very high object speed to convey compelling AR experiences. To this end, we propose a new system which combines a recent RGB-D sensor (Kinect Azure) with an event camera (DAVIS346). We develop a deep learning approach, which combines an existing RGB-D network along with a novel event-based network in a cascade fashion, and demonstrate that our approach significantly improves the robustness of a state-of-the-art frame-based 6-DOF object tracker using our RGB-D-E pipeline.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure

Influence of portal vein occlusion on portal flow and liver elasticity in an animal model

Hepatic fibrosis causes an increase in liver stiffness, a parameter measured by elastography and widely used as a diagnosis method. The concomitant presence of portal vein thrombosis (PVT) implies a change in hepatic portal inflow that could also affect liver elasticity. The main objective of this study is to determine the extent to which the presence of portal occlusion can affect the mechanical properties of the liver and potentially lead to misdiagnosis of fibrosis and hepatic cirrhosis by elastography. Portal vein occlusion was generated by insertion and inflation of a balloon catheter in the portal vein of four swines. The portal flow parameters peak flow (PF) and peak velocity magnitude (PVM) and liver mechanical properties (shear modulus) were then investigated using 4D-flow MRI and MR elastography, respectively, for progressive obstructions of the portal vein. Experimental results indicate that the reduction of the intrahepatic venous blood flow (PF/PVM decreases of 29.3%/8.5%, 51.0%/32.3% and 83.3%/53.6%, respectively) measured with 50%, 80% and 100% obstruction of the portal vein section results in a decrease of liver stiffness by $0.8\%\pm0.1\%$, $7.7\%\pm0.4\%$ and $12.3\%\pm0.9\%$, respectively. While this vascular mechanism does not have sufficient influence on the elasticity of the liver to modify the diagnosis of severe fibrosis or cirrhosis (F4 METAVIR grade), it may be sufficient to attenuate the increase in stiffness due to moderate fibrosis (F2-F3 METAVIR grades) and consequently lead to false-negative diagnoses with elastography in the presence of PVT

Automatic Alerts for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Surveillance and Control: Role of a Hospital Information System

Background: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an escalating problem in hospitals worldwide. The hospital reservoir for MRSA includes recognized and unrecognized colonized or infected patients, as well as previously colonized or infected patients readmitted to the hospital. Early and appropriate infection control measures (ICM) are key elements to reduce MRSA transmission and to control the hospital reservoir. Objective: To describe the role of an expert system applied to the control of MRSA at a large medical center (1,600 beds) with high endemic rates. Methods: The University Hospital of Geneva has an extended hospital information system (HIS), DIOGENE, structured with an open distributed architecture. It includes administrative, medical, nursing, and laboratory applications with their relational databases. Among available patient databases, clinical microbiology laboratory and admission-discharge-transfer (ADT) databases are used to generate computer alerts. A laboratory alert (lab alert) is printed daily in the Infection Control Program (ICP) offices, listing all patients with cultures positive for MRSA detected within the preceding 24 hours. Patients might be either newly detected patients colonized or infected with MRSA, or previously recognized MRSA patients having surveillance cultures. The ICP nurses subsequently go to the ward or call the ward personnel to implement ICM. A second alert, the "readmission alert,” detects readmission to the hospital of any patient previously colonized or infected with MRSA by periodic queries (q 1 min) to the ADT database. The readmission alert is printed in the ICP offices, but also forwarded with added guidelines to the emergency room. Results: During the first 12 months of application (July 1994 to June 1995), the lab alert detected an average of 4.6 isolates per day, corresponding to 314 hospital admissions (248 patients); the use of this alert saved time for the ICP nurses by improving work organization. There were 438 readmission alerts (1.2 alerts per day) over the study period; of 347 patients screened immediately upon readmission, 114 (33%) were positive for MRSA carriage. Delayed recognition of readmitted MRSA carriers decreased significantly after the implementation of this alert; the proportion of MRSA patients recognized at the time of admission to the hospital increased from 13% in 1993 to 40% in 1995 (P<.001). Conclusions: Hospital information system-based alerts can play an important role in the surveillance and early prevention of MRSA transmission, and it can help to recognize patterns of colonization and transmissio

Connaissances et Pratiques des Pharmaciens et Auxiliaires des Officines de Pharmacie de la Ville de Parakou Face aux Topiques Auriculaires en 2021

Introduction&nbsp;: Les topiques auriculaires (TA) sont très utilisés dans le monde en raison de leur remarquable efficacité. L’objectif de cette étude était d’évaluer les connaissances et pratiques des pharmaciens et auxiliaires des officines de pharmacie de la ville de Parakou face aux topiques auriculaires en 2021. Méthode&nbsp;: Il s’est agi d’une étude transversale à visée descriptive et analytique portant sur les pharmaciens et auxiliaires des 19 officines de la ville de Parakou. Les données ont été collectées à l’aide d’une fiche d’enquête du 8 Avril 2021 au 8 Juillet 2021. Résultats&nbsp;: Sur les 129 sujets colligés, les auxiliaires représentaient 86,05% des enquêtés et les pharmaciens (13,95%). La sex-ratio était de 0,32 avec une prédominance féminine. L’âge moyen était de 31,78 ans ±8,52ans. Près de la moitié des enquêtés avaient en majorité moins de 5 ans d’ancienneté (49,61%). La majorité des enquêtés (66,67%) avaient reçu leurs connaissances sur les topiques auriculaires lors de leur formation de base. Les gouttes auriculaires étaient la forme galénique connue de tous (100%). Les antibiotiques étaient la classe thérapeutique la plus connue (97,64&nbsp;%). Seuls 11,62% des enquêtés avaient une bonne connaissance des topiques auriculaires. Le bon niveau était significativement plus retrouvé chez les pharmaciens comparativement aux auxiliaires de pharmacie (p=0,004). Les topiques auriculaires étaient délivrés hors prescription médicale dans 97,67% des cas. L’automédication représentait 89,92% selon les enquêtés. En cas d’automédication, l’intégrité des tympans n’était pas vérifiée dans 92,80% des cas. La pratique adéquate était retrouvée chez 40,31% des enquêtés. &nbsp;Conclusion&nbsp;: Cette étude a montré que le niveau de connaissance du personnel de pharmacie sur les topiques auriculaires est insuffisant mais la pratique est adéquate chez 40% des enquêtés.&nbsp; Des mesures d’information et de sensibilisation sur les topiques auriculaires sont à envisager pour améliorer les niveaux de connaissance et de pratique des pharmaciens et auxiliaires des officines de pharmacie de la ville de Parakou sur les topiques auriculaires. &nbsp; Introduction: Topical Ear Medication (TEM) is widely used around the world because of its remarkable efficacy. The goal of this study was to assess the knowledge and practices of pharmacists and associate pharmacists with regard to topical ear medication in Parakou city in 2021. Method: This was a descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study on pharmacists and their associates in the 19 pharmacies of Parakou city. Data were collected using a survey form from April 8, 2021 to July 8, 2021. Results: Out of 129 subjects collected, associate pharmacists represented 86.05% of respondents and pharmacists (13.95%). The sex ratio was 0.32 with a female predominance. The average age was 31.78 years ± 8.52 years. Nearly half of the respondents had mostly less than 5 years of seniority (49.61%). The majority of respondents (66.67%) had received their knowledge on topical ear medication during their basic training. Ear drops were the dosage form known to everyone (100%). Antibiotics were the best known therapeutic class (97.64%). Only 11.62% of respondents had a good knowledge of topical ear medication. The good level was found significantly more among pharmacists compared to associate pharmacists (p=0.004). Topical ear medication was delivered without a medical prescription in 97.67% of cases. Self-medication accounted for 89.92% according to respondents. In case of self-medication, the integrity of eardrums was not checked in 92.80% of cases. Adequate practice was found in 40.31% of respondents. Conclusion: It appears from this study that the level of pharmacy staff knowledge on topical ear medication is insufficient but the practice is adequate in 40% of respondents. Measures of sensibilisation should be taken to improve the level of knowledge and practice among pharmacists and their associates on topical ear medication in Parakou city

Connaissances et Pratiques des Pharmaciens et Auxiliaires des Officines de Pharmacie de la Ville de Parakou Face aux Topiques Auriculaires en 2021

Introduction&nbsp;: Les topiques auriculaires (TA) sont très utilisés dans le monde en raison de leur remarquable efficacité. L’objectif de cette étude était d’évaluer les connaissances et pratiques des pharmaciens et auxiliaires des officines de pharmacie de la ville de Parakou face aux topiques auriculaires en 2021. Méthode&nbsp;: Il s’est agi d’une étude transversale à visée descriptive et analytique portant sur les pharmaciens et auxiliaires des 19 officines de la ville de Parakou. Les données ont été collectées à l’aide d’une fiche d’enquête du 8 Avril 2021 au 8 Juillet 2021. Résultats&nbsp;: Sur les 129 sujets colligés, les auxiliaires représentaient 86,05% des enquêtés et les pharmaciens (13,95%). La sex-ratio était de 0,32 avec une prédominance féminine. L’âge moyen était de 31,78 ans ±8,52ans. Près de la moitié des enquêtés avaient en majorité moins de 5 ans d’ancienneté (49,61%). La majorité des enquêtés (66,67%) avaient reçu leurs connaissances sur les topiques auriculaires lors de leur formation de base. Les gouttes auriculaires étaient la forme galénique connue de tous (100%). Les antibiotiques étaient la classe thérapeutique la plus connue (97,64&nbsp;%). Seuls 11,62% des enquêtés avaient une bonne connaissance des topiques auriculaires. Le bon niveau était significativement plus retrouvé chez les pharmaciens comparativement aux auxiliaires de pharmacie (p=0,004). Les topiques auriculaires étaient délivrés hors prescription médicale dans 97,67% des cas. L’automédication représentait 89,92% selon les enquêtés. En cas d’automédication, l’intégrité des tympans n’était pas vérifiée dans 92,80% des cas. La pratique adéquate était retrouvée chez 40,31% des enquêtés. &nbsp;Conclusion&nbsp;: Il ressort de cette étude que le niveau de connaissance du personnel de pharmacie sur les topiques auriculaires est insuffisant mais la pratique est adéquate chez 40% des enquêtés.&nbsp; Des mesures sont à envisager pour améliorer les niveaux de connaissance et de pratique des pharmaciens et auxiliaires des officines de pharmacie de la ville de Parakou sur les topiques auriculaires. &nbsp; Introduction: Topical Ear Medication (TEM) is widely used around the world because of its remarkable efficacy. The goal of this study was to assess the knowledge and practices of pharmacists and associate pharmacists with regard to topical ear medication in Parakou city in 2021. Method: This was a descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study on pharmacists and their associates in the 19 pharmacies of Parakou city. Data were collected using a survey form from April 8, 2021 to July 8, 2021. Results: Out of 129 subjects collected, associate pharmacists represented 86.05% of respondents and pharmacists (13.95%). The sex ratio was 0.32 with a female predominance. The average age was 31.78 years ± 8.52 years. Nearly half of the respondents had mostly less than 5 years of seniority (49.61%). The majority of respondents (66.67%) had received their knowledge on topical ear medication during their basic training. Ear drops were the dosage form known to everyone (100%). Antibiotics were the best known therapeutic class (97.64%). Only 11.62% of respondents had a good knowledge of topical ear medication. The good level was found significantly more among pharmacists compared to associate pharmacists (p=0.004). Topical ear medication was delivered without a medical prescription in 97.67% of cases. Self-medication accounted for 89.92% according to respondents. In case of self-medication, the integrity of eardrums was not checked in 92.80% of cases. Adequate practice was found in 40.31% of respondents. Conclusion: It appears from this study that the level of pharmacy staff knowledge on topical ear medication is insufficient but the practice is adequate in 40% of respondents. Measures should be taken to improve the level of knowledge and practice among pharmacists and their associates on topical ear medication in Parakou city