A good balance of costs and benefits: convincing a university administration to support the installation of an interactive multi-application display system on campus

Interactive digital signage systems allow passers-by to take (temporary) control of a public display in order to select content and applications of interest, or even upload content of their own. Not surprisingly, display owners are hesitant to embrace such interactivity, given the uncertainty of what will be shown on their displays. In this paper we summarize our experience of deploying an interactive multi-application display system in the context of a university environment, and in particular our engagements with display owners (i.e., university administration) in order to convince them and get their support for the installation and deployment of such a system. We present the results of semi-structured interviews with display owners regarding their motivations, needs, and concerns with respect to the deployment of such a system at our university. While one cannot generalize from our results, we nevertheless believe that our experiences offer helpful advice to developers of such systems (and/or researchers interested in designing and studying them) in order to aid them in successfully gathering the support of these important stakeholders

Correlating Pedestrian Flows and Search Engine Queries

An important challenge for ubiquitous computing is the development of techniques that can characterize a location vis-a-vis the richness and diversity of urban settings. In this paper we report our work on correlating urban pedestrian flows with Google search queries. Using longitudinal data we show pedestrian flows at particular locations can be correlated with the frequency of Google search terms that are semantically relevant to those locations. Our approach can identify relevant content, media, and advertisements for particular locations.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

Lymphatic endothelium stimulates melanoma metastasis and invasion via MMP14-dependent Notch3 and b1-integrin activation

Lymphatic invasion and lymph node metastasis correlate with poor clinical outcome in melanoma. However, the mechanisms of lymphatic dissemination in distant metastasis remain incompletely understood. We show here that exposure of expansively growing human WM852 melanoma cells, but not singly invasive Bowes cells, to lymphatic endothelial cells (LEC) in 3D co-culture facilitates melanoma distant organ metastasis in mice. To dissect the underlying molecular mechanisms, we established LEC co-cultures with different melanoma cells originating from primary tumors or metastases. Notably, the expansively growing metastatic melanoma cells adopted an invasively sprouting phenotype in 3D matrix that was dependent on MMP14, Notch3 and β1-integrin. Unexpectedly, MMP14 was necessary for LEC-induced Notch3 induction and coincident β1-integrin activation. Moreover, MMP14 and Notch3 were required for LEC-mediated metastasis of zebrafish xenografts. This study uncovers a unique mechanism whereby LEC contact promotes melanoma metastasis by inducing a reversible switch from 3D growth to invasively sprouting cell phenotype

Erosion wear of glass fibre reinforced vinyl ester

This study evaluates the slurry-erosion wear of glass fibre reinforced vinyl ester composites (VE-FRP) using a high speed slurry-pot type wear tester. The wear rates of VE-FRP were compared using different abrasives, namely quartz, chromite, copper ore, zinc concentrate, and tailings. Furthermore, the effect of abrasive particle size and slurry concentration on the VE-FRP wear was studied. The erosion wear results of VE-FRP were compared to natural rubber (NR) and bromobutyl rubber (BIIR) as well as to few common thermoplastics, such as polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Moreover, the failure characteristics of VE-FRP were analyzed. The results demonstrated that coarse quartz produced the largest wear rates on VE-FRP samples, while the zinc concentrate showed the lowest wear. Minor changes in the abrasive particle size had no effect on the wear results, only when the particle size was markedly raised, the wear started to increase. When comparing the wear rates of different materials, it was concluded that with all abrasive types, tested rubbers and thermoplastics had lower wear rates than VE-FRP

Récupération d'images GIF dans un environnement de cloud computing

International audienceGIF images have been used in the last years, especially on social media. Here it is explored a content-based image retrieval system to work specifically with GIF file format. Its implementation is extended to a cloud computing environment. Given the Tumblr GIF dataset, it is created a "search by example" image retrieval system. To describe the images, low-level features are used: (1) color, (2) texture and (3) shape. The system performs the search using just GIF images as query images. To obtain faster results on the retrieval process, a hashing indexing approach is used. The system showed a complexity of O(n 2) for indexing and O(log(n)) for retrieval. Additionally, better results were obtained (in relation to precision and recall) for simple images, instead of images with a lot of movements.Les images GIF ont été utilisées au cours des dernières années, en particulier sur les médias sociaux. Ici, nous explorons un système de récupération d’images basé sur le contenu pour travailler spécifiquement avec le format de fichier GIF. Son implémentation est étendue à un environnement informatique en nuage. Étant donné le jeu de données Tumblr GIF, il est créé un système de récupération d'image "recherche par exemple". Pour décrire les images, les caractéristiques de bas niveau sont utilisées: (1) couleur, (2) texture et (3) forme. Le système effectue la recherche en utilisant uniquement des images GIF en tant qu'images de requête. Pour obtenir des résultats plus rapides sur le processus de récupération, une approche d'indexation de hachage est utilisée. Le système a montré une complexité de O (n 2) pour l'indexation et de O (log (n)) pour la récupération. De plus, de meilleurs résultats ont été obtenus (en ce qui concerne la précision et le rappel) pour des images simples, au lieu d’images avec beaucoup de mouvements

Slurry and dry particle erosion wear properties of WC-10Co4Cr and Cr3C2-25NiCr hardmetal coatings deposited by HVOF and HVAF spray processes

Thermally sprayed hardmetal coatings were produced to provide improved erosion wear compared to conventional cast GX4CrNi13-4 martensitic steel (CA6NM) used in hydro turbine components. Sprayed coatings and reference materials were tested with high-speed slurry pot tester using either fine or coarse quartz as the erosive media. Additional erosion tests were carried out with centrifugal dry erosion tester. Tungsten carbide based coatings provided the highest wear resistance due to the high hardness and even distribution of the fine carbide particles. The cast 13-4 steel samples experienced up to 180 times higher wear rates in fine quartz slurry and up to 36 times higher wear rates in coarse slurry compared to the sprayed coatings

Comparative Analysis of Whole-Genome Sequences of Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 Viruses Isolated from Hospitalized and Nonhospitalized Patients Identifies Missense Mutations That Might Be Associated with Patient Hospital Admissions in Finland during 2009 to 2014

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