Change it Now: eBay v. MercExchange-Business Method Patent Litigation Reaches Critical Juncture Concerning Remedies for Infringement

Visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) as field has been researched for ten years, but with recent advances in mobile performance visual SLAM is entering the consumer market in a completely new way. A visual SLAM system will however be sensitive to non cautious use that may result in severe motion, occlusion or poor surroundings in terms of visual features that will cause the system to temporarily fail. The procedure of recovering from such a fail is called relocalization. Together with two similar problems localization, to find your position in an existing SLAM session, and loop closing, the online reparation and perfection of the map in an active SLAM session, these can be grouped as visual location recognition (VLR). This thesis presents novel results by combining the scalability of FabMap and the precision of 13th Lab's tracking yielding high-precision VLR, +/- 10 cm, while maintaining above 99 % precision and 60 % recall for sessions containing thousands of images. Everything functional purely on a normal mobile phone. The applications of VLR are many. Indoors, where GPS is not functioning, VLR can still provide positional information and navigate you through big complexes like airports and museums. Outdoors, VLR can improve the precision of GPS tenfold yielding a new level of navigational experience. Virtual and augmented reality applications are other areas that benefit from improved positioning and localization

Coordinating Summer Undergraduate Research Programs for Expanding Diversity and Impact: Opportunities and Challenges

During summers 2015-2017, we operated a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site, “Biomedical Engineering Community of Undergraduate Research Scholars for Cancer” (BME CUReS Cancer) at The University of Texas at Austin. The directors of the BME CUReS Cancer program have sought to multiply the impact of our Site by embedding students supported by other summer research experience grants, which we refer to here as Affiliated Scholars. In this paper, we will discuss the opportunities and challenges we encountered in coordinating these summer undergraduate research programs. CUReS Scholars were matched with a summer project from among a rich variety of research endeavors within strategic areas identified by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Each Scholar was part of a research team with both faculty and graduate student mentors, a mentoring system that is effective and widely employed. Scholars also benefited from: a research skills boot camp their first week; weekly educational seminars with fellow summer scholars led by the program directors; shared on-campus housing; and social events. Affiliated Scholars were supported by a variety of other funding mechanisms with a variety of research areas. By grouping these scholars into the CUReS structure with a shared scientific theme of engineering approaches to cancer research, regardless of their funding source, we sought to facilitate their identification with a larger, diverse student cohort. Criteria across the programs introduced challenges to establishing a shared community, such as subsets of Affiliated Scholars entering the summer program with existing social relationships. We will discuss specific challenges and opportunities we observed and provide recommendations for blending a primary REU with Affiliated Scholars based on our experiences.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Health locus of control of children with a chronic health condition

The purpose of this study was to determine the health locus of control among a group of pediatric patients (n = 15) at Cooper University Hospital between the ages of 10 and 17 (mean age = 13.93) with chronic health conditions. The Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, form C, was used to determine whether children with a chronic health illness had an internal health locus of control (health was self-controlled) or if their health was determined by external factors, such as chance or fate or by their doctors or other people. Mean scores showed the highest health locus of control among the doctor and other people subscale as having the most control over the children\u27s health. In addition, a positive correlation was found among the two external health locus of control subscales, chance and fate and doctors and other people. The needs for further research on this subject are discussed

Bilingual (Spanish-English) Marketing as a Catalyst for Cultural Awareness: The Effect on Parents in the Toy Market

Due to globalization, multinational companies are increasingly cognizant of the language used in marketing materials. The growing Hispanic population in the U.S. and the increasing desire to learn and consume English in Spain makes marketers think twice about how they use language. This research is multi-method, using in-depth interviews and an experiment to learn more about how languages are used in advertisements to target monolingual and bilingual consumers within a country, and how consumers respond to monolingual and bilinguals advertisements. I started by interviewing two marketing managers with experience in bilingual advertising in various media to better understand their decisions to use English, Spanish, or some combination of the two languages in advertisements. Afterward, I conducted 12 interviews with parents (bilingual, monolingual English, monolingual Spanish) in the U.S. and Spain to examine their different cultural values, and how these cultural values influenced their reactions to bilingual toy advertisements. Finally, I examined the effects of bilingual versus monolingual toy advertisements on 275 parents (bilingual, monolingual English, monolingual Spanish) of children aged 6-10 in the U.S. and Spain. This study demonstrated that bilingual and monolingual advertisements were equally effective in creating an overall positive attitude toward the ad/company/products, perceiving the company in the ad as international, encouraging parents to raise more culturally open children, and increasing support of foreign language education. In addition, the cross cultural nature of this study revealed that U.S. English-speaking parents are less culturally open and less interested in supporting foreign language education than their Bilingual and Spanish dominant peers in the U.S. and Spain

Brain-Blood Partition Coefficient and Cerebral Blood Flow in Canines Using Calibrated Short TR Recovery (CaSTRR) Correction Method.

The brain-blood partition coefficient (BBPC) is necessary for quantifying cerebral blood flow (CBF) when using tracer based techniques like arterial spin labeling (ASL). A recent improvement to traditional MRI measurements of BBPC, called calibrated short TR recovery (CaSTRR), has demonstrated a significant reduction in acquisition time for BBPC maps in mice. In this study CaSTRR is applied to a cohort of healthy canines (n = 17, age = 5.0 - 8.0 years) using a protocol suited for application in humans at 3T. The imaging protocol included CaSTRR for BBPC maps, pseudo-continuous ASL for CBF maps, and high resolution anatomical images. The standard CaSTRR method of normalizing BBPC to gadolinium-doped deuterium oxide phantoms was also compared to normalization using hematocrit (Hct) as a proxy value for blood water content. The results show that CaSTRR is able to produce high quality BBPC maps with a 4 min acquisition time. The BBPC maps demonstrate significantly higher BBPC in gray matter (0.83 ± 0.05 mL/g) than in white matter (0.78 ± 0.04 mL/g, p = 0.006). Maps of CBF acquired with pCASL demonstrate a negative correlation between gray matter perfusion and age (p = 0.003). Voxel-wise correction for BBPC is also shown to improve contrast to noise ratio between gray and white matter in CBF maps. A novel aspect of the study was to show that that BBPC measurements can be calculated based on the known Hct of the blood sample placed in scanner. We found a strong correlation (R 2 = 0.81 in gray matter, R 2 = 0.59 in white matter) established between BBPC maps normalized to the doped phantoms and BBPC maps normalized using Hct. This obviates the need for doped water phantoms which simplifies both the acquisition protocol and the post-processing methods. Together this suggests that CaSTRR represents a feasible, rapid method to account for BBPC variability when quantifying CBF. As canines have been used widely for aging and Alzheimer's disease studies, the CaSTRR method established in the animals may further improve CBF measurements and advance our understanding of cerebrovascular changes in aging and neurodegeneration

Your Place in Space: Classroom Experiment on Spatial Location Theory

The authors detail an urban economics experiment that is easily run in the classroom. The experiment has a flexible design that allows the instructor to explore how congestion, zoning, public transportation, and taxation levels determine the bid-rent function. Heterogeneous agents in the experiment compete for land use utilizing a simple auction mechanism. Using the data that is collected, a bid-rent function is derived, and the experimental treatment is altered over the course of three sessions to uncover core concepts in urban economics. Moreover, this provides a tangible experience that can be used to help undergraduates relate to urban issues such as the steep rent gradient found around many larger colleges and universities.

Corporate Cybersmear: Employers File John Doe Defamation Lawsuits Seeking the Identity of Anonymous Employee Internet Posters

Communications systems are now wide open and fully accessible, with no limits in range, scope or geography. Targeted audiences are accessible with pinpoint accuracy. Messages reach millions of readers with one click. There is a chat room for everyone. Most importantly, there is no limit on content. Therefore, employees can register their dissatisfaction by posting a message in a chat room. Moreover, the identity of the posting employee is not easily discoverable due to anonymous and pseudonymous communications capabilities. The nature of these online messages is qualitatively different from real-world communications. By way of example, newspapers have a responsibility regarding the veracity of the content that they print. Sponsors of online bulletin board services do not bear the same level of responsibility. In cyberspace chatrooms, everyone is a publisher; there are no editors. Online messages reflect this, too. The culture of online communications is vastly different from traditional discourse, in that the former tolerates and even encourages the use of hyperbole, crudeness, acronyms, misspellings, and misuse of language. It is a fast and loose atmosphere, emphasizing speed rather than accuracy. This is the current environment in which anonymous employees post negative statements about their employers. The questions raised in this article relate to management\u27s response, in the form of John Doe lawsuits, to this recent spate of negative Internet postings by employees. The emergence of the Internet as the medium of choice for such communications raises a myriad of questions that are new to courts. Questions arise regarding the extent to which employers may control the speech of current employees or former employees and, as a corollary to this, the extent to which such speech is protected, as well as whether this attempted speech control violates public policy. Such suits have just begun to reach the courts, and their resolution will form the contours of employee freedom of speech in the Internet age. John Doe suits implicate constitutional and common law issues ranging from the First Amendment to privacy, defamation, breach of employment agreement, and trade secret laws. Such suits involve statutes as well, including whistle-blower protections and Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation ( SLAPP ) laws. Negative postings by employees also correlate to general economic conditions. During the current two year downturn in the financial markets, for example, there has been a tremendous increase in such postings. Employers have just begun to reply to these allegedly defamatory postings--in the form of John Doe lawsuits. Because it is difficult to discern who is speaking in cyberspace, plaintiffs often file a lawsuit listing John Doe as the defendant. Plaintiffs then invoke the power of a subpoena to compel the Internet Service Provider ( ISP ) or Bulletin Board Service ( BBS ) on which the posting was made to identify the poster, thereby unmasking these anonymous and pseudonymous individuals. It is worth noting that plaintiffs have an alternative course of action, in that they could investigate the postings and discover for themselves who is posting the messages. It is not clear whether any more effort or expense is involved in this strategy than immediately invoking the assistance--and the power--of the judicial system. But it is fair to say that involving the judicial system at this earliest stage is a coercive, and effective, strategy

Corporate Cybersmear: Employers File John Doe Defamation Lawsuits Seeking the Identity of Anonymous Employee Internet Posters

Communications systems are now wide open and fully accessible, with no limits in range, scope or geography. Targeted audiences are accessible with pinpoint accuracy. Messages reach millions of readers with one click. There is a chat room for everyone. Most importantly, there is no limit on content. Therefore, employees can register their dissatisfaction by posting a message in a chat room. Moreover, the identity of the posting employee is not easily discoverable due to anonymous and pseudonymous communications capabilities. The nature of these online messages is qualitatively different from real-world communications. By way of example, newspapers have a responsibility regarding the veracity of the content that they print. Sponsors of online bulletin board services do not bear the same level of responsibility. In cyberspace chatrooms, everyone is a publisher; there are no editors. Online messages reflect this, too. The culture of online communications is vastly different from traditional discourse, in that the former tolerates and even encourages the use of hyperbole, crudeness, acronyms, misspellings, and misuse of language. It is a fast and loose atmosphere, emphasizing speed rather than accuracy. This is the current environment in which anonymous employees post negative statements about their employers. The questions raised in this article relate to management\u27s response, in the form of John Doe lawsuits, to this recent spate of negative Internet postings by employees. The emergence of the Internet as the medium of choice for such communications raises a myriad of questions that are new to courts. Questions arise regarding the extent to which employers may control the speech of current employees or former employees and, as a corollary to this, the extent to which such speech is protected, as well as whether this attempted speech control violates public policy. Such suits have just begun to reach the courts, and their resolution will form the contours of employee freedom of speech in the Internet age. John Doe suits implicate constitutional and common law issues ranging from the First Amendment to privacy, defamation, breach of employment agreement, and trade secret laws. Such suits involve statutes as well, including whistle-blower protections and Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation ( SLAPP ) laws. Negative postings by employees also correlate to general economic conditions. During the current two year downturn in the financial markets, for example, there has been a tremendous increase in such postings. Employers have just begun to reply to these allegedly defamatory postings--in the form of John Doe lawsuits. Because it is difficult to discern who is speaking in cyberspace, plaintiffs often file a lawsuit listing John Doe as the defendant. Plaintiffs then invoke the power of a subpoena to compel the Internet Service Provider ( ISP ) or Bulletin Board Service ( BBS ) on which the posting was made to identify the poster, thereby unmasking these anonymous and pseudonymous individuals. It is worth noting that plaintiffs have an alternative course of action, in that they could investigate the postings and discover for themselves who is posting the messages. It is not clear whether any more effort or expense is involved in this strategy than immediately invoking the assistance--and the power--of the judicial system. But it is fair to say that involving the judicial system at this earliest stage is a coercive, and effective, strategy

Pengaruh profesionalisme dan kualitas audit terhadap tingkat materialitas dalam pemeriksaan laporan keuangan (studi empiris pada staff akuntan KAP di Solo dan Yogyakarta)

Laporan keuangan berisi informasi yang diperlukan sebagai sarana pengambilan keputusan bagi para stakeholder perusahaan. Untuk dapat menghasilkan laporan keuangan yang relavan dan dapat diandalkan auditor dapat menggunakan kemahiran profesionalnya dengan cermat dan seksama, karena kemahiran profesional seorang auditor mempengaruhi ketepatan opini yang diberikannya. Untuk dapat mencapai mutu dan kualitas yang baik tentunya hal yang dipertimbangkan salah satunya adalah tingkat materialitas. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji pengaruh profesionalisme dan kualitas audit terhadap tingkat materialitas. Populasi dalam sampel ini adalah auditor yang bekerja di Kantor Akuntan Publik di wilayah Solo dan Yogyakarta. Pengambilan data menggunakan kuesioner dengan teknik convinience sampling. Sampel yang diambil sebanyak 25 auditor tetapi yang kembalihanya 15. Metode statistik untuk meguji hipotesis menggunakan regresi linier dengan bantuan SPSS versi 17. Dari hasil penelitian membuktikan bahwa hipotesis ke 1 profesionalisme auditor (X1) berpengaruh positif signifikan terhadap tingkat materialitas (Y) dalam pemeriksaan laporan keuangan. Kemudian hipotesis ke 2 kualitas audit (X2) tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap tingkat materialitas (Y) dalam pemeriksaan laporan keuangan