MIRIAM: A Multimodal Chat-Based Interface for Autonomous Systems

We present MIRIAM (Multimodal Intelligent inteRactIon for Autonomous systeMs), a multimodal interface to support situation awareness of autonomous vehicles through chat-based interaction. The user is able to chat about the vehicle's plan, objectives, previous activities and mission progress. The system is mixed initiative in that it pro-actively sends messages about key events, such as fault warnings. We will demonstrate MIRIAM using SeeByte's SeeTrack command and control interface and Neptune autonomy simulator.Comment: 2 pages, ICMI'17, 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, November 13-17 2017, Glasgow, U

All-optical radiofrequency modulation of Anderson-localized modes

All-optical modulation of light relies on exploiting intrinsic material nonlinearities. However, this optical control is rather challenging due to the weak dependence of the refractive index and absorption coefficients on the concentration of free carriers in standard semiconductors. To overcome this limitation, resonant structures with high spatial and spectral confinement are carefully designed to enhance the stored electromagnetic energy, thereby requiring lower excitation power to achieve significant nonlinear effects. Small mode-volume and high quality (Q)-factor cavities also offer an efficient coherent control of the light field and the targeted optical properties. Here, we report on optical resonances reaching Q - 10^5 induced by disorder on novel photonic/phononic crystal waveguides. At relatively low excitation powers (below 1 mW), these cavities exhibit nonlinear effects leading to periodic (up to - 35 MHz) oscillations of their resonant wavelength. Our system represents a test-bed to study the interplay between structural complexity and material nonlinearities and their impact on localization phenomena and introduces a novel functionality to the toolset of disordered photonics

Severe pulmonary mucorales superinfection in three influenzapatients with and without influenza-associated aspergillosis

Mucormycosisis an opportunistic fungal disease which affects immunocompromised hosts including patients with haematologic malignancies and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus. Mucorales grow invasively and are associated with high mortality even if promptly diagnosed. Viral infection like influenza can cause severe pneumonia and is associated with pulmonary aspergillosis. Here we report three separate cases of Mucorales super infection in critically-ill patients with influenza infection, one of them histologically confirmed. Two patients also had influenza-associated pulmonary aspergillosis. Two patients had fatal clinical outcome despite intensive care. The simultaneous detection of these two rare mold infections in patients with severe influenza is highly remarkable and calls for increased awareness

Impact of the matching algorithm on the treatment effect estimate: A neutral comparison study

Propensity score matching is increasingly being used in the medical literature. Choice of matching algorithms, reporting quality, and estimands are oftentimes not discussed. We evaluated the impact of propensity score matching algorithms, based on a recent clinical dataset, with three commonly used outcomes. The resulting estimands for different strengths of treatment effects were compared in a neutral comparison study and based on a thoroughly designed simulation study. Different algorithms yielded different levels of balance after matching. Along with full matching and genetic matching with replacement, good balance was achieved with nearest neighbor matching with caliper but thereby more than one fifth of the treated units were discarded. Average marginal treatment effect estimates were least biased with genetic or nearest neighbor matching, both with replacement and full matching. Double adjustment yielded conditional treatment effects that were closer to the true values, throughout. The choice of the matching algorithm had an impact on covariate balance after matching as well as treatment effect estimates. In comparison, genetic matching with replacement yielded better covariate balance than all other matching algorithms. A literature review in the British Medical Journal including its subjournals revealed frequent use of propensity score matching; however, the use of different matching algorithms before treatment effect estimation was only reported in one out of 21 studies. Propensity score matching is a methodology for causal treatment effect estimation from observational data; however, the methodological difficulties and low reporting quality in applied medical research need to be addressed

Multifunctional Polymers Based on Ionic Liquid and Rose Bengal Fragments for the Conversion of CO2 to Carbonates

Supported ionic liquid-like phases (SILLPs) containing Rose Bengal (RB) units are used to develop organocatalytic systems for the cycloaddition of CO2 to epoxides. The activity of the supported RB fragments can be fine-tuned by controlling the nature of the SILLPs (i.e., substitution at the imidazolium ring, cross-linking degree of the polymeric matrix, loading, etc.). Such a catalytic system prepared from cheap, simple, and commercially available components provides high activity and stability, with no decay in activity for at least 10 days of continuous use under flow conditions.Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume IFunding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume

In a fiscally-constrained legislative environment, are project-based Section 8 Vouchers and overlooked vehicle for affordable housing production?

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2004.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-61).by David Pedro Garcia.S.M

From Photonic Crystals to Photonic Glasses through disorder

Tesis doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física de Materiales. Fecha de lectura: 27-03-200

Extended mean-variance model for reliable evolutionary portfolio optimization

Real world optimization of financial portfolios pose a challenging multiobjective problem that can be tackled using Evolutionary Algorithms. The fact that the optimization process is subject to the presence of uncertainty concerning asset returns is likely to lead to unreliable solutions. This work suggests extending the classic mean-variance optimization problem with a third explicit robustness objective. This results on sets of portfolios that can be subsequently grouped together according to their reliability. This additional information allows for a better informed decision making regarding asset allocation. © 2014 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.Financial support granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science under contract TIN2011-28336 (MOVES)