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Background: High numbers of consumable medical materials (eg, sterile needles and swabs) are used during the daily routine of intensive care units (ICUs) worldwide. Although medical consumables largely contribute to total ICU hospital expenditure, many hospitals do not track the individual use of materials. Current tracking solutions meeting the specific requirements of the medical environment, like barcodes or radio frequency identification, require specialized material preparation and high infrastructure investment. This impedes the accurate prediction of consumption, leads to high storage maintenance costs caused by large inventories, and hinders scientific work due to inaccurate documentation. Thus, new cost-effective and contactless methods for object detection are urgently needed.
Objective: The goal of this work was to develop and evaluate a contactless visual recognition system for tracking medical consumable materials in ICUs using a deep learning approach on a distributed client-server architecture.
Methods: We developed Consumabot, a novel client-server optical recognition system for medical consumables, based on the convolutional neural network model MobileNet implemented in Tensorflow. The software was designed to run on single-board computer platforms as a detection unit. The system was trained to recognize 20 different materials in the ICU, while 100 sample images of each consumable material were provided. We assessed the top-1 recognition rates in the context of different real-world ICU settings: materials presented to the system without visual obstruction, 50% covered materials, and scenarios of multiple items. We further performed an analysis of variance with repeated measures to quantify the effect of adverse real-world circumstances.
Results: Consumabot reached a >99% reliability of recognition after about 60 steps of training and 150 steps of validation. A desirable low cross entropy of <0.03 was reached for the training set after about 100 iteration steps and after 170 steps for the validation set. The system showed a high top-1 mean recognition accuracy in a real-world scenario of 0.85 (SD 0.11) for objects presented to the system without visual obstruction. Recognition accuracy was lower, but still acceptable, in scenarios where the objects were 50% covered (P<.001; mean recognition accuracy 0.71; SD 0.13) or multiple objects of the target group were present (P=.01; mean recognition accuracy 0.78; SD 0.11), compared to a nonobstructed view. The approach met the criteria of absence of explicit labeling (eg, barcodes, radio frequency labeling) while maintaining a high standard for quality and hygiene with minimal consumption of resources (eg, cost, time, training, and computational power).
Conclusions: Using a convolutional neural network architecture, Consumabot consistently achieved good results in the classification of consumables and thus is a feasible way to recognize and register medical consumables directly to a hospital’s electronic health record. The system shows limitations when the materials are partially covered, therefore identifying characteristics of the consumables are not presented to the system. Further development of the assessment in different medical circumstances is needed.
A comprehensive overview is provided evaluating direct real-world CO2 emissions of both diesel and petrol cars newly registered in Europe between 1995 and 2015. Before 2011, European diesel cars emitted less CO2 per kilometre than petrol cars, but since then there is no appreciable difference in per-km CO2 emissions between diesel and petrol cars. Real-world CO2 emissions of diesel cars have not declined appreciably since 2001, while the CO2 emissions of petrol cars have been stagnant since 2012. When adding black carbon related CO2-equivalents, such as from diesel cars without particulate filters, diesel cars were discovered to have had much higher climate relevant emissions until the year 2001 when compared to petrol cars. From 2001 to 2015 CO2-equivalent emissions from new diesel cars and petrol cars were hardly distinguishable. Lifetime use phase CO2-equivalent emissions of all European passenger vehicles were modelled for 1995–2015 based on three scenarios: the historic case, another scenario freezing percentages of diesel cars at the low levels from the early 1990s (thus avoiding the observed “boom” in new diesel registrations), and an advanced mitigation scenario based on high proportions of petrol hybrid cars and cars burning gaseous fuels. The difference in CO2-equivalent emissions between the historical case and the scenario avoiding the diesel car boom is only 0.4%. The advanced mitigation scenario would have been able to achieve a 3.4% reduction in total CO2-equivalent emissions over the same time frame. The European diesel car boom appears to have been ineffective at reducing climate-warming emissions from the European transport sector.
This article presents experience curves and cost-benefit analyses for electric and plug-in hybrid cars sold in Germany. We find that between 2010 and 2016, the prices and price differentials relative to conventional cars declined at learning rates of 23 ± 2% and 32 ± 2% for electric cars and 6 ± 1% and 37 ± 2% for plug-in hybrids. If trends persist, price beak-even with conventional cars may be reached after another 7 ± 1 million electric cars and 5 ± 1 million plug-in hybrids are produced. The user costs of electric and plug-in hybrid cars relative to their conventional counterparts are declining annually by 14% and 26%. Also the costs for mitigating CO2 and air pollutant emissions through the deployment of electrified cars tend to decline. However, at current levels, NOX and particle emissions are still mitigated at lower costs by state-of-the-art after-treatment systems than through the electrification of powertrains. Overall, the observation of robust technological learning suggests policy makers should focus their support on non-cost market barriers for the electrification of road transport, addressing specifically the availability of recharging infrastructure.
Fuzzy system based on two-step cascade genetic optimization strategy for tobacco tar prediction
(2019)
There are many challenges in accurately measuring cigarette tar constituents. These include the need for standardized smoke generation methods related to unstable mixtures. In this research were developed algorithms using fusion of artificial intelligence methods to predict tar concentration. Outputs of development are three fuzzy structures optimized with genetic algorithms resulting in genetic algorithm (GA)-FUZZY, GA-adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), GA-GA-FUZZY algorithms. Proposed algorithms are used for the tar prediction in the cigarette production process. The results of prediction are compared with gas chromatograph (high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)) readings.
We present the concrete realization of a virtual laboratory equipped with a pedagogical agent. Its functionality and media didactics takes into account the results of an usability test on a prototype system, and the students' demand on such an automated assistance as obtained from a preliminary survey. The pedagogical agent mediates between the content and the learner by activating him or her. To provide information about the learner's skills, we propose a pragmatic and simplified competence model that is based on fundamental representations in physics (experiment, figure, text and equation). Moreover, an automated feedback relates the student's self-assessment with the submitted answer to the correctness of the respective task. In consequence, the pedagogical agent enables mental reflection for a crucial review of the own learning process. Interestingly, learning pathways can be envisioned, thus, giving valuable insight into individual strengths and weaknesses.
Passenger cars in Europe have become both heavier and more powerful over the past decades. This trend has increased vehicle utility but it might have also offset technical improvements in powertrain efficiency. Here, we analyze efficiency trade-offs and CO2 emissions for three popular compact cars in Germany. We find that mass, power, and front area of model variants has increased by 66%, 147%, and 22%, respectively between 1980 and 2018. In the same period, fuel consumption decreased 14% for gasoline models but it increased 9% for diesel models. However, if vehicle mass, power, and front area had remained at 1980 levels, technical efficiency improvements would have decreased the fuel consumption of gasoline and diesel models by 23% and 24%, respectively. The related efficiency trade-offs amount to 24 g CO2/km or 13% of the current fuel consumption for gasoline models and 40 g CO2/km or 25% of the current fuel consumption for diesel models. These findings suggest that about half of the technical efficiency improvements in gasoline models and all of the technical efficiency improvements in diesel models are offset through other vehicle attributes. By accounting for the observed efficiency trade-offs, climate policy could become more effective.
A new comprehensive evaluation system presented here allows to compare and to quantify education for a sustainable development (ESD) in degree programs. The evaluation is based on a criteria system working with three hierarchic levels. The highest level considers a list of 35 indicator terms. Primarily, the two most popular undergraduate (bachelor’s) degree programs in Germany (mechanical engineering, ME, and business administration, BA) have been reviewed for ESD contents based on the new evaluation scheme. Additionally we reviewed and quantified ESD subjects and their temporal changes in the entire bandwidth of degree programs of a university (Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld, University of Applied Sciences Trier), back to 1999. Moreover, a spot check on international ME and BA bachelor’s degree programs was performed. Through our reviews, we found a high number of elective classes dedicated to ESD particularly in BA bachelor programs. However, the percentage of compulsory classes related to ESD is relatively low with 5-6 % in both ME and BA programs, respectively. The spot check on degree programs outside Germany revealed similar results. Analysing the time trend at Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld, a considerable share of ESD that was part of the original diploma degrees was moved to what are now master’s degrees.