Temporal Matching in Endoscopic Images for Remote-Controlled Robotic Surgery

Temporal matching is applied in the frame of the formation of high-level entities in remote-controlled robotic surgery. The objective is to track tumor boundaries over time to improve the segmentation stage in each image of the sequence to facilitate the tracking and localization of the tumor. It makes use of an attributed string matching technique to find the correspondence between tumor boundaries over time. Relationships are then exploited to reconstitute the tumor boundaries and remove the inconsistencies coming from the detection errors. Input data are free form shapes of different length representing the tumor boundary, extracted at a previous stage

Nitsche's method for Kirchhoff plates

We introduce a Nitsche's method for the numerical approximation of the Kirchhoff-Love plate equation under general Robin-type boundary conditions. We analyze the method by presenting a priori and a posteriori error estimates in mesh-dependent norms. Several numerical examples are given to validate the approach and demonstrate its properties

On Nitsche's method for elastic contact problems

We show quasi-optimality and a posteriori error estimates for the frictionless contact problem between two elastic bodies with a zero-gap function. The analysis is based on interpreting Nitsche's method as a stabilised finite element method for which the error estimates can be obtained with minimal regularity assumptions and without the saturation assumption. We present three different Nitsche's mortaring techniques for the contact boundary each corresponding to a different stabilising term. Our numerical experiments show the robustness of Nitsche's method and corroborates the efficiency of the a posteriori error estimators

Explanatory power of internationalization theories : a case study of Norwegian SMEs targeting developing countries

Theories on the internationalization process of firms have been developed by researchers over many decades. These theories have been affected by the present time, their origins, and the given firms in the research. Physical distance is no longer an issue, and internationalization is these days almost a necessity for a specialized SME when its domestic market is threaten by global competition. Today, more firms internationalize and they do it more rapidly than before. Influenced by authorities or their networks, going abroad has become easier. Therefore, the research problem we express is: “The problem is that, given globalization, the theories available to explain the internationalization process by SMEs are hardly applicable today.‖ Access to energy is a driver of development and plays a central role in both fighting poverty and addressing climate change. The United Nations (UN) and several other organizations are offering significant funds for carry out renewable energy (RE) projects in the developing world. These developing countries represent a huge emerging market that is an attractive target for foreign international firms. But it is also a risky market given instable regimes and an absence of regulations and institutions that constitute barriers for foreign investors. Both firms in this study offer PV technology, and their main market is in Europe. Both firms also have experience targeting developing countries. The result of the study shows that the explanatory power of the theories presented here need modification to be valid in times when the circumstances of firms change constantly and significantly

Sedimentary geochemical record of human–induced environmental changes in the Lake Brunnsviken watershed, Sweden

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110094/1/lno20044951560.pd

The potential of Red Supergiants as extra-galactic abundance probes at low spectral resolution

Red Supergiants (RSGs) are among the brightest stars in the local universe, making them ideal candidates with which to probe the properties of their host galaxies. However, current quantitative spectroscopic techniques require spectral resolutions of R>17,000, making observations of RSGs at distances greater than 1Mpc unfeasible. Here we explore the potential of quantitative spectroscopic techniques at much lower resolutions, R ~2-3000. We take archival J-band spectra of a sample of RSGs in the Solar neighbourhood. In this spectral region the metallic lines of FeI, MgI, SiI and TiI are prominent, while the molecular absorption features of OH, H_2O, CN and CO are weak. We compare these data with synthetic spectra produced from the existing grid of model atmospheres from the MARCS project, with the aim of deriving chemical abundances. We find that all stars studied can be unambiguously fit by the models, and model parameters of log g, effective temperatures Teff, microturbulence and global metal content may be derived. We find that the abundances derived for the stars are all very close to Solar and have low dispersion, with an average of [logZ]=0.13+/-0.14. The values of Teff fit by the models are ~150K cooler than the stars' literature values for earlier spectral types when using the Levesque et al. temperature scale, though this temperature discrepancy has very little systematic effect on the derived abundances as the equivalent widths (EWs) of the metallic lines are roughly constant across the full temperature range of RSGs. Instead, elemental abundances are the dominating factor in the EWs of the diagnostic lines. Our results suggest that chemical abundance measurements of RSGs are possible at low- to medium-resolution, meaning that this technique is a viable infrared-based alternative to measuring abundance trends in external galaxies. [Abridged]Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS