Comparative Evaluation of Action Recognition Methods via Riemannian Manifolds, Fisher Vectors and GMMs: Ideal and Challenging Conditions

We present a comparative evaluation of various techniques for action recognition while keeping as many variables as possible controlled. We employ two categories of Riemannian manifolds: symmetric positive definite matrices and linear subspaces. For both categories we use their corresponding nearest neighbour classifiers, kernels, and recent kernelised sparse representations. We compare against traditional action recognition techniques based on Gaussian mixture models and Fisher vectors (FVs). We evaluate these action recognition techniques under ideal conditions, as well as their sensitivity in more challenging conditions (variations in scale and translation). Despite recent advancements for handling manifolds, manifold based techniques obtain the lowest performance and their kernel representations are more unstable in the presence of challenging conditions. The FV approach obtains the highest accuracy under ideal conditions. Moreover, FV best deals with moderate scale and translation changes

Residual stress measurement round robin on an electron beam welded joint between austenitic stainless steel 316L(N) and ferritic steel P91

This paper is a research output of DMW-Creep project which is part of a national UK programme through the RCUK Energy programme and India's Department of Atomic Energy. The research is focussed on understanding the characteristics of welded joints between austenitic stainless steel and ferritic steel that are widely used in many nuclear power generating plants and petrochemical industries as well as conventional coal and gas-fired power systems. The members of the DMW-Creep project have under- taken parallel round robin activities measuring the residual stresses generated by a dissimilar metal weld (DMW) between AISI 316L(N) austenitic stainless steel and P91 ferritic-martensitic steel. Electron beam (EB) welding was employed to produce a single bead weld on a plate specimen and an additional smoothing pass (known cosmetic pass) was then introduced using a defocused beam. The welding re- sidual stresses have been measured by five experimental methods including (I) neutron diffraction (ND), (II) X-Ray diffraction (XRD), (III) contour method (CM), (IV) incremental deep hole drilling (iDHD) and (V) incremental centre hole drilling (iCHD). The round robin measurements of weld residual stresses are compared in order to characterise surface and sub-surface residual stresses comprehensively

La grille au service du développement médical en Afrique

PCSV, présenté par F. Jacq, pas de proceedingsObjectives: Telemedicine networks allow to train local physicians and to improve diagnosis by exchanging medical data. But the set-up of multipoint dynamic telemedicine requires moving towards GRID technologies. The objective is to develop telemedicine services for physicians from Burkina Faso and France with the perspective of setting up a grid infrastructure between the participating medical sites. Methods: A web site to exchange diagnosis on diabetic retinopathy was developed in PHP. Another application using web services was developed to exchange patient information on ophthalmology between two databases. Results: The main difficulty comes from limited resources in developing countries including staff skills, bandwidth and funding. But the collaboration with dispensaries opened a door to enhanced collaboration between physicians of France and Burkina Faso Conclusions: These applications are designed with the aim of their use on grids which opens the perspective of multipoint dynamic telemedicine. We are developing a new generation of telemedicine service using experience acquired in the last two years

User-centered design of the C3-cloud platform for elderly with multiple diseases - functional requirements and application testing

The number of patients with multimorbidity has been steadily increasing in the modern aging societies. The European C3-Cloud project provides a multidisciplinary and patient-centered “Collaborative Care and Cure-system” for the management of elderly with multimorbidity, enabling continuous coordination of care activities between multidisciplinary care teams (MDTs), patients and informal caregivers (ICG). In this study various components of the infrastructure were tested to fulfill the functional requirements and the entire system was subjected to an early application testing involving different groups of end-users. MDTs from participating European regions were involved in requirement elicitation and test formulation, resulting in 57 questions, distributed via an internet platform to 48 test participants (22 MDTs, 26 patients) from three pilot sites. The results indicate a high level of satisfaction with all components. Early testing also provided feedback for technical improvement of the entire system, and the paper points out useful evaluation methods

SNP Genotyping Defines Complex Gene-Flow Boundaries Among African Malaria Vector Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes in the Anopheles gambiae complex show rapid ecological and behavioral diversification, traits that promote malaria transmission and complicate vector control efforts. A high-density, genome-wide mosquito SNP-genotyping array allowed mapping of genomic differentiation between populations and species that exhibit varying levels of reproductive isolation. Regions near centromeres or within polymorphic inversions exhibited the greatest genetic divergence, but divergence was also observed elsewhere in the genomes. Signals of natural selection within populations were overrepresented among genomic regions that are differentiated between populations, implying that differentiation is often driven by population-specific selective events. Complex genomic differentiation among speciating vector mosquito populations implies that tools for genome-wide monitoring of population structure will prove useful for the advancement of malaria eradication

Plantes alimentaires spontanées de la région du Fromager (Centre- Ouest de la Côte d\'Ivoire) : flore, habitats et organes consommés.

Une enquête ethnobotanique, visant à inventorier les plantes spontanées alimentaires encore présentes dans la région du Fromager (Centre-Ouest) de la Côte d\'Ivoire, a été menée auprès des populations rurales. Les espèces recensées sont au nombre de 72, réparties entre 61 genres et 42 familles. Les familles les plus représentées sont les Sterculiaceae, les Arecaceae et les Solanaceae. L\'habitat de ces plantes spontanées a été déterminé; il s\'agit des forêts, des jachères et des vergers de cacaoyers et de caféiers. Les organes les plus consommés sont les fruits (38 %), les feuilles (33 %) et les graines (19 %). Ces enquêtes ont montré qu\'il existe encore un nombre élevé d\'espèces spontanées alimentaires dans la Région du Fromager.A ethnobotanic survey, aimed at the inventory of the food spontaneous plants present in the “fromager” region (Western Center) of Côte d\'Ivoire, was carried out with the collaboration of the rural populations. The number of species inventoried is 72, belonging to 61 generas and 42 families. The most represented families are Sterculiaceae, Arecaceae and Solanaceae. The habitats of these spontaneous plants species were forests, fallows and the cocoa and coffee plantations. The most consumed organs were fruits (38 %), leaves (33 %) and seeds (19 %). These investigations showed a high number of food spontaneous species in the “fromager” region. Keywords: Spontaneous food plants, habitats, consumed organs, Côte d\'IvoireSciences & Nature Vol. 5 (1) 2008: pp. 61-7

A collaborative platform for management of chronic diseases via guideline-driven individualized care plans

Older age is associated with an increased accumulation of multiple chronic conditions. The clinical management of patients suffering from multiple chronic conditions is very complex, disconnected and time-consuming with the traditional care settings. Integrated care is a means to address the growing demand for improved patient experience and health outcomes of multimorbid and long-term care patients. Care planning is a prevalent approach of integrated care, where the aim is to deliver more personalized and targeted care creating shared care plans by clearly articulating the role of each provider and patient in the care process. In this paper, we present a method and corresponding implementation of a semi-automatic care plan management tool, integrated with clinical decision support services which can seamlessly access and assess the electronic health records (EHRs) of the patient in comparison with evidence based clinical guidelines to suggest personalized recommendations for goals and interventions to be added to the individualized care plans. We also report the results of usability studies carried out in four pilot sites by patients and clinicians