Indicators for urban quality evaluation at district scale and relationships with health and wellness perception

The paper is related with a research that was aimed to better define urban quality and sustainability at a district scale (4000-10000 inhabitants), specifically referred to European towns and settlements. An innovative set of indicators (72) has been developed, starting from and taking into consideration also existing literature, both in terms of indicators and sets of indicators (OECD, UN, Agenda 21, and existing European databases as CRISP), four “thematic” areas have been defined dealing with architectural quality, accessibility, environment and services. Within each of these areas some macroindicators and micro-indicators have been defined. The aim is to translate something that is usually considered subjective into something “objective” and finally defined with a number (0-100). Microindicators and macro-indicators are weighted thanks to a mathematical method based on symmetrical matrixes, so that there is a correct balance between different areas. Indicators are both qualitative and quantitative, so they are not just referred to urban planning procedures. The research has been already successfully applied to some Italian districts in towns as Lodi, Genova and Milano. The set of indicators was needed also to work within a multi disciplinary team that has already included engineers, architects, planners as well as doctors and physicians. As a matter of fact the results in terms of urban quality have been compared with medical results concerning health and wellness perception (using SF-36 international recognized questionnaires) by users (inhabitants), finding (non linear) relationships between urban quality and well being perception by inhabitants. The results of this research can be used to: better define design strategies (by designers) accordingly to users wellness, or evaluate ex-post the results of design activities (by municipalities or public authorities)

A Video Indexing Approach Based on Audio Classification

This paper presents a video indexing approach based only on audio classification. Indeed, we apply to an audio-visual document a set of methods for partitioning the associated audio data into homogeneous segments. The aim is to highlight semantically relevant items of a multimedia document by relying only on simple audio processing techniques. A simple algorithm to identify audio segments belonging to silence, music, speech and noise classes has been proposed

Proposals for OrderingKey DS instantiation in MPEG-7 description

This document identifies some solutions to the problem stated in the Editor’s Note in clause 7.7.1.1 of the MDS Study of CD, document ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11/N3816. Therefore this document is intended as a contribution to the MDS group. Presently there is no way to instantiate an Ordering Key DS within a “valid” MPEG-7 description. To solve this problem three proposals are here considered and their respective implication are discussed. The first proposal is to derive the OrderingKeyType as an extension of the HeaderType allowing the instantiation, at the header level, of any MPEG-7 Complete/Unit Description and DSType instances. The second solution is to include the OrderingKey DS as a component of the BasicDescriptionType. This allows to apply the ordering tool only in an MPEG-7 Complete Description, but no Unit Description. The third solution is to adopt both the first and second proposals. In Section 2 the three solutions are detailed and the required modification in terms of syntax and usage are discussed. In Section 3 the three solutions are compared

Validation Experiment on the Ordering Key DS and an Unified Syntax for the Weight DS

This document presents the experimental results for validating the Ordering Key DS (DS5) in the context of the core experiment of the Weight DS [6]. At the Melbourne MPEG meeting, in October 1999, the aforementioned core/validation experiment was planned in order to show the validity of a set of proposals (Weight DS [5], Descriptor Usage DS [8], Fidelity DS [9], Pointofview DS [4] and Ordering Key DS [7]). In a few words, all these DSs play the role of highlighting, by means of some kinds of weights, description information (DSs or Ds) relevant to user queries. They can provide, for example, confidence measure, priority, fidelity, relevance feedback, information for ordering etc. in order to facilitate user queries and browsing. As we said, the document focuses on the VE of the Ordering Key DS. Besides it presents an unified DS, in MPEG-7 DDL syntax, that addresses all the different functionalities proposed by the several DSs involved in the CE. In our case, the provided functionality deals with the concept of ordering, as we consider the need of providing users with ordering mechanisms a very relevant issue for MPEG-7. Such ordering mechanisms are derivable from descriptors (e.g. a set of key – frames ordered on the basis a color descriptor or a set of sounds ordered by means of an audio loudness D). However a possible large variety in the types of descriptors composing a description could lead to a consequent high number of ordering criteria to arrange description items. Therefore we propose that the description provider (it could be different from the content provider) should also select a reduced set of descriptors allowing to order a subset of description elements (e.g. key frames, events etc.) pertinent to the MM document being described [7]. This contribution is organized as follows. In Section 2, the motivations for introducing Ordering Key DS in the Generic AV DS are given. Section 3 briefly presents the structure of the Ordering Key DS by means of UML notation and MPEG-7 DDL as well. Moreover the section discusses about the possible locations of the DS within the Generic AV DS. In Section 4 is shown the output of the experiment: a smart browsing of ordered elements belonging to the test set of MPEG-7 video material. Finally, in Section 5, is proposed a unified DDL structure for the DSs involved in the CE

Analysis of Video Content for a Multi-Layer Navigation of Multimedia Documents

This paper describes a set of automatic extraction tools so as to generate a three-layer organization of video documents. The underlying coarse to fine description allows for a fast navigation throughout the document, depending on the degree of details which is desired. Once the time-codes of the individual segments for each layer of the hierarchy have been identified, it is possible to map them into a Description Scheme (DS), which maintains the hierarchy and linear structure of the video document. This structural DS serves the role of a table of content for the multimedia document, the same way it is done in books. The particular interest of the proposed approach lies in the automatic solutions that can be used to generate the different segments at each level of the DS, and in the browsing tool that can be easily derived to navigate throughout the document

Low Level Processing of Audio and Video Information for Extracting the Semantics of Content

The problem of semantic indexing of multimedia documents is actually of great interest due to the wide diffusion of large audio-video databases. We first briefly describe some techniques used to extract low-level features (e.g., shot change detection, dominant color extraction, audio classification etc.). Then the ToCAI (table of contents and analytical index) framework for content description of multimedia material is presented, together with an application which implements it. Finally we propose two algorithms suitable for extracting the high level semantics of a multimedia document. The first is based on finite-state machines and low-level motion indices, whereas the second uses hidden Markov models

Histopathology of the synovial tissue : perspectives for biomarker development in chronic inflammatory arthritides

The histopathological and molecular analysis of the synovial tissue has contributed to fundamental advances in our comprehension of arthritis pathogenesis and of the mechanisms of action of currently available treatments. On the other hand, its exploitation in clinical practice for diagnostic or prognostic purposes as well as for the prediction of treatment response to specific disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs is still limited. In this review, we present an overview of recent advances in the field of synovial tissue research with specific reference to the methods for synovial tissue collection, approaches to synovial tissue analysis and current perspectives for the exploitation of synovial tissue-derived biomarkers in chronic inflammatory arthritides

B cell autoimmunity and bone damage in rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic immune-inflammatory disease associated with significant bone damage. Pathological bone remodeling in RA is primarily driven by persistent inflammation. Indeed, pro-inflammatory cytokines stimulate the differentiation of bone-resorbing osteoclasts and, in parallel, suppress osteoblast function, resulting in net loss of bone. Abating disease activity thus remains the major goal of any treatment strategy in patients with RA. Autoantibody-positive patients, however, often show a rapidly progressive destructive course of the disease, disproportionate to the level of inflammation. The epidemiological association between RA-specific autoantibodies, in particular anti-citrullinated protein autoantibodies, and poor structural outcomes has recently found mechanistic explanation in the multiple roles that B cells play in bone remodeling. In this review, we will summarize the substantial progress that has been made in deciphering how B cells and autoantibodies negatively impact on bone in the course of RA, through both inflammation-dependent and independent mechanisms

Report of CE on Semantic DS

The Semantic DS allows describing the world depicted by the AV content and interpreting that world, i.e., the “about” of the AV content or depicted narrative reality, which sometimes is imaginary. This document reports on the core experiment on the Semantic DS [6]. The CE originally started at the Maui meeting in December 1999 [3]. Progress reports of the CE were provided at the Geneva meeting [1] and at the Beijing meeting [2]. In Beijing, some components of the Semantic DS were promoted to the XM: Semantic DS, Object DS, PersonObject DS, Event DS, State DS, MediaOccurrence DS, SemanticTime DS, SemanticLocation DS, UsageLabel D, and some semantic relations. The main tasks of this core experiment have been the following: 1) To refine the specification of the Semantic DS by solving identified issues; 2) To define the Conceptual DSs; 3) To recommend the standardization of more semantic relations; 4) To investigate the use of membership functions to describe the strength of relations; 5) To generate simple and complex semantic descriptions of multimedia material; 6) To implement a retrieval and browsing application/s that uses the generated descriptions and that shows the functionality of the UsageLabel D, the Conceptual DSs, the State DS, and membership functions for relations, especially; 7) To recommend changes and additions to the Semantic DS based on the results of the experiment. The retrieval application that the CE has accomplished two objectives: (1) to show the utility of the components of the Semantic DS in a retrieval scenario, and (2) to be the software for the MPEG-7 XM platform

The ToCAI DS for audio-visual documents. Structure and concepts

This document complements the description of the audio-visual (AV) description scheme (DS) called Table of Content-Analytical Index (TOCAI) proposed in MPEG-7 CFP that was evaluated in Lancaster (February 1999). This DS provides a hierarchical description of the time sequential structure of a multimedia document (suitable for browsing) together with an “analytical index” of AV objects of the document (suitable for retrieval). The TOCAI purposes and general characteristics are explained. The detailed structure of the DS is presented by means of UML notation as well, to clarify some issues that were not included in the original proposal. Some examples of XML instantiation are enclosed as well. Then an application example is shown. For an indication on how the TOCAI DS matches MPEG-7 requirements and evaluation criteria, refer to the original proposal submission