Multimedia augmented reality game for learning math.

The traditional method for learning the multiplication tables is a repetitive and boring task. Teachers try to find new methods to motivate children in this tedious duty, and one of the lines to consider is to integrate en- tertainment into educational processes. This work presents a new multimedia interaction approach in order to allow children to practice these math opera- tions and have fun.

A Generative Method for Indoor Localization Using Wi-Fi Fingerprinting.

Indoor localization is an enabling technology for pervasive and mobile computing applications. Although different technologies have been proposed for indoor localization, Wi-Fi fingerprinting is one of the most used techniques due to the pervasiveness of Wi-Fi technology. Most Wi-Fi fingerprinting localization methods presented in the literature are discriminative methods.

Collaborative Indoor Positioning Systems: A Systematic Review.

Research and development in Collaborative Indoor Positioning Systems (CIPSs) is growing steadily due to their potential to improve on the performance of their non-collaborative counterparts. In contrast to the outdoors scenario, where Global Navigation Satellite System is widely adopted, in (collaborative) indoor positioning systems a large variety of technologies, techniques, and methods is being used. Moreover, the diversity of evaluation procedures and scenarios hinders a direct comparison.

A Kinect-Based Interactive System for Home-Assisted Active Aging.

Virtually every country in the world is facing an unprecedented challenge: society is aging. Assistive technologies are expected to play a key role in promoting healthy lifestyles in the elderly. This paper presents a Kinect-based interactive system for home-assisted healthy aging, which guides, supervises, and corrects older users when they perform scheduled physical exercises.

Deep Learning-Based Cell-Level and Beam-Level Mobility Management System.

The deployment with beamforming-capable base stations in 5G New Radio (NR) requires an efficient mobility management system to reliably operate with minimum effort and interruption. In this work, we propose two artificial neural network models to optimize the cell-level and beam-level mobility management. Both models consist of convolutional, as well as dense, layer blocks.

Data on records of environmental phenomena using low-cost sensors in vineyard smallholdings.

Inadequate weather conditions are one of the main threats to the correct development of sensitive crops, where a bad situation can lead to greater stress on plants and their weakness against various diseases. This statement is especially decisive in the cultivation of the vineyard. Meteorological monitoring of vineyard parcels is vital to detect and prevent possible fungal diseases.

Reliability Evaluation of the Data Acquisition Potential of a Low-Cost Climatic Network for Applications in Agriculture.

Temperature, humidity and precipitation have a strong influence on the generation of diseases in different crops, especially in vine. In recent years, advances in different disciplines have enabled the deployment of sensor nodes on agricultural plots. These sensors are characterised by a low cost and so the reliability of the data obtained from them can be compromised, as they are built from low-confidence components.

Optimal Placement of Social Digital Twins in Edge IoT Networks.

In next-generation Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, every object such as a wearable device, a smartphone, a vehicle, and even a sensor or an actuator will be provided with a digital counterpart (twin) with the aim of augmenting the physical object's capabilities and acting on its behalf when interacting with third parties. Moreover, such objects can be able to interact and autonomously establish social relationships according to the Social Internet of Things (SIoT) paradigm. In such a context, the goal of this work is to provide an optimal solution for the social-aware placement of IoT digital twins (DTs) at the network edge, with the twofold aim of reducing the latency (i) between physical devices and corresponding DTs for efficient data exchange, and (ii) among DTs of friend devices to speed-up the service discovery and chaining procedures across the SIoT network.

A geotagged image dataset with compass directions for studying the drivers of farmland abandonment.

In this work, we present a dataset containing a collection of pictures taken during the fieldwork of a farmland abandonment study. Data was taken in 2010 with a compact camera that incorporates GPS and a digital compass sensor. The photographs were taken as part of a GIS database.

Remotely Sensed Data Fusion for Spatiotemporal Geostatistical Analysis of Forest Fire Hazard.

Forest fires are a natural phenomenon which might have severe implications on natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. Future projections predict that, under a climate change environment, the fire season would be lengthier with higher levels of droughts, leading to higher fire severity. The main aim of this paper is to perform a spatiotemporal analysis and explore the variability of fire hazard in a small Greek island, Skiathos (a prototype case of fragile environment) where the land uses mixture is very high.

Analysis of Received Signal Strength Quantization in Fingerprinting Localization.

In recent times, Received Signal Strength (RSS)-based Wi-Fi fingerprinting localization has become one of the most promising techniques for indoor localization. The primary aim of RSS is to check the quality of the signal to determine the coverage and the quality of service. Therefore, fine-resolution RSS is needed, which is generally expressed by 1-dBm granularity.

An IoT Platform Based on Microservices and Serverless Paradigms for Smart Farming Purposes.

Nowadays, the concept of "Everything is connected to Everything" has spread to reach increasingly diverse scenarios, due to the benefits of constantly being able to know, in real-time, the status of your factory, your city, your health or your smallholding. This wide variety of scenarios creates different challenges such as the heterogeneity of IoT devices, support for large numbers of connected devices, reliable and safe systems, energy efficiency and the possibility of using this system by third-parties in other scenarios. A transversal middleware in all IoT solutions is called an IoT platform.

Antibacterial Properties of Nanoparticles in Dental Restorative Materials. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Nanotechnology has become a significant area of research focused mainly on increasing the antibacterial and mechanical properties of dental materials. The aim of the present systematic review and meta-analysis was to examine and quantitatively analyze the current evidence for the addition of different nanoparticles into dental restorative materials, to determine whether their incorporation increases the antibacterial/antimicrobial properties of the materials. A literature search was performed in the Pubmed, Scopus, and Embase databases, up to December 2018, following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis) guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Interactive guidelines: Public communication of data-based research in cities.

Scientific research results are traditionally published as articles in peer-reviewed conference proceedings or journals. These articles often use technical jargon, which precludes the general public from consuming the results achieved. New ways to communicate scientific results are thus necessary to transfer scientific insights to non-experts, and this work proposes the concept of interactive guidelines to fill this gap.

Three-dimensional fluorescence imaging using the transport of intensity equation.

We propose a nonscanning three-dimensional (3-D) fluorescence imaging technique using the transport of intensity equation (TIE) and free-space Fresnel propagation. In this imaging technique, a phase distribution corresponding to defocused fluorescence images with a point-light-source-like shape is retrieved by a TIE-based phase retrieval algorithm. From the obtained phase distribution, and its corresponding amplitude distribution, of the defocused fluorescence image, various images at different distances can be reconstructed at the desired plane after Fresnel propagation of the complex wave function.

A Meta-Review of Indoor Positioning Systems.

An accurate and reliable Indoor Positioning System (IPS) applicable to most indoor scenarios has been sought for many years. The number of technologies, techniques, and approaches in general used in IPS proposals is remarkable. Such diversity, coupled with the lack of strict and verifiable evaluations, leads to difficulties for appreciating the true value of most proposals.

A RGBD-Based Interactive System for Gaming-Driven Rehabilitation of Upper Limbs.

Current physiotherapy services may not be effective or suitable for certain patients due to lack of motivation, poor adherence to exercises, insufficient supervision and feedback or, in the worst case, refusal to continue with the rehabilitation plan. This paper introduces a novel approach for rehabilitation of upper limbs through KineActiv, a platform based on Microsoft Kinect v2 and developed in Unity Engine. KineActiv proposes exergames to encourage patients to perform rehabilitation exercises prescribed by a specialist, controls the patient's performance, and corrects execution errors on the fly.

Glassy dynamics predicted by mutual role of free and activation volumes.

Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy (BDS) at elevated pressures and Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy (PALS) are employed to elucidate the importance of the ratio of activation and free volumes during vitrification. We show that this ratio has a linear correlation with the structural relaxation of glass forming liquids in a wide temperature range hence engendering it as a vital input in the description of the dynamic glass transition.

Cocaine-Induced Preference Conditioning: a Machine Vision Perspective.

Existing work on drug-induced synaptic changes has shown that the expression of perineuronal nets (PNNs) at the cerebellar cortex can be regulated by cocaine-related memory. However, these studies on animals have mostly relied on limited manually-driven procedures, and lack some more rigorous statistical approaches and more automated techniques. In this work, established methods from computer vision and machine learning are considered to build stronger evidence of those previous findings.

Glassy dynamics of two poly(ethylene glycol) derivatives in the bulk and in nanometric confinement as reflected in its inter- and intra-molecular interactions.

The inter- and intra-molecular interactions as they evolve in the course of glassy solidification are studied by broadband dielectric-and Fourier-transform infrared-spectroscopy for oligomeric derivatives of poly(ethylene glycol) derivatives, namely, poly(ethylene glycol) phenyl ether acrylate and poly(ethylene glycol) dibenzoate in the bulk and under confinement in nanoporous silica having mean pore diameters 4, 6, and 8 nm, with native and silanized inner surfaces. Analyzing the spectral positions and the oscillator strengths of specific IR absorption bands and their temperature dependencies enables one to trace the changes in the intra-molecular potentials and to compare it with the dielectrically determined primarily inter-molecular dynamics. Special emphasis is given to the calorimetric glass transition temperature T and T ≈ 1.

Promoting Pollution-Free Routes in Smart Cities Using Air Quality Sensor Networks.

Nowadays, citizens have a huge concern about the quality of life in their cities, especially regarding the level of pollution. Air quality level is of great importance, not only to plan our activities but also to take precautionary measures for our health. All levels of governments are concerned about it and have built their indexes to measure the air quality level in their countries, regions or cities.

Fabrication by Laser Irradiation in a Continuous Flow Jet of Carbon Quantum Dots for Fluorescence Imaging.

Fluorescent carbon quantum dots (CQDs) are synthesized by laser irradiation of carbon glassy particles suspended in polyethylene glycol 200 by two methods, a batch and a flow jet configuration. The flow jet configuration is carried out by the simple combination of common laboratory objects to construct a home-made passage reactor of continuous flow. Despite the simplicity of the system, the laser energy is better harvested by the carbon microparticles, improving the fabrication efficiency a 15% and enhancing the fluorescence of CQDs by an order of magnitude in comparison with the conventional batch.

Femtosecond laser settings for optimal bracket bonding to zirconia.

Bonding orthodontic brackets to ceramic materials is a challenging procedure; femtosecond (FS) laser conditioning could provide improved results, but the ideal settings for effective bracket-zirconia bonding have never been established. This study aimed to analyze the differences in surface roughness and shear bond strength (SBS) produced by different femtosecond laser settings and establish a protocol to prepare zirconia surfaces for optimal adhesion to metal orthodontic brackets. One hundred eighty zirconia samples were assigned to six groups according to surface treatment: (1) control; (2) air-particle abrasion (APA); (3) FS laser irradiation (300 mW output power, 60 μm inter-groove distance); (4) FS laser irradiation (200 mW, 100 μm); (5) FS laser irradiation (40 mW, 60 μm); and (6) FS laser irradiation (200 mW, 60 μm).

Reproducible research and GIScience: an evaluation using AGILE conference papers.

The demand for reproducible research is on the rise in disciplines concerned with data analysis and computational methods. Therefore, we reviewed current recommendations for reproducible research and translated them into criteria for assessing the reproducibility of articles in the field of geographic information science (GIScience). Using this criteria, we assessed a sample of GIScience studies from the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) conference series, and we collected feedback about the assessment from the study authors.