Search

In this paper, we present an overview of Nearest neighbour (NN) methods, which are frequently employed for solving classification problems using supervised learning. The article concisely introduces the theoretical background, algorithmic, and implementation aspects along with the key applications. From an application standpoint, this article explores the challenges related to the 5G and beyond wireless networks which can be solved using NN classification techniques.

The Microsoft HoloLens is a head-worn mobile augmented reality device. It allows a real-time 3D mapping of its direct environment and a self-localisation within the acquired 3D data. Both aspects are essential for robustly augmenting the local environment around the user with virtual contents and for the robust interaction of the user with virtual objects. Although not primarily designed as an indoor mapping device, the Microsoft HoloLens has a high potential for an efficient and comfortable mapping of both room-scale and building-scale indoor environments. In this paper, we provide a survey on the capabilities of the Microsoft HoloLens (Version 1) for the efficient 3D mapping and modelling of indoor scenes. More specifically, we focus on its capabilities regarding the localisation (in terms of pose estimation) within indoor environments and the spatial mapping of indoor environments. While the Microsoft HoloLens can certainly not compete in providing highly accurate 3D data like laser scanners, we demonstrate that the acquired data provides sufficient accuracy for a subsequent standard rule-based reconstruction of a semantically enriched and topologically correct model of an indoor scene from the acquired data. Furthermore, we provide a discussion with respect to the robustness of standard handcrafted geometric features extracted from data acquired with the Microsoft HoloLens and typically used for a subsequent learning-based semantic segmentation.

Policies for investment in biofuel production facilities and feedstock may be necessary in order to meet climate and renewable energy targets. These policies entail a trade-off between high transportation costs of biomass and economies of scale of production facilities. We develop a spatial optimisation model and investigate the cost-effective localization of production facilities for ethanol from agricultural land in Sweden. Feedstock costs are found to be most important in determining the location, although high feedstock density motivates locating large facilities in areas with high feedstock costs. At higher production, feedstock from the whole country is preferred despite high transport costs.

This paper presents the first usage of road surface defects as a means of vehicle position detection. Whilst several applications are possible, this work focuses on use in Formula E racing, where several driver information systems depend heavily upon accurate vehicle position estimation, including energy management advice and split time information, and where use of common positioning systems such as GPS is forbidden. Teams currently estimate the position on track by integrating vehicle speed, but this is susceptible to error accumulation throughout a lap, diminishing the precision and value of driver information systems. This work presents a method to improve the vehicle's position estimate by detecting bumps in the road surface using suspension damper displacement data, an approach which is novel because it is independent of common positioning techniques such as GPS. These bumps are used as positionally-fixed checkpoints around the track, allowing the positional estimate to be regularly corrected, mitigating drift in the original estimated position. Results of the bump detection algorithm developed show for the first time that this technique can pinpoint the vehicle position with a precision of 1.41m standard deviation, with scope for further improvement. This result is significant for positioning surface vehicles where other more standard techniques are precluded. In the Formula E application the approach is found to improve the precision (consistency) of the vehicle positional estimate for large parts of the circuit, which will allow higher quality and more reliable information to be given to the driver, thereby giving a competitive advantage.

Background Uterine adenomyosis is a benign disease, common among women in their 40 and 50 s, characterised by ectopic endometrial tissue in the uterine myometrial layer. Adenomyosis causes infertility and has a negative effect on the outcomes of in vitro fertilisation (IVF)/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) embryo transfer (ET) cycles. It has also been reported to have different characteristics depending on the adenomyotic lesion localisation. The effect of its localisation on IVF/ICSI-ET outcomes is unclear. This study aimed to investigate whether adenomyotic lesion localisation, assessed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), was associated with outcomes of IVF/ICSI-ET cycles. Methods This multicentre, joint, retrospective cohort study analysed the medical records of 67 infertile patients with adenomyosis who underwent IVF/ICSI with fresh and frozen-thawed ET at five participating facilities from January 2012 to December 2016 and for whom MRI data were available. Fifteen patients were excluded; therefore, the MRI data of 52 patients were evaluated by two radiologists. We assessed the localisation of and classified adenomyotic lesions into advanced (invades the full thickness of the uterine myometrium), extrinsic (localised on the serosal side), and intrinsic (localised on the endometrial side) subtypes. Results There were 40 advanced, nine extrinsic, and three intrinsic cases, and the outcomes of 100, 27, and nine ET cycles, respectively, were analysed. Pregnancy loss/clinical pregnancy and live birth rates of the advanced, extrinsic, and intrinsic groups were 64 % (16/25) and 9 % (9/100), 33.3 % (3/9) and 22.2 % (6/27), and 50 % (1/2) and 11.1 % (1/9), respectively. A logistic regression analysis adjusted for age, prior miscarriage, and body mass index showed that the extrinsic group had fewer pregnancy losses (odds ratio 0.06; 95 % confidence interval [CI]: 0.00–0.54, p = 0.026) and more live births (odds ratio 6.05; 95 % CI: 1.41–29.65, p = 0.018) than the advanced group. Conclusions Adenomyotic lesions exert different effects on IVF/ICSI-ET outcomes. Thus, MRI assessments of adenomyosis in infertile patients are beneficial. Establishment of treatment plans based on adenomyotic lesion localisation should be considered.

In this study, the purpose is to provide an efficient and original indoor area localization and presentation via picture and the voice assistance in a museum, using beacon devices based on the Bluetooth Low Energy technology infrastructure and embedded electronic circuit systems. In this context, a localization procedure is carried out via a Bluetooth module and an embedded microcontroller. A hardware as well as a software was developed in order to read the data broadcasted from radio frequency beacons, which support Bluetooth 4.0 technology. By using AT commands and a location identification system as well as a software which is designed and implemented on a microcontroller system detects the nearest beacon, therefore the desired area, based on the ID numbers of beacons and received signal strengths. Using this system, visitor locations can be determined and visitors are provided with visual or audio content based on their distance to the artworks. This study may be a prototype base application for future developments.

In Slovakia there is no tradition of localisation of video games. Foreign countries, however, have much to offer regarding the academic environment and practical outcomes. The Slovak market does not even offer Slovak localisations of video games for children who are entitled to Slovak localisations pursuant to Slovak legislation. Our paper aims to examine the issue of Slovak video game localisation, present the most serious results of our research, and offer goals for future research aimed at specific aspects of localisation of video games for Slovak children and their multimodality.

In today's highly competitive global business landscape, customers demand personalised products and responsive distribution systems, hence fuelling the concept of Distributed Manufacturing (DM) as a paradigm that suggests the geographical distribution of manufacturing systems adjacent to the markets enable ‘production on demand’. To this end, the objective of this research is to explore the DM concept to inform firms about the dynamically changing manufacturing environment, along with the emerging opportunities, and support business stakeholders in implementing DM-oriented strategies to achieve digitalisation, personalisation, and localisation. More specifically, the present research builds upon the Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT) and conducts semi-structured interviews with a panel of 16 experts from the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, Automotive, and Engineering industries to develop 12 exploratory industry cases. Our analysis highlights three strategies that companies can adopt to implement DM and realise shorter lead times and personalised product offerings, namely: (i) small-scale DM; (ii) in-house decoupled manufacturing; and (iii) outsourced decoupled manufacturing. However, the economic viability of the DM concept is identified as a significant barrier to relinquish the traditional centralised economies-of-scale. This research contributes by applying the DCT to the DM concept to advocate the viability and sustainability of manufacturing systems in the era of Industry 4.0. Pertaining to the originality of this research, limited work is available on the applicability of DM in industries, from the DCT perspective, to accomplish competitive advantages in the dynamic environment of manufacturing.

INTRODUCTION[|] Of the ischemic strokes, 25 % involve the posterior circulation ischemic infarcts (POCI) and pontine infarctions account for about 7% of all ischemic strokes. Isolated pontine infarctions are usually classified into two types: paramedian pontine infarcts (PPIs) and small deep pontine infarcts (SDPIs). The main pathogenesis of each of the two types differ. Our study was designed to investigate the main causes of isolated pontine infarctions. [¤]METHODS[|]A retrospective search of the patient database of our institution was performed for a total of 122 patients who were admitted to our neurology clinic between January 2010 and June 2018. Acute ischemic stroke patients, comprising 48 PPI patients and 74 SDPI patients, were enrolled. Routine etiological investigations were performed for each patient, and clinical data were collected.[¤]RESULTS[|]Of the 122 enrolled patients, the most frequent etiological cause of isolated pontine infarction was small vessel disease. There were 48 with PPI and 74 with SDPI patients. Hypertension was the most frequent chronic risk factor with the ratio of 68 %. But there was no significant difference in the prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, dislipidemia, coronary artery disease between patients with PPI and SDPI. In PPI group echocardiography was normal in all patients. In SDPI group 11 patients had abnormal cardioembolic findings and it was significantly important. Also male predominancy was detected in SDPI group and in males cardioembolic echocardiography findings were more prevalent than females.[¤]DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION[|]Cardioembolism may be the major cause of SDPI while basillar artery (BA) atherosclerosis remains the cause of PPI in our study. This information may assist in therapeutic approaches of isolated pontine infarction subtypes.[¤]

This paper presents a novel method for a precise localization of the automated-fiber-placement head, without the need for a data access to the machine control. It is based on a sub-pixel accurate optical-flow-algorithm which determines information about the heads movement by means of the material flow in sequences of IR images. Using local curvatures in the temperature field of the IR images, feature matrices are created which can locally be compared to the features of successive images. Thus, the translation between images become visible. This enables the possibility to perform an accurate ($$16.8\,\upmu{\mathrm{m}}$$ 16.8 μ m ) and self-sufficient process monitoring that additionally is capable of capturing the motion and position information of the AFP system and can be linked to existing algorithms for defect detection and classification.

Datasets of mobile phone trajectories collected by network operators offer an unprecedented opportunity to discover new knowledge from the activity of large populations of millions. However, publishing such trajectories also raises significant privacy concerns, as they contain personal data in the form of individual movement patterns. Privacy risks induce network operators to enforce restrictive confidential agreements in the rare occasions when they grant access to collected trajectories, whereas a less involved circulation of these data would fuel research and enable reproducibility in many disciplines. In this work, we contribute a building block toward the design of privacy-preserving datasets of mobile phone trajectories that are truthful at the record level. We present GLOVE, an algorithm that implements k-anonymity, hence solving the crucial unicity problem that affects this type of data while ensuring that the anonymized trajectories correspond to real-life users. GLOVE builds on original insights about the root causes behind the undesirable unicity of mobile phone trajectories, and leverages generalization and suppression to remove them. Proof-of-concept validations with large-scale real-world datasets demonstrate that the approach adopted by GLOVE allows preserving a substantial level of accuracy in the data, higher than that granted by previous methodologies. This work was supported by the Atracción de Talento Investigador program of the Comunidad de Madrid under Grant No. 2019-T1/TIC-16037 NetSense.

Shanghai’s modern architectural heritage in the 19th and early 20th centuries is an essential aspect of modern Chinese architectural history because of its outstanding characteristics and well-preserved conditions. Modern Shanghai architecture was transformed by the importation of Western structural technologies and materials in addition to their forms and institutions. After 100 years of development since 1843, there were over 100 important buildings in the Bund area by 1943. These buildings were built in different periods using the best available structural technologies. This study focuses on the technological dimension of modern Shanghai architecture. Based on an architectural survey and a literature investigation of the Bund buildings, this study explores the evolution of modern structural technologies in Shanghai by analysing the Bund buildings’ key structural factors. The influences of the localisation and implementation of Western architecture’s building technologies in Shanghai were also analysed, including time of importation, characteristics and integration of local craftsmanship and materials. This study focuses on the method and analyses of architectural technology history from not only technological and historical perspectives, but also a social sciences perspective.

Humanitarian governance is usually understood according to the classic, Dunantist paradigm that accords central importance to international humanitarian agencies. However, this is increasingly paralleled by 'resilience humanitarianism' that focuses, among other things, on including national actors in humanitarian governance. This article views humanitarian governance as emerging through interactions between authorities, implementing agencies and communities. It is based on interactive ethnography in five countries by Partners for Resilience (PfR). Using the Theory of Change (ToC) tool, it analyses the various interpretations and priorities of actors involved in humanitarian problems, solutions and programme governance. For example, PfR had a 'software' focus, aiming to unlock communities' potential for resilience, whereas communities and authorities preferred to receive tangible 'hardware' support. The findings highlight the crucial role of local authorities in shaping humanitarian aid. This is especially pertinent in view of the international agenda to localise aid, which requires the understanding and support of national actors in order to responsibly protect the vulnerable.

Wire-guided localisation (WGL) has been the mainstay for localising non-palpable breast lesions before excision. Due to its limitations, various wireless alternatives have been developed. In this prospective study, we evaluate the role of radiation-free wireless localisation using the SAVI SCOUT® system at the London Breast Institute. A total of 72 reflectors were deployed in 67 consecutive patients undergoing breast conserving surgery for non-palpable breast lesions. The mean interval between deployment and surgery for the therapeutic cases was 18.8 days (range: 0–210). The median deployment duration was 5 min (range: 1–15 min). The mean distance from the lesion was 1.1 mm (median distance: 0, range: 0–20 mm). The rate of surgical localisation and retrieval of the reflector was 98.6% and 100%, respectively. The median operating time was 28 min (range: 15–55 min) for the therapeutic excision of malignancy and 17 min (range: 15–24) for diagnostic excision. The incidence of reflector migration was 0%. Radial margin positivity in malignant cases was 7%. The median weight for malignant lesions was 19.6 g (range: 3.5–70 g). Radiologists and surgeons rated the system higher than WGL (93.7% and 98.6%, respectively, 60/64 and 70/71). The patient mean satisfaction score was 9.7/10 (n = 47, median = 10, range: 7–10). One instance of signal failure was reported. In patients who had breast MRI after the deployment of the reflector, the MRI void signal was &lt, 5 mm (n = 6). There was no specific technique-related surgical complication. Our study demonstrates that wire-free localisation using SAVI SCOUT® is an effective and time-efficient alternative to WGL with excellent physician and patient acceptance.

We consider a mobile robot localising itself through a set of UWB wireless anchors. We show how the use of an appropriate localisation algorithm allows for an analytical estimate of the localisation uncertainty. This information is used to build a potential-based motion planning algorithm that drives the robot along trajectories, while achieving a good tradeoff between moving toward the goal and keeping localisation uncertainty reasonably low.

Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic brought unprecedented changes leading to ‘business unusual’ in all facets of life and livelihood on a global scale. The restrictions on gathering, social distancing and lockdown measures necessitated by the need to curtail its spread, had, and still have an enormous impact on the educational sector as indeed all spheres of life. These measures implied a change in the traditional modus operandi of curriculum and delivery options for educational institutions in South Africa in the bid to continue academic sessions. Hence, a transition of educational institutions from physical interactions to virtual meetings and the need to evolve curriculum contents and delivery. Aim: With the peculiarity of the South African socioeconomic and political space, this article assessed the viability of curriculum change and delivery options (e-teaching and learning) for both students and instructors in the higher institution and the varied implications. It drew from discourses around the theory of localisation within educative context to create a more student-centred approach especially with the situation of less physical contact. Setting: The discourse is set within the South African educational space. Method: Considering the novelty of Covid-19 research and the challenge of contact, the study adopted a participatory action desktop research method to collect and analyse secondary data. The article vividly discussed how institutions transitioned to a localisation of frameworks and policies to ensure successful academic sessions. Results: The educational landscape in South Africa is still plagued with historical antecedents of social injustice, funding, and resource allocation as well as the ever-present pressure of making education affordable to majority of local students. Also, the weakness of the online teaching methods to the physical contact method for learners and practitioners could be summed up into the issues of connectivity, technical knowledge, and attention span. Conclusion: The conclusion enumerated the need for the implementation of policies and frameworks on proper utilisation of online systems to adjust to the demands of less contact-based approaches in favour of virtual approaches. The study called for adequate consideration to issues around the localisation of teaching and learning techniques considering the peculiarities of South Africa with focus on the opportunities, feasibility, and challenges of online measures especially for those in economically disadvantaged spaces.

Purpose The study aimed to evaluate audiological benefits, quality of hearing and safety of two Bonebridge generation: BCI601 and BCI602 (MED-EL, Innsbruck, Austria) in children. Methods Twelve children were implanted: five BCI601 and seven BCI602 comprising of ten conductive hearing loss, and two single sided deaf SSD subjects. Audiological outcomes tested were sound field audiometry, functional gain, speech recognition threshold (SRT50), speech recognition in noise (SPRINT) and localisation abilities. Subjective measures were Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ12). Results The mean FG with the BCI601 was 25.0 dB and with the BCI602 28.0 dB. The benefit in SRT50 was 23.2 dB and 33.8 dB, respectively. The mean benefit in SPRINT was 15% and 6.7% and the localisation ability improved from 33.3° to 16° and from 26.2° to 17.6°, respectively. The two SSD subjects reported a FG of 17 dB, a benefit in SRT50 of 22.5 and a benefit in SPRINT of 20%. Subjective outcomes improved significantly and even exceeded the values of their age-and sex matched normal hearing peers. One revision was reported: a retroauricular emphysema above the implant occurred 12 months post-OP, it was resolved operatively with the implant still being functional. Conclusion The pediatric cohort reports significant audiological benefit, even exceeding that of the age- and sex matched control. The combination of the high safety and audiological benefit makes the Bonebridge a comfortable and effective option in hearing rehabilitation in children.

In Algeria, private physicians settle much more in the northern regions of the country and preferably in the large metropolises than in the rest of regions. The purpose of this article is, first, to analyze the inequity in — and the evolution of — the geographical distribution of Algerian private physicians and, secondly, to estimate the main determinants of doctors’ density in 1998 and 2017. The inequalities in distribution is measured using the Gini index and the coefficient of variation. The econometric models (static and dynamic) were estimated by the ordinary least squares. Our results show that overall disparities increased slightly between 1998-2017. The same well-endowed wilayas (departments) still continue to attract new physicians. The econometric estimate suggests that the population density and per capita social security expenditure are the main determinants of physicians’ geographic location in both the static and dynamic models. Ultimately, the increase in the number of trained physicians does not automatically solve the problem of their geographical distribution, particularly in a context characterized by the absence of any government policy towards the private healthcare. En Algérie, les médecins libéraux s'installent beaucoup plus dans les régions du nord du pays, et de préférence dans les grandes métropoles, que dans le reste des régions. L’objectif de cet article est, premièrement, d’analyser les inégalités et l'évolution de la répartition géographique des médecins libéraux algériens et, deuxièmement, d’estimer les principaux déterminants de leur densité médicale en 1998 et 2017. Les inégalités sont mesurées par l'indice de Gini et le coefficient de variation. Les modèles économétriques (statique et dynamique) ont été estimés par la méthode des moindres carrés ordinaires. Nos résultats montrent que les disparités globales ont légèrement augmenté entre 1998 et 2017. Les mêmes wilayas (départements) bien dotées continuent toujours d'attirer les nouveaux médecins. L'estimation économétrique suggère que la densité de la population et les dépenses de la sécurité sociale par habitant sont les principaux déterminants de la localisation géographique des médecins, à la fois dans les modèles statiques et dynamiques. En définitive, l'augmentation du nombre de médecins formés ne résout pas automatiquement le problème de leur répartition géographique, notamment dans un contexte caractérisé par l'absence de toute politique publique à l'égard du secteur privé des soins. En Argelia, el ejercicio libre de los médicos se localiza con mayor presencia en las regiones del norte del país, y preferentemente en las grandes metrópolis. Este artículo presenta dos objetivos. El primero corresponde a analizar las desigualdades y evolución en la distribución geográfica de los médicos argelinos y, en segundo lugar, estimar las principales determinantes de su densidad médica en 1998 y 2017. Las desigualdades se medien mediante el índice de Gini y el coeficiente de variación. Los modelos econométricos (estáticos y dinámicos) fueron estimados por el método de mínimos cuadrados ordinarios. Los resultados expresan que las disparidades aumentaron ligeramente y de manera global entre 1998 y 2017, donde los departamentos (wilayas) bien dotados continúan atrayendo a nuevos médicos. La estimación econométrica tanto estática como dinámica, sugiere que la densidad de población y el gasto en seguridad social per cápita se constituyen como las principales determinantes en la localización geográfica de profesionales. Así, el incremento del número de médicos formados no resuelve automáticamente el problema de su distribución geográfica, particularmente en un texto de usencia de una política pública hacia el sector sanitario privado.

The article broadly examines how humanitarian aid for Rohingya refugees inadvertently harmed poorer hosts and adversely affected local capacities for peace. The article also discusses possible ways of easing tension and improving social cohesion in the refugee-hosting areas, while also highlighting how policy- and mandate-related constraints hinder a humanitarian response anchored in the "Do No Harm" principle. Finally, the article concludes with the argument that the humanitarian agencies should not just limit themselves to identifying the unintended consequences and lapses in the intervention. Instead, the Do No Harm principle should lead humanitarian aid agencies to make an active effort to accept responsibility for the harm while taking all necessary steps to mitigate or avoid harming in future interventions.

This study aims to help people working in the field of AI understand some of the unique issues regarding disabled people and examines the relationship between the terms “Personalisation” and “Classification” with regard to disability inclusion. Classification using big data struggles to cope with the individual uniqueness of disabled people, and whereas developers tend to design for the majority so ignoring outliers, designing for edge cases would be a more inclusive approach. Other issues that are discussed in the study include personalising mobile technology accessibility settings with interoperable profiles to allow ubiquitous accessibility; the ethics of using genetic data-driven personalisation to ensure babies are not born with disabilities; the importance of including disabled people in decisions to help understand AI implications; the relationship between localisation and personalisation as assistive technologies need localising in terms of language as well as culture; the ways in which AI could be used to create personalised symbols for people who find it difficult to communicate in speech or writing; and whether blind or visually impaired person will be permitted to “drive” an autonomous car. This study concludes by suggesting that the relationship between the terms “Personalisation” and “Classification” with regards to AI and disability inclusion is a very unique one because of the heterogeneity in contrast to the other protected characteristics and so needs unique solutions.

5h International Symposium on Multidisciplinary Studies and Innovative Technologies, ISMSIT 2021 -- 21 October 2021 through 23 October 2021 -- -- 174473, Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) compose of ordinary sensor networks and actor devices equipped with various capabilities. These networks are crucial technologies which are located at the communication layer of Internet of things. Actors (agents) are employed to provide decentralized control of the sensor networks. We propose an actor controlled framework for localization and clustering in sensor networks. To the best of our knowledge, our framework is the first which offers both localization and clustering within constant message complexity per node. In this structure, a mobile actor device traverses the sensor network to localize and cluster the sensor nodes. Total energy consumption of the sensor nodes using this method are reduced compared to the distributed approaches. Moreover, cluster quality of our algorithms is better than their counterparts. We show that our framework provides a suitable infrastructure for cluster-based applications in an energy efficient manner. © 2021 IEEE.

Aquest article descriu el disseny i la implementació d'un nou entorn per a la interconnectivitat de components de localització distribuïts, tant de codi obert com a propietari, donant així resposta a l'escassetat d'estudis d'investigació rellevants en aquesta àrea, ja que considerem que la interoperabilitat és clau per aconseguir la integració completa de diferents entitats. La solució que proposem permet la interoperabilitat mitjançant un esquema d'arquitectura orientada a serveis (SOA) que es basa en els estàndards de localització habituals. Descriurem un escenari d'ús genèric i l'arquitectura de l'entorn que ens permetrà estudiar qüestions d'interoperabilitat en els processos de localització. Aquest entorn va ser presentat amb èxit en el CNGL Public Showcase que es va celebrar a la seu de Microsoft, Irlanda, el novembre de 2010., This paper describes the design and implementation of a novel environment for the inter-connectivity of distributed localisation components - both open source and proprietary - in response to the scarcity of relevant research in this area, as we view interoperability as being the key to the seamless integration of different entities. The proposed solution promotes interoperability through the adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework based on established localisation standards. We describe a generic use scenario and the architecture of the environment that allows us to study interoperability issues in localisation processes. This environment was successfully demonstrated at the CNGL Public Showcase in Microsoft, Ireland, November 2010., Este artículo describe el diseño y la implementación de un nuevo entorno para la interconectividad de componentes de localización distribuidos, tanto de código abierto como propietario, con el propósito de paliar la escasez de estudios de investigación relevantes en esta área. A nuestro entender, la interoperabilidad es clave para conseguir la integración completa de diferentes entidades. La solución que proponemos permite la interoperabilidad mediante un esquema de arquitectura orientada a servicios (SOA) que se basa en los estándares de localización habituales. Describiremos un escenario de uso genérico y la arquitectura del entorno que nos permitirá estudiar cuestiones de interoperabilidad en los procesos de localización. Este entorno fue presentado con éxito en el CNGL Public Showcase que se celebró en la sede de Microsoft en Irlanda en noviembre de 2010.

Computer-aided detection, localization, and segmentation methods can help improve colonoscopy procedures. Even though many methods have been built to tackle automatic detection and segmentation of polyps, benchmarking of state-of-the-art methods still remains an open problem. This is due to the increasing number of researched computer vision methods that can be applied to polyp datasets. Benchmarking of novel methods can provide a direction to the development of automated polyp detection and segmentation tasks. Furthermore, it ensures that the produced results in the community are reproducible and provide a fair comparison of developed methods. In this paper, we benchmark several recent state-of-the-art methods using Kvasir-SEG, an open-access dataset of colonoscopy images for polyp detection, localization, and segmentation evaluating both method accuracy and speed. Whilst, most methods in literature have competitive performance over accuracy, we show that the proposed ColonSegNet achieved a better trade-off between an average precision of 0.8000 and mean IoU of 0.8100, and the fastest speed of 180 frames per second for the detection and localization task. Likewise, the proposed ColonSegNet achieved a competitive dice coefficient of 0.8206 and the best average speed of 182.38 frames per second for the segmentation task. Our comprehensive comparison with various state-of-the-art methods reveals the importance of benchmarking the deep learning methods for automated real-time polyp identification and delineations that can potentially transform current clinical practices and minimise miss-detection rates. The work of Debesh Jha is funded by the Research Council of Norway project number 263248 (Privaton). The computations in this paper were performed on equipment provided by the Experimental Infrastructure for Exploration of Exascale Computing (eX3), which is financially supported by the Research Council of Norway under contract 270053. Parts of computational resources were also used from the research supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford BRC with additional support from the Wellcome Trust Core Award Grant Number 203141/2/16/Z. The work of Sharib Ali is supported by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre.

Colorectal cancer is one of the world leading death causes. Fortunately, an early diagnosis allows for effective treatment, increasing the survival rate. Deep learning techniques have shown their utility for increasing the adenoma detection rate at colonoscopy, but a dataset is usually required so the model can automatically learn features that characterize the polyps. In this work, we present the PICCOLO dataset, that comprises 3433 manually annotated images (2131 white-light images 1302 narrow-band images), originated from 76 lesions from 40 patients, which are distributed into training (2203), validation (897) and test (333) sets assuring patient independence between sets. Furthermore, clinical metadata are also provided for each lesion. Four different models, obtained by combining two backbones and two encoder&ndash, decoder architectures, are trained with the PICCOLO dataset and other two publicly available datasets for comparison. Results are provided for the test set of each dataset. Models trained with the PICCOLO dataset have a better generalization capacity, as they perform more uniformly along test sets of all datasets, rather than obtaining the best results for its own test set. This dataset is available at the website of the Basque Biobank, so it is expected that it will contribute to the further development of deep learning methods for polyp detection, localisation and classification, which would eventually result in a better and earlier diagnosis of colorectal cancer, hence improving patient outcomes.

ESREL 2020 PSAM 15, 30th European Safety and Reliability Conference and the 15th Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management Conference, Venise, ITALIE, 01-/11/2020 - 06/11/2020; The introduction of satellite-based localization techniques, relying on GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems), for railway operation is a promising, though challenging issue. Such a technical breakthrough aims to achieve a substantial gain for the railway sector in terms of competitiveness. In recent years, several projects have investigated the introduction of GNSS in railways. However, no proposed solution has been proven to fulfill the railway safety requirements. Moreover, traditional safety assessment methods present limitations in dealing with the complexity of such systems, raising the need to set up new approaches to this aim. The work discussed in this paper is part of a general model-driven approach for safety evaluation of GNSS-based localization in railway operation. In particular, we discuss the main features of our model-based approach and we elaborate on the different safety features that can be investigated based on our models. Considering the safety-critical aspect of the localization function, formal verification methods based on model-checking are adopted to provide safety evidence. Concretely, the overall behavior of the system will be expressed in a modular representation based on the timed automata notation supported by the UPPAAL tool. Such a modular approach permits to consider a variety of system architectures in different operational contexts. We also provide an illustration while taking into account a particular viewpoint that focuses on the operational context. This work can be seen as a first attempt towards adopting model-driven techniques for assessing and qualifying GNSS-based localization systems for railway operation.

Highlights • Refugee-led organisations have pivoted their existing service provision to fill assistance gaps related to public health during COVID-19. • Five areas in which refugees are or could be responders to COVID-19: providing public information, supplementing capacity gaps, healthcare delivery, shaping social norms, and virus tracking and contact tracing. • RLOs can be key actors in refugee assistance if mechanisms are found to identify effective organisations, offer funding, and build their capacities., The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing socioeconomic impact on already marginalised refugee communities demonstrate both the need for, and lack of, localisation in humanitarian and development responses. Our research with organisations founded and led by refugees, termed here refugee-led organisations (RLOs), in camps and cities in Kenya and Uganda shows their potential to be an asset in the response to COVID-19 and in contributing to more effective and participatory forms of humanitarian assistance. In this research note we draw on pre-pandemic research with around 80 RLOs and follow-up research with 15 in Uganda and Kenya who are actively responding to the pandemic and its effects. We identify five key areas in which refugees are or could be involved as responders to COVID-19 and other pandemics: providing public information, supplementing capacity gaps, healthcare delivery, shaping social norms, and virus tracking and contact tracing. Our research during COVID-19 shows how RLOs have pivoted their existing service provision to fill assistance gaps, including in areas directly related to public health. As the humanitarian system searches for ways to implement remote and participatory approaches to refugee assistance, RLOs offer great potential, if mechanisms can be found to identify those that are effective, provide them with funding, and build their capacities.

To feature a Light-Emitting Diode (LED) illumination infrastructure as a received signal strength (RSS)-based Visible Light Positioning (VLP) system's beacons, each LED's driver currently needs to be retrofitted. As a consequence of the intensity modulation (IM) retrofit, the LEDs' average radiant flux decreases. To remain adherent to the required illuminance levels, additional LED sources are required, which significantly raises the roll-out cost. The goal of unmodulated VLP (uVLP) is to refrain from modulating the LEDs by exploiting an inherent characteristic of the LEDs' light signals, namely the characteristic frequency (CF). This paper shows the aptitude of using the spectral magnitude at the CF to infer accurate positioning in photodiode (PD)-based RSS uVLP. Compared to regular VLP, uVLP displays a limited increase in median and 90th percentile root-mean-square error of 3.52 cm (8.72 cm vs. 5.20 cm) and 7.54 cm (16.96 cm vs. 9.42 cm) respectively, during trilateration in a 4 m by 4 m lab setup. This shows uVLP's potential as an indoor localisation system.

Currently, visible light positioning (VLP) enabling an illumination infrastructure requires a costly retrofit. Intensity modulation systems not only necessitate changes to the internal LED driving module, but decrease the LEDs’ radiant flux as well. This hinders the infrastructure’s ability to meet the maintained illuminance standards. Ideally, the LEDs could be left unmodulated, i.e., unmodulated VLP (uVLP). uVLP systems, inherently low-cost, exploit the characteristics of the light signals of opportunity (LSOOP) to infer a position. In this paper, it is shown that proper signal processing allows using the LED’s characteristic frequency (CF) as a discriminative feature in photodiode (PD)-based received signal strength (RSS) uVLP. This manuscript investigates and compares the aptitude of (future) RSS-based uVLP and VLP systems in terms of their feasibility, cost and accuracy. It demonstrates that CF-based uVLP exhibits an acceptable loss of accuracy compared to (regular) VLP. For point source-like LEDs, uVLP only worsens the trilateration-based median p50 and 90th percentile root-mean-square error p90 from 5.3 cm to 7.9 cm (+50%) and from 9.6 cm to 15.6 cm (+62%), in the 4 m 4 m room under consideration. A large experimental validation shows that employing a robust model-based fingerprinting localisation procedure, instead of trilateration, further boosts uVLP’s p50 and p90 accuracy to 5.0 cm and 10.6 cm. When collating with VLP’s p50 = 3.5 cm and p90 = 6.8 cm, uVLP exhibits a comparable positioning performance at a significantly lower cost and at a higher maintained illuminance, all of which underline uVLP’s high adoption potential. With this work, a significant step is taken towards the development of an accurate and low-cost tracking system.

Background Guide-wire localisation remains the most commonly used technique for localisation of impalpable breast lesions in the UK. One alternative is magnetic seed localisation. We aimed to investigate patient and clinician satisfaction in two consecutive cohorts, describe re-excision and positive margin rates, and explore reasons for positive margins and the implications for localisation techniques. Methods A single-institution prospective service evaluation of two cohorts of consecutive cases of wire and then Magseed localisation was carried out. Data were collected on patient and clinician satisfaction, clinico-pathological findings, and causes of involved margins. T tests were used to compare continuous variables and Chi-squared test for satisfaction outcomes. Results 168 consecutive cases used wire-guided localisation (WGL) and 128 subsequent cases used Magseeds. Patients reported less anxiety between localisation and surgery in the Magseed group, and clinicians reported greater ease of use of Magseeds. There were no differences in lesion size, surgical complexity, or re-excision rate between the groups. In a subset of patients receiving standard wide local excision (i.e., excluding mammoplasties), the impact on margin involvement was investigated. There was no significant difference in radiological under-sizing or accuracy of localisation. However, specimen weight and eccentricity of the lesion were statistically significantly lower in the Magseed group. Despite this, re-excision rates were not significantly different (p = 0.4). Conclusions This is the first large study of satisfaction with localisation and showed clinician preference for Magseed and a reduction in patient anxiety. It also demonstrated similar positive margin rates despite smaller specimen weights in the Magseed group. Magnetic seed localisation offers an acceptable clinical alternative to guide wire localisation. The impact on local service provision should also be considered.

In core computer vision tasks, we have witnessed significant advances in object detection, localisation and tracking. However, there are currently no methods to detect, localize and track objects in road environments, and taking into account real-time constraints. In this paper, our objective is to develop a deep learning multi object detection and tracking technique applied to road smart mobility. Firstly, we propose an effective detector-based on YOLOv3 which we adapt to our context. Subsequently, to localize successfully the detected objects, we put forward an adaptive method aiming to extract 3D information, i.e., depth maps. To do so, a comparative study is carried out taking into account two approaches: Monodepth2 for monocular vision and MADNEt for stereoscopic vision. These approaches are then evaluated over datasets containing depth information in order to discern the best solution that performs better in real-time conditions. Object tracking is necessary in order to mitigate the risks of collisions. Unlike traditional tracking approaches which require target initialization beforehand, our approach consists of using information from object detection and distance estimation to initialize targets and to track them later. Expressly, we propose here to improve SORT approach for 3D object tracking. We introduce an extended Kalman filter to better estimate the position of objects. Extensive experiments carried out on KITTI dataset prove that our proposal outperforms state-of-the-art approches.

We have developed a method of animal localisation that detects the angle from a sensor towards the direction of an animal call. The method is as simple to use as deploying a conventional static sound recorder, but provides tracking information as well as sound recordings. The principal of operation is to detect the phase difference between microphones positioned closely together. The phase is detected by converting the signals to their analytic form with a Hilbert transform. The angle is then calculated from the phase difference, frequency and microphone separation. Angular measurements provide flight paths above the sensor, and can give details of activity and behaviour that are not possible with a single channel static recorder. We recorded flight paths for 5 bat species on a single night at a site in Denmark (Pipistrellus nathusii, Pipistrellus pygmaeus, Eptesicus serotinus, Myotis daubentonii and Nyctalus noctula). The median error in angular measurement for the species was between 3 and 7 degrees. Calls at high angles from normal, corresponding with a poor signal-to-noise ratio, had larger errors compared to calls recorded in the centre of the field of view. Locations in space could be estimated by combining angular measurements from two or more sensors., Comment: Submitted to Bioacoustics (Taylor and Francis) 15 Nov. 2019

Simple Summary A large portion of breast lesions are not palpable and need to be marked before surgery in order to aid complete surgical removal. Currently, this is accomplished by placing a hook in the lesion with radiological guidance, which is in turn attached to a wire through the skin. This is a well-understood technique and is called wire-guided localisation (WGL). It has drawbacks, including being uncomfortable for the patient, and the need for the wire to be placed within less than a day of the surgery. This is why certain wireless techniques have been developed to replace WGL. LOCalizer™ is one such technique, which uses radio-frequency identification tags. In this study, we have systematically reviewed the literature regarding LOCalizer™, and confirmed that it is a valid alternative to WGL. We have also highlighted its limitations and suggested potential technical refinements to improve its clinical performance. Abstract Wire-guided localisation (WGL) has been the gold-standard for localising non-palpable breast lesions before excision. Due to its drawbacks, various wireless alternatives have been developed, including LOCalizer™, which is based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. In this systematic review, we consulted EMBASE, Medline and PubMed databases using appropriate search terms regarding the use of RFID technology in the localisation of occult breast lesions. Retrospective and prospective studies were included if they quoted the number of patients, rate of successful placement, retrieval rate, margin positivity rate and the re-excision rate. In addition, studies comparing RFID to WGL were also included and analysed separately. Seven studies were included in this systematic review spanning 1151 patients and 1344 tags. The pooled deployment rate was 99.1% and retrieval rate was 100%. Re-excision rate was 13.9%. One complication was identified. Two studies compared RFID with WGL (128 vs. 282 patients respectively). For both techniques the re-excision rate was 15.6% (20/128 vs. 44/282 respectively, p value is 0.995). Based on our review, LOCalizer™ is safe and non-inferior to WGL in terms of successful localisation and re-excision rates. However, further research is required to assess the cost effectiveness of this approach and its impact on the aesthetic outcome compared with WGL and other wire free technologies to better inform decision making in service planning and provision.

TED.com is a platform to share ideas through influential talks in video format on topics that range from science and technology to business that engages volunteers from all over the world to help transcribe, subtitle and translate their scripts in more than 100 languages. The justification to engage volunteer transcribers is that transcribed talks can reach a wider audience because they are accessible for hearing impaired individuals, can be indexed in search engines and can achieve TED’s mission of spreading ideas by making transcripts available for translation through TED’s Open Translation Project. Therefore, talks transcribers play a crucial role in the overall translation workflow and dissemination process as they are responsible for transcribing the contents and foundations of what will be later on translated into different languages. The objective of this paper is to analyse a corpus of talks originally delivered in different variants of Spanish to identify the most common strategies used by volunteer transcribers to handle local or idiomatic expressions and culturally biased items to reach the maximum audience possible and facilitate translation.

Purpose Intraoperative localisation and preservation of parathyroid glands improves outcomes following thyroid and parathyroid surgery. This can be facilitated by fluorescent imaging and methylene blue; a fluorophore is thought to be taken up avidly by parathyroid glands. This preliminary study aims to identify the optimum dose of methylene blue (MB), fluorescent patterns of thyroid and parathyroid glands and develop a protocol for the use of intravenous MB emitted fluorescence to enable parathyroid identification. Methods This is a phase 1b, interventional study (NCT02089542) involving 41 patients undergoing thyroid and/or parathyroid surgery. After exposure of the thyroid and/or parathyroid gland(s), intravenous boluses of between 0.05 and 0.5 mg/kg of MB were injected. Fluobeam® (a hand held fluorescence real-time imager) was used to record fluorescence from the operating field prior and up to 10 min following administration. Results The optimum dose of MB to visualise thyroid and parathyroid glands was 0.4 mg/kg body weight. The median time to onset of fluorescence was 23 and 22 s and the median time to peak fluorescence was 41.5 and 40 s, respectively. The peak fluorescence for thyroid and parathyroid glands compared to muscle were 2.6 and 4.3, respectively. Parathyroid auto-fluorescence prior to methylene blue injection was commonly observed. Conclusions A clinical protocol for detection of fluorescence from MB during thyroid and parathyroid surgery is presented. Parathyroids (especially enlarged glands) fluoresce more intensely than thyroid glands. Auto-fluorescence may aid parathyroid detection, but MB fluorescence is needed to demonstrate viability.

Platelet concentrates (PC) generally refers to a group of products that are prepared from autologous blood intended to enhance healing activities. PC therapy is now very popular in treating musculoskeletal injuries; however, inconsistent clinical results urge the need to understand the working mechanism of PC. It is generally believed that the platelet-derived bioactive factors are the active constituents, and their bioavailability in the vicinity of the lesion sites determines the treatment efficacies. Therefore, the composition, localisation, and duration of the action of PC would be key determinants. In this review, we discuss how different preparations and delivery methods of PC would affect the treatment outcomes with respect to clinical evidence about PC therapy for osteoarthritis, tendinopathies, rotator cuff tears, anterior cruciate ligament injuries, and bone fractures. This review can be used as a quick guide for the use of PC therapy and provide insights for the further optimisation of the therapy in the near future.

In this paper, an experimental evaluation of the effect of multipath reflections on two 3D positioning algorithms is experimentally compared. The VLP algorithms use the received signal strength (RSS) for estimating the receiver`s 3D position without prior knowledge of its height. An experimental overall median accuracy of 10.5 cm was achieved in a 4 x 4 x 4.1 m3 test area. The effect of multipath reflections was recreated using a storage shelf rack that is similar to the ones used in warehouses and was placed 26 cm away from the path. The results demonstrate the degrading effect of reflections on two and three-dimensional positioning systems. The reflection`s effect was especially severe due to reflections from a metal beam. The achieved median errors using the two different algorithms were 7.5 and 6.6 cm before the addition of a shelf rack, and they increased to 11.7 and 12 cm after the shelf rack was added. Multipath reflections increased the median positioning errors by 112% in 2D systems and by 69% for 3D systems. The paper demonstrates the degrading effect of multipath reflections on VLP systems and highlights the need to take it into consideration when evaluating VLP systems.

ITSC 2019, IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference, Auckland, NOUVELLE-ZELANDE, 27-/10/2019 - 30/10/2019; The ERSAT GGC project introduces the concept of virtual balises for train localization, which avoids investment and maintenance costs of physical balises. Since this concept relies on the matching of train positions to balise positions stored in a database, it is dependent on placing virtual balises in track areas with unimpeded GNSS reception. One factor majorly contributing to the distortion of GNSS signals is the non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenario where the direct path between a satellite and the receiver on the train is blocked. As these NLOS situations result in deflections or the total absence of GNSS signals, this paper proposes a system to identify obstacles occluding the visibility of satellites above the tracks traversed by a train. This is achieved by video recording the sky from the roof of the train and segmenting the images into sky and non-sky regions. The line-of-sight status of individual satellites is found through projecting the known satellite locations into the segmented images. Consequently, the information whether a satellite is located in a sky or non-sky segment of the image allows for a determination of the GNSS performance at any observed track area.

32nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2019), MIAMI, ETATS-UNIS, 16-/09/2019 - 20/09/2019; Pedestrian location in urban or indoor environments is particularly complex. Indeed, GNSS technology generally used for localization is no longer sufficient in these challenging environments. However, the presence of many sensors in consumer equipment like smartphones allows the implementation of different methods. PDR (Pedestrian Dead Reckoning) is a position estimation method using inertial and magnetic sensor data. It is based on the determination of two elements: the step length and the walking direction. This direction is difficult to estimate for handheld sensors because the orientation of the sensor is not always aligned with the walking direction. Methods based on the study of horizontal hand accelerations can overcome this difficulty, but performance on real scenarios is not sufficient. This article proposes a new method for estimating the walking direction and position based on an extended Kalman filter. For this purpose, the angular estimates from the WAISS and MAGYQ algorithms are merged to update the estimate of the walking direction. Phase measurements are used with TDCP updates to correct the velocity and correct the walking direction. 6 experiments carried out with three subjects over distances between 650 and 1300m in texting mode, in real and challenging conditions are conducted. The mean angular error obtained is 4.6° and the mean position error is 0.5% of the travelled distance

Background William James’ 1884 paper “What is an emotion?” has generated much recent interest in affective science regarding somatic contributions to emotion. Studies of interoception (“sensing the physiological condition of the body”) suggest that sensing specific parts of the body contributes to the production of emotion, namely when sensing the viscera (i.e. “visceroception” of the heart, gut or lungs). Improved visceroception has, for instance, been linked to increased emotional intensity, suggesting a role for interoception in emotion regulation that may pertain specifically to visceral bodily locations. Thus, in addition to asking James’ question, “What is an emotion?”, we ask, “Where is an emotion?”. Further, there is an evidence base pointing to the connections between emotion regulation and suicide, and between interoception and suicide. This is a preliminary trial investigating whether targeted interoception/visceroception improves emotion regulation. Ultimately, the overall project aims to inform suicide prevention efforts. Methods The trial utilises a pre-test/post-test control group design, with two experimental groups undergoing visceroceptive interventions (focussing on areas pertaining to the gut or heart) and a control group. The interventions will run for 8 weeks. A spatial cueing task will measure reaction times to bodily changes relating to lower abdomen or chest focus. A stop/signal task will measure emotional inhibition, which is hypothesised to obscure awareness of active bodily locations. Visceroceptive ability will be tracked using a heartbeat estimation task, a water load test, and by self-report questionnaire. The sample will consist of healthcare professionals and healthcare students. Despite these being groups that represent a relatively high suicide risk among professional and student groups, all participants will be healthy, given the preliminary nature of this trial. Discussion To our knowledge, this will be the first project to address whether emotional feeling presents as a localised bodily phenomenon and whether trained awareness of emotional localisation can improve emotion regulation. It will also be the first to investigate relationships between interoception and emotional inhibition (i.e. whether a sustained interoceptive practice leads to the disinhibition of bodily emotional sensations, which can positively contribute to emotion regulation). These empirical findings on emotion regulation from a healthy sample will be used to inform a desk-based enquiry into the role of embodied emotion in suicide prevention, which may make a significant contribution to a growing evidence base on interoception and suicide. Trial registration ACTRN12619000324112. Registered on 4 March 2019. Universal Trial Number (UTN): U1111-1221-0201.

IEEE WoWMoM 2019, 20th IEEE International symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, Washington, ETATS-UNIS, 10-/06/2019 - 12/06/2019; International audience; Human mobility analysis is a multidisciplinary research subject that has attracted a growing interest over the last decade. A substantial amount of such recent studies is driven by the availability of original sources of real-world information about individual movement patterns. An important task in the analysis of mobility data is reliably distinguishing between the stop locations and movement phases that compose the trajectories of the monitored subjects. The problem is especially challenging when mobility is inferred from mobile phone location data: here, oscillations in the association of mobile devices to base stations lead to apparent user mobility even in absence of actual movement. In this paper, we leverage a unique dataset of spatiotemporal individual trajectories that allows capturing both the user and network operator perspectives in mobile phone location data, and investigate the oscillation phenomenon. We present probabilistic and machine learning approaches for detecting oscillations in mobile phone location data, and a filtering technique for removing those. Our analyses and comparison with state-of-the-art approaches demonstrate the superiority of our solution, both in terms of removed oscillations and of error with respect to ground-truth trajectories.

We describe a novel approach to image based localisation in urban environments using semantic matching between images and a 2-D map. It contrasts with the vast majority of existing approaches which use image to image database matching. We use highly compact binary descriptors to represent semantic features at locations, significantly increasing scalability compared with existing methods and having the potential for greater invariance to variable imaging conditions. The approach is also more akin to human map reading, making it more suited to human-system interaction. The binary descriptors indicate the presence or not of semantic features relating to buildings and road junctions in discrete viewing directions. We use CNN classifiers to detect the features in images and match descriptor estimates with a database of location tagged descriptors derived from the 2-D map. In isolation, the descriptors are not sufficiently discriminative, but when concatenated sequentially along a route, their combination becomes highly distinctive and allows localisation even when using non-perfect classifiers. Performance is further improved by taking into account left or right turns over a route. Experimental results obtained using Google StreetView and OpenStreetMap data show that the approach has considerable potential, achieving localisation accuracy of around 85% using routes corresponding to approximately 200 meters., Comment: 8 pages, submitted to IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2018

Crowdsourcing and collaborative translation, activities emerging on the translation scene recently, are playing an increasingly important role in the world of professional translation and in the localization industry. This article focuses on a study carried out to analyze the perception of a group of translator trainees regarding these new translation practices. A total of 20 undergraduate students participated in the research and were asked to perform a collaborative localization task using an online collaborative platform. Data subjected to a quantitative and qualitative analysis suggest that online collaborative translation tasks enhance students? motivation towards collaborative translation and help consolidate their technical knowledge about specific localization tools and files., Le crowdsourcing et la traduction collaborative, des activités récemment apparues sur la scène de la traduction, jouent un rôle de plus en plus important dans le monde de la traduction professionnelle et dans l’industrie de la localisation. Cet article se concentre sur une étude réalisée pour analyser la perception d’un groupe d’étudiants en traduction à l’égard de ces nouvelles pratiques de traduction. Au total 20 étudiants de premier cycle ont participé à la recherche et ont été invités à effectuer une tâche de localisation collaborative à l’aide d’une plateforme collaborative en ligne. Les données obtenues à partir d’une analyse quantitative et qualitative suggèrent que les tâches de traduction collaborative en ligne ont renforcé la motivation des étudiants à l’égard de la traduction collaborative et les ont aidés à consolider leurs connaissances techniques sur des outils et des fichiers de localisation spécifiques.

This article is devoted to analyse and discuss the level of control and autonomy that multinational enterprises (MNEs) should grant to their subsidiaries. It analyse the impact of subsidiaries' capacity to innovate and develop new products and services to the Brazilian telecommunications market, based on the case-study of Telefónica business, a subsidiary of Telefónica, a Spanish multinational communication company. The Lasserre's global integration/local responsiveness framework was applied to the data obtained from face-to-face in-depth structured interviews with key actors in Telefónica business (TNB) to investigate the relationship between global integration strategy and local adaptation in the Brazilian telecommunications market. The results show that Telefónica uses a glocal approach since its subsidiary has the autonomy to create and adapt its products when the headquarters recognise that global decisions might not meet local demands. By showing that Telefónica has successfully used a glocal approach on the Brazilian market, as its subsidiary had the autonomy to create and adapt products when global company products might not meet local demands, this study is useful for other multinational companies when going to new markets.

Solid-State LiDAR (SSL) takes an increasing share of the LiDAR market. Compared with traditional spinning LiDAR, SSLs are more compact, energy-efficient and cost-effective. Generally, the current study of SSL mapping is limited to adapting existing SLAM algorithms to an SSL sensor. However, compared with spinning LiDARs, SSLs are different in terms of their irregular scan patterns and limited FOV. Directly applying existing SLAM approaches on them often increase the instability of a mapping process. This study proposes a systematic design, which consists of a dual-LiDAR mapping system and a three DOF interpolated six DOF odometry. For dual-LiDAR mapping, this work uses a 2D LiDAR to enhance a 3D SSL performance on a ground vehicle platform. The proposed system takes a 2D LiDAR to preprocess the scanning field into a number of feature sections according to the curvatures on the 2D fraction. Subsequently, this section information is passed to 3D SSL for direction feature selection. Additionally, this work proposes an odometry interpolation method which uses both LiDARs to generate two separated odometries. The proposed odometry interpolation method selectively determines the appropriate odometry information to update the system state under challenging conditions. Experiments are conducted in different scenarios. The results proves that the proposed approach is able to utilise 12 times more corner features from the environment than the comparied method, thus results in a demonstrable improvement in its absolute position error.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as GPS, already used in aeronautics for safety-related applications, can play a major role in railway safety by allowing a train to locate itself safely. However, in order to implement this positioning solution in any embedded system, its performances must be evaluated according to railway standards. The evaluation of GNSS performances is not based on the same attributes class than RAMS evaluation. Face to these diffculties, we propose to express the integrity attribute, performance of satellite-based localisation. This attribute comes from aeronautical standards and for a hybridised GNSS with inertial system. To achieve this objective, the integrity attribute must be extended to this kind of system and algorithms initially devoted to GNSS integrity monitoring only must be adapted. Thereafter, the formalisation of this integrity attribute permits us to analyse the safety quantitatively through the probabilities of integrity risk and wrong-side failure. In this paper, after an introductory discussion about the use of localisation systems in railway safety context together with integrity issues, a particular integrity monitoring is proposed and described. The detection events of this algorithm permit us to conclude about safety level of satellite-based localisation system.

A 2013 article in Electronic Commerce Research and Applications (Cyr, 2013) claims to demonstrate that user perceptions of website design are not only driven by national culture but also by country-level economic and technological parameters. This comment shows that the study’s hypotheses should have been rejected and that the proposed dual framework does not seem to provide value added. Moreover, the study data are ill-suited for its purposes. Because the author relies on data for websites that have been localized, user perceptions no longer accurately reflect between-country cultural differences.

The data collected from the sensor network is meaningful to most of the wireless sensor network applications if and only if it is coupled with the exact positioning of the node. Mere localisation solves the problem of locating an unknown node, however applications like battlefield surveillance or enemy tracking, rescue-operations as well as monitoring of military facilities demand security and reliability of the location information. Therefore secure localisation of non-reference nodes facilitates the localisation system to be robust and secure in adversarial circumstances. The work targets secure localisation of the node position using least significant bit (LSB) insertion technique of steganography. In order for a node to be aware of its position, it sends a cover-image along with the node-id to the Cluster head (CH). The CH which already knows the node position performs LSB embedding on the cover image to generate a stego-image. The stego-image and the cover-image are then compared to get secure position information. The comparison will yield accurate position information only if the cover image is the same. For an adversarial circumstance (different cover image), the security mechanism is robust, and the information will be conveyed to the intended recipient only.

This paper addresses a key social&ndash, cultural aspect of sustainability in the Gulf region: Workforce localization (WL). Our research objective is to empirically explore organizational socialization (OS) practices in the context of WL in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where National Citizens (NCs) are a powerful minority in the workforce. This research adopts a qualitative methodology, using semi-structured interviews with managers in charge of the WL program in 14 organizations in the UAE, across different industrial sectors and ownership. We found five major OS practices: Establishing thorough orientation programs, providing formal training programs (skills, diversity/cultural awareness, supervisor, mentoring and coaching team building), redesigning NCs&rsquo, jobs and work teams, engaging expatriates in NCs&rsquo, OS processes, and organizing networking events. All organizations rigorously evaluated the effectiveness of their OS practices. This study contributes to the empirical literature on management OS, WL, and diversity management in a non-western, emerging Arab country. It contributes to theory development on the content of OS practices, showing how a minority can be a powerful group around whom socialization processes are tailored to integrate them fully into the organization. Practically, our findings inform managers of how to adapt their existing OS practices to the specific needs of minority members, and support Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-based organizations and policymakers with the design, monitoring, and implementation of WL programs, and with the development of a sustainable workforce.

2018 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation, NANTES, FRANCE, 24-/09/2018 - 27/09/2018; Inertial and magnetic sensors based PDR approaches are particularly interesting for pedestrian location since they don't require any specific infrastructure. Estimating the walking direction, which is essential for PDR strategy, remains difficult with handheld sensors. WAISS is a new method that integrates hand movement and is independent of the misalignment between the walking direction and the pointing direction that estimates the walking direction. It uses statistical models of the hand accelerations in the horizontal plane. The paper studies how to create the best possible models. Among the features under study are the number of strides used to learn the models, different acquisition contexts and walking directions. Finally, the complexity of models needed for a given person is discussed. 100 strides over curved and straight line walks combined with a bi-modal Gaussian Mixture Model gives the best walking direction estimate with a 15° mean error over a 325 m indoor/outdoor walk performed by four subjects.

40th IABSE Symposium : Tomorrow's Megastructures, NANTES, FRANCE, 19-/09/2018 - 21/09/2018; Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite constellation allowing positioning in a constantly updated global reference frame for almost any user on the globe. Over the last decade, GPS has been expanded to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) with the progressive addition of three satellite constellations. This evolution enables a more robust and effective positioning calculation, thus improving the performance and reliability of GNSS-based monitoring systems. In parallel, improvements in GNSS receivers provide higher frequency and precision calculations, with shorter computation time, enabling GNSS techniques to be used both for long-term monitoring of slow displacements, and for the analysis of short term events. This paper explores the performances and possibilities of low-cost GNSS receivers in order to improve structural health monitoring systems of large and flexible structures such as bridges, towers or cooling-towers. Low-cost carrier-phase receivers, coupled with various processing methods and parameters, are evaluated to the extent of characterizing both long term precision and stability, and qualification of short displacements and oscillations. The amplitudes and frequencies of displacements and oscillations tested are selected in accordance with phenomena that may be observed on flexible structures. The use of a high-quality reference station with very short baseline is proven a good alternative over expensive receiver upgrading, with rovers able to qualify abrupt displacements down to 4mm, and accurately monitor oscillations with frequencies up to 0.25Hz and amplitudes down to 1cm with a 1Hz sampling rate. Data acquired from a low-cost receiver installed on the main span of suspended bridge is evaluated in order to highlight quality and reliability of on-site applications, and was found highly correlated to traditional sensors data (resistance temperature detectors, and displacement laser sensors).