151 research outputs found
Semantic Visual Localization
Robust visual localization under a wide range of viewing conditions is a
fundamental problem in computer vision. Handling the difficult cases of this
problem is not only very challenging but also of high practical relevance,
e.g., in the context of life-long localization for augmented reality or
autonomous robots. In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on a joint
3D geometric and semantic understanding of the world, enabling it to succeed
under conditions where previous approaches failed. Our method leverages a novel
generative model for descriptor learning, trained on semantic scene completion
as an auxiliary task. The resulting 3D descriptors are robust to missing
observations by encoding high-level 3D geometric and semantic information.
Experiments on several challenging large-scale localization datasets
demonstrate reliable localization under extreme viewpoint, illumination, and
geometry changes
High-Temperature Thermal Storage System for Solar Tower Power Plants with Open-Volumetric Air Receiver Simulation and Energy Balancing of a Discretized Model
This paper describes the modeling of a high-temperature storage system for an existing solar tower power plant with open volumetric receiver technology, which uses air as heat transfer medium (HTF). The storage system model has been developed in the simulation environment Matlab/Simulink®. The storage type under investigation is a packed bed thermal energy storage system which has the characteristics of a regenerator. Thermal energy can be stored and discharged as required via the HTF air.
The air mass flow distribution is controlled by valves, and the mass flow by two blowers. The thermal storage operation strategy has a direct and significant impact on the energetic and economic efficiency of the solar tower power plants
High-Temperature Thermal Storage System for Solar Tower Power Plants with Open-Volumetric Air Receiver Simulation and Energy Balancing of a Discretized Model
This paper describes the modeling of a high-temperature storage system for an existing solar tower power plant with open volumetric receiver technology, which uses air as heat transfer medium (HTF). The storage system model has been developed in the simulation environment Matlab/Simulink®. The storage type under investigation is a packed bed thermal energy storage system which has the characteristics of a regenerator. Thermal energy can be stored and discharged as required via the HTF air.
The air mass flow distribution is controlled by valves, and the mass flow by two blowers. The thermal storage operation strategy has a direct and significant impact on the energetic and economic efficiency of the solar tower power plants
CAP-reform and the provision of non-commodity outputs in Brandenburg
This paper presents an attempt to model the response of selected farms to decoupled direct payments and the associated impact on the provision of a defined set of non-commodity outputs (NCO’s) using a combined modelling approach consisting of the AgriPoliS and MODAM models. AgriPoliS focuses on the socio-economic dimension of multifunctionality at the individual farm and regional levels and explicitly models heterogeneous farms (in size, location and efficiency) within a competitive and dynamic environment. The linear-programming model MODAM allows a detailed representation of production processes and their impact on the environmental dimension of multifunctionality at the farm level. We simulate the impact of a uniform area payment and a fully decoupled single farm payment. Our case study region is the district Ostprignitz-Ruppin in Brandenburg. Results show that the decoupling schemes create a trade-off between the NCO’s and that adjustment reactions differ between farms depending on their legal form, size, and production.decoupling, multifunctionality, non-commodity outputs, modelling, simulation, policy analysis, ecological indicators, Agricultural and Food Policy, Land Economics/Use,
Evaluating the Benefits: Quantifying the Effects of TCP Options, QUIC, and CDNs on Throughput
To keep up with increasing demands on quality of experience, assessing and
understanding the performance of network connections is crucial for web service
providers. While different measures, like TCP options, alternative transport
layer protocols like QUIC, or the hosting of services in CDNs, are expected to
improve connection performance, no studies are quantifying such impacts on
connections on the Internet.
This paper introduces an active Internet measurement approach to assess the
impacts of mentioned measures on connection performance. We conduct downloads
from public web servers considering different vantage points, extract
performance indicators like throughput, RTT, and retransmission rate, and
survey speed-ups due to TCP option usage. Further, we compare the performance
of QUIC-based downloads to TCP-based downloads considering different option
configurations.
Next to significant throughput improvements due to TCP option usage, in
particular TCP window scaling, and QUIC, our study shows significantly
increased performance for connections to domains hosted by different giant
CDNs.Comment: Presented at the ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop 2023
(ANRW23
Rusty Clusters? Dusting an IPv6 Research Foundation
The long-running IPv6 Hitlist service is an important foundation for IPv6
measurement studies. It helps to overcome infeasible, complete address space
scans by collecting valuable, unbiased IPv6 address candidates and regularly
testing their responsiveness. However, the Internet itself is a quickly
changing ecosystem that can affect longrunning services, potentially inducing
biases and obscurities into ongoing data collection means. Frequent analyses
but also updates are necessary to enable a valuable service to the community.
In this paper, we show that the existing hitlist is highly impacted by the
Great Firewall of China, and we offer a cleaned view on the development of
responsive addresses. While the accumulated input shows an increasing bias
towards some networks, the cleaned set of responsive addresses is well
distributed and shows a steady increase.
Although it is a best practice to remove aliased prefixes from IPv6 hitlists,
we show that this also removes major content delivery networks. More than 98%
of all IPv6 addresses announced by Fastly were labeled as aliased and
Cloudflare prefixes hosting more than 10M domains were excluded. Depending on
the hitlist usage, e.g., higher layer protocol scans, inclusion of addresses
from these providers can be valuable.
Lastly, we evaluate different new address candidate sources, including target
generation algorithms to improve the coverage of the current IPv6 Hitlist. We
show that a combination of different methodologies is able to identify 5.6M
new, responsive addresses. This accounts for an increase by 174% and combined
with the current IPv6 Hitlist, we identify 8.8M responsive addresses
The COMT p.Val158Met Polymorphism and Cognitive Performance in Adult Development, Healthy Aging and Mild Cognitive Impairment
Background: The impact of genetic polymorphisms on cognition is assumed to increase with
age as losses of brain resources have to be compensated for. We investigate the relation of
catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) p.Val158Met polymorphism and cognitive capacity in
the course of adult development, healthy aging and the development of mild cognitive impairment
(MCI) in two birth cohorts of subjects born between 1930 and 1932 or between 1950
and 1952. Methods: Thorough neuropsychological assessment was conducted in a total of
587 participants across three examination waves between 1993 and 2008. The COMT genotype
was determined as a restriction fragment length polymorphism after PCR amplification
and digestion with Nla III. Results: Significant effects of the COMT p.Val158Met polymorphism
were identified for attention and cognitive flexibility in the younger but not the older cohort.
Conclusion: These results confirm the importance of the COMT p.Val158Met genotype on
tasks assessing attention and cognitive flexibility in midlife but not in healthy aging and the
development of MCI. Our findings suggest that the influence of COMT changes as a function
of age, decreasing from midlife to aging
Application of Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy on Different Battery Circuits
For the operation of a battery pack, the cell state estimation plays a central role. For that, enough information about the current charge condition (SoC, state of charge) and the health status (SoH, state of health) of the individual cells or cell strings must be available. One way to draw out conclusions about the state of charge and health provides the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) [1]. The test cells are thereby stimulated with an alternating current signal, and the resulting voltage signal is detected. These results in cell impedances, which are addicted to the signal frequencies and the respective cell states. This poster shows an experimental platform which uses the EIS to detect asymmetries in SoC and/or SoH on circuited cells. For that, the behavior of the amplitudes and frequencies of the signals should be analyzed, because for the calculation of the precise impedance, these factors are crucial. Thereby the required alternating current and voltage signals are acquired and analyzed separately for each single cell. As cell type lithium iron-phosphate round cells of the size 18650 are used. The investigations are made on a series circuit (Fig.1) made up of three cells and on a parallel circuit made up of two strings, each having two cells in series. It shows that both a series and a parallel connection within the working range the experimental platform impedances of individual cells can be determined. For these cases, differences in state of charge and state of health can be highlighted and assigned to the respective cells
Packed to the Brim: Investigating the Impact of Highly Responsive Prefixes on Internet-wide Measurement Campaigns
Internet-wide scans are an important tool to evaluate the deployment of
services. To enable large-scale application layer scans, a fast, stateless port
scan (e.g., using ZMap) is often performed ahead of time to collect responsive
targets. It is a common expectation that port scans on the entire IPv4 address
space provide a relatively unbiased view as they cover the complete address
space. Previous work, however, has found prefixes where all addresses share
particular properties. In IPv6, aliased prefixes and fully responsive prefixes,
i.e., prefixes where all addresses are responsive, are a well-known phenomenon.
However, there is no such in-depth analysis for prefixes with these
responsiveness patterns in IPv4. This paper delves into the underlying factors
of this phenomenon in the context of IPv4 and evaluates port scans on a total
of 161 ports (142 TCP & 19 UDP ports) from three different vantage points. To
account for packet loss and other scanning artifacts, we propose the notion of
a new category of prefixes, which we call highly responsive prefixes (HRPs).
Our findings show that the share of HRPs can make up 70 % of responsive
addresses on selected ports. Regarding specific ports, we observe that CDNs
contribute to the largest fraction of HRPs on TCP/80 and TCP/443, while TCP
proxies emerge as the primary cause of HRPs on other ports. Our analysis also
reveals that application layer handshakes to targets outside HRPs are,
depending on the chosen service, up to three times more likely to be successful
compared to handshakes with targets located in HRPs. To improve future scanning
campaigns conducted by the research community, we make our study's data
publicly available and provide a tool for detecting HRPs. Furthermore, we
propose an approach for a more efficient, ethical, and sustainable application
layer target selection
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