IMMERSIVE AUGMENTED REALITY SYSTEM TO STUDY THE EFFICIENCY OF DYNAMIC EXIT SIGNAGE

Every year, many disasters occur to buildings causing their destruction and leading to huge casualties. One way of preventing casualties is by evacuation drill activity. Although accurate evacuation drills could enhance the efficiency of the process during the real event, these drills are not fully effective because participants miss the sense of being stressed or under pressure while in action. Several gaming concepts have been introduced to train the participants on how to cope with and evacuate effectively during an emergency. For instance, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) interfaces could provide virtual content to enhance the effectiveness of evacuation drills. However, accurate representation of different evacuation scenarios and its impact analysis during emergency using the above technologies are still debatable, mainly due to immersion quality. Thus, this study proposes an Immersive Augmented Reality (IAR) application that is mainly the amalgamation of AR and VR in realizing fast and safe evacuation during on-site building emergencies. A virtual dynamic exit signage system is also developed in the proposed “Smart Evacuation application“. This work evaluated the efficiency of a virtual dynamic exit signage and also a proposed “Smart Evacuation“ system by analysing on-site emergency evacuation processes. By setting up various scenarios imitating real life disasters, this research analysed the time taken and level of stress of the occupants during the evacuation of a chosen site. The proposed “Smart Evacution“ achieved 33.82% better perfomance compared to normal evacuation thus indicating a faster and safer evacuation. ABSTRAK: Secara statistik, kebanyakan bencana kemusnahan bangunan yang berlaku setiap tahun telah menyebabkan kerugian besar. Salah satu cara bagi mengelak kejadian ini adalah melalui aktiviti latih tubi evakuasi. Walaupun latih tubi evakuasi ini dapat menambah proses kecekapan semasa kejadian sebenar, latih tubi ini tidak benar-benar berkesan kerana peserta kurang mendalami perasaan tertekan atau di bawah tekanan semasa kejadian. Pelbagai konsep permainan telah diperkenalkan bagi melatih peserta bagaimana perlu bertindak dan evakuasi secara efektif semasa kecemasan. Sebagai contoh, antarmuka Realiti Terimbuh (AR) dan Realiti Maya (VR) mungkin dapat menghasilkan simulasi secara maya bagi menambah keberkesanan latih tubi evakuasi. Walau bagaimanapun, ketepatan representasi pelbagai senario evakuasi dan analisis tekanan semasa kecemasan menggunakan teknik-teknik di atas adalah masih boleh dipertikaikan terutama kerana kualiti kedalamannya. Oleh itu, kajian ini mencadangkan aplikasi Realiti Terimbuh Mendalam (IAR) di mana tumpuan adalah pada kombinasi AR dan VR dibuat dengan secara evakuasi pantas dan selamat semasa kecemasan pada bangunan kejadian. Sistem maya penunjuk arah keluar dinamik turut dicipta dalam “Aplikasi Evakuasi Pintar” yang dicadangkan ini. Kajian ini menilai keberkesanan sistem maya penunjuk arah keluar secara dinamik dan juga sistem “Evakuasi Pintar” dengan menganalisa proses evakuasi kecemasan pada tempat kejadian. Dengan mengadakan pelbagai jenis senario dan meniru bencana sebenar, kajian ini menganalisa masa yang diambil dan tahap tekanan penghuni bangunan semasa proses evakuasi berlaku pada tapak pilihan. “Evakuasi Pintar” ini mencapai 33.82% keberkesanan pada prestasi berbanding evakuasi biasa. Ia membuktikan proses evakuasi ini lebih pantas dan selamat.

Product Preservation Design of Vegetable and Animal Food Processing

The aims of the research is determine the Product Preservation Design of Vegetable and Animal Food Processing. Packaging designed to preserve food components in the hands of customers while preventing contamination by bacteria and fungus is the goal. As long as food is stored properly, the quality of the food will deteriorate. Packaging is necessary in order to deliver the following information: Package must convey an accurate representation of its contents; it should neither be copied from other parties' packaging designs, nor should it be too complex, making it prohibitively costly to produce

Evaluation of carbonyl sulfide biosphere exchange in the Simple Biosphere Model (SiB4)

The uptake of carbonyl sulfide (COS) by terrestrial plants is linked to photosynthetic uptake of CO2 as these gases partly share the same uptake pathway. Applying COS as a photosynthesis tracer in models requires an accurate representation of biosphere COS fluxes, but these models have not been extensively evaluated against field observations of COS fluxes. In this paper, the COS flux as simulated by the Simple Biosphere Model, version 4 (SiB4), is updated with the latest mechanistic insights and evaluated with site observations from different biomes: one evergreen needleleaf forest, two deciduous broadleaf forests, three grasslands, and two crop fields spread over Europe and North America. We improved SiB4 in several ways to improve its representation of COS. To account for the effect of atmospheric COS mole fractions on COS biosphere uptake, we replaced the fixed atmospheric COS mole fraction boundary condition originally used in SiB4 with spatially and temporally varying COS mole fraction fields. Seasonal amplitudes of COS mole fractions are ∼50–200 ppt at the investigated sites with a minimum mole fraction in the late growing season. Incorporating seasonal variability into the model reduces COS uptake rates in the late growing season, allowing better agreement with observations. We also replaced the empirical soil COS uptake model in SiB4 with a mechanistic model that represents both uptake and production of COS in soils, which improves the match with observations over agricultural fields and fertilized grassland soils. The improved version of SiB4 was capable of simulating the diurnal and seasonal variation in COS fluxes in the boreal, temperate, and Mediterranean region. Nonetheless, the daytime vegetation COS flux is underestimated on average by 8±27 %, albeit with large variability across sites. On a global scale, our model modifications decreased the modeled COS terrestrial biosphere sink from 922 Gg S yr−1 in the original SiB4 to 753 Gg S yr−1 in the updated version. The largest decrease in fluxes was driven by lower atmospheric COS mole fractions over regions with high productivity, which highlights the importance of accounting for variations in atmospheric COS mole fractions. The change to a different soil model, on the other hand, had a relatively small effect on the global biosphere COS sink. The secondary role of the modeled soil component in the global COS budget supports the use of COS as a global photosynthesis tracer. A more accurate representation of COS uptake in SiB4 should allow for improved application of atmospheric COS as a tracer of local- to global-scale terrestrial photosynthesis.

Biases in object location estimation: the role of camera rotations and translation

The current study investigated a systematic bias in spatial memory in which people, following a perspective shift from encoding to recall, indicated the location of an object further to the direction of the shit. In Experiment 1, we documented this bias by asking participants to encode the position of an object in a virtual room and then indicate it from memory following a perspective shift induced by camera translation and rotation. In Experiment 2, we decoupled the influence of camera translations and camera rotations and examined also whether adding more information in the scene would reduce the bias. We also investigated the presence of age-related differences in the precision of object location estimates and the tendency to display the bias related to perspective shift. Overall, our results showed that camera translations led to greater systematic bias than camera rotations. Furthermore, the use of additional spatial information improved the precision with which object locations were estimated and reduced the bias associated with camera translation. Finally, we found that although older adults were as precise as younger participants when estimating object locations, they benefited less from additional spatial information and their responses were more biased in the direction of camera translations. We propose that accurate representation of camera translations requires more demanding mental computations than camera rotations, leading to greater uncertainty about the position of an object in memory. This uncertainty causes people to rely on an egocentric anchor thereby giving rise to the systematic bias in the direction of camera translation.

Dual naming as a mechanism to recognize multiple identities; Casablanca or Ad-Dār al-Bayḍā

The primary aim of place names is to provide clear direction and reference in order to distinguish geographical entities. The Moroccan linguistic situation allows for a bilingual presentation of place names, with an Arabized version and a French counterpart that differs phonetically. On the other hand, Casablanca has dual naming, a colonial name, and an Arabic variant, which is not simply a translation that happened as a result of Arabization policies introduced after the country's independence. This study relies mainly on questionnaires, in addition to interviews, in an attempt to address the following aspects: The attitude towards the standardization of only one variant, variants and the city's cultural heritage and significance, standardization of only one variant and the accurate representation of the place, dual naming as a reminder of the multiple place histories vs. dual naming as a mere case of the language difference, and Moroccans and the etymology of the variants. The findings indicate that Casablanca shifts from a mere marker of the colonial period to an active maker of the city's heritage. Its meaning is disconnected from its historical anchorage and converted into an instrument of identity and means of historical memory. Moreover, the choice of one variant is perceived as a loss of toponymic identity, which will serve as a hindrance against the population and their relation to their past.

Genre games: Edward Gorey's play with generic form

<p>This thesis examines Edward Gorey's play with form and content across five literary genres, how that play results in the style that has come to be known as the "Goreyesque" and how the Goreyesque has influenced later artists and writers. Gorey consistently places style ahead of thematic and moral considerations, removing the purpose of each genre to reveal what remains in its absence. In doing so, Gorey maps out the boundaries of each form, providing genre- and period-specific details that act as signposts to how his audience should approach each narrative. With these markers in place, Gorey's readers are thus made aware of which genre expectations rule each piece. These expectations, however, are undermined as Gorey removes the audience-understood literary endgame, so that the work appears in all respects to be an accurate representation of the chosen genre, yet is missing the central heart. Gorey's melodramas present scenarios in which deep familial loss and suffering are at the forefront of each narrative, yet as a result of the distance that Gorey places between the text and his readers, these works ultimately lack sentimentality. His Dickensian narratives, while populated with virtuous orphans and embittered, isolated men, lack moral pronouncements and just rewards, resulting in exceptionally bleak, nihilistic endings that provide little or no social commentary. His children's literature, although full of mnemonic systems, rejects all pedagogical functions in favour of inviting in adult audiences to luxuriate in sound and linguistic form. His mystery and detective fiction, while containing secrets, crimes and criminals, ignores any pretence of decoding the central mysteries. His Gothic horror revels in supernatural excesses, yet engenders no fear. By tracing Gorey's play with genre, we can identify the aesthetic parameters of the Goreyesque, and examine how they manifest in the works of other artists and writers, notably Tim Burton, Neil Gaiman and Roman Dirge. In manipulating genre expectations, Gorey does more than simply leave readers with the shell of narrative purpose. Instead, he draws attention to the absence and pushes beyond expectation to reinvention. He normalizes the strange and fantastic by removing the very things that make the ordinary extraordinary. He infuses his works with a distance that shifts their purpose from generating high emotion and strong reactions to encouraging minute attention to narrative detail. Gorey's fantasies therefore represent odd, underwhelming moments that are otherwise ignored in the search for the uncommon and unique. By underplaying the significance of the events in his stories, Gorey represents and refreshes our concepts of the fantastic, and highlights the strangeness in the overlooked.</p>

Genre games: Edward Gorey's play with generic form

<p>This thesis examines Edward Gorey's play with form and content across five literary genres, how that play results in the style that has come to be known as the "Goreyesque" and how the Goreyesque has influenced later artists and writers. Gorey consistently places style ahead of thematic and moral considerations, removing the purpose of each genre to reveal what remains in its absence. In doing so, Gorey maps out the boundaries of each form, providing genre- and period-specific details that act as signposts to how his audience should approach each narrative. With these markers in place, Gorey's readers are thus made aware of which genre expectations rule each piece. These expectations, however, are undermined as Gorey removes the audience-understood literary endgame, so that the work appears in all respects to be an accurate representation of the chosen genre, yet is missing the central heart. Gorey's melodramas present scenarios in which deep familial loss and suffering are at the forefront of each narrative, yet as a result of the distance that Gorey places between the text and his readers, these works ultimately lack sentimentality. His Dickensian narratives, while populated with virtuous orphans and embittered, isolated men, lack moral pronouncements and just rewards, resulting in exceptionally bleak, nihilistic endings that provide little or no social commentary. His children's literature, although full of mnemonic systems, rejects all pedagogical functions in favour of inviting in adult audiences to luxuriate in sound and linguistic form. His mystery and detective fiction, while containing secrets, crimes and criminals, ignores any pretence of decoding the central mysteries. His Gothic horror revels in supernatural excesses, yet engenders no fear. By tracing Gorey's play with genre, we can identify the aesthetic parameters of the Goreyesque, and examine how they manifest in the works of other artists and writers, notably Tim Burton, Neil Gaiman and Roman Dirge. In manipulating genre expectations, Gorey does more than simply leave readers with the shell of narrative purpose. Instead, he draws attention to the absence and pushes beyond expectation to reinvention. He normalizes the strange and fantastic by removing the very things that make the ordinary extraordinary. He infuses his works with a distance that shifts their purpose from generating high emotion and strong reactions to encouraging minute attention to narrative detail. Gorey's fantasies therefore represent odd, underwhelming moments that are otherwise ignored in the search for the uncommon and unique. By underplaying the significance of the events in his stories, Gorey represents and refreshes our concepts of the fantastic, and highlights the strangeness in the overlooked.</p>

QGIS and Epigraphy: In Situ and Extra Situm Inscriptions

The use of georeferenced relational databases for the localisation of epigraphic findings is widely attested with important examples. However, in order to propose an increasingly accurate representation of information related to inscriptions, some methodological issues need to be highlighted and, if possible, solved. This paper will address the problem of the place of discovery of the inscription, which could be in situ or extra situm.

Cutaneous adverse food reactions

Dietary-induced skin problems of cats and dogs can include food intolerances, primary and secondary nutrient deficiencies and nutrient toxicities. A full dietary history needs to be taken and owners should include specific commercial foods, all snacks and treats, supplements, chewable/palatable medications and vitamins, chew toys, human foods and any food that the animal may have access to. Actively encourage owners to keep a food diary, as with obese animals and diabetics. The classification and diagnosis of nutritional-related skin disorders are initially based on a detailed dietary history and food evaluation. Veterinary nurses are in an ideal position to help owners make an accurate representation of what the pet consumes.

Female participation in U.S. oncology clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov from 2008 to 2020.

85 Background: Females are thought to be underrepresented in clinical trials, which may lead to care disparities. We characterized female enrollment trends in U.S. oncology trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov and identified features associated with accurate representation. Methods: We employed a cross-sectional study design with descriptive, logistic regression, and cox regression analyses. We downloaded 270,172 studies registered on the Aggregate Analysis of the ClinicalTrials.gov database from October 1, 2008 to March 9, 2020, excluding non-interventional and reproductive organ specific trials. We then applied cancer/oncology specific Medical Subject Heading terms and manually reviewed the remaining 27,521 trials for true oncology content. Prevalence-corrected estimates for female participation were calculated as the percentage of females among trial participants divided by the percentage of females in the disease population per U.S. Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) data (participation to prevalence ratio [PPR]), with a range between 0.8 and 1.2 reflecting accurate female representation in the trial. Results: Of 26,894 trials meeting eligibility criteria, 9,059 trials were completed in the U.S., 2,499 trials reported completed study status, and only 1,256 trials reported sex. Among 1,256 oncology trials and 229,056 participants, overall female representation was 46.9% (95% CI, 45.4-48.4%). 43% of trials were industry funded, 29% academic, and 28% U.S. government. Females were underrepresented compared to their disease burden in anal canal (PPR 0.21), thyroid (PPR 0.57), stomach (PPR 0.68), kidney (PPR 0.77), and bone (PPR 0.79) cancer trials. They were accurately represented in head and neck (PPR 0.80), lung (PPR 0.84), bladder (PPR 0.85), skin (PPR 0.88), pancreas (PPR 0.88), colon (PPR 0.90), hematologic (PPR 0.91), liver (PPR 1.01), CNS (PPR 1.03), soft tissue (PPR 1.05), and esophagus (PPR 1.05) cancer trials. Accurate representation was significantly associated with industry funding and pancreas cancer trial focus, but not associated with trial type (medical, surgical, radiation, other invasive, other) (Table). Conclusions: Females are underrepresented compared to their disease burden in many solid tumor clinical trials. Stakeholders can look to industry funded and pancreas cancer trials as models of improvement, but must increase female representation in clinical trials to improve cancer care. [Table: see text]