Correction to: Histogram and entropy oriented image coding for clustered wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNS)

Multimedia Tools and Applications -     

Role of healthy extruded snacks to mitigate malnutrition

Malnutrition is directly linked to the economic and social living standard of the people. It is the major cause of morbidity and mortality among the children, especially in the developing countries. The world population is projected to grow to around 9 billion by 2050 which will further escalate malnutrition. Snacks are becoming more and more popular and have a strong association with nutritional status of the young population. Extruded snacks have very low moisture (4–6%) and water activity (0.138) making them shelf stable. Shelf stable, nutrient dense products deemed to be ideal to alleviate malnutrition in the developing world. It is important to consider these healthy snacks for the provision of macro and micronutrients especially to the nutritionally vulnerable segment of population. Modern extrusion technologies have paved the way to use various nutrient-rich constituents to make attractive products. Analysis of supercritical fluid extrusion processed snacks has resulted in superior physical and textural properties while retaining the added macro and micronutrients. Nutrient-rich snacks produced through extrusion processing have been used for nutrition interventions along with community-based educational campaigns to mitigate malnutrition. This literature pertains the prevalence of malnutrition along with the usefulness of healthy extruded snacks against malnutrition.     

Evaporative resistance and sustainable work under heat stress conditions for two cloth anticontamination ensembles

When a work scenario in protective clothing is a nominal two hours of work followed by a short break, the level of heat stress must be limited to conditions of thermal equilibrium. By comparing changes in maximum sustainable work rate in a fixed environment, differences due to different protective clothing ensembles can be determined. To illustrate this principle, two protective clothing ensembles were examined. The Basic Ensemble was a cotton blend coverall over gym shorts with hard hat, gloves and full face mask respirator. The Enhanced Ensemble added a light weight, surgical scrub suit under the coveralls, plus a hood worn under the hard hat. Five young, acclimated males were the test subjects. Environmental conditions were fixed at T_db=32°C and T_pwb=26°C. After a physiological steady state was established at a low rate of work, treadmill speed was increased by 0.04 m/s every 5 min. The trial continued until thermal equilibrium was clearly lost. A critical treadmill speed was noted at the point thermal equilibrium was lost for each ensemble and subject. The drop in treadmill speed from the basic to enhanced ensemble was 11%. Based on measured values of average skin temperature and metabolic rate at the critical work rate and estimated values of clothing insulation, the average evaporative resistances for the basic and enhanced ensembles were 0.018 and 0.026 kPa m²/W, respectively.

Relevance to industry

Protective clothing decisions are based on the need to reduce the risk of skin contact with chemical or physical hazards. Sometimes over-protection of the skin results in a hazard secondary to the skin, such as heat stress. With or without over-protection, protective clothing decisions may affect the level of heat stress and result in lower rates of sustainable work. This paper illustrates the affects of a relatively small change in protective clothing requirements on the ability to work in the heat.     

Vision-based short range interaction between a personal service robot and a user

Interaction between a personal service robot and a human user is contingent on being aware of the posture and facial expression of users in the home environment. In this work, we propose algorithms to robustly and efficiently track the head, facial gestures, and the upper body movements of a user. The face processing module consists of 3D head pose estimation, modeling nonrigid facial deformations, and expression recognition. Thus, it can detect and track the face, and classify expressions under various poses, which is the key for human–robot interaction. For body pose tracking, we develop an efficient algorithm based on bottom-up techniques to search in a tree-structured 2D articulated body model, and identify multiple pose candidates to represent the state of current body configuration. We validate these face and body modules in varying experiments with different datasets, and the experimental results are reported. The implementation of both modules can run in real-time, which meets the requirement for real-world human–robot interaction task. These two modules have been ported onto a real robot platform by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.     

Histogram and entropy oriented image coding for clustered wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNS)

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Recently, the advent of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) has given birth to different applications. Some of the applications those required the...