Abstract

Abstract
A simulation teaching experiment to control a gantry crane system is proposed. The control is performed both in open-loop and closed-loop. The open-loop control is based on the Posicast feedforward technique and the closed-loop control uses a two-degrees of freedom configuration. Posicast control is used as a pre-filter outside the feedback loop to enhance the set-point tracking response and a PID controller is used in the feedback loop to deal with disturbance rejection. Students are required to use a gantry crane animation, to visualize its movement promoting a better perception and control techniques understanding. The experiment was performed by undergraduate feedback control students which provided learning results through a survey questionnaire.

Abstract
The characterization of heart rate variability (HRV) series has become important for clinical diagnosis. These series are non-stationary and exhibit long and short-range correlations. The non-parametric methodology detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) has become widely used for the detection of these correlations. The standard procedure is to apply DFA to the RR series, estimating the desired scaling exponents. In this work we pursue an alternative approach which consists in applying DFA to the fractionally differenced RR series, Delta(RR)-R-d, where 0 < d < 1 is the long-range correlation parameter. Both methodologies are applied to 24 hour HRV series from the Noltisalis data base. We conclude that changes in HRV are better quantified by DFA scaling exponents calculated over fractionally differenced RR series than by the standard procedure. The results indicate that the scaling exponent corresponding to high frequencies obtained from Delta(RR)-R-d increases the discriminatory power among the groups: from 60% to 87% during the day period and 57% to 77% during the night period.

Abstract
The electronic storage of medical patient data is becoming a daily experience in most of the practices and hospitals worldwide. However, much of the available data is in free text form, a convenient way of expressing concepts and events but especially challenging if one wants to perform automatic searches, summarization, or statistical analyses. Information Extraction can relieve some of these problems by offering a semantically informed interpretation and abstraction of the texts. MedInX, the Medical Information eXtraction system presented in this chapter is designed to process textual clinical discharge records in order to perform automatic and accurate mapping of free text reports onto a structured representation. MedInX components are based on Natural Language Processing principles and provide several mechanisms to read, process, and utilize external resources, such as terminologies and ontologies. MedInX current practical applications include automatic code assignment and an audit system capable of systematically analyze the content and completeness of the clinical reports. Recent evaluation efforts on a set of authentic patient discharge letters indicate that the system performs with 95% precision and recall. © 2013, IGI Global.

Abstract

Abstract
This paper proposes a framework for the creation of interactive multimedia applications that take advantage of detected features from user-captured photos. The goal is to create games, architectural and space planning applications that interact with visual elements in the images such as walls, floors and empty spaces. The framework takes advantage of a semi-automatic algorithm to detect scene elements and camera parameters. Using the detected features, virtual objects can be inserted in the scene. In this paper several example applications are presented and discussed, and the reliability of the detection algorithm is compared with other systems. The presented solution analyses the photos using graph-cuts for segmentation, vanishing point detection and line analysis to detect the scene elements. The main advantage of the proposed framework is the semi-automatic creation of the tri-dimensional model to be used in mixed reality applications. This enables scenarios where the user can be responsible for the input scene without much prior knowledge or experience. The current implemented examples include a furniture positioning system and a snake game with a user-built maze in the real world. The proposed system is ideal for multimedia mobile applications where interaction is combined with the back camera of the device.