Proceedings. IEEE 8th International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WET ICE'99), 1999
This paper presents a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) prototype tool called... more This paper presents a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) prototype tool called ACTS (Annotation Collaboration Tool via SMIL -Synchronized Multimedia Integrated Language), which was designed to meet the user requirements of a distributed, collaborative team performing remote analysis of robotic welds. Based on open standards such as W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) SMIL, ACTS provides a framework of temporal and spatial synchronization for multimedia data streams. An annotation facility provides for asynchronous collaboration among colleagues. ACTS uses the NISTdeveloped S2M2 [2] Java applet-based SMIL player that implements and extends the SMIL 1.0 specification. Future work is also discussed.
... from other organizations. The result is an application format describing a completemultimedia... more ... from other organizations. The result is an application format describing a completemultimedia solution that vendors can then readily, and quickly, apply in their productdevelopment. Figure 1 illustrates this concept. The vertical ...
Background. Physical activity may protect against gallstone formation by reducing bile stasis and... more Background. Physical activity may protect against gallstone formation by reducing bile stasis and plasma triglycerides and by raising HDL levels. No prospective studies have previously investigated this hypothesis in both genders using a physical activity questionnaire validated against physiological measurements. The aim of this study was to investigate this relationship using a questionnaire to provide a simple global index of physical activity and to determine if physical activity predicts disease independently of known risk factors for gallstones. Methods. A total of 25 639 men and women, aged 45-74, years were recruited into EPIC-Norfolk (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer) and completed a questionnaire which recorded both occupational and recreational physical activity. Participants were then ranked into four groups of physical activity, ranging from active to inactive. This questionnaire had been validated against both energy expenditure, as assessed by 4-day heart rate monitoring, and cardio-respiratory fitness, assessed by sub-maximal oxygen uptake. The cohort was monitored for the development of symptomatic gallstones and each case matched with four controls for age and sex. Odds ratios were calculated using unconditional logistic regression, adjusted for body mass index (BMI), alcohol intake, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) & parity. Results. In the cohort, 219 participants (67.6% women) developed symptomatic gallstones at a mean age of 61.3 years (SD = 9.0 years). Increased physical activity decreased the risk of symptomatic gallstones stones in a linear manner across the four categories of physical activity (odds ratio for trend = 0.85, 95% CI=0.72-1.0, p<0.05). An active vs inactive level of physical activity gave an odds ratio of 0.48 (95% CI =0.26-0.89 p=0.02). Physical activity was independently associated with a reduced risk of gallstones after multivariate adjustment for known risk factors (p<0.05). Conclusions. Increased physical activity was associated with decreased risk of symptomatic gallstones, a consistent finding in epidemiological studies, and now reported for the first time using a physical activity questionnaire validated against physiological measurements. If the level of physical activity in the population could be raised, then 42% of symptomatic gallstones could be prevented.
This work describes a simple approach to immobilize functionalized colloidal microstructures onto... more This work describes a simple approach to immobilize functionalized colloidal microstructures onto a C 18 -coated SiO 2 substrate via specific or non-specific biomediated interactions. Biotinylated bovine serum albumin pre-adsorbed onto a C 18 surface was used to mediate the surface assembly of streptavidin-coated microbeads (2.8 µm), while a bare C 18 surface was used to immobilize anti-Listeria antibody-coated microbeads (2.8 µm) through hydrophobic interactions. For a C 18 surface pre-adsorbed with bovine serum albumin, hydrophobic polystyrene microbeads (0.8 µm) and positively charged dimethylamino microbeads (0.8 µm) were allowed to self-assemble onto the surface. A monolayer with high surface coverage was observed for both polystyrene and dimethylamino microbeads. The adsorption characteristics of Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes on these microbead-based surfaces were studied using fluorescence microscopy. Both streptavidin microbeads preadsorbed with biotinylated anti-Listeria antibody and anti-Listeria antibody-coated microbeads showed specific capture of L. monocytogenes, while polystyrene and dimethylamino microbeads captured both E. coli and L. monocytogenes non-specifically. The preparation of microbead-based surfaces for the construction of microfluidic devices for separation, detection, or analysis of specific biological species is discussed.
This paper introduces the motivation and describes the model of a novel metadata standard for the... more This paper introduces the motivation and describes the model of a novel metadata standard for the exchange of preservation metadata of multimedia content. The model is being standardised as the MPEG Multimedia Preservation Application Format (MP-AF), addressing the specific issues related to the preservation description information of audiovisual contents. Several standards for expressing metadata in digital preservation are available and have been taken into consideration in the paper and in the work done in MPEG. However, none of them is able to cover all the needed aspects related to the preservation of audiovisual content. Audiovisual files are in most cases containers and are usually made up of several tracks carrying audio data, video data and specific time-based metadata. In order to be able to perform the opportune preservation actions (among others planning and format migration), several kinds of information must be kept alongside the audiovisual contents. Within this context a standardised representation for these structures and metadata is needed. Information such as quality description or fixity at frame level is required for ensuring long term access to visual content. Without using a standardised interface it is hard to guarantee a faithful rendering of encoded information while exchanging contents between different repositories, either internally or with external institutions. This paper describes the work done so far within MPEG for defining a standard metadata model which covers the identified missing parts and gaps regarding the acquisition of digital preservation description information.
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