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Philadelphia is a city that constantly gazes back toward its eighteenth-century past. Many of its historic sites rely on legends from the era of the American founding fathers in order to attract visitors. The Powel House, an historic house museum that was once the home of Philadelphia's last colonial and first post-revolutionary mayor Samuel Powel, fits into this category. Yet for The Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, the consortium that manages the Powel House, there is a pressing need for an expanded audience and increased funding, and the story of the Patriot Mayor does not provide enough fuel to achieve these goals. This essay examines some of the Powel House's lesser-known narratives. It suggests that for historic house museums such as the Powel House that are bound to constricted historical eras, an exploration of the house's entire history is a route toward uncovering new strategies for audience engagement. The essay isolates three specific narratives from the early twentieth century, and contemplates how each individual story can be leveraged for Landmarks' broader goals. / History

Landmark-based architecture has been commonly adopted in the networking community as a mechanism to measure and characterize a host's location on the Internet. In most existing landmark based approaches, end hosts use the distance measurements to a common, fixed set of landmarks to derive an estimated location on the Internet. This paper investigates whether it is possible for participating peer nodes in an overlay network to collaboratively construct an accurate geometric model of its topology in a completely decentralized peer-to-peer fashion, without using a fixed set of landmarks. We call such a peer-to-peer approach in topology discovery and modeling using landmarks PALM (Peers As LandMarks). We evaluate the performance characteristics of such a decentralized coordinates-based approach under several factors, including dimensionality of the geometric space, peer distance distribution, and the number of peer-to-peer distance measurements used. We evaluate two PALM-based schemes: RAND-PALM and ISLAND. In RAND-PALM, a peer node randomly selects from existing peer nodes as its landmarks. In ISLAND (Intelligent Selection of Landmarks), each peer node selects its landmarks by exploiting the topological information derived based on existing peer nodes' coordinates values. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Les algorithmes permettant la création de stratégies efficaces pour la résolution d’ensemble de problèmeshétéroclites ont toujours été un des piliers de la recherche en Intelligence Artificielle. Dans cette optique,la planification de tâches a pour objectif de fournir à un système la capacité de raisonner pour interagiravec son environnement de façon autonome afin d’atteindre les buts qui lui ont été assignés. À partir d’unedescription de l’état initial du monde, des actions que le système peut exécuter, et des buts qu’il doit atteindre,un planificateur calcule une séquence d’actions dont l’exécution permet de faire passer l’état du monde danslequel évolue le système vers un état qui satisfait les buts qu’on lui a fixés. Le problème de planification esten général difficile à résoudre (PSPACE-difficile), cependant certaines propriétés des problèmes peuvent êtreautomatiquement extraites permettant ainsi une résolution efficace.Dans un premier temps, nous avons développé l’algorithme LMBFS (Landmark-based Meta Best-First Search).À contre-courant des planificateurs state-of-the-art, basés sur la recherche heuristique dans l’espace d’états,LMBFS est un algorithme qui réactualise la technique de décomposition des problèmes de planification baséssur les landmarks. Un landmark est un fluent qui doit être vrai à un certain moment durant l’exécutionde n’importe quel plan solution. L’algorithme LMBFS découpe le problème principal en un ensemble desous-problèmes et essaie de trouver une solution globale grâce aux solutions trouvées pour ces sous-problèmes.Dans un second temps, nous avons adapté un ensemble de techniques pour améliorer les performances del’algorithme. Enfin, nous avons testé et comparé chacune de ces méthodes permettant ainsi la création d’unplanificateur efficace. / The algorithms allowing on-the-fly computation of efficient strategies solving aheterogeneous set of problems has always been one of the greatest challengesfaced by research in Artificial Intelligence. To this end, classical planningprovides to a system reasoning capacities, in order to help it to interact with itsenvironment autonomously. Given a description of the world current state, theactions the system is able to perform, and the goal it is supposed to reach, a plannercan compute an action sequence yielding a state satisfying the predefined goal. Theplanning problem is usually intractable (PSPACE-hard), however some propertiesof the problems can be automatically extracted allowing the design of efficientsolvers.Firstly, we have developed the Landmark-based Meta Best-First Search (LMBFS)algorithm. Unlike state-of-the-art planners, usually based on state-space heuristicsearch, LMBFS reenacts landmark-based planning problem decomposition. Alandmark is a fluent appearing in each and every solution plan. The LMBFSalgorithm splits the global problem in a set of subproblems and tries to find aglobal solution using the solutions found for these subproblems. Secondly, wehave adapted classical planning techniques to enhance the performance of ourbase algorithm, making LMBFS a competitive planner. Finally, we have tested andcompared these methods.

In mobile robot applications, it is an important issue for a robot to know where it is. Accurate localization becomes crucial for navigation and map building applications because both route to follow and positions of the objects to be inserted into the map highly depend on the position of the robot in the environment. For localization, the robot uses the measurements that it takes by various devices such as laser rangefinders, sonars, odometry devices and vision. Generally these devices give the distances of the objects in the environment to the robot and proceesing these distance information, the robot finds its location in the environment. In this thesis, two vision-based robot localization algorithms are implemented. The first algorithm uses artificial landmarks as the objects around the robot and by measuring the positions of these landmarks with respect to the camera system, the robot locates itself in the environment. Locations of these landmarks are known. The second algorithm instead of using artificial landmarks, estimates its location by measuring the positions of the objects that naturally exist in the environment. These objects are treated as natural landmarks and locations of these landmarks are not known initially. A three-wheeled robot base on which a stereo camera system is mounted is used as the mobile robot unit. Processing and control tasks of the system is performed by a stationary PC. Experiments are performed on this robot system. The stereo camera system is the measurement device for this robot.

This study was undertaken to identify the landmarks that would provide the most reliable and predictable indicators of the position of the supraorbital, infraorbital, mental and mandibular foramina in human skulls of Hokien, Hylam, Indian and British populations of ranging ages, which would provide clinicians with suitable modifications in technique to accommodate these variations. Measurements were taken using both electronic digital callipers and 3D laser scanning. Electronic digital calliper measurements were made to estimate how far each foramen was from specific anatomical landmarks on the skulls. An apparatus was developed to position the skulls securely so that the measurement points could be accurately identified, then an electronic digital calliper was used to measure the distance between the defined points. In addition, the same skulls were also scanned using a FastSCAN™ Polhemus Scorpion™ handheld laser scanner, and imported into 3D modelling software (FreeForm Modelling Plus™). This 3D software integrates a PHANYOM™ desktop arm and a haptic force feedback device that provides the user with a sense of touch. Accordingly, with the “Ruler” tool, the measurements between various foramina and defined anatomical landmarks were measured. Measurements made by electronic digital calliper were compared statistically with those made using the 3D scanning method, and overall there was good correlation between the two, indicating that 3D scanning could be used as an alternative method. With regard to age changes in the skulls, the ages of the Hokien and Hylam groups were known, having been recorded from death records, but the Indian and British skulls were not of known age. In a preliminary study the known age skulls were used to validate the methods of Miles (1962) and Brothwell (1981) who aged skulls using tooth wear patterns. The decision was taken to use the Brothwell chart for the assessment of age in the Indian and British skulls in the main study. For each of the four population groups, intra-population comparisons of the measurements were made between right and left sides, and between skulls of young and old individuals, also inter-population comparisons between ipsilateral measurements were made. The correlation between the obtuseness of the mandibular angle and the ipsilateral measurement from the mental foramen to the posterior border of the mandible were made on both sides of the skulls of each population group. Non-significant differences were found between the measurements on right and left sides for the skulls of all populations. There were significant differences between some ipsilateral measurements but although there were statistically significant, they were not considered to be clinically significant. There were no significant differences between ipsilateral measurements with increasing age of the skulls. Also there were weak correlations between the obtuseness of the mandibular angle and the ipsilateral measurement from the mental foramen to the posterior border of the mandible on both sides of the skulls of each population group. There were good statistically agreements between the electronic digital calliper and 3D laser scanning measurements in all groups and the two methods may be used interchangeably. However 3D scanning is a digital process and therefore the scans could be accessed remotely, either across the internet or by CD.

Zielstellung: Die Verwendung von Computertomographie und Magnetresonanzto-mographie zur Diagnostik von pathologischen Weichteilveränderungen, wie Läsionen der Speicheldrüsen, wird empfohlen. Diese begründet sich in Ihrer hohen Bildauflö-sung und dem guten Bildkontrast. Nach unserem Wissen gibt es aktuell keine publi-zierte Literatur, welche sich mit der CT- oder MRT-Anatomie der Speicheldrüsen der Katze beschäftigt. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es daher, Schnittbildmerkmale der Speicheldrüsen zu definieren und Landmarken für eine sichere Identifikation zu be-schreiben. Material und Methoden: Es wurden zwei Gruppen von Katzen untersucht. Die pros-pektiv untersuchten Tiere bestanden aus 16 Katzen, welche aus Gründen euthana-siert wurden, die nicht in Zusammenhang mit der Studie standen. Diese erfuhren ein CT (1 mm Schichtdicke) und 0,5 Tesla MRT (T2W, T2W SPIR, PDW, T1W) des Kop-fes. Im retrospektiven Anteil der Studie wurden CT-Untersuchungen (0,8-1 mm Schichtdicke) von 25 Katzen und MRT-Untersuchungen (T2W, T1W vor und nach Kontrastmittelgabe) von 21 Katzen verwendet. Diese Untersuchungen wurden zwi-schen 2005 und 2013 in unserer Klinik angefertigt. Dabei konnten keine Pathologien in Zusammenhang mit den Speicheldrüsen festgestellt werden. Alle Speicheldrüsen wurden bezüglich Identifizierbarkeit, Abgrenzbarkeit, Größe und Signalverhalten un-tersucht. Wenn vorhanden, wurden anatomische Landmarken die Speicheldrüsen umgebend notiert. Zusammenfassung 80 Ergebnisse: 94,3% der Glandulae parotidae, 90,7% der Glandulae mandibulares und 96,8% der Glandulae zygomaticae konnten mit dem CT identifiziert werden. Beim MRT waren es 94,1% der Glandulae parotidae, 99,2 % der Glandulae mandibulares, 88,9% der Glandulae zygomaticae und 51,4 % der Glandulae buccalis ventralis. In beiden Gruppen konnten keine der restlichen kleinen Speicheldrüsen identifiziert werden, dies galt für beide Schnittbildverfahren. Als hilfreiche anatomi-sche Landmarken konnten der äußere Gehörgang, der M. masseter, der M. pterygo-ideus medialis und der Bulbus oculi herangezogen werden. Die medianen Dichtewer-te lagen für die Glandula parotis, die Glandula mandibularis und die Glandula zygo-matica bei 65 HU, 62 HU und 57 HU. Die Parotis war überwiegend dezent hyperin-tens zur Muskulatur und hypointens zum Fett. Die Mandibularis, Zygomatica, und Glandula buccalis ventralis stellten sich hauptsächlich hyperintens zur Muskulatur und hypointens zu Fettgewebe dar. Dieses Signalverhalten war für T1W, T2W und T2W SPIR (fettunterdrückt) gewichtete Sequenzen gleich. Die Größe war für beide Gruppen und Modalitäten vergleichbar und lag bei circa 17 x 6 mm (gemessen von lateral nach medial und von dorsal nach ventral) bei der Glandula parotis, 8 x 17 mm bei der Glandula mandibularis, 10 x 7 mm bei der Glandula zygomatica und bei der Glandula buccalis ventralis 3 x 10 mm. Schlussfolgerungen: Landmarken und Aussagen über die Signalintensität bezie-hungsweise Dichte und die Größe der Glandula parotis, Glandula mandibularis, Glandula zygomatica und der Glandula buccalis ventralis konnten erhoben werden. Die mangelhafte Identifizierbarkeit der restlichen kleinen Speicheldrüsen, im Ver-gleich zu den oben genannten, kann vor allem mit dem unzureichenden Weichteil-kontrast zum umliegenden Gewebe im CT und der niedrigen Auflösung des Nieder-feld-MRTs erklärt werden. Neuere MRT-Techniken können detailliertere Bilder er-zeugen und so eine Beschreibung der kleinen Speicheldrüsen ermöglichen. / Objective: Due to their high resolution and useful contrast resolution, CT and MRI are recommended methods for diagnosing pathological changes of soft tissues such as lesions of the salivary glands. To our knowledge, no studies about the CT or MR anatomy of the feline salivary glands have been published yet. The aim of the study was to define anatomical characteristics of the salivary glands in cross-sectional im-ages and to describe landmarks for a reliable identification. Materials and methods: Two groups of cats where examined. In a prospective trial, 16 cats, euthanized for reasons unrelated to the study, underwent a head CT (1 mm slice thickness) and 0.5 Tesla MRI scans (T2W, T2W SPIR, PDW, T1W). In a retro-spective trial, the CT scans (0.8-1 mm slice thickness) of 25 cats and the MR scans (T2W, T1W, pre- and post-contrast) of 21 cats were used. These scans were per-formed at our clinic between 2005 and 2013. No signs of salivary-gland-related pa-thologies were visible. All images were reviewed with respect to the following criteria: the presence, delineation and size of the salivary glands as well as the signal intensi-ty. Anatomical landmarks surrounding the glands were also recorded. Results: 94.3% of the parotid glands, 90.7% of the mandibular glands and 96.8% of the zygomatic glands could be delineated using CT. With MRI, 94.1% of the parotid Summary 82 glands, 99.2 % of the mandibular glands, 88.9% of the zygomatic glands and 51,4 % of the ventral buccal glands could be identified. In both groups the other small salivary glands could not be visualized neither in CT nor in MRI. Anatomical landmarks such as the external ear canal, the M. masseter, the M. pterygoideus medialis and the Bulbus oculi facilitate the identification. The mean density of the parotid gland, the mandibular gland and the zygomatic gland was 65 HU, 62 HU and 57 HU, respectively. The parotid gland was mainly modestly hyperintense to muscle and hypointense to fat. The mandibular, zygomatic and ven-tral buccal glands were hyperintense to muscle and hypointense to fat. Signal intensi-ties were similar for T1W, T2W and T2W SPIR images. Sizes were comparable for both groups and modalities and measured about 17x6 mm (lateral to medial and dor-sal to ventral) for the parotid gland, 8 x 17 mm for the mandibular gland, 10x7 mm for the zygomatic gland and 3x10 mm for the ventral buccal gland. Conclusions: Landmarks were recorded and data regarding the density/signal in-tensity and the size of the parotid gland, the mandibular gland, the zygomatic gland and the ventral buccal gland could be gathered. The discrepancy between depicting the small glands and the above mentioned glands can be explained mainly by the lack of contrast to the surrounding tissue in CT and the low spatial resolution in low-field MRI. Advanced MRI techniques are expected to produce more detailed images and therefore those techniques could be used to also describe the small salivary glands.

As proporções na face e no corpo humano são analisadas desde a antiguidade, a exemplo do Homem Vitruviano de Leonardo da Vince. A existência das proporções Divinas ou proporções áureas em crânios esqueletizados é um campo de estudo que apresenta um potencial colaborador para as áreas de sobreposição de imagens, reconstrução facial e identificação forense. O objetivo deste trabalho é estabelecer parâmetros antropométricos regionais baseados nas proporções áureas, instituindo coeficientes e índices faciais específicos para a amostra composta por sessenta crânios esqueletizados (n=60), oriundos do Instituto Médico Legal da Bahia. As mensurações foram realizadas diretamente sobre o crânio utilizando paquímetros digitais. Foram selecionadas 14 medidas craniométricas diferentes e a partir delas foram calculados 06 relações horizontais, 04 verticais e 06 índices faciais. Os dados foram tabulados e descritos por valores de média e desvio padrão, utilizou-se o intervalo de confiança da média (p<0,05). A proporção áurea (1,618) não foi encontrada na população examinada, entretanto foi possível estabelecer índices faciais e coeficientes próprios para as medidas, construindo parâmetros antropométricos regionais baseados nas proporções estudadas. A proporção altura da cabeça em relação a altura da face (V-GN/N-GN) igual a 1,69 foi a variável que mais se aproximou do número de ouro e a relação entre a altura nasal ser igual a metade da altura da face (N-SN=N-GN/2) como valor de 0,92 foi a variável que mais se aproximou entre as igualdades. Admiti-se que a partir de uma medida é possível alcançar a outra utilizando os índices faciais e as retas de regressão calculadas. Este estudo fornece indicadores úteis, pois busca estabelecer proporções nos crânios que são reproduzíveis na face, contribuindo para o aperfeiçoamento das técnicas auxiliares de Reconstrução Facial e Sobreposição de Imagens em estudos futuros. / The proportions of the human face and body have been studied since, at least, Leonardo da Vinci and his Vitruvian Man. The existence of divine or Golden Ratios in human skulls may collaborate with Image Superposition, Facial Reconstruction and Forensics Identification. The goal of this study is establishing regional anthropometrics parameters based on golden ratios, using specifics facial coefficients and indexes for sixty skulls (n=60), obtained from Institute of Legal Medicine of Bahia, BRA. The measurements were done directly over the skull using a digital pachymeter. Fourteen different measurements were selected and, from them, 06 horizontals and 04 verticals relations and 06 facial indexes were calculated. The data was charted and described by average and standard deviation. An average confidence interval was used (p<0,05).The golden ratio (1,618) has not been found among the population analyzed, however was possible establishing facial indexes and coefficients for the measurements, building regional anthropometric parameters based on the studied proportions. The proportion height of the head related to the height of the face (V-GN/N-GN) equal to 1,69 was the closest variable to the golden number and the relation between nasal height being equal to half a height of the face (N-SN=N-GN/2) as 0,92 was the closest variable between equalities. Admitting that from one measurement to another can be achieved using the facial indexes facial and linear regression calculated. This study provides useful indicators since tries to establish proportions on the skull that can be reproducible on the face, contributing for the improvement of auxiliary techniques of Facial Reconstruction and Images Superposition in future studies.

As proporções na face e no corpo humano são analisadas desde a antiguidade, a exemplo do Homem Vitruviano de Leonardo da Vince. A existência das proporções Divinas ou proporções áureas em crânios esqueletizados é um campo de estudo que apresenta um potencial colaborador para as áreas de sobreposição de imagens, reconstrução facial e identificação forense. O objetivo deste trabalho é estabelecer parâmetros antropométricos regionais baseados nas proporções áureas, instituindo coeficientes e índices faciais específicos para a amostra composta por sessenta crânios esqueletizados (n=60), oriundos do Instituto Médico Legal da Bahia. As mensurações foram realizadas diretamente sobre o crânio utilizando paquímetros digitais. Foram selecionadas 14 medidas craniométricas diferentes e a partir delas foram calculados 06 relações horizontais, 04 verticais e 06 índices faciais. Os dados foram tabulados e descritos por valores de média e desvio padrão, utilizou-se o intervalo de confiança da média (p<0,05). A proporção áurea (1,618) não foi encontrada na população examinada, entretanto foi possível estabelecer índices faciais e coeficientes próprios para as medidas, construindo parâmetros antropométricos regionais baseados nas proporções estudadas. A proporção altura da cabeça em relação a altura da face (V-GN/N-GN) igual a 1,69 foi a variável que mais se aproximou do número de ouro e a relação entre a altura nasal ser igual a metade da altura da face (N-SN=N-GN/2) como valor de 0,92 foi a variável que mais se aproximou entre as igualdades. Admiti-se que a partir de uma medida é possível alcançar a outra utilizando os índices faciais e as retas de regressão calculadas. Este estudo fornece indicadores úteis, pois busca estabelecer proporções nos crânios que são reproduzíveis na face, contribuindo para o aperfeiçoamento das técnicas auxiliares de Reconstrução Facial e Sobreposição de Imagens em estudos futuros. / The proportions of the human face and body have been studied since, at least, Leonardo da Vinci and his Vitruvian Man. The existence of divine or Golden Ratios in human skulls may collaborate with Image Superposition, Facial Reconstruction and Forensics Identification. The goal of this study is establishing regional anthropometrics parameters based on golden ratios, using specifics facial coefficients and indexes for sixty skulls (n=60), obtained from Institute of Legal Medicine of Bahia, BRA. The measurements were done directly over the skull using a digital pachymeter. Fourteen different measurements were selected and, from them, 06 horizontals and 04 verticals relations and 06 facial indexes were calculated. The data was charted and described by average and standard deviation. An average confidence interval was used (p<0,05).The golden ratio (1,618) has not been found among the population analyzed, however was possible establishing facial indexes and coefficients for the measurements, building regional anthropometric parameters based on the studied proportions. The proportion height of the head related to the height of the face (V-GN/N-GN) equal to 1,69 was the closest variable to the golden number and the relation between nasal height being equal to half a height of the face (N-SN=N-GN/2) as 0,92 was the closest variable between equalities. Admitting that from one measurement to another can be achieved using the facial indexes facial and linear regression calculated. This study provides useful indicators since tries to establish proportions on the skull that can be reproducible on the face, contributing for the improvement of auxiliary techniques of Facial Reconstruction and Images Superposition in future studies.

Osteoporosis, associated with reduced bone mineral density and structural degeneration, greatly increases the risk of fragility fracture. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been applied to central skeletal sites including the proximal femur due to its non-ionizing radiation. A major challenge of volumetric bone imaging of the hip is the selection of regions of interest (ROIs) for computation of regional bone measurements. To address this issue, an MRI-based active shape model (ASM) of the human proximal femur is applied to automatically generate ROIs. The challenge in developing the ASM for a complex three-dimensional (3-D) shape lies in determining a large number of anatomically consistent landmarks for a set of training shapes. This thesis proposes a new method of generating the proximal femur ASM, where two types of landmarks, namely fiducial and secondary landmarks, are used. The method consists of—(1) segmentation of the proximal femur bone volume, (2) smoothing the bone surface, (3) drawing fiducial landmark lines on training shapes, (4) drawing secondary landmarks on a reference shape, (5) landmark mesh generation on the reference shape using both fiducial and secondary landmarks, (6) generation of secondary landmarks on other training shapes using the correspondence of fiducial landmarks and an elastic deformation of the landmark mesh, (7) computation of the active shape model. A proximal femur ASM has been developed using hip MR scans of 45 post-menopausal women. The results of secondary landmark generation were visually satisfactory, and no topology violation or notable geometric distortion artifacts were observed. Performance of the method was examined in terms of shape representation errors in a leave-one-out test. The mean and standard deviation of leave-one-out shape representation errors were 0.34mm and 0.09mm respectively. The experimental results suggest that the framework of fiducial and secondary landmarks allows reliable computation of statistical shape models for complex 3-D anatomic structures.