<p>The purpose of this report is to cover the procedure of creating and explaining how to use a tool kit that allows the haptic Application Programming Interface (API) H3D from SenseGraphics to be used in conjunction with an advanced physics simulator from Meqon. Both haptic applications and physics engines have developed rapidly the last couple of years but they are rarely used together. If such a connection would be created it would be possible to interact with complex environments in a new way and a variety of haptic applications can be produced.</p><p>The physics engine from Meqon has gained recognition for its abilities to produce realistic results due to efficient implementation of collision detection system, friction models and collision handling, among other things. H3D is a completely open source API that is based on standards such as OpenGL and X3D. H3D consists of a data base containing nodes, an XML parser to extract a scene graph from the data base and functionality to produce a graphic and haptic interface.</p><p>The tool kit produced in this thesis is an extension to H3D. A fundamental function of the tool kit is to communicate with the Meqon system and still be a part of the H3D structure. The Meqon system has a modular structure where each module has its own abilities. Only the rigid body module is utilised by the tool kit, which however is the most important module. It is possible to define global settings of the engine and rigid body module, add rigid bodies with several elements and insert constraints on the motion of the rigid bodies into the engine. All of these operations are done from the X3D file format that H3D uses, thus letting all functionality of the H3D system available.</p>

<p><strong>Syfte:</strong> Att undersöka vad ambulanssjuksköterskor upplever kan finnas för problemområden vid arbete på skadeplats med maximalt fyra drabbade.</p><p><strong>Metod:</strong> Studien har en kvalitativ ansats. Nio ambulanssjuksköterskor i Uppsala, mellan 27 och 53 år, intervjuades. Ett bekvämlighetsurval gjordes. Tillstånd för studien anskaffades hos ambulansstationens verksamhetschef. Intervjuerna var semistrukturerade och spelades in med ljudupptagning. Intervjuerna transkriberades sedan och analyserades med kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultatet gav 11 kategorier och 19 underkategorier.<strong>Resultat:</strong> Prehospitala problem på skadeplats är mörker, dåligt väder samt trafik. Prehospital sjukvårdsledning används inte i tillräcklig mån. Mental förberedelse är viktigt inför ankomst till skadeplats. Det nya radiosystemet fungerar inte optimalt och därmed försvåras kommunikationen mellan ambulans, räddningstjänst och polis. Samarbetet med räddningstjänst på skadeplats behöver förbättras. Mer interprofessionell övning och utbildning efterfrågas. De svåraste patientgrupperna är barn samt traumafall. <strong>Slutsats:</strong> Prehospital sjukvårdsledning används för lite vid arbetet på en mindre skadeplats. Radiosystemet fungerar inte optimalt och det försvårar kommunikationen och samarbetet mellan ambulans, polis och räddningstjänst. Mer övning och utbildning behövs kring barn samt trauma. Mer interprofessionell övning och gemensamma utbildningar efterfrågas.</p> / <p>Purpose: <strong>To study problems that ambulance nurses experience at the scene of accident with a maximum of four affected persons. </strong>Methods:<strong> The study is qualitative. N</strong><strong>ine ambulance nurses in Uppsala, between 27 and 53 years, were interviewed. A convenience sample was chosen. The semi-structured interviews were sound recorded. Permission was acquired from the ambulance manager. After transcription a qualitative content analysis was performed. 11 categories and 19 subcategories were found. </strong>Results:<strong> Pre-hospital problems are bad weather and traffic. Pre-hospital leadership is not used enough. Mental preparation is important before arrival at scene of accident. The new radio communication system is not working properly, which hinders interprofessional communication. Collaboration with the rescue service needs to be improved. </strong><strong>The ambulance nurses request more training and education together with the other professions. The most demanding patient groups are children and trauma cases. </strong>Conclusions:<strong> Pre-hospital leadership is not used enough at a small scene of accident. The new radio system is not working properly which hinders the interprofessional communication. More training and education is needed when it comes to children and trauma. The ambulance nurses request more inter professional training and joint education. </strong></p>

This dissertation addresses a number of inter-related and fundamental problems in computer vision. Specifically, we address object discovery, recognition, segmentation, and 3D pose estimation in images, as well as 3D scene reconstruction and scene interpretation. The key ideas behind our approaches include using shape as a basic object feature, and using structured prediction modeling paradigms for representing objects and scenes. In this work, we make a number of new contributions both in computer vision and machine learning. We address the vision problems of shape matching, shape-based mining of objects in arbitrary image collections, context-aware object recognition, monocular estimation of 3D object poses, and monocular 3D scene reconstruction using shape from texture. Our work on shape-based object discovery is the first to show that meaningful objects can be extracted from a collection of arbitrary images, without any human supervision, by shape matching. We also show that a spatial repetition of objects in images (e.g., windows on a building facade, or cars lined up along a street) can be used for 3D scene reconstruction from a single image. The aforementioned topics have never been addressed in the literature. The dissertation also presents new algorithms and object representations for the aforementioned vision problems. We fuse two traditionally different modeling paradigms Conditional Random Fields (CRF) and Random Forests (RF) into a unified framework, referred to as (RF)^2. We also derive theoretical error bounds of estimating distribution ratios by a two-class RF, which is then used to derive the theoretical performance bounds of a two-class (RF)^2. Thorough experimental evaluation of individual aspects of all our approaches is presented. In general, the experiments demonstrate that we outperform the state of the art on the benchmark datasets, without increasing complexity and supervision in training. / Graduation date: 2011 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from May 12, 2011 - May 12, 2012

Ireland has long been famous for its rich traditional music. Yet the recent global success of Irish pop, rock and traditional music has transformed the Irish music scene into a world centre attracting musicians, tourists, fans and the music industry from both Ireland and abroad. This ethnographic study of young musicians in Dublin and Galway in the late 1990s analyses the Irish music scene in terms of identity, authenticity and transnationality contextualised in contemporary Ireland. The study explores the making of Dublin and Galway into central places in the Irish music scene. It identifies musical links between the cities, and how for the young musicians, Dublin has become a 'springboard' and Galway a 'playground'. These cities provide the local arenas where young folk and popular musicians negotiate individual and collective lifestyles, identities and musical genres. By developing the concept of 'musical pathways', the study shows how these mobile musicians constantly interact with different musical sounds and scenes. The idea that Irishness has to emanate from traditional music is challenged by a diversity of musical genres and pathways of the musicians. Some musicians embrace a certain construction of Irishness while others reject it, but they are all involved in this process in one way or another. Contrary to older generations of traditional musicians, a global awareness is more important among the young musicians than a 'restricted' view of Irishness. As the young musicians are interested in multiple musical ideas and influences, they are often reluctant about a 'narrow nationalism'. They make use of the fact that the musics of the contemporary world are very much interconnected. This study discusses transnational processes of the Irish music scene in the late 1990s primarily on local and national levels in Ireland. This reveals how globalisation has contributed to the popularity of Irish music, yet without controlling its pathways completely. In Ireland the past is still in the present.

There is a dilemma between security and usability, which are two fundamentally conflicting issues. From the usability perspective, authentication protocols should be easy to use and passwords generated from these protocols should be easy to remember. From the security perspective, passwords should be hard to guess and should not be written down or stored in a plain text. Instead of using text based passwords, graphical passwords have been proposed to increase both memorability and security. Biederman (1972) and Biederman, Glass, &amp / Stacy (1973) reported that the objects in a coherent image were recognized and identified more efficiently and quickly than the objects in a jumbled image in which the jumbled image was created by dividing the coherent image into sections and changing the position of the sections without rotating them. The study was designed to experimentally examine the differences in usability and security of the graphical password scheme by manipulating the coherence of the displayed image. Sixty-three volunteers participated in the main experiment. The participants were divided into groups according to the type of image they were presented in the password creation (either coherent-image or jumbled-image) task. Each participant created a graphical password and three days after the first session (i.e., second session) s/he tried to remember it in order to authenticate to the system. The results revealed that in the proposed graphical password scheme, using coherent image has more advantages over jumbled image in terms of usability and security.

The purpose of this report is to cover the procedure of creating and explaining how to use a tool kit that allows the haptic Application Programming Interface (API) H3D from SenseGraphics to be used in conjunction with an advanced physics simulator from Meqon. Both haptic applications and physics engines have developed rapidly the last couple of years but they are rarely used together. If such a connection would be created it would be possible to interact with complex environments in a new way and a variety of haptic applications can be produced. The physics engine from Meqon has gained recognition for its abilities to produce realistic results due to efficient implementation of collision detection system, friction models and collision handling, among other things. H3D is a completely open source API that is based on standards such as OpenGL and X3D. H3D consists of a data base containing nodes, an XML parser to extract a scene graph from the data base and functionality to produce a graphic and haptic interface. The tool kit produced in this thesis is an extension to H3D. A fundamental function of the tool kit is to communicate with the Meqon system and still be a part of the H3D structure. The Meqon system has a modular structure where each module has its own abilities. Only the rigid body module is utilised by the tool kit, which however is the most important module. It is possible to define global settings of the engine and rigid body module, add rigid bodies with several elements and insert constraints on the motion of the rigid bodies into the engine. All of these operations are done from the X3D file format that H3D uses, thus letting all functionality of the H3D system available.

La investigación científico-técnica que presentamos a continuación tiene como objetivo principal la dotación de instrumentos para el conocimiento y la divulgación del patrimonio histórico-artístico del sur del Antiguo Reyno de Valencia. Ante la actual fragmentación del ecosistema, el acaparamiento de suelo y la dispersión de la oferta cultural; el estudio se sustenta en el diseño de programas didácticos para explicar los procesos de divulgación de las formas artísticas. En contraposición a los actuales modelos de difusión publicitaria, la propaganda turística y el espectáculo del museo, la tesis doctoral responde a la insuficiente gestión de las normativas de protección y conservación vigentes, para dar un valor integral a estos recursos desde una acción divulgativa. Desde una concepción holística abordamos el estudio del monumento artístico, no como un elemento aislado, sino como signo, producto de las relaciones que se establecen a través de las vías de comunicación. En un inventario-guía trataremos de dotar de valores a las antiguas rutas y su papel en la vertebración de las actividades sociales, conectando así nuestros orígenes con el mundo contemporáneo. La creación de modelos funcionales de producción cultural pasa por el desarrollo de estructuras científicas estables en cuanto a definiciones y clasificaciones, en las que se van introduciendo elementos más ambiciosos. Esta reflexión nos motiva el replanteamiento de una serie de premisas en relación con la administración de los recursos y la anticipación en el proceso de interpretación ambiental con el fin de crear instrumentos de diálogo cultural. Ante la actual dialéctica entre la cultura de la marca del museo y los modelos sociales de producción cultural, optamos por situarnos en el contexto de la educación para los valores de la naturaleza, reconociendo la cultura de un pueblo a través de los artificios que introduce cada civilización afectando a la cultura constructiva, el espacio urbano, el territorio y el paisaje. A partir de la recuperación de las vías de comunicación no sólo dotamos de valores a los recursos naturales y culturales también integramos los elementos a proteger y conservar, rentabilizando el paisaje en beneficio de las comunidades en declive. El planteamiento para la consecución de un programa interpretativo actualizado se manifiesta en las ideas de viaje espacio-temporal y la recreación panorámica de las manifestaciones culturales desde la Prehistoria hasta el s. XX. En el tránsito por los caminos entre el Júcar y el Vinalopó consideramos las características geográficas y los ecosistemas, factores que favorecen la continuidad de numerosos semblantes culturales entre los núcleos de poblaciones establecidos en la orografía montañosa, l´horta y el litoral marítimo. Los aspectos de diálogo y dialéctica cultural derivan de los conceptos de estacionalidad y frecuencia. Estas pautas continuistas vienen condicionadas por los cambios medioambientales, los procedimientos de colonización y la resistencia o asimilación de los mismos. La intensidad de los flujos culturales nos sirve para desplegar una serie de circuitos didácticos vinculados con el estudio de las vías y caminos que atraviesan la escenografía del litoral meridional. El término itinerario como recorrido o ruta lo relacionamos con la cartografía, donde el plan de viaje sigue las indicaciones del camino y las paradas, incorporando en el trayecto aquellos conjuntos y elementos a proteger, permitiéndonos la introducción en un universo de tradiciones que van más allá de localismos para participar de la historia social del arte universal. / The scientific-technical investigation that we present here, has as its objective the provision of tools for knowledge and the tranmission of historic-artistic heritage in the South of the Antiguo Reyno of Valencia. In the face of the current fragmentation of the ecosystem, the monopolization of land and the dispersion of cultural offerings, the study is based on the design of didactic programs to explain the dissemination process of artistic forms. In contrast to the current models of disseminating publicity, touristic propaganda and the spectacle of the museum, the doctoral thesis responds to insufficient management of rules for protection and conservation that are in force, using a popularising effort to help imbue these resources with integral value. Starting with a holistic conception, we broach the study of artistic monuments, not as an isolated element but rather as a signifier, a product of the relationships that are established via routes of communication. In an inventory-guide we attempt to give value to the old routes and their role in underpinning social activity, thereby connecting our origins to our contemporary world.The creation of functional models of cultural production goes through the development of stable scientific structures of classification and definition, into which more ambitious elements are then introduced. The reflection motivates us to the positing of a series of related premises concerning the administration of resources, and advance participation in the process of environmental interpretation, with the end of creating instruments of cultural dialogue. In the face of the current dialectic between the culture of the museum brand and the social models of cultural production, we choose to situate ourselves in a context of education on the values of nature, recognising the culture of a town through the artifices which each civilisation introduces in the name of cultural construction, the urban space, the territory and the landscape. From this point on, the reclaiming of the routes of communication, we are not only giving value to the natural and cultural resources, we are also introducing the elements which must be protected and conserved, making the land profitable for the benefit of communities in decline.The plan for the realisation of an working interpretative programme manifests itself in ideas of spatio-temporal journey, and the panoramic recreation of cultural manifestations from Prehistory up to the 20th Century. In transit on the roads between Jucar and Vinalopo, we consider the geographic characteristics and the local ecosystems; factors which favour the continuity of numerous cultural similarities between the nuclei of population established in the mountainous terrain, the horta and the sea coast. The features of cultural dialogue and dialectic derive from the concepts of seasonality and frequency. These constant guidelines are conditioned by environmental changes, proceeding from colonisation, and resistance or assimilation in the face of it. The intesity of cultural flows serves to unfold a series of didactic circuits linked to a study of the roads and paths that traverse the scenery of the southern coast. The final itinerary, as a crossing or a route, is conveyed with cartography, where the trip plan follows the indications of roads and rests, with those elements incorporating in the trajectory those elements and groups which need protection; allowing us to introduce a universe of traditions, going further than localisms, in order to participate in a social history of universal art.

Hearing aid devices are used to help people with hearing impairment. The number of people that requires hearingaid devices are possibly constant over the years, however the number of people that now have access to hearing aiddevices increasing rapidly. The hearing aid devices must be small, consume very little power, and be fairly accurate.Even though it is normally more important for the user that hearing impairment look good (are discrete). Once thehearing aid device prescribed to the user, she/he needs to train and adjust the device to compensate for the individualimpairment.We are within the framework of this project researching on hearing aid devices that can be trained by the hearingimpaired person her-/himself. This project is about finding suitable noise cancellation algorithm for the hearing-aiddevice. We consider several types of algorithms like, microphone array signal processing, Independent ComponentAnalysis (ICA) based on double microphone called Blind Source Separation (BSS) and DRNPE algorithm.We run this current and most sophisticated and robust algorithms in certain noise backgrounds like Cocktail noise,street, public places, train, babble situations to test the efficiency. The BSS algorithm was well in some situation andgave average results in some situations. Where one microphone gave steady results in all situations. The output isgood enough to listen targeted audio.The functionality and performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with different non-stationary noisebackgrounds. From the performance results it can be concluded that, by using the proposed algorithm we are able toreduce the noise to certain level. SNR, system delay, minimum error and audio perception are the vital parametersconsidered to evaluate the performance of algorithms. Based on these parameters an algorithm is suggested forheairng-aid. / Hearing-Aid

Denna uppsats är en narratologisk analys av berättarstrukturen inom filmen Stranger than fiction. Uppsatsen inleder med en terminologi samt en teoridel kring vad som är berättarstruktur. Utifrån detta analyserar jag filmen för att grundläggande redogöra kring hur den är berättad genom att först beskriva filmens totala fabula för att sedan analysera vad som egentligen förmedlas och på så sätt även komma fram till en slutsats kring filmens totala berättarstruktur. Resultatet visar på att Stranger than fiction är berättad genom flertalet olika nivåer som visar på två olika berättare inom två olika diegeser som förmedlas genom samma berättare. Detta resultat leder till en tematisk diskussion ett postmodernt ontologiskt syfte som genom filmens komplicerade narratologiska struktur försöker förmedla budskapet ”lev det liv du vill ha” samt ”livet blir viktigt först när döden gör sig synlig.

<p>We show topological priors play an important role in solving the inverse problem of shape reconstruction. We classify the applications into 1D, 2D, and 3D cases:</p><p>In 1D, we show that the persistent extrema of the curvature function of a closed curve are useful for shape simplication. In 2D, we study how to label a scene into multiple tiers to approximate the actual scene layout. We use the number of extrema as a topological prior to bound the complexity of the shape of tiers and study 2D labeling under symmetry shape priors. In 3D, we recover the detailed 3D root shape using multiple 2D images. Three novel ideas are presented. First, we propose the use of harmonic images for background subtraction. Second, we develop the regularized visual hull to preserve the details of an example image in reconstruction. Third, we enforce the topological connectedness by an ecient algorithm that is inspired by the recent development of persistent homology.</p><p>Computational efficiency is emphasized throughout the thesis. We show that 1D topological persistence can be computed in O(n) time on a closed curve of n nodes. For 2D tiered labeling, we give an approximation algorithm to compute it in O(nK) time for K tiers on an image of n pixels. For 3D root reconstruction, we accelerate the computation using oct-trees and minimal spanning trees. With these ingredients, it takes only a few seconds to reconstruct a detailed root shape from 40 images of resolution 1600*1200 on a laptop.</p> / Dissertation