Computer Science

This paper aims to present a study of old photographic retouching manuals which is part of a research project on the retouching of gelatin silver glass plate negatives from Portuguese photographic collections from the first half of the twentieth century. Several contemporary authors of various nationalities were studied. Differences in approach to retouching have been explored in terms of techniques and materials, particularly as the authors addressed issues such as ethics and the legitimacy of photo retouching, as well as the relationship of photography to the other arts.

Background Investigators conducting prospective clinical trials must report patient flow using the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement. Depending on how data are collected, this can be a laborious, time-intensive process. However, because many trials enter data electronically, CONSORT diagrams may be generated in an automated fashion. Objective Our objective was to use an off-the-shelf software to develop a technique to generate CONSORT diagrams automatically. Methods During a recent trial, data were entered into FileMaker Pro, a commercially available software, at enrollment and three waves of follow-up. Patient-level data were coded to automatically generate CONSORT diagrams for use by the study team. Results From August 2012 to July 2014, 1,044 participants were enrolled. CONSORT diagrams were generated weekly for study team meetings to track follow-ups at 1, 6, and 12 months, for 960 (92%), 921 (90%), and 871 (88%) participants who were contacted or de...

Soft robotics offers a range of attractive features relative to traditional rigid robots, including inherently safer human-robot interactions, and continuous passive dynamics that enable morphological computation. Here we present an actuator with an integrated print-in-place strain sensor which is produced entirely via multi-material additive manufacturing and requires no post processing or manual fabrication steps. One natural application of this technology is the end effector of robotic arms; incorporating deformable actuators into a gripping mechanism allows for the safe integration of robotic assistance in human-occupied settings. While numerous soft robot actuators have been implemented without feedback, force sensing and proprioception are valuable signals to leverage in extending the capabilities of these systems. Prior approaches to integrating sensors into soft robot components have relied on manual processes, or specialized fabrication tools. Our work shows a novel method for automatically manufacturing soft pneumatically-driven actuators with embedded sensors through readily available 3D printing tools with no human fabrication required. Automatically manufacturing these sensor-actuator systems enables more complex, capable, and integrate-able designs, because the labor of assembly is eliminated; actuator-sensor designs that would be tedious or impossible to manufacture become tractable with our approach.

Competitive intelligence (CI) has become one of the major subjects for researchers in recent years. The present research is aimed to achieve a part of the CI by investigating the scientific articles on this field through text mining in three interrelated steps. In the first step, a total of 1143 articles released between 1987 and 2016 were selected by searching the phrase "competitive intelligence" in the valid databases and search engines; then, through reviewing the topic, abstract, and main text of the articles as well as screening the articles in several steps, the authors eventually selected 135 relevant articles in order to perform the text mining process. In the second step, pre-processing of the data was carried out. In the third step, using non-hierarchical cluster analysis (k-means), 5 optimum clusters were obtained based on the Davies–Bouldin index, for each of which a word cloud was drawn; then, the association rules of each cluster was extracted and analyzed u...

Informatisches Problemlösen ist einer der zentralen Aspekte der Informatik und ein Forschungsgebiet innerhalb der Informatikdidaktik, das Prozesse, Aufgaben und Einstellungen bezüglich des Problemlösens hinsichtlich informatischer Vorgehensweisen und Inhalte untersucht. Im informatischen Escape-Adventure-Spiel „Room-X“ bieten sich aus Forschungssicht Möglichkeiten, Lernende beim Problemlösen zu beobachten und deren Strategien zu analysieren. In diesem Artikel zeigen wir auf, wie der Room-X zu einer geeigneten Umgebung wird, die Lernenden ein Schaufenster für die Informatik bietet und ihnen ermöglicht, informatisches Problemlösen als eine der Kernkomponenten der Informatik in einem attraktiven und motivierenden Umfeld auszuüben. Mittels Videoanalyse werden Verhaltensweisen analysiert und Schlussfolgerungen für die gezielte Förderung von Problemlösekompetenzen in der Informatik sowie zur Weiterentwicklung des Room-X gezogen.

The Thick-Restart Lanczos (TRLan) method is an effective method for solving large-scale Hermitian eigenvalue problems. The performance of the method strongly depends on the dimension of the projection subspace used at each restart. In this article, we propose an objective function to quantify the effectiveness of the selection of subspace dimension, and then introduce an adaptive scheme to dynamically select the dimension to optimize the performance. We have developed an open-source software package a --TRLan to include this adaptive scheme in the TRLan method. When applied to calculate the electronic structure of quantum dots, a --TRLan runs up to 2.3x faster than a state-of-the-art preconditioned conjugate gradient eigensolver.

This paper investigates the possibility of applying the Navstar GPS for rendezvous navigation and docking in LEO, by performing an error analysis on a typical rendezvous mission between the European spaceplane Hermes and the Columbus Free Flying Laboratory. The error model included nondynamic as well as dynamic error sources, such as the gravity field, drag, and GPS ephemerides. In addition, the effects of failures and degraded tracking capabilities were investigated. Results of simulations show that the Navstar GPS can be extremely useful for the navigation of rendezvous missions.

Aggregation operators are broadly used in decision making problems. These operators are often characterized by indicators. Numerous of these aggregation operators may be represented by means of the Choquet integral. In this article four different indicators usually associated to the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator are extended to the Choquet integral. In particular, we propose the extensions of the degree of balance, the divergence, the variance indicator and Renyi entropies. Indicators for the weighted ordered weighted averaging (WOWA) operator are derived to illustrate the application of results. Finally, an example is provided to show main contributions.