A Low Power Architectural Framework for Automated Surveillance System with Low Bit Rate Transmission

Abstract The changed security scenario of the modern time has necessitated increased and sophisticated vigilance of the countries' borders. The technological challenges involved in accomplishing such feat of automated security system are many and require research at the components-and-algorithms as well as the architectural levels.  This paper proposes an architectural framework for automated video surveillance comprising a network of sensors and closed circuit television cameras as well as proposing algorithmic/component research of software and hardware for the core functioning of the framework, such as: communication protocols, object detection, data-integration, object identification, object tracking, video compression, threat identification, and alarm generation. In this paper, we are addressing some general topological and routing features that would be adopted in our system. There are two types of data with regard to data communication – video stream and object detection. The network is broken down into several disjoint, almost equal zones. A zone have one or more one cluster. A zone manager is chosen among the cluster heads depending on their relative residual energies. There are several levels of control that could be implemented with this arrangement with localized decision made, to get distributed effect at all levels. A cell tracks each target in its zone. If the target moves out of the range of a cell, the cell manager will send the target description to estimated next cell. The next cell starts tracking the target. If the estimated cell is wrongly chosen, corrections will be made by the cluster heads to get the new target-tracking. We also propose bitrate reduction algorithms to accommodate the limited bandwidth. One of the main feature of this paper is introducing a Low-Power Low-Bit rate video compression algorithm to accommodate the low power requirements at sensor nodes, and the low bit rate requirement for the communication protocol. We proposed two algorithms the ALBR and LPHSME. ALBR is addressing low bit rate required for sensors network with limited bandwidth which achieves a reduction in Average number of bits per Iframe by approximately 60% in case of low motion video sequences and 53% in case of fast motion video sequences . LPHSME addresses low power requirements of multi sensor network that has limited power batteries. The performance of the proposed LPHSME algorithm versus full search and three step search indicates  a reduction in motion estimation time by approximately 89% in case of low motion video sequences (e.g., Claire ) and 84% in case of fast motion video sequences. The reduced complexity of  LPHSME results in low power requirements

miRNA-36 inhibits KSHV, EBV, HSV-2 infection of cells via stifling expression of interferon induced transmembrane protein 1 (IFITM1)

Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is etiologically associated with all forms of Kaposi’s sarcoma worldwide. Little is currently known about the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in KSHV entry. We recently demonstrated that KSHV induces a plethora of host cell miRNAs during the early stages of infection. In this study, we show the ability of host cell novel miR-36 to specifically inhibit KSHV-induced expression of interferon induced transmembrane protein 1 (IFITM1) to limit virus infection of cells. Transfecting cells with miR-36 mimic specifically lowered IFITM1 expression and thereby significantly dampening KSHV infection. In contrast, inhibition of miR-36 using miR-36 inhibitor had the direct opposite effect on KSHV infection of cells, allowing enhanced viral infection of cells. The effect of miR- 36 on KSHV infection of cells was at a post-binding stage of virus entry. The highlight of this work was in deciphering a common theme in the ability of miR-36 to regulate infection of closely related DNA viruses: KSHV, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and herpes simplexvirus-2 (HSV-2). Taken together, we report for the first time the ability of host cell miRNA to regulate internalization of KSHV, EBV, and HSV-2 in hematopoietic and endothelial cells

Hydrocarbon Identification Through Acoustic Impedance and Elastic Impedance Cross-Correlation Using Constrained Sparse Spike Inversion Method

Among other interpretation methods used in oil and gas industries, seismic inversion has become a method widely practiced to get better understanding on the subsurface condition. By combining seismic and well log data and applying certain workflow, information regarding hydrocarbon distribution presented in the form of impedance section. Using constrained sparse spike inversion, a generated low frequency model was use as input for inversion process to obtain acoustic impedance and elastic impedance variation based on seismic and low frequency data from well log data. To enhance the difference between sand and shale presence, the gamma ray distribution between acoustic impedance (AI) and elastic impedance (EI) generated from the inversion process are cross-correlated. Based on the cross plot, gas sand bodies detected in the area was mapped

Role of Inflammatory Markers in the Differential Diagnosis of Bleeding in Early Pregnancy

Background: Defective placentation as a cause of many pregnancy-related conditions including abortion and ectopic pregnancy will involve abnormal inflammatory response. Assessment of different inflammatory markers as neutrophillymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and lymphocyte-monocyte ratio (LMR) may aid in the differentiation of causes of bleeding in early pregnancy. Objective: To verify the ability of NLR, PLR, and LMR to differentiate cases of miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy from normal pregnancy in patients presenting with bleeding in the first trimester. Patients and Method: A prospective observational study of 150 patients presenting with bleeding in the first trimester were enrolled in the study. After history taking, clinical examination, ultrasound, quantitative beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (B-hCG), or laparoscopy, patients were allocated into three groups: miscarriage group (60 patients), ectopic pregnancy group (30 patients), and control group (60 patients) who continued their pregnancy beyond 20 weeks. For all patients NLR, PLR, and LMR were calculated. Results: NLR was significantly higher and LMR was significantly lower in ectopic pregnancy group when compared to the miscarriage group or the normal pregnancy group. A cutoff level of > 2.7 for NLR and < 3.7 for LMR has a sensitivity of 80% and 70%, and a specificity of 60 % and 80 %, respectively. Conclusion: Utilization of both NLR and LMR will aid in the differentiation of cases of ectopic pregnancy from normal pregnancy or miscarriage with an acceptable sensitivity and specificity

EFFECTIVENESS OF E-BOOK IN IMPROVING OMANI KINDERGARTEN KIDS COMPREHENSION AND MOTIVATION TOWARDS STORIES READING

Nowadays technology became an affective and worthy tool for learning and acquisition of knowledge. Although e-books have many facilities and tools which motivate children to read and develop their reading skills, most of the early childhood institutions in Oman are not using e-books for teaching children. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the difference between using e-books and printed books to motivate kindergarteners to read and enhancing their understanding of the text. This study compares between experimental group which use e-books and control group which use printed books. Findings show that there are no significant differences between the two groups with regard to motivation. However, children who read from paper books got better scores in the comprehension test. The study concludes with some future recommendations.  Article visualizations

ActiveStereoNet: End-to-End Self-Supervised Learning for Active Stereo Systems

In this paper we present ActiveStereoNet, the first deep learning solution for active stereo systems. Due to the lack of ground truth, our method is fully self-supervised, yet it produces precise depth with a subpixel precision of $1/30th$ of a pixel; it does not suffer from the common over-smoothing issues; it preserves the edges; and it explicitly handles occlusions. We introduce a novel reconstruction loss that is more robust to noise and texture-less patches, and is invariant to illumination changes. The proposed loss is optimized using a window-based cost aggregation with an adaptive support weight scheme. This cost aggregation is edge-preserving and smooths the loss function, which is key to allow the network to reach compelling results. Finally we show how the task of predicting invalid regions, such as occlusions, can be trained end-to-end without ground-truth. This component is crucial to reduce blur and particularly improves predictions along depth discontinuities. Extensive quantitatively and qualitatively evaluations on real and synthetic data demonstrate state of the art results in many challenging scenes.Comment: Accepted by ECCV2018, Oral Presentation, Main paper + Supplementary Material

Copper(II)-oxaloyldihydrazone complexes: Physico-chemical studies: Energy band gap and inhibition evaluation of free oxaloyldihydrazones toward the corrosion of copper metal in acidic medium

AbstractA series of oxaloyldihydrazone ligands were prepared essentially by the conventional condensation reaction between oxaloyldihydrazide and different aldehydes e.g., salicylaldehyde, 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde, 2-hydroxyacetophenone and 2-methoxybenzaldehyde in 1:2M ratio. The synthesized compounds were purified to give bis(salicylaldehyde)oxaloyldihydrazone (L1), bis(2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde)oxaloyldihydrazone (L2), bis(2-hydroxyacetophenone)oxaloyldihydrazone (L3) and bis(2-methoxybenzaldehyde)oxaloyldihydrazone (L4). All the oxaloyldihydrazones (L1–L4) and their relevant solid copper(II) complexes have been isolated and characterized by various physicochemical techniques. The identity of the synthesized compounds has been ascertained on the basis of elemental analyses, spectral (UV–Vis, IR, ESR, mass, 1H NMR), magnetism and thermal (TG) measurements. The dihydrazones coordinate to the metal center forming binuclear complexes. Upon chelation, the metal center can form a trigonal distorted octahedral structure with L1 and pseudo tetrahedral configuration with L2 & L3 & L4. The optical band gap energy for all compounds underlies the range of semiconductor materials. The investigated ligands were assayed for their corrosion inhibitive and adsorptive properties on copper surface in 1M HCl solution using weight loss technique. The results pointed out that, the ligands have a plausible inhibition toward the corrosion of copper specimen. The adsorption reaction on copper surface was found to be spontaneous first order and agreed with physical adsorption mechanism. The adsorption data fitted well to Freundlich, Langmuir and Frumkin adsorption isotherms

Immunohistochemical Study of Androgen Receptor Expression in Estrogen Receptor-Negative Invasive Breast Carcinoma and its Relation with Clinicopathologic Factors

BACKGROUND: Estrogen receptor (ER)-negative breast carcinomas lack the expression of ER and they have no targeted hormone therapies. The androgen receptor (AR) is a newly emerge biomarker. Detecting AR in these tumors may provide a target for future therapies. AIM: The aim of the study is to examine the immunohistochemical expression profiles of AR protein in ER-negative invasive breast carcinomas and to assess the relation between AR expression and the clinicopathologic factors such as age, tumor size, tumor grade, tumor type, immunohistochemical type, lymph node status, and Ki67 expression. METHODS: Sixty paraffin blocks of ER-negative invasive breast carcinoma cases were stained immunohistochemically by AR. Positive expression was defined as ≥1% nuclear staining. RESULTS: AR positivity was detected in 55% of the studied cases. The positive cases were scored by H-score with a median=117, and a range of 3–285 and by Allred score with a median=7, and a range of 3-8. AR is expressed in 60.9% of triple-negative breast carcinoma cases. AR expression was higher in older age, and there were significant positive correlations between the degree of AR expression (AR%, AR intensity, and H-score) and age (p=0.050, 0.007, 0.033, respectively). There was non-significant negative correlation between Ki67% and the degree of AR expression (AR%, AR intensity, H-score, and Allred score). Regarding different histological types, tumor grade, tumor size, lymph node status, and immunohistochemical types, there was no significant difference between AR positive and AR negative cases. CONCLUSION: AR is frequently expressed in ER-negative invasive breast carcinoma; especially in older age, and in a large number of triple-negative subtypes. This may give chance to benefit from future AR target therapy. We recommend further research work on AR expression in the special histologic subtypes of ER-negative breast carcinoma and in the triple negative group