Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

Planning algorithms are impacting technical disciplines and industries around the world, including robotics, computer-aided design, manufacturing, computer graphics, aerospace applications, drug design, and protein folding. This coherent and comprehensive book unifies material from several sources, including robotics, control theory, artificial intelligence, and algorithms. The treatment is centered on robot motion planning but integrates material on planning in discrete spaces. A major part of the book is devoted to planning under uncertainty, including decision theory, Markov decision processes, and information spaces, which are the “configuration spaces” of all sensor-based planning problems. The last part of the book delves into planning under differential constraints that arise when automating the motions of virtually any mechanical system. Developed from courses taught by the author, the book is intended for students, engineers, and researchers in robotics, artificial intelligence, and control theory as well as computer graphics, algorithms, and computational biology.

Planning Algorithms: Introductory Material

Humans perceive the three-dimensional structure of the world with apparent ease. However, despite all of the recent advances in computer vision research, the dream of having a computer interpret an image at the same level as a two-year old remains elusive. Why is computer vision such a challenging problem and what is the current state of the art? Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications explores the variety of techniques commonly used to analyze and interpret images. It also describes challenging real-world applications where vision is being successfully used, both for specialized applications such as medical imaging, and for fun, consumer-level tasks such as image editing and stitching, which students can apply to their own personal photos and videos. More than just a source of recipes, this exceptionally authoritative and comprehensive textbook/reference also takes a scientific approach to basic vision problems, formulating physical models of the imaging process before inverting them to produce descriptions of a scene. These problems are also analyzed using statistical models and solved using rigorous engineering techniques Topics and features: structured to support active curricula and project-oriented courses, with tips in the Introduction for using the book in a variety of customized courses; presents exercises at the end of each chapter with a heavy emphasis on testing algorithms and containing numerous suggestions for small mid-term projects; provides additional material and more detailed mathematical topics in the Appendices, which cover linear algebra, numerical techniques, and Bayesian estimation theory; suggests additional reading at the end of each chapter, including the latest research in each sub-field, in addition to a full Bibliography at the end of the book; supplies supplementary course material for students at the associated website, http://szeliski.org/Book/. Suitable for an upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level course in computer science or engineering, this textbook focuses on basic techniques that work under real-world conditions and encourages students to push their creative boundaries. Its design and exposition also make it eminently suitable as a unique reference to the fundamental techniques and current research literature in computer vision.

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Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications

We present a real-time algorithm which can recover the 3D trajectory of a monocular camera, moving rapidly through a previously unknown scene. Our system, which we dub MonoSLAM, is the first successful application of the SLAM methodology from mobile robotics to the "pure vision" domain of a single uncontrolled camera, achieving real time but drift-free performance inaccessible to structure from motion approaches. The core of the approach is the online creation of a sparse but persistent map of natural landmarks within a probabilistic framework. Our key novel contributions include an active approach to mapping and measurement, the use of a general motion model for smooth camera movement, and solutions for monocular feature initialization and feature orientation estimation. Together, these add up to an extremely efficient and robust algorithm which runs at 30 Hz with standard PC and camera hardware. This work extends the range of robotic systems in which SLAM can be usefully applied, but also opens up new areas. We present applications of MonoSLAM to real-time 3D localization and mapping for a high-performance full-size humanoid robot and live augmented reality with a hand-held camera

/pdf/monoslam-real-time-single-camera-slam-ydmj8dc1vj.pdf

MonoSLAM: Real-Time Single Camera SLAM

This paper describes the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem and the essential methods for solving the SLAM problem and summarizes key implementations and demonstrations of the method. While there are still many practical issues to overcome, especially in more complex outdoor environments, the general SLAM method is now a well understood and established part of robotics. Another part of the tutorial summarized more recent works in addressing some of the remaining issues in SLAM, including computation, feature representation, and data association

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Simultaneous localization and mapping: part I

The Chilean Atacama Desert is the most arid region on Earth and in several ways analogous to Mars. Evidence suggests that the interior of the Atacama is lifeless, yet where the desert meets the Pacific coastal range dessication-tolerant microorganisms are known to exist. The gradient of biodiversity and habitats in the Atacama's subregions remain unexplored and are the focus of the Life in the Atacama project. Our field investigation attempts to bring further scientific understanding of the Atacama as a habitat for life through the creation of robotic astrobiology. This involves capabilities for autonomously traversing hundreds of kilometers while deploying sensors to survey the varying geologic and biologic properties of the environment, Fig. 1. Our goal is to make genuine discoveries about the limits of life on Earth and to generate knowledge about life in extreme environments that can be applied to future planetary missions. Through these experiments we also hope to develop and practice the methods by which a rover might best be employed to survey desert terrain in search of the habitats in which life can survive, or may have in the past.

/pdf/robotic-technologies-for-surveying-habitats-and-seeking-2x4ncitdfo.pdf

Robotic Technologies for Surveying Habitats and Seeking Evidence of Life: Results from the 2004 Field Experiments of the "Life in the Atacama" Project

: The Carnegie Mellon University program to develop an Earth-based prototype of an autonomous planetary rover is organized around three teams that are developing the locomotion, perception, and planning subsystems. A joint task is to integrate the three subsystems into an experimental robot system. We will use this system for evaluating, demonstrating, and validating the concepts and technologies developed in the program. The technical objectives of the research include the following: (1) To develop and demonstrate an autonomous Earth-based mobile robot that can survive, explore, and sample in rugged, natural terrains analogous to those of Mars; (2) To provide detailed, local representations and broad, 3-D descriptions of rugged, unknown terrain by exploiting diverse sensors and data sources; and (3) To demonstrate robot autonomy through a planning and task control architecture that incorporates robot goals, intentions, actions, exceptions, and safeguards. (KR)

Year End Report: Autonomous Planetary Rover at Carnegie Mellon, 1989

AIMS To estimate how a scheme to pay substance misuse treatment service providers according to treatment outcomes affected hospital admissions. DESIGN A controlled, quasi-experimental (difference-in-differences) observational study using negative binomial regression. SETTING Hospitals in all 149 organisational areas in England for the period 2009-2010 to 2015-2016. PARTICIPANTS 572 545 patients admitted to hospital with a diagnosis indicating drug misuse, defined based on International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD-10) diagnosis codes (37 964 patients in 8 intervention areas and 534 581 in 141 comparison areas). INTERVENTION AND COMPARATORS Linkage of provider payments to recovery outcome indicators in 8 intervention organisational areas compared with all 141 comparison organisational areas in England. Outcome indicators included: abstinence from presenting substance, abstinent completion of treatment and non-re-presentation to treatment in the 12 months following completion. MEASUREMENTS Annual counts of hospital admissions, emergency admissions and admissions including a diagnosis indicating drugs misuse. Covariates included age, sex, ethnic origin and deprivation. FINDINGS For 37 245 patients in the intervention areas, annual emergency admissions were 1.073 times higher during the operation of the scheme compared with non-intervention areas (95% CI = 1.049; 1.097). There were an estimated additional 3 352 emergency admissions in intervention areas during the scheme. These findings were robust to a range of secondary analyses. CONCLUSION A programme in England from 2012 to 2014 to pay substance misuse treatment service providers according to treatment outcomes appeared to increase emergency hospital admissions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/add.15486

Did paying drugs misuse treatment providers for outcomes lead to unintended consequences for hospital admissions? Difference-in-differences analysis of a pay-for-performance scheme in England

Weighted capitation payments are increasingly used to distribute health care budgets in developed countries. Directing resources according to need can maximize efficiency in resource allocation. However, the extent to which needs can be captured, the tradeoff between efficiency and equity objectives set by the State, and the subsequent decisions regarding the spending of allocated budgets, all mean that resource allocation formulae alone cannot maximize efficiency or equity. Good formulae may therefore be necessary for efficiency and equity but they are never sufficient.

Resource Allocation Funding Formulae, Efficiency of

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a major determinant of health. We studied the Index of Multiple Deprivation Rank of 473 families with individuals with pathogenic autosomal copy number variants (CNVs) and known inheritance status. The IMDR distribution of families with pathogenic CNVs was significantly different from the general population. Families with inherited CNVs were significantly more likely to be living in areas of higher deprivation when compared with families that had individuals with de novo CNVs. These results provide unique insights into biological determinants of SES. As CNVs are relatively frequent in the general population, these results have important medical and policy consequences.

https://jmg.bmj.com/content/jmedgenet/57/1/70.full.pdf

William Whittaker

Papers

Robotic Technologies for Surveying Habitats and Seeking Evidence of Life: Results from the 2004 Field Experiments of the "Life in the Atacama" Project

Year End Report: Autonomous Planetary Rover at Carnegie Mellon, 1989

Did paying drugs misuse treatment providers for outcomes lead to unintended consequences for hospital admissions? Difference-in-differences analysis of a pay-for-performance scheme in England

Resource Allocation Funding Formulae, Efficiency of

Presence of pathogenic copy number variants (CNVs) is correlated with socioeconomic status.