Real-time Monocular Object SLAM

We present a real-time object-based SLAM system that leverages the largest object database to date. Our approach comprises two main components: 1) a monocular SLAM algorithm that exploits object rigidity constraints to improve the map and find its real scale, and 2) a novel object recognition algorithm based on bags of binary words, which provides live detections with a database of 500 3D objects. The two components work together and benefit each other: the SLAM algorithm accumulates information from the observations of the objects, anchors object features to especial map landmarks and sets constrains on the optimization. At the same time, objects partially or fully located within the map are used as a prior to guide the recognition algorithm, achieving higher recall. We evaluate our proposal on five real environments showing improvements on the accuracy of the map and efficiency with respect to other state-of-the-art techniques

Counselor Formation and Gatekeeping Best Practices

Counselor educators and supervisors contribute to students’ development while determining fitness for the profession. How we intervene can either help students work through internal conflicts that prevent them from embracing professional skills and dispositions or undermine that process. Facilitators will interactively engage participants in the application of a developmental framework that maximizes students’ dissonance in service to their counselor identity development process

Democratic Responsibility in the Americas: A shared mandate

La Carta Democrática Interamericana contiene el compromiso individual de los países de las Américas con la construcción de democracias sólidas y estables. El presente estudio busca dilucidar si de dicho instrumento puede extraerse la existencia de una obligación jurídica común a los Estados Miembros de la Organización de Estados Americanos en construir colectiva y cooperativamente tal cometido. Considerando la entidad del Derecho a la Democracia y trasladando la doctrina de la Responsabilidad de Proteger al contexto de la Democracia Prescriptiva Americana, teorizaremos sobre su aplicabilidad y su situación a la luz del Principio de No Intervención cuando un Estado americano no quiere o no puede cumplir con su obligación democrática.The Democratic Inter-American Charter stipulates the individual commitment of American States in the construction of solid and stable democracies. This study seeks to elucidate if a legal obligation to the collective and cooperative construction of that goal, common to all Member States of the Organization of American States, can be extracted from said instrument. Considering the entity of the Right to Democracy and applying the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect in the context of the Prescriptive American Democracy we will inquire on its applicability and its situation in light of the Principle of Non Intervention when an American State is unable or unwilling to fulfill its democratic obligation

Coherent delocalization: Views of entanglement in different scenarios

The concept of entanglement was originally introduced to explain correlations existing between two spatially separated systems, that cannot be described using classical ideas. Interestingly, in recent years, it has been shown that similar correlations can be observed when considering different degrees of freedom of a single system, even a classical one. Surprisingly, it has also been suggested that entanglement might be playing a relevant role in certain biological processes, such as the functioning of pigment-proteins that constitute light-harvesting complexes of photosynthetic bacteria. The aim of this work is to show that the presence of entanglement in all of these different scenarios should not be unexpected, once it is realized that the very same mathematical structure can describe all of them. We show this by considering three different, realistic cases in which the only condition for entanglement to exist is that a single excitation is coherently delocalized between the different subsystems that compose the system of interest

Influence de la matière organique et inorganiquede l'eau sur l'élimination des pesticides par nanofiltration

Ce travail explore les performances de deux types de membranes de nanofiltration (Desal DK et NF200) dans l'élimination dans les eaux de certains pesticides (l'atrazine et son métabolite la déséthylatrazine (DEA), la simazine, la cyanazine, l'isoproturon et le diuron) et évalue l'influence de la présence de matière organique ou inorganique dans la matrice d'eau sur l'efficacité de ce traitement.Des eaux synthétiques, composées à partir d'eau distillée à laquelle a été ajoutée de la matière organique (acides humiques) ou inorganique (CaCl2 ou CaSO4), ont été traitées sur un pilote de nanofiltration durant 96 heures. Les taux rétention en pesticides et ceux de leur adsorption sur les membranes ont été calculés et comparés aux résultats obtenus sur une matrice d'eau distillée pure. Une influence du type de membrane et de la présence de la matière humique sur le taux d'abattement de certains pesticides a été constatée. L'influence de la matière inorganique est pratiquement insignifiante.The intensive use of pesticides in agriculture has resulted in the contamination of groundwater and surface waters. The removal of these organic pollutants by the usual methods such as adsorption by activated carbon (in powdered or granular form) or oxidation by ozone have some disadvantages. Recently, the removal of organic pollutants by membrane retention (reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration and nanofiltration) has become increasingly popular and due to its low cost, nanofiltration has become an interesting option.This study examined the efficiency of two different nanofiltration membranes (Desal DK and NF200) in the removal of some pesticides (atrazine and its metabolite desethylatrazine (DEA), simazine, cyanazine, isoproturon and diuron) from water and, in addition, investigated the influence that organic and inorganic matter may have on the efficiency of this removal. Synthetic waters were made from distilled water and organic matter (humic acids) or inorganic matter (CaCl2 or CaSO4) was added, as well as 1 µg/l of each pesticide. The samples were then filtered by a nanofiltration pilot for 96 hours. Samples of the feed, permeate and the retentate were taken after 4, 24, 48, 72 and 96 h. The samples were replaced with equivalent volumes of the original solution in the feed tank. The different samples were analysed by an on-line SPE / HPLC system. The different concentrations obtained allowed the determination of the proportion of the pesticides that adsorbed to the membrane.The removal efficiency of pesticides from pure distilled water differed according to the membrane. For example, the Desal DK membrane eliminated more than 90% of all the pesticides (with the exception of diuron). In contrast, the NF200 membrane, eliminated more than 75% of all the pesticides (with the exception of diuron). The removal efficiency of Diuron was the lowest by both the membranes: 70 % by Desal DK and 45 % by NF200. The adsorption efficiency of the pesticides was similar for both membranes (between 30 and 40%). In pure water, pesticide removal is a function of both the specific properties of each pesticide (solubility, molecular mass, Stokes diameter, equivalent molar diameter, calculated equivalent diameter and polarity) and the physical characteristics of the membrane (molecular weight cut-off and current load).The influence of inorganic matter on pesticide removal efficiency changed according to the type of membrane. For example, we noted an improvement in removal efficiency with the NF200 membrane from low removal with CaCl2 to high removal with CaSO4 for all pesticides examined including diuron. In contrast, for the Desal DK membrane, very little change was noted (a slight decrease in the removal efficiency of DEA and simazine with CaCl2). Adsorption by the membranes remained stable for all the pesticides tested on the two types of membrane. The improvement in the removal of pesticides by the NF200 membrane was probably linked to pores being blocked by ions at high concentrations. It could be concluded from these results that elimination of pesticides is quantitatively linked to the physical characteristics of the membranes and that inorganic matter only has an effect with wide-pore membranes (NF200 membrane) and, furthermore, it has no influence on the adsorption of the pesticides on the membranes.For water containing organic matter, we have noted an improvement in the removal of certain pesticides with the NF200 membrane when compared to distilled water (except diuron). With the Desal DK membrane, we observed a slight decrease in the removal of DEA, simazine and isoproturon, and a substantial drop for diuron (20 %) with no change for cyanazine and atrazine. Adsorption of the pesticides on the membranes remained unchanged with the NF200 membrane but increased by about 10% on the Desal DK membrane for all molecules. Pesticides, notably triazines, adsorb easily on organic matter by physiosorption (weak links) and by chemisorption (ionic links) to form macromolecules. The steric congestion and the density of these pseudo-complexes is high, which facilitated the elimination of certain pesticides with the (wide-pore) NF200 membrane by accentuating the effects of steric exclusion and electrostsatic repulsion and decreasing adsorption. For the Desal DK membrane, the increased adsorption of the pesticides on the membrane generated a more significant transition of these molecules in the direction of the permeate. This had a negative influence on the removal of some pesticides, depending on their size; the largest molecules underwent the least change. Diuron behaved differently from the other pesticides examined. This molecule did not bind to humic acids and its removal rate did not change with a wide-pore (NF200) membrane. However a greater adsorption of organic matter by the narrower-pore (Desal DK) membrane favored diuron adsorption and, consequently, its diffusion into the permeate. The effect of organic matter and, more specifically, of humic acids on the elimination of pesticides depends not only on the structure of the molecules, but also on the cut-off threshold of the membrane.The two main mechanisms that govern the process of pesticide elimination by NF are repulsion (steric and electrostatic) by the membrane and adsorption on the membrane. This latter phenomenon must be minimized, to reduce the elimination of pesticides by fostering their transition in the direction of the permeate. In addition, removal of the pesticides by NF was favoured by the high-molecular weight organic matter fraction (i.e., humic acids). The influence of the inorganic matter (CaCl2 and CaSO4), for its part, is greater with the wide-pore membrane