619 research outputs found
High resolution dynamical mapping of social interactions with active RFID
In this paper we present an experimental framework to gather data on
face-to-face social interactions between individuals, with a high spatial and
temporal resolution. We use active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
devices that assess contacts with one another by exchanging low-power radio
packets. When individuals wear the beacons as a badge, a persistent radio
contact between the RFID devices can be used as a proxy for a social
interaction between individuals. We present the results of a pilot study
recently performed during a conference, and a subsequent preliminary data
analysis, that provides an assessment of our method and highlights its
versatility and applicability in many areas concerned with human dynamics
MLP: a MATLAB toolbox for rapid and reliable auditory threshold estimation
In this paper, we present MLP, a MATLAB toolbox enabling auditory
thresholds estimation via the adaptive Maximum Likelihood procedure proposed
by David Green (1990, 1993). This adaptive procedure is particularly appealing for
those psychologists that need to estimate thresholds with a good degree of accuracy
and in a short time. Together with a description of the toolbox, the current text
provides an introduction to the threshold estimation theory and a theoretical
explanation of the maximum likelihood adaptive procedure. MLP comes with a
graphical interface and it is provided with several built-in, classic psychoacoustics
experiments ready to use at a mouse click
Relaxed 2-D Principal Component Analysis by Norm for Face Recognition
A relaxed two dimensional principal component analysis (R2DPCA) approach is
proposed for face recognition. Different to the 2DPCA, 2DPCA- and G2DPCA,
the R2DPCA utilizes the label information (if known) of training samples to
calculate a relaxation vector and presents a weight to each subset of training
data. A new relaxed scatter matrix is defined and the computed projection axes
are able to increase the accuracy of face recognition. The optimal -norms
are selected in a reasonable range. Numerical experiments on practical face
databased indicate that the R2DPCA has high generalization ability and can
achieve a higher recognition rate than state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure
The uniting of Europe and the foundation of EU studies: revisiting the neofunctionalism of Ernst B. Haas
This article suggests that the neofunctionalist theoretical legacy left by Ernst B. Haas is somewhat richer and more prescient than many contemporary discussants allow. The article develops an argument for routine and detailed re-reading of the corpus of neofunctionalist work (and that of Haas in particular), not only to disabuse contemporary students and scholars of the normally static and stylized reading that discussion of the theory provokes, but also to suggest that the conceptual repertoire of neofunctionalism is able to speak directly to current EU studies and comparative regionalism. Neofunctionalism is situated in its social scientific context before the theory's supposed erroneous reliance on the concept of 'spillover' is discussed critically. A case is then made for viewing Haas's neofunctionalism as a dynamic theory that not only corresponded to established social scientific norms, but did so in ways that were consistent with disciplinary openness and pluralism
Sociomateriality Implications of Software As a Service Adoption on IT-workersâ Roles and Changes in Organizational Routines of IT Systems Support
This paper aims to deepen our understanding on how sociomateriality practices influence IT
workersâ roles and skill set requirements and changes to the organizational routines of IT systems support,
when an organization migrates an on-premise IT system to a software as a service (SaaS) model. This
conceptual paper is part of an ongoing study investigating organizations that migrated on-premise IT email
systems to SaaS business models, such as Google Apps for Education (GAE) and Microsoft Office 365
systems, in New Zealand tertiary institutions. We present initial findings from interpretive case studies. The
findings are, firstly, technological artifacts are entangled in sociomaterial practices, which change the way
humans respond to the performative aspects of the organizational routines. Human and material agencies are
interwoven in ways that reinforce or change existing routines. Secondly, materiality, virtual realm and spirit
of the technology provide elementary levels at which human and material agencies entangle. Lastly, the
elementary levels at which human and material entangle depends on the capabilities or skills set of an
individual
Simulation of an SEIR infectious disease model on the dynamic contact network of conference attendees
The spread of infectious diseases crucially depends on the pattern of
contacts among individuals. Knowledge of these patterns is thus essential to
inform models and computational efforts. Few empirical studies are however
available that provide estimates of the number and duration of contacts among
social groups. Moreover, their space and time resolution are limited, so that
data is not explicit at the person-to-person level, and the dynamical aspect of
the contacts is disregarded. Here, we want to assess the role of data-driven
dynamic contact patterns among individuals, and in particular of their temporal
aspects, in shaping the spread of a simulated epidemic in the population.
We consider high resolution data of face-to-face interactions between the
attendees of a conference, obtained from the deployment of an infrastructure
based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) devices that assess mutual
face-to-face proximity. The spread of epidemics along these interactions is
simulated through an SEIR model, using both the dynamical network of contacts
defined by the collected data, and two aggregated versions of such network, in
order to assess the role of the data temporal aspects.
We show that, on the timescales considered, an aggregated network taking into
account the daily duration of contacts is a good approximation to the full
resolution network, whereas a homogeneous representation which retains only the
topology of the contact network fails in reproducing the size of the epidemic.
These results have important implications in understanding the level of
detail needed to correctly inform computational models for the study and
management of real epidemics
Bag-of-Colors for Biomedical Document Image Classification
The number of biomedical publications has increased noticeably in the last 30 years. Clinicians and medical researchers regularly have unmet information needs but require more time for searching than is usually available to find publications relevant to a clinical situation. The techniques described in this article are used to classify images from the biomedical open access literature into categories, which can potentially reduce the search time. Only the visual information of the images is used to classify images based on a benchmark database of ImageCLEF 2011 created for the task of image classification and image retrieval. We evaluate particularly the importance of color in addition to the frequently used texture and grey level features.
Results show that bagsâofâcolors in combination with the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) provide an image representation allowing to improve the classification quality. Accuracy improved from 69.75% of the best system in ImageCLEF 2011 using visual information, only, to 72.5% of the system described in this paper. The results highlight the importance of color for the classification of biomedical images
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