Amila Akagic, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Motoki Amagasaki, Kumamoto University, Japan Muhammad Alfian Amrizal, Tohoku University, Japan Hiroaki Anada, University of Nagasaki, Japan Ritu Arora, University of Texas at Austin, U.S. Thomas Austin, San Jose State University, U.S. Akram Ben Ahmed, Keio University, Japan Antoine Bossard, Kanagawa University, Japan Chen-Mou Cheng, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Franco Chiaraluce, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy Stéphane Devismes, VERIMAG UMR 5104, France Nguyen Anh Vu Doan, Technical University of Munich, Germany Ryusuke Egawa, Tohoku University, Japan Toshio Endo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Martti Forsell, VTT, Finland Naoki Fujieda, Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan Noriyuki Fujimoto, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan Hiroshi Fujiwara, Shinshu University, Japan Ken-Ichi Fukui, Osaka University, Japan Masayuki Fukumitsu, Hokkaido Information University, Japan Masaru Fukushi, Yamaguchi University, Japan Junichi Funasaka, Hiroshima City University, Japan Takayasu Fushimi, University of Tsukuba, Japan Jing Gong, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Takaaki Goto, Toyo University, Japan Andreas Grapentin, Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany Yan Gu, Carnegie Mellon University, U.S. Masafumi Hashimoto, Osaka University, Japan Kohei Hatano, Kyushu University, Japan Akihiro Hayashi, Rice University, U.S. Ramon Hermoso, University of Zaragoza, Spain Shoichi Hirose, University of Fukui, Japan Michihiro Horie, IBM, Japan Naoto Hoshikawa, National Institute of Technology, Oyama College, Japan Shuichi Ichikawa, Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan Tsutomu Inamoto, Ehime University, Japan Masaki Inamura, Tokyo Denki University, Japan Fumihiko Ino, Osaka University, Japan Takashi Ishida, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

The study investigated in vitro the effect of Porphyromonas gingivalis and its cysteine proteases (gingipains) on epithelial cell adhesion to titanium-zirconium alloy surfaces. Titanium-zirconium discs with a standard machined (M) or chemically modified hydrophilic surface (modM) were coated with lamin-5 and incubated with telomerase-inactivated gingival keratinocytes (TIGK). Three P. gingivalis strains or gingipains were either added simultaneously with TIGK or after TIGK cells were already attached to the disks. Adhered TIGK cells were counted at 24 h. All P. gingivalis strains clearly inhibited adhesion of TIGK cells to M and modM surfaces. Compared with bacteria/gingipain-free TIGK cell cultures, the number of attached TIGK cells was reduced by about 80% and 60% when P. gingivalis was added simultaneously or after TIGK cells were already attached to the disks (each p < 0.01), respectively. Counts of attached cells were similarly reduced when only gingipains were used. Adhesion molecules of TIGK cells, in particular E-cadherin, were cleaved by P. gingivalis. In conclusion, P. gingivalis and gingipains interfere with the adhesion of epithelial cells to titanium-zirconium alloy surfaces by cleaving adhesion molecules, while a chemically modified hydrophilic titanium-zirconium alloy surface did not yield any protection. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res B Part B, 2019.

The aim of this paper is comparing a simulation model with real IPTV (Internet Protocol TeleVision) scenario in access network. In real IPTV scenarios, it is known that packet losses appear suddenly and might have an "explosive" character, especially in DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) case. In addition, these packet losses usually appear in groups and lead to huge degradation of the video service, which decreases customer’s QoE (Quality of Experience) level. Hence, estimation of this degradation in access network is important and the paper explained one simulation model based on SSIM (Structural Similarity Index) analysis, which can be used as one perceptive video quality assessment by imitating a real environment with packet losses. To check this, we compared our simulation model with the real IPTV video distributed over DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and exposed to different packet loss appearances.

The paper presents an algorithm for automatic layout of class diagrams. The presented algorithm efficiently and openly tries to lay out a diagram in the landscape format using a modified Sugiyama algorithm. The proposed algorithm is implemented as an Eclipse plug-in and works within Papyrus class diagram modeling projects.

Automated detection of asphalt pavement distresses is a very popular computer vision and image processing problem. In recent years, automated detection is an essential part of every pavement management system, since it allows very fast detection of distresses on the road. This is important because timely detection can prevent many road accidents, and hence it has potential to save lives. In this paper, we presented a new unsupervised image processing method for segmentation of the most common road distresses-pavement cracks. The method first performs slicing of an image into M×N sub-images, and then removes sub-images without cracks based on empirically defined threshold. Analysis is then carried out only on a small number of sub-images, which significantly reduces computation time. Then, a series of images processing tasks are performed to select only pixels with pavement cracks. The method is suitable as a pre-processing step in a number of computer vision tasks, and can provide rough estimation of damaged area in an image.

Visual impairment severely constraints the ability to independently conduct many everyday tasks that we usually do not consider challenging. Although some types of visual impairment can be treated efficiently there is still a considerable number of visually impaired persons, especially among aging population, which depend on help of others or assistive technology to sustain their life quality. Visually impaired person cannot perceive the full extent of surrounding information due to the lack of visual details. However great progress can be achieved if surrounding information can be somehow visually transformed to the subset of visual information that visually impaired person can perceive. To certain extent every impairment has individual characteristics, as different individuals may better respond to different subsets of visual information. Thus any assistive solution aiming to visually transform surrounding information to accommodate broad range of impairment conditions must be personalized in order to be effective. Virtual reality enables individuals to experience imaginary surroundings by tricking their visual senses and such virtual surroundings can be personalized to any extent desired. We use virtual reality, image processing, and RFID to create a test setup able to simulate visual impairment and visually transformed surroundings suitable for visual Impairment studies. The test setup enables gathering information and conducting studies on both healthy and visually impaired individuals in a controlled environment enabling reliable assistive technology development and testing.

Visually impaired person might find it very difficult to locate an object that has been even slightly misplaced from its usual position. Unfortunately this is very common situation in a shared environment where multiple individuals can affect object’s position and where visually impaired person cannot rely on object’s position remaining unchanged since the last interaction with the object. In order to independently localize the object of its interest visually impaired person must rely on assistive technology. It is yet very unlikely that any single wearable assistive device will encompass the whole range of object localization scenarios and be universally adoptable to a broad range of environments. In this paper we propose indoors test setup for visually impaired persons by creating RFID based assistive environment – Visual Impairment Friendly RFID Room. The test setup can be used to evaluate RFID object localization and its use by visually impaired persons.

The multipath radio channel is considered to have a non-bandlimited channel impulse response. Therefore, it is challenging to achieve high resolution time-delay (TD) estimation of multipath components (MPCs) from bandlimited observations of communication signals. It this paper, we consider the problem of multiband channel sampling and TD estimation of MPCs. We assume that the nonideal multi-branch receiver is used for multiband sampling, where the noise is nonuniform across the receiver branches. The resulting data model of Hankel matrices formed from acquired samples has multiple shift-invariance structures, and we propose an algorithm for TD estimation using weighted subspace fitting. The subspace fitting is formulated as a separable nonlinear least squares (NLS) problem, and it is solved using a variable projection method. The proposed algorithm supports high resolution TD estimation from an arbitrary number of bands, and it allows for nonuniform noise across the bands. Numerical simulations show that the algorithm almost attains the Cramér Rao Lower Bound, and it outperforms previously proposed methods such as multiresolution TOA, MI-MUSIC, and ESPRIT.

Abstract Building on the limited literature on consumer xenocentrism, this study investigates the route through which the construct impacts consumers' purchase intentions for (a) domestic, (b) foreign genuine, and (c) foreign counterfeit brands, while controlling for product category effects and the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism. Drawing on system justification theory and based on a sample of Russian consumers (N = 262), it is shown that a serial mediation model, with product-country image and brand attitudes as intervening variables, effectively describes the route through which consumer xenocentrism (a) positively influences intentions to buy genuine foreign brands, and (b) negatively influences purchase intentions for domestic brands. These effects of consumer xenocentrism are observed over and above the influences of ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism and after controlling for brand familiarity, price sensitivity and product category involvement. The results also show that xenocentrism is not able to explain consumers' willingness to buy (foreign) counterfeit brands.