An evaluation of pixel-based methods for the detection of floating objects on the sea surface

Ship-based automatic detection of small floating objects on an agitated sea surface remains a hard problem. Our main concern is the detection of floating mines, which proved a real threat to shipping in confined waterways during the first Gulf War, but applications include salvaging, search-and-rescue operation, perimeter, or harbour defense. Detection in infrared (IR) is challenging because a rough sea is seen as a dynamic background of moving objects with size order, shape, and temperature similar to those of the floating mine. In this paper we have applied a selection of background subtraction algorithms to the problem, and we show that the recent algorithms such as ViBe and behaviour subtraction, which take into account spatial and temporal correlations within the dynamic scene, significantly outperformthe more conventional parametric techniques, with only little prior assumptions about the physical properties of the scene

Isotropic non-white matter partial volume effects in constrained spherical deconvolution

Diffusion-weighted (DW) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive imaging method, which can be used to investigate neural tracts in the white matter (WM) of the brain. Significant partial volume effects (PVEs) are present in the DVV signal due to relatively large voxel sizes. These PVEs can be caused by both non-WM tissue, such as gray matter (GM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and by multiple non-parallel WM fiber populations. High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) methods have been developed to correctly characterize complex WM fiber configurations, but to date, many of the HARDI methods do not account for non-WM PVEs. In this work, we investigated the isotropic PVEs caused by non-WM tissue in WM voxels on fiber orientations extracted with constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD). Experiments were performed on simulated and real DW-MRI data. In particular, simulations were performed to demonstrate the effects of varying the diffusion weightings, signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), fiber configurations, and tissue fractions. Our results show that the presence of non-WM tissue signal causes a decrease in the precision of the detected fiber orientations and an increase in the detection of false peaks in CSD. We estimated 35-50% of WM voxels to be affected by non-WM PVEs. For HARDI sequences, which typically have a relatively high degree of diffusion weighting, these adverse effects are most pronounced in voxels with GM PVEs. The non-WM PVEs become severe with 50% GM volume for maximum spherical harmonics orders of 8 and below, and already with 25% GM volume for higher orders. In addition, a low diffusion weighting or SNR increases the effects. The non-WM PVEs may cause problems in connectomics, where reliable fiber tracking at the WM G M interface is especially important. We suggest acquiring data with high diffusion-weighting 2500-3000 s/mm(2), reasonable SNR (similar to 30) and using lower SH orders in GM contaminated regions to minimize the non-WM PVEs in CSD

ANALISIS KAPASITAS PENAMPANG SUNGAI TINGKULU DI KECAMATAN TIKALA KOTA MANADO

Sungai Tingkulu merupakan salah satu sungai di Kota Manado yang pernah meluap dan membanjiri beberapa daerah yang dilewatinya yang mengakibatkan kerugian bagi warga yang tinggal disekitar sungai maupun pengguna jalan raya. Oleh karena itu dalam mengantisipasi banjir yang kemungkinan akan terjadi kelak, dibutuhkan data mengenai kapasitas penampang sungai Tingkulu.Analisis dilakukan dengan mencari frekuensi hujan dengan metode Log Pearson III. Data hujan diambil dari pos hujan Tikala-Sawangan. Data curah hujan yang digunakan adalah data curah hujan harian maksimum dari tahun 2008 s/d 2017. Setelah didapat besar hujan, pemodelan hujan aliran pada program komputer HEC-HMS akan menggunakan metode HSS Soil Conservation Services, dan untuk kehilangan air dengan SCS Curve Number (CN). Untuk aliran dasar (baseflow) akan menggunakan metode recession. Dilakukan kalibrasi parameter HSS SCS sebelum melakukan simulasi debit banjir dengan menggunakan program komputer HEC-HMS. Dalam kalibrasi ini, parameter yang akan dikalibrasi adalah lag time, curve number, recession constant, baseflow dan ratio to peak. Untuk batasan setiap parameter disesuaikan dengan nilai standar pada program komputer HEC-HMS. Hasil kalibrasi menunjukan nilai Nash Sutchliffe Efficiency yang baik yaitu 0,911. Kemudian dilakukan analisis debit banjir dengan parameter terkalibrasi menggunakan program komputer HEC-HMS. Setelah itu didapat debit puncak hasil simulasi setiap kala ulang dan kemudian dimasukkan dalam program komputer HEC-RAS  untuk simulasi tinggi muka air pada penampang yang telah diukur. Hasil simulasi menunjukkan bahwa semua penampang sungai Tingkulu yang ditinjau, sudah tidak mampu menampung debit banjir yang terjadi untuk kala ulang 5 tahun, 10 tahun, 25 tahun, 50 tahun, dan 100 tahun. Kata kunci : Banjir, Kapasitas Penampang Sungai, Tinggi Muka Air, HEC-HMS, HEC-RAS

Multi-resolution analysis for region of interest extraction in thermographic, nondestructive evaluation

Infrared Non-Destructive Testing (INDT) is known as an effective and rapid method for nondestructive inspection. It can detect a broad range of near-surface structuring flaws in metallic and composite components. Those flaws are modeled as a smooth contour centered at peaks of stored thermal energy, termed Regions of Interest (ROI). Dedicated methodologies must detect the presence of those ROIs. In this paper, we present a methodology for ROI extraction in INDT tasks. The methodology deals with the difficulties due to the non-uniform heating. The non-uniform heating affects low spatial/frequencies and hinders the detection of relevant points in the image. In this paper, a methodology for ROI extraction in INDT using multi-resolution analysis is proposed, which is robust to ROI low contrast and non-uniform heating. The former methodology includes local correlation, Gaussian scale analysis and local edge detection. In this methodology local correlation between image and Gaussian window provides interest points related to ROIs. We use a Gaussian window because thermal behavior is well modeled by Gaussian smooth contours. Also, the Gaussian scale is used to analyze details in the image using multi-resolution analysis avoiding low contrast, non-uniform heating and selection of the Gaussian window size. Finally, local edge detection is used to provide a good estimation of the boundaries in the ROI. Thus, we provide a methodology for ROI extraction based on multi-resolution analysis that is better or equal compared with the other dedicate algorithms proposed in the state of art

Opioid prescribing in out-of-hours primary care in Flanders and the Netherlands:A retrospective cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Increased opioid prescribing has raised concern, as the benefits of pain relief not always outweigh the risks. Acute and chronic pain is often treated in a primary care out-of-hours (OOH) setting. This setting may be a driver of opioid use but the extent to which opioids are prescribed OOH is unknown. We aimed to investigate weak and strong opioid prescribing at OOH primary care services (PCS) in Flanders (Northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) and the Netherlands between 2015 and 2019. METHODS: We performed a retrospective cross sectional study using data from routine electronic health records of OOH-PCSs in Flanders and the Netherlands (2015–2019). Our primary outcome was the opioid prescribing rate per 1000 OOH-contacts per year, in total and for strong (morphine, hydromorphone, oxycodone, oxycodone and naloxone, fentanyl, tapentadol, and buprenorphine and weak opioids (codeine combinations and tramadol and combinations) and type of opioids separately. RESULTS: Opioids were prescriped in approximately 2.5% of OOH-contacts in both Flanders and the Netherlands. In Flanders, OOH opioid prescribing went from 2.4% in 2015 to 2.1% in 2017 and then increased to 2.3% in 2019. In the Netherlands, opioid prescribing increased from 1.9% of OOH-contacts in 2015 to 2.4% in 2017 and slightly decreased thereafter to 2.1% of OOH-contacts. In 2019, in Flanders, strong opioids were prescribed in 8% of the OOH-contacts with an opioid prescription. In the Netherlands a strong opioid was prescribed in 57% of these OOH-contacts. Two thirds of strong opioids prescriptions in Flanders OOH were issued for patients over 75, in the Netherlands one third was prescribed to this age group. CONCLUSION: We observed large differences in strong opioid prescribing at OOH-PCSs between Flanders and the Netherlands that are likely to be caused by differences in accessibility of secondary care, and possibly existing opioid prescribing habits. Measures to ensure judicious and evidence-based opioid prescribing need to be tailored to the organisation of the healthcare system

Selling Your Self in the United States

In the contemporary U.S. workplace, corporate personhood is increasingly becoming the metaphor structuring how job seekers are supposed to present themselves as employable. If one takes oneself to be a business, one should also take oneself to be an entity that requires a brand. Some ethnographic questions arise when job seekers try to embody corporate personhood. How does one transform oneself into a brand? What are the obstacles that a person encounters adopting a form of corporate personhood? How does one foster relationships or networks that will lead to a job, not just a circulation of one’s brand identity? Based on research in Indiana and northern California, this article explores the conundrums of marketing oneself as a desirable employee on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, and so on. I address the reasons why the increased use of social media contributes to popularizing a notion of self-branding. I also discuss the quandaries people face when using social media to create this self-brand. In sum, this article investigates the obstacles people face when they try to embody a form of corporate personhood across media, a form of self putatively based on the individual, but one that has been transformed into a corporate form that people can not easily inhabit

POIMs: positional oligomer importance matrices—understanding support vector machine-based signal detectors

Motivation: At the heart of many important bioinformatics problems, such as gene finding and function prediction, is the classification of biological sequences. Frequently the most accurate classifiers are obtained by training support vector machines (SVMs) with complex sequence kernels. However, a cumbersome shortcoming of SVMs is that their learned decision rules are very hard to understand for humans and cannot easily be related to biological facts

Differential Phagocytosis of White versus Opaque Candida albicans by Drosophila and Mouse Phagocytes

The human fungal pathogen Candida albicans resides asymptomatically in the gut of most healthy people but causes serious invasive diseases in immunocompromised patients. Many C. albicans strains have the ability to stochastically switch between distinct white and opaque cell types, but it is not known with certainty what role this switching plays in the physiology of the organism. Here, we report a previously undescribed difference between white and opaque cells, namely their interaction with host phagocytic cells. We show that both Drosophila hemocyte-derived S2 cells and mouse macrophage-derived RAW264.7 cells preferentially phagocytose white cells over opaque cells. This difference is seen both in the overall percentage of cultured cells that phagocytose white versus opaque C. albicans and in the average number of C. albicans taken up by each phagocytic cell. We conclude that susceptibility to phagocytosis by cells of the innate immune system is an important distinction between white and opaque C. albicans, and propose that one role of switching from the prevalent white form into the rarer opaque form may be to allow C. albicans to escape phagocytosis

Acute kidney disease and renal recovery : consensus report of the Acute Disease Quality Initiative (ADQI) 16 Workgroup

Consensus definitions have been reached for both acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) and these definitions are now routinely used in research and clinical practice. The KDIGO guideline defines AKI as an abrupt decrease in kidney function occurring over 7 days or less, whereas CKD is defined by the persistence of kidney disease for a period of > 90 days. AKI and CKD are increasingly recognized as related entities and in some instances probably represent a continuum of the disease process. For patients in whom pathophysiologic processes are ongoing, the term acute kidney disease (AKD) has been proposed to define the course of disease after AKI; however, definitions of AKD and strategies for the management of patients with AKD are not currently available. In this consensus statement, the Acute Disease Quality Initiative (ADQI) proposes definitions, staging criteria for AKD, and strategies for the management of affected patients. We also make recommendations for areas of future research, which aim to improve understanding of the underlying processes and improve outcomes for patients with AKD

Mentalidades de francos y bizantinos en 1204: una aproximación

The object of the present essay is to open up new approaches to the topic of the fourth crusade and the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. Apart from the discussion on the problematic recent application of the concepts we are going to address, I have relied on methodological tools for the history of mentalities, attempting to shed new light on the interpretation of the actions of both Franks and Byzantines. The survey on the marvellous in the accounts of that period reveals to us anew the capital of Byzantium, characterized and accompanied by the mythical element. The key of my endeavor is the interaction of the average man’s frame of mind with the stimuli surrounding him. In doing so, we will be able to comprehend the individual’s demeanor, the human action that determines the historical process. Furthermore, we shall scrutinize a bifurcated Christian cosmos, with similar structure of thought and contrary perspectives.El ensayo presente tiene como objetivo brindar propuestas novedosas para el tema de la cuarta cruzada y la toma de Constantinopla por los latinos en 1204. Tras polemizar el empleo insatisfactorio existente de los conceptos de los cuales echaremos mano, el autor basándose en herramientas de la historia de las mentalidades trata de arrojar nueva luz sobre la interpretación de la acción de los francos y de los bizantinos. El estudio de lo maravilloso en las fuentes de aquella época nos descubre nuevos aspectos de la capital de Bizancio, con su carácter legendario que la acompaña. Clave principal de toda esta empresa es la interacción del molde conceptual del hombre medio con los incentivos que lo rodean. Si seguimos tal procedimiento, podremos entender el comportamiento individual, la acción humana que determina el devenir histórico. También, podremos atisbar un mundo cristiano dividido, con una estructura de pensamiento parecida y perspectivas contrarias