Sign Language Recognition Using Sub-units

This chapter discusses sign language recognition using linguistic sub-units. It presents three types of sub-units for consideration; those learnt from appearance data as well as those inferred from both 2D or 3D tracking data. These sub-units are then combined using a sign level classifier; here, two options are presented. The first uses Markov Models to encode the temporal changes between sub-units. The second makes use of Sequential Pattern Boosting to apply discriminative feature selection at the same time as encoding temporal information. This approach is more robust to noise and performs well in signer independent tests, improving results from the 54% achieved by the Markov Chains to 76%

Presence and Persistence of Ebola or Marburg Virus in Patients and Survivors: A Rapid Systematic Review

Background: The 2013-15 Ebola outbreak was unprecedented due to sustainedtransmission within urban environments and thousands of survivors. In 2014 the World Health Organization stated that there was insufficient evidence to give definitive guidance about which body fluids are infectious and when they pose a risk to humans. We report a rapid systematic review of published evidence on the presence of filoviruses in body fluids of infected people and survivors. Methods: Scientific articles were screened for information about filovirus in human body fluids. The aim was to find primary data that suggested high likelihood of actively infectious filovirus in human body fluids (viral RNA). Eligible infections were from Marburg virus (MARV or RAVV) and Zaire, Sudan, Taï Forest and Bundibugyo species of Ebola. [1] Cause of infection had to be laboratory confirmed (in practice either tissue culture or RT-PCR tests), or evidenced by compatible clinical history with subsequent positivity for filovirus antibodies or inflammatory factors. Data were extracted and summarized narratively. Results: 6831 unique articles were found, and after screening, 33 studies were eligible. For most body fluid types there were insufficient patients to draw strong conclusions, and prevalence of positivity was highly variable. Body fluids taken >16 days after onset were usually negative. In the six studies that used both assay methods RT-PCR tests for filovirus RNA gave positive results about 4 times more often than tissue culture. Conclusions: Filovirus was reported in most types of body fluid, but not in every sample from every otherwise confirmed patient. Apart from semen, most non-blood, RT-PCR positive samples are likely to be culture negative and so possibly of low infectious risk. Nevertheless, it is not apparent how relatively infectious many body fluids are during or after illness, even when culture-positive, not least because most test results come from more severe cases. Contact with blood and blood-stained body fluids remains the major risk for disease transmission because of the known high viral loads in blood

An introduction to the Australian and New Zealand flux tower network - OzFlux

© Author(s) 2016. OzFlux is the regional Australian and New Zealand flux tower network that aims to provide a continental-scale national research facility to monitor and assess trends, and improve predictions, of Australia's terrestrial biosphere and climate. This paper describes the evolution, design, and current status of OzFlux as well as provides an overview of data processing. We analyse measurements from all sites within the Australian portion of the OzFlux network and two sites from New Zealand. The response of the Australian biomes to climate was largely consistent with global studies except that Australian systems had a lower ecosystem water-use efficiency. Australian semi-arid/arid ecosystems are important because of their huge extent (70 %) and they have evolved with common moisture limitations. We also found that Australian ecosystems had a similar radiation-use efficiency per unit leaf area compared to global values that indicates a convergence toward a similar biochemical efficiency. The two New Zealand sites represented extremes in productivity for a moist temperate climate zone, with the grazed dairy farm site having the highest GPP of any OzFlux site (2620 gC m-2 yr-1) and the natural raised peat bog site having a very low GPP (820 gC m-2 yr-1). The paper discusses the utility of the flux data and the synergies between flux, remote sensing, and modelling. Lastly, the paper looks ahead at the future direction of the network and concludes that there has been a substantial contribution by OzFlux, and considerable opportunities remain to further advance our understanding of ecosystem response to disturbances, including drought, fire, land-use and land-cover change, land management, and climate change, which are relevant both nationally and internationally. It is suggested that a synergistic approach is required to address all of the spatial, ecological, human, and cultural challenges of managing the delicately balanced ecosystems in Australasia

Author Correction: The FLUXNET2015 dataset and the ONEFlux processing pipeline for eddy covariance data

The following authors were omitted from the original version of this Data Descriptor: Markus Reichstein and Nicolas Vuichard. Both contributed to the code development and N. Vuichard contributed to the processing of the ERA-Interim data downscaling. Furthermore, the contribution of the co-author Frank Tiedemann was re-evaluated relative to the colleague Corinna Rebmann, both working at the same sites, and based on this re-evaluation a substitution in the co-author list is implemented (with Rebmann replacing Tiedemann). Finally, two affiliations were listed incorrectly and are corrected here (entries 190 and 193). The author list and affiliations have been amended to address these omissions in both the HTML and PDF versions

The FLUXNET2015 dataset and the ONEFlux processing pipeline for eddy covariance data.

The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as gap-filled time series, ecosystem respiration and photosynthetic uptake estimates, estimation of uncertainties, and metadata about the measurements, presented for the first time in this paper. In addition, 206 of these sites are for the first time distributed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) license. This paper details this enhanced dataset and the processing methods, now made available as open-source codes, making the dataset more accessible, transparent, and reproducible

Student attitudes and their academic performance: is there any relationship?

This study examined the relationship between students' attitudes to consultation skills, their confidence in performing those skills and their academic results. Final-year medical students completed a questionnaire before and after the year 6 general practice attachment, which teaches holistic, patient-centred clinical management and emphasizes core verbal and non-verbal communication skills. When underlying academic ability was taken into account only pre-attachment attitudes regarding the importance of consultation skills remained significantly correlated with at least one measure of performance. Student confidence in performing a skill was not associated with academic measures of performance. These results show that students perform better on those skills that they value and this may be influenced by underlying motivation to master the skill. In contrast, students' confidence in performing a skill is not related to their assessed performance and using confidence as a performance measure may misrepresent the quality of learning being assessed

Evaluation of procedural skills training in an undergraduate curriculum

CONTEXT: A substantial proportion of medical students enter their intern year without any basic skills experience. Lack of experience is a significant source of stress for many junior doctors. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effect of a basic procedural skills tutorial for Year 3 medical students on their competence in relevant skills at Year 5. SUBJECTS: The control group consisted of 93 medical students who completed Year 3 in 1996. The intervention group consisted of 92 medical students who completed Year 3 in 1997. The intervention group received a practical skills tutorial in Year 3; the control group did not. Both groups were assessed on their practical skills competence during Year 5. METHODS: A 3-hour practical tutorial on injection and suturing techniques was delivered to the intervention group. The effectiveness of the intervention was assessed by self-reported experience of giving injections, inserting sutures and sustaining needlestick injuries, and by teacher-rated competency in four basic procedural skills. RESULTS: Students who received the Year 3 tutorial were significantly more likely to record a satisfactory assessment for their performance in all four basic skills compared with students who did not receive the tutorial. They were less likely than controls to refuse invitations to give injections, but not invitations to insert a suture, during Years 4 and 5. CONCLUSIONS: A single session of formalised teaching in procedural skills in the early stages of a medical degree can have long-term effectiveness in basic skills competence and may increase students' confidence to practise their skills

Language as a multimodal phenomenon: implications for language learning, processing and evolution

Our understanding of the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language has traditionally been firmly based on spoken Indo-European languages and on language studied as speech or text. However, in face-to-face communication, language is multimodal: speech signals are invariably accompanied by visual information on the face and in manual gestures, and sign languages deploy multiple channels (hands, face and body) in utterance construction. Moreover, the narrow focus on spoken Indo-European languages has entrenched the assumption that language is comprised wholly by an arbitrary system of symbols and rules. However, iconicity (i.e. resemblance between aspects of communicative form and meaning) is also present: speakers use iconic gestures when they speak; many non-Indo-European spoken languages exhibit a substantial amount of iconicity in word forms and, finally, iconicity is the norm, rather than the exception in sign languages. This introduction provides the motivation for taking a multimodal approach to the study of language learning, processing and evolution, and discusses the broad implications of shifting our current dominant approaches and assumptions to encompass multimodal expression in both signed and spoken languages