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Understanding the operation of complex assets such heavy-duty vehicles is essential for improving the efficiency, sustainability, and safety of future industry. Specifically, reducing energy consumption of transportation is crucially important for fleet operators, due to the impact it has on decreasing energy costs and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Drivers have a high influence on fuel usage. However, reliably estimating driver performance is challenging. This is a key component of many eco-driving tools used to train drivers. Some key aspects of good, or efficient, drivers include being more aware of the surroundings, adapting to the road situations, and anticipating likely developments of the traffic conditions. With the development of IoT technologies and possibility of collecting high-precision and high-frequency data, even such vague concepts can be qualitatively measured, or at least approximated. In this paper, we demonstrate how the driver’s degree of attention to the road can be automatically extracted from onboard sensor data. More specifically, our main contribution is introduction of a new metric, called attention horizon (AH); it can, fully automatically and based on readily-available IoT data, capture, differentiate, and evaluate a driver’s behavior as the vehicle approaches a red traffic light. We suggest that our measure encapsulates complex concepts such as driver’s “awareness” and “carefulness” in itself. This metric is extracted from the pedal positions in a 150 m trajectory just before stopping. We demonstrate that this metric is correlated with normalized fuel consumption rate (FCR) in the long term, making it a suitable tool for ranking and evaluating drivers. For example, over weekly periods we found a negative median correlation between AH and FCR with the absolute value of 0.156; while using monthly data, the value was 0.402.

The main purpose of this study is to identify Israeli security threats (especially military threats arising from nuclear weapons programs), to investigate the impact of these threats on the regional security environment in the Middle East, and to provide solutions to deal with them. Research questions include: 1. What is the strategic vision and principles of Israel's national security policies? 2. What are the most important security threats to Israel for the Middle East, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran? 3. What policies should the countries of the region consider in dealing with these threats in their defense policy? The political structure of the Zionist regime is influenced by the ideological foundations of Judaism, and the teachings of the Talmud have had a great influence on the political and military actions of that regime. Overall conclusion is that while Israel's security policies pose a threat to the Middle East, for a myriad of reasons, including the growing economic vulnerability by militarism, foreign dependence on major superregional powers, especially the United States, and internal political-social-economic conflicts.Increasing the political role and armed activities of terrorist groups, the weakening and eventual overthrow of the unpopular and authoritarian Western governments in the Middle East, the Netanyahu administration will not achieve its strategic goals. The research method of this article is qualitative and the type of information gathering is documentary, desk (library) form and the use of reputable scientific sites.

The apparition of low-cost depth cameras has lead to the development of several reconstruction methods that work well with rigid objects, but tend to fail when used to manually scan a standing person. Specific methods for body scanning have been proposed, but they have some ad-hoc requirements that make them unsuitable in a wide range of applications: they either require rotation platforms, multiple sensors and a priori template model. Scanning a person with a hand-held low-cost depth camera is still a challenging unsolved problem. This work proposes a novel solution to easily scan standing persons by combining depth information with fiducial markers without using a template model. In our approach, a set of markers placed in the ground are used to improve camera tracking by a novel algorithm that fuses depth information with the known location of the markers. The proposed method analyzes the video sequence and automatically divides it into fragments that are employed to build partial overlapping scans of the subject. Then, a registration step (both rigid and non-rigid) is applied to create a final mesh of the scanned subject. The proposed method has been compared with the state-of-the-art KinectFusion [1], ElasticFusion [2], ORB-SLAM [3, 4 ], and BundleFusion [5] methods, exhibiting superior performance.

Event cameras are a new type of image sensors that output changes in light intensity (events) instead of absolute intensity values. They have a very high temporal resolution and a high dynamic range. In this paper, we propose a method to detect and decode binary square markers using an event camera. We detect the edges of the markers by detecting line segments in an image created from events in the current packet. The line segments are combined to form marker candidates. The bit value of marker cells is decoded using the events on their borders. To the best of our knowledge, no other approach exists for detecting square binary markers directly from an event camera using only the CPU unit in real-time. Experimental results show that the performance of our proposal is much superior to the one from the RGB ArUco marker detector. The proposed method can achieve the real-time performance on a single CPU thread., Comment: An error in the abstract of the IEEE Access version has been corrected in this version. Link to the IEEE Access paper: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3058423

Object tracking is a key aspect in many applications such as augmented reality in medicine (e.g. tracking a surgical instrument) or robotics. Squared planar markers have become popular tools for tracking since their pose can be estimated from their four corners. While using a single marker and a single camera limits the working area considerably, using multiple markers attached to an object requires estimating their relative position, which is not trivial, for high accuracy tracking. Likewise, using multiple cameras requires estimating their extrinsic parameters, also a tedious process that must be repeated whenever a camera is moved. This work proposes a novel method to simultaneously solve the above-mentioned problems. From a video sequence showing a rigid set of planar markers recorded from multiple cameras, the proposed method is able to automatically obtain the three-dimensional configuration of the markers, the extrinsic parameters of the cameras, and the relative pose between the markers and the cameras at each frame. Our experiments show that our approach can obtain highly accurate results for estimating these parameters using low resolution cameras. Once the parameters are obtained, tracking of the object can be done in real time with a low computational cost. The proposed method is a step forward in the development of cost-effective solutions for object tracking., Comment: Some errors in the IEEE Access version (regarding object's rotational accuracy, and the definition of Equation 14) have been corrected in this version. IEEE Access paper: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2896648

US foreign policy during the Obama administration, especially in the second term, has focused to resolve its international crises in the Middle East and tried to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue. In the current article, different approaches are brought forth in the field of discerning deterrence mechanisms that are feasible against asymmetric hazards. In the following, the attempts has been made to answer the question of how deterrence can be utilized as a mechanism to face asymmetric threats, and what role can Iran's nuclear program play in deterring countries in power in this process?. Hence, from the analysis of the mentioned model, we will present the main and major assumptions of the current article under four headings: deterrent measures, coercive measures, anti-deployment measures and counter-offensive measures. The tensions between Iran and the West are not the product of Iran's nuclear program, but are based on the religious ideology of the Iranian government and Israel's presence in the region, although the role of some Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, should not be disregarded. The hypothesis under consideration is that US foreign policy in the Iranian nuclear case has been directed towards the interaction of national interests by following the rational, organizational and bureaucratic model of decision-making models. The result of the research is that think tanks are very determining in leading the US government to the White House foreign policy decision-maker towards Iran, so that diplomacy actors cannot escape it. And public opinion seeks to make Iran's nuclear energy dangerous and to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as a serious threat to humanity. Though, the Islamic Republic of Iran, with its power to obtain nuclear weapons, does not intend to build a nuclear bomb, nor does it intend to make the world insecure. The power of reaching to a nuclear weapon can play a key and major role for Iran as a deterrent, and Iran intends to use nuclear energy not to build a bomb but to make it peaceful.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The research done in the field of Augmented Reality (AR) for patient positioning in radiation therapy is scarce. We propose an efficient and cost-effective algorithm for tracking the scene and the patient to interactively assist the patient's positioning process by providing visual feedback to the operator. Up to our knowledge, this is the first framework that can be employed for mobile interactive AR to guide patient positioning. METHODS: We propose a point cloud processing method that combined with a fiducial marker-mapper algorithm and the generalized ICP algorithm tracks the patient and the camera precisely and efficiently only using the CPU unit. The alignment between the 3D reference model and body marker map is calculated employing an efficient body reconstruction algorithm. RESULTS: Our quantitative evaluation shows that the proposed method achieves a translational and rotational error of 4.17 mm/0.82 deg at 9 fps. Furthermore, the qualitative results demonstrate the usefulness of our algorithm in patient positioning on different human subjects. CONCLUSION: Since our algorithm achieves a relatively high frame rate and accuracy employing a regular laptop (without the usage of a dedicated GPU), it is a very cost-effective AR-based patient positioning method. It also opens the way for other researchers by introducing a framework that could be improved upon for better mobile interactive AR patient positioning solutions in the future., 16 pages, 7 figures

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Patient positioning is a crucial step in radiation therapy, for which non-invasive methods have been developed based on surface reconstruction using optical 3D imaging. However, most solutions need expensive specialized hardware and a careful calibration procedure that must be repeated over time.This paper proposes a fast and cheap patient positioning method based on inexpensive consumer level RGB-D sensors. METHODS: The proposed method relies on a 3D reconstruction approach that fuses, in real-time, artificial and natural visual landmarks recorded from a hand-held RGB-D sensor. The video sequence is transformed into a set of keyframes with known poses, that are later refined to obtain a realistic 3D reconstruction of the patient. The use of artificial landmarks allows our method to automatically align the reconstruction to a reference one, without the need of calibrating the system with respect to the linear accelerator coordinate system. RESULTS:The experiments conducted show that our method obtains a median of 1 cm in translational error, and 1 degree of rotational error with respect to reference pose. Additionally, the proposed method shows as visual output overlayed poses (from the reference and the current scene) and an error map that can be used to correct the patient's current pose to match the reference pose. CONCLUSIONS: A novel approach to obtain 3D body reconstructions for patient positioning without requiring expensive hardware or dedicated graphic cards is proposed. The method can be used to align in real time the patient's current pose to a preview pose, which is a relevant step in radiation therapy., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

In many countries, foreign movies and TV productions are dubbed, i.e., the original voice of an actor is replaced with a translation that is spoken by a dubbing actor in the country's own language. Dubbing is a complex process that requires specific translations and accurately timed recitations such that the new audio at least coarsely adheres to the mouth motion in the video. However, since the sequence of phonemes and visemes in the original and the dubbing language are different, the video-to-audio match is never perfect, which is a major source of visual discomfort. In this paper, we propose a system to alter the mouth motion of an actor in a video, so that it matches the new audio track. Our paper builds on high-quality monocular capture of 3D facial performance, lighting and albedo of the dubbing and target actors, and uses audio analysis in combination with a space-time retrieval method to synthesize a new photo-realistically rendered and highly detailed 3D shape model of the mouth region to replace the target performance. We demonstrate plausible visual quality of our results compared to footage that has been professionally dubbed in the traditional way, both qualitatively and through a user study.

Terms formation like that globalization, world village, information era, lattice society and international common language indicate rising substantial changes in our peripheral circumstance. Today rate of life changes is very fast with widely range effect that intensify modernity dynamics. Today we are in subject appearance of global industry communications, formation of transnational institutions, fade of political borders, structural and institutional similarity of societies, internationalization of local issues, increase of social interactions and communications bulk and another common global challenge. All this change realizable in globalization paradigm. This phenomenon with its increaser validation along with global language, realize unprecedented level of transnational and human communications. Globalization by this method rescue little and vulnerable framework of societies from restrict of local features and combine them with big and national organizations along with social diverse backgrounds that has been agent of political, economic and cultural orders in global scale. According with process, even increased critical outlook of life, cultural arena of life alters to challenge sphere that with increasing of resistant forms, considered fundamental questions about social and cultural power ties. According to this process expect that in political dimension. Globalization facilitate with creation potential preparation prerequisite for many non-democratic Persian-gulf edge countries for reduction democracy like that extend of compare and political participation. Writers believe that foundation of democratic systems in globalization era that its main feature is extension of human communication by communication networks, strengthen democratization process and evaluate any political and social transform in this region. In framework of Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington theories should be said the democracy is inevitable fate for authoritarian Persian-gulf edge countries and Arab spring prelude of democratization and forth wave in non-democratic regions.

Azerbaijan has a very central and decisive role in the Iranian politics in the Caucasus. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and independence of Azerbaijan, relations between Tehran-Baku has usually been good with leaps and bounds during the past two decades. Factors such as having a shared history and culture and potentials for economic cooperation function as a stimulus for the development of bilateral relations. However, the relations are faced with obstacles and deterrents such as continuing disputes about the legal regime of the Caspian Sea, relations with Israel and the US and NATO accession by Azerbaijan are in place. Azerbaijani authorities also see the Islamic Republic of Iran's foreign policy towards the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh and extensive relations with Armenia as the most important obstacles to improved relations between the two countries. Therefore, despite some opportunities to improve bilateral relations between Tehran and Baku, challenging factors and restrictions have actually increased. This research provides a brief survey of the relations between Iran and Azerbaijan based on statistics of economic and trade relations, and the causes of development of economic relations and economic cooperation between Iran and Azerbaijan on the other hand, and uses descriptive and experimental method (statistical) to study capacity and balance of economic relations between the two countries given political considerations on the one hand. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n3s3p72

The Saudi Arabia having patrimonial government politically system and unique nature of power structure that all political affairs set in Ale Saudi dynasty. Government system is traditional and dependent to person and persons of dynasty are absolute rulers and away from criticism and ruler willing prefer to law. Despite of authoritarian and monarchy system and non-democracy development in Saudi Arabia special now that kind of government system isn’t acceptable side of dominant discourse of global community, this country could rely on oil produce regarding to rentier state features have active representation in international communities and too in home sue achievement to legitimacy and vindication. the interests of state-building and to reinforce its legitimacy, which is hardly the act of a state free of interests. Saudi Arabia is also an archetypal example of a state that still faces influence from actors within the state and elite structures, i.e. princes, senior officials, and clerics, among others. In this article analysis rentier state effect on non-democracy development in case study of the Saudi Arabia and research claim is that in nature of relations between rentier state and non-democracy development exist negative correlation. Namely whatever government income dependent to oil export and state economic nature has been independent from peoples, will be decrease from democratic charge in political dimension. This country by oil produce and effect to world powers economies cause that be complex government structure under monarchy system and use endowment of oil rent. Now observe modern dictatorship that despite of economic and social reforms side if internal, regional and international pressures in general dimension of society, will be non-democratic politically structure.

The traditional ideological discourse of the Islamic revolution was formed by the safeguard and support of the pastachievements and also to preserve the historical heritage. It was one of the rings attached to the compatibility of thereligious and national identity in contrast of the Pahlavi's extremism that emphasized the leasing of Shiite's elements,the identity of Western modernity and tyranny.Following of this hegemonic discourse after the Islamic revolution. We can see the adoption of religious and nationalvalues. It is strengthened the national identity by the central slab of religious democracy and some elements such as ;civil society, rule of law, development of higher education, political participation, economic development, civilrights and human dignity.

The images obtained from confocal imaging systems present less resolution than the theoretical limit due to imperfection of the optical components and their arrangement. This imperfection deteriorates the wavefront and introduces aberrations to the optical system. Adaptive optics (AO) systems composed of a wavefront sensor (WFS) and a deformable mirror represent the most used solution to this problem. Such adaptive optics systems are expensive. In addition, in microscopy, WFSs cannot be used due to stray reflections in the system and high aberrations introduced by the specimen. For these reasons, sensor-less AO systems have been developed to control the deformable mirror (DM) using an optimization algorithm in an iterative manner. At each iteration, the algorithm produces a new set of voltage and sends it to the mirror so as to optimize its shape, in such a way, as to maximize the strength of the photodetector current in the imaging system. In this paper the results of the application of three optimization techniques in the sensor-less AO are compared. The three optimization techniques are simulated annealing (SA), genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). SA and GA have been previously implemented and PSO is explained in this paper.

The imperfection of optical devices in confocal imaging system deteriorates wavefront which results in aberration. This reduces the optical signal to noise ratio of the imaging system and the quality of the produced images. Adaptive optics composed of wavefront sensor and deformable mirror is a straightforward solution for this problem. In this paper, we described a blind optimization technique with an in-expensive electronics without using the sensor to correct the aberration in order to achieve better quality images. The correction system includes a deformable mirror with 52 actuators which are controlled by particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm.

in this paper we described a blind optimization technique with an in-expensive electronics for optical systems to maximize the output signal. Deformable mirror is the main optical element used in the system to correct the wavefront and increase the output signal. The mirror is controlled by genetic algorithms through the computer microphone port and two PCI-Express cards.