Car make and model recognition under limited lighting conditions at night

Car make and model recognition (CMMR) has become an important part of intelligent transport systems. Information provided by CMMR can be utilized when license plate numbers cannot be identified or fake number plates are used. CMMR can also be used when a certain model of a vehicle is required to be automatically identified by cameras. The majority of existing CMMR methods are designed to be used only in daytime when most of the car features can be easily seen. Few methods have been developed to cope with limited lighting conditions at night where many vehicle features cannot be detected. The aim of this work was to identify car make and model at night by using available rear view features. This paper presents a one-class classifier ensemble designed to identify a particular car model of interest from other models. The combination of salient geographical and shape features of taillights and license plates from the rear view is extracted and used in the recognition process. The majority vote from support vector machine, decision tree, and k-nearest neighbors is applied to verify a target model in the classification process. The experiments on 421 car makes and models captured under limited lighting conditions at night show the classification accuracy rate at about 93 %

Supplementary Material for: Effect of Fludrocortisone on Intradialytic Hypotension: An Open-Label, Randomized, Crossover Study

Introduction: Intradialytic hypotension (IDH) is an important complication during chronic hemodialysis due to its adverse cardiovascular and hemodialysis outcomes. Case reports have demonstrated that administration of fludrocortisone before undergoing hemodialysis might increase intradialytic blood pressure. This study is a randomized crossover study aiming to evaluate the intradialytic hemodynamic effects of fludrocortisone. Material and Methods: A randomized, controlled two-period crossover trial was conducted at Lampang Hospital in stable chronic hemodialysis patients who experienced IDH >30% in their sessions during the past 3 months. All participants have randomly received a single dose of 0.2-mg fludrocortisone 30 min before each hemodialysis session, or had no treatment for 4 weeks. After a 2-week washout period, the participants were then switched to the other treatment for 4 weeks. The primary outcome was the mean lowest intradialytic mean arterial pressure (MAP) during the hemodialysis session. Results: A total of 17 patients were recruited with a mean age of 61.7 ± 14.8 years. By analysis of crossover design, the mean lowest intradialytic MAP was not different between receiving fludrocortisone or with no treatment (76.1 ± 12.5 vs. 73.9 ± 11.5 mm Hg, p for treatment effect = 0.331, p for period effect = 0.855, p for sequence effect = 0.870). There was no difference in the incidence of IDH between the two groups (34.4% in fludrocortisone vs. 42.7% in no treatment, p = 0.137). However, in diabetic patients and patients with residual kidney function, the incidence of IDH was significantly lower when receiving fludrocortisone (30.8 vs. 52.6%, p p Conclusions: In chronic hemodialysis patients who had IDH, fludrocortisone administration did not improve intradialytic hemodynamics and did not decrease the incidence of IDH

Optimisation of a sorption-enhanced chemical looping steam methane reforming process

An intensified hydrogen production steam reforming process named ‘Sorption-Enhanced Chemical Looping Steam Methane Reforming’ (SE-CL-SMR) was studied. Aspen Plus was used to carry out a thermodynamic investigation into the influence of various operating conditions on hydrogen production and process thermal efficiency. The steam to carbon molar ratio (S/C), the CaO to carbon molar ratio (CaO/C), the metal oxide to carbon molar ratio (MeO/C), the metal oxide composition (NiO:CuO), and the oxidising agent species were all shown to influence the process performance. The main findings were that; (1) the introduction of CaO reduces the potential for coke formation with predicted zero coke formation for CaO/C ratios > 0.4; (2) increasing amounts of metal oxide (MeO/C) and steam (S/C) enhance the hydrogen production yield and purity; (3) due to its involvement in an exothermic reaction, the presence of CuO allows for the reforming reactor to operate as an adiabatic reactor with an operating temperature within the range of 600 °C–700 °C; (4) an increase in the NiO:CuO ratio leads to an increase in methane conversion. With the operating conditions of S/C = 3, CaO/C = 1, MeO/C = 1, NiO:CuO = 0.9 and air as the oxidising agent, a hydrogen purity as high as 98% was predicted for the SE-CL-SMR process, along with the lowest observed CO2 production rate. Under the same conditions and using pinch analysis, the thermodynamic model prediction of the thermal process efficiency is reported as ca. 86%. This is significantly higher than the reported efficiency of 79% for the ‘Sorption-Enhanced Steam Methane Reforming’ (SE-SMR) process, predicted using similar thermodynamic models

Pollution and acne: is there a link?

Jean Krutmann,1 Dominique Moyal,2 Wei Liu,3 Sanjiv Kandahari,4 Geun-Soo Lee,5 Noppakun Nopadon,6 Leihong Flora Xiang,7 Sophie Seité2 1IUF – Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, Düsseldorf, Germany; 2La Roche Posay Dermatological Laboratories, Asnières, France; 3Department of Dermatology, The General Hospital of Air Force, PLA, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 4Dr. Kandhari’s Skin & Dental Clinic, New Delhi, India; 5Drs. Woo and Hann Skin Center, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea; 6Division of Dermatology, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; 7Department of Dermatology, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China Abstract: In recent years, the critical role that inflammation may play in the development and progression of acne has become increasingly recognized. The prevalence of acne is similar between Asian and Caucasian women, but Asian women have a higher prevalence of inflammatory acne. They also report their symptoms exacerbate during periods of high air pollution. The objective of this study was to review the current evidence that links air pollution to worsening of acne symptoms. Firstly, a group of five Asian and three European scientists with expertise in Dermatology reviewed the current literature and described current acne treatment practices in their countries. During this activity, they identified the need for further epidemiological and clinical research. Secondly, additional studies ensued which provided evidence that acne symptoms might exacerbate in regions of high ambient air pollution. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that people with acne should protect the natural barrier function of their skin with emollients and ultraviolet (UV)A/UVB protection. Keywords: pollution, acne, Asia, epidemiology, pathophysiolog