The International Association for Danube Research (IAD)—portrait of a transboundary scientific NGO

Introduction: The International Association for Danube Research (IAD), a legal association (Verein) according to Austrian law, presently consists of 13 member countries and 12 expert groups covering all water-relevant scientific disciplines. IAD, founded in 1956, represents a traditional and significant stakeholder in the Danube River Basin, fulfilling an important task towards an integrative water and river basin management requested by the EU Water Framework Directive. Discussion: IAD, stretching between basic and applied research, adapted its strategy after the major political changes in 1989. IAD fosters transdisciplinary and transboundary projects to support integrative Danube River protection in line with the governmental International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) in which IAD has had observer status since 1998. Recent scientific outputs of IAD encompass, amongst others, a water quality map of the Danube and major tributaries, the Sturgeon Action Plan, hydromorphological mapping of the Drava, a macrophyte inventory, and a Mures River study. Further information about IAD can be found on our website http://www.iad.g

Session E5: The Iron Gate Dams in the Danube River and Their Importance for Endangered Sturgeons

Abstract: Danube sturgeons are highly threatened (IUCN Red List) and two out of six native species are already extinct. The Sturgeon Action Plan enforced in 2005 in the framework of the Bern Convention signed by all Danube countries, lists 72 actions for sturgeon conservation. First priority is the reopening of the Iron Gate I and II hydropower dams, as these disrupt sturgeon spawning migration from the Black Sea to the Middle and Upper Danube. The situation in the region of the Iron Gate dams is extremely complex (navigation locks, transboundary between Romania and Serbia, sturgeon fishery bans, habitat degradation), and monitoring of migrating sturgeons is just in the beginning. Therefore, in view of limited experience, the design, construction and implementation of fish passages for sturgeons will be very difficult and demanding. The first steps for the necessary feasibility study were done by a FAO-Mission in 2011 and a Pilot Study performed by a Dutch Consortium during 2013/14. The respective reports will be outlined by Wilco De Bruijne in the sister presentation of this special session introduction. The political background has been prepared by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR, Danube River Basin Management Plan), and the Danube Sturgeon Task Force (DSTF) is coordinating sturgeon activities in the frame of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (Strategy/Program “Sturgeon 2020”). This special session, in particular, the Round Table discussion, is aimed at gathering state-of-the-art knowledge on sturgeon behavior related to crossing fish passes (upstream and downstream)

An Investigation into Peripersonal Space Representations in Older Adults

Peripersonal space is the space immediately surrounding one\u27s body. This space is believed to have a unique representation in order to facilitate successful interaction with the surrounding environment. Supporting this theory, there are consistent findings of changes in cognition within as compared to beyond peripersonal space, including differences in visual attention and perception. However, research on peripersonal space in healthy populations has largely focused on young adults. Representations of peripersonal space take place in multimodal brain regions, areas that show structural and functional changes during senescence. Because of this, there is reason to suspect that older adults represent peripersonal space differently than young adults and that this will lead to measurable changes on tasks that rely on those representations. The present experiments used a behavioral approach to examine age differences on three distinct, but related phenomena that rely on peripersonal space representations. Experiment 1 assessed the rate and strength of the rubber hand illusion, a multimodal illusion that primarily occurs when a dummy hand is within the peripersonal space representation of a person\u27s real hand. Experiment 2 measured the perceptual consequences of tool use and the ability to flexibly incorporate a tool into one\u27s peripersonal space representation. Experiment 3 looked at the extent to which attention is automatically biased toward the space near an outstretched hand. Finally, the relationship among the tasks was examined to assess the extent to which the three paradigms are measuring the same construct. All three experiments showed significant age-related effects. Young adults consistently exhibited changes in performance when performing the tasks within as compared to beyond peripersonal space. Older adults, however, had the same pattern of performance regardless of whether they performed the task within or beyond peripersonal space. Surprisingly, there were no correlations among the experimental measures, suggesting that the selected tasks may be measuring different aspects of peripersonal space. These results have implications for our understanding of mobility and goal-directed action declines in older adults

State Estimation for a Humanoid Robot

This paper introduces a framework for state estimation on a humanoid robot platform using only common proprioceptive sensors and knowledge of leg kinematics. The presented approach extends that detailed in [1] on a quadruped platform by incorporating the rotational constraints imposed by the humanoid's flat feet. As in previous work, the proposed Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) accommodates contact switching and makes no assumptions about gait or terrain, making it applicable on any humanoid platform for use in any task. The filter employs a sensor-based prediction model which uses inertial data from an IMU and corrects for integrated error using a kinematics-based measurement model which relies on joint encoders and a kinematic model to determine the relative position and orientation of the feet. A nonlinear observability analysis is performed on both the original and updated filters and it is concluded that the new filter significantly simplifies singular cases and improves the observability characteristics of the system. Results on simulated walking and squatting datasets demonstrate the performance gain of the flat-foot filter as well as confirm the results of the presented observability analysis.Comment: IROS 2014 Submission, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2014) 952-95