bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lack of Research-Based Standards for Accessible Housing: Problematization and Exemplification of Consequences
Authors: Helle T.  , Brandt Å.  , Slaug B.  , Iwarsson S.
Published: February 2025

Objective. One aim was to review the literature in search of research with potential to inform research-based standards for accessible housing design. Another aim was to explore how existing and alternative standards influence 1) the proportion of dwellings that are considered accessible and 2) the probability of the proportion of individuals defined as having accessibility problems.
An evaluation of tactile walking surface indicators for the visually impaired
Authors: Takahashi Shinji  , Miyake Akifumi  , Ito Shin-ichi  , Sato Katsuya  , Booka Masayuki  , Fujisawa Shoichiro
Published: February 2025

[Objective]. Tactile Walking Surface Indicators (TWSIs) are a vital walking aid for the visually impaired, especially those with complete blind person (totally blind), but the blocks are still not available on all walkways. This study was performed with visually impaired persons to determine to what degree TWSIs (in particular, blocks with raised parts to indicate caution) contribute to direction determination, with the goal of improving the utility of TWSIs.
MathInBraille Online Converter
Authors: Batusic Mario  , Miesenberger Klaus  , Heumader Peter
Published: February 2025

Objective. In this short paper we will announce the targets and the way of accomplishing the tasks in our current project “MathInBraille”. 60 years since the invention of the computer and after 30 years of successful use of Braille display and speech output, there are still difficulties for blind and visually impaired persons to access scientific documents or school books containing mathematical formulae. The main reason for these difficulties lies in the visual 2D character of the mathematical presentation that is in conflict with the linear nature of Braille and speech output. The existence of many different, language bound mathematical Braille codes is also a barrier for an universal Braille access to science. MathInBraille project wants to contribute to overcoming this part of the digital divide by offering an online portal for converting eDocuments with mathematical contents into Braille and speech formats. The main target group of the project are blind and visually impaired pupils, students and other persons interested in school and/or scientific materials containing mathematics.
Developing Indicators for Accessibility to Public Transport in Europe
Authors: Øderud Tone  , Øvstedal Liv  , Azalde Gloria
Published: February 2025

The overall objective of Mediate, Methodology for Describing the Accessibility of Transport in Europe, is to contribute to the development of inclusive urban transport systems with better access for all citizens. This paper describes the process of developing indicators for accessibility to public transport in Europe. The Mediate project has been carried out with the active participation of different stakeholders including organisations of people with disabilities, end users, local authorities, public transport operators, industry and experts. The stakeholders have complemented the consortium partners with their expertise, contributed to the development process, and ensured a broader dissemination of the results. Furthermore Mediate has developed a Self Assessment Tool for measuring accessibility and a Good Practice Guide providing examples on accessible public transport. Mediate is a project within the 7thEuropean Commission Framework Program, Theme Transport.
University under Risk: The University as Incubator for Radicalization
Authors: Al-Badayneh Diab M.
Published: February 2025

This paper examine the prevalence of radicalization beliefs and thoughts among university student, also it examines the differences in radicalization between males and females. A convenient sample of 190 students (Mutah University, Jordan) was selected. A measurement tool for the radicalization based on the literature review was developed. A reliability coefficient (Cronbach's alpha = 0.61) was found for the research tool. The average percentage of the prevalence of the radical beliefs was 64.4% among the university students. Radical beliefs like martyrdom, unity by force, hatred & jihad were highly prevailed among university students. Findings raised the attention to the university security and encountering radical beliefs dissemination among university students. Security policies are needed to prevent hijacking the university by radicalism, and transiting the university as incubator for radicalization and path to terrorism. Further researches are needed with large sample size and with more a testable research instrument.
Fuzzy Risk Analysis in Underwater Intelligence System Issues and Advancement in Man/Machine Complex Swarms
Authors: Arnold Colin  , Kandel Abraham
Published: February 2025

In this paper we examine the present state of underwater systems including both machine and humans, identify problems associated with these systems and how fuzzy logic can be used to extend the functionality and safety through risk analysis. Specifically in this paper we examine autonomous underwater vehicles investigating navigational issues in a myriad of locations and conditions. We also discuss issues associated with human divers and propose a new sensor acquisition technique to facilitate making diving safer as well as reviews techniques for implementing a new decompression algorithm in hardware.
Variable Domain Eigenvalue Problems with Applications to Some Mechanical Systems
Authors: Gasimov Yusif S.
Published: February 2025

In the work eigenvalue problems are considered for the elliptic operators with variable domain. Eigenvalues of these operators are taken as functionals of the domain. Using the one to one correspondence between bounded convex domains and their support functions variation of the domain is expressed by the variation of its support function and calculate the first variation of this functional. Using the obtained formulas behavior of the eigenvalues is investigated when the domain varies. Then shape optimization problems are considered consider for the eigenvalues, the necessary conditions of optimality relatively domain are proved, an algorithm is offered for the numerical solution of the considered problems.
Face Recognition in Ambient Intelligence Applications
Authors: Franco Annalisa  , Maio Dario  , Maltoni Davide
Published: February 2025

Face recognition is certainly the most natural approach to person recognition in smart home environments. The extreme variability of faces in such applications, due to continuous changes in terms of pose, illumination and subject appearance (hairstyle, make-up, etc.), requires very robust and fast algorithms to be developed. Moreover the variations of the subject's face cannot usually be adequately encoded in the initial user template, typically created starting from a few example images, thus making necessary to continuously update the templates on the basis on new inputs. After a review of the state of art of video-based face recognition approaches, suitable for home environments, a semi-supervised video-based template updating approach introduced by the authors is presented.
Medical Information Management with ECG Biometrics: A Secure and Effective Framework
Authors: Agrafioti Foteini  , Bui Francis M.  , Hatzinakos Dimitrios
Published: February 2025

This chapter discusses the feasibility of using the Electrocardiogram (ECG) for human identification. ECG falls under the umbrella of medical biometrics, i.e., physiological signals that are typically used for disease diagnosis, but also carry subject discriminative information. As opposed to traditional static biometric modalities like the iris, the fingerprint or the face, ECG is a time dependent signal affected both by physical and emotional activities. Therefore, one of the challenges that are studied in this work is the design of permanent and, at the same time discriminative features, which are robust to heart rate changes.
Happy Healthy Home
Authors: Do Ellen Yi-Luen  , Jones Brian D.
Published: February 2025

This chapter introduces the idea of a smart living environment in which the home tracks and supports happy healthy living for the residents. We start with the introduction of the concepts of wellness and the Aware Home Research Initiative at Georgia Institute of Technology. We then present several interesting projects to illustrate the approaches and implementations toward health, awareness and entertainment and conclude with some reflections and discuss possible future research directions.
Designing Ambient and Personalised Displays to Encourage Healthier Lifestyles
Authors: Nakajima Tatsuo  , Kawsar Fahim
Published: February 2025

In recent years, the deteriorations of living habits like immobilization or unhealthy diet are becoming serious social problems in many developed countries. Even if we know the importance, it is difficult to change our undesirable habits and to maintain a desirable lifestyle. Previous studies have suggested that persuasive technology can play a significant role in persuading individuals for behavioural change. In the article, we discuss the design of persuasive ambient displays aimed at addressing this issue borrowing theories from behavioural psychology. In our design, aesthetic and empathetic expressions are used to represent the visualisation reflecting behavioural feedback of an individual. If an individual's behaviour is leaned towards healthier lifestyle, the display expression is designed to boost his/her positive emotion where as display expression is progressively shifted to increase negative emotion of the individual if he/she does not sustain the desirable behaviour. In this paper, we introduce design principles of our approach and present four case studies to show the applicability of our approach. We also discuss a number of issues uncovered during the design and evaluation of these case studies.
Fast Simulation Method of Multiple Narrow Cracks in Planar Stratified Media
Authors: Miorelli Roberto  , Reboud Christophe  , Theodoulidis Theodoros  , Lesselier Dominique
Published: February 2025

This contribution presents a fast simulation technique of eddy current testing (ECT) signals due to narrow cracks embedded in a planar stratified medium. Starting from the Boundary Element Method (BEM) approach for ideal and narrow cracks, a collaborative work by the authors has led to the development of a more general semi-analytical model treating several parallel and/or orthogonal narrow cracks embedded in a planar multilayered structure, without any constraint on the numbers of layers or flaws. Simulation results obtained with this method have been compared with experimental data, results from literature and Finite Element Method (FEM). The theoretical approach and results obtained are presented and some perspectives for further extension are discussed.
Evaluation of sigma phase embrittlement in Fe-Cr alloys by magnetic hysteresis loop technique
Authors: Mohapatra J.N.  , Kamada Y.  , Kikuchi H.  , Kobayashi S.  , Echigoya J.  , Park D.G.  , Cheong Y.M.
Published: February 2025

Fe-Cr alloys with different Cr content were subjected to various heat treated conditions to produce σ phase. Micro-Vickers hardness and magnetic hysteresis loop (MHL) measurements were carried out at various heat treated conditions of the alloys to observe the change in mechanical and magnetic properties respectively. A drastic increase in hardness and coercivity whereas sudden drop in remanence and maximum induction were observed at large volume fraction of σ phase in higher Cr content alloy (48% Cr). At small volume fraction of σ phase no change in hardness was observed. However with the formation of small volume fraction of σ phase and its growth the magnetic properties change systematically. The study revealed that MHL technique would be a good Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) tool for the evaluation of σ phase in high temperature structural components made of Fe-Cr alloys.
Competitive Learning on Cosine Similarity Method for Classification of Defects in Two-layered Metallic Structures
Authors: Ahmed Shuaib  , Thirunavukkarasu S.  , Rao B.P.C.  , Jayakumar T.
Published: February 2025

This paper proposes competitive learning with cosine similarity method for classification of defects in a two-layer system. Eddy current images of defects in stainless steel (layer1) and sodium (layer2) layers required for evolving the method have been generated using CIVA software. The images are subjected to principal component analysis to determine input features for the competitive learning method. The quantitative performance of the method has been compared with Euclidean distance similarity and K-Means clustering using two evaluation metrics namely, cluster purity and entropy. Studies indicate that when data from two frequencies is fed as input, reliable classify of defects in two layers is possible despite variations in defect shape and size.
3D Image reconstruction using noisy EMAT signal
Authors: Nishimura Yoshihiro  , Suzuki Takayuki
Published: February 2025

Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMATs) are used for contact-free ultrasound non-destructive testing (NDT), which is useful for high-speed scanning of inspection materials or high-temperature materials. The EMAT probe acquires a time series of echo signals as the output, similar to those derived by piezo-electric transducers. However, it is too noisy and blurred to reconstruct images of internal flaws. We processed these noisy signals, calculated the directivity function of EMAT probe and reconstructed an image of the flaws.
Eddy Current Transducers Dedicated for Titanium Billets Evaluation
Authors: Chady Tomasz  , Sikora Ryszard  , Psuj Grzegorz  , Kowalczyk Jacek  , Spychalski Ireneusz
Published: February 2025

An effective method for inspection of billets made of titanium alloy was proposed. Two nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques were utilized: phase array ultrasonic testing (PA) and eddy current testing (ECT). In this paper results obtained by ECT method ware presented. Dedicated transducers were introduced and the results of measurements shown and discussed.
Terahertz Inspection of Composite Materials Reinforced with Basalt Fibers
Authors: Lopato Przemyslaw  , Chady Tomasz
Published: February 2025

Basalt fiber-reinforced composites are the innovative materials that are increasingly used in various industries e.g. automotive, shipbuilding, aircraft and civil engineering (heat and sound insulation, pipelines, reinforcement of concrete, bridges and tunnels). This results in the need for effective methods of assessing their condition. Terahertz radiation is sensitive to dielectric constant variations thus time domain terahertz imaging is very effective tool in nondestructive evaluation of multilayer composite materials. In order to achieve enough in-depth resolution, very short THz pulse duration (~20 ps) were utilized in presented experiments. Defects were detected by reflection imaging. In this work a composite material samples consisting of six layers of basalt fiber fabric, within a polyester resin (Polimal 1094 AWTP-1) were examined. Evaluated test specimens contain artificial flaws (inclusions) and some of them were exposed to mechanical impacts. In order to identify defective regions, a modified linear system identification method is applied.
Nondestructive Interrogation of Dielectric Materials using Markov Chain Monte Carlo Method for Structural Equation Model
Authors: Kojima Fumio  , Usami Teruo
Published: February 2025

Motivated by quantitative evaluation of aging properties of electrical cables, a computational method for identifying physical parameters of dielectric materials is considered. First, a nondestructive testing using micro-waveguide is described by electric and magnetic fields defined on the problem. Secondly, an inversion technique based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo method (MCMC) is employed for solving the electromagnetic interrogation treated here. Finally, a numerical scheme of the direct problem is developed using the finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD). Applying Metropolis-Hasting algorithm to the inversion presented here, results on computational experiments are demonstrated in order to show the feasibility and applicability of the proposed method.
Counter Terrorism – What You Do With the Community, Not What You Do To the Community
Authors: Weston Keith
Published: February 2025

Policing in Northern Ireland has faced many challenges in providing a balanced policing response to a culturally diverse community in the face of an enduring threat from community based terrorism. Over the years mistakes have been made, but today the Police Service of Northern Ireland provides one model of a community based response to policing, whilst still facing a serious threat from terrorism. This chapter will look at the lessons that can be learned from the experience of policing terrorism in Northern Ireland, in particular the development of the partnerships necessary to meet this challenging task. The majority of the research for this article was undertaken during a George C Marshal Center Field Study Trip to Northern Ireland in March 2011.
The National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium's Efforts to Improve Pain Education in Medical, Dental, and Nursing Schools Using the “Centers of Excellence” Model
Authors: Thomas David A.  , Cohn Matthew R.  , Denisco Richard A.  , Pintello Denise A.  , Chandler Redonna K.  , Krause Carol M.
Published: February 2025

Pain is a major health problem. It is estimated that over 100 million people in the U.S. suffer from chronic pain with a projected cost of $560-635 billion annually for medical costs and lost productivity. In response to the chronic pain epidemic, the prescribing of opioids has increased dramatically during the last 20 years. This increase has contributed to the creation of a new public health concern – the misuse of prescription opiates. At the fulcrum of these two health crises are healthcare providers including doctors, dentists, nurses and others who are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of pain. Yet the topics of pain diagnosis and treatment receive relatively little attention in the formal training of most healthcare professionals. The National Institute of Health (NIH) Pain Consortium is helping to address this issue by establishing Centers of Excellence for Pain Education (PCoEs.) These PCoEs will develop and implement curricula to help train healthcare professionals in the diagnosis and management of pain. The anticipated result is that these PCoEs will provide healthcare professionals with educational tools to help prepare them better to diagnose, treat, and manage pain and help them minimize the potential for opioid abuse and addiction.
Telehomecare in the Netherlands: Value-Based Analysis for Full Implementation
Authors: Kort Helianthe S.M.  , van Hoof Joost  , Dijkstra Jacqueline I.
Published: February 2025

Telehomecare is one of the solutions for ageing-in-place in addition to care support for daily functioning, architectural and technological solutions. Telehomecare solutions were examined by the use of the framework of ICF and MIBD. Telehomecare projects address the needs of care recipients and family carers. Some projects also did consider functional value needs, as how to get commitment of professionals and management. Only a few projects consider economic value needs in the sense that a social business case is made. To achieve full implementation, all stakeholder values should be taken into account. Furthermore, exchange of knowledge and experience is needed.
Seniors Go High Tech to Age Independently at Home: Selfhelp Community Services Embraces its Role as Innovator
Authors: Kaplan Stuart C.  , Asen Leo M.
Published: February 2025

The authors discuss the use of Telehomecare technologies by Selfhelp Community Services, Inc., a comprehensive care organization located in New York City and Nassau County to achieve their organization's mission of helping individuals to live independently in their homes and communities. Five Telehomecare applications are selected as examples of how such technologies can be used within a specific care delivery context. The authors consider the benefits brought about by the use of the technologies, as well the barriers which they have encountered over the last several years, placing emphasis on the need for a sustainable financial model to ensure success.
Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) and its Application to Biomolecular and Cellular Investigation
Authors: Procházka Marek  , Štěpánek Josef
Published: February 2025

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a specific technique of Raman spectroscopy when signal enhancement of several orders is achieved for numerous molecules placed in the closest vicinity of certain rough metal surfaces. Despite of some experimental difficulties and undesirable concomitant effects, this technique provides numerous promises for both highly specific and sensitive measurements. This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art in the field of SERS applications in biomolecular, cellular and biomedical studies. Prior to this, the reader is familiarized with the basics of SERS phenomenon and its experimental aspects including the most common or promising types of SERS-active substrates.
Probing the interactions of oligodeoxynucleotides with a cationic peptide by Raman scattering
Authors: Hernández Belén  , Coïc Yves-Marie  , Gouyette Catherine  , Ghomi Mahmoud
Published: February 2025

Raman scattering was shown to be an efficient tool for analyzing the interactions of natural (phosphate) and chemically modified phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotides with an amphipathic cationic peptide adopting an α-helix structure in aqueous environment. Examination of the Raman spectra recorded from different partners and their complexes, leads us to conclude that these interactions cannot be interpreted within a restricted electrostatic framework. The cationic peptide can undergo an order-to-disorder transition upon interaction with oligodeoxynucleotides. Furthermore, it can interact with different structural fragments of their partners (nucleoside, backbone). However, these interactions appear to be sequence-dependent and stronger with natural oligodeoxynucleotides compared to their chemically modified analogues.
Health Status of Populations Affected by the Chernobyl Accident
Authors: Marozik Pavel M.  , Mosse Irma B.  , Melnov Sergei B.  , Marozik Mikhail S.
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this work was to analyse the effects of bystander factors from blood sera of people affected by the Chernobyl accident on human keratinocyte cell culture (HPV-G cells). A new method was developed for the evaluation of bystander factor presence in vivo in blood of people irradiated by the Chernobyl accident. Affected population groups included liquidators of the Chernobyl accident and people living and working in areas of the Gomel region contaminated by radionuclides. The analysis has shown that bystander factors persist in Chernobyl liquidator blood samples for more than 20 years since irradiation. The data suggest that blood sera contain bystander factors which are able to induce micronuclei and decrease metabolic activity of HPV-G cells.
A Parallel Benchmark Suite for Fortran Coarrays
Authors: Henty David
Published: February 2025

Coarrays are a feature of the new Fortran 2008 standard that enable parallelism using a small number of additional language elements. A new array declaration syntax allows for remotely accessible variables, with data allocated across multiple images. The execution model is that of a Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) language. Since Fortran coarrays are in their infancy, and full compiler support has only recently emerged, it is important to understand the performance characteristics of any parallel operations. Although benchmark suites exist for well-established models such as MPI, OpenMP and UPC, none are currently available for coarrays. The results of such benchmarks are important as they guide both the applications programmer and the compiler or library developer. In this paper we describe a low-level benchmark suite for Fortran coarrays that measures the performance of a selection of basic parallel operations. We present initial performance results on Cray architectures and a general-purpose Intel cluster. We hope this suite will help in the development and uptake of these new parallel features of the Fortran language.
SAC on a Niagara T3-4 Server: Lessons and Experiences
Authors: Grelck Clemens  , Douma Roeland
Published: February 2025

The Sparc T3-4 server provides up to 512 concurrent hardware threads, a degree of concurrency that is unprecedented in a single server system. This paper reports on how the automatically parallelising compiler of the data-parallel functional array language SAC copes with up to 512 execution units. We investigate three different numerical kernels that are representative for a wide range of applications: matrix multiplication, convolution and 3-dimensional FFT. We show both the high-level declarative coding style of SAC and the performance achieved on the T3-4 server. Last not least, we draw conclusions for improving our compiler technology in the future.
Advances in Physarum Machines Gates, Hulls, Mazes and Routing with Slime Mould
Authors: Adamatzky Andrew
Published: February 2025

A Physarum machine is a programmable amorphous biological computing device experimentally implemented in plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum. A Physarum machine is programmed by configurations of repelling and attracting gradients, and functions on a wide range of substrates and in a broad scope of environmental conditions. A Physarum machine can play a role of universal and general-purpose computer yet also efficiently solve specialised tasks. We overview few topics of Physarum machine research including routing signals with light, plane tessellation, and planar hull approximation.
A First Implementation of Parallel IO in Chapel for Block Data Distribution
Authors: Larrosa Rafael  , Asenjo Rafael  , Navarro Angeles  , Chamberlain Bradford L.
Published: February 2025

This paper presents our preliminary implementations of parallel IO routines in Chapel, a high-productivity parallel language for large-scale systems. The IO functions are implemented using standard Chapel features, taking POSIX as the IO middleware layer and Lustre as the target parallel file system. In this work, we focus on the Chapel Block data distribution, for which we propose different algorithms to perform the file read and write operations. We pay particular attention to the collective writing operation, for which we evaluate different strategies. Our algorithms take into account some of the Lustre file system parameters that can have an impact on the write operation performance. Through our evaluation we find that a more careful selection of the stripe pattern (a feature of the Lustre system), as well as the appropriate selection of the number of IO processes that perform the IO calls, should be taken into account to better tune the performance. In addition, we compare our implementations with the ROMIO library, the de facto parallel IO standard, finding that we achieve comparable results with our higher level approach.
Tools for Analyzing the Behavior and Performance of Parallel Applications
Authors: Vandeputte Frederik
Published: February 2025

Designing efficient scalable parallel applications is hard. As a result, proper tools for analyzing the behavior and performance of parallel applications are valuable assets for the application developer during the entire development cycle. To assist the application developer or researcher in analyzing the behavior of a parallel application, we have developed two analysis tools, called MICA-MT and Perfex-MT.
Data Parallel Skeletons for GPU Clusters and Multi-GPU Systems
Authors: Ernsting Steffen  , Kuchen Herbert
Published: February 2025

CUDA made general-purpose computing for Graphics Processing Units (GPU) popular. But still GPU programming is error-prone and there are a lot of peculiarities to be considered for developing efficient GPU accelerated applications. Algorithmic skeletons encapsulate typical parallel programming patterns. They have emerged to be an efficient approach to simplifying the development of parallel and distributed applications. In this paper, we present an extension of our skeleton library Muesli in terms of GPU accelerated data parallel skeletons for multi-GPU systems and GPU clusters using CUDA. Besides the computation on the GPU, these skeletons also fully hide data transfer between different GPU devices as well as network transfer between different compute nodes. Experimental results demonstrate competitive performance results for some example applications.
Composable Parallelism Foundations in the Intel® Threading Building Blocks Task Scheduler
Authors: Marochko Andrey  , Kukanov Alexey
Published: February 2025

This article provides a comprehensive overview of new usage models supported by the Intel® Threading Building Blocks (Intel® TBB) task scheduler, with an accent on the features facilitating construction of highly composable parallel solutions. We also discuss design decision tradeoffs, and explain implementation details that influence the performance and behavior of Intel® TBB based applications. This article may be of value both to application developers already using or intending to start using the library, by explaining its new functionality, and to researchers and engineers working on other parallelization solutions, by evaluating factors that influence design decisions in this field.
Accelerating HMMER search using FPGA Grid
Authors: Takagi Toyokazu  , Maruyama Tsutomu
Published: February 2025

HMMER is one of the most used software tools for sensitive profile HMM searches of biological sequence databases. HMMER can be accelerated by comparing a profile HMM with sequences in parallel using a CPU grid. HMMER is, however, still a cpu-intensive program. The search on each node on the grid can be further accelerated by using dedicated hardware. In this paper, we describe an approach for accelerating HMMER search using an FPGA grid. In our system, two prototype circuits which share the same basic processing units are prepared in advance, and the circuit for each size FPGA is generated from the prototype circuits. In the FPGA grid, the difference of the processing speed and data transfer speed becomes much larger than CPU grids. In order to maintain the load balance on each node, new load balancing methods are introduced and evaluated.
From mono-FPGA to multi-FPGA emulation platform for NoC performance evaluations
Authors: Tan Junyan  , Fresse Virginie  , Rousseau Frederic
Published: February 2025

Experimental approaches used for architecture exploration and validation are often based on configurable logic device such as Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). System on Chip (SoC) and Network on Chip (NoC) architectures require multi-FPGA platforms as the resources of a single FPGA may not be big enough. Partitioning a NoC on a multi-FPGA platform requires special techniques for allocating communication channels, physical links and suitable resource allocation scheme. It is a time consuming process reducing the exploration space and validation. In this paper, we present a scalable emulation platform and its associated design flow based on a multi FPGA approach that allows quick exploration, evaluation and comparison of a wide range of NoC solutions. The efficiency of our approach is illustrated through the deployment of the Hermes NoC and its exploration on a mono FPGA and multi-FPGA platform with several traffic implementations.
GPI – Global Address Space Programming Interface
Authors: Rahn Mirko
Published: February 2025

The Global Address Space Programming Interface (GPI) is the PGAS-API developed at the Fraunhofer ITWM. It is a thin layer, that delivers the full performance of remote direct memory access (RDMA) enabled networks to the application without interrupting the CPU.
Discrimination of breast tissue structures by FT-IR FPA imaging
Authors: Benard Audrey  , Goormaghtigh Erik
Published: February 2025

The recent development of Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopic imaging devices provides a new imaging approach for cell and tissue pathology as distribution and structure of cellular components can be observed without sample staining. However, in order to translate this emerging technology to the clinic, optimization of the acquisition, classification and validation techniques is a prerequisite step. The information extracted from the spectral data largely depends on the quality of the raw spectra but also on the corrections and processing methods. In this chapter, some of the guidelines for the recording and preprocessing methods will be presented. Unsupervised statistical approaches for tissue type discrimination illustrate the potential of this technology on histopathology.
Beyond Four Walls: Towards Large-Scale Intelligent Environments
Authors: Dooley James  , Ball Matthew  , Al-Mulla Mohammed R.
Published: February 2025

As Intelligent Environments research continues in its various guises, there is an increase in the scale at which investigation is being conducted. Projects are looking beyond single-room and apartment sized living-labs that have provided us with initial testbeds for early research and are envisioning grander designs on the scale of entire buildings, campus or towns. But now we must ask if the knowledge we have gained previously can scale upwards, or are new methods and models required to break free from the confines of controlled labs and into real-world deployments where multi-user is the norm not the exception. In the discourse of this paper, we describe what Large-Scale Intelligent Environments (LSIEs) are and identify some of the challenges that relate to realizing them. We highlight the importance of security, standards and infrastructure so that human users can roam confidently from place-to-place whilst enjoying a seamless continuity of experience.
Smart Home in a Box: A Large Scale Smart Home Deployment
Authors: Crandall Aaron S.  , Cook Diane J.
Published: February 2025

Smart home technologies hold promise for many aspects of daily life. Research and development of these systems has matured for elder care, energy efficiency, and home safety applications. The focus of most implementations has been on single living spaces for a small number of individuals. New low-power wireless systems, inexpensive computing power, and widely available network access has reached the point where large scale ubiquitous computing technologies have become much more feasible.
Towards FollowMe User Profiles for Macro Intelligent Environments
Authors: Whittington Luke  , Dooley James  , Henson Martin  , Al-Malaise Al-Ghamdi Abdullah
Published: February 2025

We envision an Ambient Intelligent Environment as an environment with technology embedded within the framework of that environment to help enhance an users experience in that environment. Existing implementations , while working effectively, are themselves an expensive and time consuming investment. Applying the same expertise to an environment on a monolithic scale is very inefficient, and thus, will require a different approach. In this paper, we present this problem, propose theoretical solutions that would solve this problem, with the guise of experimentally verifying and comparing these approaches, as well as a formal method to model the entire scenario.
Real-Time Human Pose and Gesture Recognition for Autonomous Robots Using a Single Structured Light 3D-Scanner
Authors: van Elteren Tim  , van der Zant Tijn
Published: February 2025

We propose a method for real-time human pose and gesture recognition for autonomous robots using a structured light 3D-scanner. Poses are recognized using skeleton representations by performing classification using the Nearest Neighbour algorithm. The whole-body pose recognition approach uses the joint coordinate data from the processed depth images. The quality of the classification is determined by 10-fold cross validation in which the recognition rate is 99.9028%.
MidBlocks: A Supervising Middleware for Reliable Intelligent Environments
Authors: Baquero Rafael  , Rodriguez José  , Mendoza Sonia  , Decouchant Dominique
Published: February 2025

Intelligent Environments (IEs) are expected to have a dramatic impact on our daily lives in the near future. Environments that can assist users in their daily activities, aid the elderly in continuing productive and independent lives, keep people safe and help them make better use of resources can provide great benefits. However, due to the multidisciplinary nature of IEs, the complexity of the technologies involved, and the distinct requirements of different user groups, the development of full scale IEs is a difficult and error prone task. Although a robust design is a fundamental part in the development of an IE, proper supervision of the system for failure detection is important to guarantee the reliability of the systems. In this paper we propose MidBlocks, an event-based component supervising middleware. Through the use of MidBlocks, Intelligent Environments can perform constant supervision of their components and communication links in order to warn users in case of a system malfunction or to perform corrective actions such as dynamic system reconfiguration.
Assesment of Respiratory Diseases through Acoustic GMM Modeling
Authors: Mayorga Pedro  , Druzgalski Cristopher  , GonzÁlez Oscar Hugo  , Lopez Hernán Silverio  , Criollo Marco Antonio
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this paper is to present a method that utilizes lung sounds (LS) for quantitative assessment of patient health, based on the fact that LS are relates to respiratory disorders. Traditional asthma evaluation methods may involve auscultation and spirometry. However, improved diagnosis opportunities can be offered by utilizing sensitive electronic stethoscopes (now widely available), and the application of quantitative signal analysis methods. In this context, we carried out experiments using normal LS from both the RALE repository and recordings from students. In this paper, we propose an acoustic evaluation methodology based on the Gaussian Mixed Models (GMM) that should assist in broader analysis, identification, and differentiation of LS. Additionally, frequency domain analysis of peculiar sounds reflected during wheezes and crackles, and their differentiation from normal respiratory sounds should assist in improved diagnosis.
The Legal Aspects of Combating Terrorism
Authors: White Larry D.
Published: February 2025

The legal challenges of the fight against terrorism involve a two-step process; the initial step is to prevent terrorist attacks through the timely identification and arrest of terrorists and then trying to obtain time-sensitive information. The second step is to convict terrorists and discourage others by obtaining needed evidence to use the judicial process to obtain just results. Current issues addressed deal with the historical background and legal standards associated with the treatment of terrorists. Security forces involved in the fight against terrorists must be cognizant of international norms dealing with terrorism and how new issues like bounties created new problems in this area. The emergence of lawfare in the area of antiterrorism will be a new challenge where terrorists are starting to use the legal system to advance their causes. Planning must anticipate this issue. The legal procedures against terrorism cannot be ad hoc but should be planned before operations. Also, the distinction between terrorists and criminals should not be blended but treatment should stem from an early determination of a particular individual's status. A final guideline for the students suggested that, although the minimum standards of treatment of suspected terrorists can be hard to pin down, the suspects should be treated at least as well as the security forces holding them.
Vulnerability Assessment of Complex Civil Works Systems Using Expert-Opinion Elicitation
Authors: Patev Robert C.
Published: February 2025

This paper describes a technique that could be utilized to estimate the probabilities and consequences required in vulnerability assessment for terrorist threats of civil works projects. The Expert-Opinion Elicitation (EOE) methodology developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is presented in detail. The USACE EOE methodology limits the use of words of estimative probabilities to reduce the anchoring bias that is present with qualitative descriptors. A demonstration vulnerability EOE example will as be included to show how the process and opinion data may be properly analyzed. Conclusions are drawn to show the major benefits of using the EOE methodology to estimate probabilities for vulnerability assessment.
Triage Protocols for Critical-Care Patients in Disaster Conditions
Authors: Ajdinović Asja  , Jurjević Matija  , Kopić Jasminka  , Hrečkovski Boris
Published: February 2025

The medical and healthcare needs of a community during disaster conditions could be drastically changed. Hospital capacities, especially the number of intensive-care unit beds and ventilators, are usually constant, so careful planning and great efforts should be made to adapt to altered circumstances. Triage for critical care patients is tertiary triage and is provided according to the hospital disaster plan, which defines triage protocols, the triage officer, and the triage support team. The triage protocols are based on inclusion and exclusion criteria combined with prioritization tools and stratifies patients into priority categories. The most recommended prioritization tool is the SOFA scoring system. The triage process is dynamic, and patients' medical conditions should be periodically reassessed and their priority category amended if necessary. When a major incident is declared, it may be necessary to triage non-disaster patients in the intensive-care unit to free beds and respirators for expected disaster casualties. Triage protocols should be objective, ethical, transparent, and publicly disclosed to avoid a collision between individual rights and community needs.
Collaboration Topologies for Interdisciplinary and Interlevel Information Exchange
Authors: Galindo Fernando  , Laporte Ron  , Linkov Faina  , Rossodivita Alessandra  , Shubnikov Eugene  , Stikova Elisaveta  , Trufanov Andrey  , Vynograd Natalia
Published: February 2025

There are many isolated human and financial resources, advanced technologies, and theoretical basics throughout the world within diverse disciplinary, agency, and national cones: the problem is how to concert those to use them effectively against global threats. The objective is to bring together necessary knowledge, instruments, and resources of actors who can, want to, and are obliged to cooperate globally. A proposed topological consideration with its mapping tools gives us a unique language to understand each other. Aiming at greater cooperation and collaboration, the present consideration comprises sizing of the community, balancing its homophily and heterophily, networking the actors of proper rank and status, and other theoretical and practical issues. The study focuses on topology issues to enforce emergency information-sharing networks, to seek effective strategies to implement the networks, and eventually to make relations between pertinent national and international agencies sustainable.
Preface
Authors: Perry George  , Zhu Xiongwei  , Smith Mark A.  , Sorensen Aaron  , Avila Jesús
Published: February 2025

The success of Alzheimer's Disease: A Century of Scientific and Clinical Research, a retrospective of milestones in Alzheimer's disease (AD) exploration coinciding with completion of the first century of AD research, led colleagues and our publisher to encourage us to examine the progress defining AD in the coming century.
Endothelin-Converting Enzymes and Related Metalloproteases in Alzheimer's Disease
Authors: Pacheco-Quinto Javier  , Herdt Aimee  , Eckman Christopher B.  , Eckman Elizabeth A.
Published: February 2025

The efficient clearance of amyloid-β (Aβ) is essential to modulate levels of the peptide in the brain and to prevent it from accumulating in senile plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. We and others have shown that failure in Aβ catabolism can produce elevations in Aβ concentration similar to those observed in familial forms of AD. Based on the available evidence, it remains plausible that in late-onset AD, disturbances in the activity of Aβ degrading enzymes could induce Aβ accumulation, and that this increase could result in AD pathology. The following review presents a historical perspective of the parallel discovery of three vasopeptidases (neprilysin and endothelin-converting enzymes-1 and -2) as important Aβ degrading enzymes. The recognition of the role of these vasopeptidases in Aβ degradation, beyond bringing to light a possible explanation of how cardiovascular risk factors may influence AD risk, highlights a possible risk of the use of inhibitors of these enzymes for other clinical indications such as hypertension. We will discuss in detail the experiments conducted to assess the impact of vasopeptidase deficiency (through pharmacological inhibition or genetic mutation) on Aβ accumulation, as well as the cooperative effect of multiple Aβ degrading enzymes to regulate the concentration of the peptide at multiple sites, both intracellular and extracellular, throughout the brain.
Amyloid-β Peptide: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?
Authors: Puzzo Daniela  , Arancio Ottavio
Published: February 2025

Amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) is considered a key protein in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) because of its neurotoxicity and capacity to form characteristic insoluble deposits known as senile plaques. Aβ derives from amyloid-β protein precursor (AβPP), whose proteolytic processing generates several fragments including Aβ peptides of various lengths. The normal function of AβPP and its fragments remains poorly understood. While some fragments have been suggested to have a function in normal physiological cellular processes, Aβ has been widely considered as a “garbage” fragment that becomes toxic when it accumulates in the brain, resulting in impaired synaptic function and memory. Aβ is produced and released physiologically in the healthy brain during neuronal activity. In the last 10 years, we have been investigating whether Aβ plays a physiological role in the brain. We first demonstrated that picomolar concentrations of a human Aβ42preparation enhanced synaptic plasticity and memory in mice. Next, we investigated the role of endogenous Aβ in healthy murine brains and found that treatment with a specific antirodent Aβ antibody and an siRNA against murine AβPP impaired synaptic plasticity and memory. The concurrent addition of human Aβ42rescued these deficits, suggesting that in the healthy brain, physiological Aβ concentrations are necessary for normal synaptic plasticity and memory to occur. Furthermore, the effect of both exogenous and endogenous Aβ was seen to be mediated by modulation of neurotransmitter release and α7-nicotinic receptors. These findings need to be taken into consideration when designing novel therapeutic strategies for AD.