Utilizing In-Vehicle Computing Devices to Exchange Information During a Traffic Stop

This publication describes techniques directed at utilizing in-vehicle computing devices to facilitate an electronic traffic stop process that enables the electronic exchange of information between a police officer and a vehicle operator. This electronic exchange of information facilitates safer and less-stressful interactions during traffic stops. The information exchanged through this process includes, but is not limited to, copies of the operator’s driver’s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance. By exchanging the information electronically, a police officer can perform their initial investigation without approaching the vehicle on foot

A Scalable Information Theoretic Approach to Distributed Robot Coordination

This paper presents a scalable information theoretic approach to infer the state of an environment by distributively controlling robots equipped with sensors. The robots iteratively estimate the environment state using a recursive Bayesian filter, while continuously moving to improve the quality of the estimate by following the gradient of mutual information. Both the filter and the controller use a novel algorithm for approximating the robots' joint measurement probabilities, which combines consensus (for decentralization) and sampling (for scalability). The approximations are shown to approach the true joint measurement probabilities as the size of the consensus rounds grows or as the network becomes complete. The resulting gradient controller runs in constant time with respect to the number of robots, and linear time with respect to the number of sensor measurements and environment discretization cells, while traditional mutual information methods are exponential in all of these quantities. Furthermore, the controller is proven to be convergent between consensus rounds and, under certain conditions, is locally optimal. The complete distributed inference and coordination algorithm is demonstrated in experiments with five quad-rotor flying robots and simulations with 100 robots.This work is sponsored by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force contract number FA8721-05-C-0002. The opinions, interpretations, recommendations, and conclusions are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government. This work is also supported in part by ARO grant number W911NF-05-1-0219, ONR grant number N00014-09-1-1051, NSF grant number EFRI-0735953, ARL grant number W911NF-08-2-0004, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the European Commission, and the Boeing Company

3-D reconstruction of anterior mantle-field techniques in Hodgkin's disease survivors: doses to cardiac structures

BACKGROUND: The long-term dose-effect relationship for specific cardiac structures in mediastinal radiotherapy has rarely been investigated. As part of an interdisciplinary project, the 3-D dose distribution within the heart was reconstructed in all long-term Hodgkin's disease survivors (n = 55) treated with mediastinal radiotherapy between 1978 and 1985. For dose reconstruction, original techniques were transferred to the CT data sets of appropriate test patients, in whom left (LV) and right ventricle (RV), left (LA) and right atrium (RA) as well as right (RCA), left anterior descending (LAD) and left circumflex (LCX) coronary arteries were contoured. Dose-volume histograms (DVHs) were generated for these heart structures and results compared between techniques. RESULTS: Predominant technique was an anterior mantle field (cobalt-60). 26 patients (47%) were treated with anterior mantle field alone (MF), 18 (33%) with anterior mantle field and monoaxial, bisegmental rotation boost (MF+ROT), 7 (13%) with anterior mantle field and dorsal boost (MF+DORS) and 4 (7%) with other techniques. Mean ± SD total mediastinal doses for MF+ROT (41.7 ± 3.5 Gy) and for MF+DORS (42.7 ± 7.4) were significantly higher than for MF (36.7 ± 5.2 Gy). DVH analysis documented relative overdosage to right heart structures with MF (median maximal dose to RV 129%, to RCA 127%) which was siginificantly reduced to 117% and 112%, respectively, in MF+ROT. Absolute doses in right heart structures, however, did not differ between techniques. Absolute LA doses were significantly higher in MF+ROT patients than in MF patients where large parts of LA were blocked. Median maximal doses for all techniques ranged between 48 and 52 Gy (RV), 44 and 46 Gy (LV), 47 and 49 Gy (RA), 38 and 45 Gy (LA), 46 and 50 Gy (RCA), 39 and 44 Gy (LAD) and 34 and 42 Gy (LCX). CONCLUSION: In patients irradiated with anterior mantle-field techniques, high doses to anterior heart portions were partly compensated by boost treatment from non-anterior angles. As the threshold doses for coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathy, pericarditis and valvular changes are assumed to be 30 to 40 Gy, cardiac toxicity must be anticipated in these patients. Thus, dose distributions in individual subjects should be correlated to the corresponding cardiovascular findings in these long-term survivors, e. g. by cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging

Eyes in the Sky: Decentralized Control for the Deployment of Robotic Camera Networks

This paper presents a decentralized control strategy for positioning and orienting multiple robotic cameras to collectively monitor an environment. The cameras may have various degrees of mobility from six degrees of freedom, to one degree of freedom. The control strategy is proven to locally minimize a novel metric representing information loss over the environment. It can accommodate groups of cameras with heterogeneous degrees of mobility (e.g., some that only translate and some that only rotate), and is adaptive to robotic cameras being added or deleted from the group, and to changing environmental conditions. The robotic cameras share information for their controllers over a wireless network using a specially designed multihop networking algorithm. The control strategy is demonstrated in repeated experiments with three flying quadrotor robots indoors, and with five flying quadrotor robots outdoors. Simulation results for more complex scenarios are also presented.United States. Army Research Office. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. Scalable (Grant number W911NF-05-1-0219)United States. Office of Naval Research. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. Smarts (Grant number N000140911051)National Science Foundation (U.S.). (Grant number EFRI-0735953)Lincoln LaboratoryBoeing CompanyUnited States. Dept. of the Air Force (Contract FA8721-05-C-0002

The importance of highly-accurate and consistent geodetic products for reliable Earth system monitoring

The Bureau of Products and Standards (BPS) supports IAG’s Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) in its goal to provide highly-accurate, consistent and long-term stable geodetic products needed to monitor, map, and understand changes in the Earth’s shape, rotation and gravity field. A key objective of the BPS is to keep track and to foster homogenization of adopted geodetic standards and conventions across all IAG components for the generation of geodetic products. This involves the interaction with IAG and other entities involved in standards and conventions, such as the IERS Conventions Center, the IAU Commission A3 "Fundamental Standards", ISO/TC 211 and the Working Group "Data Sharing and Development of Geodetic Standards" of the UN-GGIM Subcommittee on Geodesy. This contribution presents the role of the BPS, and it highlights some of the recent activities, which are focused on the updating of the BPS inventory of standards and conventions used for the generation of IAG products, the revision of the IERS Conventions, mainly related to Chapter 1 "General definitions and numerical standards" and the compilation of user-friendly product descriptions published at the GGOS website. The BPS also contributes to the generation of GGOS films to make other disciplines and society aware of Geodesy and its beneficial products

Sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibition in patients hospitalized for acute decompensated heart failure:rationale for and design of the EMPULSE trial

Aims Treatment with sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors improves outcomes in patients with chronic heart failure (HF) with reduced ejection fraction. There is limited experience with the in-hospital initiation of SGLT2 inhibitors in patients with acute HF (AHF) with or without diabetes. EMPULSE is designed to assess the clinical benefit and safety of the SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin compared with placebo in patients hospitalized with AHF. Methods EMPULSE is a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled multinational trial comparing the in-hospital initiation of empagliflozin (10 mg once daily) with placebo. Approximately 500 patients admitted for AHF with dyspnoea, signs of fluid overload, and elevated natriuretic peptides will be randomized 1:1 stratified to HF status (de-novo and decompensated chronic HF) to either empagliflozin or placebo at approximately 165 sites across North America, Europe and Asia. Patients will be enrolled regardless of ejection fraction and diabetes status and will be randomized during hospitalization and after stabilization (between 24 h and 5 days after admission), with treatment continued up to 90 days after initiation. The primary outcome is clinical benefit at 90 days, consisting of a composite of all-cause death, HF events, and >= 5 point change from baseline in Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire total symptom score (KCCQ-TSS), assessed using a 'win-ratio' approach. Secondary outcomes include assessments of safety, change in KCCQ-TSS from baseline to 90 days and change in natriuretic peptides from baseline to 30 days. Conclusion The EMPULSE trial will evaluate the clinical benefit and safety of empagliflozin in patients hospitalized for AHF

The GGOS Bureau of Products and Standards: Description and Promotion of Geodetic Products

The Bureau of Products and Standards (BPS) is a key component of the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG). It supports GGOS in its goal to provide consistent geodetic products needed to monitor, map, and understand changes in the Earth’s shape, rotation, and gravity field. In addition to the operational structure, the Committees “Earth System Modeling” and “Essential Geodetic Variables” as well as the Working Group “Towards a consistent set of parameters for the definition of a new Geodetic Reference System (GRS)” are associated to the BPS. This contribution presents the structure and role of the BPS. It highlights some of the recent activities, which are focused on the classification of geodetic products and on the generation of user-friendly product descriptions to support the establishment of a comprehensive Internet portal for Geodesy under the responsibility of GGOS. The GGOS website www.ggos.org serves as an “entrance door” and information platform to geodetic data and products, and should become an essential tool to make these data and products easier findable and accessible. With this, GGOS is contributing to address different user needs (e.g., geodesists, geophysicists, other geoscientists and further customers) and to make other disciplines and society aware of Geodesy and the importance of its products

Inflammation-induced effector CD4+ T cell interstitial migration is alpha-v integrin dependent

Leukocytes must traverse inflamed tissues to effectively control local infection. Although motility in dense tissues appears to be integrin-independent actin-myosin based, during inflammation changes to the extracellular matrix (ECM) may necessitate distinct motility requirements. Indeed, we found that T cell interstitial motility was critically dependent on RGD-binding integrins in the inflamed dermis. Inflammation-induced deposition of fibronectin was functionally linked to increased αv integrin expression on effector CD4+ T cells. Using intravital multi-photon imaging, we found that CD4+ T cell motility was dependent on αv expression. Selective αv blockade or knockdown arrested TH1 motility in the inflamed tissue and attenuated local effector function. These data show a context-dependent specificity of lymphocyte movement in inflamed tissues that is essential for protective immunity