Sustainable Mobility as Essential Ingredient for Vibrant Cities: 3 Cases in Point

Achieving smart urban mobility: the case of Zürich 198

Lidar Measurement Bias Estimation via Return Waveform Modelling in a Context of 3D Mapping

In a context of 3D mapping, it is very important to get accurate measurements from sensors. In particular, Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) measurements are typically treated as a zero-mean Gaussian distribution. We show that this assumption leads to predictable localisation drifts, especially when a bias related to measuring obstacles with high incidence angles is not taken into consideration. Moreover, we present a way to physically understand and model this bias, which generalises to multiple sensors. Using an experimental setup, we measured the bias of the Sick LMS151, Velodyne HDL-32E, and Robosense RS-LiDAR-16 as a function of depth and incidence angle, and showed that the bias can go up to 20 cm for high incidence angles. We then used our modelisations to remove the bias from the measurements, leading to more accurate maps and a reduced localisation drift.Comment: IEEE Copyrights: 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other work

Learning to rank from medical imaging data

Medical images can be used to predict a clinical score coding for the severity of a disease, a pain level or the complexity of a cognitive task. In all these cases, the predicted variable has a natural order. While a standard classifier discards this information, we would like to take it into account in order to improve prediction performance. A standard linear regression does model such information, however the linearity assumption is likely not be satisfied when predicting from pixel intensities in an image. In this paper we address these modeling challenges with a supervised learning procedure where the model aims to order or rank images. We use a linear model for its robustness in high dimension and its possible interpretation. We show on simulations and two fMRI datasets that this approach is able to predict the correct ordering on pairs of images, yielding higher prediction accuracy than standard regression and multiclass classification techniques

Flexible MgO barrier magnetic tunnel junctions

Flexible electronic devices require the integration of multiple crucial components on soft substrates to achieve their functions. In particular, memory devices are the fundamental component for data storage and processing in flexible electronics. Here, we present flexible MgO barrier magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) devices fabricated using a transfer printing process, which exhibit reliable and stable operation under substantial deformation of the device substrates. In addition, the flexible MTJ devices yield significantly enhanced tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) of ~300 % and improved abruptness of switching, as residual strain in the MTJ structure induced by the fabrication process is released during the transfer process. This approach could be useful for a wide range of flexible electronic systems that require high performance memory components.Comment: Adv. Mat. (2016

The founding and development of Louvain-la-Neuve, the only new town of Belgium

SUMMARY OF FACTSThe Louvain-la-Neuve new university town has been built by the University of Louvain on a previously agricultural and forested site of 920 ha, following a master plan drawn up by the “Groupe Urbanisme-Architecture” (R. Lemaire, J.-P. Blondel and P. Laconte). The first phase opened in 1972, comprising the science faculties, the science library (architect A. Jacqmain), student and commercial housing, shops and restaurants. Each phase was linked to the overall project and planned as a potentially multifunctional and autonomous unit along an east-west pedestrian spine. There has been direct rail access to Brussels since 1976. In 2005 a 35.000 m2 shopping centre opened next to the station (with 8 million visitors in 2014), which is to be extended above the railway tracks. The 2014 estimated daytime population of the new town was 45.000 (with 12.000 residents, out of 31.000 for the city of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve). The land remains entirely in the university’s ownership and is developed through long term leases.OBJECTIVES OF THE PAPER. The proposed paper addresses the following research issues:1. What skills were developed by “Groupe Urbanisme-Architecture” and its staff in order to conceive and create this new university town? How were they appointed? What was their urban model (one inspired by the mix of land uses found in historic towns, as opposed to the functionalist approach in which these are separated)? How was finance secured? How were the faculties involved in the implementation of the plan? How are the inhabitants and students involved? Could this experience inform present-day land use planning and urban design?2. How did the1970 master plan adapt to change: e.g. in demography, in housing demand, in the university’s teaching and research needs and those of university-related industry, in the social, cultural and political environment, and from small individual plots to developer-led projects?3. Which wider issues of planning research are raised by the Louvain example? These include:- the overall rationale for new town development, its up-front investment needs and its governance challenges (i.e. relations with existing local authorities).- the pros and cons of long-term leases as a tool for property development.- the economic and ecological justification of a linear pedestrian spine as a development model. This entails making vehicular traffic and parking accessible from the perimeter or putting it underground.- the economic and ecological justification for separating water treatment and storm water collection into a reservoir, treated as a lake whose depth varies according to the seasons.- the case for small plots and high density-low rise buildings versus large plots and high density-high rise.- the optimal location of the main squares and public spaces in a new town

Sparse classification with MRI based markers for neuromuscular disease categorization

International audienceIn this paper, we present a novel method for disease classification between two patient populations based on features extracted from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data. Anatomically meaningful features are extracted from structural data (T1- and T2-weighted MR images) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) data, and used to train a new machine learning algorithm, the k-support SVM (ksup-SVM). The k-support regularized SVM has an inherent feature selection property, and thus it eliminates the requirement for a separate feature selection step. Our dataset consists of patients that suffer from facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSH) and Myotonic muscular dystrophy type 1 (DM1) and our proposed method achieves a high performance. More specifically, it achieves a mean Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.7141 and mean accuracy 77% ± 0.013. Moreover, we provide a sparsity visualization of the features in order to indentify their discriminative value. The results suggest the potential of the combined use of MR markers to diagnose myopathies, and the general utility of the ksup-SVM. Source code is also available at https://gitorious.org/ksup-svm

“Not One Looks like My Daughter!”: How American Girl Makes History Hegemony

American Girl markets dolls and books toward girls. Their original product line, which features historical characters, mobilizes history to teach moral lessons. This paper breaks down these morals to search for hegemony, a discourse that marginalizes minority readers. In this quest to uncover hegemony, the paper deals with issues of narrative perspective and socialization. Regarding narrative perspective, the paper asks, “Whom do these books deem normal in America? Whom do these books deem other in America?” Regarding socialization issues, this paper asks, “What value and behaviors do these books condone as part of acceptable American Girlhood? What values and behaviors are deemed totally aberrant and unacceptable?” In establishing normative perspectives and trajectories, the books raise issues about race, socioeconomic class, gender roles, religious identities, and nationalism. Given this particular line of questioning, this paper falls under the contemporary historical pursuit to problematize the very idea of historical accuracy, to uncover excluded voices from the traditional canon. The paper concludes that American Girl use history to perpetuate hegemony over young women in the United States

The Changing Role of Women in Spain

Spain has experienced the powerful force and changing effects of globalization, especially after the death of Francisco Franco\u27s and the demise of his regime. Spanish women especially have embraced the changing social environment in Spain by enrolling in institutions of higher education in greater numbers and entering the work force by developing careers in business and other fields