Low Inaccuracy Research Articles

Accuracy of Nursing Term Translation from Indonesian to English by Nursing Students

Translating the accuracy of source language into target language in specialized language requires high appropriation that retains of the original meaning. This study aims to discover the accuracy of nursing term translation from Indonesian to English by nursing students. This research is a mixed-method research with content analysis method to analyze the accuracy of translation. The accuracy of the translation results will be analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The research subject was the translation of Indonesian – English abstracts of nursing articles by nursing students of STIKES Surya Global Yogyakarta. The object of research was nursing special terms in the form of words and phrases. The data collection technique used was the documentation method used to find related data that has been determined. The results of this study showed that the accurate translation of nursing terms was 65.29% while the inaccurate translation was 34.71%. In addition, there were about 25% of accurate translations was plagiarism. It is considered plagiarism because the student's translation of the abstract was exactly as same as the original writer's English version of the abstract, not only the specific language but also the whole sentence. It can be concluded from this study that overall the translation of nursing students into the special language of nursing is accurate. There are only a few translations is still in low inaccuracy level.
 Keywords: Accuracy, Nursing term, Translation

Age estimation by modified Suchey-Brooks method using three-dimensional reconstructed CT images of Chinese Han population

The method proposed by Suchey-Brooks for adult age estimation based on the surface morphology of the pubic symphysis has been widely accepted. The applicability of the method varies considerably in different populations. The present study established a virtual reference sample and aimed to develop population-specific criteria that can be used for age estimation in different skeletal samples. First, The dry bone specimens from 100 individuals were compared with their corresponding three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction model and showed high inter-method agreement (k = 0.743–0.811), suggesting that the virtual bone model and physical bone specimens have comparable performances in describing the surface morphology of the pubic symphysis. We retrospectively collected clinical computed tomography (CT) data from 895 Chinese patients to create a virtual reference sample of the pubic symphysis. Based on the original Suchey-Brooks method, each of the 895 reference samples was assigned a phase, for each sex and phase, data on the mean age, standard deviation, and 95% age range of the corresponding sample were obtained, which was then used as the “method modified for Chinese” (modified method) and compared to the “SB method”. Compared to the SB method, modified method had a lower inaccuracy in dry bones for males over 35 years and females over 45 years, in dry bone CT test sample for males over 55 years and females over 45 years, and in postmortem CT test sample for males over 35 years and females over 55 years. The modified method can improve the accuracy of age estimation for older samples over 40 years. It has shown considerable reliability when applied as a population-specific criterion, but its accuracy is still not sufficient, and caution is needed when using it.

Age-at-Death Estimation: Accuracy and Reliability of Common Age-Reporting Strategies in Forensic Anthropology

Forensic anthropologists build a biological profile—consisting of sex, age, population affinity, and stature estimates—to assist medicolegal stakeholders in the identification of unknown human skeletal remains. While adult age-at-death estimations can narrow the pool of potential individuals, a lack of standards, best practices, and consensus among anthropologists for method selection and the production of a final age estimate present significant challenges. The purpose of this research is to identify age-reporting strategies that provide the most accurate and reliable (i.e., low inaccuracy and low bias) adult age-at-death estimates when evaluated considering the total sample, age cohort (20–39; 40–59; 60–79), and sex. Age-reporting strategies in this study were derived from six age-at-death estimation methods and tested on 58 adult individuals (31 males, 27 females) from the UTK Donated Skeletal Collection. An experienced-based estimation strategy was also assessed. A paired-samples t-test was used to determine whether there was a significant difference (p ≤ 0.05) between the mean estimated age and the actual age for all age-reporting strategies. Results show that the most accurate and reliable age-reporting strategy varied if the sample was evaluated as a whole, by age, or by sex. While none of the age-reporting strategies evaluated in this study were consistently the most accurate and reliable for all of the sample categories, the experience-based approach performed well for each group.

The Composite Method: A Novel, Continuum-Based Approach to Estimating Age from the Female Pubic Symphysis with Particular Relevance to Mature Adults

While a myriad of effective techniques exist to aid in symphyseal age estimation for those 40 years and younger, few offer similar levels of efficacy for those beyond that threshold. Through the application of a novel technique, this study sought to determine whether a closer inspection of degenerative change may help to improve precision in age estimation for post-epiphyseal adults. Results show that the combination of five distinct areas of interest, plus a correction for density, accurately estimated age 87.75% of the time (averaged amongst four observers [spread: 72–100%]) for a subset of 50 living British females. An adjusted R2 value of 0.85, an RSME value of 5.62 years, and a PCC value of 0.92 also confirmed the trialed technique to be a good predictor of age for the entirety of the larger female sample (n = 533). Low inaccuracy (3.86 years) and Bias (0.69 years) further indicate that a continuum-based approach, without pre-set phases or ranges, such as was utilized by this research holds the potential to be at least as effective as the currently available methodologies but with the added advantage of allowing for increased variation at the individual level. Age estimation by linear regression, or by simple addition, yielded estimation envelopes (intervals) of 22–23 and 24 years, respectively, which remain narrow enough to be forensically useful while still wide enough to maximize accuracy in mature adults.

Metrological Characterization of a CO2 Laser-Based System for Inscribing Long-Period Gratings in Optical Fibers

A CO2 laser-based system was studied and implemented to produce asymmetric long period fiber gratings (LPFG) with a large attenuation peak, high reproducibility, and high stability. The first half of this study provides a mathematical uncertainty model of the CO2 laser-based approach that takes into account various mechanical and thermal effects that impact this production technique. This is the first time that metrological analysis and modeling are performed on the CO2 laser-based engraving technique. Following that, the engraved system’s quality was assessed using a microscopic approach to confirm mechanical characteristics such as grating period, engraved spot width, and penetration depth, demonstrating that, if the thermal and mechanical components of the overall system are correctly managed, it is feasible to have very low inaccuracy. Lastly, the LPFG performance as temperature and strain sensors was tested, and the findings show that they had good linearity in both circumstances. Thus, the temperature sensor had a maximal sensitivity of 58 pm/°C when measuring temperature changed from 20 to 97 °C, but the strain sensor had sensitivity of 43 pm/με when measuring strain variations from 5.59 to 25 με. As a result, the model and results presented in this paper can be utilized to create a platform for the metrological management of lengths involved in the process of manufacturing LPFGs, devices that are widely employed in the creation of sensors and communications devices.

SARU: A self-attention ResUNet to generate synthetic CT images for MR-only BNCT treatment planning.

Despite the significant physical differences between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT), the high entropy of MRI data indicates the existence of a surjective transformation from MRI to CT image. However, there is no specific optimization of the network itself in previous MRI/CT translation works, resulting in mistakes in details such as the skull margin and cavity edge. These errors might have moderate effect on conventional radiotherapy, but for boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), the skin dose will be a critical part of the dose composition. Thus, the purpose of this work is to create a self-attention network that could directly transfer MRI to synthetical computerized tomography (sCT) images with lower inaccuracy at the skin edge and examine the viability of magnetic resonance (MR)-guided BNCT. A retrospective analysis was undertaken on 104 patients with brain malignancies who had both CT and MRI as part of their radiation treatment plan. The CT images were deformably registered to the MRI. In the U-shaped generation network, we introduced spatial and channel attention modules, as well as a versatile "Attentional ResBlock," which reduce the parameters while maintaining high performance. We employed five-fold cross-validation to test all patients, compared the proposed network to those used in earlier studies, and used Monte Carlo software to simulate the BNCT process for dosimetric evaluation in test set. Compared with UNet, Pix2Pix, and ResNet, the mean absolute error (MAE) of self-attention ResUNet (SARU) is reduced by 12.91, 17.48, and 9.50HU, respectively. The "two one-sided tests" show no significant difference in dose-volume histogram (DVH) results. And for all tested cases, the average 2%/2mm gamma index of UNet, ResNet, Pix2Pix, and SARU were 0.96±0.03, 0.96±0.03, 0.95±0.03, and 0.98±0.01, respectively. The error of skin dose from SARU is much less than the results from other methods. We have developed a residual U-shape network with an attention mechanism to generate sCT images from MRI for BNCT treatment planning with lower MAE in six organs. There is no significant difference between the dose distribution calculated by sCT and real CT. This solution may greatly simplify the BNCT treatment planning process, lower the BNCT treatment dose, and minimize image feature mismatch.

Model-informed precision dosing of vancomycin via continuous infusion: a clinical fit-for-purpose evaluation of published PK models

Model-informed precision dosing is an innovative approach used to guide bedside vancomycin dosing. The use of Bayesian software requires suitable and externally validated population pharmacokinetic (popPK) models. This study aimed to identify suitable popPK models for a priori prediction and a posteriori forecasting of vancomycin in continuous infusion. Additionally, model averaging (MAA) and model selection approach (MSA) were compared with the identified popPK models. Clinical pharmacokinetic data were retrospectively collected from patients receiving continuous vancomycin therapy and admitted to a general ward of three large Belgian hospitals. The predictive performance of the popPK models, identified in a systematic literature search, as well as the MAA/MSA were evaluated for the a priori and a posteriori scenarios using bias, root mean square errors, normalised prediction distribution errors and visual predictive checks. The predictive performance of 23 popPK models was evaluated based on clinical data from 169 patients and 923 therapeutic drug monitoring samples. Overall, the best predictive performance was found using the Okada etal. model (bias < -0.1 mg/L) followed by the Colin etal. The MAA/MSA predicted with a constantly high precision and low inaccuracy and were clinically acceptable in the Bayesian forecasting. This study identified the two-compartmental models of Okada etal. and Colin etal. as most suitable for non-ICU patients to forecast individual exposure profiles after continuous vancomycin infusion. The MAA/MSA performed equally as well as the individual popPK models; therefore, both approaches could be used in clinical practice to guide dosing decisions.

End-to-end differentiable construction of molecular mechanics force fields.

Molecular mechanics (MM) potentials have long been a workhorse of computational chemistry. Leveraging accuracy and speed, these functional forms find use in a wide variety of applications in biomolecular modeling and drug discovery, from rapid virtual screening to detailed free energy calculations. Traditionally, MM potentials have relied on human-curated, inflexible, and poorly extensible discrete chemical perception rules (atom types) for applying parameters to small molecules or biopolymers, making it difficult to optimize both types and parameters to fit quantum chemical or physical property data. Here, we propose an alternative approach that uses graph neural networks to perceive chemical environments, producing continuous atom embeddings from which valence and nonbonded parameters can be predicted using invariance-preserving layers. Since all stages are built from smooth neural functions, the entire process-spanning chemical perception to parameter assignment-is modular and end-to-end differentiable with respect to model parameters, allowing new force fields to be easily constructed, extended, and applied to arbitrary molecules. We show that this approach is not only sufficiently expressive to reproduce legacy atom types, but that it can learn to accurately reproduce and extend existing molecular mechanics force fields. Trained with arbitrary loss functions, it can construct entirely new force fields self-consistently applicable to both biopolymers and small molecules directly from quantum chemical calculations, with superior fidelity than traditional atom or parameter typing schemes. When adapted to simultaneously fit partial charge models, espaloma delivers high-quality partial atomic charges orders of magnitude faster than current best-practices with low inaccuracy. When trained on the same quantum chemical small molecule dataset used to parameterize the Open Force Field ("Parsley") openff-1.2.0 small molecule force field augmented with a peptide dataset, the resulting espaloma model shows superior accuracy vis-á-vis experiments in computing relative alchemical free energy calculations for a popular benchmark. This approach is implemented in the free and open source package espaloma, available at https://github.com/choderalab/espaloma.

XAFCL: Run Scalable Function Choreographies Across Multiple FaaS Systems

Most well-known cloud providers offer advanced support for serverless applications that goes beyond single function invocation by enabling developers to build entire workflows, which are known as serverless function choreographies (FCs). Current support for FCs by many FaaS systems uncovered important problems including maximum number of parallel function executions, unexpected considerable delays, and provider lock-in. These limitations can result in longer execution times or even failure to execute individual functions or entire FCs. To overcome some of these limitations, we introduce a scalable middleware service xAFCL that can schedule and execute different functions of the same FC across multiple FaaS systems (currently supporting all top five providers). In order to support scheduling under xAFCL, we introduce a novel FaaS model which estimates the completion time of functions by considering FaaS system limitations, submission delays, and overheads for executing functions. Experimental results demonstrate that xAFCLs FaaS model shows very low inaccuracy of up to 2.9% for AWS and 20% for IBM for real-life BWA data-bound FC that uses S3. Moreover, xAFCL outperforms an earliest start time (EST) scheduler by up to 43% for makespan and 2.7x for throughput.

Health management information system (HMIS) data quality and associated factors in Massaguet district, Chad

BackgroundQuality data from Health Management Information Systems (HMIS) are important for tracking the effectiveness of malaria control interventions. However, HMIS data in many resource-limited settings do not currently meet standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO). We aimed to assess HMIS data quality and associated factors in Chad.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in 14 health facilities in Massaguet district. Data on children under 15 years were obtained from the HMIS and from the external patient register covering the period January–December 2018. An additional questionnaire was administered to 16 health centre managers to collect data on contextual variables. Patient registry data were aggregated and compared with the HMIS database at district and health centre level. Completeness and accuracy indicators were calculated as per WHO guidelines. Multivariate logistic regressions were performed on the Verification Factor for attendance, suspected and confirmed malaria cases for three age groups (1 to < 12 months, 1 to < 5 years and 5 to < 15 years) to identify associations between health centre characteristics and data accuracy.ResultsHealth centres achieved a high level of data completeness in HMIS. Malaria data were over-reported in HMIS for children aged under 15 years. There was an association between workload and higher odds of inaccuracy in reporting of attendance among children aged 1 to < 5 years (Odds ratio [OR]: 10.57, 95% CI 2.32–48.19) and 5– < 15 years (OR: 6.64, 95% CI 1.38–32.04). Similar association was found between workload and stock-outs in register books, and inaccuracy in reporting of malaria confirmed cases. Meanwhile, we found that presence of a health technician, and of dedicated staff for data management, were associated with lower inaccuracy in reporting of clinic attendance in children aged under five years.ConclusionData completeness was high while the accuracy was low. Factors associated with data inaccuracy included high workload and the unavailability of required data collection tools. The results suggest that improvement in working conditions for clinic personnel may improve HMIS data quality. Upgrading from paper-based forms to a web-based HMIS may provide a solution for improving data accuracy and its utility for future evaluations of health interventions. Results from this study can inform the Ministry of Health and it partners on the precautions to be taken in the use of HMIS data and inform initiatives for improving its quality.

Pairwise deep learning to rank for top-N recommendation

Recent researches indicate that pairwise learning to rank methods could achieve high performance in dealing with data sparsity and long tail distribution in item recommendation, although suffering from problems such as high computational complexity and insufficient samples, which may cause low convergence and inaccuracy. To further improve the performance in computational capability and recommendation accuracy, in this article, a novel deep neural network based recommender architecture referred to as PDLR is proposed, in which the item corpus will be partitioned into two collections of positive instances and negative items respectively, and pairwise comparison will be performed between the positive instances and negative samples to learn the preference degree for each user. With the powerful capability of neural network, PDLR could capture rich interactions between each user and items as well as the intricate relations between items. As a result, PDLR could minimize the ranking loss, and achieve significant improvement in ranking accuracy. In practice, experimental results over four real world datasets also demonstrate the superiority of PDLR in contrast to state-of-the-art recommender approaches, in terms of Rec@N, Prec@N, AUC and NDCG@N.

Fabric wrinkle evaluation model with regularized extreme learning machine based on improved Harris Hawks optimization

Aiming at the problem of low manual efficiency and inaccuracy in the traditional evaluation of fabric wrinkle-resistance performance relying on the eye of experts and subjective judgment, this paper proposes a fabric wrinkle grade evaluation model based on optimized regularized extreme learning machine. First, this paper extracts four image characteristics of fabric wrinkle image, including wrinkle density, gray level co-occurrence matrix, wavelet parameter standard deviation and data fusion feature, combined with the grade evaluation standard, and then obtains a complete wrinkle grade data set. Then, differential evolution is used to initialize the initial population of the Harris Hawks optimization, and the improved Harris Hawks optimization is used to optimize the input weights and hidden layer bias of the regularized extreme learning machine. Finally, this optimized regularized extreme learning machine is used to evaluate the fabric wrinkle grade. Experimental results show that the classification accuracy of the model proposed in this paper can reach 96.39%, and the proposed algorithm has no abnormal points in the analysis of the stability of the box plot.

Band Gap Engineering in Luminescence Thermometry – Pros and Cons

Luminescence thermometry and 2D imaging using luminescence thermometric phosphors are of growing interest as these non-contact and non-invasive techniques may offer important advantages in some applications. The requirements such thermometers have to fulfill depend on considered use. It is obvious that bio and medical applications points on different parameters than measurements in cryo-range and measuring high temperatures point on yet different needs. Nevertheless, high-sensitivity and low inaccuracy are always appreciated, as well as chemical stability in conditions the thermometers are to be used.One of the limitations of known luminescence thermometers is their limited range of temperatures they may measure. Obviously, some applications do not need a broad range of thermometer usability. On the other hand, presenting a good performance over a wide range of temperatures would give a versatile “all-purpose” thermometer. This might open a door for truly broad usage of such a phosphor.Trying to deliberately manage the performance of luminescence thermometers for a broad-range and accurate temperature measuring we paid attention to the bandgap engineering as a tool to achieve this goal. In this presentation, we shall focus on Lu2(Ge,Si)O5:Pr and Y3(Al,Ga)5O12:Pr powders with different Ge:Si and Al:Ga ratios, respectively. We shall discuss the advantages of bandgap engineering in luminescence thermometry and will point to possible complications this may cause. Among others, we shall show that managing the bandgap cause at the same time changes in phonons energies and these affect radiative and non-radiative processes, so important when luminescence over a broad range of temperatures is considered. Last but not least, a side effect of bandgap engineering is the change of the phosphor refractive index, also an important parameter for luminescence properties.This research was supported by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) upon the grants #UMO-2017/25/B/ST5/00824 and UMO-2018/29/B/ST5/00420 and the project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, UIDB/50011/2020 & UIDP/50011/2020, financed by Portuguese funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)/MCTES. Financial support from FCT (PTDC/CTM-NAN/4647/2014, NANOHEATCONTROL - POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031469) is also acknowledged. E. Z. and L. D. C. are grateful to the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) for support under the NAWA-Bekker #PPN/BEK/2018/1/00333/DEC/1 and NAWA-Ulam #PPN/ULM/2019/1/00077/U/00001 projects, respectively. Figure 1

RESEARCH OF THE RESONANCE PROPERTIES OF HELMHOLTZ RESONATORS

The object of research. Process of oscillation of the Helmholtz resonators. Investigated problem. Differences between some formulas for the calculation of the resonant frequency of the Helmholtz resonator and the most accurate of them were established. The effect of acoustic design on the Helmholtz resonator frequency value and influence of the attached air mass between the neck of the Helmholtz resonator and free field were investigated. The main scientific results. As a result of a numerical experiment, analytical ratios were obtained that allow obtaining the most accurate results. One of them is the most optimal for calculating the resonator resonant frequency in a free field, and in this case, less than 1 % inaccuracy level can be achieved, given that r/R&lt;0.25. Other one allows to achieve the same low inaccuracy level for a resonator located in an acoustically rigid shield, given that r/R&lt;0.25. Research has shown that the location of the resonator in an acoustically rigid shield leads to significant changes in natural resonance frequency value. The area of practical use of the research results. The detailed research of previously unexplored properties of resonators will make it possible to improve the algorithms for the development of metamaterials, to discover additional parameters with which it is possible to control the characteristics of the metamaterial. Scope of the innovative technological product. Such resonators are used as the basic elements in metamaterials, as structural elements of the sound-absorbing panels, in acoustic mufflers.

Automatic quantification of uracil and dihydrouracil in plasma

Fluoropyrimidines-based chemotherapies are the backbone in the treatment of many cancers. However, the use of 5-fluorouracil and its oral pre-prodrug, capecitabine, is associated with an important risk of toxicity. This toxicity is mainly due to a deficiency of dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPD). This deficiency may be detected by using a phenotypic approach that consists in the measurement of uracilemia or the calculation of dihydrouracil (UH2)/uracil (U) ratio. For uracilemia, a threshold value of 16 ng/ml has been proposed for partial deficiency, while a value of 150 ng/ml has been proposed for complete deficiency.We have developed a rapid, accurate and fully-automated procedure for the quantification of U and UH2 in plasma. Sample extraction was carried out by a programmable liquid handler directly coupled to a liquid chromatography – tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) system. The method was validated according to the EMA guidelines and ISO 15189 requirements and was applied to real patient samples (n = 64).The limit of quantification was 5 and 10 ng/ml for U and UH2 respectively. Imprecision and inaccuracy were less than 15% for inter and intra-assay tests. Comparison with dedicated routine method showed excellent correlation.An automated procedure perfectly fulfills the need of low inaccuracy and CVs at the threshold values (less than 5% at 16 ng/ml) and is highly suitable for the characterization of DPD deficiency.Automatization should guaranty reliable and robust performances by minimizing the sources of variation such as volume inaccuracies, filtration or manual extraction related errors.

(Invited) On Dilemmas of Band Gap Engineering in Luminescence Thermometers

Luminescence thermometry and 2D imaging by means of luminescence thermometric phosphors are of growing interest as these non-contact and almost non-invasive techniques may possibly offer important advantages in some areas of applications. The requirements such thermometers have to fulfill are quite dependent on considered application. It is obvious that bio and medical applications points on different parameters than measurements in cryo range and measuring high temperatures point on yet different needs. Nevertheless, high-sensitivity and low inaccuracy are always appreciated, as well as chemical stability in conditions the thermometers are used. One of the limitations of luminescence thermometers proposed up to data is the limited range of temperatures they may measure. Clearly, some applications do not need a broad range of a thermometer usability. On the other hand, presenting a good performance over a wide range of temperatures luminescence thermometer could be considered a versatile “all-purpose” device. This might open a door for truly broad usage of such phosphors. Trying to deliberately manage the performance of luminescence thermometers for broad-range temperature measuring we paid attention into the band gap engineering as a tool to achieve the goal. In this presentation we shall focus on Sr2(Ge,Si)O4:0.05%Pr powders with different Ge:Si ratio to adjust the host lattice band gap and consequently to manage the thermometer performance, see the figure attached. Basing on the lesson learned from Sr2(Ge,Si)O4:0.05%Pr we shell try to draw more general conclusions too. This research was supported by Polish National Science Centre upon the grant #UMO-2017/25/B/ST5/00824 and by the Portuguese project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, FCT Ref. UID/CTM/50011/2019. Figure 1

EXPERIMENTAL FINDING OF FRACTURE TOUGHNESS CHARACTERISTICS AND THEORETICAL MODELING OF CRACK PROPAGATION PROCESSES IN CARBON FIBER SAMPLES UNDER CONDITIONS OF ADDITIVE PRODUCTION

The relevance of the problem stated in this article is that the development of aerospace technology increased the demand for good quality materials. An important issue is ensuring durability in conditions of longterm loads and in conditions of damage development. One of the criteria that ensure the toughness of the material is crack resistance. The aim of the work is to study the interlayer crack resistance (fracture toughness) under loading under conditions of separation and transverse shear, interlayer strength, as well as the effect of temperature on interlayer strength, mechanical tensile properties. A comparison of the values of interlayer crack resistance GIС (separation) and GIIС (shear) and of mechanical tensile properties and interlayer strength of carbon fiber samples is made. The main methods for studying this problem were the short-beam method, the DCB method, the ENF method. The results of the experimental data were compared with modeling the processes of the appearance and development of cracks in the finite element complexes ABAQUS and Ansys based on the VVCT models, cohesive elements. Deviations from the experiment were found and conclusions were drawn that the point of application of the load had to be shifted from the edge of the sample, which will reduce the initial separation and increase the stiffness of the sample. Due to the fact that the cohesion zone model is very sensitive to input parameters, it is necessary to know many parameters and take into account a large number of factors. The practical importance of this work is to show how to use the VCCT model to obtain the critical load of the germination of the first crack. The research technique can be used for further experiments, including simulation further stratification with low inaccuracy.

Sky-canopy border length, exposure and thresholding influence accuracy of hemispherical photography for complex plant canopies

BackgroundHemispherical photography (HP) is a popular method to estimate canopy structure and understorey light environment, which analyses photographs acquired with wide view-angle lens (i.e. fisheye lens). To increase HP accuracy, the approaches of most previous studies were to increase the preciseness of exposure and thresholding of photographs, while ours quantified effects of canopy properties (gap fraction and length of sky-canopy border (SCB)) and errors of exposure and thresholding on the accuracy of HP.ResultsThrough analysing photographs of real and model canopies, it was showed that HP inaccuracy resulted from the mismatch between exposure and thresholding rather than exposure or thresholding errors alone. HP inaccuracy was a function of the SCB length and the extent of exposure and thresholding errors, but independent of gap fraction.DiscussionIn photographs, SCBs are recorded as grey pixels which greyness is in between that of sky and canopy pixels. When there are exposure and thresholding errors, grey pixels are those prone to be misclassified in image analysis. Longer (vegetation with taller canopies) and wider (lower image sharpness) SCBs in photographs can both result in a higher amount of grey pixels and ultimately higher HP inaccuracy for a given extent of exposure and threshold errors.ConclusionsUsing lenses with view angle narrower rather than that of fisheye lens can shorten the SCB length in photographs and in turn reduce HP estimation inaccuracy for canopy structure and understorey light environment. Since short SCBs and low levels of exposure and thresholding errors can both result in low HP inaccuracy, to identify the true performance of new exposure and thresholding methods for HP, photographs recording canopies with long SCBs and acquired with fisheye lenses should be used. Because HP inaccuracy in a function of the amount of grey pixels resulting from SCBs, the amount of these pixels in photographs can be used as a universal parameter to quantify canopy properties influential to HP estimation and in turn make cross-study comparisons feasible.

Forensic age estimation based on the trabecular bone changes of the pelvic bone using post-mortem CT

We analyzed the trabecular bone changes in the pubic bone (PB) and in the auricular surface (AS) of the ilium using 319 CT scans of cadavers to estimate the age. Although the sharpness of the trabecular structure decreases in CT images when soft tissues are present, we identified four phases for the changes in PB and five in AS; a juvenile trait in PB and a senile trait in AS helped narrow the age range. High correlation with age was identified for both sexes in PB (F 0.89; M 0.75) and in AS (F 0.85; M 0.71) used independently or combined (F 0.91; M 0.78). The old adults (>60 years) could be evaluated with better accuracy and discriminated in several phases. We found low inter-observer error and low inaccuracy (about 6 years, mean for all age ranges). The method is robust with respect to slice thickness, display window and kernel within the tested ranges.

Accurate operation of a CMOS integrated temperature sensor

A high-accuracy temperature sensor is designed by applying the temperature characteristics of substrate bipolar transistor in CMOS technology. Initial accuracy of the temperature sensor can be improved by chopper amplifiers and dynamic element matching. Using these two methods, the circuit realization of reference voltage is also described. Simulation results show that the inaccuracy is within×0.4°C from −40 to +100°C. Experimental results, obtained from circuits fabricated in 0.5μm CMOS process, indicate that the sensor is inaccurate within×0.7°C from −40 to +100°C. The power dissipation is 0.35mW and the chip area is 889μm×620μm. Compared with previously reported work, the temperature sensor in the paper has lower inaccuracy without calibration.