Real-time hand tracking for rehabilitation and character animation

Hand and finger tracking has a major importance in healthcare, for rehabilitation of hand function required due to a neurological disorder, and in virtual environment applications, like characters animation for on-line games or movies. Current solutions consist mostly of motion tracking gloves with embedded resistive bend sensors that most often suffer from signal drift, sensor saturation, sensor displacement and complex calibration procedures. More advanced solutions provide better tracking stability, but at the expense of a higher cost. The proposed solution aims to provide the required precision, stability and feasibility through the combination of eleven inertial measurements units (IMUs). Each unit captures the spatial orientation of the attached body. To fully capture the hand movement, each finger encompasses two units (at the proximal and distal phalanges), plus one unit at the back of the hand. The proposed glove was validated in two distinct steps: a) evaluation of the sensors’ accuracy and stability over time; b) evaluation of the bending trajectories during usual finger flexion tasks based on the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). Results revealed that the glove was sensitive mainly to magnetic field distortions and sensors tuning. The inclusion of a hard and soft iron correction algorithm and accelerometer and gyro drift and temperature compensation methods provided increased stability and precision. Finger trajectories evaluation yielded high ICC values with an overall reliability within application’s satisfying limits. The developed low cost system provides a straightforward calibration and usability, qualifying the device for hand and finger tracking in healthcare and animation industries.

Influence of foliar fertilization with manganese on germination, vigor and storage time of RR soybean seeds

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to evaluate the influence of foliar fertilizer doses containing Mn of phenological stages of suggested application in RR soybeans, to recover management damages with glyphosate at postemergence application on seed vigor in post-harvest and post six months storage. The seeds originated from a field experiment conducted , which included two applications of glyphosate, concomitant with foliar fertilizer in growth stages V4 and V6, with 0.00, 113.50 and 227.00 mg ha-1doses of Mn2+. Germination, GSI (Germination Speed Index), electrical conductivity tests and the first count of seeds were conducted. The application of Mn did not affect the physiological quality of RR soy in postharvest. However, in post-storage, higher doses of Mn had a negative effect on tests of abnormal seedlings, GSI and electrical conductivity. The applications of Mn, regardless of the developmental stage, did not interfere in the germination and first count tests, with and without storage. The electrical conductivity test showed a higher correlation with the seed germination test in the post-harvest treatment.

A-scan ultrasound system for real-time puncture safety assessment during percutaneous nephrolithotomy

Background: Kidney stone is a major universal health problem, affecting 10% of the population worldwide. Percutaneous nephrolithotomy is a first-line and established procedure for disintegration and removal of renal stones. Its surgical success depends on the precise needle puncture of renal calyces, which remains the most challenging task for surgeons. This work describes and tests a new ultrasound based system to alert the surgeon when undesirable anatomical structures are in between the puncture path defined through a tracked needle. Methods: Two circular ultrasound transducers were built with a single 3.3-MHz piezoelectric ceramic PZT SN8, 25.4 mm of radius and resin-epoxy matching and backing layers. One matching layer was designed with a concave curvature to work as an acoustic lens with long focusing. The A-scan signals were filtered and processed to automatically detect reflected echoes. Results: The transducers were mapped in water tank and tested in a study involving 45 phantoms. Each phantom mimics different needle insertion trajectories with a percutaneous path length between 80 and 150 mm. Results showed that the beam cross-sectional area oscillates around the ceramics radius and it was possible to automatically detect echo signals in phantoms with length higher than 80 mm. Conclusions: This new solution may alert the surgeon about anatomical tissues changes during needle insertion, which may decrease the need of X-Ray radiation exposure and ultrasound image evaluation during percutaneous puncture.

THE ROLE OF EARNINGS PERSISTENCE IN VALUATION ACCURACY AND THE TIME HORIZON

ABSTRACT Based on the assumption that earnings persistence has implications for both financial analysis and compensation contracts, the aim of this paper is to investigate the role of earnings persistence assuming that (i) more persistent earnings are likely to be a better input to valuation models and (ii) more persistent earnings are likely to serve as a proxy for long-term market and managerial orientation. The analysis is based on Brazilian listed firms from 1995 to 2013, and while we document strong support for the relevance of earnings persistence in financial analysis and valuation, we fail to document a significant relationship between earnings persistence and long-term value orientation. These results are sensitive to different specifications, and additional results suggest that firms' idiosyncratic risk (total risk) is relevant to explain the focus on short-term outcomes (short-termism) across firms. The main contribution of this paper is to offer empirical evidence for the relevance of accounting numbers in both valuation and contractual theories in an emergent market.

Beyond time and oblivion : Sir Robert Sidney’s autograph manuscript

Dealing with ancient manuscript or old printed texts often constitutes a difficult task, especially to philologists and editors, for two main reasons: the precarious state of preservation of the documents and the uncertainty regarding their origin, authenticity and authorship. These problems are aggravated by spurious versions, due to the publication of truncated works, poorly supervised miscellanies and non-authorised editions. Sir Robert Sidney’s literary text constitutes an exception amidst such vicissitudes, once the original corpus is wholly contained in a notebook exhibiting the organisation and unity conceived by the author himself. Today, there is no evidence that any loose poems, either autograph or copied by amanuenses, were in circulation among members of the Elizabethan court society. The notebook was kept in private collections for four centuries, which probably explains why it was so well preserved. In fact, only in 1984 would P.J. Croft’s fine edition bring the youngest Sidney’s Poems into light. In this work, I approach Croft’s perceptive, accurate philological study that eventually rescued from oblivion a remarkable piece both of the Elizabethan lyric poetry and of the English Renaissance, and, at the same time, look into Robert Sidney’s peculiar, careful and original formatting of his own autograph manuscript.

Accessing Planktothrix species diversity and associated toxins using quantitative real-time PCR in natural waters

Tese de Doutoramento em Biologia apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, 2015.

Constructing good deals in discrete time arbitrage-free dynamic pricing models

Recent literature has proved that many classical pricing models (Black and Scholes, Heston, etc.) and risk measures (V aR, CV aR, etc.) may lead to “pathological meaningless situations”, since traders can build sequences of portfolios whose risk leveltends to −infinity and whose expected return tends to +infinity, i.e., (risk = −infinity, return = +infinity). Such a sequence of strategies may be called “good deal”. This paper focuses on the risk measures V aR and CV aR and analyzes this caveat in a discrete time complete pricing model. Under quite general conditions the explicit expression of a good deal is given, and its sensitivity with respect to some possible measurement errors is provided too. We point out that a critical property is the absence of short sales. In such a case we first construct a “shadow riskless asset” (SRA) without short sales and then the good deal is given by borrowing more and more money so as to invest in the SRA. It is also shown that the SRA is interested by itself, even if there are short selling restrictions.

Concepção e implementação do time-driven activity based costing numa PME industrial: evidência de um estudo empírico

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Contabilidade e Finanças Orientador: Mestre Paulino Manuel Leite da Silva

A real time pricing approach to deal with excessive wind power situations

The introduction of wind power generation in several countries around the world, including in European countries, where energy policy directives have encouraged the use of renewables, led to several changes in market and power systems operation. The intensive integration of these sources has led to situations in which the demand is lower than the available renewable resources. In these situations a part of the available generation is wasted if not used for storage or to supply additional demand. This paper proposes a real time demand response methodology based on changing the electricity price for the consumers expecting an increase in the demand in the periods in which that demand is lower than the available renewable generation. The consumers response to the changes in electricity price is characterized by their price elasticity of demand considered distinct for each consumer type. The proposed methodology is applied to the Portuguese power system, in the context of the Iberian electricity market (MIBEL). The renewable-based producers are considered as special producers, with special tariffs, and so it is important to use the energy available as it will be paid anyway. In this context, consumers are entities actively participating in the operation of the market.

Real-time energy resources scheduling considering intensive wind penetration

The use of distributed energy resources, based on natural intermittent power sources, like wind generation, in power systems imposes the development of new adequate operation management and control methodologies. A short-term Energy Resource Management (ERM) methodology performed in two phases is proposed in this paper. The first one addresses the day-ahead ERM scheduling and the second one deals with the five-minute ahead ERM scheduling. The ERM scheduling is a complex optimization problem due to the high quantity of variables and constraints. In this paper the main goal is to minimize the operation costs from the point of view of a virtual power player that manages the network and the existing resources. The optimization problem is solved by a deterministic mixedinteger non-linear programming approach. A case study considering a distribution network with 33 bus, 66 distributed generation, 32 loads with demand response contracts and 7 storage units and 1000 electric vehicles has been implemented in a simulator developed in the field of the presented work, in order to validate the proposed short-term ERM methodology considering the dynamic power system behavior.

Real-time energy resources scheduling considering short-term and very short-term wind forecast

This paper proposes an energy resources management methodology based on three distinct time horizons: day-ahead scheduling, hour-ahead scheduling, and real-time scheduling. In each scheduling process it is necessary the update of generation and consumption operation and of the storage and electric vehicles storage status. Besides the new operation condition, it is important more accurate forecast values of wind generation and of consumption using results of in short-term and very short-term methods. A case study considering a distribution network with intensive use of distributed generation and electric vehicles is presented.

Virtual power players dealing with excessive wind power situations using real time pricing

The increasing importance given by environmental policies to the dissemination and use of wind power has led to its fast and large integration in power systems. In most cases, this integration has been done in an intensive way, causing several impacts and challenges in current and future power systems operation and planning. One of these challenges is dealing with the system conditions in which the available wind power is higher than the system demand. This is one of the possible applications of demand response, which is a very promising resource in the context of competitive environments that integrates even more amounts of distributed energy resources, as well as new players. The methodology proposed aims the maximization of the social welfare in a smart grid operated by a virtual power player that manages the available energy resources. When facing excessive wind power generation availability, real time pricing is applied in order to induce the increase of consumption so that wind curtailment is minimized. The proposed method is especially useful when actual and day-ahead wind forecast differ significantly. The proposed method has been computationally implemented in GAMS optimization tool and its application is illustrated in this paper using a real 937-bus distribution network with 20310 consumers and 548 distributed generators, some of them with must take contracts.