Abstract

Abstract
The Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a medical tool that captures, in a non-invasive way, electrical signals from the brain activities performed by neurons. EEG signals have been the target of study as a biomarker of Parkinsons disease (PD), where several methods of analysis are applied. The present work aims to evaluate features extracted from EEG signals, through methodologies such as HOS, Haralick descriptors, and Fractal Features, as new biomarkers for PD identification. Data from 50 individuals, available at the Open Neuro repository, who underwent an attentional cognitive task were analyzed. RF and SVM algorithms were employed for the classification of the extracted features. The best accuracy achieved was 79.49% in differentiating between Parkinsons subjects and control subjects using Haralick descriptors and RF classifier, suggesting that these features can identify activations in brain areas caused by dopaminergic medication.

Abstract
Objective: Health inequities can be influenced by demographic factors such as race and ethnicity, proficiency in English, and biological sex. Disparities may manifest as differential likelihood of testing which correlates directly with the likelihood of an intervention to address an abnormal finding. Our retrospective observational study evaluated the presence of variation in glucose measurements in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Methods: Using the MIMIC-IV database (2008-2019), a single -center, academic referral hospital in Boston (USA), we identified adult patients meeting sepsis-3 criteria. Exclusion criteria were diabetic ketoacidosis, ICU length of stay under 1 day, and unknown race or ethnicity. We performed a logistic regression analysis to assess differential likelihoods of glucose measurements on day 1. A negative binomial regression was fitted to assess the frequency of subsequent glucose readings. Analyses were adjusted for relevant clinical confounders, and performed across three disparity proxy axes: race and ethnicity, sex, and English proficiency. Results: We studied 24,927 patients, of which 19.5% represented racial and ethnic minority groups, 42.4% were female, and 9.8% had limited English proficiency. No significant differences were found for glucose measurement on day 1 in the ICU. This pattern was consistent irrespective of the axis of analysis, i.e. race and ethnicity, sex, or English proficiency. Conversely, subsequent measurement frequency revealed potential disparities. Specifically, males (incidence rate ratio (IRR) 1.06, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01 - 1.21), patients who identify themselves as Hispanic (IRR 1.11, 95% CI 1.01 - 1.21), or Black (IRR 1.06, 95% CI 1.01 - 1.12), and patients being English proficient (IRR 1.08, 95% CI 1.01 - 1.15) had higher chances of subsequent glucose readings. Conclusion: We found disparities in ICU glucose measurements among patients with sepsis, albeit the magnitude was small. Variation in disease monitoring is a source of data bias that may lead to spurious correlations when modeling health data.

Abstract
The notable expansion of technologies related to automated processes has been observed in recent years, largely driven by the significant advantages they provide across diverse industries. Concurrently, there has been a rise in simulation technologies aimed at replicating these complex systems. Nevertheless, in order to fully leverage the potential of these technologies, it is crucial to ensure the highest possible resemblance of simulations to real-world scenarios. In brief, this work consists of the development of a data acquisition and processing pipeline allowing a posterior search for the optimal physical parameters in MuJoCo simulator to obtain a more accurate simulation of a dexterous robotic hand. In the end, a Random Search optimization algorithm was used to validate this same pipeline.

Abstract

Abstract
The widespread use of smartphones and other low-cost equipment as recording devices, the massive growth in bandwidth, and the ever-growing demand for new applications with enhanced capabilities, made visual data a must in several scenarios, including surveillance, sports, retail, entertainment, and intelligent vehicles. Despite significant advances in analyzing and extracting data from images and video, there is a lack of solutions able to analyze and semantically describe the information in the visual scene so that it can be efficiently used and repurposed. Scientific contributions have focused on individual aspects or addressing specific problems and application areas, and no cross-domain solution is available to implement a complete system that enables information passing between cross-cutting algorithms. This paper analyses the problem from an end-to-end perspective, i.e., from the visual scene analysis to the representation of information in a virtual environment, including how the extracted data can be described and stored. A simple processing pipeline is introduced to set up a structure for discussing challenges and opportunities in different steps of the entire process, allowing to identify current gaps in the literature. The work reviews various technologies specifically from the perspective of their applicability to an end-to-end pipeline for scene analysis and synthesis, along with an extensive analysis of datasets for relevant tasks.