Thales (United States)

A navigation system that tracks the location of a person on foot is useful for finding and rescuing firefighters or other emergency first responders, or for location-aware computing, personal navigation assistance, mobile 3D audio, and mixed or augmented reality applications. One of the main obstacles to the real-world deployment of location-sensitive wearable computing, including mixed reality (MR), is that current position-tracking technologies require an instrumented, marked, or premapped environment. At InterSense, we've developed a system called NavShoe, which uses a new approach to position tracking based on inertial sensing. Our wireless inertial sensor is small enough to easily tuck into the shoelaces, and sufficiently low power to run all day on a small battery. Although it can't be used alone for precise registration of close-range objects, in outdoor applications augmenting distant objects, a user would barely notice the NavShoe's meter-level error combined with any error in the head's assumed location relative to the foot. NavShoe can greatly reduce the database search space for computer vision, making it much simpler and more robust. The NavShoe device provides not only robust approximate position, but also an extremely accurate orientation tracker on the foot.

This paper addresses the problem of coordinating multiple spacecraft to fly in tightly controlled formations. The main contribution of the paper is to introduce a coordination architecture that subsumes leader-following, behavioral, and virtual-structure approaches to the multiagent coordination problem. The architecture is illustrated through a detailed application of the ideas to the problem of synthesizing a multiple spacecraft interferometer in deep space.

Because a delay tolerant network (DTN) can often be partitioned, routing is a challenge. However, routing benefits considerably if one can take advantage of knowledge concerning node mobility. This paper addresses this problem with a generic algorithm based on the use of a high-dimensional Euclidean space, that we call MobySpace, constructed upon nodes' mobility patterns. We provide here an analysis and a large scale evaluation of this routing scheme in the context of ambient networking by replaying real mobility traces. The specific MobySpace evaluated is based on the frequency of visits of nodes to each possible location. We show that routing based on MobySpace can achieve good performance compared to that of a number of standard algorithms, especially for nodes that are present in the network a large portion of the time. We determine that the degree of homogeneity of node mobility patterns has a high impact on routing. And finally, we study the ability of nodes to learn their own mobility patterns.

Article Constellation: a wide-range wireless motion-tracking system for augmented reality and virtual set applications Share on Authors: Eric Foxlin InterSense Inc. InterSense Inc.View Profile , Michael Harrington InterSense Inc. InterSense Inc.View Profile , George Pfeifer InterSense Inc. InterSense Inc.View Profile Authors Info & Claims SIGGRAPH '98: Proceedings of the 25th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniquesJuly 1998 Pages 371–378https://doi.org/10.1145/280814.280937Online:24 July 1998Publication History 107citation2,308DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations107Total Downloads2,308Last 12 Months61Last 6 weeks3 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

We analyze the dynamics of a mobility dataset collected in a pipelined disruption-tolerant network (DTN), a particular class of intermittently-connected wireless networks characterized by a one-dimensional topology. First, we collected and investigated traces of contact times among a thousand participants of a rollerblading tour in Paris. The dataset shows extreme dynamics in the mobility pattern of a large number of nodes. Most strikingly, fluctuations in the motion of the rollerbladers cause a typical accordion phenomenon - the topology expands and shrinks with time, thus influencing connection times and opportunities between participants. Second, we show through an analytical model that the accordion phenomenon, through the variation of the average node degree, has a major impact on the performance of epidemic dissemination. Finally, we test epidemic dissemination and other existing forwarding schemes on our traces, and argue that routing should adapt to the varying, though predictable, nature of the network. To this end, we propose DA-SW (density-aware spray-and-wait), a measurement-oriented variant of the spray-and-wait algorithm that tunes, in a dynamic fashion, the number of a message copies disseminated in the network. We show that DA-SW leads to performance results that are close to the best case (obtained with an oracle).

We propose in this work a single copy and multi-hop opportunistic routing scheme for sparse delay tolerant networks (DTNs). The scheme uses as only input the estimates of the average inter-contact times between the nodes in the network. Defined as the fixed point of a recursive process, it aims at minimizing delivery time in case of independent exponential pairwise inter-contacts. The two properties of loop-free forwarding and polynomial convergence make the scheme workable for routing in DTNs. The routing performances of the scheme are evaluated on three publicly available reference data sets. Comparisons with well known single-copy schemes, including MED and the <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">two</i> <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">hop</i> relay strategy, consistently demonstrate improvements for both delivery ratio and delay.

ABSTRACT: Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas are rising in incidence worldwide, and despite the advent of improved surgical and radiation techniques, a substantial proportion of patients have disease recurrence, where systemic therapies are the mainstay of management. Recent advances in systemic therapy include the development of epidermal growth factor receptor- and programmed death 1-targeting drugs, which have produced incremental improvements in disease outcomes. However, for most patients, responses to treatment remain elusive because of primary or acquired resistance. Novel drugs and rational drug combinations need to be tested based on biomarker identification and preclinical science that will ultimately advance outcomes for our patients. This review focuses on efforts untaken for epidermal growth factor receptor targeting in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma to date.

The limitation of single base “real-time kinematic” (RTK) techniques is the distance between base receiver and the rover receiver due to distance-dependent biases, namely orbit bias, ionosphere bias and troposphere bias. Techniques have been developed to overcome this distance dependence using a network of GPS reference stations spread over a wide geographic area. Because the measurement biases will be modelled and corrected for, the positioning accuracy will be almost independent of the inter-receiver distance. Since the mid-1990s investigators have been investigating the optimal means of processing reference receiver data, and then providing ‘correction’ information to users, in real-time. This technique is now generally referred to as Network-RTK. In 1993 the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) established a Special Study Group on “Wide Area Modelling for Precise Satellite Positioning” . This paper focusses on the progress made during the last few years in designing Network-RTK architectures and the associated data processing algorithms and issues. Although many university investigators have been researching the fundamental challenges in functional and stochastic modelling, currently there is only one commercially available Network-RTK product, the Trimble VRS. However, with the use of the Internet as the primary data communication link, it is predicted that many more implementations of Network-RTK will come ‘online’, at various sites around the world, over the next few years.

Objective: Opioid use disorder (OUD) in the United States has surged, with an estimated 2.5 million needing treatment. The aim of this article is to provide a clinical overview of the key pharmacological and behavioral treatments for OUD. Methods: A nonsystematic review of the literature was conducted to investigate OUD treatments, including their mechanism of action, efficacy, clinical guidelines in the United States, and consideration of frequently occurring comorbid conditions. Results: Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved pharmacotherapies for OUD include methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone, each of which has different actions on opioid receptors. Although these medications all show efficacy in some dosages and formulations, barriers to accessibility may be most pronounced for methadone, whereas treatment retention poses greater challenges for naltrexone and, to a lesser extent, buprenorphine. Lofexidine, an α2-adrenergic agonist, has recently been approved by the FDA for treatment of opioid withdrawal symptoms. OUD is commonly treated with medication-assisted treatment (MAT), which offers pharmacotherapy in the context of counseling and/or behavioral treatments. Behavioral therapies, rarely offered as stand-alone treatments for OUD, are generally used in the context of MAT, in structured settings or to prevent relapse after detoxification and stabilization. The aim of behavioral interventions is to improve medication compliance and target problems not addressed with medication alone. Individuals with OUD commonly have other comorbid psychiatric and substance use conditions, which are not exclusionary for initiating MAT but should be carefully evaluated and monitored because they may reduce treatment effectiveness. Conclusions: MAT is the first-line treatment for patients with OUD and should be provided in combination with behavioral interventions. Treatment retention remains challenging in this population. Future studies should focus on approaches that will serve the complex needs of patients with OUD, including those with comorbid psychiatric and substance use conditions.

A steerable leaky-wave antenna is built using a mechanically tunable impedance surface. A horizontally polarized antenna couples energy into leaky transverse electric waves on a tunable textured ground plane. By tuning the resonance frequency of the surface, the band structure is shifted in frequency, which changes the tangential wave vector of the leaky waves for a fixed frequency. This steers the elevation angle of the resulting radiated beam. This steerable leaky-wave antenna can scan over a range of 45/spl deg/ using a mechanical movement of about 1/500 wavelength.

STATEMENT: Curriculum development in medical education should follow a planned, systematic approach fitted to the needs and conditions of a local institutional environment and its learners. This article describes the development and maintenance of a simulation-based medical education curriculum on advanced cardiac life support skills and its transformation to a mastery learning program. Curriculum development used the Kern 6-step model involving problem identification and general needs assessment, targeted needs assessment, goals and objectives, educational strategies, implementation, and evaluation and feedback. Curriculum maintenance and enhancement and dissemination are also addressed. Transformation of the simulation-based medical education curriculum to a mastery learning program was accomplished after a 2-year phase-in trial. A series of studies spanning 11 years was performed to adjust the curriculum, improve checklist outcome measures, and evaluate curriculum effects as learning outcomes among internal medicine residents and improved patient care practices. We anticipate wide adoption of the mastery learning model for skill and knowledge acquisition and maintenance in medical education settings.

OBJECTIVES: The triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells (TREM)-1, a receptor expressed on the surface of neutrophils and monocytes/macrophages, synergizes with the Toll-like receptors in amplifying the inflammatory response mediated by microbial components. Because the pathogenesis of ischemia-reperfusion-induced gastrointestinal tissue injury and multiple organ failure implies leukocyte activation and bacterial translocation, we hypothesized that the TREM-1 pathway modulation would prove beneficial in this setting. DESIGN: Animal study. SETTING: Research laboratory. SUBJECTS: Adult male Wistar rats (250-300 g). INTERVENTIONS: Rats were subjected to intestinal ischemia-reperfusion induced by occlusion of the superior mesenteric artery during 60 mins and reperfused for 180 mins. At the time of reperfusion, animals were administered with LP17 (a synthetic TREM-1 inhibitor), a control peptide, or a vehicle (normal saline). Plasma concentrations of tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-6, and soluble TREM-1 were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Hepatic activation of the transcriptional factor nuclear factor-kappaB was assessed by electrophoretic mobility shift assay. Hepatic oxidant-antioxidant balance was estimated by measurement of lipid peroxidation and catalase activity. Ileal mucosal permeability was estimated by fluorescein dextran-4 clearance and bacterial translocation by mesenteric lymph nodes culture. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Ischemia-reperfusion was associated with cardiovascular collapse, lactic acidosis, and systemic and hepatic inflammatory response that were partly prevented by LP17 administration. Liver lipid peroxidation and catalase depletion were attenuated by LP17. Ischemia-reperfusion induced a marked increase in ileal mucosal permeability and an associated bacterial translocation that was also prevented by TREM-1 modulation. LP17 delayed mortality. CONCLUSIONS: The modulation of the TREM-1 pathway by the means of a synthetic peptide may be useful during acute mesenteric ischemia.

The primary contribution of this paper is investigating how the User Centered Design approach is integrated into the industry. Employing a structured web-survey, targeted to the usability practitioners, we find out that UCD is particularly employed in big companies, but with a relatively low ratio: practitioners represent less than one percent of the company employees. User interviews and both low and high fidelity prototyping are the most frequently used techniques. We eventually validate our hypothesis that UCD integration is facilitated by factors related to management support, infrastructure and communication; companies interested in producing better usable and fit-for-use products should take all of these issues into serious consideration.

Large long-term projects with many stakeholders generally entail unforeseen risks and events that cannot, in principle, be predicted. Given the impracticality of pre-planning for every possible contingency, managers must react to inevitable disruptions, respond to unexpected events, update risk management plans, rescope the project, and problem-solve. Contrary to these all-too-common project occurrences, management continues to view the project as a deterministic process. The belief is that risk can be anticipated and projects executed as planned. The view presented in this paper is that pragmatic project management involves a practical balance between proactive risk management tools and reactive problem-solving tools.

Efficient and resilient traffic management relies on accurate prediction of air traffic states. However, the complex spatial-temporal dependencies of air traffic networks make this task challenging. To address this issue, we propose a novel deep learning framework, named Physics-Informed Graph Attention Transformer (), which leverages real-world data and knowledge to predict essential air traffic state parameters. Our approach utilizes fine-grained traffic state detection to extract critical features from aviation databases. The model employs GAT-based spatial learning blocks with temporal Transformers to capture the dynamic spatial-temporal dependencies of data. A dynamic graph generator layer is also utilized to update the airport network’s topological structure adaptively, strengthening the model prediction’s effectiveness. Furthermore, the fluid queuing-theoretic PDEs are incorporated into the loss function, enhancing the model’s interpretability and reliability. Our framework is evaluated on real-world air traffic datasets from 36 major airport hubs within the US. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed framework efficiently makes accurate predictions and outperforms eight baselines. In conclusion, our proposed framework has the potential to be applied in real-time decision-making systems for air traffic management and provides promising directions for future research. The code for our project is available at: https://github.com/ymlasu/para-atm-collection/tree/master/air-traffic-prediction/PIGAT.

Numerous approaches have been proposed for path planning in dynamic current fields, for a fixed departure time. However, in many applications, the departure time is not necessarily known in advance, but can vary in a time window. In this context, the choice of a good departure time is a critical issue. That is why we introduce in this paper a new approach, called symbolic wavefront expansion, determining both the path and the departure time minimizing the travel time of the vehicle. The key idea of this approach is to propagate and compose functions instead of numerical values, with appropriate operators.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the recent progress of research work performed to develop new thermal interface materials. The review starts by classifying existing thermal interface materials and analyzing their advantages and disadvantages. The state of the art research is then reviewed with an emphasis on those materials based on various carbon allotropes, such as graphite, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and fibers. Other kinds of fillers with high thermal conductivity, such as silicon carbide, boron nitride, aluminum nitride, aluminum oxide, silver and other metals, have also been extensively studied. These materials are also reviewed in this paper. Besides the achievements in materials development, other methods have also been developed to further reduce the overall interface resistance, such as modifying the surfaces of the integrated chips or heat sinks. This aspect is also discussed in this paper. The paper is summarized with a perspective on the future technical trends.

Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANET) is a key technology enabler in the tactical communication domain for the Network Centric Warfare.[1] A self-forming, self-healing, infrastructure-less network consisting of mobile nodes is very attractive for beyond line of sight (BLOS) voice and data range extension as well as tactical networking applications in general. Current research and development mostly focus on implementing MANET over new wideband data waveforms. However, a large number of currently fielded tactical radios and the next generation software defined radios (SDR) support various legacy tactical radio waveforms. A mobile ad hoc network over such legacy tactical radio links not only provides war fighters mission critical networking applications such as Situational Awareness and short payload messaging, the MANET nodes can also support voice and legacy data interoperation with the existing fielded legacy radios. Furthermore, the small spectrum footprint of current narrowband tactical radio waveforms can be complementary to the new wideband data waveforms for providing networking access in a spectrum constrained environment. This paper first describes the networking usage requirements for MANET over legacy narrowband tactical waveforms. Next, the common characteristics of legacy tactical radio waveforms and the implications of such characteristics for the MANET implementation are discussed. Then an actual MANET implementation over a legacy tactical radio waveform on a SDR is presented with the results of actual field tests. Finally, several improvements to this implementation are proposed.

Supported by an unrestricted grant from Research to Prevent Blindness. The author declares that she has no conflicts of interest to disclose.

The increase in the variety and capability of mobile communications devices carried by people today has made it possible to envision a new class of networks called pocket switched networks (PSNs). In a PSN, because the nodes are constantly moving and their communication abilities are limited, the design of networking protocols and applications is challenging. This paper presents a new communications scheme for PSN, called Osmosis, based on the biological phenomenon. We show how this scheme can be applied to file sharing. This scheme uses epidemic routing to perform file lookup and achieves controlled flooding for file transfer. The flooding requires very little state information, which is collected during the lookup. This paper analyzes the performance of Osmosis in simulation studies based on real mobility traces.