2D Digital Filter Implementation on a FPGA

The use of two dimensional (2D) digital filters for real-time 2D data processing has found important practical applications in many areas, such as aerial surveillance, satellite imaging and pattern recognition. In the case of military operations, real-time image pro-cessing is extensively used in target acquisition and tracking, automatic target recognition and identi cation, and guidance of autonomous robots. Furthermore, equal opportunities exist in civil industries such as vacuum cleaner path recognition and mapping and car collision detection and avoidance. Many of these applications require dedicated hardware for signal processing. It is not efficient to implement 2D digital filters using a single processor for real-time applications due to the large amount of data. A multiprocessor implementation can be used in order to reduce processing time. Previous work explored several realizations of 2D denominator separable digital filters with minimal throughput delay by utilizing parallel processors. It was shown that regardless of the order of the filter, a throughput delay of one adder and one multiplier can be achieved. The proposed realizations have high regularity due to the nature of the processors. In this thesis, all four realizations are implemented in a Field Programming Gate Array (FPGA) with floating point adders, multipliers and shift registers. The implementation details and design trade-offs are discussed. Simulation results in terms of performance, area and power are compared. From the experimental results, realization four is the ideal candidate for implementation on an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) since it has the best performance, dissipates the lowest power, and uses the least amount of logic when compared to other realizations of the same filter size. For a filter size of 5 by 5, realization four can produce a throughput of 16.3 million pixels per second, which is comparable to realization one and about 34% increase in performance compared to realization one and two. For the given filter size, realization four dissipates the same amount of dynamic power as realization one, and roughly 54% less than realization three and 140% less than realization two. Furthermore, area reduction can be applied by converting floating point algorithms to fixed point algorithms. Alternatively, the denormalization and normalization stage of the floating point pipeline can be eliminated and fused together in order to save hardware resources

Attributes of Alignment of Real Estate and Facilities Management to Business Needs – an international comparative analysis

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to present a model for consideration of real estate and facilities management (RE/FM) alignment to business needs and to validate the model based on questionnaire surveys carried out in a number of countries around the world.Design/methodology/approach– The model for RE/FM alignment is inspired by the work of the fathers of the Balanced Scorecard in their book called Alignment. The model includes a number of criteria for alignment between business needs, facility solutions, FM services and FM resources. Three multi-year questionnaire surveys were conducted using the same methodology: the surveys have been carried out in three rounds in different languages: English, Portuguese and Danish. The respondents were senior professionals in the area of FM and real estate/property, mostly working at strategic levels, and representing countries in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. The results of the different surveys were combined and then analyzed, using both statistical analysis and tests to validate the results. Differences in the priorities of the alignment criteria in the different regions are described and analyzed.Findings– A main result of the surveys is that all of the alignment criteria were seen as relevant and useful in nearly all countries, but the accorded priorities to the different criteria varied significantly for some of the alignment variables in the different regions. The highest degree of agreement was on “capacity”, being the most important criteria for the alignment between supply and demand of facility solutions in relation to business needs. One of the main differences in agreement was between the importance of strategy versus cost in the alignment between “facility solutions” and “FM services”.Originality/value– Alignment of RE/FM to business needs is an essential management task and an important tool for RE/FM executives to create added value to their core business. However, there has so far only been limited research into such an alignment concept applicable to FM and an implementation model.Department of Building Services Engineerin

Autochthony and isotopic niches of benthic fauna at shallow-water hydrothermal vents

The food webs of shallow-water hydrothermal vents are supported by chemosynthetic and photosynthetic autotrophs. However, the relative importance of these two basal resources for benthic consumers and its changes along the physicochemical gradient caused by vent plumes are unknown. We used stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes (i.e., delta C-13 and delta N-15) and Bayesian mixing models to quantify the dietary contribution of basal resources to the benthic fauna at the shallow-water vents around Kueishan Island, Taiwan. Our results indicated that the food chains and consumer production at the shallow-water vents were mainly driven by photoautotrophs (total algal contribution: 26-54%) and zooplankton (19-34%) rather than by chemosynthetic production (total contribution: 14-26%). Intraspecific differences in the trophic support and isotopic niche of the benthic consumers along the physicochemical gradient were also evident. For instance, sea anemone Anthopleura sp. exhibited the greatest reliance on chemosynthetic bacteria (26%) and photoautotrophs (66%) near the vent openings, but zooplankton was its main diet in regions 150-300 m (32-49%) and 300-700 m (32-78%) away from the vent mouths. The vent-induced physicochemical gradient structures not only the community but also the trophic support and isotopic niche of vent consumers

Obstacle tower : a generalization challenge in vision, control, and planning

The rapid pace of recent research in AI has been driven in part by the presence of fast and challenging simulation environments. These environments often take the form of games; with tasks ranging from simple board games, to competitive video games. We propose a new benchmark - Obstacle Tower: a high fidelity, 3D, 3rd person, procedurally generated environment. An agent playing Obstacle Tower must learn to solve both low-level control and high-level planning problems in tandem while learning from pixels and a sparse reward signal. Unlike other benchmarks such as the Arcade Learning Environment, evaluation of agent performance in Obstacle Tower is based on an agent's ability to perform well on unseen instances of the environment. In this paper we outline the environment and provide a set of baseline results produced by current state-of-the-art Deep RL methods as well as human players. These algorithms fail to produce agents capable of performing near human level.peer-reviewe

Impact of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes on price, import and sale volumes in an island: interrupted time series analysis

Objective To evaluate the impact of changes in import tariffs on sweetened beverages. Design Interrupted time series analysis examined sweetened beverage tariff increases of 40% to 60% in 2008 and to 75% in 2012; and an approximately 11% decrease in 2014 when an excise tax replaced the tariff. Post-tax trends were compared with a counterfactual modelled on the pre-tax trend for: quarterly price of an indicator beverage, monthly beverage import volumes (both 2001 to 2017), and quarterly sales volumes (2012 to 2017). In a controlled analysis taxed beverage imports were compared to a sugary snacks control. Setting Cook Islands Participants NA Results In the first year, the 2008 tariff increased the price of the selected indicator soft drink by 7.3% (CI: 6.3% to 8.3%) but after the 2012 tariff increase it decreased by 13.9% (CI: -14.9% to -12.8%). At the same time the import volumes of taxed beverages decreased by 13.2% (CI: -38.1% to 17.8%) and 2.9% (CI: -41.6% to 72.5%) respectively; and decreased by 24.8% (CI: -36.9 to -9.8) and 10.2% (CI: -37.1 to 37.5) in the controlled analysis. After the 2014 tax decrease, the price of the indicator soft drink decreased by 23.6% (CI: -26.0% to -21.1%), sweetened beverage imports increased by 4.5% (CI: -39.5% to 156.0%), and sales of full-sugar soft drinks increased by 31% (CI: -21% to 243%). Conclusions The increased import tariffs on sweetened beverages appeared to be effective for reducing import volumes, but this was partly reversed by the reduced tax/tariff in 2014.Peer Reviewe

Autochthony and isotopic niches of benthic fauna at shallow-water hydrothermal vents

The food webs of shallow-water hydrothermal vents are supported by chemosynthetic and photosynthetic autotrophs. However, the relative importance of these two basal resources for benthic consumers and its changes along the physicochemical gradient caused by vent plumes are unknown. We used stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes (i.e., δ13C and δ15N) and Bayesian mixing models to quantify the dietary contribution of basal resources to the benthic fauna at the shallow-water vents around Kueishan Island, Taiwan. Our results indicated that the food chains and consumer production at the shallow-water vents were mainly driven by photoautotrophs (total algal contribution: 26–54%) and zooplankton (19–34%) rather than by chemosynthetic production (total contribution: 14–26%). Intraspecific differences in the trophic support and isotopic niche of the benthic consumers along the physicochemical gradient were also evident. For instance, sea anemone Anthopleura sp. exhibited the greatest reliance on chemosynthetic bacteria (26%) and photoautotrophs (66%) near the vent openings, but zooplankton was its main diet in regions 150–300 m (32–49%) and 300–700 m (32–78%) away from the vent mouths. The vent-induced physicochemical gradient structures not only the community but also the trophic support and isotopic niche of vent consumers