33,469 research outputs found
Occlusion-Robust MVO: Multimotion Estimation Through Occlusion Via Motion Closure
Visual motion estimation is an integral and well-studied challenge in
autonomous navigation. Recent work has focused on addressing multimotion
estimation, which is especially challenging in highly dynamic environments.
Such environments not only comprise multiple, complex motions but also tend to
exhibit significant occlusion.
Previous work in object tracking focuses on maintaining the integrity of
object tracks but usually relies on specific appearance-based descriptors or
constrained motion models. These approaches are very effective in specific
applications but do not generalize to the full multimotion estimation problem.
This paper presents a pipeline for estimating multiple motions, including the
camera egomotion, in the presence of occlusions. This approach uses an
expressive motion prior to estimate the SE (3) trajectory of every motion in
the scene, even during temporary occlusions, and identify the reappearance of
motions through motion closure. The performance of this occlusion-robust
multimotion visual odometry (MVO) pipeline is evaluated on real-world data and
the Oxford Multimotion Dataset.Comment: To appear at the 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). An earlier version of this work first
appeared at the Long-term Human Motion Planning Workshop (ICRA 2019). 8
pages, 5 figures. Video available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_N71AA6FR
Reference Pricing of Pharmaceuticals for Medicare: Evidence from Germany, the Netherlands and New Zealand
This paper describes three prototypical systems of therapeutic reference pricing (RP) for pharmaceuticals -- Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand -- and examines their effects on the availability of new drugs, reimbursement levels, manufacturer prices and out-of-pocket surcharges to patients. RP for pharmaceuticals is not simply analogous to a defined contribution approach to subsidizing insurance coverage. Although a major purpose of RP is to stimulate competition, theory suggests that this is unlikely and this is confirmed by the empirical evidence. Other effects of RP differ across countries in predictable ways, reflecting each country's system design and other cost control policies. New Zealand's RP system has reduced reimbursement and limited the availability of new drugs, particularly more expensive drugs. Compared to these three countries, if RP were applied in the US, it would likely have a more negative effect on prices of on-patent products, due to the more competitive US generic market, and a more negative effect on R&D and on the future supply of new drugs, due to the much larger US share of global pharmaceutical sales.
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Making Memories: Why Time Matters
In the last decade advances in human neuroscience have identified the critical importance of time in creating long-term memories. Circadian neuroscience has established biological time functions via cellular clocks regulated by photosensitive retinal ganglion cells and the suprachiasmatic nuclei. Individuals have different circadian clocks depending on their chronotypes that vary with genetic, age, and sex. In contrast, social time is determined by time zones, daylight savings time, and education and employment hours. Social time and circadian time differences can lead to circadian desynchronization, sleep deprivation, health problems, and poor cognitive performance. Synchronizing social time to circadian biology leads to better health and learning, as demonstrated in adolescent education. In-day making memories of complex bodies of structured information in education is organized in social time and uses many different learning techniques. Research in the neuroscience of long-term memory (LTM) has demonstrated in-day time spaced learning patterns of three repetitions of information separated by two rest periods are effective in making memories in mammals and humans. This time pattern is based on the intracellular processes required in synaptic plasticity. Circadian desynchronization, sleep deprivation, and memory consolidation in sleep are less well-understood, though there has been considerable progress in neuroscience research in the last decade. The interplay of circadian, in-day and sleep neuroscience research are creating an understanding of making memories in the first 24-h that has already led to interventions that can improve health and learning
Chiral effective field theory beyond the power-counting regime
Novel techniques are presented, which identify the chiral power-counting
regime (PCR), and realize the existence of an intrinsic energy scale embedded
in lattice QCD results that extend outside the PCR. The nucleon mass is
considered as a benchmark for illustrating this new approach. Using
finite-range regularization, an optimal regularization scale can be extracted
from lattice simulation results by analyzing the renormalization of the low
energy coefficients. The optimal scale allows a description of lattice
simulation results that extend beyond the PCR by quantifying and thus handling
any scheme-dependence. Preliminary results for the nucleon magnetic moment are
also examined, and a consistent optimal regularization scale is obtained. This
indicates the existence of an intrinsic scale corresponding to the finite size
of the source of the pion cloud.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, conferenc
Near-field coupling of gold plasmonic antennas for sub-100 nm magneto-thermal microscopy
The development of spintronic technology with increasingly dense, high-speed,
and complex devices will be accelerated by accessible microscopy techniques
capable of probing magnetic phenomena on picosecond time scales and at deeply
sub-micron length scales. A recently developed time-resolved magneto-thermal
microscope provides a path towards this goal if it is augmented with a
picosecond, nanoscale heat source. We theoretically study adiabatic
nanofocusing and near-field heat induction using conical gold plasmonic
antennas to generate sub-100 nm thermal gradients for time-resolved
magneto-thermal imaging. Finite element calculations of antenna-sample
interactions reveal focused electromagnetic loss profiles that are either
peaked directly under the antenna or are annular, depending on the sample's
conductivity, the antenna's apex radius, and the tip-sample separation. We find
that the thermal gradient is confined to 40 nm to 60 nm full width at half
maximum for realistic ranges of sample conductivity and apex radius. To
mitigate this variation, which is undesirable for microscopy, we investigate
the use of a platinum capping layer on top of the sample as a thermal
transduction layer to produce heat uniformly across different sample materials.
After determining the optimal capping layer thickness, we simulate the
evolution of the thermal gradient in the underlying sample layer, and find that
the temporal width is below 10 ps. These results lay a theoretical foundation
for nanoscale, time-resolved magneto-thermal imaging.Comment: 24 pages including Supporting Information, 6 figures in the main
text, 4 supporting figure
Invited commentary on Stewart and Davis " 'Big data' in mental health research-current status and emerging possibilities"
No abstract available
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