Global region-based active contours, like the Chan-Vese model, often make strong assumptions on the intensity distributions of the searched object and background, preventing their use in natural images. We introduce a more flexible local region energy achieving a trade-off between local features of gradient-like terms and global region features . Relying on the theory of parallel curves, we def...

Background: This study aimed to assess the pattern of hygienic behaviors of Iranian children and adolescents at national and sub-national levels according to the socioeconomic status (SES) of their living region.   Methods: Data were obtained from the fourth national school-based surveillance survey entitled, “CASPIAN-IV study” (2011-2012). It was conducted among 14,880 stud...

Deaf and hearing-impaired people capture information in video through visual content and captions. Those activities require different visual attention strategies and up to now, little is known on how caption readers balance these two visual attention demands. Understanding these strategies could suggest more efficient ways of producing captions. Eye tracking and attention overload detections ar...

Concrete is a long-lasting and less energy consuming construction material than steel and Aluminum. However, the concrete industry is the single largest consumer of natural resources. Several places around the world are facing faster rates of depletion of the resources needed for the manufacturing of portland cement, mining of aggregates, and water for making concrete. Each one of these materia...

Resource depletion and global warming dictate needs to reduce energy consumption, however energy used for the environmental space conditioning of buildings remains substantial; even in well-designed examples. Therefore the ways in which buildings are utilized, and occupant expectations of comfort in building environments should be researched to determine alternative means for optimizing perform...

It is well-known that HCFC refrigerants widely used in today’s air conditioning and refrigeration (AC&R) industry will soon be phased out, mainly due to their ozone depletion potentials (ODPs) and global warming potentials (GWPs). The timetable established through international agreement and national legislation calls for a 65% reduction of HCFC consumption based on 1989 level by January 1, 201...

Dehumidification is the process of removing the water vapour from the air. The outside humid air consists of sensible heat load and latent heat load [1]. In conventional system the dehumidification is done by vapour compression system. The sensible heat of the air is removed by reducing the temperature of the air but the latent heat load is removed by cooling the air below dew point temperature...

Introduction Developing countries which suffer from several technical and technological weaknesses and of under-developed socio-economic systems, also face energy shortages and inefficient energy systems. This situation gets worse if we take into account the high population growth rate in these countries. Such an enormous increase in population leads to a scramble for limited energy resources a...

The growth is impending concern, face to ‹ecology› musts of over-depletion/pollution. The technology-driven key is in ‹robot age› implements, by ‹to de-materialise› and ‹to re-materialise› goals. The paper draws on topics outlined in recent investigation of the authors, with the guess that progress is artificial man conquest, whose consistency cooks up transcendental (God benignity) or immanent...

This paper presents a study on image pixels using block positioning pixel subtraction technique to analyse the changes that occur in that region of interest. The changes that happen in the pixels represent the motion translation. Processing a whole video sequence in order to view a certain area of interest will increase the computational and processing time. In order to avoid this situation, th...