An evaluation of different features and learning models for anomalous event detection

The huge amount of CCTV footage available makes it very burdensome to process these videos manually through human operators. This has made automated processing of video footage through computer vision technologies necessary. During the past several years, there has been a large effort to detect abnormal activities through computer vision techniques. Typically, the problem is formulated as a novelty detection task where the system is trained on normal data and is required to detect events which do not fit the learned ‘normal’ model. There is no precise and exact definition for an abnormal activity; it is dependent on the context of the scene. Hence there is a requirement for different feature sets to detect different kinds of abnormal activities. In this work we evaluate the performance of different state of the art features to detect the presence of the abnormal objects in the scene. These include optical flow vectors to detect motion related anomalies, textures of optical flow and image textures to detect the presence of abnormal objects. These extracted features in different combinations are modeled using different state of the art models such as Gaussian mixture model(GMM) and Semi- 2D Hidden Markov model(HMM) to analyse the performances. Further we apply perspective normalization to the extracted features to compensate for perspective distortion due to the distance between the camera and objects of consideration. The proposed approach is evaluated using the publicly available UCSD datasets and we demonstrate improved performance compared to other state of the art methods.

Developing an evidence-based clinical pathway for the assessment, diagnosis and management of acute Charcot Neuro-Arthropathy : a systematic review

Background: Charcot Neuro-Arthropathy (CN) is one of the more devastating complications of diabetes. To the best of the authors' knowledge, it appears that no clinical tools based on a systematic review of existing literature have been developed to manage acute CN. Thus, the aim of this paper was to systematically review existing literature and develop an evidence-based clinical pathway for the assessment, diagnosis and management of acute CN in patients with diabetes. Methods: Electronic databases (Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, Embase and Cochrane Library), reference lists, and relevant key websites were systematically searched for literature discussing the assessment, diagnosis and/or management of acute CN published between 2002-2012. At least two independent investigators then quality rated and graded the evidence of each included paper. Consistent recommendations emanating from the included papers were then fashioned in a clinical pathway. Results: The systematic search identified 267 manuscripts, of which 117 (44%) met the inclusion criteria for this study. Most manuscripts discussing the assessment, diagnosis and/or management of acute CN constituted level IV (case series) or EO (expert opinion) evidence. The included literature was used to develop an evidence-based clinical pathway for the assessment, investigations, diagnosis and management of acute CN. Conclusions: This research has assisted in developing a comprehensive, evidence-based clinical pathway to promote consistent and optimal practice in the assessment, diagnosis and management of acute CN. The pathway aims to support health professionals in making early diagnosis and providing appropriate immediate management of acute CN, ultimately reducing its associated complications such as amputations and hospitalisations.

A methodology for effective implementation of lean strategies and its performance evaluation in manufacturing organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an effective methodology for implementing lean manufacturing strategies and a leanness evaluation metric using continuous performance measurement (CPM). Design/methodology/approach – Based on five lean principles, a systematic lean implementation methodology for manufacturing organizations has been proposed. A simplified leanness evaluation metric consisting of both efficiency and effectiveness attributes of manufacturing performance has been developed for continuous evaluation of lean implementation. A case study to validate the proposed methodology has been conducted and proposed CPM metric has been used to assess the manufacturing leanness. Findings – Proposed methodology is able to systematically identify manufacturing wastes, select appropriate lean tools, identify relevant performance indicators, achieve significant performance improvement and establish lean culture in the organization. Continuous performance measurement matrices in terms of efficiency and effectiveness are proved to be appropriate methods for continuous evaluation of lean performance. Research limitations/implications – Effectiveness of the method developed has been demonstrated by applying it in a real life assembly process. However, more tests/applications will be necessary to generalize the findings. Practical implications – Results show that applying the methods developed, managers can successfully identify and remove manufacturing wastes from their production processes. By improving process efficiency, they can optimize their resource allocations. Manufacturers now have a validated step by step methodology for successfully implementing lean strategies. Originality/value – According to the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first known study that proposed a systematic lean implementation methodology based on lean principles and continuous improvement techniques. Evaluation of performance improvement by lean strategies is a critical issue. This study develops a simplified leanness evaluation metric considering both efficiency and effectiveness attributes and integrates it with the lean implementation methodology.

Evaluation framework for green procurement in road construction

Purpose Most barriers and enablers of sustainable projects are related to procurement. This study proposes a framework for evaluating green procurement practices throughout the lifecycle of road construction projects and demonstrates its application through an Australian case study. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on linking the phases of road construction with incentive mechanisms for proactively motivating behavioural change. A holistic view on utilised and potential incentives is attempted with a literature review and a state-of-practice review. The latter is based on interviews and 90 policy and procurement documents across five Australian states. Findings An evaluation framework with seven procurement stages is suggested to describe current state green procurement incentives throughout the delivery lifecycle of road construction projects. The Australian case study was found to provide useful data to identify gaps and strong points of the different states regarding their level of integration of sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions GHG) reduction elements in their procurement practices. This understanding was used to draw recommendations on future advancement of green procurement. Originality/value: Government entities across the globe can impact considerably the achievement of sustainability and GHG targets, by using their procurement practices and requirements to create incentives for contractors and suppliers to engage in more GHG conscious practices. The present study provides a systematic account of how green procurement practices can be underpinned using the Australian road construction industry as a case study, and distinguish between strong and weak links in the green procurement chain to draw recommendations for future initiatives.

Teacher Evidence Matrix : an evaluation using multiple lines of evidence

Welcome to the Teacher evidence matrix. This matrix is designed for highly qualified discipline experts to evaluate their teaching in a systematic manner. The primary purpose of the Teacher evidence matrix is to provide a tool that an academic staff member at university can annually review their teaching. The annual review will result in you being ready for performance, planning and review; promotion; awards; or employment application. This tool is designed for individual use and will lead to an action plan for implementation.

Application of cepstrum pre-whitening for the diagnosis of bearing faults under variable speed conditions

Diagnostics of rolling element bearings involves a combination of different techniques of signal enhancing and analysis. The most common procedure presents a first step of order tracking and synchronous averaging, able to remove the undesired components, synchronous with the shaft harmonics, from the signal, and a final step of envelope analysis to obtain the squared envelope spectrum. This indicator has been studied thoroughly, and statistically based criteria have been obtained, in order to identify damaged bearings. The statistical thresholds are valid only if all the deterministic components in the signal have been removed. Unfortunately, in various industrial applications, characterized by heterogeneous vibration sources, the first step of synchronous averaging is not sufficient to eliminate completely the deterministic components and an additional step of pre-whitening is needed before the envelope analysis. Different techniques have been proposed in the past with this aim: The most widely spread are linear prediction filters and spectral kurtosis. Recently, a new technique for pre-whitening has been proposed, based on cepstral analysis: the so-called cepstrum pre-whitening. Owing to its low computational requirements and its simplicity, it seems a good candidate to perform the intermediate pre-whitening step in an automatic damage recognition algorithm. In this paper, the effectiveness of the new technique will be tested on the data measured on a full-scale industrial bearing test-rig, able to reproduce the harsh conditions of operation. A benchmark comparison with the traditional pre-whitening techniques will be made, as a final step for the verification of the potentiality of the cepstrum pre-whitening.

Effectiveness of MED for Fault Diagnosis in Roller Bearings

Diagnostics of rolling element bearings is usually performed by means of vibration signals measured by accelerometers placed in the proximity of the bearing under investigation. The aim is to monitor the integrity of the bearing components, in order to avoid catastrophic failures, or to implement condition based maintenance strategies. In particular, the trend in this field is to combine in a single algorithm different signal-enhancement and signal-analysis techniques. Among the first ones, Minimum Entropy Deconvolution (MED) has been pointed out as a key tool able to highlight the effect of a possible damage in one of the bearing components within the vibration signal. This paper presents the application of this technique to signals collected on a simple test-rig, able to test damaged industrial roller bearings in different working conditions. The effectiveness of the technique has been tested, comparing the results of one undamaged bearing with three bearings artificially damaged in different locations, namely on the inner race, outer race and rollers. Since MED performances are dependent on the filter length, the most suitable value of this parameter is defined on the basis of both the application and measured signals. This represents an original contribution of the paper.

Facilitating local stories in post-disaster regional communities : evaluation in narrative-driven oral history projects

Cyclone Yasi struck the Cassowary Coast of Northern Queensland, Australia, in the early hours of February 3, 2011, destroying many homes and property, including the destruction of the Cardwell and district historical society’s premises. With their own homes flattened, many residents were forced to live in mobile accommodation, with extended family, or leave the area altogether. The historical society members seemed, however, particularly devastated by their flattened foreshore museum and loss of their precious collection of material. A call for assistance was made through the Oral History Association of Australia’s Queensland branch (OHAA Qld), which along with a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) research team sponsored a trip to best plan how they could start to pick up the pieces to rebuild the museum. This chapter highlights the need for communities to gather, preserve and present their own stories, in a way that is sustainable and meaningful to them – whether that be because of a disaster, or as they go about life in their contemporary communities – the key being that good advice, professional support and embedded evaluation practices at crucial moments along the way can be critically important.

Building indicators in media assistance; four ways evaluation reports present “change”

The international aid and development community has supported programs that aim to build the capacity of media professionals or contribute to an enabling environment throughout the past 20 years. However, two decades on from the first modern media assistance programs, the sector is still struggling to identify, measure and understand the changes effected by their programs. There are questions raised as to whether it is even feasible to identify impacts on society and governance. This paper draws on some preliminary findings from a comparative thematic analysis of 47 evaluation documents of media assistance programs. The aim of this analysis is to identify trends in impact evaluation practice in the media assistance field, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of different evaluation approaches. This paper presents four types of social change claims commonly presented in reports; hypothetical changes, introduction of new opportunities, concrete examples of immediate impacts, and analysis of ongoing social and political changes. Although these types may appear as a spectrum from weak to strong, the interactions are perhaps more accurately understood using metaphors such as building blocks. This paper explores these types in more detail and suggests that a robust set of impacts-types could be useful in developing more grounded theories of change and indicators.

Social event detection at MediaEval 2013 : challenges, datasets and evaluation

In this paper, we provide an overview of the Social Event Detection (SED) task that is part of the MediaEval Bench mark for Multimedia Evaluation 2013. This task requires participants to discover social events and organize the re- lated media items in event-specific clusters within a collection of Web multimedia. Social events are events that are planned by people, attended by people and for which the social multimedia are also captured by people. We describe the challenges, datasets, and the evaluation methodology.

Evaluation of two-view geometry methods with automatic ground-truth generation

A large number of methods have been published that aim to evaluate various components of multi-view geometry systems. Most of these have focused on the feature extraction, description and matching stages (the visual front end), since geometry computation can be evaluated through simulation. Many data sets are constrained to small scale scenes or planar scenes that are not challenging to new algorithms, or require special equipment. This paper presents a method for automatically generating geometry ground truth and challenging test cases from high spatio-temporal resolution video. The objective of the system is to enable data collection at any physical scale, in any location and in various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The data generation process consists of collecting high resolution video, computing accurate sparse 3D reconstruction, video frame culling and down sampling, and test case selection. The evaluation process consists of applying a test 2-view geometry method to every test case and comparing the results to the ground truth. This system facilitates the evaluation of the whole geometry computation process or any part thereof against data compatible with a realistic application. A collection of example data sets and evaluations is included to demonstrate the range of applications of the proposed system.

The evaluation of a clinical scar scale for porcine burn scars

This study describes the evaluation of a clinical scar scale for our porcine burn scars, which includes scar cosmetic outcome, colour, height and hair, supplemented with reference porcine scar photographs representing each scar outcome and scar colour scores. A total of 72 porcine burn scars at week 6 after burn were rated in vivo and/or on photographs. Good agreements were achieved for both intra-rater reliability (correlation is 0.86-0.98) and inter-rater reliability (ICC=80-85%). The results showed statistically significant correlations for each pair in this clinical scar scale (p<0.01), with the best correlation found between scar cosmetic outcome and scar colour. A multivariate principle components analysis revealed that this clinical scar assessment was highly correlated with scar histology, wound size, and re-epithelialisation data (p<0.001). More severe scars are clinically characterised by darker purple colouration, more elevation, no presence of hair, histologically by thicker scar tissue, thinner remaining normal dermis, are more likely to have worse contraction, and slower re-epithelialisation. This study demonstrates that our clinical scar scale is a reliable, independent and valuable tool for assessing porcine burn outcome and truthfully reflects scar appearance and function. To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating a high correlation between clinical scar assessment and scar histology, wound contraction and re-epithelialisation data on porcine burn scars. We believe that the successful use of porcine scar scales is invaluable for assessing potential human burn treatments.

Systematic evaluation of GoSoapBox in tertiary education : a student response system for improving learning experiences and outcomes

There is currently a wide range of research into the recent introduction of student response systems in higher education and tertiary settings (Banks 2006; Kay and Le Sange, 2009; Beatty and Gerace 2009; Lantz 2010; Sprague and Dahl 2009). However, most of this pedagogical literature has generated ‘how to’ approaches regarding the use of ‘clickers’, keypads, and similar response technologies. There are currently no systematic reviews on the effectiveness of ‘GoSoapBox’ – a more recent, and increasingly popular student response system – for its capacity to enhance critical thinking, and achieve sustained learning outcomes. With rapid developments in teaching and learning technologies across all undergraduate disciplines, there is a need to obtain comprehensive, evidence-based advice on these types of technologies, their uses, and overall efficacy. This paper addresses this current gap in knowledge. Our teaching team, in an undergraduate Sociology and Public Health unit at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), introduced GoSoapBox as a mechanism for discussing controversial topics, such as sexuality, gender, economics, religion, and politics during lectures, and to take opinion polls on social and cultural issues affecting human health. We also used this new teaching technology to allow students to interact with each other during class – both on both social and academic topics – and to generate discussions and debates during lectures. The paper reports on a data-driven study into how this interactive online tool worked to improve engagement and the quality of academic work produced by students. This paper will firstly, cover the recent literature reviewing student response systems in tertiary settings. Secondly, it will outline the theoretical framework used to generate this pedagogical research. In keeping with the social and collaborative features of Web 2.0 technologies, Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (SLT) will be applied here to investigate the effectiveness of GoSoapBox as an online tool for improving learning experiences and the quality of academic output by students. Bandura has emphasised the Internet as a tool for ‘self-controlled learning’ (Bandura 2001), as it provides the education sector with an opportunity to reconceptualise the relationship between learning and thinking (Glassman & Kang 2011). Thirdly, we describe the methods used to implement the use of GoSoapBox in our lectures and tutorials, and which aspects of the technology we drew on for learning purposes, as well as the methods for obtaining feedback from the students about the effectiveness or otherwise of this tool. Fourthly, we report cover findings from an examination of all student/staff activity on GoSoapBox as well as reports from students about the benefits and limitations of it as a learning aid. We then display a theoretical model that is produced via an iterative analytical process between SLT and our data analysis for use by academics and teachers across the undergraduate curriculum. The model has implications for all teachers considering the use of student response systems to improve the learning experiences of their students. Finally, we consider some of the negative aspects of GoSoapBox as a learning aid.

An evaluation of clinical procedures used in dental implant treatment in posterior maxilla using flapless technique

This study was a measure forward in cultivating the scientific basis for an approach to examine clinical procedure in Flapless dental implant surgery. The thesis is based on: the systematic review, retrospective study of flapless implants, and in vivo study on the osseo-integration in osteoporotic rats. Dr Doan investigated "clinical procedures used in dental implant treatment in posterior maxilla using flapless technique". The work has yielded significant contributions to the area of implant flapless surgery and its effects on osteoporotic patients having implants in the posterior maxilla.

An evaluation of the Australian ‘reconceptualising early mathematics learning’ project : key findings and implications

The Pattern and Structure Mathematics Awareness Project (PASMAP) has investigated the development of patterning and early algebraic reasoning among 4 to 8 year olds over a series of related studies. We assert that an awareness of mathematical pattern and structure (AMPS) enables mathematical thinking and simple forms of generalization from an early age. This paper provides an overview of key findings of the Reconceptualizing Early Mathematics Learning empirical evaluation study involving 316 Kindergarten students from 4 schools. The study found highly significant differences on PASA scores for PASMAP students. Analysis of structural development showed increased levels for the PASMAP students; those categorised as low ability developed improved structural responses over a short period of time.