The impact of interactive manipulation on the recognition of objects

A new application for VR has emerged: product development, in which several stakeholders (from engineers to end users) use the same VR for development and communicate purposes. Various characteristics among these stakeholders vary considerably, which imposes potential constraints to the VR. The current paper discusses the influence of three types of exploration of objects (i.e., none, passive, active) on one of these characteristics: the ability to form mental representations or visuo-spatial ability (VSA). Through an experiment we found that all users benefit from exploring objects. Moreover, people with low VSA (e.g., end users) benefit from an interactive exploration of objects opposed to people with a medium or high VSA (e.g. engineers), who are not sensitive for the type of exploration. Hence, for VR environments in which multiple stakeholders participate (e.g. for product development), differences among their cognitive abilities (e.g., VSA) have to be taken into account to enable an efficient usage of VR

Human-Centered Computer Vision

Contains fulltext : 241512.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)Symposium on The Art and Science of Pattern Recognitio

Three Dimensional Fast Exact Euclidean Distance (3D-FEED) Maps

In image and video analysis, distance maps are frequently used. They provide the (Euclidean) distance (ED) of background pixels to the nearest object pixel. Recently, the Fast Exact Euclidean Distance (FEED) transformation was launched. In this paper, we present the three dimensional (3D) version of FEED. 3D-FEED is compared with four other methods for a wide range of 3D test images. 3D-FEED proved to be twice as fast as the fastest algorithm available. Moreover, it provides true exact EDs, where other algorithms only approximate the ED. This unique algorithm makes the difference, especially there where time and precision are of importance

User-centered digital preservation of multimedia

Everything expressed by humans in whatever form, arouses emotions in every one, who witnesses that expression. Those emotions are dependent on the witness and vary over time. For instance, an expression like "I'm now going to smoke a cigar in my office" uttered today brings about other emotions than 10 years ago. To really preserve (digital multimedia) expressions, the different kinds of emotions it arouses have to be preserved

Incremental Distance Transforms (IDT)

A new generic scheme for incremental implementations of distance transforms (DT) is presented: Incremental Distance Transforms (IDT). This scheme is applied on the cityblock, Chamfer, and three recent exact Euclidean DT (E2DT). A benchmark shows that for all five DT, the incremental implementation results in a significant speedup: 3.4×−10×. However, significant differences (i.e., up to 12.5×) among the DT remain present. The FEED transform, one of the recent E2DT, even showed to be faster than both city-block and Chamfer DT. So, through a very efficient incremental processing scheme for DT, a relief is found for E2DT’s computational burden

Assessing the waste heat recovery potential of liquid organic hydrogen carrier chains

Proper thermal management can improve the efficiency of hydrogen storage chains based on liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC). The energy and exergy efficiencies of 24 LOHC chains, which are differentiated by two hydrogen sources (SEL: hydrogen from electrolyzer and SINDU: industrial by-product), three hydrogen consumers (CPEMFC: proton exchange membrane fuel cell, CSOFC: solid oxide fuel cell, and CINDU: industrial consumer), and four LOHC pairs are calculated based on thermodynamic modeling. Possible strategies for the heat integration between the heat sources (including hydrogenation heat, heat generated by hydrogen consumer, and the high-temperature LOHC fluids) and the heat sinks (including LOHC preheating, hydrogen preheating, dehydrogenation, and external heating purposes) are designed for these chains. In the four selected LOHC pairs, dibenzyltoluene (DBT) is found to be the most favorable LOHC pair for the implementation of WHR strategies, mainly because of low heat demand for preheating (8.9% of the stored hydrogen energy) and a high dehydrogenation rate. The WHR strategies significantly improve the energy efficiency of LOHC chains by up to 21.7% points for the chains with CINDU and 40.8% points for chains with CSOFC or CPEMFC, which makes LOHC chains more efficient than traditional compressed or liquid hydrogen chains in several scenarios, i.e., the DBT chain with CPEMFC have the highest energy efficiency (70.4% for SEL/69.5% for SINDU), while the DBT chain with SINDU and CSOFC has the highest exergy efficiency (60.6%). For the remaining combinations of the remaining hydrogen sources and consumers, the compressed hydrogen chains are the most efficient

Cyclosporin in atopic dermatitis: A multicentre placebo-controlled study

The efficacy of cyclosporin (Sandimmun®) given in a daily dose of 5 mg/kg for 6 weeks in severe atopic dermatitis was confirmed in this double-blind, placebo-controlled, short-term study. Of the 46 patients included in the study, 23 were randomized to receive cyclosporin and 23 to receive placebo. Four of the 23 patients (17%) on cyclosporin, and 14 of the 23 patients (61%) who received placebo, discontinued the trial because of inefficacy. All patients who discontinued the trial were assessed following the principle the principle of ‘intention to treat’. Compared with the baseline, the mean scores for disease severity [6-area, total body severity assessment (TBSA)] improved by 55%, and the mean scores for extent of disease [rule-of-nines area assessment (RoNAA)] improved by 40%, in patients treated with cyclosporin. Nine of the patients who received cyclosporin and completed the study (n=14) had an individual reduction of disease severity (TBSA) of 75% or more, and in three patients this reduction was nearly 100%. In the placebo group, a mean worsening of disease severity (4%) and of extent of the disease (25%), compared with the baseline, was observed al week 6. Patients' and investigators' mean scores for the overall efficacy were similar, and showed a statistically significant difference in favour of cyclosporin. Two patients on cyclosporin developed hypertension during therapy, and one of these withdrew from the study. At the end of the trial, no statistically significant differences in the systolic or diastolic blood pressures were observed between the two groups. In the cyclosporin group, the increases in the values of serum creatinine and bilirubin at week 6, compared with the respective values at the baseline, were statistically significantly different from those in the placebo group, but all values normalized in the post-treatment period. Cyclosporin can be a safe and very effective treatment in episodes of severe atopic dermatitis, provided that the recommended guidelines for its administration are strictly observed