1,720,957 research outputs found
A wearable intelligent system for the health of expectant mom's and their childs
No full textIl monitoraggio dello stato di salute del feto anteparto mediante l’analisi della frequenza cardiaca fetale e delle contrazioni uterine (CTG) è, insieme all’ecografia, l’esame standard a cui tutte le donne si sottopongono almeno una volta durante la gravidanza. Tuttavia, la maggior parte dei presidi clinici in cui è effettuato il monitoraggio fetale non hanno a disposizione gli strumenti necessari per un’accurata analisi quantitativa dei segnali CTG, e devono affidarsi alla sola competenza del medico che esamina visivamente il tracciato. Pertanto, in termini di valutazione sull’intera popolazione delle gravidanze, l’affidabilità del monitoraggio anteparto è bassa.
Il problema può essere risolto grazie al progetto di un nuovo sistema per il monitoraggio remoto che consenta alle pazienti di effettuare l’esame in qualunque momento ed in qualunque luogo, ricevendo risposte tempestive ed affidabili sulla condizione del feto. Utilizzando le più recenti tecnologie nei settori dei “textile wearable devices” e dell’ICT, realizzeremo un sistema indossabile, in grado di inviare i segnali ad un centro diagnostico remoto, che combinerà la semplicità e la comodità d’uso con un’elevata affidabilità diagnostica.
Per raggiungere l’obiettivo è nato un progetto che coinvolge ricercatori del Politecnico di Milano, dell’università di Pavia e dell’Università di Napoli, al fine di:
• sviluppare e realizzare un sistema indossabile, costituito da una fascia addominale sensorizzata, per la rilevazione, la pre-elaborazione locale e la trasmissione via telefonia wireless dell’attività del cuore fetale e materno, delle contrazioni uterine e della stima dei movimenti fetali;
• definire e implementare algoritmi per l’analisi di segnali e adattamento a dati di sensori indossabili. La ricerca partirà dalla situazione esistente e potrà portare allo sviluppo di nuovi algoritmi di analisi e per la separazione dei contributi materni e fetali con estrazione di parametri e costruzione di classificatori;
• sviluppo di un database di conoscenze e implementazione di un Web Service per l’analisi remota dei dati;
• esecuzione di test clinici su un campione di soggetti volontari nel terzo trimestre di gravidanza in diverse condizioni (riposo, cammino, attività lavorativa, ecc..). Confronto con registrazioni CTG tradizionali già acquisite con il sistema Tocomat
A hardware accelerator for real time simulation of complex neuronal models
No full textUnderstanding and emulating the brain behaviour
is one of the most challenging topic in neuroscience but
simulating such complicated models always requires a lot of
computation and, as a consequence, a lot of time. In order
to efficiently evaluate a model it could be very useful to
speed up the simulation process by using software or
hardware accelerators. This paper presents an FPGA based
accelerator who speeds up the simulation of two different
kinds of innovative cerebellar neurons model, such as the
Golgi cell and the granular cell, developed by the Physiology
department of the University of Pavia. Since the achieved
performance is real time compliant, such a circuit could be
used, in the future, to bypass some dysfunction of the
cerebellum in the human being
A Video Elaboration System for Image Deinterlacing and Processing in Race Cars
No full textThe advent of digital technologies has been revolutionizing a lot of different field and video processing is certainly one of the most deeply impacted. Small digital cameras are nowadays common in many environments but unfortunately, digital video still carries some legacy from the old analog era, the interlacement being one of the most annoying. Video interlacement consists of alternatively sending only odd or even lines of frames in order to reduce necessary bandwidth. Interlacement is indeed a smart form of analog video compression made possible by CRT (Cathode-Ray Tube) monitor's optical properties. Unfortunately interlacement is unacceptable for computer monitors, which instead work using a non interlaced mode (progressive). Showing interlaced videos on progressive screens results in annoying video defects. Moreover, technology evolved enough not to need interlacement any more. Nevertheless, interlaced cameras are still very common in every application that needs to preserve compatibility with analog television. Therefore, to make interlaced videos usable in modern systems, deinterlacement techniques have been developed. There are many deinterlace algorithms of different complexities, but none of them is able to deliver the best possible quality with both still and fast changing scenes. The best results are obtained using adaptive techniques, which dynamically change the algorithm depending on scene's motion characteristics. Deinterlacing a video using adaptive motion technique is computationally expensive. Doing it real-time is a challenge topic. The proposed idea consists in the implementation of four real-time deinterlacers on a single FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) in order to give the possibility to select the most suitable for the specific application using either a manual selection or a motion detection algorithm
Interactive learning environment for engineering courses
No full textIl contributo ha descritto i risultati si un progetto di ricerca (responsabile: Prof. Maria Grazia Albanesi) sull'innovazione nella didattica universitaria; il progetto ha vinto un grant internazionale messo a bando da HP (vedi indirizzo Web) del valore di 100000 dollari
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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