Mobile Wound Assessment and 3D Modeling from a Single Image

The prevalence of camera-enabled mobile phones have made mobile wound assessment a viable treatment option for millions of previously difficult to reach patients. We have designed a complete mobile wound assessment platform to ameliorate the many challenges related to chronic wound care. Chronic wounds and infections are the most severe, costly and fatal types of wounds, placing them at the center of mobile wound assessment. Wound physicians assess thousands of single-view wound images from all over the world, and it may be difficult to determine the location of the wound on the body, for example, if the wound is taken at close range. In our solution, end-users capture an image of the wound by taking a picture with their mobile camera. The wound image is segmented and classified using modern convolution neural networks, and is stored securely in the cloud for remote tracking. We use an interactive semi-automated approach to allow users to specify the location of the wound on the body. To accomplish this we have created, to the best our knowledge, the first 3D human surface anatomy labeling system, based off the current NYU and Anatomy Mapper labeling systems. To interactively view wounds in 3D, we have presented an efficient projective texture mapping algorithm for texturing wounds onto a 3D human anatomy model. In so doing, we have demonstrated an approach to 3D wound reconstruction that works even for a single wound image

The Emergent Vinifera Wine Industry in North Carolina: A Descriptive Overview

The North Carolina (NC) wine industry has grown rapidly over the past decade and is expected to grow even more as the worldwide wine consumption and export of wines rises. In the United States, the wine market has grown by 13.7 percent since 2002 in volume and by more than 15 percent in dollars as wine has progressed from being a beverage of an elite segment of the market to becoming a mainline beverage, taking its place alongside beer and liquor (MKF Research LLC, 2007; Oches, 2009). The Piedmont Triad Region is uniquely positioned to increase its presence in this industry. Of the 80 wineries in NC that are currently open to the public, nearly half are located in the Piedmont Triad Region. However, growing grapes and making wine is a long term commitment to a community, both financially and physically. The MKF Research report states that the capital-intensive nature of the winery and vineyard sectors is often underestimated, with new entrants to the industry at times unprepared for the extended cash requirements. In addition, only a few local institutions are familiar with the unique needs of the winemaking business. In order to address factors that will impede growth in this nascent industry, it is important to identify the state of the industry and obtain management perspectives on the needs and challenges facing their operations. This study provides information that would help gain a better understanding of the business issues and needs related to the wine and grape industry in North Carolina. Data for this study was drawn from a census of 34 wine producers located in the Yadkin, Swan Creek, and the Haw River valley regions of North Carolina. Descriptive statistics using frequencies and means is used to provide a demographic overview of the industry and to identify the factors that wine producers perceive to be important in affecting their profitability. Results from the study shows that most of the wineries share some common traits: they are small, relatively new to the wine and grape industry and grow grapes other than the traditional native Muscadine grape. Primarily, a majority of the wineries are family-based entrepreneurial businesses that have to behave like mini-conglomerates. These findings are consistent with a study conducted by Taplin and Breckenridge (2008).Profitability Constraints, Financial Management, Marketing, Distribution, Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Farm Management,

Goal-oriented Web search

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-58).We have designed and implemented a Goal-oriented Web application to search videos, images, and news by querying YouTube, Truveo, Google and Yahoo search services. The Planner module decomposes functionality in Goals and Techniques. Goals declare searches for specific types of content and Techniques query the various Web services. We choose which Web service has the best rating at runtime and return the winning results. Users weight their preferred Web services and declare a repository of their own Techniques to upload and execute.by Victor Lamont Williamson.M.Eng

'Colour and communion': Exploring the influences of visual art-making as a leisure activity on older women's subjective well-being

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Journal of Aging Studies. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Research into the subjective experience of art-making for older people is limited, and has focused mostly on professional artists rather than amateurs. This study examined older women's motives for visual art-making. Thirty-two participants aged 60-86 years old were interviewed. Twelve lived with chronic illness; twenty reported good health. Nearly all had taken up art after retirement; two had since become professional artists. Participants described their art-making as enriching their mental life, promoting enjoyment of the sensuality of colour and texture, presenting new challenges, playful experimentation, and fresh ambitions. Art also afforded participants valued connections with the world outside the home and immediate family. It encouraged attention to the aesthetics of the physical environment, preserved equal status relationships, and created opportunities for validation. Art-making protected the women's identities, helping them to resist the stereotypes and exclusions which are commonly encountered in later life.AHR

A survey of facilitators and barriers to recruitment to the MAGNETIC trial

Background Recruitment to randomised controlled trials with children is challenging. It is imperative to understand the factors that boost or hinder recruitment of children to clinical trials. We conducted a survey of facilitators and barriers to recruitment to the MAGNETIC trial, using a previously developed web-based tool. Methods MAGNETIC is a multicentre randomised trial of nebulised magnesium in acute severe asthma, recruiting 508 children from 30 UK sites. Recruiters were asked to grade a list of factors from –3 to +3 depending on whether the factor was perceived as a strong, intermediate or weak barrier (–3 to –1) or facilitator (+1 to + 3), and using (0) if it was thought to be not applicable. Free text responses were invited on strategies applied to counter the identified barriers. Results The commonly identified facilitators were motivation and experience of study teams, effective communication and coordination between teams at site and between sites and the Clinical Trials Unit, the presence of designated research nurses, good trial management, clinical trial publicity, simple inclusion criteria, effective communication with parents and presentation of trial information in a simple and clear manner. The commonly identified barriers were heavy clinical workload, shift patterns of work, Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training, inadequate number of trained staff, time and setting of consent seeking, non-availability of research staff out of hours and parents' concerns about their child taking an experimental medicine. Having a designated research nurse, arranging GCP training and trial-related training sessions for staff were the most commonly reported interventions. Conclusions This study highlights important generic and trial-specific facilitators and barriers to recruitment to a paediatric trial in the acute setting and provides information on the recruitment strategies or interventions that were applied to overcome these barriers. This information can be very useful in informing the design and conduct of future clinical trials with children, particularly in the acute or emergency setting

Amplification of Emerging Viruses in a Bat Colony

Concentration and prevalence of coronaviruses and astroviruses increase when bats form maternity roosts and bear young

Why Reform Fails : The ‘Politics of Policies’ in Costa Rican Telecommunications Liberalization

As the \u27Washington Consensus\u27 reforms are losing momentum in Latin America, the Inter- American Development Bank (IDB) is calling for shifting the focus from the content of policy choices to the political process of their implementation. As this paper studies the paradigmatic case of telecommunications reform in Costa Rica it underscores the importance of these \u27politics of policies\u27. The analysis finds, however, that the failure of repeated liberalization initiatives was not only due to policy-makers\u27 errors in steering the project through \u27the messy world of politics\u27 (IDB); instead, as liberalization remained unpopular, policy content indeed mattered, and only the interaction of both explains the outcome. Particular attention is drawn to the political feed-back effects, as the failed reform, precisely because it had been backed by bi-partisan support, became a catalyst for the disintegration of the country\u27s long-standing two-party system.In dem Maße, in dem die mit dem „Washington Consensus“ verbundenen Reformen in Lateinamerika ins Stocken geraten sind, plädiert die Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) für eine stärkere Berücksichtigung nicht nur der Politikinhalte (policies), sondern auch des politischen Prozesses von deren Umsetzung (politics). Die vorliegende Untersuchung zum paradigmatischen Fall der Reform des Telekommunikationssektors in Costa Rica unterstreicht die Bedeutung dieser „politics of policies“. Sie zeigt allerdings auch, dass Ursache für das Scheiten wiederholter Liberalisierungsinitiativen nicht nur Fehler der Politiker sind, das Vorhaben durch „die unordentliche Welt der politics“ (IDB) zu steuern. Die breite gesellschaftliche Opposition gegen den Liberalisierungskurs bleibt. Nur die Interaktion von beiden, politics und policies, erklärt Verlauf und Ergebnis der Reform. Besonderes Augenmerk widmet die Studie den politischen Rückwirkungen der gescheiterten Reform: Sie wurde, just weil sie von beiden etablierten Parteien unterstützt wurde, zum Katalysator für den Zerfall des seit Jahrzehnten etablierten Zweiparteiensystems des Landes