Load Repartition for Congestion Control in Multimedia Wireless Sensor Networks with Multipath Routing

Wireless sensor networks hold a great potential in the deployment of several applications of a paramount importance in our daily life. Video sensors are able to improve a number of these applications where new approaches adapted to both wireless sensor networks and video transport specific characteristics are required. The aim of this work is to provide the necessary bandwidth and to alleviate the congestion problem to video streaming. In this paper, we investigate various load repartition strategies for congestion control mechanism on top of a multipath routing feature. Simulations are performed in order to get insight into the performances of our proposals

MaXM: Towards Multilingual Visual Question Answering

Visual Question Answering (VQA) has been primarily studied through the lens of the English language. Yet, tackling VQA in other languages in the same manner would require a considerable amount of resources. In this paper, we propose scalable solutions to multilingual visual question answering (mVQA), on both data and modeling fronts. We first propose a translation-based framework to mVQA data generation that requires much less human annotation efforts than the conventional approach of directly collection questions and answers. Then, we apply our framework to the multilingual captions in the Crossmodal-3600 dataset and develop an efficient annotation protocol to create MaXM, a test-only VQA benchmark in 7 diverse languages. Finally, we develop a simple, lightweight, and effective approach as well as benchmark state-of-the-art English and multilingual VQA models. We hope that our benchmark encourages further research on mVQA.Comment: EMNLP 2023 (Findings). https://github.com/google-research-datasets/max

PaLI-X: On Scaling up a Multilingual Vision and Language Model

We present the training recipe and results of scaling up PaLI-X, a multilingual vision and language model, both in terms of size of the components and the breadth of its training task mixture. Our model achieves new levels of performance on a wide-range of varied and complex tasks, including multiple image-based captioning and question-answering tasks, image-based document understanding and few-shot (in-context) learning, as well as object detection, video question answering, and video captioning. PaLI-X advances the state-of-the-art on most vision-and-language benchmarks considered (25+ of them). Finally, we observe emerging capabilities, such as complex counting and multilingual object detection, tasks that are not explicitly in the training mix

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

Intraband Mid-Infrared Transitions in Ag 2 Se Nanocrystals: Potential and Limitations for Hgfree Low Cost Photodetection

International audienceInfrared photodetection based on colloidal nanoparticles is a promising path toward low cost devices. However, mid-infrared absorption relies on interband transition in heavy metal based materials, which is a major flaw for the development toward mass market. In the quest of infrared active colloidal materials, we here investigate Ag2Se nanoparticles presenting intraband transition between 3 and 15 µm. With photoemission and infrared spectroscopy, we are able to propose an electronic spectrum of the material in absolute energy scale. We also investigate the origin of doping and demonstrate that it is the result of cation excess under Ag+ form. We demonstrate photoconduction into this material including under resonant excitation of the intraband transition. However, performances are currently quite weak with (i) a slow photoresponse (several seconds), and (ii) some electrochemical instabilities at room temperature

Large-scale time-lapse microscopy of Oct4 expression in human embryonic stem cell colonies

Identification and quantification of the characteristics of stem cell preparations is critical for understanding stem cell biology and for the development and manufacturing of stem cell based therapies. We have developed image analysis and visualization software that allows effective use of time-lapse microscopy to provide spatial and dynamic information from large numbers of human embryonic stem cell colonies. To achieve statistically relevant sampling, we examined >680 colonies from 3 different preparations of cells over 5 days each, generating a total experimental dataset of 0.9 terabyte (TB). The 0.5 Giga-pixel images at each time point were represented by multi-resolution pyramids and visualized using the Deep Zoom Javascript library extended to support viewing Giga-pixel images over time and extracting data on individual colonies. We present a methodology that enables quantification of variations in nominally-identical preparations and between colonies, correlation of colony characteristics with Oct4 expression, and identification of rare events

Intraband Mid-Infrared Transitions in Ag₂Se Nanocrystals: Potential and Limitations for Hg-Free Low-Cost Photodetection

Infrared photodetection based on colloidal nanoparticles is a promising path toward low-cost devices. However, mid-infrared absorption relies on interband transitions in heavy metal-based materials, which is a major flaw for the development toward mass market. In the quest of mercury-free infrared active colloidal materials, we here investigate Ag₂Se nanoparticles presenting intraband transition between 3 and 15 μm. With photoemission and infrared spectroscopy, we are able to propose an electronic spectrum of the material in the absolute energy scale. We also investigate the origin of doping and demonstrate that it results from a cation excess under the Ag⁺ form. We demonstrate photoconduction into this material under resonant excitation of the intraband transition. However, performances are currently quite weak with (i) a slow photoresponse (several seconds) and (ii) some electrochemical instabilities at room temperature

Les géographes et le développement

Entre 2005 et 2008. sous la conduite de Christian Bouquet et Hélène Velasco-Graciet, trois colloques ont été organisés à la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme d'Aquitaine par le laboratoire ADES-CNRS pour essayer de clarifier la position de la géographie française par rapport aux ambiguïtés de la discipline face à la colonisation, à la tropicalité, et au développement. Après avoir tenté de savoir si la géographie coloniale était colonialiste (L'Empire des géographes), puis si la géographie tropicale était fille de la précédente et avait encore un sens (Les Tropiques des géographes), un ensemble de chercheurs ont affronte la question du « développement ». considéré comme le dernier terrain pour une géographie hors des murs occidentaux, pour confirmer ou infirmer qu'il s'agissait du dernier refuge possible pour ceux qui travaillent dans les Suds. Même si les hypothèses de départ ont été traitées avec d'infinies précautions car le débat n'est pas encore débarrassé des passions anciennes la filiation géographie coloniale / géographie tropicale / géographie du développement n'a pas été démontrée. Comme souvent, plus que des réponses, c'est une série de questions qui surgissent à la lecture des articles. En invitant les auteurs à s'interroger sur le lien qu'ils établissent entre leurs discours sur le développement et leurs actions concrètes dans ce domaine, les organisateurs savaient que le fossé entre les scientifiques et les experts ne serait pas comblé. Il reste donc à savoir pourquoi. En abordant dans son appel à communications le thème des Postcolonial Studies, le colloque a précisé des interrogations qu'il faudra continuer d'explorer. Enfin, en donnant la parole à plusieurs chercheurs originaires des anciennes colonies, cette rencontre a ouvert la porte à une décolonisation des esprits qui pourrait bientôt déboucher sur une géographie (enfin) décentrée. Cette quête épistémologique, qui a donné ici beaucoup de place au terrain, devra donc se poursuivre par le questionnement constant des principes et des pratiques des uns et des autres, en insistant sans doute davantage sur la géographie de l'Autre que sur une géographie de l'Ailleurs