Geovisualization Using HTML5 : a case study to improve animations of historical geographic data

Popular science Visualize geographic data Using HTML5 The Scanian Economic-Demographic Database (SEDD) has been assembled by the Centre for Economic Demography (CED), Lund University. It contains demographic and economic information of Scania from the 17th century until the present. The SEDD database has been integrated with geographic data, which are digitized from four independent historical maps. To help the users well understand these data, a web mapping application called SEDD Map has been developed and tested. The previous version of SEDD Map is constructed using Silverlight plugin. It cannot run on most popular portable devices. As Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML) continue to develop, a recent version, HTML5, was published in 2012. It aims to support the latest multimedia formats and reduce the need for plugins. So, to improve the compatibility of SEDD Map, this work using HTML5 to developed a new version of SEDD Map. Before we constructed the new version of SEDD Map, a set of web mapping applications and programs were evaluated. From this evaluation and comparison, we found that SEDD Map could be improved in many area, such as improving the animation of historical geographic data. Animation is a useful tool when presenting historical data. The geographic data in SEDD Map are taken from four independent historical maps. To visualize geographic data as an animation, we need to create a time sense sequential dataset. In this study, we used linear interpolation and the four historical maps as start years and end years to simulate 159 maps to visualize the geographic data as animations. From this study, we found that: The commonly used web mapping applications for investigating demographic data contain functions, such as interactive visualization, statistical graphics, basic map tools, animations, etc; HTML5 can replace (and improve) the used of Silverlight for web mapping; Animations can be generated (filling in what is missing is to improve the data sets).The Scanian Economic-Demographic Database (SEDD) has been assembled by the Centre for Economic Demography (CED), Lund University. It contains information about the demographic and economic conditions of people that have lived in 5 parishes in Scania from the 17th century until the present. The SEDD database has been integrated with geographic data, which are digitized from four independent historical maps. To visualize and analyze these data, a GIS based web mapping application called SEDD Map has been developed and tested. The previous version of SEDD Map is constructed using Silverlight. As a result, it only can be used on computers which have installed the Silverlight plugin. As Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML) continue to develop, a recent version, HTML5, was published in 2012. It aims to support the latest multimedia formats and reduce the need for plugins. In this study, we use HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3), JavaScript and the ArcGIS API for JavaScript to create a new version of SEDD Map to visualize data stored in the SEDD database. Before we constructed the new version of SEDD Map, a set of web mapping applications and programs were evaluated by the requirements which were needed to create the new version of SEDD Map. From this evaluation and comparison, we found that SEDD Map could be improved in many area, such as improving the animation of historical geographic data. Animation is a useful tool when presenting historical data. The geographic data in SEDD Map are taken from four independent historical maps. To visualize geographic data as an animation, we need to create a time sense sequential dataset, which is done in a parallel project. In this study, we evaluate techniques for data animation. We used linear interpolation and the four historical maps as start years and end years to simulate 159 maps to visualize the geographic data as animations. The conclusions are as follows: 1) The commonly used web mapping applications for investigating demographic data contain functions, such as interactive visualization, statistical graphics, basic map tools, animations, etc. 2) HTML5 can replace (and improve) the used of Silverlight for web mapping. 3) Animations can be generated (filling in what is missing is to improve the data sets)

Automated Formation Control Synthesis from Temporal Logic Specifications

In this paper, we propose a novel framework using formal methods to synthesize a navigation control strategy for a multi-robot swarm system with automated formation. The main objective of the problem is to navigate the robot swarm toward a goal position while passing a series of waypoints. The formation of the robot swarm should be changed according to the terrain restrictions around the corresponding waypoint. Also, the motion of the robots should always satisfy certain runtime safety requirements, such as avoiding collision with other robots and obstacles. We prescribe the desired waypoints and formation for the robot swarm using a temporal logic (TL) specification. Then, we formulate the transition of the waypoints and the formation as a deterministic finite transition system (DFTS) and synthesize a control strategy subject to the TL specification. Meanwhile, the runtime safety requirements are encoded using control barrier functions, and fixed-time control Lyapunov functions ensure fixed-time convergence. A quadratic program (QP) problem is solved to refine the DFTS control strategy to generate the control inputs for the robots, such that both TL specifications and runtime safety requirements are satisfied simultaneously. This work enlights a novel solution for multi-robot systems with complicated task specifications. The efficacy of the proposed framework is validated with a simulation study

Automated Formation Control Synthesis from Temporal Logic Specifications

In this paper, we propose a novel framework using formal methods to synthesize a navigation control strategy for a multi-robot swarm system with automated formation. The main objective of the problem is to navigate the robot swarm toward a goal position while passing a series of waypoints. The formation of the robot swarm should be changed according to the terrain restrictions around the corresponding waypoint. Also, the motion of the robots should always satisfy certain runtime safety requirements, such as avoiding collision with other robots and obstacles. We prescribe the desired waypoints and formation for the robot swarm using a temporal logic (TL) specification. Then, we formulate the transition of the waypoints and the formation as a deterministic finite transition system (DFTS) and synthesize a control strategy subject to the TL specification. Meanwhile, the runtime safety requirements are encoded using control barrier functions, and fixed-time control Lyapunov functions ensure fixed-time convergence. A quadratic program (QP) problem is solved to refine the DFTS control strategy to generate the control inputs for the robots, such that both TL specifications and runtime safety requirements are satisfied simultaneously. This work enlights a novel solution for multi-robot systems with complicated task specifications. The efficacy of the proposed framework is validated with a simulation study

High-performance blob-based iterative three-dimensional reconstruction in electron tomography using multi-GPUs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction in electron tomography (ET) has emerged as a leading technique to elucidate the molecular structures of complex biological specimens. Blob-based iterative methods are advantageous reconstruction methods for 3D reconstruction in ET, but demand huge computational costs. Multiple graphic processing units (multi-GPUs) offer an affordable platform to meet these demands. However, a synchronous communication scheme between multi-GPUs leads to idle GPU time, and a weighted matrix involved in iterative methods cannot be loaded into GPUs especially for large images due to the limited available memory of GPUs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we propose a multilevel parallel strategy combined with an asynchronous communication scheme and a blob-ELLR data structure to efficiently perform blob-based iterative reconstructions on multi-GPUs. The asynchronous communication scheme is used to minimize the idle GPU time so as to asynchronously overlap communications with computations. The blob-ELLR data structure only needs nearly 1/16 of the storage space in comparison with ELLPACK-R (ELLR) data structure and yields significant acceleration.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Experimental results indicate that the multilevel parallel scheme combined with the asynchronous communication scheme and the blob-ELLR data structure allows efficient implementations of 3D reconstruction in ET on multi-GPUs.</p

A navigation method for targeted prostate biopsy based on MRI-TRUS fusion

 A navigation method is proposed to enable the fusion of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) for targeted prostate biopsy. This method directly establishes the transfor-mation between the preoperative MRI image and the intraoperative TRUS based on the selected coplanar MRI and TRUS images without the use of 3D TRUS. According to the real-time spatial pose of the intrao-perative TRUS, the resliced preoperative MRI image is computed and displayed along with the preoperative planning 3D model, and the planned lesion region is mapped to TRUS to guide the needle in-sertion. In the phantom experiment, the average error between the planned target point and the actual puncture position was calculated to be (1.98±0.28) mm. The experimental results show that this method can achieve high targeting accuracy and has potential value in clinical applications

Dynamic control of spin wave spectra using spin-polarized currents

We describe a method of controlling the spin wave spectra dynamically in a uniform nanostripe waveguide through spin-polarized currents. A stable periodic magnetization structure is observed when the current flows vertically through the center of nanostripe waveguide. After being excited, the spin wave is transmitted at the sides of the waveguide. Numerical simulations of spin-wave transmission and dispersion curves reveal a single, pronounced band gap. Moreover, the periodic magnetization structure can be turned on and off by the spin-polarized current. The switching process from full rejection to full transmission takes place within less than 3ns. Thus, this type magnonic waveguide can be utilized for low-dissipation spin wave based filters.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, submitted to AP

miR-96/HBP1/Wnt/β-catenin regulatory circuitry promotes glioma growth

AbstractWe found that miR-96 is overexpressed in glioma, and its level inversely correlates with the survival of patients. The reduction in miR-96 abundance suppresses the proliferation and colony formation of glioma cells. The tumorigenicity of U-87 MG cells is reduced by miR-96 silencing. miR-96 contributes to the activation of Wnt/β-catenin pathway in glioma cells. HMG-box transcription factor 1 (HBP-1), a Wnt/β-catenin pathway inhibitor, is suppressed by miR-96. The reactivation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling causes an increase in the proliferation of glioma cells, and a decrease in miR-96 expression. On the other hand, HBP1 silencing promotes miR-96 expression. Collectively, miR-96 contributes to the progression of glioma by enhancing the activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, and the miR-96/HBP1/Wnt/β-catenin regulatory circuitry promotes the proliferation of glioma cells

The FruitShell French synthesis system at the Blizzard 2023 Challenge

This paper presents a French text-to-speech synthesis system for the Blizzard Challenge 2023. The challenge consists of two tasks: generating high-quality speech from female speakers and generating speech that closely resembles specific individuals. Regarding the competition data, we conducted a screening process to remove missing or erroneous text data. We organized all symbols except for phonemes and eliminated symbols that had no pronunciation or zero duration. Additionally, we added word boundary and start/end symbols to the text, which we have found to improve speech quality based on our previous experience. For the Spoke task, we performed data augmentation according to the competition rules. We used an open-source G2P model to transcribe the French texts into phonemes. As the G2P model uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), we applied the same transcription process to the provided competition data for standardization. However, due to compiler limitations in recognizing special symbols from the IPA chart, we followed the rules to convert all phonemes into the phonetic scheme used in the competition data. Finally, we resampled all competition audio to a uniform sampling rate of 16 kHz. We employed a VITS-based acoustic model with the hifigan vocoder. For the Spoke task, we trained a multi-speaker model and incorporated speaker information into the duration predictor, vocoder, and flow layers of the model. The evaluation results of our system showed a quality MOS score of 3.6 for the Hub task and 3.4 for the Spoke task, placing our system at an average level among all participating teams