Age and gender estimation using Region-SIFT and multi-layered SVM

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Hyunduk; Lee, Sang-Heon; Sohn, Myoung-Kyu; Hwang, Byunghun

2018-04-01

In this paper, we propose an age and gender estimation framework using the region-SIFT feature and multi-layered SVM classifier. The suggested framework entails three processes. The first step is landmark based face alignment. The second step is the feature extraction step. In this step, we introduce the region-SIFT feature extraction method based on facial landmarks. First, we define sub-regions of the face. We then extract SIFT features from each sub-region. In order to reduce the dimensions of features we employ a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and a Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). Finally, we classify age and gender using a multi-layered Support Vector Machines (SVM) for efficient classification. Rather than performing gender estimation and age estimation independently, the use of the multi-layered SVM can improve the classification rate by constructing a classifier that estimate the age according to gender. Moreover, we collect a dataset of face images, called by DGIST_C, from the internet. A performance evaluation of proposed method was performed with the FERET database, CACD database, and DGIST_C database. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach classifies age and performs gender estimation very efficiently and accurately.

Face recognition: database acquisition, hybrid algorithms, and human studies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gutta, Srinivas; Huang, Jeffrey R.; Singh, Dig; Wechsler, Harry

1997-02-01

One of the most important technologies absent in traditional and emerging frontiers of computing is the management of visual information. Faces are accessible `windows' into the mechanisms that govern our emotional and social lives. The corresponding face recognition tasks considered herein include: (1) Surveillance, (2) CBIR, and (3) CBIR subject to correct ID (`match') displaying specific facial landmarks such as wearing glasses. We developed robust matching (`classification') and retrieval schemes based on hybrid classifiers and showed their feasibility using the FERET database. The hybrid classifier architecture consist of an ensemble of connectionist networks--radial basis functions-- and decision trees. The specific characteristics of our hybrid architecture include (a) query by consensus as provided by ensembles of networks for coping with the inherent variability of the image formation and data acquisition process, and (b) flexible and adaptive thresholds as opposed to ad hoc and hard thresholds. Experimental results, proving the feasibility of our approach, yield (i) 96% accuracy, using cross validation (CV), for surveillance on a data base consisting of 904 images (ii) 97% accuracy for CBIR tasks, on a database of 1084 images, and (iii) 93% accuracy, using CV, for CBIR subject to correct ID match tasks on a data base of 200 images.

Maximal likelihood correspondence estimation for face recognition across pose.

PubMed

Li, Shaoxin; Liu, Xin; Chai, Xiujuan; Zhang, Haihong; Lao, Shihong; Shan, Shiguang

2014-10-01

Due to the misalignment of image features, the performance of many conventional face recognition methods degrades considerably in across pose scenario. To address this problem, many image matching-based methods are proposed to estimate semantic correspondence between faces in different poses. In this paper, we aim to solve two critical problems in previous image matching-based correspondence learning methods: 1) fail to fully exploit face specific structure information in correspondence estimation and 2) fail to learn personalized correspondence for each probe image. To this end, we first build a model, termed as morphable displacement field (MDF), to encode face specific structure information of semantic correspondence from a set of real samples of correspondences calculated from 3D face models. Then, we propose a maximal likelihood correspondence estimation (MLCE) method to learn personalized correspondence based on maximal likelihood frontal face assumption. After obtaining the semantic correspondence encoded in the learned displacement, we can synthesize virtual frontal images of the profile faces for subsequent recognition. Using linear discriminant analysis method with pixel-intensity features, state-of-the-art performance is achieved on three multipose benchmarks, i.e., CMU-PIE, FERET, and MultiPIE databases. Owe to the rational MDF regularization and the usage of novel maximal likelihood objective, the proposed MLCE method can reliably learn correspondence between faces in different poses even in complex wild environment, i.e., labeled face in the wild database.

Robust kernel representation with statistical local features for face recognition.

PubMed

Yang, Meng; Zhang, Lei; Shiu, Simon Chi-Keung; Zhang, David

2013-06-01

Factors such as misalignment, pose variation, and occlusion make robust face recognition a difficult problem. It is known that statistical features such as local binary pattern are effective for local feature extraction, whereas the recently proposed sparse or collaborative representation-based classification has shown interesting results in robust face recognition. In this paper, we propose a novel robust kernel representation model with statistical local features (SLF) for robust face recognition. Initially, multipartition max pooling is used to enhance the invariance of SLF to image registration error. Then, a kernel-based representation model is proposed to fully exploit the discrimination information embedded in the SLF, and robust regression is adopted to effectively handle the occlusion in face images. Extensive experiments are conducted on benchmark face databases, including extended Yale B, AR (A. Martinez and R. Benavente), multiple pose, illumination, and expression (multi-PIE), facial recognition technology (FERET), face recognition grand challenge (FRGC), and labeled faces in the wild (LFW), which have different variations of lighting, expression, pose, and occlusions, demonstrating the promising performance of the proposed method.

Face recognition using total margin-based adaptive fuzzy support vector machines.

PubMed

Liu, Yi-Hung; Chen, Yen-Ting

2007-01-01

This paper presents a new classifier called total margin-based adaptive fuzzy support vector machines (TAF-SVM) that deals with several problems that may occur in support vector machines (SVMs) when applied to the face recognition. The proposed TAF-SVM not only solves the overfitting problem resulted from the outlier with the approach of fuzzification of the penalty, but also corrects the skew of the optimal separating hyperplane due to the very imbalanced data sets by using different cost algorithm. In addition, by introducing the total margin algorithm to replace the conventional soft margin algorithm, a lower generalization error bound can be obtained. Those three functions are embodied into the traditional SVM so that the TAF-SVM is proposed and reformulated in both linear and nonlinear cases. By using two databases, the Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU) multiview and the facial recognition technology (FERET) face databases, and using the kernel Fisher's discriminant analysis (KFDA) algorithm to extract discriminating face features, experimental results show that the proposed TAF-SVM is superior to SVM in terms of the face-recognition accuracy. The results also indicate that the proposed TAF-SVM can achieve smaller error variances than SVM over a number of tests such that better recognition stability can be obtained.

Face biometrics with renewable templates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

van der Veen, Michiel; Kevenaar, Tom; Schrijen, Geert-Jan; Akkermans, Ton H.; Zuo, Fei

2006-02-01

In recent literature, privacy protection technologies for biometric templates were proposed. Among these is the so-called helper-data system (HDS) based on reliable component selection. In this paper we integrate this approach with face biometrics such that we achieve a system in which the templates are privacy protected, and multiple templates can be derived from the same facial image for the purpose of template renewability. Extracting binary feature vectors forms an essential step in this process. Using the FERET and Caltech databases, we show that this quantization step does not significantly degrade the classification performance compared to, for example, traditional correlation-based classifiers. The binary feature vectors are integrated in the HDS leading to a privacy protected facial recognition algorithm with acceptable FAR and FRR, provided that the intra-class variation is sufficiently small. This suggests that a controlled enrollment procedure with a sufficient number of enrollment measurements is required.

Progressive sparse representation-based classification using local discrete cosine transform evaluation for image recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Song, Xiaoning; Feng, Zhen-Hua; Hu, Guosheng; Yang, Xibei; Yang, Jingyu; Qi, Yunsong

2015-09-01

This paper proposes a progressive sparse representation-based classification algorithm using local discrete cosine transform (DCT) evaluation to perform face recognition. Specifically, the sum of the contributions of all training samples of each subject is first taken as the contribution of this subject, then the redundant subject with the smallest contribution to the test sample is iteratively eliminated. Second, the progressive method aims at representing the test sample as a linear combination of all the remaining training samples, by which the representation capability of each training sample is exploited to determine the optimal "nearest neighbors" for the test sample. Third, the transformed DCT evaluation is constructed to measure the similarity between the test sample and each local training sample using cosine distance metrics in the DCT domain. The final goal of the proposed method is to determine an optimal weighted sum of nearest neighbors that are obtained under the local correlative degree evaluation, which is approximately equal to the test sample, and we can use this weighted linear combination to perform robust classification. Experimental results conducted on the ORL database of faces (created by the Olivetti Research Laboratory in Cambridge), the FERET face database (managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology), AR face database (created by Aleix Martinez and Robert Benavente in the Computer Vision Center at U.A.B), and USPS handwritten digit database (gathered at the Center of Excellence in Document Analysis and Recognition at SUNY Buffalo) demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Supervised orthogonal discriminant subspace projects learning for face recognition.

PubMed

Chen, Yu; Xu, Xiao-Hong

2014-02-01

In this paper, a new linear dimension reduction method called supervised orthogonal discriminant subspace projection (SODSP) is proposed, which addresses high-dimensionality of data and the small sample size problem. More specifically, given a set of data points in the ambient space, a novel weight matrix that describes the relationship between the data points is first built. And in order to model the manifold structure, the class information is incorporated into the weight matrix. Based on the novel weight matrix, the local scatter matrix as well as non-local scatter matrix is defined such that the neighborhood structure can be preserved. In order to enhance the recognition ability, we impose an orthogonal constraint into a graph-based maximum margin analysis, seeking to find a projection that maximizes the difference, rather than the ratio between the non-local scatter and the local scatter. In this way, SODSP naturally avoids the singularity problem. Further, we develop an efficient and stable algorithm for implementing SODSP, especially, on high-dimensional data set. Moreover, the theoretical analysis shows that LPP is a special instance of SODSP by imposing some constraints. Experiments on the ORL, Yale, Extended Yale face database B and FERET face database are performed to test and evaluate the proposed algorithm. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of SODSP. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Robust kernel collaborative representation for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Wei; Wang, Xiaohui; Ma, Yanbo; Jiang, Yuzheng; Zhu, Yinghui; Jin, Zhong

2015-05-01

One of the greatest challenges of representation-based face recognition is that the training samples are usually insufficient. In other words, the training set usually does not include enough samples to show varieties of high-dimensional face images caused by illuminations, facial expressions, and postures. When the test sample is significantly different from the training samples of the same subject, the recognition performance will be sharply reduced. We propose a robust kernel collaborative representation based on virtual samples for face recognition. We think that the virtual training set conveys some reasonable and possible variations of the original training samples. Hence, we design a new object function to more closely match the representation coefficients generated from the original and virtual training sets. In order to further improve the robustness, we implement the corresponding representation-based face recognition in kernel space. It is noteworthy that any kind of virtual training samples can be used in our method. We use noised face images to obtain virtual face samples. The noise can be approximately viewed as a reflection of the varieties of illuminations, facial expressions, and postures. Our work is a simple and feasible way to obtain virtual face samples to impose Gaussian noise (and other types of noise) specifically to the original training samples to obtain possible variations of the original samples. Experimental results on the FERET, Georgia Tech, and ORL face databases show that the proposed method is more robust than two state-of-the-art face recognition methods, such as CRC and Kernel CRC.

Component-based subspace linear discriminant analysis method for face recognition with one training sample

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Jian; Yuen, Pong C.; Chen, Wen-Sheng; Lai, J. H.

2005-05-01

Many face recognition algorithms/systems have been developed in the last decade and excellent performances have also been reported when there is a sufficient number of representative training samples. In many real-life applications such as passport identification, only one well-controlled frontal sample image is available for training. Under this situation, the performance of existing algorithms will degrade dramatically or may not even be implemented. We propose a component-based linear discriminant analysis (LDA) method to solve the one training sample problem. The basic idea of the proposed method is to construct local facial feature component bunches by moving each local feature region in four directions. In this way, we not only generate more samples with lower dimension than the original image, but also consider the face detection localization error while training. After that, we propose a subspace LDA method, which is tailor-made for a small number of training samples, for the local feature projection to maximize the discrimination power. Theoretical analysis and experiment results show that our proposed subspace LDA is efficient and overcomes the limitations in existing LDA methods. Finally, we combine the contributions of each local component bunch with a weighted combination scheme to draw the recognition decision. A FERET database is used for evaluating the proposed method and results are encouraging.

Adaptive gamma correction-based expert system for nonuniform illumination face enhancement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abdelhamid, Iratni; Mustapha, Aouache; Adel, Oulefki

2018-03-01

The image quality of a face recognition system suffers under severe lighting conditions. Thus, this study aims to develop an approach for nonuniform illumination adjustment based on an adaptive gamma correction (AdaptGC) filter that can solve the aforementioned issue. An approach for adaptive gain factor prediction was developed via neural network model-based cross-validation (NN-CV). To achieve this objective, a gamma correction function and its effects on the face image quality with different gain values were examined first. Second, an orientation histogram (OH) algorithm was assessed as a face's feature descriptor. Subsequently, a density histogram module was developed for face label generation. During the NN-CV construction, the model was assessed to recognize the OH descriptor and predict the face label. The performance of the NN-CV model was evaluated by examining the statistical measures of root mean square error and coefficient of efficiency. Third, to evaluate the AdaptGC enhancement approach, an image quality metric was adopted using enhancement by entropy, contrast per pixel, second-derivative-like measure of enhancement, and sharpness, then supported by visual inspection. The experiment results were examined using five face's databases, namely, extended Yale-B, Carnegie Mellon University-Pose, Illumination, and Expression, Mobio, FERET, and Oulu-CASIA-NIR-VIS. The final results prove that AdaptGC filter implementation compared with state-of-the-art methods is the best choice in terms of contrast and nonuniform illumination adjustment. In summary, the benefits attained prove that AdaptGC is driven by a profitable enhancement rate, which provides satisfying features for high rate face recognition systems.

Face Recognition Vendor Test 2000: Evaluation Report

DTIC Science & Technology

2001-02-16

The biggest change in the facial recognition community since the completion of the FERET program has been the introduction of facial recognition products...program and significantly lowered system costs. Today there are dozens of facial recognition systems available that have the potential to meet...inquiries from numerous government agencies on the current state of facial recognition technology prompted the DoD Counterdrug Technology Development Program

PCANet: A Simple Deep Learning Baseline for Image Classification?

PubMed

Chan, Tsung-Han; Jia, Kui; Gao, Shenghua; Lu, Jiwen; Zeng, Zinan; Ma, Yi

2015-12-01

In this paper, we propose a very simple deep learning network for image classification that is based on very basic data processing components: 1) cascaded principal component analysis (PCA); 2) binary hashing; and 3) blockwise histograms. In the proposed architecture, the PCA is employed to learn multistage filter banks. This is followed by simple binary hashing and block histograms for indexing and pooling. This architecture is thus called the PCA network (PCANet) and can be extremely easily and efficiently designed and learned. For comparison and to provide a better understanding, we also introduce and study two simple variations of PCANet: 1) RandNet and 2) LDANet. They share the same topology as PCANet, but their cascaded filters are either randomly selected or learned from linear discriminant analysis. We have extensively tested these basic networks on many benchmark visual data sets for different tasks, including Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) for face verification; the MultiPIE, Extended Yale B, AR, Facial Recognition Technology (FERET) data sets for face recognition; and MNIST for hand-written digit recognition. Surprisingly, for all tasks, such a seemingly naive PCANet model is on par with the state-of-the-art features either prefixed, highly hand-crafted, or carefully learned [by deep neural networks (DNNs)]. Even more surprisingly, the model sets new records for many classification tasks on the Extended Yale B, AR, and FERET data sets and on MNIST variations. Additional experiments on other public data sets also demonstrate the potential of PCANet to serve as a simple but highly competitive baseline for texture classification and object recognition.

Learning Low-Rank Class-Specific Dictionary and Sparse Intra-Class Variant Dictionary for Face Recognition.

PubMed

Tang, Xin; Feng, Guo-Can; Li, Xiao-Xin; Cai, Jia-Xin

2015-01-01

Face recognition is challenging especially when the images from different persons are similar to each other due to variations in illumination, expression, and occlusion. If we have sufficient training images of each person which can span the facial variations of that person under testing conditions, sparse representation based classification (SRC) achieves very promising results. However, in many applications, face recognition often encounters the small sample size problem arising from the small number of available training images for each person. In this paper, we present a novel face recognition framework by utilizing low-rank and sparse error matrix decomposition, and sparse coding techniques (LRSE+SC). Firstly, the low-rank matrix recovery technique is applied to decompose the face images per class into a low-rank matrix and a sparse error matrix. The low-rank matrix of each individual is a class-specific dictionary and it captures the discriminative feature of this individual. The sparse error matrix represents the intra-class variations, such as illumination, expression changes. Secondly, we combine the low-rank part (representative basis) of each person into a supervised dictionary and integrate all the sparse error matrix of each individual into a within-individual variant dictionary which can be applied to represent the possible variations between the testing and training images. Then these two dictionaries are used to code the query image. The within-individual variant dictionary can be shared by all the subjects and only contribute to explain the lighting conditions, expressions, and occlusions of the query image rather than discrimination. At last, a reconstruction-based scheme is adopted for face recognition. Since the within-individual dictionary is introduced, LRSE+SC can handle the problem of the corrupted training data and the situation that not all subjects have enough samples for training. Experimental results show that our method achieves the state-of-the-art results on AR, FERET, FRGC and LFW databases.

Learning Low-Rank Class-Specific Dictionary and Sparse Intra-Class Variant Dictionary for Face Recognition

PubMed Central

Tang, Xin; Feng, Guo-can; Li, Xiao-xin; Cai, Jia-xin

2015-01-01

Face recognition is challenging especially when the images from different persons are similar to each other due to variations in illumination, expression, and occlusion. If we have sufficient training images of each person which can span the facial variations of that person under testing conditions, sparse representation based classification (SRC) achieves very promising results. However, in many applications, face recognition often encounters the small sample size problem arising from the small number of available training images for each person. In this paper, we present a novel face recognition framework by utilizing low-rank and sparse error matrix decomposition, and sparse coding techniques (LRSE+SC). Firstly, the low-rank matrix recovery technique is applied to decompose the face images per class into a low-rank matrix and a sparse error matrix. The low-rank matrix of each individual is a class-specific dictionary and it captures the discriminative feature of this individual. The sparse error matrix represents the intra-class variations, such as illumination, expression changes. Secondly, we combine the low-rank part (representative basis) of each person into a supervised dictionary and integrate all the sparse error matrix of each individual into a within-individual variant dictionary which can be applied to represent the possible variations between the testing and training images. Then these two dictionaries are used to code the query image. The within-individual variant dictionary can be shared by all the subjects and only contribute to explain the lighting conditions, expressions, and occlusions of the query image rather than discrimination. At last, a reconstruction-based scheme is adopted for face recognition. Since the within-individual dictionary is introduced, LRSE+SC can handle the problem of the corrupted training data and the situation that not all subjects have enough samples for training. Experimental results show that our method achieves the state-of-the-art results on AR, FERET, FRGC and LFW databases. PMID:26571112

A multiple maximum scatter difference discriminant criterion for facial feature extraction.

PubMed

Song, Fengxi; Zhang, David; Mei, Dayong; Guo, Zhongwei

2007-12-01

Maximum scatter difference (MSD) discriminant criterion was a recently presented binary discriminant criterion for pattern classification that utilizes the generalized scatter difference rather than the generalized Rayleigh quotient as a class separability measure, thereby avoiding the singularity problem when addressing small-sample-size problems. MSD classifiers based on this criterion have been quite effective on face-recognition tasks, but as they are binary classifiers, they are not as efficient on large-scale classification tasks. To address the problem, this paper generalizes the classification-oriented binary criterion to its multiple counterpart--multiple MSD (MMSD) discriminant criterion for facial feature extraction. The MMSD feature-extraction method, which is based on this novel discriminant criterion, is a new subspace-based feature-extraction method. Unlike most other subspace-based feature-extraction methods, the MMSD computes its discriminant vectors from both the range of the between-class scatter matrix and the null space of the within-class scatter matrix. The MMSD is theoretically elegant and easy to calculate. Extensive experimental studies conducted on the benchmark database, FERET, show that the MMSD out-performs state-of-the-art facial feature-extraction methods such as null space method, direct linear discriminant analysis (LDA), eigenface, Fisherface, and complete LDA.

Analysis of microstructures and macrotextures for different apple cultivars based on parenchyma morphology.

PubMed

Hou, Jumin; Sun, Yonghai; Chen, Fangyuan; Yu, Libo; Mao, Qian; Wang, Lu; Guo, Xiaolei; Liu, Chao

2016-04-01

Fuji, Golden Delicious, and Jonagold parenchyma were imaged by confocal laser scanning microscopy to be extracted morphology characteristics, which were used to analyze the relationship with macrotexture of apples tested by penetration and compression. Before analyzing the relationship, the significantly different morphology parameters were reduced in dimensions by principal component analysis and were proved to be availably used for distinguishing the different apple cultivars. For compression results, cell did not absolutely determine the hardness in different apple cultivars, and the pore should also be taken into consideration. With the same size in cell feret diameter, the bigger the pore feret diameter was, the softer the apple became. If no difference existed in pore feret diameter size, the cultivar became harder with a narrower distribution in cell feret diameter. The texture parameters were compared with the roundness parameters in the same or inverse changing trends to explore the relationship. High correlations were found between the texture parameters (energy required in whole penetration (Wt), fracture force (Fp), crispness) and pore solidity (R(2)  > 0.924, P < 0.001). Compactness of parenchyma played an important role in fruit texture. This research could provide the comprehension about relationship between microstructure and macrotexture of apple cultivars and morphological values for modeling apple parenchyma, contributing to numerical simulation for constitutive relation of fruit. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Face recognition by applying wavelet subband representation and kernel associative memory.

PubMed

Zhang, Bai-Ling; Zhang, Haihong; Ge, Shuzhi Sam

2004-01-01

In this paper, we propose an efficient face recognition scheme which has two features: 1) representation of face images by two-dimensional (2-D) wavelet subband coefficients and 2) recognition by a modular, personalised classification method based on kernel associative memory models. Compared to PCA projections and low resolution "thumb-nail" image representations, wavelet subband coefficients can efficiently capture substantial facial features while keeping computational complexity low. As there are usually very limited samples, we constructed an associative memory (AM) model for each person and proposed to improve the performance of AM models by kernel methods. Specifically, we first applied kernel transforms to each possible training pair of faces sample and then mapped the high-dimensional feature space back to input space. Our scheme using modular autoassociative memory for face recognition is inspired by the same motivation as using autoencoders for optical character recognition (OCR), for which the advantages has been proven. By associative memory, all the prototypical faces of one particular person are used to reconstruct themselves and the reconstruction error for a probe face image is used to decide if the probe face is from the corresponding person. We carried out extensive experiments on three standard face recognition datasets, the FERET data, the XM2VTS data, and the ORL data. Detailed comparisons with earlier published results are provided and our proposed scheme offers better recognition accuracy on all of the face datasets.

Facial Asymmetry-Based Age Group Estimation: Role in Recognizing Age-Separated Face Images.

PubMed

Sajid, Muhammad; Taj, Imtiaz Ahmad; Bajwa, Usama Ijaz; Ratyal, Naeem Iqbal

2018-04-23

Face recognition aims to establish the identity of a person based on facial characteristics. On the other hand, age group estimation is the automatic calculation of an individual's age range based on facial features. Recognizing age-separated face images is still a challenging research problem due to complex aging processes involving different types of facial tissues, skin, fat, muscles, and bones. Certain holistic and local facial features are used to recognize age-separated face images. However, most of the existing methods recognize face images without incorporating the knowledge learned from age group estimation. In this paper, we propose an age-assisted face recognition approach to handle aging variations. Inspired by the observation that facial asymmetry is an age-dependent intrinsic facial feature, we first use asymmetric facial dimensions to estimate the age group of a given face image. Deeply learned asymmetric facial features are then extracted for face recognition using a deep convolutional neural network (dCNN). Finally, we integrate the knowledge learned from the age group estimation into the face recognition algorithm using the same dCNN. This integration results in a significant improvement in the overall performance compared to using the face recognition algorithm alone. The experimental results on two large facial aging datasets, the MORPH and FERET sets, show that the proposed age group estimation based on the face recognition approach yields superior performance compared to some existing state-of-the-art methods. © 2018 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Learning Robust and Discriminative Subspace With Low-Rank Constraints.

PubMed

Li, Sheng; Fu, Yun

2016-11-01

In this paper, we aim at learning robust and discriminative subspaces from noisy data. Subspace learning is widely used in extracting discriminative features for classification. However, when data are contaminated with severe noise, the performance of most existing subspace learning methods would be limited. Recent advances in low-rank modeling provide effective solutions for removing noise or outliers contained in sample sets, which motivates us to take advantage of low-rank constraints in order to exploit robust and discriminative subspace for classification. In particular, we present a discriminative subspace learning method called the supervised regularization-based robust subspace (SRRS) approach, by incorporating the low-rank constraint. SRRS seeks low-rank representations from the noisy data, and learns a discriminative subspace from the recovered clean data jointly. A supervised regularization function is designed to make use of the class label information, and therefore to enhance the discriminability of subspace. Our approach is formulated as a constrained rank-minimization problem. We design an inexact augmented Lagrange multiplier optimization algorithm to solve it. Unlike the existing sparse representation and low-rank learning methods, our approach learns a low-dimensional subspace from recovered data, and explicitly incorporates the supervised information. Our approach and some baselines are evaluated on the COIL-100, ALOI, Extended YaleB, FERET, AR, and KinFace databases. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, especially when the data contain considerable noise or variations.

Optimized Periocular Template Selection for Human Recognition

PubMed Central

Sa, Pankaj K.; Majhi, Banshidhar

2013-01-01

A novel approach for selecting a rectangular template around periocular region optimally potential for human recognition is proposed. A comparatively larger template of periocular image than the optimal one can be slightly more potent for recognition, but the larger template heavily slows down the biometric system by making feature extraction computationally intensive and increasing the database size. A smaller template, on the contrary, cannot yield desirable recognition though the smaller template performs faster due to low computation for feature extraction. These two contradictory objectives (namely, (a) to minimize the size of periocular template and (b) to maximize the recognition through the template) are aimed to be optimized through the proposed research. This paper proposes four different approaches for dynamic optimal template selection from periocular region. The proposed methods are tested on publicly available unconstrained UBIRISv2 and FERET databases and satisfactory results have been achieved. Thus obtained template can be used for recognition of individuals in an organization and can be generalized to recognize every citizen of a nation. PMID:23984370

Lunar Regolith Particle Shape Analysis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kiekhaefer, Rebecca; Hardy, Sandra; Rickman, Douglas; Edmunson, Jennifer

2013-01-01

Future engineering of structures and equipment on the lunar surface requires significant understanding of particle characteristics of the lunar regolith. Nearly all sediment characteristics are influenced by particle shape; therefore a method of quantifying particle shape is useful both in lunar and terrestrial applications. We have created a method to quantify particle shape, specifically for lunar regolith, using image processing. Photomicrographs of thin sections of lunar core material were obtained under reflected light. Three photomicrographs were analyzed using ImageJ and MATLAB. From the image analysis measurements for area, perimeter, Feret diameter, orthogonal Feret diameter, Heywood factor, aspect ratio, sieve diameter, and sieve number were recorded. Probability distribution functions were created from the measurements of Heywood factor and aspect ratio.

Cascaded K-means convolutional feature learner and its application to face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Daoxiang; Yang, Dan; Zhang, Xiaohong; Huang, Sheng; Feng, Shu

2017-09-01

Currently, considerable efforts have been devoted to devise image representation. However, handcrafted methods need strong domain knowledge and show low generalization ability, and conventional feature learning methods require enormous training data and rich parameters tuning experience. A lightened feature learner is presented to solve these problems with application to face recognition, which shares similar topology architecture as a convolutional neural network. Our model is divided into three components: cascaded convolution filters bank learning layer, nonlinear processing layer, and feature pooling layer. Specifically, in the filters learning layer, we use K-means to learn convolution filters. Features are extracted via convoluting images with the learned filters. Afterward, in the nonlinear processing layer, hyperbolic tangent is employed to capture the nonlinear feature. In the feature pooling layer, to remove the redundancy information and incorporate the spatial layout, we exploit multilevel spatial pyramid second-order pooling technique to pool the features in subregions and concatenate them together as the final representation. Extensive experiments on four representative datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our model to various variations, yielding competitive recognition results on extended Yale B and FERET. In addition, our method achieves the best identification performance on AR and labeled faces in the wild datasets among the comparative methods.

Discriminant locality preserving projections based on L1-norm maximization.

PubMed

Zhong, Fujin; Zhang, Jiashu; Li, Defang

2014-11-01

Conventional discriminant locality preserving projection (DLPP) is a dimensionality reduction technique based on manifold learning, which has demonstrated good performance in pattern recognition. However, because its objective function is based on the distance criterion using L2-norm, conventional DLPP is not robust to outliers which are present in many applications. This paper proposes an effective and robust DLPP version based on L1-norm maximization, which learns a set of local optimal projection vectors by maximizing the ratio of the L1-norm-based locality preserving between-class dispersion and the L1-norm-based locality preserving within-class dispersion. The proposed method is proven to be feasible and also robust to outliers while overcoming the small sample size problem. The experimental results on artificial datasets, Binary Alphadigits dataset, FERET face dataset and PolyU palmprint dataset have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Optimization of chemical displacement deposition of copper on porous silicon.

PubMed

Bandarenka, Hanna; Redko, Sergey; Nenzi, Paolo; Balucani, Marco; Bondarenko, Vitaly

2012-11-01

Copper (II) sulfate was used as a source of copper to achieve uniform distribution of Cu particles deposited on porous silicon. Layers of the porous silicon were formed by electrochemical anodization of Si wafers in a mixture of HF, C3H7OH and deionized water. The well-known chemical displacement technique was modified to grow the copper particles of specific sizes. SEM and XRD analysis revealed that the outer surface of the porous silicon was covered with copper particles of the crystal orientation inherited from the planes of porous silicon skeleton. The copper crystals were found to have the cubic face centering elementary cell. In addition, the traces of Cu2O cubic primitive crystalline phases were identified. The dimensions of Cu particles were determined by the Feret's analysis of the SEM images. The sizes of the particles varied widely from a few to hundreds of nanometers. A phenomenological model of copper deposition was proposed.

Locally Linear Embedding of Local Orthogonal Least Squares Images for Face Recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hafizhelmi Kamaru Zaman, Fadhlan

2018-03-01

Dimensionality reduction is very important in face recognition since it ensures that high-dimensionality data can be mapped to lower dimensional space without losing salient and integral facial information. Locally Linear Embedding (LLE) has been previously used to serve this purpose, however, the process of acquiring LLE features requires high computation and resources. To overcome this limitation, we propose a locally-applied Local Orthogonal Least Squares (LOLS) model can be used as initial feature extraction before the application of LLE. By construction of least squares regression under orthogonal constraints we can preserve more discriminant information in the local subspace of facial features while reducing the overall features into a more compact form that we called LOLS images. LLE can then be applied on the LOLS images to maps its representation into a global coordinate system of much lower dimensionality. Several experiments carried out using publicly available face datasets such as AR, ORL, YaleB, and FERET under Single Sample Per Person (SSPP) constraint demonstrates that our proposed method can reduce the time required to compute LLE features while delivering better accuracy when compared to when either LLE or OLS alone is used. Comparison against several other feature extraction methods and more recent feature-learning method such as state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) also reveal the superiority of the proposed method under SSPP constraint.

Oil refinery dusts: morphological and size analysis by TEM.

PubMed

Sielicki, Przemysław; Janik, Helena; Guzman, Agnieszka; Broniszewski, Mieczysław; Namieśnik, Jacek

2011-03-01

The objectives of this work were to develop a means of sampling atmospheric dusts on the premises of an oil refinery for electron microscopic study to carry out preliminary morphological analyses and to compare these dusts with those collected at sites beyond the refinery limits. Carbon and collodion membranes were used as a support for collection of dust particles straight on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) grids. Micrographs of the dust particles were taken at magnifications from ×4,000 to ×80,000 with a Tesla BS500 transmission electron microscope. Four parameters were defined on the basis of the micrographs: surface area, Feret diameter, circumference, and shape coefficient. The micrographs and literature data were used to classify the atmospheric dusts into six groups: particles with an irregular shape and rounded edges; particles with an irregular shape and sharp edges; soot and its aggregates; spherical particles; singly occurring, ultrafine dust particles; and particles not allocated to any of the previous five groups. The types of dusts found in all the samples were similar, although differences did exist between the various morphological parameters. Dust particles with the largest Feret diameter were present in sample 3 (mean, 0.739 μm)-these were collected near the refinery's effluent treatment plant. The particles with the smallest diameter were found in the sample that had been intended to be a reference sample for the remaining results (mean, 0.326 μm). The dust particles collected in the refinery had larger mean Feret diameters, even 100% larger, than those collected beyond it. Particles with diameters from 0.1 to 0.2 μm made up the most numerous group in all the samples collected in the refinery.

Quantitative morphometric analysis of hepatocellular carcinoma: development of a programmed algorithm and preliminary application.

PubMed

Yap, Felix Y; Bui, James T; Knuttinen, M Grace; Walzer, Natasha M; Cotler, Scott J; Owens, Charles A; Berkes, Jamie L; Gaba, Ron C

2013-01-01

The quantitative relationship between tumor morphology and malignant potential has not been explored in liver tumors. We designed a computer algorithm to analyze shape features of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and tested feasibility of morphologic analysis. Cross-sectional images from 118 patients diagnosed with HCC between 2007 and 2010 were extracted at the widest index tumor diameter. The tumor margins were outlined, and point coordinates were input into a MATLAB (MathWorks Inc., Natick, Massachusetts, USA) algorithm. Twelve shape descriptors were calculated per tumor: the compactness, the mean radial distance (MRD), the RD standard deviation (RDSD), the RD area ratio (RDAR), the zero crossings, entropy, the mean Feret diameter (MFD), the Feret ratio, the convex hull area (CHA) and perimeter (CHP) ratios, the elliptic compactness (EC), and the elliptic irregularity (EI). The parameters were correlated with the levels of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) as an indicator of tumor aggressiveness. The quantitative morphometric analysis was technically successful in all cases. The mean parameters were as follows: compactness 0.88±0.086, MRD 0.83±0.056, RDSD 0.087±0.037, RDAR 0.045±0.023, zero crossings 6±2.2, entropy 1.43±0.16, MFD 4.40±3.14 cm, Feret ratio 0.78±0.089, CHA 0.98±0.027, CHP 0.98±0.030, EC 0.95±0.043, and EI 0.95±0.023. MFD and RDAR provided the widest value range for the best shape discrimination. The larger tumors were less compact, more concave, and less ellipsoid than the smaller tumors (P < 0.0001). AFP-producing tumors displayed greater morphologic irregularity based on several parameters, including compactness, MRD, RDSD, RDAR, entropy, and EI (P < 0.05 for all). Computerized HCC image analysis using shape descriptors is technically feasible. Aggressively growing tumors have wider diameters and more irregular margins. Future studies will determine further clinical applications for this morphologic analysis.

Using false colors to protect visual privacy of sensitive content

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ćiftçi, Serdar; Korshunov, Pavel; Akyüz, Ahmet O.; Ebrahimi, Touradj

2015-03-01

Many privacy protection tools have been proposed for preserving privacy. Tools for protection of visual privacy available today lack either all or some of the important properties that are expected from such tools. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a simple yet effective method for privacy protection based on false color visualization, which maps color palette of an image into a different color palette, possibly after a compressive point transformation of the original pixel data, distorting the details of the original image. This method does not require any prior face detection or other sensitive regions detection and, hence, unlike typical privacy protection methods, it is less sensitive to inaccurate computer vision algorithms. It is also secure as the look-up tables can be encrypted, reversible as table look-ups can be inverted, flexible as it is independent of format or encoding, adjustable as the final result can be computed by interpolating the false color image with the original using different degrees of interpolation, less distracting as it does not create visually unpleasant artifacts, and selective as it preserves better semantic structure of the input. Four different color scales and four different compression functions, one which the proposed method relies, are evaluated via objective (three face recognition algorithms) and subjective (50 human subjects in an online-based study) assessments using faces from FERET public dataset. The evaluations demonstrate that DEF and RBS color scales lead to the strongest privacy protection, while compression functions add little to the strength of privacy protection. Statistical analysis also shows that recognition algorithms and human subjects perceive the proposed protection similarly

Robust Eye Center Localization through Face Alignment and Invariant Isocentric Patterns

PubMed Central

Teng, Dongdong; Chen, Dihu; Tan, Hongzhou

2015-01-01

The localization of eye centers is a very useful cue for numerous applications like face recognition, facial expression recognition, and the early screening of neurological pathologies. Several methods relying on available light for accurate eye-center localization have been exploited. However, despite the considerable improvements that eye-center localization systems have undergone in recent years, only few of these developments deal with the challenges posed by the profile (non-frontal face). In this paper, we first use the explicit shape regression method to obtain the rough location of the eye centers. Because this method extracts global information from the human face, it is robust against any changes in the eye region. We exploit this robustness and utilize it as a constraint. To locate the eye centers accurately, we employ isophote curvature features, the accuracy of which has been demonstrated in a previous study. By applying these features, we obtain a series of eye-center locations which are candidates for the actual position of the eye-center. Among these locations, the estimated locations which minimize the reconstruction error between the two methods mentioned above are taken as the closest approximation for the eye centers locations. Therefore, we combine explicit shape regression and isophote curvature feature analysis to achieve robustness and accuracy, respectively. In practical experiments, we use BioID and FERET datasets to test our approach to obtaining an accurate eye-center location while retaining robustness against changes in scale and pose. In addition, we apply our method to non-frontal faces to test its robustness and accuracy, which are essential in gaze estimation but have seldom been mentioned in previous works. Through extensive experimentation, we show that the proposed method can achieve a significant improvement in accuracy and robustness over state-of-the-art techniques, with our method ranking second in terms of accuracy. According to our implementation on a PC with a Xeon 2.5Ghz CPU, the frame rate of the eye tracking process can achieve 38 Hz. PMID:26426929

System for face recognition under expression variations of neutral-sampled individuals using recognized expression warping and a virtual expression-face database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Petpairote, Chayanut; Madarasmi, Suthep; Chamnongthai, Kosin

2018-01-01

The practical identification of individuals using facial recognition techniques requires the matching of faces with specific expressions to faces from a neutral face database. A method for facial recognition under varied expressions against neutral face samples of individuals via recognition of expression warping and the use of a virtual expression-face database is proposed. In this method, facial expressions are recognized and the input expression faces are classified into facial expression groups. To aid facial recognition, the virtual expression-face database is sorted into average facial-expression shapes and by coarse- and fine-featured facial textures. Wrinkle information is also employed in classification by using a process of masking to adjust input faces to match the expression-face database. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method using the CMU multi-PIE, Cohn-Kanade, and AR expression-face databases, and we find that it provides significantly improved results in terms of face recognition accuracy compared to conventional methods and is acceptable for facial recognition under expression variation.

DeitY-TU face database: its design, multiple camera capturing, characteristics, and evaluation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhowmik, Mrinal Kanti; Saha, Kankan; Saha, Priya; Bhattacharjee, Debotosh

2014-10-01

The development of the latest face databases is providing researchers different and realistic problems that play an important role in the development of efficient algorithms for solving the difficulties during automatic recognition of human faces. This paper presents the creation of a new visual face database, named the Department of Electronics and Information Technology-Tripura University (DeitY-TU) face database. It contains face images of 524 persons belonging to different nontribes and Mongolian tribes of north-east India, with their anthropometric measurements for identification. Database images are captured within a room with controlled variations in illumination, expression, and pose along with variability in age, gender, accessories, make-up, and partial occlusion. Each image contains the combined primary challenges of face recognition, i.e., illumination, expression, and pose. This database also represents some new features: soft biometric traits such as mole, freckle, scar, etc., and facial anthropometric variations that may be helpful for researchers for biometric recognition. It also gives an equivalent study of the existing two-dimensional face image databases. The database has been tested using two baseline algorithms: linear discriminant analysis and principal component analysis, which may be used by other researchers as the control algorithm performance score.

Investigating the effect of suspensions nanostructure on the thermophysical properties of nanofluids

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tesfai, Waka; Singh, Pawan K.; Masharqa, Salim J. S.; Souier, Tewfik; Chiesa, Matteo; Shatilla, Youssef

2012-12-01

The effect of fractal dimensions and Feret diameter of aggregated nanoparticle on predicting the thermophysical properties of nanofluids is demonstrated. The fractal dimensions and Feret diameter distributions of particle agglomerates are quantified from scanning electron and probe microscope imaging of yttria nanofluids. The results are compared with the fractal dimensions calculated by fitting the rheological properties of yttria nanofluids against the modified Krieger-Dougherty model. Nanofluids of less than 1 vol. % particle loading are found to have fractal dimensions of below 1.8, which is typical for diffusion controlled cluster formation. By contrast, an increase in the particle loading increases the fractal dimension to 2.0-2.2. The fractal dimensions obtained from both methods are employed to predict the thermal conductivity of the nanofluids using the modified Maxwell-Garnet (M-G) model. The prediction from rheology is found inadequate and might lead up to 8% error in thermal conductivity for an improper choice of aspect ratio. Nevertheless, the prediction of the modified M-G model from the imaging is found to agree well with the experimentally observed effective thermal conductivity of the nanofluids. In addition, this study opens a new window on the study of aggregate kinetics, which is critical in tuning the properties of multiphase systems.

Atmospheric turbulence and sensor system effects on biometric algorithm performance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Espinola, Richard L.; Leonard, Kevin R.; Byrd, Kenneth A.; Potvin, Guy

2015-05-01

Biometric technologies composed of electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor systems and advanced matching algorithms are being used in various force protection/security and tactical surveillance applications. To date, most of these sensor systems have been widely used in controlled conditions with varying success (e.g., short range, uniform illumination, cooperative subjects). However the limiting conditions of such systems have yet to be fully studied for long range applications and degraded imaging environments. Biometric technologies used for long range applications will invariably suffer from the effects of atmospheric turbulence degradation. Atmospheric turbulence causes blur, distortion and intensity fluctuations that can severely degrade image quality of electro-optic and thermal imaging systems and, for the case of biometrics technology, translate to poor matching algorithm performance. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of atmospheric turbulence and sensor resolution on biometric matching algorithm performance. We use a subset of the Facial Recognition Technology (FERET) database and a commercial algorithm to analyze facial recognition performance on turbulence degraded facial images. The goal of this work is to understand the feasibility of long-range facial recognition in degraded imaging conditions, and the utility of camera parameter trade studies to enable the design of the next generation biometrics sensor systems.

The Dartmouth Database of Children’s Faces: Acquisition and Validation of a New Face Stimulus Set

PubMed Central

Dalrymple, Kirsten A.; Gomez, Jesse; Duchaine, Brad

2013-01-01

Facial identity and expression play critical roles in our social lives. Faces are therefore frequently used as stimuli in a variety of areas of scientific research. Although several extensive and well-controlled databases of adult faces exist, few databases include children’s faces. Here we present the Dartmouth Database of Children’s Faces, a set of photographs of 40 male and 40 female Caucasian children between 6 and 16 years-of-age. Models posed eight facial expressions and were photographed from five camera angles under two lighting conditions. Models wore black hats and black gowns to minimize extra-facial variables. To validate the images, independent raters identified facial expressions, rated their intensity, and provided an age estimate for each model. The Dartmouth Database of Children’s Faces is freely available for research purposes and can be downloaded by contacting the corresponding author by email. PMID:24244434

The Basel Face Database: A validated set of photographs reflecting systematic differences in Big Two and Big Five personality dimensions

PubMed Central

Schönborn, Sandro; Greifeneder, Rainer; Vetter, Thomas

2018-01-01

Upon a first encounter, individuals spontaneously associate faces with certain personality dimensions. Such first impressions can strongly impact judgments and decisions and may prove highly consequential. Researchers investigating the impact of facial information often rely on (a) real photographs that have been selected to vary on the dimension of interest, (b) morphed photographs, or (c) computer-generated faces (avatars). All three approaches have distinct advantages. Here we present the Basel Face Database, which combines these advantages. In particular, the Basel Face Database consists of real photographs that are subtly, but systematically manipulated to show variations in the perception of the Big Two and the Big Five personality dimensions. To this end, the information specific to each psychological dimension is isolated and modeled in new photographs. Two studies serve as systematic validation of the Basel Face Database. The Basel Face Database opens a new pathway for researchers across psychological disciplines to investigate effects of perceived personality. PMID:29590124

The Basel Face Database: A validated set of photographs reflecting systematic differences in Big Two and Big Five personality dimensions.

PubMed

Walker, Mirella; Schönborn, Sandro; Greifeneder, Rainer; Vetter, Thomas

2018-01-01

Upon a first encounter, individuals spontaneously associate faces with certain personality dimensions. Such first impressions can strongly impact judgments and decisions and may prove highly consequential. Researchers investigating the impact of facial information often rely on (a) real photographs that have been selected to vary on the dimension of interest, (b) morphed photographs, or (c) computer-generated faces (avatars). All three approaches have distinct advantages. Here we present the Basel Face Database, which combines these advantages. In particular, the Basel Face Database consists of real photographs that are subtly, but systematically manipulated to show variations in the perception of the Big Two and the Big Five personality dimensions. To this end, the information specific to each psychological dimension is isolated and modeled in new photographs. Two studies serve as systematic validation of the Basel Face Database. The Basel Face Database opens a new pathway for researchers across psychological disciplines to investigate effects of perceived personality.

Development of Human Face Literature Database Using Text Mining Approach: Phase I.

PubMed

Kaur, Paramjit; Krishan, Kewal; Sharma, Suresh K

2018-06-01

The face is an important part of the human body by which an individual communicates in the society. Its importance can be highlighted by the fact that a person deprived of face cannot sustain in the living world. The amount of experiments being performed and the number of research papers being published under the domain of human face have surged in the past few decades. Several scientific disciplines, which are conducting research on human face include: Medical Science, Anthropology, Information Technology (Biometrics, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence, etc.), Psychology, Forensic Science, Neuroscience, etc. This alarms the need of collecting and managing the data concerning human face so that the public and free access of it can be provided to the scientific community. This can be attained by developing databases and tools on human face using bioinformatics approach. The current research emphasizes on creating a database concerning literature data of human face. The database can be accessed on the basis of specific keywords, journal name, date of publication, author's name, etc. The collected research papers will be stored in the form of a database. Hence, the database will be beneficial to the research community as the comprehensive information dedicated to the human face could be found at one place. The information related to facial morphologic features, facial disorders, facial asymmetry, facial abnormalities, and many other parameters can be extracted from this database. The front end has been developed using Hyper Text Mark-up Language and Cascading Style Sheets. The back end has been developed using hypertext preprocessor (PHP). The JAVA Script has used as scripting language. MySQL (Structured Query Language) is used for database development as it is most widely used Relational Database Management System. XAMPP (X (cross platform), Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl) open source web application software has been used as the server.The database is still under the developmental phase and discusses the initial steps of its creation. The current paper throws light on the work done till date.

Optimising the measurement of bruises in children across conventional and cross polarized images using segmentation analysis techniques in Image J, Photoshop and circle diameter measurements.

PubMed

Harris, C; Alcock, A; Trefan, L; Nuttall, D; Evans, S T; Maguire, S; Kemp, A M

2018-02-01

Bruising is a common abusive injury in children, and it is standard practice to image and measure them, yet there is no current standard for measuring bruise size consistently. We aim to identify the optimal method of measuring photographic images of bruises, including computerised measurement techniques. 24 children aged <11 years (mean age of 6.9, range 2.5-10 years) with a bruise were recruited from the community. Demographics and bruise details were recorded. Each bruise was measured in vivo using a paper measuring tape. Standardised conventional and cross polarized digital images were obtained. The diameter of bruise images were measured by three computer aided measurement techniques: Image J (segmentation with Simple Interactive Object Extraction (maximum Feret diameter), 'Circular Selection Tool' (Circle diameter), & the Photoshop 'ruler' software (Photoshop diameter)). Inter and intra-observer effects were determined by two individuals repeating 11 electronic measurements, and relevant Intraclass Correlation Coefficient's (ICC's) were used to establish reliability. Spearman's rank correlation was used to compare in vivo with computerised measurements; a comparison of measurement techniques across imaging modalities was conducted using Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Significance was set at p < 0.05 for all tests. Images were available for 38 bruises in vivo, with 48 bruises visible on cross polarized imaging and 46 on conventional imaging (some bruises interpreted as being single in vivo appeared to be multiple in digital images). Correlation coefficients were >0.5 for all techniques, with maximum Feret diameter and maximum Photoshop diameter on conventional images having the strongest correlation with in vivo measurements. There were significant differences between in vivo and computer-aided measurements, but none between different computer-aided measurement techniques. Overall, computer aided measurements appeared larger than in vivo. Inter- and intra-observer agreement was high for all maximum diameter measurements (ICC's > 0.7). Whilst there are minimal differences between measurements of images obtained, the most consistent results were obtained when conventional images, segmented by Image J Software, were measured with a Feret diameter. This is therefore proposed as a standard for future research, and forensic practice, with the proviso that all computer aided measurements appear larger than in vivo. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd and Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine. All rights reserved.

A Benchmark and Comparative Study of Video-Based Face Recognition on COX Face Database.

PubMed

Huang, Zhiwu; Shan, Shiguang; Wang, Ruiping; Zhang, Haihong; Lao, Shihong; Kuerban, Alifu; Chen, Xilin

2015-12-01

Face recognition with still face images has been widely studied, while the research on video-based face recognition is inadequate relatively, especially in terms of benchmark datasets and comparisons. Real-world video-based face recognition applications require techniques for three distinct scenarios: 1) Videoto-Still (V2S); 2) Still-to-Video (S2V); and 3) Video-to-Video (V2V), respectively, taking video or still image as query or target. To the best of our knowledge, few datasets and evaluation protocols have benchmarked for all the three scenarios. In order to facilitate the study of this specific topic, this paper contributes a benchmarking and comparative study based on a newly collected still/video face database, named COX(1) Face DB. Specifically, we make three contributions. First, we collect and release a largescale still/video face database to simulate video surveillance with three different video-based face recognition scenarios (i.e., V2S, S2V, and V2V). Second, for benchmarking the three scenarios designed on our database, we review and experimentally compare a number of existing set-based methods. Third, we further propose a novel Point-to-Set Correlation Learning (PSCL) method, and experimentally show that it can be used as a promising baseline method for V2S/S2V face recognition on COX Face DB. Extensive experimental results clearly demonstrate that video-based face recognition needs more efforts, and our COX Face DB is a good benchmark database for evaluation.

Introduction of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery FACE TO FACE Database.

PubMed

Abraham, Manoj T; Rousso, Joseph J; Hu, Shirley; Brown, Ryan F; Moscatello, Augustine L; Finn, J Charles; Patel, Neha A; Kadakia, Sameep P; Wood-Smith, Donald

2017-07-01

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery FACE TO FACE database was created to gather and organize patient data primarily from international humanitarian surgical mission trips, as well as local humanitarian initiatives. Similar to cloud-based Electronic Medical Records, this web-based user-generated database allows for more accurate tracking of provider and patient information and outcomes, regardless of site, and is useful when coordinating follow-up care for patients. The database is particularly useful on international mission trips as there are often different surgeons who may provide care to patients on subsequent missions, and patients who may visit more than 1 mission site. Ultimately, by pooling data across multiples sites and over time, the database has the potential to be a useful resource for population-based studies and outcome data analysis. The objective of this paper is to delineate the process involved in creating the AAFPRS FACE TO FACE database, to assess its functional utility, to draw comparisons to electronic medical records systems that are now widely implemented, and to explain the specific benefits and disadvantages of the use of the database as it was implemented on recent international surgical mission trips.

In search of the emotional face: anger versus happiness superiority in visual search.

PubMed

Savage, Ruth A; Lipp, Ottmar V; Craig, Belinda M; Becker, Stefanie I; Horstmann, Gernot

2013-08-01

Previous research has provided inconsistent results regarding visual search for emotional faces, yielding evidence for either anger superiority (i.e., more efficient search for angry faces) or happiness superiority effects (i.e., more efficient search for happy faces), suggesting that these results do not reflect on emotional expression, but on emotion (un-)related low-level perceptual features. The present study investigated possible factors mediating anger/happiness superiority effects; specifically search strategy (fixed vs. variable target search; Experiment 1), stimulus choice (Nimstim database vs. Ekman & Friesen database; Experiments 1 and 2), and emotional intensity (Experiment 3 and 3a). Angry faces were found faster than happy faces regardless of search strategy using faces from the Nimstim database (Experiment 1). By contrast, a happiness superiority effect was evident in Experiment 2 when using faces from the Ekman and Friesen database. Experiment 3 employed angry, happy, and exuberant expressions (Nimstim database) and yielded anger and happiness superiority effects, respectively, highlighting the importance of the choice of stimulus materials. Ratings of the stimulus materials collected in Experiment 3a indicate that differences in perceived emotional intensity, pleasantness, or arousal do not account for differences in search efficiency. Across three studies, the current investigation indicates that prior reports of anger or happiness superiority effects in visual search are likely to reflect on low-level visual features associated with the stimulus materials used, rather than on emotion. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Face antispoofing based on frame difference and multilevel representation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Benlamoudi, Azeddine; Aiadi, Kamal Eddine; Ouafi, Abdelkrim; Samai, Djamel; Oussalah, Mourad

2017-07-01

Due to advances in technology, today's biometric systems become vulnerable to spoof attacks made by fake faces. These attacks occur when an intruder attempts to fool an established face-based recognition system by presenting a fake face (e.g., print photo or replay attacks) in front of the camera instead of the intruder's genuine face. For this purpose, face antispoofing has become a hot topic in face analysis literature, where several applications with antispoofing task have emerged recently. We propose a solution for distinguishing between real faces and fake ones. Our approach is based on extracting features from the difference between successive frames instead of individual frames. We also used a multilevel representation that divides the frame difference into multiple multiblocks. Different texture descriptors (local binary patterns, local phase quantization, and binarized statistical image features) have then been applied to each block. After the feature extraction step, a Fisher score is applied to sort the features in ascending order according to the associated weights. Finally, a support vector machine is used to differentiate between real and fake faces. We tested our approach on three publicly available databases: CASIA Face Antispoofing database, Replay-Attack database, and MSU Mobile Face Spoofing database. The proposed approach outperforms the other state-of-the-art methods in different media and quality metrics.

A new method for computer-assisted detection, definition and differentiation of the urinary calculi.

PubMed

Yildirim, Duzgun; Ozturk, Ovunc; Tutar, Onur; Nurili, Fuad; Bozkurt, Halil; Kayadibi, Huseyin; Karaarslan, Ercan; Bakan, Selim

2014-09-01

Urinary stones are common and can be diagnosed with computed tomography (CT) easily. In this study, we aimed to specify the opacity characteristics of various types of calcified foci that develop through the urinary system by using an image analysis program. With this method, we try to differentiate the calculi from the non-calculous opacities and also we aimed to present how to identify the characteristic features of renal and ureteral calcules. We obtained the CT studies of the subjects (n = 48, mean age = 41 years) by using a dual source CT imaging system. We grouped the calculi detected in the dual-energy CT sections as renal (n = 40) or ureteric (n = 45) based on their locations. Other radio-opaque structures that were identified outside but within close proximity of the urinary tract were recorded as calculi "mimickers". We used ImageJ program for morphological analysis. All the acquired data were analyzed statistically. According to thorough morphological parameters, there were statistically significant differences in the angle and Feret angle values between calculi and mimickers (p < 0.001). Multivariate logistical regression analysis showed that Minor Axis and Feret angle parameters can be used to distinguish between ureteric (p = 0.003) and kidney (p = 0.001) stones. Computer-based morphologic parameters can be used simply to differentiate between calcular and noncalcular densities on CT and also between renal and ureteric stones.

Person Authentication Using Learned Parameters of Lifting Wavelet Filters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Niijima, Koichi

2006-10-01

This paper proposes a method for identifying persons by the use of the lifting wavelet parameters learned by kurtosis-minimization. Our learning method uses desirable properties of kurtosis and wavelet coefficients of a facial image. Exploiting these properties, the lifting parameters are trained so as to minimize the kurtosis of lifting wavelet coefficients computed for the facial image. Since this minimization problem is an ill-posed problem, it is solved by the aid of Tikhonov's regularization method. Our learning algorithm is applied to each of the faces to be identified to generate its feature vector whose components consist of the learned parameters. The constructed feature vectors are memorized together with the corresponding faces in a feature vectors database. Person authentication is performed by comparing the feature vector of a query face with those stored in the database. In numerical experiments, the lifting parameters are trained for each of the neutral faces of 132 persons (74 males and 58 females) in the AR face database. Person authentication is executed by using the smile and anger faces of the same persons in the database.

Quality labeled faces in the wild (QLFW): a database for studying face recognition in real-world environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karam, Lina J.; Zhu, Tong

2015-03-01

The varying quality of face images is an important challenge that limits the effectiveness of face recognition technology when applied in real-world applications. Existing face image databases do not consider the effect of distortions that commonly occur in real-world environments. This database (QLFW) represents an initial attempt to provide a set of labeled face images spanning the wide range of quality, from no perceived impairment to strong perceived impairment for face detection and face recognition applications. Types of impairment include JPEG2000 compression, JPEG compression, additive white noise, Gaussian blur and contrast change. Subjective experiments are conducted to assess the perceived visual quality of faces under different levels and types of distortions and also to assess the human recognition performance under the considered distortions. One goal of this work is to enable automated performance evaluation of face recognition technologies in the presence of different types and levels of visual distortions. This will consequently enable the development of face recognition systems that can operate reliably on real-world visual content in the presence of real-world visual distortions. Another goal is to enable the development and assessment of visual quality metrics for face images and for face detection and recognition applications.

Adaptive weighted local textural features for illumination, expression, and occlusion invariant face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cui, Chen; Asari, Vijayan K.

2014-03-01

Biometric features such as fingerprints, iris patterns, and face features help to identify people and restrict access to secure areas by performing advanced pattern analysis and matching. Face recognition is one of the most promising biometric methodologies for human identification in a non-cooperative security environment. However, the recognition results obtained by face recognition systems are a affected by several variations that may happen to the patterns in an unrestricted environment. As a result, several algorithms have been developed for extracting different facial features for face recognition. Due to the various possible challenges of data captured at different lighting conditions, viewing angles, facial expressions, and partial occlusions in natural environmental conditions, automatic facial recognition still remains as a difficult issue that needs to be resolved. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to tackling some of these issues by analyzing the local textural descriptions for facial feature representation. The textural information is extracted by an enhanced local binary pattern (ELBP) description of all the local regions of the face. The relationship of each pixel with respect to its neighborhood is extracted and employed to calculate the new representation. ELBP reconstructs a much better textural feature extraction vector from an original gray level image in different lighting conditions. The dimensionality of the texture image is reduced by principal component analysis performed on each local face region. Each low dimensional vector representing a local region is now weighted based on the significance of the sub-region. The weight of each sub-region is determined by employing the local variance estimate of the respective region, which represents the significance of the region. The final facial textural feature vector is obtained by concatenating the reduced dimensional weight sets of all the modules (sub-regions) of the face image. Experiments conducted on various popular face databases show promising performance of the proposed algorithm in varying lighting, expression, and partial occlusion conditions. Four databases were used for testing the performance of the proposed system: Yale Face database, Extended Yale Face database B, Japanese Female Facial Expression database, and CMU AMP Facial Expression database. The experimental results in all four databases show the effectiveness of the proposed system. Also, the computation cost is lower because of the simplified calculation steps. Research work is progressing to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed face recognition method on pose-varying conditions as well. It is envisaged that a multilane approach of trained frameworks at different pose bins and an appropriate voting strategy would lead to a good recognition rate in such situation.

Novel face-detection method under various environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jing, Min-Quan; Chen, Ling-Hwei

2009-06-01

We propose a method to detect a face with different poses under various environments. On the basis of skin color information, skin regions are first extracted from an input image. Next, the shoulder part is cut out by using shape information and the head part is then identified as a face candidate. For a face candidate, a set of geometric features is applied to determine if it is a profile face. If not, then a set of eyelike rectangles extracted from the face candidate and the lighting distribution are used to determine if the face candidate is a nonprofile face. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust under a wide range of lighting conditions, different poses, and races. The detection rate for the HHI face database is 93.68%. For the Champion face database, the detection rate is 95.15%.

Face liveness detection using shearlet-based feature descriptors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feng, Litong; Po, Lai-Man; Li, Yuming; Yuan, Fang

2016-07-01

Face recognition is a widely used biometric technology due to its convenience but it is vulnerable to spoofing attacks made by nonreal faces such as photographs or videos of valid users. The antispoof problem must be well resolved before widely applying face recognition in our daily life. Face liveness detection is a core technology to make sure that the input face is a live person. However, this is still very challenging using conventional liveness detection approaches of texture analysis and motion detection. The aim of this paper is to propose a feature descriptor and an efficient framework that can be used to effectively deal with the face liveness detection problem. In this framework, new feature descriptors are defined using a multiscale directional transform (shearlet transform). Then, stacked autoencoders and a softmax classifier are concatenated to detect face liveness. We evaluated this approach using the CASIA Face antispoofing database and replay-attack database. The experimental results show that our approach performs better than the state-of-the-art techniques following the provided protocols of these databases, and it is possible to significantly enhance the security of the face recognition biometric system. In addition, the experimental results also demonstrate that this framework can be easily extended to classify different spoofing attacks.

Development and validation of a facial expression database based on the dimensional and categorical model of emotions.

PubMed

Fujimura, Tomomi; Umemura, Hiroyuki

2018-01-15

The present study describes the development and validation of a facial expression database comprising five different horizontal face angles in dynamic and static presentations. The database includes twelve expression types portrayed by eight Japanese models. This database was inspired by the dimensional and categorical model of emotions: surprise, fear, sadness, anger with open mouth, anger with closed mouth, disgust with open mouth, disgust with closed mouth, excitement, happiness, relaxation, sleepiness, and neutral (static only). The expressions were validated using emotion classification and Affect Grid rating tasks [Russell, Weiss, & Mendelsohn, 1989. Affect Grid: A single-item scale of pleasure and arousal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(3), 493-502]. The results indicate that most of the expressions were recognised as the intended emotions and could systematically represent affective valence and arousal. Furthermore, face angle and facial motion information influenced emotion classification and valence and arousal ratings. Our database will be available online at the following URL. https://www.dh.aist.go.jp/database/face2017/ .

Fusion of Visible and Thermal Descriptors Using Genetic Algorithms for Face Recognition Systems.

PubMed

Hermosilla, Gabriel; Gallardo, Francisco; Farias, Gonzalo; San Martin, Cesar

2015-07-23

The aim of this article is to present a new face recognition system based on the fusion of visible and thermal features obtained from the most current local matching descriptors by maximizing face recognition rates through the use of genetic algorithms. The article considers a comparison of the performance of the proposed fusion methodology against five current face recognition methods and classic fusion techniques used commonly in the literature. These were selected by considering their performance in face recognition. The five local matching methods and the proposed fusion methodology are evaluated using the standard visible/thermal database, the Equinox database, along with a new database, the PUCV-VTF, designed for visible-thermal studies in face recognition and described for the first time in this work. The latter is created considering visible and thermal image sensors with different real-world conditions, such as variations in illumination, facial expression, pose, occlusion, etc. The main conclusions of this article are that two variants of the proposed fusion methodology surpass current face recognition methods and the classic fusion techniques reported in the literature, attaining recognition rates of over 97% and 99% for the Equinox and PUCV-VTF databases, respectively. The fusion methodology is very robust to illumination and expression changes, as it combines thermal and visible information efficiently by using genetic algorithms, thus allowing it to choose optimal face areas where one spectrum is more representative than the other.

Fusion of Visible and Thermal Descriptors Using Genetic Algorithms for Face Recognition Systems

PubMed Central

Hermosilla, Gabriel; Gallardo, Francisco; Farias, Gonzalo; San Martin, Cesar

2015-01-01

The aim of this article is to present a new face recognition system based on the fusion of visible and thermal features obtained from the most current local matching descriptors by maximizing face recognition rates through the use of genetic algorithms. The article considers a comparison of the performance of the proposed fusion methodology against five current face recognition methods and classic fusion techniques used commonly in the literature. These were selected by considering their performance in face recognition. The five local matching methods and the proposed fusion methodology are evaluated using the standard visible/thermal database, the Equinox database, along with a new database, the PUCV-VTF, designed for visible-thermal studies in face recognition and described for the first time in this work. The latter is created considering visible and thermal image sensors with different real-world conditions, such as variations in illumination, facial expression, pose, occlusion, etc. The main conclusions of this article are that two variants of the proposed fusion methodology surpass current face recognition methods and the classic fusion techniques reported in the literature, attaining recognition rates of over 97% and 99% for the Equinox and PUCV-VTF databases, respectively. The fusion methodology is very robust to illumination and expression changes, as it combines thermal and visible information efficiently by using genetic algorithms, thus allowing it to choose optimal face areas where one spectrum is more representative than the other. PMID:26213932

Embedded wavelet-based face recognition under variable position

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cotret, Pascal; Chevobbe, Stéphane; Darouich, Mehdi

2015-02-01

For several years, face recognition has been a hot topic in the image processing field: this technique is applied in several domains such as CCTV, electronic devices delocking and so on. In this context, this work studies the efficiency of a wavelet-based face recognition method in terms of subject position robustness and performance on various systems. The use of wavelet transform has a limited impact on the position robustness of PCA-based face recognition. This work shows, for a well-known database (Yale face database B*), that subject position in a 3D space can vary up to 10% of the original ROI size without decreasing recognition rates. Face recognition is performed on approximation coefficients of the image wavelet transform: results are still satisfying after 3 levels of decomposition. Furthermore, face database size can be divided by a factor 64 (22K with K = 3). In the context of ultra-embedded vision systems, memory footprint is one of the key points to be addressed; that is the reason why compression techniques such as wavelet transform are interesting. Furthermore, it leads to a low-complexity face detection stage compliant with limited computation resources available on such systems. The approach described in this work is tested on three platforms from a standard x86-based computer towards nanocomputers such as RaspberryPi and SECO boards. For K = 3 and a database with 40 faces, the execution mean time for one frame is 0.64 ms on a x86-based computer, 9 ms on a SECO board and 26 ms on a RaspberryPi (B model).

Joint Sparse Representation for Robust Multimodal Biometrics Recognition

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-01-01

described in III. Experimental evaluations on a comprehensive multimodal dataset and a face database have been described in section V. Finally, in...WVU Multimodal Dataset The WVU multimodal dataset is a comprehensive collection of different biometric modalities such as fingerprint, iris, palmprint ...Martnez and R. Benavente, “The AR face database ,” CVC Technical Report, June 1998. [29] U. Park and A. Jain, “Face matching and retrieval using soft

Tensor discriminant color space for face recognition.

PubMed

Wang, Su-Jing; Yang, Jian; Zhang, Na; Zhou, Chun-Guang

2011-09-01

Recent research efforts reveal that color may provide useful information for face recognition. For different visual tasks, the choice of a color space is generally different. How can a color space be sought for the specific face recognition problem? To address this problem, this paper represents a color image as a third-order tensor and presents the tensor discriminant color space (TDCS) model. The model can keep the underlying spatial structure of color images. With the definition of n-mode between-class scatter matrices and within-class scatter matrices, TDCS constructs an iterative procedure to obtain one color space transformation matrix and two discriminant projection matrices by maximizing the ratio of these two scatter matrices. The experiments are conducted on two color face databases, AR and Georgia Tech face databases, and the results show that both the performance and the efficiency of the proposed method are better than those of the state-of-the-art color image discriminant model, which involve one color space transformation matrix and one discriminant projection matrix, specifically in a complicated face database with various pose variations.

[Establishment of the database of the 3D facial models for the plastic surgery based on network].

PubMed

Liu, Zhe; Zhang, Hai-Lin; Zhang, Zheng-Guo; Qiao, Qun

2008-07-01

To collect the three-dimensional (3D) facial data of 30 facial deformity patients by the 3D scanner and establish a professional database based on Internet. It can be helpful for the clinical intervention. The primitive point data of face topography were collected by the 3D scanner. Then the 3D point cloud was edited by reverse engineering software to reconstruct the 3D model of the face. The database system was divided into three parts, including basic information, disease information and surgery information. The programming language of the web system is Java. The linkages between every table of the database are credibility. The query operation and the data mining are convenient. The users can visit the database via the Internet and use the image analysis system to observe the 3D facial models interactively. In this paper we presented a database and a web system adapt to the plastic surgery of human face. It can be used both in clinic and in basic research.

FaceWarehouse: a 3D facial expression database for visual computing.

PubMed

Cao, Chen; Weng, Yanlin; Zhou, Shun; Tong, Yiying; Zhou, Kun

2014-03-01

We present FaceWarehouse, a database of 3D facial expressions for visual computing applications. We use Kinect, an off-the-shelf RGBD camera, to capture 150 individuals aged 7-80 from various ethnic backgrounds. For each person, we captured the RGBD data of her different expressions, including the neutral expression and 19 other expressions such as mouth-opening, smile, kiss, etc. For every RGBD raw data record, a set of facial feature points on the color image such as eye corners, mouth contour, and the nose tip are automatically localized, and manually adjusted if better accuracy is required. We then deform a template facial mesh to fit the depth data as closely as possible while matching the feature points on the color image to their corresponding points on the mesh. Starting from these fitted face meshes, we construct a set of individual-specific expression blendshapes for each person. These meshes with consistent topology are assembled as a rank-3 tensor to build a bilinear face model with two attributes: identity and expression. Compared with previous 3D facial databases, for every person in our database, there is a much richer matching collection of expressions, enabling depiction of most human facial actions. We demonstrate the potential of FaceWarehouse for visual computing with four applications: facial image manipulation, face component transfer, real-time performance-based facial image animation, and facial animation retargeting from video to image.

The Tromso Infant Faces Database (TIF): Development, Validation and Application to Assess Parenting Experience on Clarity and Intensity Ratings.

PubMed

Maack, Jana K; Bohne, Agnes; Nordahl, Dag; Livsdatter, Lina; Lindahl, Åsne A W; Øvervoll, Morten; Wang, Catharina E A; Pfuhl, Gerit

2017-01-01

Newborns and infants are highly depending on successfully communicating their needs; e.g., through crying and facial expressions. Although there is a growing interest in the mechanisms of and possible influences on the recognition of facial expressions in infants, heretofore there exists no validated database of emotional infant faces. In the present article we introduce a standardized and freely available face database containing Caucasian infant face images from 18 infants 4 to 12 months old. The development and validation of the Tromsø Infant Faces (TIF) database is presented in Study 1. Over 700 adults categorized the photographs by seven emotion categories (happy, sad, disgusted, angry, afraid, surprised, neutral) and rated intensity, clarity and their valance. In order to examine the relevance of TIF, we then present its first application in Study 2, investigating differences in emotion recognition across different stages of parenthood. We found a small gender effect in terms of women giving higher intensity and clarity ratings than men. Moreover, parents of young children rated the images as clearer than all the other groups, and parents rated "neutral" expressions as more clearly and more intense. Our results suggest that caretaking experience provides an implicit advantage in the processing of emotional expressions in infant faces, especially for the more difficult, ambiguous expressions.

Locating faces in color photographs using neural networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brown, Joe R.; Talley, Jim

1994-03-01

This paper summarizes a research effort in finding the locations and sizes of faces in color images (photographs, video stills, etc.) if, in fact, faces are presented. Scenarios for using such a system include serving as the means of localizing skin for automatic color balancing during photo processing or it could be used as a front-end in a customs port of energy context for a system which identified persona non grata given a database of known faces. The approach presented here is a hybrid system including: a neural pre-processor, some conventional image processing steps, and a neural classifier as the final face/non-face discriminator. Neither the training (containing 17,655 faces) nor the test (containing 1829 faces) imagery databases were constrained in their content or quality. The results for the pilot system are reported along with a discussion for improving the current system.

Subject-specific and pose-oriented facial features for face recognition across poses.

PubMed

Lee, Ping-Han; Hsu, Gee-Sern; Wang, Yun-Wen; Hung, Yi-Ping

2012-10-01

Most face recognition scenarios assume that frontal faces or mug shots are available for enrollment to the database, faces of other poses are collected in the probe set. Given a face from the probe set, one needs to determine whether a match in the database exists. This is under the assumption that in forensic applications, most suspects have their mug shots available in the database, and face recognition aims at recognizing the suspects when their faces of various poses are captured by a surveillance camera. This paper considers a different scenario: given a face with multiple poses available, which may or may not include a mug shot, develop a method to recognize the face with poses different from those captured. That is, given two disjoint sets of poses of a face, one for enrollment and the other for recognition, this paper reports a method best for handling such cases. The proposed method includes feature extraction and classification. For feature extraction, we first cluster the poses of each subject's face in the enrollment set into a few pose classes and then decompose the appearance of the face in each pose class using Embedded Hidden Markov Model, which allows us to define a set of subject-specific and pose-priented (SSPO) facial components for each subject. For classification, an Adaboost weighting scheme is used to fuse the component classifiers with SSPO component features. The proposed method is proven to outperform other approaches, including a component-based classifier with local facial features cropped manually, in an extensive performance evaluation study.

Linking the IR Christiansen effect to the mean particle size and type of volcanic ash

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scollo, Simona; Baratta, Giuseppe A.; Palumbo, Maria Elisabetta; Corradini, Stefano; Leto, Giuseppe; Strazzulla, Giovanni

2013-04-01

Infrared transmittance spectra of several volcanic ash samples positioned in the path of a IR beam have been obtained. This technique is widely used in astronomy, in biological applications, in industrial and environmental fields. Nevertheless, in spite of its wide diffusion in several branch of science, up to now only few IR measurements on volcanic ash particles have been carried out in laboratory. In this work, infrared spectroscopy is used to investigate the spectral signature of volcanic ash particles emitted during the 21-24 July 2001 eruption at Mt. Etna, in Italy. A Bruker Equinox-55 FTIR interferometer operating in the range 1.43-16.67 µm is used to analyse the infrared transmittance of ash particles on KBr windows. For every collected spectrum, an image of the volcanic ash particles was recorded in the visible spectral range through the same microscope. These images are then analyzed by standard image analysis software in order to evaluate the main features of the particle shape: the length of the major and minor axes, Feret diameter, area and aspect ratio. We measured the spectrum of only one particle (Single Particle Measurement SPM), the spectrum of a number of particles from two to ten particles (Multi Particle Measurements type 1, MPM1) and of more than a hundred particles (Multi Particle Measurements type 2, MPM2). For SPM, the length of the major and minor axis ranges between 5 and 25 μm and 3.5 and 15 μm, respectively, Feret diameter ranges between 5.5 and 25 μm, while variations of aspect ratio (AR) and area are between 0.5 and 0.95 and between 14 and 285 μm ^ 2. For MPM1 and MPM2, the mean values of the length of the minor and major axis are between 3-4 and 10-17 μm, the Feret diameter between 5 and 20 μm, AR between 0.3 and 0.7 and area between 50 and 400 μm ^ 2. The optical depth spectra as a function of the wave number showed the presence of the Christiansen effect that produces high transmission at a given wavelength in the infrared region. The ratio between a and b that are respectively the distance in optical depth between the minimum and maximum optical depth values with respect to the continuum, were plotted vs all the shape parameters. We found a linear relationship with the length of the major axis that demonstrates the possibility of evaluating the size distribution of volcanic ash suspended in the atmosphere from infrared spectra. More, we also showed the possibility to use the Christiansen signature (shape and minimum) to characterize the ash type. This additional information can be used to significantly improve the IR remote sensing volcanic ash quantitative estimations.

Method for secure electronic voting system: face recognition based approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alim, M. Affan; Baig, Misbah M.; Mehboob, Shahzain; Naseem, Imran

2017-06-01

In this paper, we propose a framework for low cost secure electronic voting system based on face recognition. Essentially Local Binary Pattern (LBP) is used for face feature characterization in texture format followed by chi-square distribution is used for image classification. Two parallel systems are developed based on smart phone and web applications for face learning and verification modules. The proposed system has two tire security levels by using person ID followed by face verification. Essentially class specific threshold is associated for controlling the security level of face verification. Our system is evaluated three standard databases and one real home based database and achieve the satisfactory recognition accuracies. Consequently our propose system provides secure, hassle free voting system and less intrusive compare with other biometrics.

Databases in the United Kingdom.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chadwyck-Healey, Charles

This overview of the status of online databases in the United Kingdom describes online users' attitudes and practices in light of two surveys conducted in the past two years. The Online Information Centre at ASLIB sampled 325 users, and Chadwyck-Healey, Ltd., conducted a face-to-face survey of librarians in a broad cross-section of 76 libraries.…

Database Design Learning: A Project-Based Approach Organized through a Course Management System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dominguez, Cesar; Jaime, Arturo

2010-01-01

This paper describes an active method for database design learning through practical tasks development by student teams in a face-to-face course. This method integrates project-based learning, and project management techniques and tools. Some scaffolding is provided at the beginning that forms a skeleton that adapts to a great variety of…

Content-based video indexing and searching with wavelet transformation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stumpf, Florian; Al-Jawad, Naseer; Du, Hongbo; Jassim, Sabah

2006-05-01

Biometric databases form an essential tool in the fight against international terrorism, organised crime and fraud. Various government and law enforcement agencies have their own biometric databases consisting of combination of fingerprints, Iris codes, face images/videos and speech records for an increasing number of persons. In many cases personal data linked to biometric records are incomplete and/or inaccurate. Besides, biometric data in different databases for the same individual may be recorded with different personal details. Following the recent terrorist atrocities, law enforcing agencies collaborate more than before and have greater reliance on database sharing. In such an environment, reliable biometric-based identification must not only determine who you are but also who else you are. In this paper we propose a compact content-based video signature and indexing scheme that can facilitate retrieval of multiple records in face biometric databases that belong to the same person even if their associated personal data are inconsistent. We shall assess the performance of our system using a benchmark audio visual face biometric database that has multiple videos for each subject but with different identity claims. We shall demonstrate that retrieval of relatively small number of videos that are nearest, in terms of the proposed index, to any video in the database results in significant proportion of that individual biometric data.

Emotion-independent face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

De Silva, Liyanage C.; Esther, Kho G. P.

2000-12-01

Current face recognition techniques tend to work well when recognizing faces under small variations in lighting, facial expression and pose, but deteriorate under more extreme conditions. In this paper, a face recognition system to recognize faces of known individuals, despite variations in facial expression due to different emotions, is developed. The eigenface approach is used for feature extraction. Classification methods include Euclidean distance, back propagation neural network and generalized regression neural network. These methods yield 100% recognition accuracy when the training database is representative, containing one image representing the peak expression for each emotion of each person apart from the neutral expression. The feature vectors used for comparison in the Euclidean distance method and for training the neural network must be all the feature vectors of the training set. These results are obtained for a face database consisting of only four persons.

Multi-stream face recognition for crime-fighting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jassim, Sabah A.; Sellahewa, Harin

2007-04-01

Automatic face recognition (AFR) is a challenging task that is increasingly becoming the preferred biometric trait for identification and has the potential of becoming an essential tool in the fight against crime and terrorism. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras have increasingly been used over the last few years for surveillance in public places such as airports, train stations and shopping centers. They are used to detect and prevent crime, shoplifting, public disorder and terrorism. The work of law-enforcing and intelligence agencies is becoming more reliant on the use of databases of biometric data for large section of the population. Face is one of the most natural biometric traits that can be used for identification and surveillance. However, variations in lighting conditions, facial expressions, face size and pose are a great obstacle to AFR. This paper is concerned with using waveletbased face recognition schemes in the presence of variations of expressions and illumination. In particular, we will investigate the use of a combination of wavelet frequency channels for a multi-stream face recognition using various wavelet subbands as different face signal streams. The proposed schemes extend our recently developed face veri.cation scheme for implementation on mobile devices. We shall present experimental results on the performance of our proposed schemes for a number of face databases including a new AV database recorded on a PDA. By analyzing the various experimental data, we shall demonstrate that the multi-stream approach is robust against variations in illumination and facial expressions than the previous single-stream approach.

Deep neural network features for horses identity recognition using multiview horses' face pattern

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jarraya, Islem; Ouarda, Wael; Alimi, Adel M.

2017-03-01

To control the state of horses in the born, breeders needs a monitoring system with a surveillance camera that can identify and distinguish between horses. We proposed in [5] a method of horse's identification at a distance using the frontal facial biometric modality. Due to the change of views, the face recognition becomes more difficult. In this paper, the number of images used in our THoDBRL'2015 database (Tunisian Horses DataBase of Regim Lab) is augmented by adding other images of other views. Thus, we used front, right and left profile face's view. Moreover, we suggested an approach for multiview face recognition. First, we proposed to use the Gabor filter for face characterization. Next, due to the augmentation of the number of images, and the large number of Gabor features, we proposed to test the Deep Neural Network with the auto-encoder to obtain the more pertinent features and to reduce the size of features vector. Finally, we performed the proposed approach on our THoDBRL'2015 database and we used the linear SVM for classification.

Face detection on distorted images using perceptual quality-aware features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gunasekar, Suriya; Ghosh, Joydeep; Bovik, Alan C.

2014-02-01

We quantify the degradation in performance of a popular and effective face detector when human-perceived image quality is degraded by distortions due to additive white gaussian noise, gaussian blur or JPEG compression. It is observed that, within a certain range of perceived image quality, a modest increase in image quality can drastically improve face detection performance. These results can be used to guide resource or bandwidth allocation in a communication/delivery system that is associated with face detection tasks. A new face detector based on QualHOG features is also proposed that augments face-indicative HOG features with perceptual quality-aware spatial Natural Scene Statistics (NSS) features, yielding improved tolerance against image distortions. The new detector provides statistically significant improvements over a strong baseline on a large database of face images representing a wide range of distortions. To facilitate this study, we created a new Distorted Face Database, containing face and non-face patches from images impaired by a variety of common distortion types and levels. This new dataset is available for download and further experimentation at www.ideal.ece.utexas.edu/˜suriya/DFD/.

The construction FACE database - Codifying the NIOSH FACE reports.

PubMed

Dong, Xiuwen Sue; Largay, Julie A; Wang, Xuanwen; Cain, Chris Trahan; Romano, Nancy

2017-09-01

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has published reports detailing the results of investigations on selected work-related fatalities through the Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program since 1982. Information from construction-related FACE reports was coded into the Construction FACE Database (CFD). Use of the CFD was illustrated by analyzing major CFD variables. A total of 768 construction fatalities were included in the CFD. Information on decedents, safety training, use of PPE, and FACE recommendations were coded. Analysis shows that one in five decedents in the CFD died within the first two months on the job; 75% and 43% of reports recommended having safety training or installing protection equipment, respectively. Comprehensive research using FACE reports may improve understanding of work-related fatalities and provide much-needed information on injury prevention. The CFD allows researchers to analyze the FACE reports quantitatively and efficiently. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd and National Safety Council. All rights reserved.

Earlinet database: new design and new products for a wider use of aerosol lidar data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mona, Lucia; D'Amico, Giuseppe; Amato, Francesco; Linné, Holger; Baars, Holger; Wandinger, Ulla; Pappalardo, Gelsomina

2018-04-01

The EARLINET database is facing a complete reshaping to meet the wide request for more intuitive products and to face the even wider request related to the new initiatives such as Copernicus, the European Earth observation programme. The new design has been carried out in continuity with the past, to take advantage from long-term database. In particular, the new structure will provide information suitable for synergy with other instruments, near real time (NRT) applications, validation and process studies and climate applications.

Gaze-fixation to happy faces predicts mood repair after a negative mood induction.

PubMed

Sanchez, Alvaro; Vazquez, Carmelo; Gomez, Diego; Joormann, Jutta

2014-02-01

The present study tested the interplay between mood and attentional deployment by examining attention to positive (i.e., happy faces) and negative (i.e., angry and sad faces) stimuli in response to experimental inductions of sad and happy mood. Participants underwent a negative, neutral, or positive mood induction procedure (MIP) which was followed by an assessment of their attentional deployment to emotional faces using eye-tracking technology. Faces were selected from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) database (Lundqvist, Flykt, & Öhman, 1998). In the positive MIP condition, analyses revealed a mood-congruent relation between positive mood and greater attentional deployment to happy faces. In the negative MIP condition, however, analyses revealed a mood-incongruent relation between increased negative mood and greater attentional deployment to happy faces. Furthermore, attentional deployment to happy faces after the negative MIP predicted participants' mood recovery at the end of the experimental session. These results suggest that attentional processing of positive information may play a role in mood repair, which may have important clinical implications. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Interactive searching of facial image databases

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nicholls, Robert A.; Shepherd, John W.; Shepherd, Jean

1995-09-01

A set of psychological facial descriptors has been devised to enable computerized searching of criminal photograph albums. The descriptors have been used to encode image databased of up to twelve thousand images. Using a system called FACES, the databases are searched by translating a witness' verbal description into corresponding facial descriptors. Trials of FACES have shown that this coding scheme is more productive and efficient than searching traditional photograph albums. An alternative method of searching the encoded database using a genetic algorithm is currenly being tested. The genetic search method does not require the witness to verbalize a description of the target but merely to indicate a degree of similarity between the target and a limited selection of images from the database. The major drawback of FACES is that is requires a manual encoding of images. Research is being undertaken to automate the process, however, it will require an algorithm which can predict human descriptive values. Alternatives to human derived coding schemes exist using statistical classifications of images. Since databases encoded using statistical classifiers do not have an obvious direct mapping to human derived descriptors, a search method which does not require the entry of human descriptors is required. A genetic search algorithm is being tested for such a purpose.

Physiology-based face recognition in the thermal infrared spectrum.

PubMed

Buddharaju, Pradeep; Pavlidis, Ioannis T; Tsiamyrtzis, Panagiotis; Bazakos, Mike

2007-04-01

The current dominant approaches to face recognition rely on facial characteristics that are on or over the skin. Some of these characteristics have low permanency can be altered, and their phenomenology varies significantly with environmental factors (e.g., lighting). Many methodologies have been developed to address these problems to various degrees. However, the current framework of face recognition research has a potential weakness due to its very nature. We present a novel framework for face recognition based on physiological information. The motivation behind this effort is to capitalize on the permanency of innate characteristics that are under the skin. To establish feasibility, we propose a specific methodology to capture facial physiological patterns using the bioheat information contained in thermal imagery. First, the algorithm delineates the human face from the background using the Bayesian framework. Then, it localizes the superficial blood vessel network using image morphology. The extracted vascular network produces contour shapes that are characteristic to each individual. The branching points of the skeletonized vascular network are referred to as Thermal Minutia Points (TMPs) and constitute the feature database. To render the method robust to facial pose variations, we collect for each subject to be stored in the database five different pose images (center, midleft profile, left profile, midright profile, and right profile). During the classification stage, the algorithm first estimates the pose of the test image. Then, it matches the local and global TMP structures extracted from the test image with those of the corresponding pose images in the database. We have conducted experiments on a multipose database of thermal facial images collected in our laboratory, as well as on the time-gap database of the University of Notre Dame. The good experimental results show that the proposed methodology has merit, especially with respect to the problem of low permanence over time. More importantly, the results demonstrate the feasibility of the physiological framework in face recognition and open the way for further methodological and experimental research in the area.

Heterogeneous Face Attribute Estimation: A Deep Multi-Task Learning Approach.

PubMed

Han, Hu; K Jain, Anil; Shan, Shiguang; Chen, Xilin

2017-08-10

Face attribute estimation has many potential applications in video surveillance, face retrieval, and social media. While a number of methods have been proposed for face attribute estimation, most of them did not explicitly consider the attribute correlation and heterogeneity (e.g., ordinal vs. nominal and holistic vs. local) during feature representation learning. In this paper, we present a Deep Multi-Task Learning (DMTL) approach to jointly estimate multiple heterogeneous attributes from a single face image. In DMTL, we tackle attribute correlation and heterogeneity with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) consisting of shared feature learning for all the attributes, and category-specific feature learning for heterogeneous attributes. We also introduce an unconstrained face database (LFW+), an extension of public-domain LFW, with heterogeneous demographic attributes (age, gender, and race) obtained via crowdsourcing. Experimental results on benchmarks with multiple face attributes (MORPH II, LFW+, CelebA, LFWA, and FotW) show that the proposed approach has superior performance compared to state of the art. Finally, evaluations on a public-domain face database (LAP) with a single attribute show that the proposed approach has excellent generalization ability.

Face photo-sketch synthesis and recognition.

PubMed

Wang, Xiaogang; Tang, Xiaoou

2009-11-01

In this paper, we propose a novel face photo-sketch synthesis and recognition method using a multiscale Markov Random Fields (MRF) model. Our system has three components: 1) given a face photo, synthesizing a sketch drawing; 2) given a face sketch drawing, synthesizing a photo; and 3) searching for face photos in the database based on a query sketch drawn by an artist. It has useful applications for both digital entertainment and law enforcement. We assume that faces to be studied are in a frontal pose, with normal lighting and neutral expression, and have no occlusions. To synthesize sketch/photo images, the face region is divided into overlapping patches for learning. The size of the patches decides the scale of local face structures to be learned. From a training set which contains photo-sketch pairs, the joint photo-sketch model is learned at multiple scales using a multiscale MRF model. By transforming a face photo to a sketch (or transforming a sketch to a photo), the difference between photos and sketches is significantly reduced, thus allowing effective matching between the two in face sketch recognition. After the photo-sketch transformation, in principle, most of the proposed face photo recognition approaches can be applied to face sketch recognition in a straightforward way. Extensive experiments are conducted on a face sketch database including 606 faces, which can be downloaded from our Web site (http://mmlab.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/facesketch.html).

Face masks and basketball: NCAA division I consumer trends and a review of over-the-counter face masks.

PubMed

Gandy, Jessica R; Fossett, Lela; Wong, Brian J F

2016-05-01

This study aims to: 1) determine the current consumer trends of over-the-counter (OTC) and custom-made face mask usage among National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletic programs; and 2) provide a literature review of OTC face guards and a classified database. Literature review and survey. Consumer trends were obtained by contacting all 352 NCAA Division I programs. Athletic trainers present in the office when called answered the following questions: 1) "When an athlete breaks his or her nose, is a custom or generic face guard used?" and 2) "What brand is the generic face guard that is used?" Data was analyzed to determine trends among athletic programs. Also, a database of OTC devices available was generated using PubMed, Google, and manufacturer Web sites. Among the 352 NCAA Division I athletic programs, 254 programs participated in the survey (72% response rate). The majority preferred custom-made guards (46%). Disadvantages included high cost and slow manufacture turnaround time. Only 20% of the programs strictly used generic brands. For the face mask database, 10 OTC products were identified and classified into four categories based on design, with pricing ranging between $35.99 and $69.95. Only a handful of face masks exist for U.S. consumers, but none of them have been reviewed or classified by product design, sport application, price, and collegiate consumer use. This project details usage trends among NCAA Division I athletic programs and provides a list of available devices that can be purchased to protect the nose and face during sports. NA. Laryngoscope, 126:1054-1060, 2016. © 2015 The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc.

Uyghur face recognition method combining 2DDCT with POEM

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yi, Lihamu; Ya, Ermaimaiti

2017-11-01

In this paper, in light of the reduced recognition rate and poor robustness of Uyghur face under illumination and partial occlusion, a Uyghur face recognition method combining Two Dimension Discrete Cosine Transform (2DDCT) with Patterns Oriented Edge Magnitudes (POEM) was proposed. Firstly, the Uyghur face images were divided into 8×8 block matrix, and the Uyghur face images after block processing were converted into frequency-domain status using 2DDCT; secondly, the Uyghur face images were compressed to exclude non-sensitive medium frequency parts and non-high frequency parts, so it can reduce the feature dimensions necessary for the Uyghur face images, and further reduce the amount of computation; thirdly, the corresponding POEM histograms of the Uyghur face images were obtained by calculating the feature quantity of POEM; fourthly, the POEM histograms were cascaded together as the texture histogram of the center feature point to obtain the texture features of the Uyghur face feature points; finally, classification of the training samples was carried out using deep learning algorithm. The simulation experiment results showed that the proposed algorithm further improved the recognition rate of the self-built Uyghur face database, and greatly improved the computing speed of the self-built Uyghur face database, and had strong robustness.

Methodology of the determination of the uncertainties by using the biometric device the broadway 3D

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jasek, Roman; Talandova, Hana; Adamek, Milan

2016-06-01

The biometric identification by face is among one of the most widely used methods of biometric identification. Due to it provides a faster and more accurate identification; it was implemented into area of security 3D face reader by Broadway manufacturer was used to measure. It is equipped with the 3D camera system, which uses the method of structured light scanning and saves the template into the 3D model of face. The obtained data were evaluated by software Turnstile Enrolment Application (TEA). The measurements were used 3D face reader the Broadway 3D. First, the person was scanned and stored in the database. Thereafter person has already been compared with the stored template in the database for each method. Finally, a measure of reliability was evaluated for the Broadway 3D face reader.

A smart technique for attendance system to recognize faces through parallelism

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Prabhavathi, B.; Tanuja, V.; Madhu Viswanatham, V.; Rajashekhara Babu, M.

2017-11-01

Major part of recognising a person is face with the help of image processing techniques we can exploit the physical features of a person. In the old approach method that is used in schools and colleges it is there that the professor calls the student name and then the attendance for the students marked. Here in paper want to deviate from the old approach and go with the new approach by using techniques that are there in image processing. In this paper we presenting spontaneous presence for students in classroom. At first classroom image has been in use and after that image is kept in data record. For the images that are stored in the database we apply system algorithm which includes steps such as, histogram classification, noise removal, face detection and face recognition methods. So by using these steps we detect the faces and then compare it with the database. The attendance gets marked automatically if the system recognizes the faces.

A robust human face detection algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Raviteja, Thaluru; Karanam, Srikrishna; Yeduguru, Dinesh Reddy V.

2012-01-01

Human face detection plays a vital role in many applications like video surveillance, managing a face image database, human computer interface among others. This paper proposes a robust algorithm for face detection in still color images that works well even in a crowded environment. The algorithm uses conjunction of skin color histogram, morphological processing and geometrical analysis for detecting human faces. To reinforce the accuracy of face detection, we further identify mouth and eye regions to establish the presence/absence of face in a particular region of interest.

A novel deep learning algorithm for incomplete face recognition: Low-rank-recovery network.

PubMed

Zhao, Jianwei; Lv, Yongbiao; Zhou, Zhenghua; Cao, Feilong

2017-10-01

There have been a lot of methods to address the recognition of complete face images. However, in real applications, the images to be recognized are usually incomplete, and it is more difficult to realize such a recognition. In this paper, a novel convolution neural network frame, named a low-rank-recovery network (LRRNet), is proposed to conquer the difficulty effectively inspired by matrix completion and deep learning techniques. The proposed LRRNet first recovers the incomplete face images via an approach of matrix completion with the truncated nuclear norm regularization solution, and then extracts some low-rank parts of the recovered images as the filters. With these filters, some important features are obtained by means of the binaryzation and histogram algorithms. Finally, these features are classified with the classical support vector machines (SVMs). The proposed LRRNet method has high face recognition rate for the heavily corrupted images, especially for the images in the large databases. The proposed LRRNet performs well and efficiently for the images with heavily corrupted, especially in the case of large databases. Extensive experiments on several benchmark databases demonstrate that the proposed LRRNet performs better than some other excellent robust face recognition methods. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Palmprint and face score level fusion: hardware implementation of a contactless small sample biometric system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Poinsot, Audrey; Yang, Fan; Brost, Vincent

2011-02-01

Including multiple sources of information in personal identity recognition and verification gives the opportunity to greatly improve performance. We propose a contactless biometric system that combines two modalities: palmprint and face. Hardware implementations are proposed on the Texas Instrument Digital Signal Processor and Xilinx Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platforms. The algorithmic chain consists of a preprocessing (which includes palm extraction from hand images), Gabor feature extraction, comparison by Hamming distance, and score fusion. Fusion possibilities are discussed and tested first using a bimodal database of 130 subjects that we designed (uB database), and then two common public biometric databases (AR for face and PolyU for palmprint). High performance has been obtained for recognition and verification purpose: a recognition rate of 97.49% with AR-PolyU database and an equal error rate of 1.10% on the uB database using only two training samples per subject have been obtained. Hardware results demonstrate that preprocessing can easily be performed during the acquisition phase, and multimodal biometric recognition can be treated almost instantly (0.4 ms on FPGA). We show the feasibility of a robust and efficient multimodal hardware biometric system that offers several advantages, such as user-friendliness and flexibility.

Multi-stream face recognition on dedicated mobile devices for crime-fighting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jassim, Sabah A.; Sellahewa, Harin

2006-09-01

Automatic face recognition is a useful tool in the fight against crime and terrorism. Technological advance in mobile communication systems and multi-application mobile devices enable the creation of hybrid platforms for active and passive surveillance. A dedicated mobile device that incorporates audio-visual sensors would not only complement existing networks of fixed surveillance devices (e.g. CCTV) but could also provide wide geographical coverage in almost any situation and anywhere. Such a device can hold a small portion of a law-enforcing agency biometric database that consist of audio and/or visual data of a number of suspects/wanted or missing persons who are expected to be in a local geographical area. This will assist law-enforcing officers on the ground in identifying persons whose biometric templates are downloaded onto their devices. Biometric data on the device can be regularly updated which will reduce the number of faces an officer has to remember. Such a dedicated device would act as an active/passive mobile surveillance unit that incorporate automatic identification. This paper is concerned with the feasibility of using wavelet-based face recognition schemes on such devices. The proposed schemes extend our recently developed face verification scheme for implementation on a currently available PDA. In particular we will investigate the use of a combination of wavelet frequency channels for multi-stream face recognition. We shall present experimental results on the performance of our proposed schemes for a number of publicly available face databases including a new AV database of videos recorded on a PDA.

Gender classification system in uncontrolled environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zeng, Pingping; Zhang, Yu-Jin; Duan, Fei

2011-01-01

Most face analysis systems available today perform mainly on restricted databases of images in terms of size, age, illumination. In addition, it is frequently assumed that all images are frontal and unconcealed. Actually, in a non-guided real-time supervision, the face pictures taken may often be partially covered and with head rotation less or more. In this paper, a special system supposed to be used in real-time surveillance with un-calibrated camera and non-guided photography is described. It mainly consists of five parts: face detection, non-face filtering, best-angle face selection, texture normalization, and gender classification. Emphases are focused on non-face filtering and best-angle face selection parts as well as texture normalization. Best-angle faces are figured out by PCA reconstruction, which equals to an implicit face alignment and results in a huge increase of the accuracy for gender classification. Dynamic skin model and a masked PCA reconstruction algorithm are applied to filter out faces detected in error. In order to fully include facial-texture and shape-outline features, a hybrid feature that is a combination of Gabor wavelet and PHoG (pyramid histogram of gradients) was proposed to equitable inner texture and outer contour. Comparative study on the effects of different non-face filtering and texture masking methods in the context of gender classification by SVM is reported through experiments on a set of UT (a company name) face images, a large number of internet images and CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) face database. Some encouraging results are obtained.

Tracking and recognition face in videos with incremental local sparse representation model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Chao; Wang, Yunhong; Zhang, Zhaoxiang

2013-10-01

This paper addresses the problem of tracking and recognizing faces via incremental local sparse representation. First a robust face tracking algorithm is proposed via employing local sparse appearance and covariance pooling method. In the following face recognition stage, with the employment of a novel template update strategy, which combines incremental subspace learning, our recognition algorithm adapts the template to appearance changes and reduces the influence of occlusion and illumination variation. This leads to a robust video-based face tracking and recognition with desirable performance. In the experiments, we test the quality of face recognition in real-world noisy videos on YouTube database, which includes 47 celebrities. Our proposed method produces a high face recognition rate at 95% of all videos. The proposed face tracking and recognition algorithms are also tested on a set of noisy videos under heavy occlusion and illumination variation. The tracking results on challenging benchmark videos demonstrate that the proposed tracking algorithm performs favorably against several state-of-the-art methods. In the case of the challenging dataset in which faces undergo occlusion and illumination variation, and tracking and recognition experiments under significant pose variation on the University of California, San Diego (Honda/UCSD) database, our proposed method also consistently demonstrates a high recognition rate.

A face and palmprint recognition approach based on discriminant DCT feature extraction.

PubMed

Jing, Xiao-Yuan; Zhang, David

2004-12-01

In the field of image processing and recognition, discrete cosine transform (DCT) and linear discrimination are two widely used techniques. Based on them, we present a new face and palmprint recognition approach in this paper. It first uses a two-dimensional separability judgment to select the DCT frequency bands with favorable linear separability. Then from the selected bands, it extracts the linear discriminative features by an improved Fisherface method and performs the classification by the nearest neighbor classifier. We detailedly analyze theoretical advantages of our approach in feature extraction. The experiments on face databases and palmprint database demonstrate that compared to the state-of-the-art linear discrimination methods, our approach obtains better classification performance. It can significantly improve the recognition rates for face and palmprint data and effectively reduce the dimension of feature space.

Crash analysis of lower extremity injuries in children restrained in forward-facing car seats during front and rear impacts.

PubMed

Bennett, Tellen D; Kaufman, Robert; Schiff, Melissa; Mock, Charles; Quan, Linda

2006-09-01

The mechanism, crash characteristics, and spectrum of lower extremity injuries in children restrained in forward-facing car seats during front and rear impacts have not been described. We identified in two databases children who sustained lower extremity injuries while restrained in forward-facing car seats. To identify the mechanism, we analyzed crash reconstructions from three frontal-impact cases from the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network. To further describe the crash and injury characteristics we evaluated children between 1 and 4 years of age with lower extremity injuries from front or rear impacts in the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) database. Crash reconstruction data demonstrated that the likely mechanism of lower extremity injury was contact between the legs and the front seatbacks. In the CDS database, we identified 15 children with lower extremity injuries in a forward-facing child seat, usually (13 out of 15) placed in the rear seat, incurred in frontal impacts (11 out of 15). Several (5 out of 15) children were in unbelted or improperly secured forward-facing car seats. Injury Severity Scores varied widely (5-50). Children in forward-facing car seats involved in severe front or rear crashes may incur a range of lower extremity injury from impact with the car interior component in front of them. Crash scene photography can provide useful information about anatomic sites at risk for injury and alert emergency department providers to possible subtle injury.

Classification of Human Retinal Microaneurysms Using Adaptive Optics Scanning Light Ophthalmoscope Fluorescein Angiography

PubMed Central

Dubow, Michael; Pinhas, Alexander; Shah, Nishit; Cooper, Robert F.; Gan, Alexander; Gentile, Ronald C.; Hendrix, Vernon; Sulai, Yusufu N.; Carroll, Joseph; Chui, Toco Y. P.; Walsh, Joseph B.; Weitz, Rishard; Dubra, Alfredo; Rosen, Richard B.

2014-01-01

Purpose. Microaneurysms (MAs) are considered a hallmark of retinal vascular disease, yet what little is known about them is mostly based upon histology, not clinical observation. Here, we use the recently developed adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) fluorescein angiography (FA) to image human MAs in vivo and to expand on previously described MA morphologic classification schemes. Methods. Patients with vascular retinopathies (diabetic, hypertensive, and branch and central retinal vein occlusion) were imaged with reflectance AOSLO and AOSLO FA. Ninety-three MAs, from 14 eyes, were imaged and classified according to appearance into six morphologic groups: focal bulge, saccular, fusiform, mixed, pedunculated, and irregular. The MA perimeter, area, and feret maximum and minimum were correlated to morphology and retinal pathology. Select MAs were imaged longitudinally in two eyes. Results. Adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope fluorescein angiography imaging revealed microscopic features of MAs not appreciated on conventional images. Saccular MAs were most prevalent (47%). No association was found between the type of retinal pathology and MA morphology (P = 0.44). Pedunculated and irregular MAs were among the largest MAs with average areas of 4188 and 4116 μm2, respectively. Focal hypofluorescent regions were noted in 30% of MAs and were more likely to be associated with larger MAs (3086 vs. 1448 μm2, P = 0.0001). Conclusions. Retinal MAs can be classified in vivo into six different morphologic types, according to the geometry of their two-dimensional (2D) en face view. Adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope fluorescein angiography imaging of MAs offers the possibility of studying microvascular change on a histologic scale, which may help our understanding of disease progression and treatment response. PMID:24425852

Implementing a Dynamic Database-Driven Course Using LAMP

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laverty, Joseph Packy; Wood, David; Turchek, John

2011-01-01

This paper documents the formulation of a database driven open source architecture web development course. The design of a web-based curriculum faces many challenges: a) relative emphasis of client and server-side technologies, b) choice of a server-side language, and c) the cost and efficient delivery of a dynamic web development, database-driven…

Content based information retrieval in forensic image databases.

PubMed

Geradts, Zeno; Bijhold, Jurrien

2002-03-01

This paper gives an overview of the various available image databases and ways of searching these databases on image contents. The developments in research groups of searching in image databases is evaluated and compared with the forensic databases that exist. Forensic image databases of fingerprints, faces, shoeprints, handwriting, cartridge cases, drugs tablets, and tool marks are described. The developments in these fields appear to be valuable for forensic databases, especially that of the framework in MPEG-7, where the searching in image databases is standardized. In the future, the combination of the databases (also DNA-databases) and possibilities to combine these can result in stronger forensic evidence.

Automated facial attendance logger for students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Krithika, L. B.; Kshitish, S.; Kishore, M. R.

2017-11-01

From the past two decades, various spheres of activity are in the aspect of ‘Face recognition’ as an essential tool. The complete series of actions of face recognition is composed of 3 stages: Face Detection, Feature Extraction and Recognition. In this paper, we make an effort to put forth a new application of face recognition and detection in education. The proposed system scans the classroom and detects the face of the students in class and matches the scanned face with the templates that is available in the database and updates the attendance of the respective students.

Neuro-fuzzy model for estimating race and gender from geometric distances of human face across pose

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nanaa, K.; Rahman, M. N. A.; Rizon, M.; Mohamad, F. S.; Mamat, M.

2018-03-01

Classifying human face based on race and gender is a vital process in face recognition. It contributes to an index database and eases 3D synthesis of the human face. Identifying race and gender based on intrinsic factor is problematic, which is more fitting to utilizing nonlinear model for estimating process. In this paper, we aim to estimate race and gender in varied head pose. For this purpose, we collect dataset from PICS and CAS-PEAL databases, detect the landmarks and rotate them to the frontal pose. After geometric distances are calculated, all of distance values will be normalized. Implementation is carried out by using Neural Network Model and Fuzzy Logic Model. These models are combined by using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Model. The experimental results showed that the optimization of address fuzzy membership. Model gives a better assessment rate and found that estimating race contributing to a more accurate gender assessment.

Score Fusion and Decision Fusion for the Performance Improvement of Face Recognition

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-07-01

0.1). A Hamming distance (HD) [7] is calculated with the FP-CGF to measure the similarities among faces. The matched face has the shortest HD from...then put into a face pattern byte (FPB) pixel- by-pixel. A HD is calculated with the FPB to measure the similarities among faces, and recognition is...all query users are included in the database), the recognition performance can be measured by a verification rate (VR), the percentage of the

Face recognition using slow feature analysis and contourlet transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Yuehao; Peng, Lingling; Zhe, Fuchuan

2018-04-01

In this paper we propose a novel face recognition approach based on slow feature analysis (SFA) in contourlet transform domain. This method firstly use contourlet transform to decompose the face image into low frequency and high frequency part, and then takes technological advantages of slow feature analysis for facial feature extraction. We named the new method combining the slow feature analysis and contourlet transform as CT-SFA. The experimental results on international standard face database demonstrate that the new face recognition method is effective and competitive.

A comparative study of DIGNET, average, complete, single hierarchical and k-means clustering algorithms in 2D face image recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thanos, Konstantinos-Georgios; Thomopoulos, Stelios C. A.

2014-06-01

The study in this paper belongs to a more general research of discovering facial sub-clusters in different ethnicity face databases. These new sub-clusters along with other metadata (such as race, sex, etc.) lead to a vector for each face in the database where each vector component represents the likelihood of participation of a given face to each cluster. This vector is then used as a feature vector in a human identification and tracking system based on face and other biometrics. The first stage in this system involves a clustering method which evaluates and compares the clustering results of five different clustering algorithms (average, complete, single hierarchical algorithm, k-means and DIGNET), and selects the best strategy for each data collection. In this paper we present the comparative performance of clustering results of DIGNET and four clustering algorithms (average, complete, single hierarchical and k-means) on fabricated 2D and 3D samples, and on actual face images from various databases, using four different standard metrics. These metrics are the silhouette figure, the mean silhouette coefficient, the Hubert test Γ coefficient, and the classification accuracy for each clustering result. The results showed that, in general, DIGNET gives more trustworthy results than the other algorithms when the metrics values are above a specific acceptance threshold. However when the evaluation results metrics have values lower than the acceptance threshold but not too low (too low corresponds to ambiguous results or false results), then it is necessary for the clustering results to be verified by the other algorithms.

The depth estimation of 3D face from single 2D picture based on manifold learning constraints

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Xia; Yang, Yang; Xiong, Hailiang; Liu, Yunxia

2018-04-01

The estimation of depth is virtual important in 3D face reconstruction. In this paper, we propose a t-SNE based on manifold learning constraints and introduce K-means method to divide the original database into several subset, and the selected optimal subset to reconstruct the 3D face depth information can greatly reduce the computational complexity. Firstly, we carry out the t-SNE operation to reduce the key feature points in each 3D face model from 1×249 to 1×2. Secondly, the K-means method is applied to divide the training 3D database into several subset. Thirdly, the Euclidean distance between the 83 feature points of the image to be estimated and the feature point information before the dimension reduction of each cluster center is calculated. The category of the image to be estimated is judged according to the minimum Euclidean distance. Finally, the method Kong D will be applied only in the optimal subset to estimate the depth value information of 83 feature points of 2D face images. Achieving the final depth estimation results, thus the computational complexity is greatly reduced. Compared with the traditional traversal search estimation method, although the proposed method error rate is reduced by 0.49, the number of searches decreases with the change of the category. In order to validate our approach, we use a public database to mimic the task of estimating the depth of face images from 2D images. The average number of searches decreased by 83.19%.

Multi-pose facial correction based on Gaussian process with combined kernel function

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shi, Shuyan; Ji, Ruirui; Zhang, Fan

2018-04-01

In order to improve the recognition rate of various postures, this paper proposes a method of facial correction based on Gaussian Process which build a nonlinear regression model between the front and the side face with combined kernel function. The face images with horizontal angle from -45° to +45° can be properly corrected to front faces. Finally, Support Vector Machine is employed for face recognition. Experiments on CAS PEAL R1 face database show that Gaussian process can weaken the influence of pose changes and improve the accuracy of face recognition to certain extent.

Robust Face Recognition via Multi-Scale Patch-Based Matrix Regression.

PubMed

Gao, Guangwei; Yang, Jian; Jing, Xiaoyuan; Huang, Pu; Hua, Juliang; Yue, Dong

2016-01-01

In many real-world applications such as smart card solutions, law enforcement, surveillance and access control, the limited training sample size is the most fundamental problem. By making use of the low-rank structural information of the reconstructed error image, the so-called nuclear norm-based matrix regression has been demonstrated to be effective for robust face recognition with continuous occlusions. However, the recognition performance of nuclear norm-based matrix regression degrades greatly in the face of the small sample size problem. An alternative solution to tackle this problem is performing matrix regression on each patch and then integrating the outputs from all patches. However, it is difficult to set an optimal patch size across different databases. To fully utilize the complementary information from different patch scales for the final decision, we propose a multi-scale patch-based matrix regression scheme based on which the ensemble of multi-scale outputs can be achieved optimally. Extensive experiments on benchmark face databases validate the effectiveness and robustness of our method, which outperforms several state-of-the-art patch-based face recognition algorithms.

Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Probabilistic Graphical Model with Multiple Feature Fusion for Binary Facial Attribute Classification in Real-World Face Videos.

PubMed

Demirkus, Meltem; Precup, Doina; Clark, James J; Arbel, Tal

2016-06-01

Recent literature shows that facial attributes, i.e., contextual facial information, can be beneficial for improving the performance of real-world applications, such as face verification, face recognition, and image search. Examples of face attributes include gender, skin color, facial hair, etc. How to robustly obtain these facial attributes (traits) is still an open problem, especially in the presence of the challenges of real-world environments: non-uniform illumination conditions, arbitrary occlusions, motion blur and background clutter. What makes this problem even more difficult is the enormous variability presented by the same subject, due to arbitrary face scales, head poses, and facial expressions. In this paper, we focus on the problem of facial trait classification in real-world face videos. We have developed a fully automatic hierarchical and probabilistic framework that models the collective set of frame class distributions and feature spatial information over a video sequence. The experiments are conducted on a large real-world face video database that we have collected, labelled and made publicly available. The proposed method is flexible enough to be applied to any facial classification problem. Experiments on a large, real-world video database McGillFaces [1] of 18,000 video frames reveal that the proposed framework outperforms alternative approaches, by up to 16.96 and 10.13%, for the facial attributes of gender and facial hair, respectively.

The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts

Treesearch

L.N. Hudson; T. Newbold; S. Contu

2014-01-01

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that...

Visual search for emotional expressions: Effect of stimulus set on anger and happiness superiority.

PubMed

Savage, Ruth A; Becker, Stefanie I; Lipp, Ottmar V

2016-01-01

Prior reports of preferential detection of emotional expressions in visual search have yielded inconsistent results, even for face stimuli that avoid obvious expression-related perceptual confounds. The current study investigated inconsistent reports of anger and happiness superiority effects using face stimuli drawn from the same database. Experiment 1 excluded procedural differences as a potential factor, replicating a happiness superiority effect in a procedure that previously yielded an anger superiority effect. Experiments 2a and 2b confirmed that image colour or poser gender did not account for prior inconsistent findings. Experiments 3a and 3b identified stimulus set as the critical variable, revealing happiness or anger superiority effects for two partially overlapping sets of face stimuli. The current results highlight the critical role of stimulus selection for the observation of happiness or anger superiority effects in visual search even for face stimuli that avoid obvious expression related perceptual confounds and are drawn from a single database.

Face recognition using tridiagonal matrix enhanced multivariance products representation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ã-zay, Evrim Korkmaz

2017-01-01

This study aims to retrieve face images from a database according to a target face image. For this purpose, Tridiagonal Matrix Enhanced Multivariance Products Representation (TMEMPR) is taken into consideration. TMEMPR is a recursive algorithm based on Enhanced Multivariance Products Representation (EMPR). TMEMPR decomposes a matrix into three components which are a matrix of left support terms, a tridiagonal matrix of weight parameters for each recursion, and a matrix of right support terms, respectively. In this sense, there is an analogy between Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and TMEMPR. However TMEMPR is a more flexible algorithm since its initial support terms (or vectors) can be chosen as desired. Low computational complexity is another advantage of TMEMPR because the algorithm has been constructed with recursions of certain arithmetic operations without requiring any iteration. The algorithm has been trained and tested with ORL face image database with 400 different grayscale images of 40 different people. TMEMPR's performance has been compared with SVD's performance as a result.

DataBase on Demand

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gaspar Aparicio, R.; Gomez, D.; Coterillo Coz, I.; Wojcik, D.

2012-12-01

At CERN a number of key database applications are running on user-managed MySQL database services. The database on demand project was born out of an idea to provide the CERN user community with an environment to develop and run database services outside of the actual centralised Oracle based database services. The Database on Demand (DBoD) empowers the user to perform certain actions that had been traditionally done by database administrators, DBA's, providing an enterprise platform for database applications. It also allows the CERN user community to run different database engines, e.g. presently open community version of MySQL and single instance Oracle database server. This article describes a technology approach to face this challenge, a service level agreement, the SLA that the project provides, and an evolution of possible scenarios.

Comparison of face types in Chinese women using three-dimensional computed tomography.

PubMed

Zhou, Rong-Rong; Zhao, Qi-Ming; Liu, Miao

2015-04-01

This study compared inverted triangle and square faces of 21 young Chinese Han women (18-25 years old) using three-dimensional computed tomography images retrieved from a records database. In this study, 11 patients had inverted triangle faces and 10 had square faces. The anatomic features were examined and compared. There were significant differences in lower face width, lower face height, masseter thickness, middle/lower face width ratio, and lower face width/height ratio between the two facial types (p < 0.01). Lower face width was positively correlated with masseter thickness and negatively correlated with gonial angle. Lower face height was positively correlated with gonial angle and negatively correlated with masseter thickness, and gonial angle was negatively correlated with masseter thickness. In young Chinese Han women, inverted triangle faces and square faces differ significantly in masseter thickness and lower face height. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

The biometric-based module of smart grid system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Engel, E.; Kovalev, I. V.; Ermoshkina, A.

2015-10-01

Within Smart Grid concept the flexible biometric-based module base on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and selective Neural Network is developed. The formation of the selective Neural Network the biometric-based module uses the method which includes three main stages: preliminary processing of the image, face localization and face recognition. Experiments on the Yale face database show that (i) selective Neural Network exhibits promising classification capability for face detection, recognition problems; and (ii) the proposed biometric-based module achieves near real-time face detection, recognition speed and the competitive performance, as compared to some existing subspaces-based methods.

Let the IRIS Bloom:Regrowing the integrated risk information system (IRIS) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

PubMed

Dourson, Michael L

2018-05-03

The Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an important role in protecting public health. Originally it provided a single database listing official risk values equally valid for all Agency offices, and was an important tool for risk assessment communication across EPA. Started in 1986, IRIS achieved full standing in 1990 when it listed 500 risk values, the effort of two senior EPA groups over 5 years of monthly face-to-face meetings, to assess combined risk data from multiple Agency offices. Those groups were disbanded in 1995, and the lack of continuing face-to-face meetings meant that IRIS became no longer EPA's comprehensive database of risk values or their latest evaluations. As a remedy, a work group of the Agency's senior scientists should be re-established to evaluate new risks and to update older ones. Risk values to be reviewed would come from the same EPA offices now developing such information on their own. Still, this senior group would have the final authority on posting a risk value in IRIS, independently of individual EPA offices. This approach could also lay the groundwork for an all-government IRIS database, especially needed as more government Agencies, industries and non-governmental organizations are addressing evolving risk characterizations. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Performance evaluation of wavelet-based face verification on a PDA recorded database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sellahewa, Harin; Jassim, Sabah A.

2006-05-01

The rise of international terrorism and the rapid increase in fraud and identity theft has added urgency to the task of developing biometric-based person identification as a reliable alternative to conventional authentication methods. Human Identification based on face images is a tough challenge in comparison to identification based on fingerprints or Iris recognition. Yet, due to its unobtrusive nature, face recognition is the preferred method of identification for security related applications. The success of such systems will depend on the support of massive infrastructures. Current mobile communication devices (3G smart phones) and PDA's are equipped with a camera which can capture both still and streaming video clips and a touch sensitive display panel. Beside convenience, such devices provide an adequate secure infrastructure for sensitive & financial transactions, by protecting against fraud and repudiation while ensuring accountability. Biometric authentication systems for mobile devices would have obvious advantages in conflict scenarios when communication from beyond enemy lines is essential to save soldier and civilian life. In areas of conflict or disaster the luxury of fixed infrastructure is not available or destroyed. In this paper, we present a wavelet-based face verification scheme that have been specifically designed and implemented on a currently available PDA. We shall report on its performance on the benchmark audio-visual BANCA database and on a newly developed PDA recorded audio-visual database that take include indoor and outdoor recordings.

Kruskal-Wallis-based computationally efficient feature selection for face recognition.

PubMed

Ali Khan, Sajid; Hussain, Ayyaz; Basit, Abdul; Akram, Sheeraz

2014-01-01

Face recognition in today's technological world, and face recognition applications attain much more importance. Most of the existing work used frontal face images to classify face image. However these techniques fail when applied on real world face images. The proposed technique effectively extracts the prominent facial features. Most of the features are redundant and do not contribute to representing face. In order to eliminate those redundant features, computationally efficient algorithm is used to select the more discriminative face features. Extracted features are then passed to classification step. In the classification step, different classifiers are ensemble to enhance the recognition accuracy rate as single classifier is unable to achieve the high accuracy. Experiments are performed on standard face database images and results are compared with existing techniques.

An embedded face-classification system for infrared images on an FPGA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soto, Javier E.; Figueroa, Miguel

2014-10-01

We present a face-classification architecture for long-wave infrared (IR) images implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The circuit is fast, compact and low power, can recognize faces in real time and be embedded in a larger image-processing and computer vision system operating locally on an IR camera. The algorithm uses Local Binary Patterns (LBP) to perform feature extraction on each IR image. First, each pixel in the image is represented as an LBP pattern that encodes the similarity between the pixel and its neighbors. Uniform LBP codes are then used to reduce the number of patterns to 59 while preserving more than 90% of the information contained in the original LBP representation. Then, the image is divided into 64 non-overlapping regions, and each region is represented as a 59-bin histogram of patterns. Finally, the algorithm concatenates all 64 regions to create a 3,776-bin spatially enhanced histogram. We reduce the dimensionality of this histogram using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), which improves clustering and enables us to store an entire database of 53 subjects on-chip. During classification, the circuit applies LBP and LDA to each incoming IR image in real time, and compares the resulting feature vector to each pattern stored in the local database using the Manhattan distance. We implemented the circuit on a Xilinx Artix-7 XC7A100T FPGA and tested it with the UCHThermalFace database, which consists of 28 81 x 150-pixel images of 53 subjects in indoor and outdoor conditions. The circuit achieves a 98.6% hit ratio, trained with 16 images and tested with 12 images of each subject in the database. Using a 100 MHz clock, the circuit classifies 8,230 images per second, and consumes only 309mW.

A familiarity disadvantage for remembering specific images of faces.

PubMed

Armann, Regine G M; Jenkins, Rob; Burton, A Mike

2016-04-01

Familiar faces are remembered better than unfamiliar faces. Furthermore, it is much easier to match images of familiar than unfamiliar faces. These findings could be accounted for by quantitative differences in the ease with which faces are encoded. However, it has been argued that there are also some qualitative differences in familiar and unfamiliar face processing. Unfamiliar faces are held to rely on superficial, pictorial representations, whereas familiar faces invoke more abstract representations. Here we present 2 studies that show, for 1 task, an advantage for unfamiliar faces. In recognition memory, viewers are better able to reject a new picture, if it depicts an unfamiliar face. This rare advantage for unfamiliar faces supports the notion that familiarity brings about some representational changes, and further emphasizes the idea that theoretical accounts of face processing should incorporate familiarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Stereo Reconstruction Study

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-06-01

be registered on the agenda. At each step or analysis, the action with the highest score is executed and the database is changed. The agenda controls...activation of production rules according to changes in the database . The agenda is updated whenever the database is changed. Each time, the number of...views of an object. Total prediction has combinatorial complexity. For a polyhedron with n distinct faces, there are 2" views. Instead, ACRONYM predicts

Face recognition via edge-based Gabor feature representation for plastic surgery-altered images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chude-Olisah, Chollette C.; Sulong, Ghazali; Chude-Okonkwo, Uche A. K.; Hashim, Siti Z. M.

2014-12-01

Plastic surgery procedures on the face introduce skin texture variations between images of the same person (intra-subject), thereby making the task of face recognition more difficult than in normal scenario. Usually, in contemporary face recognition systems, the original gray-level face image is used as input to the Gabor descriptor, which translates to encoding some texture properties of the face image. The texture-encoding process significantly degrades the performance of such systems in the case of plastic surgery due to the presence of surgically induced intra-subject variations. Based on the proposition that the shape of significant facial components such as eyes, nose, eyebrow, and mouth remains unchanged after plastic surgery, this paper employs an edge-based Gabor feature representation approach for the recognition of surgically altered face images. We use the edge information, which is dependent on the shapes of the significant facial components, to address the plastic surgery-induced texture variation problems. To ensure that the significant facial components represent useful edge information with little or no false edges, a simple illumination normalization technique is proposed for preprocessing. Gabor wavelet is applied to the edge image to accentuate on the uniqueness of the significant facial components for discriminating among different subjects. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated on the Georgia Tech (GT) and the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) databases with illumination and expression problems, and the plastic surgery database with texture changes. Results show that the proposed edge-based Gabor feature representation approach is robust against plastic surgery-induced face variations amidst expression and illumination problems and outperforms the existing plastic surgery face recognition methods reported in the literature.

False match elimination for face recognition based on SIFT algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gu, Xuyuan; Shi, Ping; Shao, Meide

2011-06-01

The SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) is a well known algorithm used to detect and describe local features in images. It is invariant to image scale, rotation and robust to the noise and illumination. In this paper, a novel method used for face recognition based on SIFT is proposed, which combines the optimization of SIFT, mutual matching and Progressive Sample Consensus (PROSAC) together and can eliminate the false matches of face recognition effectively. Experiments on ORL face database show that many false matches can be eliminated and better recognition rate is achieved.

Sub-pattern based multi-manifold discriminant analysis for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dai, Jiangyan; Guo, Changlu; Zhou, Wei; Shi, Yanjiao; Cong, Lin; Yi, Yugen

2018-04-01

In this paper, we present a Sub-pattern based Multi-manifold Discriminant Analysis (SpMMDA) algorithm for face recognition. Unlike existing Multi-manifold Discriminant Analysis (MMDA) approach which is based on holistic information of face image for recognition, SpMMDA operates on sub-images partitioned from the original face image and then extracts the discriminative local feature from the sub-images separately. Moreover, the structure information of different sub-images from the same face image is considered in the proposed method with the aim of further improve the recognition performance. Extensive experiments on three standard face databases (Extended YaleB, CMU PIE and AR) demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and outperforms some other sub-pattern based face recognition methods.

Visual cryptography for face privacy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ross, Arun; Othman, Asem A.

2010-04-01

We discuss the problem of preserving the privacy of a digital face image stored in a central database. In the proposed scheme, a private face image is dithered into two host face images such that it can be revealed only when both host images are simultaneously available; at the same time, the individual host images do not reveal the identity of the original image. In order to accomplish this, we appeal to the field of Visual Cryptography. Experimental results confirm the following: (a) the possibility of hiding a private face image in two unrelated host face images; (b) the successful matching of face images that are reconstructed by superimposing the host images; and (c) the inability of the host images, known as sheets, to reveal the identity of the secret face image.

Wavelet filtered shifted phase-encoded joint transform correlation for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moniruzzaman, Md.; Alam, Mohammad S.

2017-05-01

A new wavelet-filtered-based Shifted- phase-encoded Joint Transform Correlation (WPJTC) technique has been proposed for efficient face recognition. The proposed technique uses discrete wavelet decomposition for preprocessing and can effectively accommodate various 3D facial distortions, effects of noise, and illumination variations. After analyzing different forms of wavelet basis functions, an optimal method has been proposed by considering the discrimination capability and processing speed as performance trade-offs. The proposed technique yields better correlation discrimination compared to alternate pattern recognition techniques such as phase-shifted phase-encoded fringe-adjusted joint transform correlator. The performance of the proposed WPJTC has been tested using the Yale facial database and extended Yale facial database under different environments such as illumination variation, noise, and 3D changes in facial expressions. Test results show that the proposed WPJTC yields better performance compared to alternate JTC based face recognition techniques.

Performance analysis of different database in new internet mapping system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yao, Xing; Su, Wei; Gao, Shuai

2017-03-01

In the Mapping System of New Internet, Massive mapping entries between AID and RID need to be stored, added, updated, and deleted. In order to better deal with the problem when facing a large number of mapping entries update and query request, the Mapping System of New Internet must use high-performance database. In this paper, we focus on the performance of Redis, SQLite, and MySQL these three typical databases, and the results show that the Mapping System based on different databases can adapt to different needs according to the actual situation.

Online Survey Design and Development: A Janus-Faced Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lauer, Claire; McLeod, Michael; Blythe, Stuart

2013-01-01

In this article we propose a "Janus-faced" approach to survey design--an approach that encourages researchers to consider how they can design and implement surveys more effectively using the latest web and database tools. Specifically, this approach encourages researchers to look two ways at once; attending to both the survey interface…

Review of Research on Student-Facing Learning Analytics Dashboards and Educational Recommender Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bodily, Robert; Verbert, Katrien

2017-01-01

This article is a comprehensive literature review of student-facing learning analytics reporting systems that track learning analytics data and report it directly to students. This literature review builds on four previously conducted literature reviews in similar domains. Out of the 945 articles retrieved from databases and journals, 93 articles…

Novel dynamic Bayesian networks for facial action element recognition and understanding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Wei; Park, Jeong-Seon; Choi, Dong-You; Lee, Sang-Woong

2011-12-01

In daily life, language is an important tool of communication between people. Besides language, facial action can also provide a great amount of information. Therefore, facial action recognition has become a popular research topic in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). However, facial action recognition is quite a challenging task due to its complexity. In a literal sense, there are thousands of facial muscular movements, many of which have very subtle differences. Moreover, muscular movements always occur simultaneously when the pose is changed. To address this problem, we first build a fully automatic facial points detection system based on a local Gabor filter bank and principal component analysis. Then, novel dynamic Bayesian networks are proposed to perform facial action recognition using the junction tree algorithm over a limited number of feature points. In order to evaluate the proposed method, we have used the Korean face database for model training. For testing, we used the CUbiC FacePix, facial expressions and emotion database, Japanese female facial expression database, and our own database. Our experimental results clearly demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Pose-Invariant Face Recognition via RGB-D Images.

PubMed

Sang, Gaoli; Li, Jing; Zhao, Qijun

2016-01-01

Three-dimensional (3D) face models can intrinsically handle large pose face recognition problem. In this paper, we propose a novel pose-invariant face recognition method via RGB-D images. By employing depth, our method is able to handle self-occlusion and deformation, both of which are challenging problems in two-dimensional (2D) face recognition. Texture images in the gallery can be rendered to the same view as the probe via depth. Meanwhile, depth is also used for similarity measure via frontalization and symmetric filling. Finally, both texture and depth contribute to the final identity estimation. Experiments on Bosphorus, CurtinFaces, Eurecom, and Kiwi databases demonstrate that the additional depth information has improved the performance of face recognition with large pose variations and under even more challenging conditions.

Becoming a Lunari or Taiyo expert: learned attention to parts drives holistic processing of faces.

PubMed

Chua, Kao-Wei; Richler, Jennifer J; Gauthier, Isabel

2014-06-01

Faces are processed holistically, but the locus of holistic processing remains unclear. We created two novel races of faces (Lunaris and Taiyos) to study how experience with face parts influences holistic processing. In Experiment 1, subjects individuated Lunaris wherein the top, bottom, or both face halves contained diagnostic information. Subjects who learned to attend to face parts exhibited no holistic processing. This suggests that individuation only leads to holistic processing when the whole face is attended. In Experiment 2, subjects individuated both Lunaris and Taiyos, with diagnostic information in complementary face halves of the two races. Holistic processing was measured with composites made of either diagnostic or nondiagnostic face parts. Holistic processing was only observed for composites made from diagnostic face parts, demonstrating that holistic processing can occur for diagnostic face parts that were never seen together. These results suggest that holistic processing is an expression of learned attention to diagnostic face parts. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity are linked to individual differences in face recognition ability.

PubMed

Rhodes, Gillian; Jeffery, Linda; Taylor, Libby; Hayward, William G; Ewing, Louise

2014-06-01

Despite their similarity as visual patterns, we can discriminate and recognize many thousands of faces. This expertise has been linked to 2 coding mechanisms: holistic integration of information across the face and adaptive coding of face identity using norms tuned by experience. Recently, individual differences in face recognition ability have been discovered and linked to differences in holistic coding. Here we show that they are also linked to individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity, measured using face identity aftereffects. Identity aftereffects correlated significantly with several measures of face-selective recognition ability. They also correlated marginally with own-race face recognition ability, suggesting a role for adaptive coding in the well-known other-race effect. More generally, these results highlight the important functional role of adaptive face-coding mechanisms in face expertise, taking us beyond the traditional focus on holistic coding mechanisms. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Cloud storage based mobile assessment facility for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder using integrated signal processing algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Balbin, Jessie R.; Pinugu, Jasmine Nadja J.; Basco, Abigail Joy S.; Cabanada, Myla B.; Gonzales, Patrisha Melrose V.; Marasigan, Juan Carlos C.

2017-06-01

The research aims to build a tool in assessing patients for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. The parameters used are heart rate, skin conductivity, and facial gestures. Facial gestures are recorded using OpenFace, an open-source face recognition program that uses facial action units in to track facial movements. Heart rate and skin conductivity is measured through sensors operated using Raspberry Pi. Results are stored in a database for easy and quick access. Databases to be used are uploaded to a cloud platform so that doctors have direct access to the data. This research aims to analyze these parameters and give accurate assessment of the patient.

Illumination robust face recognition using spatial adaptive shadow compensation based on face intensity prior

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hsieh, Cheng-Ta; Huang, Kae-Horng; Lee, Chang-Hsing; Han, Chin-Chuan; Fan, Kuo-Chin

2017-12-01

Robust face recognition under illumination variations is an important and challenging task in a face recognition system, particularly for face recognition in the wild. In this paper, a face image preprocessing approach, called spatial adaptive shadow compensation (SASC), is proposed to eliminate shadows in the face image due to different lighting directions. First, spatial adaptive histogram equalization (SAHE), which uses face intensity prior model, is proposed to enhance the contrast of each local face region without generating visible noises in smooth face areas. Adaptive shadow compensation (ASC), which performs shadow compensation in each local image block, is then used to produce a wellcompensated face image appropriate for face feature extraction and recognition. Finally, null-space linear discriminant analysis (NLDA) is employed to extract discriminant features from SASC compensated images. Experiments performed on the Yale B, Yale B extended, and CMU PIE face databases have shown that the proposed SASC always yields the best face recognition accuracy. That is, SASC is more robust to face recognition under illumination variations than other shadow compensation approaches.

Meeting the Aims of Honors in the Online Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Melissa L.

2013-01-01

While little data-based research is available on the use of technology in the honors classroom, data on the nature of online honors courses are even rarer. In undergraduate education generally, enrollment in online courses has been increasing annually, outpacing enrollment in traditional, face-to-face environments. During fall 2011, more than 6.7…

Intelligent Virtual Assistant's Impact on Technical Proficiency within Virtual Teams

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Graham, Christian; Jones, Nory B.

2016-01-01

Information-systems development continues to be a difficult process, particularly for virtual teams that do not have the luxury of meeting face-to-face. The research literature on this topic reinforces this point: the greater part of database systems development projects ends in failure. The use of virtual teams to complete projects further…

Social Networking as a Platform for Role-Playing Scientific Case Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geyer, Andrea M.

2014-01-01

This work discusses the design and implementation of two online case studies in a face-to-face general chemistry course. The case studies were integrated into the course to emphasize the need for science literacy in general society, to enhance critical thinking, to introduce database searching, and to improve primary literature reading skills. An…

Global Binary Continuity for Color Face Detection With Complex Background

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Belavadi, Bhaskar; Mahendra Prashanth, K. V.; Joshi, Sujay S.; Suprathik, N.

2017-08-01

In this paper, we propose a method to detect human faces in color images, with complex background. The proposed algorithm makes use of basically two color space models, specifically HSV and YCgCr. The color segmented image is filled uniformly with a single color (binary) and then all unwanted discontinuous lines are removed to get the final image. Experimental results on Caltech database manifests that the purported model is able to accomplish far better segmentation for faces of varying orientations, skin color and background environment.

The Changing Face of Scientific Discourse: Analysis of Genomic and Proteomic Database Usage and Acceptance.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Cecelia

2003-01-01

Discusses the growth in use and acceptance of Web-based genomic and proteomic databases (GPD) in scholarly communication. Confirms the role of GPD in the scientific literature cycle, suggests GPD are a storage and retrieval mechanism for molecular biology information, and recommends that existing models of scientific communication be updated to…

a Review on State-Of Face Recognition Approaches

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mahmood, Zahid; Muhammad, Nazeer; Bibi, Nargis; Ali, Tauseef

Automatic Face Recognition (FR) presents a challenging task in the field of pattern recognition and despite the huge research in the past several decades; it still remains an open research problem. This is primarily due to the variability in the facial images, such as non-uniform illuminations, low resolution, occlusion, and/or variation in poses. Due to its non-intrusive nature, the FR is an attractive biometric modality and has gained a lot of attention in the biometric research community. Driven by the enormous number of potential application domains, many algorithms have been proposed for the FR. This paper presents an overview of the state-of-the-art FR algorithms, focusing their performances on publicly available databases. We highlight the conditions of the image databases with regard to the recognition rate of each approach. This is useful as a quick research overview and for practitioners as well to choose an algorithm for their specified FR application. To provide a comprehensive survey, the paper divides the FR algorithms into three categories: (1) intensity-based, (2) video-based, and (3) 3D based FR algorithms. In each category, the most commonly used algorithms and their performance is reported on standard face databases and a brief critical discussion is carried out.

VIEWCACHE: An incremental pointer-based access method for autonomous interoperable databases

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Roussopoulos, N.; Sellis, Timos

1992-01-01

One of biggest problems facing NASA today is to provide scientists efficient access to a large number of distributed databases. Our pointer-based incremental database access method, VIEWCACHE, provides such an interface for accessing distributed data sets and directories. VIEWCACHE allows database browsing and search performing inter-database cross-referencing with no actual data movement between database sites. This organization and processing is especially suitable for managing Astrophysics databases which are physically distributed all over the world. Once the search is complete, the set of collected pointers pointing to the desired data are cached. VIEWCACHE includes spatial access methods for accessing image data sets, which provide much easier query formulation by referring directly to the image and very efficient search for objects contained within a two-dimensional window. We will develop and optimize a VIEWCACHE External Gateway Access to database management systems to facilitate distributed database search.

Facial expressions of emotion (KDEF): identification under different display-duration conditions.

PubMed

Calvo, Manuel G; Lundqvist, Daniel

2008-02-01

Participants judged which of seven facial expressions (neutrality, happiness, anger, sadness, surprise, fear, and disgust) were displayed by a set of 280 faces corresponding to 20 female and 20 male models of the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database (Lundqvist, Flykt, & Ohman, 1998). Each face was presented under free-viewing conditions (to 63 participants) and also for 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500 msec (to 160 participants), to examine identification thresholds. Measures of identification accuracy, types of errors, and reaction times were obtained for each expression. In general, happy faces were identified more accurately, earlier, and faster than other faces, whereas judgments of fearful faces were the least accurate, the latest, and the slowest. Norms for each face and expression regarding level of identification accuracy, errors, and reaction times may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.

Does it matter where we meet? The role of emotional context in evaluative first impressions.

PubMed

Koji, Shahnaz; Fernandes, Myra

2010-06-01

We investigated how emotionality of visual background context influenced perceptual ratings of faces. In two experiments participants rated how positive or negative a face, with a neutral expression (Experiment 1), or unambiguous emotional expression (happy/angry; Experiment 2), appeared when viewed overlaid onto positive, negative, or neutral background context scenes. Faces viewed in a positive context were rated as appearing more positive than when in a neutral or negative context, and faces in negative contexts were rated more negative than when in a positive or neutral context, regardless of the emotional expression portrayed. Notably, congruency of valence in face expression and background context significantly influenced face ratings. These findings suggest that human judgements of faces are relative, and significantly influenced by contextual factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Fusion of LBP and SWLD using spatio-spectral information for hyperspectral face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xie, Zhihua; Jiang, Peng; Zhang, Shuai; Xiong, Jinquan

2018-01-01

Hyperspectral imaging, recording intrinsic spectral information of the skin cross different spectral bands, become an important issue for robust face recognition. However, the main challenges for hyperspectral face recognition are high data dimensionality, low signal to noise ratio and inter band misalignment. In this paper, hyperspectral face recognition based on LBP (Local binary pattern) and SWLD (Simplified Weber local descriptor) is proposed to extract discriminative local features from spatio-spectral fusion information. Firstly, the spatio-spectral fusion strategy based on statistical information is used to attain discriminative features of hyperspectral face images. Secondly, LBP is applied to extract the orientation of the fusion face edges. Thirdly, SWLD is proposed to encode the intensity information in hyperspectral images. Finally, we adopt a symmetric Kullback-Leibler distance to compute the encoded face images. The hyperspectral face recognition is tested on Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hyperspectral Face database (PolyUHSFD). Experimental results show that the proposed method has higher recognition rate (92.8%) than the state of the art hyperspectral face recognition algorithms.

Formal implementation of a performance evaluation model for the face recognition system.

PubMed

Shin, Yong-Nyuo; Kim, Jason; Lee, Yong-Jun; Shin, Woochang; Choi, Jin-Young

2008-01-01

Due to usability features, practical applications, and its lack of intrusiveness, face recognition technology, based on information, derived from individuals' facial features, has been attracting considerable attention recently. Reported recognition rates of commercialized face recognition systems cannot be admitted as official recognition rates, as they are based on assumptions that are beneficial to the specific system and face database. Therefore, performance evaluation methods and tools are necessary to objectively measure the accuracy and performance of any face recognition system. In this paper, we propose and formalize a performance evaluation model for the biometric recognition system, implementing an evaluation tool for face recognition systems based on the proposed model. Furthermore, we performed evaluations objectively by providing guidelines for the design and implementation of a performance evaluation system, formalizing the performance test process.

Holistic processing of static and moving faces.

PubMed

Zhao, Mintao; Bülthoff, Isabelle

2017-07-01

Humans' face ability develops and matures with extensive experience in perceiving, recognizing, and interacting with faces that move most of the time. However, how facial movements affect 1 core aspect of face ability-holistic face processing-remains unclear. Here we investigated the influence of rigid facial motion on holistic and part-based face processing by manipulating the presence of facial motion during study and at test in a composite face task. The results showed that rigidly moving faces were processed as holistically as static faces (Experiment 1). Holistic processing of moving faces persisted whether facial motion was presented during study, at test, or both (Experiment 2). Moreover, when faces were inverted to eliminate the contributions of both an upright face template and observers' expertise with upright faces, rigid facial motion facilitated holistic face processing (Experiment 3). Thus, holistic processing represents a general principle of face perception that applies to both static and dynamic faces, rather than being limited to static faces. These results support an emerging view that both perceiver-based and face-based factors contribute to holistic face processing, and they offer new insights on what underlies holistic face processing, how information supporting holistic face processing interacts with each other, and why facial motion may affect face recognition and holistic face processing differently. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Quantitative assessment of the facial features of a Mexican population dataset.

PubMed

Farrera, Arodi; García-Velasco, Maria; Villanueva, Maria

2016-05-01

The present study describes the morphological variation of a large database of facial photographs. The database comprises frontal (386 female, 764 males) and lateral (312 females, 666 males) images of Mexican individuals aged 14-69 years that were obtained under controlled conditions. We used geometric morphometric methods and multivariate statistics to describe the phenotypic variation within the dataset as well as the variation regarding sex and age groups. In addition, we explored the correlation between facial traits in both views. We found a spectrum of variation that encompasses broad and narrow faces. In frontal view, the latter is associated to a longer nose, a thinner upper lip, a shorter lower face and to a longer upper face, than individuals with broader faces. In lateral view, antero-posteriorly shortened faces are associated to a longer profile and to a shortened helix, than individuals with longer faces. Sexual dimorphism is found in all age groups except for individuals above 39 years old in lateral view. Likewise, age-related changes are significant for both sexes, except for females above 29 years old in both views. Finally, we observed that the pattern of covariation between views differs in males and females mainly in the thickness of the upper lip and the angle of the facial profile and the auricle. The results of this study could contribute to the forensic practices as a complement for the construction of biological profiles, for example, to improve facial reconstruction procedures. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Template protection and its implementation in 3D face recognition systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Xuebing

2007-04-01

As biometric recognition systems are widely applied in various application areas, security and privacy risks have recently attracted the attention of the biometric community. Template protection techniques prevent stored reference data from revealing private biometric information and enhance the security of biometrics systems against attacks such as identity theft and cross matching. This paper concentrates on a template protection algorithm that merges methods from cryptography, error correction coding and biometrics. The key component of the algorithm is to convert biometric templates into binary vectors. It is shown that the binary vectors should be robust, uniformly distributed, statistically independent and collision-free so that authentication performance can be optimized and information leakage can be avoided. Depending on statistical character of the biometric template, different approaches for transforming biometric templates into compact binary vectors are presented. The proposed methods are integrated into a 3D face recognition system and tested on the 3D facial images of the FRGC database. It is shown that the resulting binary vectors provide an authentication performance that is similar to the original 3D face templates. A high security level is achieved with reasonable false acceptance and false rejection rates of the system, based on an efficient statistical analysis. The algorithm estimates the statistical character of biometric templates from a number of biometric samples in the enrollment database. For the FRGC 3D face database, the small distinction of robustness and discriminative power between the classification results under the assumption of uniquely distributed templates and the ones under the assumption of Gaussian distributed templates is shown in our tests.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bourham, Mohamed A.; Gilligan, John G.

Safety considerations in large future fusion reactors like ITER are important before licensing the reactor. Several scenarios are considered hazardous, which include safety of plasma-facing components during hard disruptions, high heat fluxes and thermal stresses during normal operation, accidental energy release, and aerosol formation and transport. Disruption events, in large tokamaks like ITER, are expected to produce local heat fluxes on plasma-facing components, which may exceed 100 GW/m{sup 2} over a period of about 0.1 ms. As a result, the surface temperature dramatically increases, which results in surface melting and vaporization, and produces thermal stresses and surface erosion. Plasma-facing componentsmore » safety issues extends to cover a wide range of possible scenarios, including disruption severity and the impact of plasma-facing components on disruption parameters, accidental energy release and short/long term LOCA's, and formation of airborne particles by convective current transport during a LOVA (water/air ingress disruption) accident scenario. Study, and evaluation of, disruption-induced aerosol generation and mobilization is essential to characterize database on particulate formation and distribution for large future fusion tokamak reactor like ITER. In order to provide database relevant to ITER, the SIRENS electrothermal plasma facility at NCSU has been modified to closely simulate heat fluxes expected in ITER.« less

Gender classification from video under challenging operating conditions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mendoza-Schrock, Olga; Dong, Guozhu

2014-06-01

The literature is abundant with papers on gender classification research. However the majority of such research is based on the assumption that there is enough resolution so that the subject's face can be resolved. Hence the majority of the research is actually in the face recognition and facial feature area. A gap exists for gender classification under challenging operating conditions—different seasonal conditions, different clothing, etc.—and when the subject's face cannot be resolved due to lack of resolution. The Seasonal Weather and Gender (SWAG) Database is a novel database that contains subjects walking through a scene under operating conditions that span a calendar year. This paper exploits a subset of that database—the SWAG One dataset—using data mining techniques, traditional classifiers (ex. Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine, etc.) and traditional (canny edge detection, etc.) and non-traditional (height/width ratios, etc.) feature extractors to achieve high correct gender classification rates (greater than 85%). Another novelty includes exploiting frame differentials.

VIEWCACHE: An incremental pointer-based access method for autonomous interoperable databases

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Roussopoulos, N.; Sellis, Timos

1993-01-01

One of the biggest problems facing NASA today is to provide scientists efficient access to a large number of distributed databases. Our pointer-based incremental data base access method, VIEWCACHE, provides such an interface for accessing distributed datasets and directories. VIEWCACHE allows database browsing and search performing inter-database cross-referencing with no actual data movement between database sites. This organization and processing is especially suitable for managing Astrophysics databases which are physically distributed all over the world. Once the search is complete, the set of collected pointers pointing to the desired data are cached. VIEWCACHE includes spatial access methods for accessing image datasets, which provide much easier query formulation by referring directly to the image and very efficient search for objects contained within a two-dimensional window. We will develop and optimize a VIEWCACHE External Gateway Access to database management systems to facilitate database search.

Mass-Spectrometry Based Structure Identification of "Known-Unknowns" Using the EPA's CompTox Dashboard (ACS Spring National Meeting) 4 of 7

EPA Science Inventory

The CompTox Dashboard is a publicly accessible database provided by the National Center for Computational Toxicology at the US-EPA. The dashboard provides access to a database containing ~720,000 chemicals and integrates a number of our public-facing projects (e.g. ToxCast and Ex...

Federated Search Tools in Fusion Centers: Bridging Databases in the Information Sharing Environment

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-09-01

considerable variation in how fusion centers plan for, gather requirements, select and acquire federated search tools to bridge disparate databases...centers, when considering integrating federated search tools; by evaluating the importance of the planning, requirements gathering, selection and...acquisition processes for integrating federated search tools; by acknowledging the challenges faced by some fusion centers during these integration processes

Semisupervised kernel marginal Fisher analysis for face recognition.

PubMed

Wang, Ziqiang; Sun, Xia; Sun, Lijun; Huang, Yuchun

2013-01-01

Dimensionality reduction is a key problem in face recognition due to the high-dimensionality of face image. To effectively cope with this problem, a novel dimensionality reduction algorithm called semisupervised kernel marginal Fisher analysis (SKMFA) for face recognition is proposed in this paper. SKMFA can make use of both labelled and unlabeled samples to learn the projection matrix for nonlinear dimensionality reduction. Meanwhile, it can successfully avoid the singularity problem by not calculating the matrix inverse. In addition, in order to make the nonlinear structure captured by the data-dependent kernel consistent with the intrinsic manifold structure, a manifold adaptive nonparameter kernel is incorporated into the learning process of SKMFA. Experimental results on three face image databases demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.

Individual differences in perceiving and recognizing faces-One element of social cognition.

PubMed

Wilhelm, Oliver; Herzmann, Grit; Kunina, Olga; Danthiir, Vanessa; Schacht, Annekathrin; Sommer, Werner

2010-09-01

Recognizing faces swiftly and accurately is of paramount importance to humans as a social species. Individual differences in the ability to perform these tasks may therefore reflect important aspects of social or emotional intelligence. Although functional models of face cognition based on group and single case studies postulate multiple component processes, little is known about the ability structure underlying individual differences in face cognition. In 2 large individual differences experiments (N = 151 and N = 209), a broad variety of face-cognition tasks were tested and the component abilities of face cognition-face perception, face memory, and the speed of face cognition-were identified and then replicated. Experiment 2 also showed that the 3 face-cognition abilities are clearly distinct from immediate and delayed memory, mental speed, general cognitive ability, and object cognition. These results converge with functional and neuroanatomical models of face cognition by demonstrating the difference between face perception and face memory. The results also underline the importance of distinguishing between speed and accuracy of face cognition. Together our results provide a first step toward establishing face-processing abilities as an independent ability reflecting elements of social intelligence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Does perceived race affect discrimination and recognition of ambiguous-race faces? A test of the sociocognitive hypothesis.

PubMed

Rhodes, Gillian; Lie, Hanne C; Ewing, Louise; Evangelista, Emma; Tanaka, James W

2010-01-01

Discrimination and recognition are often poorer for other-race than own-race faces. These other-race effects (OREs) have traditionally been attributed to reduced perceptual expertise, resulting from more limited experience, with other-race faces. However, recent findings suggest that sociocognitive factors, such as reduced motivation to individuate other-race faces, may also contribute. If the sociocognitive hypothesis is correct, then it should be possible to alter discrimination and memory performance for identical faces by altering their perceived race. We made identical ambiguous-race morphed faces look either Asian or Caucasian by presenting them in Caucasian or Asian face contexts, respectively. However, this perceived-race manipulation had no effect on either discrimination (Experiment 1) or memory (Experiment 2) for the ambiguous-race faces, despite the presence of the usual OREs in discrimination and recognition of unambiguous Asian and Caucasian faces in our participant population. These results provide no support for the sociocognitive hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

Functional atlas of emotional faces processing: a voxel-based meta-analysis of 105 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies

PubMed Central

Fusar-Poli, Paolo; Placentino, Anna; Carletti, Francesco; Landi, Paola; Allen, Paul; Surguladze, Simon; Benedetti, Francesco; Abbamonte, Marta; Gasparotti, Roberto; Barale, Francesco; Perez, Jorge; McGuire, Philip; Politi, Pierluigi

2009-01-01

Background Most of our social interactions involve perception of emotional information from the faces of other people. Furthermore, such emotional processes are thought to be aberrant in a range of clinical disorders, including psychosis and depression. However, the exact neurofunctional maps underlying emotional facial processing are not well defined. Methods Two independent researchers conducted separate comprehensive PubMed (1990 to May 2008) searches to find all functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies using a variant of the emotional faces paradigm in healthy participants. The search terms were: “fMRI AND happy faces,” “fMRI AND sad faces,” “fMRI AND fearful faces,” “fMRI AND angry faces,” “fMRI AND disgusted faces” and “fMRI AND neutral faces.” We extracted spatial coordinates and inserted them in an electronic database. We performed activation likelihood estimation analysis for voxel-based meta-analyses. Results Of the originally identified studies, 105 met our inclusion criteria. The overall database consisted of 1785 brain coordinates that yielded an overall sample of 1600 healthy participants. Quantitative voxel-based meta-analysis of brain activation provided neurofunctional maps for 1) main effect of human faces; 2) main effect of emotional valence; and 3) modulatory effect of age, sex, explicit versus implicit processing and magnetic field strength. Processing of emotional faces was associated with increased activation in a number of visual, limbic, temporoparietal and prefrontal areas; the putamen; and the cerebellum. Happy, fearful and sad faces specifically activated the amygdala, whereas angry or disgusted faces had no effect on this brain region. Furthermore, amygdala sensitivity was greater for fearful than for happy or sad faces. Insular activation was selectively reported during processing of disgusted and angry faces. However, insular sensitivity was greater for disgusted than for angry faces. Conversely, neural response in the visual cortex and cerebellum was observable across all emotional conditions. Limitations Although the activation likelihood estimation approach is currently one of the most powerful and reliable meta-analytical methods in neuroimaging research, it is insensitive to effect sizes. Conclusion Our study has detailed neurofunctional maps to use as normative references in future fMRI studies of emotional facial processing in psychiatric populations. We found selective differences between neural networks underlying the basic emotions in limbic and insular brain regions. PMID:19949718

Discriminative Projection Selection Based Face Image Hashing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karabat, Cagatay; Erdogan, Hakan

Face image hashing is an emerging method used in biometric verification systems. In this paper, we propose a novel face image hashing method based on a new technique called discriminative projection selection. We apply the Fisher criterion for selecting the rows of a random projection matrix in a user-dependent fashion. Moreover, another contribution of this paper is to employ a bimodal Gaussian mixture model at the quantization step. Our simulation results on three different databases demonstrate that the proposed method has superior performance in comparison to previously proposed random projection based methods.

Biometric Challenges for Future Deployments: A Study of the Impact of Geography, Climate, Culture, and Social Conditions on the Effective Collection of Biometrics

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-04-01

to iris or face recognition. In addition, breathing the dust is prevented with something covering the mouth , which will cause problems with face...headgear that “obscures the hair or hairline”. [58] One database of face images has images of people with and without scarves over their mouth . [59... Electronic Systems Magazine. Vol 19, Number 9, September 2004. [58] U.S. Department of State. How to Apply [for a Passport] in Person. [On-line

Visual feature extraction and establishment of visual tags in the intelligent visual internet of things

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Yiqun; Wang, Zhihui

2015-12-01

The Internet of things (IOT) is a kind of intelligent networks which can be used to locate, track, identify and supervise people and objects. One of important core technologies of intelligent visual internet of things ( IVIOT) is the intelligent visual tag system. In this paper, a research is done into visual feature extraction and establishment of visual tags of the human face based on ORL face database. Firstly, we use the principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm for face feature extraction, then adopt the support vector machine (SVM) for classifying and face recognition, finally establish a visual tag for face which is already classified. We conducted a experiment focused on a group of people face images, the result show that the proposed algorithm have good performance, and can show the visual tag of objects conveniently.

Combination of Face Regions in Forensic Scenarios.

PubMed

Tome, Pedro; Fierrez, Julian; Vera-Rodriguez, Ruben; Ortega-Garcia, Javier

2015-07-01

This article presents an experimental analysis of the combination of different regions of the human face on various forensic scenarios to generate scientific knowledge useful for the forensic experts. Three scenarios of interest at different distances are considered comparing mugshot and CCTV face images using MORPH and SC face databases. One of the main findings is that inner facial regions combine better in mugshot and close CCTV scenarios and outer facial regions combine better in far CCTV scenarios. This means, that depending of the acquisition distance, the discriminative power of the facial regions change, having in some cases better performance than the full face. This effect can be exploited by considering the fusion of facial regions which results in a very significant improvement of the discriminative performance compared to just using the full face. © 2015 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

A Comparison of Global Indexing Schemes to Facilitate Earth Science Data Management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Griessbaum, N.; Frew, J.; Rilee, M. L.; Kuo, K. S.

2017-12-01

Recent advances in database technology have led to systems optimized for managing petabyte-scale multidimensional arrays. These array databases are a good fit for subsets of the Earth's surface that can be projected into a rectangular coordinate system with acceptable geometric fidelity. However, for global analyses, array databases must address the same distortions and discontinuities that apply to map projections in general. The array database SciDB supports enormous databases spread across thousands of computing nodes. Additionally, the following SciDB characteristics are particularly germane to the coordinate system problem: SciDB efficiently stores and manipulates sparse (i.e. mostly empty) arrays. SciDB arrays have 64-bit indexes. SciDB supports user-defined data types, functions, and operators. We have implemented two geospatial indexing schemes in SciDB. The simplest uses two array dimensions to represent longitude and latitude. For representation as 64-bit integers, the coordinates are multiplied by a scale factor large enough to yield an appropriate Earth surface resolution (e.g., a scale factor of 100,000 yields a resolution of approximately 1m at the equator). Aside from the longitudinal discontinuity, the principal disadvantage of this scheme is its fixed scale factor. The second scheme uses a single array dimension to represent the bit-codes for locations in a hierarchical triangular mesh (HTM) coordinate system. A HTM maps the Earth's surface onto an octahedron, and then recursively subdivides each triangular face to the desired resolution. Earth surface locations are represented as the concatenation of an octahedron face code and a quadtree code within the face. Unlike our integerized lat-lon scheme, the HTM allow for objects of different size (e.g., pixels with differing resolutions) to be represented in the same indexing scheme. We present an evaluation of the relative utility of these two schemes for managing and analyzing MODIS swath data.

Women's Self-Identified Sources of Student Support in a Master's-Level Health Informatics Database Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Feinberg, Daniel A.

2017-01-01

This study examined the supports that female students sought out and found of value in an online database design course in a health informatics master's program. A target outcome was to help inform the practice of faculty and administrators in similar programs. Health informatics is a growing field that has faced shortages of qualified workers who…

Remembering faces and scenes: The mixed-category advantage in visual working memory.

PubMed

Jiang, Yuhong V; Remington, Roger W; Asaad, Anthony; Lee, Hyejin J; Mikkalson, Taylor C

2016-09-01

We examined the mixed-category memory advantage for faces and scenes to determine how domain-specific cortical resources constrain visual working memory. Consistent with previous findings, visual working memory for a display of 2 faces and 2 scenes was better than that for a display of 4 faces or 4 scenes. This pattern was unaffected by manipulations of encoding duration. However, the mixed-category advantage was carried solely by faces: Memory for scenes was not better when scenes were encoded with faces rather than with other scenes. The asymmetry between faces and scenes was found when items were presented simultaneously or sequentially, centrally, or peripherally, and when scenes were drawn from a narrow category. A further experiment showed a mixed-category advantage in memory for faces and bodies, but not in memory for scenes and objects. The results suggest that unique category-specific interactions contribute significantly to the mixed-category advantage in visual working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Three-Dimensional Anthropometric Database of Attractive Caucasian Women: Standards and Comparisons.

PubMed

Galantucci, Luigi Maria; Deli, Roberto; Laino, Alberto; Di Gioia, Eliana; D'Alessio, Raoul; Lavecchia, Fulvio; Percoco, Gianluca; Savastano, Carmela

2016-10-01

The aim of this paper is to develop a database to determine a new biomorphometric standard of attractiveness. Sampling was carried out using noninvasive three-dimensional relief methods to measure the soft tissues of the face. These anthropometric measurements were analyzed to verify the existence of any canons with respect to shape, size, and measurement proportions which proved to be significant with regard to the aesthetics of the face. Finally, the anthropometric parameters obtained were compared with findings described in the international literature.The study sample was made up competitors in the Miss Italy 2010 and 2009 beauty contest. The three-dimensional (3D) scanning of soft tissue surfaces allowed 3D digital models of the faces and the spatial 3D coordinates of 25 anthropometric landmarks to be obtained and used to calculate linear and angular measurements. A paired Student t test for the analysis of the means allowed 3 key questions in the study of biomorphometric parameters of the face to be addressed through comparison with the data available in the literature.The question of statistical evidence for the samples analyzed being members of the populations samples reported in literature was also addressed.The critical analysis of the data helped to identify the anthropometric measurements of the upper, middle, and lower thirds of the face, variations in which have a major influence on the attractiveness of the face. These changes involve facial width, height, and depth. Changes in measurements of length, angles, and proportions found in the sample considered were also analyzed.

Automatic recognition of emotions from facial expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xue, Henry; Gertner, Izidor

2014-06-01

In the human-computer interaction (HCI) process it is desirable to have an artificial intelligent (AI) system that can identify and categorize human emotions from facial expressions. Such systems can be used in security, in entertainment industries, and also to study visual perception, social interactions and disorders (e.g. schizophrenia and autism). In this work we survey and compare the performance of different feature extraction algorithms and classification schemes. We introduce a faster feature extraction method that resizes and applies a set of filters to the data images without sacrificing the accuracy. In addition, we have enhanced SVM to multiple dimensions while retaining the high accuracy rate of SVM. The algorithms were tested using the Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE) Database and the Database of Faces (AT&T Faces).

Exposure to the self-face facilitates identification of dynamic facial expressions: influences on individual differences.

PubMed

Li, Yuan Hang; Tottenham, Nim

2013-04-01

A growing literature suggests that the self-face is involved in processing the facial expressions of others. The authors experimentally activated self-face representations to assess its effects on the recognition of dynamically emerging facial expressions of others. They exposed participants to videos of either their own faces (self-face prime) or faces of others (nonself-face prime) prior to a facial expression judgment task. Their results show that experimentally activating self-face representations results in earlier recognition of dynamically emerging facial expression. As a group, participants in the self-face prime condition recognized expressions earlier (when less affective perceptual information was available) compared to participants in the nonself-face prime condition. There were individual differences in performance, such that poorer expression identification was associated with higher autism traits (in this neurocognitively healthy sample). However, when randomized into the self-face prime condition, participants with high autism traits performed as well as those with low autism traits. Taken together, these data suggest that the ability to recognize facial expressions in others is linked with the internal representations of our own faces. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Energy conservation using face detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deotale, Nilesh T.; Kalbande, Dhananjay R.; Mishra, Akassh A.

2011-10-01

Computerized Face Detection, is concerned with the difficult task of converting a video signal of a person to written text. It has several applications like face recognition, simultaneous multiple face processing, biometrics, security, video surveillance, human computer interface, image database management, digital cameras use face detection for autofocus, selecting regions of interest in photo slideshows that use a pan-and-scale and The Present Paper deals with energy conservation using face detection. Automating the process to a computer requires the use of various image processing techniques. There are various methods that can be used for Face Detection such as Contour tracking methods, Template matching, Controlled background, Model based, Motion based and color based. Basically, the video of the subject are converted into images are further selected manually for processing. However, several factors like poor illumination, movement of face, viewpoint-dependent Physical appearance, Acquisition geometry, Imaging conditions, Compression artifacts makes Face detection difficult. This paper reports an algorithm for conservation of energy using face detection for various devices. The present paper suggests Energy Conservation can be done by Detecting the Face and reducing the brightness of complete image and then adjusting the brightness of the particular area of an image where the face is located using histogram equalization.

Energy in the urban environment. Proceedings of the 22. annual Illinois energy conference

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

NONE

1994-12-31

The conference addressed the energy and environmental challenges facing large metropolitan areas. The topics included a comparison of the environmental status of cities twenty years ago with the challenges facing today`s large cities, sustainable economic development, improving the energy and environmental infrastructure, and the changing urban transportation sector. Selected papers are indexed separately for inclusion in the Energy Science and Technology Database.

Massively-Parallel Architectures for Automatic Recognition of Visual Speech Signals

DTIC Science & Technology

1988-10-12

Secusrity Clamifieation, Nlassively-Parallel Architectures for Automa ic Recognitio of Visua, Speech Signals 12. PERSONAL AUTHOR(S) Terrence J...characteristics of speech from tJhe, visual speech signals. Neural networks have been trained on a database of vowels. The rqw images of faces , aligned and...images of faces , aligned and preprocessed, were used as input to these network which were trained to estimate the corresponding envelope of the

A self-organized learning strategy for object recognition by an embedded line of attraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seow, Ming-Jung; Alex, Ann T.; Asari, Vijayan K.

2012-04-01

For humans, a picture is worth a thousand words, but to a machine, it is just a seemingly random array of numbers. Although machines are very fast and efficient, they are vastly inferior to humans for everyday information processing. Algorithms that mimic the way the human brain computes and learns may be the solution. In this paper we present a theoretical model based on the observation that images of similar visual perceptions reside in a complex manifold in an image space. The perceived features are often highly structured and hidden in a complex set of relationships or high-dimensional abstractions. To model the pattern manifold, we present a novel learning algorithm using a recurrent neural network. The brain memorizes information using a dynamical system made of interconnected neurons. Retrieval of information is accomplished in an associative sense. It starts from an arbitrary state that might be an encoded representation of a visual image and converges to another state that is stable. The stable state is what the brain remembers. In designing a recurrent neural network, it is usually of prime importance to guarantee the convergence in the dynamics of the network. We propose to modify this picture: if the brain remembers by converging to the state representing familiar patterns, it should also diverge from such states when presented with an unknown encoded representation of a visual image belonging to a different category. That is, the identification of an instability mode is an indication that a presented pattern is far away from any stored pattern and therefore cannot be associated with current memories. These properties can be used to circumvent the plasticity-stability dilemma by using the fluctuating mode as an indicator to create new states. We capture this behavior using a novel neural architecture and learning algorithm, in which the system performs self-organization utilizing a stability mode and an instability mode for the dynamical system. Based on this observation we developed a self- organizing line attractor, which is capable of generating new lines in the feature space to learn unrecognized patterns. Experiments performed on UMIST pose database and CMU face expression variant database for face recognition have shown that the proposed nonlinear line attractor is able to successfully identify the individuals and it provided better recognition rate when compared to the state of the art face recognition techniques. Experiments on FRGC version 2 database has also provided excellent recognition rate in images captured in complex lighting environments. Experiments performed on the Japanese female face expression database and Essex Grimace database using the self organizing line attractor have also shown successful expression invariant face recognition. These results show that the proposed model is able to create nonlinear manifolds in a multidimensional feature space to distinguish complex patterns.

Joint Sparse Representation for Robust Multimodal Biometrics Recognition

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-01-01

comprehensive multimodal dataset and a face database are described in section V. Finally, in section VI, we discuss the computational complexity of...fingerprint, iris, palmprint , hand geometry and voice from subjects of different age, gender and ethnicity as described in Table I. It is a...Taylor, “Constructing nonlinear discriminants from multiple data views,” Machine Learning and Knowl- edge Discovery in Databases , pp. 328–343, 2010

Studying Turbulence Using Numerical Simulation Databases. Part 6; Proceedings of the 1996 Summer Program

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1996-01-01

Topics considered include: New approach to turbulence modeling; Second moment closure analysis of the backstep flow database; Prediction of the backflow and recovery regions in the backward facing step at various Reynolds numbers; Turbulent flame propagation in partially premixed flames; Ensemble averaged dynamic modeling. Also included a study of the turbulence structures of wall-bounded shear flows; Simulation and modeling of the elliptic streamline flow.

Adaptive non-local smoothing-based weberface for illumination-insensitive face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yao, Min; Zhu, Changming

2017-07-01

Compensating the illumination of a face image is an important process to achieve effective face recognition under severe illumination conditions. This paper present a novel illumination normalization method which specifically considers removing the illumination boundaries as well as reducing the regional illumination. We begin with the analysis of the commonly used reflectance model and then expatiate the hybrid usage of adaptive non-local smoothing and the local information coding based on Weber's law. The effectiveness and advantages of this combination are evidenced visually and experimentally. Results on Extended YaleB database show its better performance than several other famous methods.

Improvement of Janus Using Pegasus 1-Meter Resolution Database With a Transputer Network

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-03-01

Figure 4.9 shows the six jacks on the end of the HSI-card. Facing the back of the SPARC Station LINKO LINKI LINK2 LINK3 DOWN UP Figure 4.9: HSI-Card Link...shown in Figure 4.22. Facing the back of the Sun SPARC Station LINK0 LINKI LINK2 LINK3 DOWN UP "b Telephone Cable Facing the front of the Remote Tram...Holder LINKO LINKI LINK2 LINK3 DOWN UPI Figure 4.20: The Connection Between Sun SPARC Station and Remote Tram Holder 58 (3) Se.inu Up t• Link Speed

Low-level image properties in facial expressions.

PubMed

Menzel, Claudia; Redies, Christoph; Hayn-Leichsenring, Gregor U

2018-06-04

We studied low-level image properties of face photographs and analyzed whether they change with different emotional expressions displayed by an individual. Differences in image properties were measured in three databases that depicted a total of 167 individuals. Face images were used either in their original form, cut to a standard format or superimposed with a mask. Image properties analyzed were: brightness, redness, yellowness, contrast, spectral slope, overall power and relative power in low, medium and high spatial frequencies. Results showed that image properties differed significantly between expressions within each individual image set. Further, specific facial expressions corresponded to patterns of image properties that were consistent across all three databases. In order to experimentally validate our findings, we equalized the luminance histograms and spectral slopes of three images from a given individual who showed two expressions. Participants were significantly slower in matching the expression in an equalized compared to an original image triad. Thus, existing differences in these image properties (i.e., spectral slope, brightness or contrast) facilitate emotion detection in particular sets of face images. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Applied learning-based color tone mapping for face recognition in video surveillance system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yew, Chuu Tian; Suandi, Shahrel Azmin

2012-04-01

In this paper, we present an applied learning-based color tone mapping technique for video surveillance system. This technique can be applied onto both color and grayscale surveillance images. The basic idea is to learn the color or intensity statistics from a training dataset of photorealistic images of the candidates appeared in the surveillance images, and remap the color or intensity of the input image so that the color or intensity statistics match those in the training dataset. It is well known that the difference in commercial surveillance cameras models, and signal processing chipsets used by different manufacturers will cause the color and intensity of the images to differ from one another, thus creating additional challenges for face recognition in video surveillance system. Using Multi-Class Support Vector Machines as the classifier on a publicly available video surveillance camera database, namely SCface database, this approach is validated and compared to the results of using holistic approach on grayscale images. The results show that this technique is suitable to improve the color or intensity quality of video surveillance system for face recognition.

Holistic processing of face configurations and components.

PubMed

Hayward, William G; Crookes, Kate; Chu, Ming Hon; Favelle, Simone K; Rhodes, Gillian

2016-10-01

Although many researchers agree that faces are processed holistically, we know relatively little about what information holistic processing captures from a face. Most studies that assess the nature of holistic processing do so with changes to the face affecting many different aspects of face information (e.g., different identities). Does holistic processing affect every aspect of a face? We used the composite task, a common means of examining the strength of holistic processing, with participants making same-different judgments about configuration changes or component changes to 1 portion of a face. Configuration changes involved changes in spatial position of the eyes, whereas component changes involved lightening or darkening the eyebrows. Composites were either aligned or misaligned, and were presented either upright or inverted. Both configuration judgments and component judgments showed evidence of holistic processing, and in both cases it was strongest for upright face composites. These results suggest that holistic processing captures a broad range of information about the face, including both configuration-based and component-based information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Performance evaluation of no-reference image quality metrics for face biometric images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Xinwei; Pedersen, Marius; Charrier, Christophe; Bours, Patrick

2018-03-01

The accuracy of face recognition systems is significantly affected by the quality of face sample images. The recent established standardization proposed several important aspects for the assessment of face sample quality. There are many existing no-reference image quality metrics (IQMs) that are able to assess natural image quality by taking into account similar image-based quality attributes as introduced in the standardization. However, whether such metrics can assess face sample quality is rarely considered. We evaluate the performance of 13 selected no-reference IQMs on face biometrics. The experimental results show that several of them can assess face sample quality according to the system performance. We also analyze the strengths and weaknesses of different IQMs as well as why some of them failed to assess face sample quality. Retraining an original IQM by using face database can improve the performance of such a metric. In addition, the contribution of this paper can be used for the evaluation of IQMs on other biometric modalities; furthermore, it can be used for the development of multimodality biometric IQMs.

A framework for the recognition of 3D faces and expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Chao; Barreto, Armando

2006-04-01

Face recognition technology has been a focus both in academia and industry for the last couple of years because of its wide potential applications and its importance to meet the security needs of today's world. Most of the systems developed are based on 2D face recognition technology, which uses pictures for data processing. With the development of 3D imaging technology, 3D face recognition emerges as an alternative to overcome the difficulties inherent with 2D face recognition, i.e. sensitivity to illumination conditions and orientation positioning of the subject. But 3D face recognition still needs to tackle the problem of deformation of facial geometry that results from the expression changes of a subject. To deal with this issue, a 3D face recognition framework is proposed in this paper. It is composed of three subsystems: an expression recognition system, a system for the identification of faces with expression, and neutral face recognition system. A system for the recognition of faces with one type of expression (happiness) and neutral faces was implemented and tested on a database of 30 subjects. The results proved the feasibility of this framework.

Joint and collaborative representation with local Volterra kernels convolution feature for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feng, Guang; Li, Hengjian; Dong, Jiwen; Chen, Xi; Yang, Huiru

2018-04-01

In this paper, we proposed a joint and collaborative representation with Volterra kernel convolution feature (JCRVK) for face recognition. Firstly, the candidate face images are divided into sub-blocks in the equal size. The blocks are extracted feature using the two-dimensional Voltera kernels discriminant analysis, which can better capture the discrimination information from the different faces. Next, the proposed joint and collaborative representation is employed to optimize and classify the local Volterra kernels features (JCR-VK) individually. JCR-VK is very efficiently for its implementation only depending on matrix multiplication. Finally, recognition is completed by using the majority voting principle. Extensive experiments on the Extended Yale B and AR face databases are conducted, and the results show that the proposed approach can outperform other recently presented similar dictionary algorithms on recognition accuracy.

Facial emotion recognition, face scan paths, and face perception in children with neurofibromatosis type 1.

PubMed

Lewis, Amelia K; Porter, Melanie A; Williams, Tracey A; Bzishvili, Samantha; North, Kathryn N; Payne, Jonathan M

2017-05-01

This study aimed to investigate face scan paths and face perception abilities in children with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) and how these might relate to emotion recognition abilities in this population. The authors investigated facial emotion recognition, face scan paths, and face perception in 29 children with NF1 compared to 29 chronological age-matched typically developing controls. Correlations between facial emotion recognition, face scan paths, and face perception in children with NF1 were examined. Children with NF1 displayed significantly poorer recognition of fearful expressions compared to controls, as well as a nonsignificant trend toward poorer recognition of anger. Although there was no significant difference between groups in time spent viewing individual core facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, and nonfeature regions), children with NF1 spent significantly less time than controls viewing the face as a whole. Children with NF1 also displayed significantly poorer face perception abilities than typically developing controls. Facial emotion recognition deficits were not significantly associated with aberrant face scan paths or face perception abilities in the NF1 group. These results suggest that impairments in the perception, identification, and interpretation of information from faces are important aspects of the social-cognitive phenotype of NF1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Face recognition algorithm using extended vector quantization histogram features.

PubMed

Yan, Yan; Lee, Feifei; Wu, Xueqian; Chen, Qiu

2018-01-01

In this paper, we propose a face recognition algorithm based on a combination of vector quantization (VQ) and Markov stationary features (MSF). The VQ algorithm has been shown to be an effective method for generating features; it extracts a codevector histogram as a facial feature representation for face recognition. Still, the VQ histogram features are unable to convey spatial structural information, which to some extent limits their usefulness in discrimination. To alleviate this limitation of VQ histograms, we utilize Markov stationary features (MSF) to extend the VQ histogram-based features so as to add spatial structural information. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm by achieving recognition results superior to those of several state-of-the-art methods on publicly available face databases.

Face verification system for Android mobile devices using histogram based features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sato, Sho; Kobayashi, Kazuhiro; Chen, Qiu

2016-07-01

This paper proposes a face verification system that runs on Android mobile devices. In this system, facial image is captured by a built-in camera on the Android device firstly, and then face detection is implemented using Haar-like features and AdaBoost learning algorithm. The proposed system verify the detected face using histogram based features, which are generated by binary Vector Quantization (VQ) histogram using DCT coefficients in low frequency domains, as well as Improved Local Binary Pattern (Improved LBP) histogram in spatial domain. Verification results with different type of histogram based features are first obtained separately and then combined by weighted averaging. We evaluate our proposed algorithm by using publicly available ORL database and facial images captured by an Android tablet.

Improve Performance of Data Warehouse by Query Cache

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gour, Vishal; Sarangdevot, S. S.; Sharma, Anand; Choudhary, Vinod

2010-11-01

The primary goal of data warehouse is to free the information locked up in the operational database so that decision makers and business analyst can make queries, analysis and planning regardless of the data changes in operational database. As the number of queries is large, therefore, in certain cases there is reasonable probability that same query submitted by the one or multiple users at different times. Each time when query is executed, all the data of warehouse is analyzed to generate the result of that query. In this paper we will study how using query cache improves performance of Data Warehouse and try to find the common problems faced. These kinds of problems are faced by Data Warehouse administrators which are minimizes response time and improves the efficiency of query in data warehouse overall, particularly when data warehouse is updated at regular interval.

Using Organizational Behavior To Increase the Efficiency of The Total Force Enterprise

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-06-01

database and through personal interviews , the reader will be shown the common struggles faced by units undergoing change without following the...active, ARC, or hybrid may all play a role. Through this database and personal interviews , we can determine how the unit change was dealt with, if...organizational structures, as well as strategy . If we overlay the speed of technological change and the power of social media, military organizations failing

Emotion Words: Adding Face Value.

PubMed

Fugate, Jennifer M B; Gendron, Maria; Nakashima, Satoshi F; Barrett, Lisa Feldman

2017-06-12

Despite a growing number of studies suggesting that emotion words affect perceptual judgments of emotional stimuli, little is known about how emotion words affect perceptual memory for emotional faces. In Experiments 1 and 2 we tested how emotion words (compared with control words) affected participants' abilities to select a target emotional face from among distractor faces. Participants were generally more likely to false alarm to distractor emotional faces when primed with an emotion word congruent with the face (compared with a control word). Moreover, participants showed both decreased sensitivity (d') to discriminate between target and distractor faces, as well as altered response biases (c; more likely to answer "yes") when primed with an emotion word (compared with a control word). In Experiment 3 we showed that emotion words had more of an effect on perceptual memory judgments when the structural information in the target face was limited, as well as when participants were only able to categorize the face with a partially congruent emotion word. The overall results are consistent with the idea that emotion words affect the encoding of emotional faces in perceptual memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

High-resolution face verification using pore-scale facial features.

PubMed

Li, Dong; Zhou, Huiling; Lam, Kin-Man

2015-08-01

Face recognition methods, which usually represent face images using holistic or local facial features, rely heavily on alignment. Their performances also suffer a severe degradation under variations in expressions or poses, especially when there is one gallery per subject only. With the easy access to high-resolution (HR) face images nowadays, some HR face databases have recently been developed. However, few studies have tackled the use of HR information for face recognition or verification. In this paper, we propose a pose-invariant face-verification method, which is robust to alignment errors, using the HR information based on pore-scale facial features. A new keypoint descriptor, namely, pore-Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-Scale Invariant Feature Transform (PPCASIFT)-adapted from PCA-SIFT-is devised for the extraction of a compact set of distinctive pore-scale facial features. Having matched the pore-scale features of two-face regions, an effective robust-fitting scheme is proposed for the face-verification task. Experiments show that, with one frontal-view gallery only per subject, our proposed method outperforms a number of standard verification methods, and can achieve excellent accuracy even the faces are under large variations in expression and pose.

Technology survey on video face tracking

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Tong; Gomes, Herman Martins

2014-03-01

With the pervasiveness of monitoring cameras installed in public areas, schools, hospitals, work places and homes, video analytics technologies for interpreting these video contents are becoming increasingly relevant to people's lives. Among such technologies, human face detection and tracking (and face identification in many cases) are particularly useful in various application scenarios. While plenty of research has been conducted on face tracking and many promising approaches have been proposed, there are still significant challenges in recognizing and tracking people in videos with uncontrolled capturing conditions, largely due to pose and illumination variations, as well as occlusions and cluttered background. It is especially complex to track and identify multiple people simultaneously in real time due to the large amount of computation involved. In this paper, we present a survey on literature and software that are published or developed during recent years on the face tracking topic. The survey covers the following topics: 1) mainstream and state-of-the-art face tracking methods, including features used to model the targets and metrics used for tracking; 2) face identification and face clustering from face sequences; and 3) software packages or demonstrations that are available for algorithm development or trial. A number of publically available databases for face tracking are also introduced.

Neural architecture underlying classification of face perception paradigms.

PubMed

Laird, Angela R; Riedel, Michael C; Sutherland, Matthew T; Eickhoff, Simon B; Ray, Kimberly L; Uecker, Angela M; Fox, P Mickle; Turner, Jessica A; Fox, Peter T

2015-10-01

We present a novel strategy for deriving a classification system of functional neuroimaging paradigms that relies on hierarchical clustering of experiments archived in the BrainMap database. The goal of our proof-of-concept application was to examine the underlying neural architecture of the face perception literature from a meta-analytic perspective, as these studies include a wide range of tasks. Task-based results exhibiting similar activation patterns were grouped as similar, while tasks activating different brain networks were classified as functionally distinct. We identified four sub-classes of face tasks: (1) Visuospatial Attention and Visuomotor Coordination to Faces, (2) Perception and Recognition of Faces, (3) Social Processing and Episodic Recall of Faces, and (4) Face Naming and Lexical Retrieval. Interpretation of these sub-classes supports an extension of a well-known model of face perception to include a core system for visual analysis and extended systems for personal information, emotion, and salience processing. Overall, these results demonstrate that a large-scale data mining approach can inform the evolution of theoretical cognitive models by probing the range of behavioral manipulations across experimental tasks. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Composite faces are not (necessarily) processed coactively: A test using systems factorial technology and logical-rule models.

PubMed

Cheng, Xue Jun; McCarthy, Callum J; Wang, Tony S L; Palmeri, Thomas J; Little, Daniel R

2018-06-01

Upright faces are thought to be processed more holistically than inverted faces. In the widely used composite face paradigm, holistic processing is inferred from interference in recognition performance from a to-be-ignored face half for upright and aligned faces compared with inverted or misaligned faces. We sought to characterize the nature of holistic processing in composite faces in computational terms. We use logical-rule models (Fifić, Little, & Nosofsky, 2010) and Systems Factorial Technology (Townsend & Nozawa, 1995) to examine whether composite faces are processed through pooling top and bottom face halves into a single processing channel-coactive processing-which is one common mechanistic definition of holistic processing. By specifically operationalizing holistic processing as the pooling of features into a single decision process in our task, we are able to distinguish it from other processing models that may underlie composite face processing. For instance, a failure of selective attention might result even when top and bottom components of composite faces are processed in serial or in parallel without processing the entire face coactively. Our results show that performance is best explained by a mixture of serial and parallel processing architectures across all 4 upright and inverted, aligned and misaligned face conditions. The results indicate multichannel, featural processing of composite faces in a manner inconsistent with the notion of coactivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatial Pyramid Covariance based Compact Video Code for Robust Face Retrieval in TV-series.

PubMed

Li, Yan; Wang, Ruiping; Cui, Zhen; Shan, Shiguang; Chen, Xilin

2016-10-10

We address the problem of face video retrieval in TV-series which searches video clips based on the presence of specific character, given one face track of his/her. This is tremendously challenging because on one hand, faces in TV-series are captured in largely uncontrolled conditions with complex appearance variations, and on the other hand retrieval task typically needs efficient representation with low time and space complexity. To handle this problem, we propose a compact and discriminative representation for the huge body of video data, named Compact Video Code (CVC). Our method first models the face track by its sample (i.e., frame) covariance matrix to capture the video data variations in a statistical manner. To incorporate discriminative information and obtain more compact video signature suitable for retrieval, the high-dimensional covariance representation is further encoded as a much lower-dimensional binary vector, which finally yields the proposed CVC. Specifically, each bit of the code, i.e., each dimension of the binary vector, is produced via supervised learning in a max margin framework, which aims to make a balance between the discriminability and stability of the code. Besides, we further extend the descriptive granularity of covariance matrix from traditional pixel-level to more general patchlevel, and proceed to propose a novel hierarchical video representation named Spatial Pyramid Covariance (SPC) along with a fast calculation method. Face retrieval experiments on two challenging TV-series video databases, i.e., the Big Bang Theory and Prison Break, demonstrate the competitiveness of the proposed CVC over state-of-the-art retrieval methods. In addition, as a general video matching algorithm, CVC is also evaluated in traditional video face recognition task on a standard Internet database, i.e., YouTube Celebrities, showing its quite promising performance by using an extremely compact code with only 128 bits.

Education as an intergenerational process of human learning, teaching, and development.

PubMed

Cole, Michael

2010-11-01

In this article I argue that the future of psychological research on educational processes would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach that enables psychologists to locate their objects of study within the cultural, social, and historical contexts of their research. To make this argument, I begin by examining anthropological accounts of the characteristics of education in small, face-to-face, preindustrial societies. I then turn to a sample of contemporary psychoeducational research that seeks to implement major, qualitative changes in modern educational practices by transforming them to have the properties of education in those self-same face-to-face societies. Next I examine the challenges faced by these modern approaches and briefly describe a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary system of education that responds to these challenges while offering a model for educating psychology students in a multigenerational system of activities with potential widespread benefits. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Face Liveness Detection Using Defocus

PubMed Central

Kim, Sooyeon; Ban, Yuseok; Lee, Sangyoun

2015-01-01

In order to develop security systems for identity authentication, face recognition (FR) technology has been applied. One of the main problems of applying FR technology is that the systems are especially vulnerable to attacks with spoofing faces (e.g., 2D pictures). To defend from these attacks and to enhance the reliability of FR systems, many anti-spoofing approaches have been recently developed. In this paper, we propose a method for face liveness detection using the effect of defocus. From two images sequentially taken at different focuses, three features, focus, power histogram and gradient location and orientation histogram (GLOH), are extracted. Afterwards, we detect forged faces through the feature-level fusion approach. For reliable performance verification, we develop two databases with a handheld digital camera and a webcam. The proposed method achieves a 3.29% half total error rate (HTER) at a given depth of field (DoF) and can be extended to camera-equipped devices, like smartphones. PMID:25594594

Probabilistic Elastic Part Model: A Pose-Invariant Representation for Real-World Face Verification.

PubMed

Li, Haoxiang; Hua, Gang

2018-04-01

Pose variation remains to be a major challenge for real-world face recognition. We approach this problem through a probabilistic elastic part model. We extract local descriptors (e.g., LBP or SIFT) from densely sampled multi-scale image patches. By augmenting each descriptor with its location, a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is trained to capture the spatial-appearance distribution of the face parts of all face images in the training corpus, namely the probabilistic elastic part (PEP) model. Each mixture component of the GMM is confined to be a spherical Gaussian to balance the influence of the appearance and the location terms, which naturally defines a part. Given one or multiple face images of the same subject, the PEP-model builds its PEP representation by sequentially concatenating descriptors identified by each Gaussian component in a maximum likelihood sense. We further propose a joint Bayesian adaptation algorithm to adapt the universally trained GMM to better model the pose variations between the target pair of faces/face tracks, which consistently improves face verification accuracy. Our experiments show that we achieve state-of-the-art face verification accuracy with the proposed representations on the Labeled Face in the Wild (LFW) dataset, the YouTube video face database, and the CMU MultiPIE dataset.

Reduced isothermal feature set for long wave infrared (LWIR) face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Donoso, Ramiro; San Martín, Cesar; Hermosilla, Gabriel

2017-06-01

In this paper, we introduce a new concept in the thermal face recognition area: isothermal features. This consists of a feature vector built from a thermal signature that depends on the emission of the skin of the person and its temperature. A thermal signature is the appearance of the face to infrared sensors and is unique to each person. The infrared face is decomposed into isothermal regions that present the thermal features of the face. Each isothermal region is modeled as circles within a center representing the pixel of the image, and the feature vector is composed of a maximum radius of the circles at the isothermal region. This feature vector corresponds to the thermal signature of a person. The face recognition process is built using a modification of the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm in conjunction with a proposed probabilistic index to the classification process. Results obtained using an infrared database are compared with typical state-of-the-art techniques showing better performance, especially in uncontrolled acquisition conditions scenarios.

Why do fearful facial expressions elicit behavioral approach? Evidence from a combined approach-avoidance implicit association test.

PubMed

Hammer, Jennifer L; Marsh, Abigail A

2015-04-01

Despite communicating a "negative" emotion, fearful facial expressions predominantly elicit behavioral approach from perceivers. It has been hypothesized that this seemingly paradoxical effect may occur due to fearful expressions' resemblance to vulnerable, infantile faces. However, this hypothesis has not yet been tested. We used a combined approach-avoidance/implicit association test (IAT) to test this hypothesis. Participants completed an approach-avoidance lever task during which they responded to fearful and angry facial expressions as well as neutral infant and adult faces presented in an IAT format. Results demonstrated an implicit association between fearful facial expressions and infant faces and showed that both fearful expressions and infant faces primarily elicit behavioral approach. The dominance of approach responses to both fearful expressions and infant faces decreased as a function of psychopathic personality traits. Results suggest that the prosocial responses to fearful expressions observed in most individuals may stem from their associations with infantile faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Face Aging Effect Simulation Using Hidden Factor Analysis Joint Sparse Representation.

PubMed

Yang, Hongyu; Huang, Di; Wang, Yunhong; Wang, Heng; Tang, Yuanyan

2016-06-01

Face aging simulation has received rising investigations nowadays, whereas it still remains a challenge to generate convincing and natural age-progressed face images. In this paper, we present a novel approach to such an issue using hidden factor analysis joint sparse representation. In contrast to the majority of tasks in the literature that integrally handle the facial texture, the proposed aging approach separately models the person-specific facial properties that tend to be stable in a relatively long period and the age-specific clues that gradually change over time. It then transforms the age component to a target age group via sparse reconstruction, yielding aging effects, which is finally combined with the identity component to achieve the aged face. Experiments are carried out on three face aging databases, and the results achieved clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method in rendering a face with aging effects. In addition, a series of evaluations prove its validity with respect to identity preservation and aging effect generation.

Face recognition ability matures late: evidence from individual differences in young adults.

PubMed

Susilo, Tirta; Germine, Laura; Duchaine, Bradley

2013-10-01

Does face recognition ability mature early in childhood (early maturation hypothesis) or does it continue to develop well into adulthood (late maturation hypothesis)? This fundamental issue in face recognition is typically addressed by comparing child and adult participants. However, the interpretation of such studies is complicated by children's inferior test-taking abilities and general cognitive functions. Here we examined the developmental trajectory of face recognition ability in an individual differences study of 18-33 year-olds (n = 2,032), an age interval in which participants are competent test takers with comparable general cognitive functions. We found a positive association between age and face recognition, controlling for nonface visual recognition, verbal memory, sex, and own-race bias. Our study supports the late maturation hypothesis in face recognition, and illustrates how individual differences investigations of young adults can address theoretical issues concerning the development of perceptual and cognitive abilities. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Recognizing Disguised Faces: Human and Machine Evaluation

PubMed Central

Dhamecha, Tejas Indulal; Singh, Richa; Vatsa, Mayank; Kumar, Ajay

2014-01-01

Face verification, though an easy task for humans, is a long-standing open research area. This is largely due to the challenging covariates, such as disguise and aging, which make it very hard to accurately verify the identity of a person. This paper investigates human and machine performance for recognizing/verifying disguised faces. Performance is also evaluated under familiarity and match/mismatch with the ethnicity of observers. The findings of this study are used to develop an automated algorithm to verify the faces presented under disguise variations. We use automatically localized feature descriptors which can identify disguised face patches and account for this information to achieve improved matching accuracy. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on the IIIT-Delhi Disguise database that contains images pertaining to 75 subjects with different kinds of disguise variations. The experiments suggest that the proposed algorithm can outperform a popular commercial system and evaluates them against humans in matching disguised face images. PMID:25029188

Cross-modal face recognition using multi-matcher face scores

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Yufeng; Blasch, Erik

2015-05-01

The performance of face recognition can be improved using information fusion of multimodal images and/or multiple algorithms. When multimodal face images are available, cross-modal recognition is meaningful for security and surveillance applications. For example, a probe face is a thermal image (especially at nighttime), while only visible face images are available in the gallery database. Matching a thermal probe face onto the visible gallery faces requires crossmodal matching approaches. A few such studies were implemented in facial feature space with medium recognition performance. In this paper, we propose a cross-modal recognition approach, where multimodal faces are cross-matched in feature space and the recognition performance is enhanced with stereo fusion at image, feature and/or score level. In the proposed scenario, there are two cameras for stereo imaging, two face imagers (visible and thermal images) in each camera, and three recognition algorithms (circular Gaussian filter, face pattern byte, linear discriminant analysis). A score vector is formed with three cross-matched face scores from the aforementioned three algorithms. A classifier (e.g., k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, binomial logical regression [BLR]) is trained then tested with the score vectors by using 10-fold cross validations. The proposed approach was validated with a multispectral stereo face dataset from 105 subjects. Our experiments show very promising results: ACR (accuracy rate) = 97.84%, FAR (false accept rate) = 0.84% when cross-matching the fused thermal faces onto the fused visible faces by using three face scores and the BLR classifier.

Hepatitis Diagnosis Using Facial Color Image

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Mingjia; Guo, Zhenhua

Facial color diagnosis is an important diagnostic method in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, due to its qualitative, subjective and experi-ence-based nature, traditional facial color diagnosis has a very limited application in clinical medicine. To circumvent the subjective and qualitative problems of facial color diagnosis of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in this paper, we present a novel computer aided facial color diagnosis method (CAFCDM). The method has three parts: face Image Database, Image Preprocessing Module and Diagnosis Engine. Face Image Database is carried out on a group of 116 patients affected by 2 kinds of liver diseases and 29 healthy volunteers. The quantitative color feature is extracted from facial images by using popular digital image processing techni-ques. Then, KNN classifier is employed to model the relationship between the quantitative color feature and diseases. The results show that the method can properly identify three groups: healthy, severe hepatitis with jaundice and severe hepatitis without jaundice with accuracy higher than 73%.

Fatal falls and PFAS use in the construction industry: Findings from the NIOSH FACE reports.

PubMed

Dong, Xiuwen Sue; Largay, Julie A; Choi, Sang D; Wang, Xuanwen; Cain, Chris Trahan; Romano, Nancy

2017-05-01

This study analyzed the Construction FACE Database (CFD), a quantitative database developed from reports of the Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The CFD contains detailed data on 768 fatalities in the construction industry reported by NIOSH and individual states from 1982 through June 30, 2015. The results show that falls accounted for 42% (325) of the 768 fatalities included in the CFD. Personal fall arrest systems (PFAS) were not available to more than half of the fall decedents (54%); nearly one in four fall decedents (23%) had access to PFAS, but were not using it at the time of the fall. Lack of access to PFAS was particularly high among residential building contractors as well as roofing, siding, and sheet metal industry sectors (∼70%). Although the findings may not represent the entire construction industry today, they do provide strong evidence in favor of fall protection requirements by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In addition to stronger enforcement, educating employers and workers about the importance and effectiveness of fall protection is crucial for compliance and fall prevention. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fatal falls and PFAS use in the construction industry: Findings from the NIOSH FACE reports

PubMed Central

Dong, Xiuwen Sue; Largay, Julie A.; Choi, Sang D.; Wang, Xuanwen; Cain, Chris Trahan; Romano, Nancy

2017-01-01

This study analyzed the Construction FACE Database (CFD), a quantitative database developed from reports of the Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The CFD contains detailed data on 768 fatalities in the construction industry reported by NIOSH and individual states from 1982 through June 30, 2015. The results show that falls accounted for 42% (325) of the 768 fatalities included in the CFD. Personal fall arrest systems (PFAS) were not available to more than half of the fall decedents (54%); nearly one in four fall decedents (23%) had access to PFAS, but were not using it at the time of the fall. Lack of access to PFAS was particularly high among residential building contractors as well as roofing, siding, and sheet metal industry sectors (~70%). Although the findings may not represent the entire construction industry today, they do provide strong evidence in favor of fall protection requirements by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In addition to stronger enforcement, educating employers and workers about the importance and effectiveness of fall protection is crucial for compliance and fall prevention. PMID:28292698

The review and results of different methods for facial recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Le, Yifan

2017-09-01

In recent years, facial recognition draws much attention due to its wide potential applications. As a unique technology in Biometric Identification, facial recognition represents a significant improvement since it could be operated without cooperation of people under detection. Hence, facial recognition will be taken into defense system, medical detection, human behavior understanding, etc. Several theories and methods have been established to make progress in facial recognition: (1) A novel two-stage facial landmark localization method is proposed which has more accurate facial localization effect under specific database; (2) A statistical face frontalization method is proposed which outperforms state-of-the-art methods for face landmark localization; (3) It proposes a general facial landmark detection algorithm to handle images with severe occlusion and images with large head poses; (4) There are three methods proposed on Face Alignment including shape augmented regression method, pose-indexed based multi-view method and a learning based method via regressing local binary features. The aim of this paper is to analyze previous work of different aspects in facial recognition, focusing on concrete method and performance under various databases. In addition, some improvement measures and suggestions in potential applications will be put forward.

Face verification with balanced thresholds.

PubMed

Yan, Shuicheng; Xu, Dong; Tang, Xiaoou

2007-01-01

The process of face verification is guided by a pre-learned global threshold, which, however, is often inconsistent with class-specific optimal thresholds. It is, hence, beneficial to pursue a balance of the class-specific thresholds in the model-learning stage. In this paper, we present a new dimensionality reduction algorithm tailored to the verification task that ensures threshold balance. This is achieved by the following aspects. First, feasibility is guaranteed by employing an affine transformation matrix, instead of the conventional projection matrix, for dimensionality reduction, and, hence, we call the proposed algorithm threshold balanced transformation (TBT). Then, the affine transformation matrix, constrained as the product of an orthogonal matrix and a diagonal matrix, is optimized to improve the threshold balance and classification capability in an iterative manner. Unlike most algorithms for face verification which are directly transplanted from face identification literature, TBT is specifically designed for face verification and clarifies the intrinsic distinction between these two tasks. Experiments on three benchmark face databases demonstrate that TBT significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art subspace techniques for face verification.

Facial contrast is a cue for perceiving health from the face.

PubMed

Russell, Richard; Porcheron, Aurélie; Sweda, Jennifer R; Jones, Alex L; Mauger, Emmanuelle; Morizot, Frederique

2016-09-01

How healthy someone appears has important social consequences. Yet the visual cues that determine perceived health remain poorly understood. Here we report evidence that facial contrast-the luminance and color contrast between internal facial features and the surrounding skin-is a cue for the perception of health from the face. Facial contrast was measured from a large sample of Caucasian female faces, and was found to predict ratings of perceived health. Most aspects of facial contrast were positively related to perceived health, meaning that faces with higher facial contrast appeared healthier. In 2 subsequent experiments, we manipulated facial contrast and found that participants perceived faces with increased facial contrast as appearing healthier than faces with decreased facial contrast. These results support the idea that facial contrast is a cue for perceived health. This finding adds to the growing knowledge about perceived health from the face, and helps to ground our understanding of perceived health in terms of lower-level perceptual features such as contrast. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Cold Climate Foundation Retrofit Experimental Hygrothermal Performance: Cloquet Residential Research Facility Laboratory Results

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Goldberg, Louise F.; Harmon, Anna C.

2015-04-01

Thermal and moisture problems in existing basements create a unique challenge because the exterior face of the wall is not easily or inexpensively accessible. This approach addresses thermal and moisture management from the interior face of the wall without disturbing the exterior soil and landscaping. the interior and exterior environments. This approach has the potential for improving durability, comfort, and indoor air quality. This project was funded jointly by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). ORNL focused on developing a full basement wall system experimental database to enable others to validate hygrothermal simulation codes.more » NREL focused on testing the moisture durability of practical basement wall interior insulation retrofit solutions for cold climates. The project has produced a physically credible and reliable long-term hygrothermal performance database for retrofit foundation wall insulation systems in zone 6 and 7 climates that are fully compliant with the performance criteria in the 2009 Minnesota Energy Code. The experimental data were configured into a standard format that can be published online and that is compatible with standard commercially available spreadsheet and database software.« less

The Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS): A dynamic, multimodal set of facial and vocal expressions in North American English

PubMed Central

Russo, Frank A.

2018-01-01

The RAVDESS is a validated multimodal database of emotional speech and song. The database is gender balanced consisting of 24 professional actors, vocalizing lexically-matched statements in a neutral North American accent. Speech includes calm, happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprise, and disgust expressions, and song contains calm, happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotions. Each expression is produced at two levels of emotional intensity, with an additional neutral expression. All conditions are available in face-and-voice, face-only, and voice-only formats. The set of 7356 recordings were each rated 10 times on emotional validity, intensity, and genuineness. Ratings were provided by 247 individuals who were characteristic of untrained research participants from North America. A further set of 72 participants provided test-retest data. High levels of emotional validity and test-retest intrarater reliability were reported. Corrected accuracy and composite "goodness" measures are presented to assist researchers in the selection of stimuli. All recordings are made freely available under a Creative Commons license and can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1188976. PMID:29768426

Establishment of an Italian chronic migraine database: a multicenter pilot study.

PubMed

Barbanti, Piero; Fofi, L; Cevoli, S; Torelli, P; Aurilia, C; Egeo, G; Grazzi, L; D'Amico, D; Manzoni, G C; Cortelli, P; Infarinato, F; Vanacore, N

2018-05-01

To optimize chronic migraine (CM) ascertainment and phenotype definition, provide adequate clinical management and health care procedures, and rationalize economic resources allocation, we performed an exploratory multicenter pilot study aimed at establishing a CM database, the first step for developing a future Italian CM registry. We enrolled 63 consecutive CM patients in four tertiary headache centers screened with face-to-face interviews using an ad hoc dedicated semi-structured questionnaire gathering detailed information on life-style, behavioral and socio-demographic factors, comorbidities, and migraine features before and after chronicization and healthcare resource use. Our pilot study provided useful insights revealing that CM patients (1) presented in most cases symptoms of peripheral trigeminal sensitization, a relatively unexpected feature which could be useful to unravel different CM endophenotypes and to predict trigeminal-targeted treatments' responsiveness; (2) had been frequently admitted to emergency departments; (3) had undergone, sometime repeatedly, unnecessary or inappropriate investigations; (4) got rarely illness benefit exemption or disability allowance only. We deem that the expansion of the database-shortly including many other Italian headache centers-will contribute to more precisely outline CM endophenotypes, hence improving management, treatment, and economic resource allocation, ultimately reducing CM burden on both patients and health system.

On the Privacy Protection of Biometric Traits: Palmprint, Face, and Signature

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Panigrahy, Saroj Kumar; Jena, Debasish; Korra, Sathya Babu; Jena, Sanjay Kumar

Biometrics are expected to add a new level of security to applications, as a person attempting access must prove who he or she really is by presenting a biometric to the system. The recent developments in the biometrics area have lead to smaller, faster and cheaper systems, which in turn has increased the number of possible application areas for biometric identity verification. The biometric data, being derived from human bodies (and especially when used to identify or verify those bodies) is considered personally identifiable information (PII). The collection, use and disclosure of biometric data — image or template, invokes rights on the part of an individual and obligations on the part of an organization. As biometric uses and databases grow, so do concerns that the personal data collected will not be used in reasonable and accountable ways. Privacy concerns arise when biometric data are used for secondary purposes, invoking function creep, data matching, aggregation, surveillance and profiling. Biometric data transmitted across networks and stored in various databases by others can also be stolen, copied, or otherwise misused in ways that can materially affect the individual involved. As Biometric systems are vulnerable to replay, database and brute-force attacks, such potential attacks must be analysed before they are massively deployed in security systems. Along with security, also the privacy of the users is an important factor as the constructions of lines in palmprints contain personal characteristics, from face images a person can be recognised, and fake signatures can be practised by carefully watching the signature images available in the database. We propose a cryptographic approach to encrypt the images of palmprints, faces, and signatures by an advanced Hill cipher technique for hiding the information in the images. It also provides security to these images from being attacked by above mentioned attacks. So, during the feature extraction, the encrypted images are first decrypted, then the features are extracted, and used for identification or verification.

Facial soft biometric features for forensic face recognition.

PubMed

Tome, Pedro; Vera-Rodriguez, Ruben; Fierrez, Julian; Ortega-Garcia, Javier

2015-12-01

This paper proposes a functional feature-based approach useful for real forensic caseworks, based on the shape, orientation and size of facial traits, which can be considered as a soft biometric approach. The motivation of this work is to provide a set of facial features, which can be understood by non-experts such as judges and support the work of forensic examiners who, in practice, carry out a thorough manual comparison of face images paying special attention to the similarities and differences in shape and size of various facial traits. This new approach constitutes a tool that automatically converts a set of facial landmarks to a set of features (shape and size) corresponding to facial regions of forensic value. These features are furthermore evaluated in a population to generate statistics to support forensic examiners. The proposed features can also be used as additional information that can improve the performance of traditional face recognition systems. These features follow the forensic methodology and are obtained in a continuous and discrete manner from raw images. A statistical analysis is also carried out to study the stability, discrimination power and correlation of the proposed facial features on two realistic databases: MORPH and ATVS Forensic DB. Finally, the performance of both continuous and discrete features is analyzed using different similarity measures. Experimental results show high discrimination power and good recognition performance, especially for continuous features. A final fusion of the best systems configurations achieves rank 10 match results of 100% for ATVS database and 75% for MORPH database demonstrating the benefits of using this information in practice. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Locality constrained joint dynamic sparse representation for local matching based face recognition.

PubMed

Wang, Jianzhong; Yi, Yugen; Zhou, Wei; Shi, Yanjiao; Qi, Miao; Zhang, Ming; Zhang, Baoxue; Kong, Jun

2014-01-01

Recently, Sparse Representation-based Classification (SRC) has attracted a lot of attention for its applications to various tasks, especially in biometric techniques such as face recognition. However, factors such as lighting, expression, pose and disguise variations in face images will decrease the performances of SRC and most other face recognition techniques. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose a robust face recognition method named Locality Constrained Joint Dynamic Sparse Representation-based Classification (LCJDSRC) in this paper. In our method, a face image is first partitioned into several smaller sub-images. Then, these sub-images are sparsely represented using the proposed locality constrained joint dynamic sparse representation algorithm. Finally, the representation results for all sub-images are aggregated to obtain the final recognition result. Compared with other algorithms which process each sub-image of a face image independently, the proposed algorithm regards the local matching-based face recognition as a multi-task learning problem. Thus, the latent relationships among the sub-images from the same face image are taken into account. Meanwhile, the locality information of the data is also considered in our algorithm. We evaluate our algorithm by comparing it with other state-of-the-art approaches. Extensive experiments on four benchmark face databases (ORL, Extended YaleB, AR and LFW) demonstrate the effectiveness of LCJDSRC.

Infrared and visible fusion face recognition based on NSCT domain

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xie, Zhihua; Zhang, Shuai; Liu, Guodong; Xiong, Jinquan

2018-01-01

Visible face recognition systems, being vulnerable to illumination, expression, and pose, can not achieve robust performance in unconstrained situations. Meanwhile, near infrared face images, being light- independent, can avoid or limit the drawbacks of face recognition in visible light, but its main challenges are low resolution and signal noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, near infrared and visible fusion face recognition has become an important direction in the field of unconstrained face recognition research. In this paper, a novel fusion algorithm in non-subsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) domain is proposed for Infrared and visible face fusion recognition. Firstly, NSCT is used respectively to process the infrared and visible face images, which exploits the image information at multiple scales, orientations, and frequency bands. Then, to exploit the effective discriminant feature and balance the power of high-low frequency band of NSCT coefficients, the local Gabor binary pattern (LGBP) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) are applied respectively in different frequency parts to obtain the robust representation of infrared and visible face images. Finally, the score-level fusion is used to fuse the all the features for final classification. The visible and near infrared face recognition is tested on HITSZ Lab2 visible and near infrared face database. Experiments results show that the proposed method extracts the complementary features of near-infrared and visible-light images and improves the robustness of unconstrained face recognition.

A biologically inspired neural network model to transformation invariant object recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Iftekharuddin, Khan M.; Li, Yaqin; Siddiqui, Faraz

2007-09-01

Transformation invariant image recognition has been an active research area due to its widespread applications in a variety of fields such as military operations, robotics, medical practices, geographic scene analysis, and many others. The primary goal for this research is detection of objects in the presence of image transformations such as changes in resolution, rotation, translation, scale and occlusion. We investigate a biologically-inspired neural network (NN) model for such transformation-invariant object recognition. In a classical training-testing setup for NN, the performance is largely dependent on the range of transformation or orientation involved in training. However, an even more serious dilemma is that there may not be enough training data available for successful learning or even no training data at all. To alleviate this problem, a biologically inspired reinforcement learning (RL) approach is proposed. In this paper, the RL approach is explored for object recognition with different types of transformations such as changes in scale, size, resolution and rotation. The RL is implemented in an adaptive critic design (ACD) framework, which approximates the neuro-dynamic programming of an action network and a critic network, respectively. Two ACD algorithms such as Heuristic Dynamic Programming (HDP) and Dual Heuristic dynamic Programming (DHP) are investigated to obtain transformation invariant object recognition. The two learning algorithms are evaluated statistically using simulated transformations in images as well as with a large-scale UMIST face database with pose variations. In the face database authentication case, the 90° out-of-plane rotation of faces from 20 different subjects in the UMIST database is used. Our simulations show promising results for both designs for transformation-invariant object recognition and authentication of faces. Comparing the two algorithms, DHP outperforms HDP in learning capability, as DHP takes fewer steps to perform a successful recognition task in general. Further, the residual critic error in DHP is generally smaller than that of HDP, and DHP achieves a 100% success rate more frequently than HDP for individual objects/subjects. On the other hand, HDP is more robust than the DHP as far as success rate across the database is concerned when applied in a stochastic and uncertain environment, and the computational time involved in DHP is more.

Age synthesis and estimation via faces: a survey.

PubMed

Fu, Yun; Guo, Guodong; Huang, Thomas S

2010-11-01

Human age, as an important personal trait, can be directly inferred by distinct patterns emerging from the facial appearance. Derived from rapid advances in computer graphics and machine vision, computer-based age synthesis and estimation via faces have become particularly prevalent topics recently because of their explosively emerging real-world applications, such as forensic art, electronic customer relationship management, security control and surveillance monitoring, biometrics, entertainment, and cosmetology. Age synthesis is defined to rerender a face image aesthetically with natural aging and rejuvenating effects on the individual face. Age estimation is defined to label a face image automatically with the exact age (year) or the age group (year range) of the individual face. Because of their particularity and complexity, both problems are attractive yet challenging to computer-based application system designers. Large efforts from both academia and industry have been devoted in the last a few decades. In this paper, we survey the complete state-of-the-art techniques in the face image-based age synthesis and estimation topics. Existing models, popular algorithms, system performances, technical difficulties, popular face aging databases, evaluation protocols, and promising future directions are also provided with systematic discussions.

Perceptual dehumanization of faces is activated by norm violations and facilitates norm enforcement.

PubMed

Fincher, Katrina M; Tetlock, Philip E

2016-02-01

This article uses methods drawn from perceptual psychology to answer a basic social psychological question: Do people process the faces of norm violators differently from those of others--and, if so, what is the functional significance? Seven studies suggest that people process these faces different and the differential processing makes it easier to punish norm violators. Studies 1 and 2 use a recognition-recall paradigm that manipulated facial-inversion and spatial frequency to show that people rely upon face-typical processing less when they perceive norm violators' faces. Study 3 uses a facial composite task to demonstrate that the effect is actor dependent, not action dependent, and to suggest that configural processing is the mechanism of perceptual change. Studies 4 and 5 use offset faces to show that configural processing is only attenuated when they belong to perpetrators who are culpable. Studies 6 and 7 show that people find it easier to punish inverted faces and harder to punish faces displayed in low spatial frequency. Taken together, these data suggest a bidirectional flow of causality between lower-order perceptual and higher-order cognitive processes in norm enforcement. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved.

Development of preference for conspecific faces in human infants.

PubMed

Sanefuji, Wakako; Wada, Kazuko; Yamamoto, Tomoka; Mohri, Ikuko; Taniike, Masako

2014-04-01

Previous studies have proposed that humans may be born with mechanisms that attend to conspecifics. However, as previous studies have relied on stimuli featuring human adults, it remains unclear whether infants attend only to adult humans or to the entire human species. We found that 1-month-old infants (n = 23) were able to differentiate between human and monkey infants' faces; however, they exhibited no preference for human infants' faces over monkey infants' faces (n = 24) and discriminated individual differences only within the category of human infants' faces (n = 30). We successfully replicated previous findings that 1-month-old infants (n = 42) preferred adult humans, even adults of other races, to adult monkeys. Further, by 3 months of age, infants (n = 55) preferred human faces to monkey faces with both infant and adult stimuli. Human infants' spontaneous preference for conspecific faces appears to be initially limited to conspecific adults and afterward extended to conspecific infants. Future research should attempt to determine whether preference for human adults results from some innate tendency to attend to conspecific adults or from the impact of early experiences with adults. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Face sketch recognition based on edge enhancement via deep learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xie, Zhenzhu; Yang, Fumeng; Zhang, Yuming; Wu, Congzhong

2017-11-01

In this paper,we address the face sketch recognition problem. Firstly, we utilize the eigenface algorithm to convert a sketch image into a synthesized sketch face image. Subsequently, considering the low-level vision problem in synthesized face sketch image .Super resolution reconstruction algorithm based on CNN(convolutional neural network) is employed to improve the visual effect. To be specific, we uses a lightweight super-resolution structure to learn a residual mapping instead of directly mapping the feature maps from the low-level space to high-level patch representations, which making the networks are easier to optimize and have lower computational complexity. Finally, we adopt LDA(Linear Discriminant Analysis) algorithm to realize face sketch recognition on synthesized face image before super resolution and after respectively. Extensive experiments on the face sketch database(CUFS) from CUHK demonstrate that the recognition rate of SVM(Support Vector Machine) algorithm improves from 65% to 69% and the recognition rate of LDA(Linear Discriminant Analysis) algorithm improves from 69% to 75%.What'more,the synthesized face image after super resolution can not only better describer image details such as hair ,nose and mouth etc, but also improve the recognition accuracy effectively.

Face recognition based on two-dimensional discriminant sparse preserving projection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Dawei; Zhu, Shanan

2018-04-01

In this paper, a supervised dimensionality reduction algorithm named two-dimensional discriminant sparse preserving projection (2DDSPP) is proposed for face recognition. In order to accurately model manifold structure of data, 2DDSPP constructs within-class affinity graph and between-class affinity graph by the constrained least squares (LS) and l1 norm minimization problem, respectively. Based on directly operating on image matrix, 2DDSPP integrates graph embedding (GE) with Fisher criterion. The obtained projection subspace preserves within-class neighborhood geometry structure of samples, while keeping away samples from different classes. The experimental results on the PIE and AR face databases show that 2DDSPP can achieve better recognition performance.

Door Security using Face Detection and Raspberry Pi

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bhutra, Venkatesh; Kumar, Harshav; Jangid, Santosh; Solanki, L.

2018-03-01

With the world moving towards advanced technologies, security forms a crucial part in daily life. Among the many techniques used for this purpose, Face Recognition stands as effective means of authentication and security. This paper deals with the user of principal component and security. PCA is a statistical approach used to simplify a data set. The minimum Euclidean distance found from the PCA technique is used to recognize the face. Raspberry Pi a low cost ARM based computer on a small circuit board, controls the servo motor and other sensors. The servo-motor is in turn attached to the doors of home and opens up when the face is recognized. The proposed work has been done using a self-made training database of students from B.K. Birla Institute of Engineering and Technology, Pilani, Rajasthan, India.

Good match exploration for infrared face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Changcai; Zhou, Huabing; Sun, Sheng; Liu, Renfeng; Zhao, Ji; Ma, Jiayi

2014-11-01

Establishing good feature correspondence is a critical prerequisite and a challenging task for infrared (IR) face recognition. Recent studies revealed that the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) descriptor outperforms other local descriptors for feature matching. However, it only uses local appearance information for matching, and hence inevitably leads to a number of false matches. To address this issue, this paper explores global structure information (GSI) among SIFT correspondences, and proposes a new method SIFT-GSI for good match exploration. This is achieved by fitting a smooth mapping function for the underlying correct matches, which involves softassign and deterministic annealing. Quantitative comparisons with state-of-the-art methods on a publicly available IR human face database demonstrate that SIFT-GSI significantly outperforms other methods for feature matching, and hence it is able to improve the reliability of IR face recognition systems.

Perceived emotion genuineness: normative ratings for popular facial expression stimuli and the development of perceived-as-genuine and perceived-as-fake sets.

PubMed

Dawel, Amy; Wright, Luke; Irons, Jessica; Dumbleton, Rachael; Palermo, Romina; O'Kearney, Richard; McKone, Elinor

2017-08-01

In everyday social interactions, people's facial expressions sometimes reflect genuine emotion (e.g., anger in response to a misbehaving child) and sometimes do not (e.g., smiling for a school photo). There is increasing theoretical interest in this distinction, but little is known about perceived emotion genuineness for existing facial expression databases. We present a new method for rating perceived genuineness using a neutral-midpoint scale (-7 = completely fake; 0 = don't know; +7 = completely genuine) that, unlike previous methods, provides data on both relative and absolute perceptions. Normative ratings from typically developing adults for five emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and happiness) provide three key contributions. First, the widely used Pictures of Facial Affect (PoFA; i.e., "the Ekman faces") and the Radboud Faces Database (RaFD) are typically perceived as not showing genuine emotion. Also, in the only published set for which the actual emotional states of the displayers are known (via self-report; the McLellan faces), percepts of emotion genuineness often do not match actual emotion genuineness. Second, we provide genuine/fake norms for 558 faces from several sources (PoFA, RaFD, KDEF, Gur, FacePlace, McLellan, News media), including a list of 143 stimuli that are event-elicited (rather than posed) and, congruently, perceived as reflecting genuine emotion. Third, using the norms we develop sets of perceived-as-genuine (from event-elicited sources) and perceived-as-fake (from posed sources) stimuli, matched on sex, viewpoint, eye-gaze direction, and rated intensity. We also outline the many types of research questions that these norms and stimulus sets could be used to answer.

Rear-facing versus forward-facing child restraints: an updated assessment.

PubMed

McMurry, Timothy L; Arbogast, Kristy B; Sherwood, Christopher P; Vaca, Federico; Bull, Marilyn; Crandall, Jeff R; Kent, Richard W

2018-02-01

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children be placed in rear-facing child restraint systems (RFCRS) until at least age 2. These recommendations are based on laboratory biomechanical tests and field data analyses. Due to concerns raised by an independent researcher, we re-evaluated the field evidence in favour of RFCRS using the National Automotive Sampling System Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS) database. Children aged 0 or 1 year old (0-23 months) riding in either rear-facing or forward-facing child restraint systems (FFCRS) were selected from the NASS-CDS database, and injury rates were compared by seat orientation using survey-weighted χ 2 tests. In order to compare with previous work, we analysed NASS-CDS years 1988-2003, and then updated the analyses to include all available data using NASS-CDS years 1988-2015. Years 1988-2015 of NASS-CDS contained 1107 children aged 0 or 1 year old meeting inclusion criteria, with 47 of these children sustaining injuries with Injury Severity Score of at least 9. Both 0-year-old and 1-year-old children in RFCRS had lower rates of injury than children in FFCRS, but the available sample size was too small for reasonable statistical power or to allow meaningful regression controlling for covariates. Non-US field data and laboratory tests support the recommendation that children be kept in RFCRS for as long as possible, but the US NASS-CDS field data are too limited to serve as a strong statistical basis for these recommendations. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

High-accuracy and robust face recognition system based on optical parallel correlator using a temporal image sequence

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watanabe, Eriko; Ishikawa, Mami; Ohta, Maiko; Kodate, Kashiko

2005-09-01

Face recognition is used in a wide range of security systems, such as monitoring credit card use, searching for individuals with street cameras via Internet and maintaining immigration control. There are still many technical subjects under study. For instance, the number of images that can be stored is limited under the current system, and the rate of recognition must be improved to account for photo shots taken at different angles under various conditions. We implemented a fully automatic Fast Face Recognition Optical Correlator (FARCO) system by using a 1000 frame/s optical parallel correlator designed and assembled by us. Operational speed for the 1: N (i.e. matching a pair of images among N, where N refers to the number of images in the database) identification experiment (4000 face images) amounts to less than 1.5 seconds, including the pre/post processing. From trial 1: N identification experiments using FARCO, we acquired low error rates of 2.6% False Reject Rate and 1.3% False Accept Rate. By making the most of the high-speed data-processing capability of this system, much more robustness can be achieved for various recognition conditions when large-category data are registered for a single person. We propose a face recognition algorithm for the FARCO while employing a temporal image sequence of moving images. Applying this algorithm to a natural posture, a two times higher recognition rate scored compared with our conventional system. The system has high potential for future use in a variety of purposes such as search for criminal suspects by use of street and airport video cameras, registration of babies at hospitals or handling of an immeasurable number of images in a database.

Hierarchical Representation Learning for Kinship Verification.

PubMed

Kohli, Naman; Vatsa, Mayank; Singh, Richa; Noore, Afzel; Majumdar, Angshul

2017-01-01

Kinship verification has a number of applications such as organizing large collections of images and recognizing resemblances among humans. In this paper, first, a human study is conducted to understand the capabilities of human mind and to identify the discriminatory areas of a face that facilitate kinship-cues. The visual stimuli presented to the participants determine their ability to recognize kin relationship using the whole face as well as specific facial regions. The effect of participant gender and age and kin-relation pair of the stimulus is analyzed using quantitative measures such as accuracy, discriminability index d' , and perceptual information entropy. Utilizing the information obtained from the human study, a hierarchical kinship verification via representation learning (KVRL) framework is utilized to learn the representation of different face regions in an unsupervised manner. We propose a novel approach for feature representation termed as filtered contractive deep belief networks (fcDBN). The proposed feature representation encodes relational information present in images using filters and contractive regularization penalty. A compact representation of facial images of kin is extracted as an output from the learned model and a multi-layer neural network is utilized to verify the kin accurately. A new WVU kinship database is created, which consists of multiple images per subject to facilitate kinship verification. The results show that the proposed deep learning framework (KVRL-fcDBN) yields the state-of-the-art kinship verification accuracy on the WVU kinship database and on four existing benchmark data sets. Furthermore, kinship information is used as a soft biometric modality to boost the performance of face verification via product of likelihood ratio and support vector machine based approaches. Using the proposed KVRL-fcDBN framework, an improvement of over 20% is observed in the performance of face verification.

Data Dealers Face Stormy Weather.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tenopir, Carol; Barry, Jeff

1998-01-01

This report, the second annual Database Marketplace survey, analyzes information gathered from 29 companies that distribute and produce information available through online, Web, or CD-ROM systems. In addition to data, topics include company mergers, takeovers, sales, accomplishments, and future plans. (Author/LRW)

EUnetHTA information management system: development and lessons learned.

PubMed

Chalon, Patrice X; Kraemer, Peter

2014-11-01

The aim of this study was to describe the techniques used in achieving consensus on common standards to be implemented in the EUnetHTA Information Management System (IMS); and to describe how interoperability between tools was explored. Three face to face meetings were organized to identify and agree on common standards to the development of online tools. Two tools were created to demonstrate the added value of implementing interoperability standards at local levels. Developers of tools outside EUnetHTA were identified and contacted. Four common standards have been agreed on by consensus; and consequently all EUnetHTA tools have been modified or designed accordingly. RDF Site Summary (RSS) has demonstrated a good potential to support rapid dissemination of HTA information. Contacts outside EUnetHTA resulted in direct collaboration (HTA glossary, HTAi Vortal), evaluation of options for interoperability between tools (CRD HTA database) or a formal framework to prepare cooperation on concrete projects (INAHTA projects database). While being entitled a project on IT infrastructure, the work program was also about people. When having to agree on complex topics, fostering a cohesive group dynamic and hosting face to face meetings brings added value and enhances understanding between partners. The adoption of widespread standards enhanced the homogeneity of the EUnetHTA tools and should thus contribute to their wider use, therefore, to the general objective of EUnetHTA. The initiatives on interoperability of systems need to be developed further to support a general interoperable information system that could benefit the whole HTA community.

Modular biometric system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hsu, Charles; Viazanko, Michael; O'Looney, Jimmy; Szu, Harold

2009-04-01

Modularity Biometric System (MBS) is an approach to support AiTR of the cooperated and/or non-cooperated standoff biometric in an area persistent surveillance. Advanced active and passive EOIR and RF sensor suite is not considered here. Neither will we consider the ROC, PD vs. FAR, versus the standoff POT in this paper. Our goal is to catch the "most wanted (MW)" two dozens, separately furthermore ad hoc woman MW class from man MW class, given their archrivals sparse front face data basis, by means of various new instantaneous input called probing faces. We present an advanced algorithm: mini-Max classifier, a sparse sample realization of Cramer-Rao Fisher bound of the Maximum Likelihood classifier that minimize the dispersions among the same woman classes and maximize the separation among different man-woman classes, based on the simple feature space of MIT Petland eigen-faces. The original aspect consists of a modular structured design approach at the system-level with multi-level architectures, multiple computing paradigms, and adaptable/evolvable techniques to allow for achieving a scalable structure in terms of biometric algorithms, identification quality, sensors, database complexity, database integration, and component heterogenity. MBS consist of a number of biometric technologies including fingerprints, vein maps, voice and face recognitions with innovative DSP algorithm, and their hardware implementations such as using Field Programmable Gate arrays (FPGAs). Biometric technologies and the composed modularity biometric system are significant for governmental agencies, enterprises, banks and all other organizations to protect people or control access to critical resources.

Facial Expression Recognition with Fusion Features Extracted from Salient Facial Areas.

PubMed

Liu, Yanpeng; Li, Yibin; Ma, Xin; Song, Rui

2017-03-29

In the pattern recognition domain, deep architectures are currently widely used and they have achieved fine results. However, these deep architectures make particular demands, especially in terms of their requirement for big datasets and GPU. Aiming to gain better results without deep networks, we propose a simplified algorithm framework using fusion features extracted from the salient areas of faces. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm has achieved a better result than some deep architectures. For extracting more effective features, this paper firstly defines the salient areas on the faces. This paper normalizes the salient areas of the same location in the faces to the same size; therefore, it can extracts more similar features from different subjects. LBP and HOG features are extracted from the salient areas, fusion features' dimensions are reduced by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and we apply several classifiers to classify the six basic expressions at once. This paper proposes a salient areas definitude method which uses peak expressions frames compared with neutral faces. This paper also proposes and applies the idea of normalizing the salient areas to align the specific areas which express the different expressions. As a result, the salient areas found from different subjects are the same size. In addition, the gamma correction method is firstly applied on LBP features in our algorithm framework which improves our recognition rates significantly. By applying this algorithm framework, our research has gained state-of-the-art performances on CK+ database and JAFFE database.

A computer-generated animated face stimulus set for psychophysiological research

PubMed Central

Naples, Adam; Nguyen-Phuc, Alyssa; Coffman, Marika; Kresse, Anna; Faja, Susan; Bernier, Raphael; McPartland., James

2014-01-01

Human faces are fundamentally dynamic, but experimental investigations of face perception traditionally rely on static images of faces. While naturalistic videos of actors have been used with success in some contexts, much research in neuroscience and psychophysics demands carefully controlled stimuli. In this paper, we describe a novel set of computer generated, dynamic, face stimuli. These grayscale faces are tightly controlled for low- and high-level visual properties. All faces are standardized in terms of size, luminance, and location and size of facial features. Each face begins with a neutral pose and transitions to an expression over the course of 30 frames. Altogether there are 222 stimuli spanning 3 different categories of movement: (1) an affective movement (fearful face); (2) a neutral movement (close-lipped, puffed cheeks with open eyes); and (3) a biologically impossible movement (upward dislocation of eyes and mouth). To determine whether early brain responses sensitive to low-level visual features differed between expressions, we measured the occipital P100 event related potential (ERP), which is known to reflect differences in early stages of visual processing and the N170, which reflects structural encoding of faces. We found no differences between faces at the P100, indicating that different face categories were well matched on low-level image properties. This database provides researchers with a well-controlled set of dynamic faces controlled on low-level image characteristics that are applicable to a range of research questions in social perception. PMID:25028164

Motion facilitates face perception across changes in viewpoint and expression in older adults.

PubMed

Maguinness, Corrina; Newell, Fiona N

2014-12-01

Faces are inherently dynamic stimuli. However, face perception in younger adults appears to be mediated by the ability to extract structural cues from static images and a benefit of motion is inconsistent. In contrast, static face processing is poorer and more image-dependent in older adults. We therefore compared the role of facial motion in younger and older adults to assess whether motion can enhance perception when static cues are insufficient. In our studies, older and younger adults learned faces presented in motion or in a sequence of static images, containing rigid (viewpoint) or nonrigid (expression) changes. Immediately following learning, participants matched a static test image to the learned face which varied by viewpoint (Experiment 1) or expression (Experiment 2) and was either learned or novel. First, we found an age effect with better face matching performance in younger than in older adults. However, we observed face matching performance improved in the older adult group, across changes in viewpoint and expression, when faces were learned in motion relative to static presentation. There was no benefit for facial (nonrigid) motion when the task involved matching inverted faces (Experiment 3), suggesting that the ability to use dynamic face information for the purpose of recognition reflects motion encoding which is specific to upright faces. Our results suggest that ageing may offer a unique insight into how dynamic cues support face processing, which may not be readily observed in younger adults' performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Unconscious evaluation of faces on social dimensions.

PubMed

Stewart, Lorna H; Ajina, Sara; Getov, Spas; Bahrami, Bahador; Todorov, Alexander; Rees, Geraint

2012-11-01

It has been proposed that two major axes, dominance and trustworthiness, characterize the social dimensions of face evaluation. Whether evaluation of faces on these social dimensions is restricted to conscious appraisal or happens at a preconscious level is unknown. Here we provide behavioral evidence that such preconscious evaluations exist and that they are likely to be interpretations arising from interactions between the face stimuli and observer-specific traits. Monocularly viewed faces that varied independently along two social dimensions of trust and dominance were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression (CFS) when a flashing pattern was presented to the other eye. Participants pressed a button as soon as they saw the face emerge from suppression to indicate whether the previously hidden face was located slightly to the left or right of central fixation. Dominant and untrustworthy faces took significantly longer time to emerge (T2E) compared with neutral faces. A control experiment showed these findings could not reflect delayed motor responses to conscious faces. Finally, we showed that participants' self-reported propensity to trust was strongly predictive of untrust avoidance (i.e., difference in T2E for untrustworthy vs neutral faces) as well as dominance avoidance (i.e., difference in T2E for dominant vs neutral faces). Dominance avoidance was also correlated with submissive behavior. We suggest that such prolongation of suppression for threatening faces may result from a passive fear response, leading to slowed visual perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Improving face image extraction by using deep learning technique

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xue, Zhiyun; Antani, Sameer; Long, L. R.; Demner-Fushman, Dina; Thoma, George R.

2016-03-01

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has made a collection of over a 1.2 million research articles containing 3.2 million figure images searchable using the Open-iSM multimodal (text+image) search engine. Many images are visible light photographs, some of which are images containing faces ("face images"). Some of these face images are acquired in unconstrained settings, while others are studio photos. To extract the face regions in the images, we first applied one of the most widely-used face detectors, a pre-trained Viola-Jones detector implemented in Matlab and OpenCV. The Viola-Jones detector was trained for unconstrained face image detection, but the results for the NLM database included many false positives, which resulted in a very low precision. To improve this performance, we applied a deep learning technique, which reduced the number of false positives and as a result, the detection precision was improved significantly. (For example, the classification accuracy for identifying whether the face regions output by this Viola- Jones detector are true positives or not in a test set is about 96%.) By combining these two techniques (Viola-Jones and deep learning) we were able to increase the system precision considerably, while avoiding the need to manually construct a large training set by manual delineation of the face regions.

Video face recognition against a watch list

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abbas, Jehanzeb; Dagli, Charlie K.; Huang, Thomas S.

2007-10-01

Due to a large increase in the video surveillance data recently in an effort to maintain high security at public places, we need more robust systems to analyze this data and make tasks like face recognition a realistic possibility in challenging environments. In this paper we explore a watch-list scenario where we use an appearance based model to classify query faces from low resolution videos into either a watch-list or a non-watch-list face. We then use our simple yet a powerful face recognition system to recognize the faces classified as watch-list faces. Where the watch-list includes those people that we are interested in recognizing. Our system uses simple feature machine algorithms from our previous work to match video faces against still images. To test our approach, we match video faces against a large database of still images obtained from a previous work in the field from Yahoo News over a period of time. We do this matching in an efficient manner to come up with a faster and nearly real-time system. This system can be incorporated into a larger surveillance system equipped with advanced algorithms involving anomalous event detection and activity recognition. This is a step towards more secure and robust surveillance systems and efficient video data analysis.

Computer face-matching technology using two-dimensional photographs accurately matches the facial gestalt of unrelated individuals with the same syndromic form of intellectual disability.

PubMed

Dudding-Byth, Tracy; Baxter, Anne; Holliday, Elizabeth G; Hackett, Anna; O'Donnell, Sheridan; White, Susan M; Attia, John; Brunner, Han; de Vries, Bert; Koolen, David; Kleefstra, Tjitske; Ratwatte, Seshika; Riveros, Carlos; Brain, Steve; Lovell, Brian C

2017-12-19

Massively parallel genetic sequencing allows rapid testing of known intellectual disability (ID) genes. However, the discovery of novel syndromic ID genes requires molecular confirmation in at least a second or a cluster of individuals with an overlapping phenotype or similar facial gestalt. Using computer face-matching technology we report an automated approach to matching the faces of non-identical individuals with the same genetic syndrome within a database of 3681 images [1600 images of one of 10 genetic syndrome subgroups together with 2081 control images]. Using the leave-one-out method, two research questions were specified: 1) Using two-dimensional (2D) photographs of individuals with one of 10 genetic syndromes within a database of images, did the technology correctly identify more than expected by chance: i) a top match? ii) at least one match within the top five matches? or iii) at least one in the top 10 with an individual from the same syndrome subgroup? 2) Was there concordance between correct technology-based matches and whether two out of three clinical geneticists would have considered the diagnosis based on the image alone? The computer face-matching technology correctly identifies a top match, at least one correct match in the top five and at least one in the top 10 more than expected by chance (P < 0.00001). There was low agreement between the technology and clinicians, with higher accuracy of the technology when results were discordant (P < 0.01) for all syndromes except Kabuki syndrome. Although the accuracy of the computer face-matching technology was tested on images of individuals with known syndromic forms of intellectual disability, the results of this pilot study illustrate the potential utility of face-matching technology within deep phenotyping platforms to facilitate the interpretation of DNA sequencing data for individuals who remain undiagnosed despite testing the known developmental disorder genes.

Meta-analytic review of the development of face discrimination in infancy: Face race, face gender, infant age, and methodology moderate face discrimination.

PubMed

Sugden, Nicole A; Marquis, Alexandra R

2017-11-01

Infants show facility for discriminating between individual faces within hours of birth. Over the first year of life, infants' face discrimination shows continued improvement with familiar face types, such as own-race faces, but not with unfamiliar face types, like other-race faces. The goal of this meta-analytic review is to provide an effect size for infants' face discrimination ability overall, with own-race faces, and with other-race faces within the first year of life, how this differs with age, and how it is influenced by task methodology. Inclusion criteria were (a) infant participants aged 0 to 12 months, (b) completing a human own- or other-race face discrimination task, (c) with discrimination being determined by infant looking. Our analysis included 30 works (165 samples, 1,926 participants participated in 2,623 tasks). The effect size for infants' face discrimination was small, 6.53% greater than chance (i.e., equal looking to the novel and familiar). There was a significant difference in discrimination by race, overall (own-race, 8.18%; other-race, 3.18%) and between ages (own-race: 0- to 4.5-month-olds, 7.32%; 5- to 7.5-month-olds, 9.17%; and 8- to 12-month-olds, 7.68%; other-race: 0- to 4.5-month-olds, 6.12%; 5- to 7.5-month-olds, 3.70%; and 8- to 12-month-olds, 2.79%). Multilevel linear (mixed-effects) models were used to predict face discrimination; infants' capacity to discriminate faces is sensitive to face characteristics including race, gender, and emotion as well as the methods used, including task timing, coding method, and visual angle. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Application of OpenCV in Asus Tinker Board for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Wei-Yu; Wu, Frank; Hu, Chung-Chiang

2017-06-01

The rise of the Internet of Things to promote the development of technology development board, the processor speed of operation and memory capacity increases, more and more applications, can already be completed before the data on the board computing, combined with the network to sort the information after Sent to the cloud for processing, so that the front of the development board is no longer simply retrieve the data device. This study uses Asus Tinker Board to install OpenCV for real-time face recognition and capture of the face, the acquired face to the Microsoft Cognitive Service cloud database for artificial intelligence comparison, to find out what the face now represents the mood. The face of the corresponding person name, and finally, and then through the text of Speech to read the name of the name to complete the identification of the action. This study was developed using the Asus Tinker Board, which uses ARM-based CPUs with high efficiency and low power consumption, plus improvements in memory and hardware performance for the development board.

Ethnicity identification from face images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lu, Xiaoguang; Jain, Anil K.

2004-08-01

Human facial images provide the demographic information, such as ethnicity and gender. Conversely, ethnicity and gender also play an important role in face-related applications. Image-based ethnicity identification problem is addressed in a machine learning framework. The Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) based scheme is presented for the two-class (Asian vs. non-Asian) ethnicity classification task. Multiscale analysis is applied to the input facial images. An ensemble framework, which integrates the LDA analysis for the input face images at different scales, is proposed to further improve the classification performance. The product rule is used as the combination strategy in the ensemble. Experimental results based on a face database containing 263 subjects (2,630 face images, with equal balance between the two classes) are promising, indicating that LDA and the proposed ensemble framework have sufficient discriminative power for the ethnicity classification problem. The normalized ethnicity classification scores can be helpful in the facial identity recognition. Useful as a "soft" biometric, face matching scores can be updated based on the output of ethnicity classification module. In other words, ethnicity classifier does not have to be perfect to be useful in practice.

The face of fear and anger: Facial width-to-height ratio biases recognition of angry and fearful expressions.

PubMed

Deska, Jason C; Lloyd, E Paige; Hugenberg, Kurt

2018-04-01

The ability to rapidly and accurately decode facial expressions is adaptive for human sociality. Although judgments of emotion are primarily determined by musculature, static face structure can also impact emotion judgments. The current work investigates how facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), a stable feature of all faces, influences perceivers' judgments of expressive displays of anger and fear (Studies 1a, 1b, & 2), and anger and happiness (Study 3). Across 4 studies, we provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that perceivers more readily see anger on faces with high fWHR compared with those with low fWHR, which instead facilitates the recognition of fear and happiness. This bias emerges when participants are led to believe that targets displaying otherwise neutral faces are attempting to mask an emotion (Studies 1a & 1b), and is evident when faces display an emotion (Studies 2 & 3). Together, these studies suggest that target facial width-to-height ratio biases ascriptions of emotion with consequences for emotion recognition speed and accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The DalHouses: 100 new photographs of houses with ratings of typicality, familiarity, and degree of similarity to faces.

PubMed

Filliter, Jillian H; Glover, Jacqueline M; McMullen, Patricia A; Salmon, Joshua P; Johnson, Shannon A

2016-03-01

Houses have often been used as comparison stimuli in face-processing studies because of the many attributes they share with faces (e.g., distinct members of a basic category, consistent internal features, mono-orientation, and relative familiarity). Despite this, no large, well-controlled databases of photographs of houses that have been developed for research use currently exist. To address this gap, we photographed 100 houses and carefully edited these images. We then asked 41 undergraduate students (18 to 31 years of age) to rate each house on three dimensions: typicality, likeability, and face-likeness. The ratings had a high degree of face validity, and analyses revealed a significant positive correlation between typicality and likeability. We anticipate that this stimulus set (i.e., the DalHouses) and the associated ratings will prove useful to face-processing researchers by minimizing the effort required to acquire stimuli and allowing for easier replication and extension of studies. The photographs of all 100 houses and their ratings data can be obtained at http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1279430.

The dynamic still-face effect: do infants decrease bidding over time when parents are not responsive?

PubMed

Ekas, Naomi V; Haltigan, John D; Messinger, Daniel S

2013-06-01

The still-face paradigm (SFP) was designed to assess infant expectations that parents will respond to infant communicative signals. During the still-face (SF) episode, the parent ceases interaction and maintains a neutral expression. Original, qualitative descriptions of infant behavior suggested changes within the SF episode: infants decrease bidding and disengage from their impassive parent. Research has documented changes in mean levels of infant behavior between episodes of the SFP. The hypothesis that infant behavior changes within the SF episode has not been empirically tested. In this study, hierarchical linear modeling indicated that infant gazing at the parent, smiling, and social bidding (smiling while gazing at the parent) decreased with time in the SF episode, while infant cry-face expressions increased. Changes in infant behaviors within the SF episode were associated with infant attachment and infant internalizing problems. The dynamic still-face effect quantifies infant initiation of interaction in the face of parental unresponsiveness and is a potential predictor of individual differences in development. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Gender classification from face images by using local binary pattern and gray-level co-occurrence matrix

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Uzbaş, Betül; Arslan, Ahmet

2018-04-01

Gender is an important step for human computer interactive processes and identification. Human face image is one of the important sources to determine gender. In the present study, gender classification is performed automatically from facial images. In order to classify gender, we propose a combination of features that have been extracted face, eye and lip regions by using a hybrid method of Local Binary Pattern and Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix. The features have been extracted from automatically obtained face, eye and lip regions. All of the extracted features have been combined and given as input parameters to classification methods (Support Vector Machine, Artificial Neural Networks, Naive Bayes and k-Nearest Neighbor methods) for gender classification. The Nottingham Scan face database that consists of the frontal face images of 100 people (50 male and 50 female) is used for this purpose. As the result of the experimental studies, the highest success rate has been achieved as 98% by using Support Vector Machine. The experimental results illustrate the efficacy of our proposed method.

Men appear more lateralized when noticing emotion in male faces.

PubMed

Rahman, Qazi; Anchassi, Tarek

2012-02-01

Empirical tests of the "right hemisphere dominance" versus "valence" theories of emotion processing are confounded by known sex differences in lateralization. Moreover, information about the sex of the person posing an emotion might be processed differently by men and women because of an adaptive male bias to notice expressions of threat and vigilance in other male faces. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether sex of poser and emotion displayed influenced lateralization in men and women by analyzing "laterality quotient" scores on a test which depicts vertically split chimeric faces, formed with one half showing a neutral expression and the other half showing an emotional expression. We found that men (N = 50) were significantly more lateralized for emotions indicative of vigilance and threat (happy, sad, angry, and surprised) in male faces relative to female faces and compared to women (N = 44). These data indicate that sex differences in functional cerebral lateralization for facial emotion may be specific to the emotion presented and the sex of face presenting it. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved

Redesigning photo-ID to improve unfamiliar face matching performance.

PubMed

White, David; Burton, A Mike; Jenkins, Rob; Kemp, Richard I

2014-06-01

Viewers find it difficult to match photos of unfamiliar faces for identity. Despite this, the use of photographic ID is widespread. In this study we ask whether it is possible to improve face matching performance by replacing single photographs on ID documents with multiple photos or an average image of the bearer. In 3 experiments we compare photo-to-photo matching with photo-to-average matching (where the average is formed from multiple photos of the same person) and photo-to-array matching (where the array comprises separate photos of the same person). We consistently find an accuracy advantage for average images and photo arrays over single photos, and show that this improvement is driven by performance in match trials. In the final experiment, we find a benefit of 4-image arrays relative to average images for unfamiliar faces, but not for familiar faces. We propose that conventional photo-ID format can be improved, and discuss this finding in the context of face recognition more generally. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Adaptive error correction codes for face identification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hussein, Wafaa R.; Sellahewa, Harin; Jassim, Sabah A.

2012-06-01

Face recognition in uncontrolled environments is greatly affected by fuzziness of face feature vectors as a result of extreme variation in recording conditions (e.g. illumination, poses or expressions) in different sessions. Many techniques have been developed to deal with these variations, resulting in improved performances. This paper aims to model template fuzziness as errors and investigate the use of error detection/correction techniques for face recognition in uncontrolled environments. Error correction codes (ECC) have recently been used for biometric key generation but not on biometric templates. We have investigated error patterns in binary face feature vectors extracted from different image windows of differing sizes and for different recording conditions. By estimating statistical parameters for the intra-class and inter-class distributions of Hamming distances in each window, we encode with appropriate ECC's. The proposed approached is tested for binarised wavelet templates using two face databases: Extended Yale-B and Yale. We shall demonstrate that using different combinations of BCH-based ECC's for different blocks and different recording conditions leads to in different accuracy rates, and that using ECC's results in significantly improved recognition results.

Accurate landmarking of three-dimensional facial data in the presence of facial expressions and occlusions using a three-dimensional statistical facial feature model.

PubMed

Zhao, Xi; Dellandréa, Emmanuel; Chen, Liming; Kakadiaris, Ioannis A

2011-10-01

Three-dimensional face landmarking aims at automatically localizing facial landmarks and has a wide range of applications (e.g., face recognition, face tracking, and facial expression analysis). Existing methods assume neutral facial expressions and unoccluded faces. In this paper, we propose a general learning-based framework for reliable landmark localization on 3-D facial data under challenging conditions (i.e., facial expressions and occlusions). Our approach relies on a statistical model, called 3-D statistical facial feature model, which learns both the global variations in configurational relationships between landmarks and the local variations of texture and geometry around each landmark. Based on this model, we further propose an occlusion classifier and a fitting algorithm. Results from experiments on three publicly available 3-D face databases (FRGC, BU-3-DFE, and Bosphorus) demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, in terms of landmarking accuracy and robustness, in the presence of expressions and occlusions.

Face-off: A new identification procedure for child eyewitnesses.

PubMed

Price, Heather L; Fitzgerald, Ryan J

2016-09-01

In 2 experiments, we introduce a new "face-off" procedure for child eyewitness identifications. The new procedure, which is premised on reducing the stimulus set size, was compared with the showup and simultaneous procedures in Experiment 1 and with modified versions of the simultaneous and elimination procedures in Experiment 2. Several benefits of the face-off procedure were observed: it was significantly more diagnostic than the showup procedure; it led to significantly more correct rejections of target-absent lineups than the simultaneous procedures in both experiments, and it led to greater information gain than the modified elimination and simultaneous procedures. The face-off procedure led to consistently more conservative responding than the simultaneous procedures in both experiments. Given the commonly cited concern that children are too lenient in their decision criteria for identification tasks, the face-off procedure may offer a concrete technique to reduce children's high choosing rates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Mere social categorization modulates identification of facial expressions of emotion.

PubMed

Young, Steven G; Hugenberg, Kurt

2010-12-01

The ability of the human face to communicate emotional states via facial expressions is well known, and past research has established the importance and universality of emotional facial expressions. However, recent evidence has revealed that facial expressions of emotion are most accurately recognized when the perceiver and expresser are from the same cultural ingroup. The current research builds on this literature and extends this work. Specifically, we find that mere social categorization, using a minimal-group paradigm, can create an ingroup emotion-identification advantage even when the culture of the target and perceiver is held constant. Follow-up experiments show that this effect is supported by differential motivation to process ingroup versus outgroup faces and that this motivational disparity leads to more configural processing of ingroup faces than of outgroup faces. Overall, the results point to distinct processing modes for ingroup and outgroup faces, resulting in differential identification accuracy for facial expressions of emotion. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Alternative face models for 3D face registration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Salah, Albert Ali; Alyüz, Neşe; Akarun, Lale

2007-01-01

3D has become an important modality for face biometrics. The accuracy of a 3D face recognition system depends on a correct registration that aligns the facial surfaces and makes a comparison possible. The best results obtained so far use a one-to-all registration approach, which means each new facial surface is registered to all faces in the gallery, at a great computational cost. We explore the approach of registering the new facial surface to an average face model (AFM), which automatically establishes correspondence to the pre-registered gallery faces. Going one step further, we propose that using a couple of well-selected AFMs can trade-off computation time with accuracy. Drawing on cognitive justifications, we propose to employ category-specific alternative average face models for registration, which is shown to increase the accuracy of the subsequent recognition. We inspect thin-plate spline (TPS) and iterative closest point (ICP) based registration schemes under realistic assumptions on manual or automatic landmark detection prior to registration. We evaluate several approaches for the coarse initialization of ICP. We propose a new algorithm for constructing an AFM, and show that it works better than a recent approach. Finally, we perform simulations with multiple AFMs that correspond to different clusters in the face shape space and compare these with gender and morphology based groupings. We report our results on the FRGC 3D face database.

Illumination normalization of face image based on illuminant direction estimation and improved Retinex.

PubMed

Yi, Jizheng; Mao, Xia; Chen, Lijiang; Xue, Yuli; Rovetta, Alberto; Caleanu, Catalin-Daniel

2015-01-01

Illumination normalization of face image for face recognition and facial expression recognition is one of the most frequent and difficult problems in image processing. In order to obtain a face image with normal illumination, our method firstly divides the input face image into sixteen local regions and calculates the edge level percentage in each of them. Secondly, three local regions, which meet the requirements of lower complexity and larger average gray value, are selected to calculate the final illuminant direction according to the error function between the measured intensity and the calculated intensity, and the constraint function for an infinite light source model. After knowing the final illuminant direction of the input face image, the Retinex algorithm is improved from two aspects: (1) we optimize the surround function; (2) we intercept the values in both ends of histogram of face image, determine the range of gray levels, and stretch the range of gray levels into the dynamic range of display device. Finally, we achieve illumination normalization and get the final face image. Unlike previous illumination normalization approaches, the method proposed in this paper does not require any training step or any knowledge of 3D face and reflective surface model. The experimental results using extended Yale face database B and CMU-PIE show that our method achieves better normalization effect comparing with the existing techniques.

Image preprocessing study on KPCA-based face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Xuan; Li, Dehua

2015-12-01

Face recognition as an important biometric identification method, with its friendly, natural, convenient advantages, has obtained more and more attention. This paper intends to research a face recognition system including face detection, feature extraction and face recognition, mainly through researching on related theory and the key technology of various preprocessing methods in face detection process, using KPCA method, focuses on the different recognition results in different preprocessing methods. In this paper, we choose YCbCr color space for skin segmentation and choose integral projection for face location. We use erosion and dilation of the opening and closing operation and illumination compensation method to preprocess face images, and then use the face recognition method based on kernel principal component analysis method for analysis and research, and the experiments were carried out using the typical face database. The algorithms experiment on MATLAB platform. Experimental results show that integration of the kernel method based on PCA algorithm under certain conditions make the extracted features represent the original image information better for using nonlinear feature extraction method, which can obtain higher recognition rate. In the image preprocessing stage, we found that images under various operations may appear different results, so as to obtain different recognition rate in recognition stage. At the same time, in the process of the kernel principal component analysis, the value of the power of the polynomial function can affect the recognition result.

Laptop Computer - Based Facial Recognition System Assessment

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

R. A. Cain; G. B. Singleton

2001-03-01

The objective of this project was to assess the performance of the leading commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) facial recognition software package when used as a laptop application. We performed the assessment to determine the system's usefulness for enrolling facial images in a database from remote locations and conducting real-time searches against a database of previously enrolled images. The assessment involved creating a database of 40 images and conducting 2 series of tests to determine the product's ability to recognize and match subject faces under varying conditions. This report describes the test results and includes a description of the factors affecting the results.more » After an extensive market survey, we selected Visionics' FaceIt{reg_sign} software package for evaluation and a review of the Facial Recognition Vendor Test 2000 (FRVT 2000). This test was co-sponsored by the US Department of Defense (DOD) Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office, the National Institute of Justice, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Administered in May-June 2000, the FRVT 2000 assessed the capabilities of facial recognition systems that were currently available for purchase on the US market. Our selection of this Visionics product does not indicate that it is the ''best'' facial recognition software package for all uses. It was the most appropriate package based on the specific applications and requirements for this specific application. In this assessment, the system configuration was evaluated for effectiveness in identifying individuals by searching for facial images captured from video displays against those stored in a facial image database. An additional criterion was that the system be capable of operating discretely. For this application, an operational facial recognition system would consist of one central computer hosting the master image database with multiple standalone systems configured with duplicates of the master operating in remote locations. Remote users could perform real-time searches where network connectivity is not available. As images are enrolled at the remote locations, periodic database synchronization is necessary.« less

Nine-year-old children use norm-based coding to visually represent facial expression.

PubMed

Burton, Nichola; Jeffery, Linda; Skinner, Andrew L; Benton, Christopher P; Rhodes, Gillian

2013-10-01

Children are less skilled than adults at making judgments about facial expression. This could be because they have not yet developed adult-like mechanisms for visually representing faces. Adults are thought to represent faces in a multidimensional face-space, and have been shown to code the expression of a face relative to the norm or average face in face-space. Norm-based coding is economical and adaptive, and may be what makes adults more sensitive to facial expression than children. This study investigated the coding system that children use to represent facial expression. An adaptation aftereffect paradigm was used to test 24 adults and 18 children (9 years 2 months to 9 years 11 months old). Participants adapted to weak and strong antiexpressions. They then judged the expression of an average expression. Adaptation created aftereffects that made the test face look like the expression opposite that of the adaptor. Consistent with the predictions of norm-based but not exemplar-based coding, aftereffects were larger for strong than weak adaptors for both age groups. Results indicate that, like adults, children's coding of facial expressions is norm-based. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Multimodal Translation System Using Texture-Mapped Lip-Sync Images for Video Mail and Automatic Dubbing Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morishima, Shigeo; Nakamura, Satoshi

2004-12-01

We introduce a multimodal English-to-Japanese and Japanese-to-English translation system that also translates the speaker's speech motion by synchronizing it to the translated speech. This system also introduces both a face synthesis technique that can generate any viseme lip shape and a face tracking technique that can estimate the original position and rotation of a speaker's face in an image sequence. To retain the speaker's facial expression, we substitute only the speech organ's image with the synthesized one, which is made by a 3D wire-frame model that is adaptable to any speaker. Our approach provides translated image synthesis with an extremely small database. The tracking motion of the face from a video image is performed by template matching. In this system, the translation and rotation of the face are detected by using a 3D personal face model whose texture is captured from a video frame. We also propose a method to customize the personal face model by using our GUI tool. By combining these techniques and the translated voice synthesis technique, an automatic multimodal translation can be achieved that is suitable for video mail or automatic dubbing systems into other languages.

Detection of emotional faces: salient physical features guide effective visual search.

PubMed

Calvo, Manuel G; Nummenmaa, Lauri

2008-08-01

In this study, the authors investigated how salient visual features capture attention and facilitate detection of emotional facial expressions. In a visual search task, a target emotional face (happy, disgusted, fearful, angry, sad, or surprised) was presented in an array of neutral faces. Faster detection of happy and, to a lesser extent, surprised and disgusted faces was found both under upright and inverted display conditions. Inversion slowed down the detection of these faces less than that of others (fearful, angry, and sad). Accordingly, the detection advantage involves processing of featural rather than configural information. The facial features responsible for the detection advantage are located in the mouth rather than the eye region. Computationally modeled visual saliency predicted both attentional orienting and detection. Saliency was greatest for the faces (happy) and regions (mouth) that were fixated earlier and detected faster, and there was close correspondence between the onset of the modeled saliency peak and the time at which observers initially fixated the faces. The authors conclude that visual saliency of specific facial features--especially the smiling mouth--is responsible for facilitated initial orienting, which thus shortens detection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).

Super-resolution method for face recognition using nonlinear mappings on coherent features.

PubMed

Huang, Hua; He, Huiting

2011-01-01

Low-resolution (LR) of face images significantly decreases the performance of face recognition. To address this problem, we present a super-resolution method that uses nonlinear mappings to infer coherent features that favor higher recognition of the nearest neighbor (NN) classifiers for recognition of single LR face image. Canonical correlation analysis is applied to establish the coherent subspaces between the principal component analysis (PCA) based features of high-resolution (HR) and LR face images. Then, a nonlinear mapping between HR/LR features can be built by radial basis functions (RBFs) with lower regression errors in the coherent feature space than in the PCA feature space. Thus, we can compute super-resolved coherent features corresponding to an input LR image according to the trained RBF model efficiently and accurately. And, face identity can be obtained by feeding these super-resolved features to a simple NN classifier. Extensive experiments on the Facial Recognition Technology, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and Olivetti Research Laboratory databases show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art face recognition algorithms for single LR image in terms of both recognition rate and robustness to facial variations of pose and expression.

Fast and accurate face recognition based on image compression

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Yufeng; Blasch, Erik

2017-05-01

Image compression is desired for many image-related applications especially for network-based applications with bandwidth and storage constraints. The face recognition community typical reports concentrate on the maximal compression rate that would not decrease the recognition accuracy. In general, the wavelet-based face recognition methods such as EBGM (elastic bunch graph matching) and FPB (face pattern byte) are of high performance but run slowly due to their high computation demands. The PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and LDA (Linear Discriminant Analysis) algorithms run fast but perform poorly in face recognition. In this paper, we propose a novel face recognition method based on standard image compression algorithm, which is termed as compression-based (CPB) face recognition. First, all gallery images are compressed by the selected compression algorithm. Second, a mixed image is formed with the probe and gallery images and then compressed. Third, a composite compression ratio (CCR) is computed with three compression ratios calculated from: probe, gallery and mixed images. Finally, the CCR values are compared and the largest CCR corresponds to the matched face. The time cost of each face matching is about the time of compressing the mixed face image. We tested the proposed CPB method on the "ASUMSS face database" (visible and thermal images) from 105 subjects. The face recognition accuracy with visible images is 94.76% when using JPEG compression. On the same face dataset, the accuracy of FPB algorithm was reported as 91.43%. The JPEG-compressionbased (JPEG-CPB) face recognition is standard and fast, which may be integrated into a real-time imaging device.

(abstract) Synthesis of Speaker Facial Movements to Match Selected Speech Sequences

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Scott, Kenneth C.

1994-01-01

We are developing a system for synthesizing image sequences the simulate the facial motion of a speaker. To perform this synthesis, we are pursuing two major areas of effort. We are developing the necessary computer graphics technology to synthesize a realistic image sequence of a person speaking selected speech sequences. Next, we are developing a model that expresses the relation between spoken phonemes and face/mouth shape. A subject is video taped speaking an arbitrary text that contains expression of the full list of desired database phonemes. The subject is video taped from the front speaking normally, recording both audio and video detail simultaneously. Using the audio track, we identify the specific video frames on the tape relating to each spoken phoneme. From this range we digitize the video frame which represents the extreme of mouth motion/shape. Thus, we construct a database of images of face/mouth shape related to spoken phonemes. A selected audio speech sequence is recorded which is the basis for synthesizing a matching video sequence; the speaker need not be the same as used for constructing the database. The audio sequence is analyzed to determine the spoken phoneme sequence and the relative timing of the enunciation of those phonemes. Synthesizing an image sequence corresponding to the spoken phoneme sequence is accomplished using a graphics technique known as morphing. Image sequence keyframes necessary for this processing are based on the spoken phoneme sequence and timing. We have been successful in synthesizing the facial motion of a native English speaker for a small set of arbitrary speech segments. Our future work will focus on advancement of the face shape/phoneme model and independent control of facial features.

Beyond attentional bias: a perceptual bias in a dot-probe task.

PubMed

Bocanegra, Bruno R; Huijding, Jorg; Zeelenberg, René

2012-12-01

Previous dot-probe studies indicate that threat-related face cues induce a bias in spatial attention. Independently of spatial attention, a recent psychophysical study suggests that a bilateral fearful face cue improves low spatial-frequency perception (LSF) and impairs high spatial-frequency perception (HSF). Here, we combine these separate lines of research within a single dot-probe paradigm. We found that a bilateral fearful face cue, compared with a bilateral neutral face cue, speeded up responses to LSF targets and slowed down responses to HSF targets. This finding is important, as it shows that emotional cues in dot-probe tasks not only bias where information is preferentially processed (i.e., an attentional bias in spatial location), but also bias what type of information is preferentially processed (i.e., a perceptual bias in spatial frequency). PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Implementation of a high-speed face recognition system that uses an optical parallel correlator.

PubMed

Watanabe, Eriko; Kodate, Kashiko

2005-02-10

We implement a fully automatic fast face recognition system by using a 1000 frame/s optical parallel correlator designed and assembled by us. The operational speed for the 1:N (i.e., matching one image against N, where N refers to the number of images in the database) identification experiment (4000 face images) amounts to less than 1.5 s, including the preprocessing and postprocessing times. The binary real-only matched filter is devised for the sake of face recognition, and the system is optimized by the false-rejection rate (FRR) and the false-acceptance rate (FAR), according to 300 samples selected by the biometrics guideline. From trial 1:N identification experiments with the optical parallel correlator, we acquired low error rates of 2.6% FRR and 1.3% FAR. Facial images of people wearing thin glasses or heavy makeup that rendered identification difficult were identified with this system.

Perceptual individuation training (but not mere exposure) reduces implicit racial bias in preschool children.

PubMed

Qian, Miao K; Quinn, Paul C; Heyman, Gail D; Pascalis, Olivier; Fu, Genyue; Lee, Kang

2017-05-01

Two studies with preschool-age children examined the effectiveness of perceptual individuation training at reducing racial bias (Study 1, N = 32; Study 2, N = 56). We found that training preschool-age children to individuate other-race faces resulted in a reduction in implicit racial bias while mere exposure to other-race faces produced no such effect. We also showed that neither individuation training nor mere exposure reduced explicit racial bias. Theoretically, our findings provide strong evidence for a causal link between individual-level face processing and implicit racial bias, and are consistent with the newly proposed perceptual-social linkage hypothesis. Practically, our findings suggest that offering children experiences that allow them to increase their expertise in processing individual other-race faces will help reduce their implicit racial bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Face recognition in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella).

PubMed

Pokorny, Jennifer J; de Waal, Frans B M

2009-05-01

Primates live in complex social groups that necessitate recognition of the individuals with whom they interact. In humans, faces provide a visual means by which to gain information such as identity, allowing us to distinguish between both familiar and unfamiliar individuals. The current study used a computerized oddity task to investigate whether a New World primate, Cebus apella, can discriminate the faces of In-group and Out-group conspecifics based on identity. The current study, improved on past methodologies, demonstrates that capuchins recognize the faces of both familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics. Once a performance criterion had been reached, subjects successfully transferred to a large number of novel images within the first 100 trials thus ruling out performance based on previous conditioning. Capuchins can be added to a growing list of primates that appear to recognize two-dimensional facial images of conspecifics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

Sorted Index Numbers for Privacy Preserving Face Recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Yongjin; Hatzinakos, Dimitrios

2009-12-01

This paper presents a novel approach for changeable and privacy preserving face recognition. We first introduce a new method of biometric matching using the sorted index numbers (SINs) of feature vectors. Since it is impossible to recover any of the exact values of the original features, the transformation from original features to the SIN vectors is noninvertible. To address the irrevocable nature of biometric signals whilst obtaining stronger privacy protection, a random projection-based method is employed in conjunction with the SIN approach to generate changeable and privacy preserving biometric templates. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated on a large generic data set, which contains images from several well-known face databases. Extensive experimentation shows that the proposed solution may improve the recognition accuracy.

Emotion-Color Associations in the Context of the Face.

PubMed

Thorstenson, Christopher A; Elliot, Andrew J; Pazda, Adam D; Perrett, David I; Xiao, Dengke

2017-11-27

Facial expressions of emotion contain important information that is perceived and used by observers to understand others' emotional state. While there has been considerable research into perceptions of facial musculature and emotion, less work has been conducted to understand perceptions of facial coloration and emotion. The current research examined emotion-color associations in the context of the face. Across 4 experiments, participants were asked to manipulate the color of face, or shape, stimuli along 2 color axes (i.e., red-green, yellow-blue) for 6 target emotions (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise). The results yielded a pattern that is consistent with physiological and psychological models of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Near infrared and visible face recognition based on decision fusion of LBP and DCT features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xie, Zhihua; Zhang, Shuai; Liu, Guodong; Xiong, Jinquan

2018-03-01

Visible face recognition systems, being vulnerable to illumination, expression, and pose, can not achieve robust performance in unconstrained situations. Meanwhile, near infrared face images, being light- independent, can avoid or limit the drawbacks of face recognition in visible light, but its main challenges are low resolution and signal noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, near infrared and visible fusion face recognition has become an important direction in the field of unconstrained face recognition research. In order to extract the discriminative complementary features between near infrared and visible images, in this paper, we proposed a novel near infrared and visible face fusion recognition algorithm based on DCT and LBP features. Firstly, the effective features in near-infrared face image are extracted by the low frequency part of DCT coefficients and the partition histograms of LBP operator. Secondly, the LBP features of visible-light face image are extracted to compensate for the lacking detail features of the near-infrared face image. Then, the LBP features of visible-light face image, the DCT and LBP features of near-infrared face image are sent to each classifier for labeling. Finally, decision level fusion strategy is used to obtain the final recognition result. The visible and near infrared face recognition is tested on HITSZ Lab2 visible and near infrared face database. The experiment results show that the proposed method extracts the complementary features of near-infrared and visible face images and improves the robustness of unconstrained face recognition. Especially for the circumstance of small training samples, the recognition rate of proposed method can reach 96.13%, which has improved significantly than 92.75 % of the method based on statistical feature fusion.

A service-oriented data access control model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meng, Wei; Li, Fengmin; Pan, Juchen; Song, Song; Bian, Jiali

2017-01-01

The development of mobile computing, cloud computing and distributed computing meets the growing individual service needs. Facing with complex application system, it's an urgent problem to ensure real-time, dynamic, and fine-grained data access control. By analyzing common data access control models, on the basis of mandatory access control model, the paper proposes a service-oriented access control model. By regarding system services as subject and data of databases as object, the model defines access levels and access identification of subject and object, and ensures system services securely to access databases.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of face-to-face communication of tailored health messages: implications for practice.

PubMed

Wanyonyi, Kristina L; Themessl-Huber, Markus; Humphris, Gerry; Freeman, Ruth

2011-12-01

To conduct a systematic review of the effect of face-to-face delivered tailored health messages on patient behavior and applications for practice. A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Systematic searches of a number of electronic databases were conducted and criteria for selection of studies were specified. 6 experimental studies published between 2003 and 2009 were included. The studies were all randomized controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of a face-to-face tailored messaging intervention. There were variation in their research design and methods used to randomize. All participants were aged at least 18 years. All of the studies reported positive changes in participants' health behavior with varying degrees of effect size and duration. A meta-analysis of the available data also confirmed an overall positive effect of tailored messaging on participants' health behaviors. The systematic review and the meta-analysis demonstrate a significant and positive effective of face-to-face tailored messaging upon participants' health behaviors. Health practitioners should be encouraged to allot time in their work routines to discover their patients' psycho-social characteristics and felt needs in order that they can provide a tailored health message to enable the patient to adopt health-promoting regimes into their lifestyle. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Data-Based Marketing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leach, Ernest R.

The discipline of marketing, applied to higher education, has the potential for increasing enrollments, reducing attrition, and making college services more responsive to the needs of consumers. Faced with enrollments that were below projections, Prince George's Community College devised a four-stage marketing plan that focused on service,…

Experimental Validation Plan for the Xolotl Plasma-Facing Component Simulator Using Tokamak Sample Exposures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chan, V. S.; Wong, C. P. C.; McLean, A. G.; Luo, G. N.; Wirth, B. D.

2013-10-01

The Xolotl code under development by PSI-SciDAC will enhance predictive modeling capability of plasma-facing materials under burning plasma conditions. The availability and application of experimental data to compare to code-calculated observables are key requirements to validate the breadth and content of physics included in the model and ultimately gain confidence in its results. A dedicated effort has been in progress to collect and organize a) a database of relevant experiments and their publications as previously carried out at sample exposure facilities in US and Asian tokamaks (e.g., DIII-D DiMES, and EAST MAPES), b) diagnostic and surface analysis capabilities available at each device, and c) requirements for future experiments with code validation in mind. The content of this evolving database will serve as a significant resource for the plasma-material interaction (PMI) community. Work supported in part by the US Department of Energy under GA-DE-SC0008698, DE-AC52-07NA27344 and DE-AC05-00OR22725.

A lightweight approach for biometric template protection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Al-Assam, Hisham; Sellahewa, Harin; Jassim, Sabah

2009-05-01

Privacy and security are vital concerns for practical biometric systems. The concept of cancelable or revocable biometrics has been proposed as a solution for biometric template security. Revocable biometric means that biometric templates are no longer fixed over time and could be revoked in the same way as lost or stolen credit cards are. In this paper, we describe a novel and an efficient approach to biometric template protection that meets the revocability property. This scheme can be incorporated into any biometric verification scheme while maintaining, if not improving, the accuracy of the original biometric system. However, we shall demonstrate the result of applying such transforms on face biometric templates and compare the efficiency of our approach with that of the well-known random projection techniques. We shall also present the results of experimental work on recognition accuracy before and after applying the proposed transform on feature vectors that are generated by wavelet transforms. These results are based on experiments conducted on a number of well-known face image databases, e.g. Yale and ORL databases.

Covariance analysis for evaluating head trackers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kang, Donghoon

2017-10-01

Existing methods for evaluating the performance of head trackers usually rely on publicly available face databases, which contain facial images and the ground truths of their corresponding head orientations. However, most of the existing publicly available face databases are constructed by assuming that a frontal head orientation can be determined by compelling the person under examination to look straight ahead at the camera on the first video frame. Since nobody can accurately direct one's head toward the camera, this assumption may be unrealistic. Rather than obtaining estimation errors, we present a method for computing the covariance of estimation error rotations to evaluate the reliability of head trackers. As an uncertainty measure of estimators, the Schatten 2-norm of a square root of error covariance (or the algebraic average of relative error angles) can be used. The merit of the proposed method is that it does not disturb the person under examination by asking him to direct his head toward certain directions. Experimental results using real data validate the usefulness of our method.

Modulation of the composite face effect by unintended emotion cues.

PubMed

Gray, Katie L H; Murphy, Jennifer; Marsh, Jade E; Cook, Richard

2017-04-01

When upper and lower regions from different emotionless faces are aligned to form a facial composite, observers 'fuse' the two halves together, perceptually. The illusory distortion induced by task-irrelevant ('distractor') halves hinders participants' judgements about task-relevant ('target') halves. This composite-face effect reveals a tendency to integrate feature information from disparate regions of intact upright faces, consistent with theories of holistic face processing. However, observers frequently perceive emotion in ostensibly neutral faces, contrary to the intentions of experimenters. This study sought to determine whether this 'perceived emotion' influences the composite-face effect. In our first experiment, we confirmed that the composite effect grows stronger as the strength of distractor emotion increased. Critically, effects of distractor emotion were induced by weak emotion intensities, and were incidental insofar as emotion cues hindered image matching, not emotion labelling per se . In Experiment 2, we found a correlation between the presence of perceived emotion in a set of ostensibly neutral distractor regions sourced from commonly used face databases, and the strength of illusory distortion they induced. In Experiment 3, participants completed a sequential matching composite task in which half of the distractor regions were rated high and low for perceived emotion, respectively. Significantly stronger composite effects were induced by the high-emotion distractor halves. These convergent results suggest that perceived emotion increases the strength of the composite-face effect induced by supposedly emotionless faces. These findings have important implications for the study of holistic face processing in typical and atypical populations.

The roles of perceptual and conceptual information in face recognition.

PubMed

Schwartz, Linoy; Yovel, Galit

2016-11-01

The representation of familiar objects is comprised of perceptual information about their visual properties as well as the conceptual knowledge that we have about them. What is the relative contribution of perceptual and conceptual information to object recognition? Here, we examined this question by designing a face familiarization protocol during which participants were either exposed to rich perceptual information (viewing each face in different angles and illuminations) or with conceptual information (associating each face with a different name). Both conditions were compared with single-view faces presented with no labels. Recognition was tested on new images of the same identities to assess whether learning generated a view-invariant representation. Results showed better recognition of novel images of the learned identities following association of a face with a name label, but no enhancement following exposure to multiple face views. Whereas these findings may be consistent with the role of category learning in object recognition, face recognition was better for labeled faces only when faces were associated with person-related labels (name, occupation), but not with person-unrelated labels (object names or symbols). These findings suggest that association of meaningful conceptual information with an image shifts its representation from an image-based percept to a view-invariant concept. They further indicate that the role of conceptual information should be considered to account for the superior recognition that we have for familiar faces and objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Reading in developmental prosopagnosia: Evidence for a dissociation between word and face recognition.

PubMed

Starrfelt, Randi; Klargaard, Solja K; Petersen, Anders; Gerlach, Christian

2018-02-01

Recent models suggest that face and word recognition may rely on overlapping cognitive processes and neural regions. In support of this notion, face recognition deficits have been demonstrated in developmental dyslexia. Here we test whether the opposite association can also be found, that is, impaired reading in developmental prosopagnosia. We tested 10 adults with developmental prosopagnosia and 20 matched controls. All participants completed the Cambridge Face Memory Test, the Cambridge Face Perception test and a Face recognition questionnaire used to quantify everyday face recognition experience. Reading was measured in four experimental tasks, testing different levels of letter, word, and text reading: (a) single word reading with words of varying length,(b) vocal response times in single letter and short word naming, (c) recognition of single letters and short words at brief exposure durations (targeting the word superiority effect), and d) text reading. Participants with developmental prosopagnosia performed strikingly similar to controls across the four reading tasks. Formal analysis revealed a significant dissociation between word and face recognition, as the difference in performance with faces and words was significantly greater for participants with developmental prosopagnosia than for controls. Adult developmental prosopagnosics read as quickly and fluently as controls, while they are seemingly unable to learn efficient strategies for recognizing faces. We suggest that this is due to the differing demands that face and word recognition put on the perceptual system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

An Adult Developmental Approach to Perceived Facial Attractiveness and Distinctiveness

PubMed Central

Ebner, Natalie C.; Luedicke, Joerg; Voelkle, Manuel C.; Riediger, Michaela; Lin, Tian; Lindenberger, Ulman

2018-01-01

Attractiveness and distinctiveness constitute facial features with high biological and social relevance. Bringing a developmental perspective to research on social-cognitive face perception, we used a large set of faces taken from the FACES Lifespan Database to examine effects of face and perceiver characteristics on subjective evaluations of attractiveness and distinctiveness in young (20–31 years), middle-aged (44–55 years), and older (70–81 years) men and women. We report novel findings supporting variations by face and perceiver age, in interaction with gender and emotion: although older and middle-aged compared to young perceivers generally rated faces of all ages as more attractive, young perceivers gave relatively higher attractiveness ratings to young compared to middle-aged and older faces. Controlling for variations in attractiveness, older compared to young faces were viewed as more distinctive by young and middle-aged perceivers. Age affected attractiveness more negatively for female than male faces. Furthermore, happy faces were rated as most attractive, while disgusted faces were rated as least attractive, particularly so by middle-aged and older perceivers and for young and female faces. Perceivers largely agreed on distinctiveness ratings for neutral and happy emotions, but older and middle-aged compared to young perceivers rated faces displaying negative emotions as more distinctive. These findings underscore the importance of a lifespan perspective on perception of facial characteristics and suggest possible effects of age on goal-directed perception, social motivation, and in-group bias. This publication makes available picture-specific normative data for experimental stimulus selection. PMID:29867620

Content Based Image Retrieval based on Wavelet Transform coefficients distribution

PubMed Central

Lamard, Mathieu; Cazuguel, Guy; Quellec, Gwénolé; Bekri, Lynda; Roux, Christian; Cochener, Béatrice

2007-01-01

In this paper we propose a content based image retrieval method for diagnosis aid in medical fields. We characterize images without extracting significant features by using distribution of coefficients obtained by building signatures from the distribution of wavelet transform. The research is carried out by computing signature distances between the query and database images. Several signatures are proposed; they use a model of wavelet coefficient distribution. To enhance results, a weighted distance between signatures is used and an adapted wavelet base is proposed. Retrieval efficiency is given for different databases including a diabetic retinopathy, a mammography and a face database. Results are promising: the retrieval efficiency is higher than 95% for some cases using an optimization process. PMID:18003013

Integrating Scientific Array Processing into Standard SQL

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Misev, Dimitar; Bachhuber, Johannes; Baumann, Peter

2014-05-01

We live in a time that is dominated by data. Data storage is cheap and more applications than ever accrue vast amounts of data. Storing the emerging multidimensional data sets efficiently, however, and allowing them to be queried by their inherent structure, is a challenge many databases have to face today. Despite the fact that multidimensional array data is almost always linked to additional, non-array information, array databases have mostly developed separately from relational systems, resulting in a disparity between the two database categories. The current SQL standard and SQL DBMS supports arrays - and in an extension also multidimensional arrays - but does so in a very rudimentary and inefficient way. This poster demonstrates the practicality of an SQL extension for array processing, implemented in a proof-of-concept multi-faceted system that manages a federation of array and relational database systems, providing transparent, efficient and scalable access to the heterogeneous data in them.

Appearance-based multimodal human tracking and identification for healthcare in the digital home.

PubMed

Yang, Mau-Tsuen; Huang, Shen-Yen

2014-08-05

There is an urgent need for intelligent home surveillance systems to provide home security, monitor health conditions, and detect emergencies of family members. One of the fundamental problems to realize the power of these intelligent services is how to detect, track, and identify people at home. Compared to RFID tags that need to be worn all the time, vision-based sensors provide a natural and nonintrusive solution. Observing that body appearance and body build, as well as face, provide valuable cues for human identification, we model and record multi-view faces, full-body colors and shapes of family members in an appearance database by using two Kinects located at a home's entrance. Then the Kinects and another set of color cameras installed in other parts of the house are used to detect, track, and identify people by matching the captured color images with the registered templates in the appearance database. People are detected and tracked by multisensor fusion (Kinects and color cameras) using a Kalman filter that can handle duplicate or partial measurements. People are identified by multimodal fusion (face, body appearance, and silhouette) using a track-based majority voting. Moreover, the appearance-based human detection, tracking, and identification modules can cooperate seamlessly and benefit from each other. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the human tracking across multiple sensors and human identification considering the information of multi-view faces, full-body clothes, and silhouettes. The proposed home surveillance system can be applied to domestic applications in digital home security and intelligent healthcare.

Appearance-Based Multimodal Human Tracking and Identification for Healthcare in the Digital Home

PubMed Central

Yang, Mau-Tsuen; Huang, Shen-Yen

2014-01-01

There is an urgent need for intelligent home surveillance systems to provide home security, monitor health conditions, and detect emergencies of family members. One of the fundamental problems to realize the power of these intelligent services is how to detect, track, and identify people at home. Compared to RFID tags that need to be worn all the time, vision-based sensors provide a natural and nonintrusive solution. Observing that body appearance and body build, as well as face, provide valuable cues for human identification, we model and record multi-view faces, full-body colors and shapes of family members in an appearance database by using two Kinects located at a home's entrance. Then the Kinects and another set of color cameras installed in other parts of the house are used to detect, track, and identify people by matching the captured color images with the registered templates in the appearance database. People are detected and tracked by multisensor fusion (Kinects and color cameras) using a Kalman filter that can handle duplicate or partial measurements. People are identified by multimodal fusion (face, body appearance, and silhouette) using a track-based majority voting. Moreover, the appearance-based human detection, tracking, and identification modules can cooperate seamlessly and benefit from each other. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the human tracking across multiple sensors and human identification considering the information of multi-view faces, full-body clothes, and silhouettes. The proposed home surveillance system can be applied to domestic applications in digital home security and intelligent healthcare. PMID:25098207

Choosing Assessments that Matter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abilock, Debbie, Ed.

2007-01-01

Professionally, school librarians are faced with an explosion of choices--search engines, online catalogs, media types, subscription databases, and Web tools--all requiring scrutiny, evaluation, and selection. In turn, this support "stuff" forms a basis for making additional choices about how and what they teach and what they assess. Whereas once…

Learning Deep Representations for Ground to Aerial Geolocalization (Open Access)

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-10-15

proposed approach, Where-CNN, is inspired by deep learning success in face verification and achieves significant improvements over tra- ditional hand...crafted features and existing deep features learned from other large-scale databases. We show the ef- fectiveness of Where-CNN in finding matches

Search Engines for Tomorrow's Scholars

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fagan, Jody Condit

2011-01-01

Today's scholars face an outstanding array of choices when choosing search tools: Google Scholar, discipline-specific abstracts and index databases, library discovery tools, and more recently, Microsoft's re-launch of their academic search tool, now dubbed Microsoft Academic Search. What are these tools' strengths for the emerging needs of…

Interventions to enhance effective communication during over-the-counter consultations in the community pharmacy setting: A systematic review.

PubMed

Seubert, Liza J; Whitelaw, Kerry; Hattingh, Laetitia; Watson, Margaret C; Clifford, Rhonda M

2017-12-13

Easy access to effective over-the-counter (OTC) treatments allows self-management of some conditions, however inappropriate or incorrect supply or use of OTC medicines can cause harm. Pharmacy personnel should support consumers in their health-seeking behaviour by utilising effective communication skills underpinned by clinical knowledge. To identify interventions targeted towards improving communication between consumers and pharmacy personnel during OTC consultations in the community pharmacy setting. Systematic review and narrative analysis. Databases searched were MEDLINE, EMBASE, Psycinfo, Cochrane Central Register and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for literature published between 2000 and 30 October 2014, as well as reference lists of included articles. The search was re-run on 18 January 2016 and 25 September 2017 to maximise the currency. Two reviewers independently screened retrieved articles for inclusion, assessed study quality and extracted data. Full publications of intervention studies were included. Participants were community pharmacy personnel and/or consumers involved in OTC consultations. Interventions which aimed to improve communication during OTC consultations in the community pharmacy setting were included if they involved a direct measurable communication outcome. Studies reporting attitudes and measures not quantifiable were excluded. The protocol was published on Prospero Database of Systematic Reviews. Of 4978 records identified, 11 studies met inclusion criteria. Interventions evaluated were: face-to-face training sessions (n = 10); role-plays (n = 9); a software decision making program (n = 1); and simulated patient (SP) visits followed by immediate feedback (n = 1). Outcomes were measured using: SP methodology (n = 10) and a survey (n = 1), with most (n = 10) reporting a level of improvement in some communication behaviours. Empirical evaluation of interventions using active learning techniques such as face-to-face training with role-play can improve some communication skills. However interventions that are not fully described limit the ability for replication and/or generalisability. This review identified interventions targeting pharmacy personnel. Future interventions to improve communication should consider the consumer's role in OTC consultations. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A comparative study of six European databases of medically oriented Web resources.

PubMed

Abad García, Francisca; González Teruel, Aurora; Bayo Calduch, Patricia; de Ramón Frias, Rosa; Castillo Blasco, Lourdes

2005-10-01

The paper describes six European medically oriented databases of Web resources, pertaining to five quality-controlled subject gateways, and compares their performance. The characteristics, coverage, procedure for selecting Web resources, record structure, searching possibilities, and existence of user assistance were described for each database. Performance indicators for each database were obtained by means of searches carried out using the key words, "myocardial infarction." Most of the databases originated in the 1990s in an academic or library context and include all types of Web resources of an international nature. Five databases use Medical Subject Headings. The number of fields per record varies between three and nineteen. The language of the search interfaces is mostly English, and some of them allow searches in other languages. In some databases, the search can be extended to Pubmed. Organizing Medical Networked Information, Catalogue et Index des Sites Médicaux Francophones, and Diseases, Disorders and Related Topics produced the best results. The usefulness of these databases as quick reference resources is clear. In addition, their lack of content overlap means that, for the user, they complement each other. Their continued survival faces three challenges: the instability of the Internet, maintenance costs, and lack of use in spite of their potential usefulness.

Word and face processing engage overlapping distributed networks: Evidence from RSVP and EEG investigations.

PubMed

Robinson, Amanda K; Plaut, David C; Behrmann, Marlene

2017-07-01

Words and faces have vastly different visual properties, but increasing evidence suggests that word and face processing engage overlapping distributed networks. For instance, fMRI studies have shown overlapping activity for face and word processing in the fusiform gyrus despite well-characterized lateralization of these objects to the left and right hemispheres, respectively. To investigate whether face and word perception influences perception of the other stimulus class and elucidate the mechanisms underlying such interactions, we presented images using rapid serial visual presentations. Across 3 experiments, participants discriminated 2 face, word, and glasses targets (T1 and T2) embedded in a stream of images. As expected, T2 discrimination was impaired when it followed T1 by 200 to 300 ms relative to longer intertarget lags, the so-called attentional blink. Interestingly, T2 discrimination accuracy was significantly reduced at short intertarget lags when a face was followed by a word (face-word) compared with glasses-word and word-word combinations, indicating that face processing interfered with word perception. The reverse effect was not observed; that is, word-face performance was no different than the other object combinations. EEG results indicated the left N170 to T1 was correlated with the word decrement for face-word trials, but not for other object combinations. Taken together, the results suggest face processing interferes with word processing, providing evidence for overlapping neural mechanisms of these 2 object types. Furthermore, asymmetrical face-word interference points to greater overlap of face and word representations in the left than the right hemisphere. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Face-blind for other-race faces: Individual differences in other-race recognition impairments.

PubMed

Wan, Lulu; Crookes, Kate; Dawel, Amy; Pidcock, Madeleine; Hall, Ashleigh; McKone, Elinor

2017-01-01

We report the existence of a previously undescribed group of people, namely individuals who are so poor at recognition of other-race faces that they meet criteria for clinical-level impairment (i.e., they are "face-blind" for other-race faces). Testing 550 participants, and using the well-validated Cambridge Face Memory Test for diagnosing face blindness, results show the rate of other-race face blindness to be nontrivial, specifically 8.1% of Caucasians and Asians raised in majority own-race countries. Results also show risk factors for other-race face blindness to include: a lack of interracial contact; and being at the lower end of the normal range of general face recognition ability (i.e., even for own-race faces); but not applying less individuating effort to other-race than own-race faces. Findings provide a potential resolution of contradictory evidence concerning the importance of the other-race effect (ORE), by explaining how it is possible for the mean ORE to be modest in size (suggesting a genuine but minor problem), and simultaneously for individuals to suffer major functional consequences in the real world (e.g., eyewitness misidentification of other-race offenders leading to wrongful imprisonment). Findings imply that, in legal settings, evaluating an eyewitness's chance of having made an other-race misidentification requires information about the underlying face recognition abilities of the individual witness. Additionally, analogy with prosopagnosia (inability to recognize even own-race faces) suggests everyday social interactions with other-race people, such as those between colleagues in the workplace, will be seriously impacted by the ORE in some people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Interdyad differences in early mother-infant face-to-face communication: real-time dynamics and developmental pathways.

PubMed

Lavelli, Manuela; Fogel, Alan

2013-12-01

A microgenetic research design with a multiple case study method and a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses was used to investigate interdyad differences in real-time dynamics and developmental change processes in mother-infant face-to-face communication over the first 3 months of life. Weekly observations of 24 mother-infant dyads with analyses performed dyad by dyad showed that most dyads go through 2 qualitatively different developmental phases of early face-to-face communication: After a phase of mutual attentiveness, mutual engagement begins in Weeks 7-8, with infant smiling and cooing bidirectionally linked with maternal mirroring. This gives rise to sequences of positive feedback that, by the 3rd month, dynamically stabilizes into innovative play routines. However, when there is a lack of bidirectional positive feedback between infant and maternal behaviors, and a lack of permeability of the early communicative patterns to incorporate innovations, the development of the mutual engagement phase is compromised. The findings contribute both to theories of relationship change processes and to clinical work with at-risk mother-infant interactions. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Borderline Intellectual Functioning: A Systematic Literature Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peltopuro, Minna; Ahonen, Timo; Kaartinen, Jukka; Seppälä, Heikki; Närhi, Vesa

2014-01-01

The literature related to people with borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) was systematically reviewed in order to summarize the present knowledge. Database searches yielded 1,726 citations, and 49 studies were included in the review. People with BIF face a variety of hardships in life, including neurocognitive, social, and mental health…

Trials and Triumphs of Expanded Extension Programs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leavengood, Scott; Love, Bob

1998-01-01

Oregon extension faced challenges in presenting programs in the wood products industry. Several traditional tactics, revised to suit a new audience, have proved successful: personal coaching, building partnerships, and providing a high level of service. Newer methods, such as database marketing and distance learning, are also proving to be…

IRBAS: An online database to collate, analyze, and synthesize data on the biodiversity and ecology of intermittent rivers worldwide

EPA Science Inventory

Key questions dominating contemporary ecological research and management concern interactions between biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and ecosystem services provision in the face of global change. This is particularly salient for freshwater biodiversity and in the context of r...

Beach Advisory and Closing Online Notification (BEACON) system

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Beach Advisory and Closing Online Notification system (BEACON) is a colletion of state and local data reported to EPA about beach closings and advisories. BEACON is the public-facing query of the Program tracking, Beach Advisories, Water quality standards, and Nutrients database (PRAWN) which tracks beach closing and advisory information.

School Gardens Enhance Academic Performance and Dietary Outcomes in Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berezowitz, Claire K.; Bontrager Yoder, Andrea B.; Schoeller, Dale A.

2015-01-01

Background: Schools face increasing demands to provide education on healthy living and improve core academic performance. Although these appear to be competing concerns, they may interact beneficially. This article focuses on school garden programs and their effects on students' academic and dietary outcomes. Methods: Database searches in CABI,…

Portraits made to measure: manipulating social judgments about individuals with a statistical face model.

PubMed

Walker, Mirella; Vetter, Thomas

2009-10-13

The social judgments people make on the basis of the facial appearance of strangers strongly affect their behavior in different contexts. However, almost nothing is known about the physical information underlying these judgments. In this article, we present a new technology (a) to quantify the information in faces that is used for social judgments and (b) to manipulate the image of a human face in a way which is almost imperceptible but changes the personality traits ascribed to the depicted person. This method was developed in a high-dimensional face space by identifying vectors that capture maximum variability in judgments of personality traits. Our method of manipulating the salience of these vectors in faces was successfully transferred to novel photographs from an independent database. We evaluated this method by showing pairs of face photographs which differed only in the salience of one of six personality traits. Subjects were asked to decide which face was more extreme with respect to the trait in question. Results show that the image manipulation produced the intended attribution effect. All response accuracies were significantly above chance level. This approach to understanding and manipulating how a person is socially perceived could be useful in psychological research and could also be applied in advertising or the film industries.

Vicarious Social Touch Biases Gazing at Faces and Facial Emotions.

PubMed

Schirmer, Annett; Ng, Tabitha; Ebstein, Richard P

2018-02-01

Research has suggested that interpersonal touch promotes social processing and other-concern, and that women may respond to it more sensitively than men. In this study, we asked whether this phenomenon would extend to third-party observers who experience touch vicariously. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants (N = 64, 32 men and 32 women) viewed prime and target images with the intention of remembering them. Primes comprised line drawings of dyadic interactions with and without touch. Targets comprised two faces shown side-by-side, with one being neutral and the other being happy or sad. Analysis of prime fixations revealed that faces in touch interactions attracted longer gazing than faces in no-touch interactions. In addition, touch enhanced gazing at the area of touch in women but not men. Analysis of target fixations revealed that touch priming increased looking at both faces immediately after target onset, and subsequently, at the emotional face in the pair. Sex differences in target processing were nonsignificant. Together, the present results imply that vicarious touch biases visual attention to faces and promotes emotion sensitivity. In addition, they suggest that, compared with men, women are more aware of tactile exchanges in their environment. As such, vicarious touch appears to share important qualities with actual physical touch. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Pose Invariant Face Recognition Based on Hybrid Dominant Frequency Features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wijaya, I. Gede Pasek Suta; Uchimura, Keiichi; Hu, Zhencheng

Face recognition is one of the most active research areas in pattern recognition, not only because the face is a human biometric characteristics of human being but also because there are many potential applications of the face recognition which range from human-computer interactions to authentication, security, and surveillance. This paper presents an approach to pose invariant human face image recognition. The proposed scheme is based on the analysis of discrete cosine transforms (DCT) and discrete wavelet transforms (DWT) of face images. From both the DCT and DWT domain coefficients, which describe the facial information, we build compact and meaningful features vector, using simple statistical measures and quantization. This feature vector is called as the hybrid dominant frequency features. Then, we apply a combination of the L2 and Lq metric to classify the hybrid dominant frequency features to a person's class. The aim of the proposed system is to overcome the high memory space requirement, the high computational load, and the retraining problems of previous methods. The proposed system is tested using several face databases and the experimental results are compared to a well-known Eigenface method. The proposed method shows good performance, robustness, stability, and accuracy without requiring geometrical normalization. Furthermore, the purposed method has low computational cost, requires little memory space, and can overcome retraining problem.

A Viola-Jones based hybrid face detection framework

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Murphy, Thomas M.; Broussard, Randy; Schultz, Robert; Rakvic, Ryan; Ngo, Hau

2013-12-01

Improvements in face detection performance would benefit many applications. The OpenCV library implements a standard solution, the Viola-Jones detector, with a statistically boosted rejection cascade of binary classifiers. Empirical evidence has shown that Viola-Jones underdetects in some instances. This research shows that a truncated cascade augmented by a neural network could recover these undetected faces. A hybrid framework is constructed, with a truncated Viola-Jones cascade followed by an artificial neural network, used to refine the face decision. Optimally, a truncation stage that captured all faces and allowed the neural network to remove the false alarms is selected. A feedforward backpropagation network with one hidden layer is trained to discriminate faces based upon the thresholding (detection) values of intermediate stages of the full rejection cascade. A clustering algorithm is used as a precursor to the neural network, to group significant overlappings. Evaluated on the CMU/VASC Image Database, comparison with an unmodified OpenCV approach shows: (1) a 37% increase in detection rates if constrained by the requirement of no increase in false alarms, (2) a 48% increase in detection rates if some additional false alarms are tolerated, and (3) an 82% reduction in false alarms with no reduction in detection rates. These results demonstrate improved face detection and could address the need for such improvement in various applications.

A Comparative Survey of Methods for Remote Heart Rate Detection From Frontal Face Videos

PubMed Central

Wang, Chen; Pun, Thierry; Chanel, Guillaume

2018-01-01

Remotely measuring physiological activity can provide substantial benefits for both the medical and the affective computing applications. Recent research has proposed different methodologies for the unobtrusive detection of heart rate (HR) using human face recordings. These methods are based on subtle color changes or motions of the face due to cardiovascular activities, which are invisible to human eyes but can be captured by digital cameras. Several approaches have been proposed such as signal processing and machine learning. However, these methods are compared with different datasets, and there is consequently no consensus on method performance. In this article, we describe and evaluate several methods defined in literature, from 2008 until present day, for the remote detection of HR using human face recordings. The general HR processing pipeline is divided into three stages: face video processing, face blood volume pulse (BVP) signal extraction, and HR computation. Approaches presented in the paper are classified and grouped according to each stage. At each stage, algorithms are analyzed and compared based on their performance using the public database MAHNOB-HCI. Results found in this article are limited on MAHNOB-HCI dataset. Results show that extracted face skin area contains more BVP information. Blind source separation and peak detection methods are more robust with head motions for estimating HR. PMID:29765940

Locally linear regression for pose-invariant face recognition.

PubMed

Chai, Xiujuan; Shan, Shiguang; Chen, Xilin; Gao, Wen

2007-07-01

The variation of facial appearance due to the viewpoint (/pose) degrades face recognition systems considerably, which is one of the bottlenecks in face recognition. One of the possible solutions is generating virtual frontal view from any given nonfrontal view to obtain a virtual gallery/probe face. Following this idea, this paper proposes a simple, but efficient, novel locally linear regression (LLR) method, which generates the virtual frontal view from a given nonfrontal face image. We first justify the basic assumption of the paper that there exists an approximate linear mapping between a nonfrontal face image and its frontal counterpart. Then, by formulating the estimation of the linear mapping as a prediction problem, we present the regression-based solution, i.e., globally linear regression. To improve the prediction accuracy in the case of coarse alignment, LLR is further proposed. In LLR, we first perform dense sampling in the nonfrontal face image to obtain many overlapped local patches. Then, the linear regression technique is applied to each small patch for the prediction of its virtual frontal patch. Through the combination of all these patches, the virtual frontal view is generated. The experimental results on the CMU PIE database show distinct advantage of the proposed method over Eigen light-field method.

Face recognition via sparse representation of SIFT feature on hexagonal-sampling image

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Daming; Zhang, Xueyong; Li, Lu; Liu, Huayong

2018-04-01

This paper investigates a face recognition approach based on Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) feature and sparse representation. The approach takes advantage of SIFT which is local feature other than holistic feature in classical Sparse Representation based Classification (SRC) algorithm and possesses strong robustness to expression, pose and illumination variations. Since hexagonal image has more inherit merits than square image to make recognition process more efficient, we extract SIFT keypoint in hexagonal-sampling image. Instead of matching SIFT feature, firstly the sparse representation of each SIFT keypoint is given according the constructed dictionary; secondly these sparse vectors are quantized according dictionary; finally each face image is represented by a histogram and these so-called Bag-of-Words vectors are classified by SVM. Due to use of local feature, the proposed method achieves better result even when the number of training sample is small. In the experiments, the proposed method gave higher face recognition rather than other methods in ORL and Yale B face databases; also, the effectiveness of the hexagonal-sampling in the proposed method is verified.

Error Rates in Users of Automatic Face Recognition Software

PubMed Central

White, David; Dunn, James D.; Schmid, Alexandra C.; Kemp, Richard I.

2015-01-01

In recent years, wide deployment of automatic face recognition systems has been accompanied by substantial gains in algorithm performance. However, benchmarking tests designed to evaluate these systems do not account for the errors of human operators, who are often an integral part of face recognition solutions in forensic and security settings. This causes a mismatch between evaluation tests and operational accuracy. We address this by measuring user performance in a face recognition system used to screen passport applications for identity fraud. Experiment 1 measured target detection accuracy in algorithm-generated ‘candidate lists’ selected from a large database of passport images. Accuracy was notably poorer than in previous studies of unfamiliar face matching: participants made over 50% errors for adult target faces, and over 60% when matching images of children. Experiment 2 then compared performance of student participants to trained passport officers–who use the system in their daily work–and found equivalent performance in these groups. Encouragingly, a group of highly trained and experienced “facial examiners” outperformed these groups by 20 percentage points. We conclude that human performance curtails accuracy of face recognition systems–potentially reducing benchmark estimates by 50% in operational settings. Mere practise does not attenuate these limits, but superior performance of trained examiners suggests that recruitment and selection of human operators, in combination with effective training and mentorship, can improve the operational accuracy of face recognition systems. PMID:26465631

3D face recognition based on multiple keypoint descriptors and sparse representation.

PubMed

Zhang, Lin; Ding, Zhixuan; Li, Hongyu; Shen, Ying; Lu, Jianwei

2014-01-01

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in developing methods for 3D face recognition. However, 3D scans often suffer from the problems of missing parts, large facial expressions, and occlusions. To be useful in real-world applications, a 3D face recognition approach should be able to handle these challenges. In this paper, we propose a novel general approach to deal with the 3D face recognition problem by making use of multiple keypoint descriptors (MKD) and the sparse representation-based classification (SRC). We call the proposed method 3DMKDSRC for short. Specifically, with 3DMKDSRC, each 3D face scan is represented as a set of descriptor vectors extracted from keypoints by meshSIFT. Descriptor vectors of gallery samples form the gallery dictionary. Given a probe 3D face scan, its descriptors are extracted at first and then its identity can be determined by using a multitask SRC. The proposed 3DMKDSRC approach does not require the pre-alignment between two face scans and is quite robust to the problems of missing data, occlusions and expressions. Its superiority over the other leading 3D face recognition schemes has been corroborated by extensive experiments conducted on three benchmark databases, Bosphorus, GavabDB, and FRGC2.0. The Matlab source code for 3DMKDSRC and the related evaluation results are publicly available at http://sse.tongji.edu.cn/linzhang/3dmkdsrcface/3dmkdsrc.htm.

Media use, face-to-face communication, media multitasking, and social well-being among 8- to 12-year-old girls.

PubMed

Pea, Roy; Nass, Clifford; Meheula, Lyn; Rance, Marcus; Kumar, Aman; Bamford, Holden; Nass, Matthew; Simha, Aneesh; Stillerman, Benjamin; Yang, Steven; Zhou, Michael

2012-03-01

An online survey of 3,461 North American girls ages 8-12 conducted in the summer of 2010 through Discovery Girls magazine examined the relationships between social well-being and young girls' media use--including video, video games, music listening, reading/homework, e-mailing/posting on social media sites, texting/instant messaging, and talking on phones/video chatting--and face-to-face communication. This study introduced both a more granular measure of media multitasking and a new comparative measure of media use versus time spent in face-to-face communication. Regression analyses indicated that negative social well-being was positively associated with levels of uses of media that are centrally about interpersonal interaction (e.g., phone, online communication) as well as uses of media that are not (e.g., video, music, and reading). Video use was particularly strongly associated with negative social well-being indicators. Media multitasking was also associated with negative social indicators. Conversely, face-to-face communication was strongly associated with positive social well-being. Cell phone ownership and having a television or computer in one's room had little direct association with children's socioemotional well-being. We hypothesize possible causes for these relationships, call for research designs to address causality, and outline possible implications of such findings for the social well-being of younger adolescents. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

KDEF-PT: Valence, Emotional Intensity, Familiarity and Attractiveness Ratings of Angry, Neutral, and Happy Faces.

PubMed

Garrido, Margarida V; Prada, Marília

2017-01-01

The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) is one of the most widely used human facial expressions database. Almost a decade after the original validation study (Goeleven et al., 2008), we present subjective rating norms for a sub-set of 210 pictures which depict 70 models (half female) each displaying an angry, happy and neutral facial expressions. Our main goals were to provide an additional and updated validation to this database, using a sample from a different nationality ( N = 155 Portuguese students, M = 23.73 years old, SD = 7.24) and to extend the number of subjective dimensions used to evaluate each image. Specifically, participants reported emotional labeling (forced-choice task) and evaluated the emotional intensity and valence of the expression, as well as the attractiveness and familiarity of the model (7-points rating scales). Overall, results show that happy faces obtained the highest ratings across evaluative dimensions and emotion labeling accuracy. Female (vs. male) models were perceived as more attractive, familiar and positive. The sex of the model also moderated the accuracy of emotional labeling and ratings of different facial expressions. Each picture of the set was categorized as low, moderate, or high for each dimension. Normative data for each stimulus (hits proportion, means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals per evaluative dimension) is available as supplementary material (available at https://osf.io/fvc4m/).

Feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of an online alternative to face-to-face consultation in general practice: a mixed-methods study of webGP in six Devon practices

PubMed Central

Carter, Mary; Fletcher, Emily; Sansom, Anna; Warren, Fiona C; Campbell, John L

2018-01-01

Objectives To evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of webGP as piloted by six general practices. Methods Mixed-methods evaluation, including data extraction from practice databases, general practitioner (GP) completion of case reports, patient questionnaires and staff interviews. Setting General practices in NHS Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group’s area approximately 6 months after implementing webGP (February–July 2016). Participants Six practices provided consultations data; 20 GPs completed case reports (regarding 61 e-consults); 81 patients completed questionnaires; 5 GPs and 5 administrators were interviewed. Outcome measures Attitudes and experiences of practice staff and patients regarding webGP. Results WebGP uptake during the evaluation was small, showing no discernible impact on practice workload. The completeness of cross-sectional data on consultation workload varied between practices. GPs judged 41/61 (72%) of webGP requests to require a face-to-face or telephone consultation. Introducing webGP appeared to be associated with shifts in responsibility and workload between practice staff and between practices and patients. 81/231 patients completed a postal survey (35.1% response rate). E-Consulters were somewhat younger and more likely to be employed than face-to-face respondents. WebGP appeared broadly acceptable to patients regarding timeliness and quality/experience of care provided. Similar problems were presented by all respondents. Both groups appeared equally familiar with other practice online services; e-consulters were somewhat more likely to have used them. From semistructured staff interviews, it appeared that, while largely acceptable within practice, introducing e-consults had potential for adverse interactions with pre-existing practice systems. Conclusions There is potential to assess the impact of new systems on consultation patterns by extracting routine data from practice databases. Staff and patients noticed subtle changes to responsibilities associated with online options. Greater uptake requires good communication between practice and patients, and organisation of systems to avoid conflicts and misuse. Further research is required to evaluate the full potential of webGP in managing practice workload. PMID:29449293

Access to digital library databases in higher education: design problems and infrastructural gaps.

PubMed

Oswal, Sushil K

2014-01-01

After defining accessibility and usability, the author offers a broad survey of the research studies on digital content databases which have thus far primarily depended on data drawn from studies conducted by sighted researchers with non-disabled users employing screen readers and low vision devices. This article aims at producing a detailed description of the difficulties confronted by blind screen reader users with online library databases which now hold most of the academic, peer-reviewed journal and periodical content essential for research and teaching in higher education. The approach taken here is borrowed from descriptive ethnography which allows the author to create a complete picture of the accessibility and usability problems faced by an experienced academic user of digital library databases and screen readers. The author provides a detailed analysis of the different aspects of accessibility issues in digital databases under several headers with a special focus on full-text PDF files. The author emphasizes that long-term studies with actual, blind screen reader users employing both qualitative and computerized research tools can yield meaningful data for the designers and developers to improve these databases to a level that they begin to provide an equal access to the blind.

New data acquisition system for the focal plane polarimeter of the Grand Raiden spectrometer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tamii, A.; Sakaguchi, H.; Takeda, H.; Yosoi, M.; Akimune, H.; Fujiwara, M.; Ogata, H.; Tanaka, M.; Togawa, H.

1996-10-01

This paper describes a new data acquisition system for the focal plane polarimeter of the Grand Raiden spectrometer at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) in Osaka, Japan. Data are acquired by a Creative Electronic Systems (CES) Starburst, which is a CAMAC auxiliary crate controller equipped with a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) J11 microprocessor. The data on the Starburst are transferred to a VME single-board computer. A VME reflective memory module broadcasts the data to other systems through a fiber-optic link. A data transfer rate of 2.0 Mbytes/s between VME modules has been achieved by reflective memories. This rate includes the overhead of buffer management. The overall transfer rate, however, is limited by the performance of the Starburst to about 160 Kbytes/s at maximum. In order to further improve the system performance, we developed a new readout module called the Rapid Data Transfer Module (RDTM). RDTM's transfer data from LeCroy PCOS III's or 4298's, and FERA/FERET's directly to CES 8170 High Speed Memories (HSM) in VME crates, the data transfer rate of the RDTM from PCOS III's to the HSM is about 4 Mbytes/s.

Development of a digital video-microscopy technique to study lactose crystallisation kinetics in situ.

PubMed

Arellano, María Paz; Aguilera, José Miguel; Bouchon, Pedro

2004-11-15

Polarised light microscopy was employed non-invasively to monitor lactose crystallisation from non-seeded supersaturated solutions in real time. Images were continuously recorded, processed and characterised by image analysis, and the results were compared with those obtained by refractometry. Three crystallisation temperatures (10, 20 and 30 degrees C) and three different levels of initial relative supersaturation (C/C(s)=1.95; 2.34; 3.15) were investigated. Induction times using the imaging technique proved to be substantially lower than those determined using refractive index. Lactose crystals were isolated digitally to determine geometrical parameters of interest, such as perimeter, diameter, area, roundness and Feret mean, and to derive crystal growth rates. Mean growth rates obtained for single crystals were fitted to a combined mass transfer model (R(2)=0.9766). The model allowed the effects of temperature and supersaturation on crystallisation rate to be clearly identified. It also suggested that, in this set of experiments, surface integration seemed to be the rate controlling step. It is believed that a similar experimental set-up could be implemented in a real food system to characterise a particular process where crystallisation control is of interest and where traditional techniques are difficult to implement.

Determination of Hydrodynamic Parameters on Two--Phase Flow Gas - Liquid in Pipes with Different Inclination Angles Using Image Processing Algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Montoya, Gustavo; Valecillos, María; Romero, Carlos; Gonzáles, Dosinda

2009-11-01

In the present research a digital image processing-based automated algorithm was developed in order to determine the phase's height, hold up, and statistical distribution of the drop size in a two-phase system water-air using pipes with 0 , 10 , and 90 of inclination. Digital images were acquired with a high speed camera (up to 4500fps), using an equipment that consist of a system with three acrylic pipes with diameters of 1.905, 3.175, and 4.445 cm. Each pipe is arranged in two sections of 8 m of length. Various flow patterns were visualized for different superficial velocities of water and air. Finally, using the image processing program designed in Matlab/Simulink^, the captured images were processed to establish the parameters previously mentioned. The image processing algorithm is based in the frequency domain analysis of the source pictures, which allows to find the phase as the edge between the water and air, through a Sobel filter that extracts the high frequency components of the image. The drop size was found using the calculation of the Feret diameter. Three flow patterns were observed: Annular, ST, and ST&MI.

Characterization and extraction of the synaptic apposition surface for synaptic geometry analysis

PubMed Central

Morales, Juan; Rodríguez, Angel; Rodríguez, José-Rodrigo; DeFelipe, Javier; Merchán-Pérez, Angel

2013-01-01

Geometrical features of chemical synapses are relevant to their function. Two critical components of the synaptic junction are the active zone (AZ) and the postsynaptic density (PSD), as they are related to the probability of synaptic release and the number of postsynaptic receptors, respectively. Morphological studies of these structures are greatly facilitated by the use of recent electron microscopy techniques, such as combined focused ion beam milling and scanning electron microscopy (FIB/SEM), and software tools that permit reconstruction of large numbers of synapses in three dimensions. Since the AZ and the PSD are in close apposition and have a similar surface area, they can be represented by a single surface—the synaptic apposition surface (SAS). We have developed an efficient computational technique to automatically extract this surface from synaptic junctions that have previously been three-dimensionally reconstructed from actual tissue samples imaged by automated FIB/SEM. Given its relationship with the release probability and the number of postsynaptic receptors, the surface area of the SAS is a functionally relevant measure of the size of a synapse that can complement other geometrical features like the volume of the reconstructed synaptic junction, the equivalent ellipsoid size and the Feret's diameter. PMID:23847474

Adherence to Internet-Based and Face-to-Face Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Depression: A Meta-Analysis

PubMed Central

van Ballegooijen, Wouter; Cuijpers, Pim; van Straten, Annemieke; Karyotaki, Eirini; Andersson, Gerhard; Smit, Jan H.; Riper, Heleen

2014-01-01

Background Internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) is an effective and acceptable treatment for depression, especially when it includes guidance, but its treatment adherence has not yet been systematically studied. We conducted a meta-analysis, comparing the adherence to guided iCBT with the adherence to individual face-to-face CBT. Methods Studies were selected from a database of trials that investigate treatment for adult depression (see www.evidencebasedpsychotherapies.org), updated to January 2013. We identified 24 studies describing 26 treatment conditions (14 face-to-face CBT, 12 guided iCBT), by means of these inclusion criteria: targeting depressed adults, no comorbid somatic disorder or substance abuse, community recruitment, published in the year 2000 or later. The main outcome measure was the percentage of completed sessions. We also coded the percentage of treatment completers (separately coding for 100% or at least 80% of treatment completed). Results We did not find studies that compared guided iCBT and face-to-face CBT in a single trial that met our inclusion criteria. Face-to-face CBT treatments ranged from 12 to 28 sessions, guided iCBT interventions consisted of 5 to 9 sessions. Participants in face-to-face CBT completed on average 83.9% of their treatment, which did not differ significantly from participants in guided iCBT (80.8%, P  =  .59). The percentage of completers (total intervention) was significantly higher in face-to-face CBT (84.7%) than in guided iCBT (65.1%, P < .001), as was the percentage of completers of 80% or more of the intervention (face-to-face CBT: 85.2%, guided iCBT: 67.5%, P  =  .003). Non-completers of face-to-face CBT completed on average 24.5% of their treatment, while non-completers of guided iCBT completed on average 42.1% of their treatment. Conclusion We did not find studies that compared guided iCBT and face-to-face CBT in a single trial. Adherence to guided iCBT appears to be adequate and could be equal to adherence to face-to-face CBT. PMID:25029507

Can we match ultraviolet face images against their visible counterparts?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Narang, Neeru; Bourlai, Thirimachos; Hornak, Lawrence A.

2015-05-01

In law enforcement and security applications, the acquisition of face images is critical in producing key trace evidence for the successful identification of potential threats. However, face recognition (FR) for face images captured using different camera sensors, and under variable illumination conditions, and expressions is very challenging. In this paper, we investigate the advantages and limitations of the heterogeneous problem of matching ultra violet (from 100 nm to 400 nm in wavelength) or UV, face images against their visible (VIS) counterparts, when all face images are captured under controlled conditions. The contributions of our work are three-fold; (i) We used a camera sensor designed with the capability to acquire UV images at short-ranges, and generated a dual-band (VIS and UV) database that is composed of multiple, full frontal, face images of 50 subjects. Two sessions were collected that span over the period of 2 months. (ii) For each dataset, we determined which set of face image pre-processing algorithms are more suitable for face matching, and, finally, (iii) we determined which FR algorithm better matches cross-band face images, resulting in high rank-1 identification rates. Experimental results show that our cross spectral matching (the heterogeneous problem, where gallery and probe sets consist of face images acquired in different spectral bands) algorithms achieve sufficient identification performance. However, we also conclude that the problem under study, is very challenging, and it requires further investigation to address real-world law enforcement or military applications. To the best of our knowledge, this is first time in the open literature the problem of cross-spectral matching of UV against VIS band face images is being investigated.

Knowledge representation in metabolic pathway databases.

PubMed

Stobbe, Miranda D; Jansen, Gerbert A; Moerland, Perry D; van Kampen, Antoine H C

2014-05-01

The accurate representation of all aspects of a metabolic network in a structured format, such that it can be used for a wide variety of computational analyses, is a challenge faced by a growing number of researchers. Analysis of five major metabolic pathway databases reveals that each database has made widely different choices to address this challenge, including how to deal with knowledge that is uncertain or missing. In concise overviews, we show how concepts such as compartments, enzymatic complexes and the direction of reactions are represented in each database. Importantly, also concepts which a database does not represent are described. Which aspects of the metabolic network need to be available in a structured format and to what detail differs per application. For example, for in silico phenotype prediction, a detailed representation of gene-protein-reaction relations and the compartmentalization of the network is essential. Our analysis also shows that current databases are still limited in capturing all details of the biology of the metabolic network, further illustrated with a detailed analysis of three metabolic processes. Finally, we conclude that the conceptual differences between the databases, which make knowledge exchange and integration a challenge, have not been resolved, so far, by the exchange formats in which knowledge representation is standardized.

Face recognition for criminal identification: An implementation of principal component analysis for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abdullah, Nurul Azma; Saidi, Md. Jamri; Rahman, Nurul Hidayah Ab; Wen, Chuah Chai; Hamid, Isredza Rahmi A.

2017-10-01

In practice, identification of criminal in Malaysia is done through thumbprint identification. However, this type of identification is constrained as most of criminal nowadays getting cleverer not to leave their thumbprint on the scene. With the advent of security technology, cameras especially CCTV have been installed in many public and private areas to provide surveillance activities. The footage of the CCTV can be used to identify suspects on scene. However, because of limited software developed to automatically detect the similarity between photo in the footage and recorded photo of criminals, the law enforce thumbprint identification. In this paper, an automated facial recognition system for criminal database was proposed using known Principal Component Analysis approach. This system will be able to detect face and recognize face automatically. This will help the law enforcements to detect or recognize suspect of the case if no thumbprint present on the scene. The results show that about 80% of input photo can be matched with the template data.

Cultural differences in gaze and emotion recognition: Americans contrast more than Chinese.

PubMed

Stanley, Jennifer Tehan; Zhang, Xin; Fung, Helene H; Isaacowitz, Derek M

2013-02-01

We investigated the influence of contextual expressions on emotion recognition accuracy and gaze patterns among American and Chinese participants. We expected Chinese participants would be more influenced by, and attend more to, contextual information than Americans. Consistent with our hypothesis, Americans were more accurate than Chinese participants at recognizing emotions embedded in the context of other emotional expressions. Eye-tracking data suggest that, for some emotions, Americans attended more to the target faces, and they made more gaze transitions to the target face than Chinese. For all emotions except anger and disgust, Americans appeared to use more of a contrasting strategy where each face was individually contrasted with the target face, compared with Chinese who used less of a contrasting strategy. Both cultures were influenced by contextual information, although the benefit of contextual information depended upon the perceptual dissimilarity of the contextual emotions to the target emotion and the gaze pattern employed during the recognition task. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Correlation based efficient face recognition and color change detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elbouz, M.; Alfalou, A.; Brosseau, C.; Alam, M. S.; Qasmi, S.

2013-01-01

Identifying the human face via correlation is a topic attracting widespread interest. At the heart of this technique lies the comparison of an unknown target image to a known reference database of images. However, the color information in the target image remains notoriously difficult to interpret. In this paper, we report a new technique which: (i) is robust against illumination change, (ii) offers discrimination ability to detect color change between faces having similar shape, and (iii) is specifically designed to detect red colored stains (i.e. facial bleeding). We adopt the Vanderlugt correlator (VLC) architecture with a segmented phase filter and we decompose the color target image using normalized red, green, and blue (RGB), and hue, saturation, and value (HSV) scales. We propose a new strategy to effectively utilize color information in signatures for further increasing the discrimination ability. The proposed algorithm has been found to be very efficient for discriminating face subjects with different skin colors, and those having color stains in different areas of the facial image.

A comparative analysis of family adaptability and cohesion ratings among traumatized urban youth.

PubMed

Bellantuono, Alessandro; Saigh, Philip A; Durham, Katherine; Dekis, Constance; Hackler, Dusty; McGuire, Leah A; Yasik, Anastasia E; Halamandaris, Phill V; Oberfield, Richard A

2018-03-01

Given the need to identify psychological risk factors among traumatized youth, this study examined the family functioning of traumatized youth with or without PTSD and a nonclinical sample. The Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales, second edition (FACES II; Olson, Portner, & Bell, 1982), scores of youth with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; n = 29) were compared with the scores of trauma-exposed youth without PTSD (n = 48) and a nontraumatized comparison group (n = 44). Child diagnostic interviews determined that all participants were free of major comorbid disorders. The FACES II scores of the participants with PTSD were not significantly different from the scores of trauma-exposed youth without PTSD and the nontraumatized comparison group. FACES II scores were also not significantly different between the trauma-exposed youth without PTSD and the nontraumatized comparison group. PTSD and trauma-exposure without PTSD were not associated with variations in the perception of family functioning as measured by the FACES II. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Real-time teleophthalmology versus face-to-face consultation: A systematic review.

PubMed

Tan, Irene J; Dobson, Lucy P; Bartnik, Stephen; Muir, Josephine; Turner, Angus W

2017-08-01

Introduction Advances in imaging capabilities and the evolution of real-time teleophthalmology have the potential to provide increased coverage to areas with limited ophthalmology services. However, there is limited research assessing the diagnostic accuracy of face-to-face teleophthalmology consultation. This systematic review aims to determine if real-time teleophthalmology provides comparable accuracy to face-to-face consultation for the diagnosis of common eye health conditions. Methods A search of PubMed, Embase, Medline and Cochrane databases and manual citation review was conducted on 6 February and 7 April 2016. Included studies involved real-time telemedicine in the field of ophthalmology or optometry, and assessed diagnostic accuracy against gold-standard face-to-face consultation. The revised quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS-2) tool assessed risk of bias. Results Twelve studies were included, with participants ranging from four to 89 years old. A broad number of conditions were assessed and include corneal and retinal pathologies, strabismus, oculoplastics and post-operative review. Quality assessment identified a high or unclear risk of bias in patient selection (75%) due to an undisclosed recruitment processes. The index test showed high risk of bias in the included studies, due to the varied interpretation and conduct of real-time teleophthalmology methods. Reference standard risk was overall low (75%), as was the risk due to flow and timing (75%). Conclusion In terms of diagnostic accuracy, real-time teleophthalmology was considered superior to face-to-face consultation in one study and comparable in six studies. Store-and-forward image transmission coupled with real-time videoconferencing is a suitable alternative to overcome poor internet transmission speeds.

The neural representation of the gender of faces in the primate visual system: A computer modeling study.

PubMed

Minot, Thomas; Dury, Hannah L; Eguchi, Akihiro; Humphreys, Glyn W; Stringer, Simon M

2017-03-01

We use an established neural network model of the primate visual system to show how neurons might learn to encode the gender of faces. The model consists of a hierarchy of 4 competitive neuronal layers with associatively modifiable feedforward synaptic connections between successive layers. During training, the network was presented with many realistic images of male and female faces, during which the synaptic connections are modified using biologically plausible local associative learning rules. After training, we found that different subsets of output neurons have learned to respond exclusively to either male or female faces. With the inclusion of short range excitation within each neuronal layer to implement a self-organizing map architecture, neurons representing either male or female faces were clustered together in the output layer. This learning process is entirely unsupervised, as the gender of the face images is not explicitly labeled and provided to the network as a supervisory training signal. These simulations are extended to training the network on rotating faces. It is found that by using a trace learning rule incorporating a temporal memory trace of recent neuronal activity, neurons responding selectively to either male or female faces were also able to learn to respond invariantly over different views of the faces. This kind of trace learning has been previously shown to operate within the primate visual system by neurophysiological and psychophysical studies. The computer simulations described here predict that similar neurons encoding the gender of faces will be present within the primate visual system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Accuracy and consensus in judgments of trustworthiness from faces: behavioral and neural correlates.

PubMed

Rule, Nicholas O; Krendl, Anne C; Ivcevic, Zorana; Ambady, Nalini

2013-03-01

Perceivers' inferences about individuals based on their faces often show high interrater consensus and can even accurately predict behavior in some domains. Here we investigated the consensus and accuracy of judgments of trustworthiness. In Study 1, we showed that the type of photo judged makes a significant difference for whether an individual is judged as trustworthy. In Study 2, we found that inferences of trustworthiness made from the faces of corporate criminals did not differ from inferences made from the faces of noncriminal executives. In Study 3, we found that judgments of trustworthiness did not differ between the faces of military criminals and the faces of military heroes. In Study 4, we tempted undergraduates to cheat on a test. Although we found that judgments of intelligence from the students' faces were related to students' scores on the test and that judgments of students' extraversion were correlated with self-reported extraversion, there was no relationship between judgments of trustworthiness from the students' faces and students' cheating behavior. Finally, in Study 5, we examined the neural correlates of the accuracy of judgments of trustworthiness from faces. Replicating previous research, we found that perceptions of trustworthiness from the faces in Study 4 corresponded to participants' amygdala response. However, we found no relationship between the amygdala response and the targets' actual cheating behavior. These data suggest that judgments of trustworthiness may not be accurate but, rather, reflect subjective impressions for which people show high agreement. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

High precision automated face localization in thermal images: oral cancer dataset as test case

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chakraborty, M.; Raman, S. K.; Mukhopadhyay, S.; Patsa, S.; Anjum, N.; Ray, J. G.

2017-02-01

Automated face detection is the pivotal step in computer vision aided facial medical diagnosis and biometrics. This paper presents an automatic, subject adaptive framework for accurate face detection in the long infrared spectrum on our database for oral cancer detection consisting of malignant, precancerous and normal subjects of varied age group. Previous works on oral cancer detection using Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging(DITI) reveals that patients and normal subjects differ significantly in their facial thermal distribution. Therefore, it is a challenging task to formulate a completely adaptive framework to veraciously localize face from such a subject specific modality. Our model consists of first extracting the most probable facial regions by minimum error thresholding followed by ingenious adaptive methods to leverage the horizontal and vertical projections of the segmented thermal image. Additionally, the model incorporates our domain knowledge of exploiting temperature difference between strategic locations of the face. To our best knowledge, this is the pioneering work on detecting faces in thermal facial images comprising both patients and normal subjects. Previous works on face detection have not specifically targeted automated medical diagnosis; face bounding box returned by those algorithms are thus loose and not apt for further medical automation. Our algorithm significantly outperforms contemporary face detection algorithms in terms of commonly used metrics for evaluating face detection accuracy. Since our method has been tested on challenging dataset consisting of both patients and normal subjects of diverse age groups, it can be seamlessly adapted in any DITI guided facial healthcare or biometric applications.

Issues Facing Academic Library Consortia and Perceptions of Members of the Illinois Digital Academic Library.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brooks, Sam; Dorst, Thomas J.

2002-01-01

Discusses the role of consortia in academic libraries, specifically the Illinois Digital Academic Library (IDAL), and describes a study conducted by the IDAL that investigated issues surrounding full text database research including stability of content, vendor communication, embargo periods, publisher concerns, quality of content, linking and…

Raising the Bar: Book Vendors and the New Realities of Service.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alessi, Dana L.

1999-01-01

Library book vendors are facing new realities in the 21st century. Changes in continuations, firm order placement, value-added services, approval plans, retrospective collection development, and database creation and maintenance are being effected in an effort to keep current customers and attract new ones. Those changes and the subsequent shift…

Schizophrenia and the Family.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cook, Barbara J.

This document addresses the problems faced by families with a schizophrenic member, based on a survey of the literature from a variety of sources including: (1) the Alden Library of Ohio University; (2) the ERIC database; (3) the American Association of Counseling and Development (AACD); and (4) the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI).…

Structure Identification Using High Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data and the EPAs Chemistry Dashboard (ACS Fall meeting)

EPA Science Inventory

The iCSS Chemistry Dashboard is a publicly accessible dashboard provided by the National Center for Computation Toxicology at the US-EPA. It serves a number of purposes, including providing a chemistry database underpinning many of our public-facing projects (e.g. ToxCast and Exp...

Chemical Tracking Systems: Not Your Usual Global Positioning System!

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roy, Ken

2007-01-01

The haphazard storing and tracking of chemicals in the laboratory is a serious safety issue facing science teachers. To get control of your chemicals, try implementing a "chemical tracking system". A chemical tracking system (CTS) is a database of chemicals used in the laboratory. If implemented correctly, a CTS will reduce purchasing costs,…

Data Mining in Finance: Using Counterfactuals To Generate Knowledge from Organizational Information Systems.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dhar, Vasant

1998-01-01

Shows how counterfactuals and machine learning methods can be used to guide exploration of large databases that addresses some of the fundamental problems that organizations face in learning from data. Discusses data mining, particularly in the financial arena; generating useful knowledge from data; and the evaluation of counterfactuals. (LRW)

Evaluating Representativeness and Cancer Screening Outcomes in a State Department of Developmental Services Database

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilkinson, Joanne; Lauer, Emily; Greenwood, Nechama W.; Freund, Karen M.; Rosen, Amy K.

2014-01-01

Though it is widely recognized that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face significant health disparities, the comprehensive data sets needed for population-level health surveillance of people with IDD are lacking. This paucity of data makes it difficult to track and accurately describe health differences, improvements,…

Facing Future Users--The Challenge of Transforming a Traditional Online Database into a Web Service.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tolonen, Eva

The Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) agreement included 19 member countries spanning four continents: Japan and the Republic of Korea; Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; Canada, Mexico, and the United States; and Brazil. The participating…

The Problems Public Schools Face: High School Misbehaviour in 1990 and 2002

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fish, Reva M.; Finn, Kristin V.; Finn, Jeremy D.

2011-01-01

Misbehaviour in high school impacts learning and instruction in the classroom as well as the educational climate of the institution. In this report, changes in administrators', teachers', and students' reports of misbehaviour between 1990 and 2002 were examined using two national US databases. There was little change in administrators'…

New Faces of Blended Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Horn, Michael B.; Fisher, Julia Freeland

2017-01-01

The Clayton Christiansen Institute maintains a database of more than 400 schools across the United States that have implemented some form of blended learning, which combines online learning with brick-and-mortar classrooms. Data the Institute has collected over the past six months suggests three trends as this model continues to evolve and mature.…

Unified framework for automated iris segmentation using distantly acquired face images.

PubMed

Tan, Chun-Wei; Kumar, Ajay

2012-09-01

Remote human identification using iris biometrics has high civilian and surveillance applications and its success requires the development of robust segmentation algorithm to automatically extract the iris region. This paper presents a new iris segmentation framework which can robustly segment the iris images acquired using near infrared or visible illumination. The proposed approach exploits multiple higher order local pixel dependencies to robustly classify the eye region pixels into iris or noniris regions. Face and eye detection modules have been incorporated in the unified framework to automatically provide the localized eye region from facial image for iris segmentation. We develop robust postprocessing operations algorithm to effectively mitigate the noisy pixels caused by the misclassification. Experimental results presented in this paper suggest significant improvement in the average segmentation errors over the previously proposed approaches, i.e., 47.5%, 34.1%, and 32.6% on UBIRIS.v2, FRGC, and CASIA.v4 at-a-distance databases, respectively. The usefulness of the proposed approach is also ascertained from recognition experiments on three different publicly available databases.

Example of monitoring measurements in a virtual eye clinic using 'big data'.

PubMed

Jones, Lee; Bryan, Susan R; Miranda, Marco A; Crabb, David P; Kotecha, Aachal

2017-10-26

To assess the equivalence of measurement outcomes between patients attending a standard glaucoma care service, where patients see an ophthalmologist in a face-to-face setting, and a glaucoma monitoring service (GMS). The average mean deviation (MD) measurement on the visual field (VF) test for 250 patients attending a GMS were compared with a 'big data' repository of patients attending a standard glaucoma care service (reference database). In addition, the speed of VF progression between GMS patients and reference database patients was compared. Reference database patients were used to create expected outcomes that GMS patients could be compared with. For GMS patients falling outside of the expected limits, further analysis was carried out on the clinical management decisions for these patients. The average MD of patients in the GMS ranged from +1.6 dB to -18.9 dB between two consecutive appointments at the clinic. In the first analysis, 12 (4.8%; 95% CI 2.5% to 8.2%) GMS patients scored outside the 90% expected values based on the reference database. In the second analysis, 1.9% (95% CI 0.4% to 5.4%) GMS patients had VF changes outside of the expected 90% limits. Using 'big data' collected in the standard glaucoma care service, we found that patients attending a GMS have equivalent outcomes on the VF test. Our findings provide support for the implementation of virtual healthcare delivery in the hospital eye service. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Binary zone-plate array for a parallel joint transform correlator applied to face recognition.

PubMed

Kodate, K; Hashimoto, A; Thapliya, R

1999-05-10

Taking advantage of small aberrations, high efficiency, and compactness, we developed a new, to our knowledge, design procedure for a binary zone-plate array (BZPA) and applied it to a parallel joint transform correlator for the recognition of the human face. Pairs of reference and unknown images of faces are displayed on a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator (SLM), Fourier transformed by the BZPA, intensity recorded on an optically addressable SLM, and inversely Fourier transformed to obtain correlation signals. Consideration of the bandwidth allows the relations among the channel number, the numerical aperture of the zone plates, and the pattern size to be determined. Experimentally a five-channel parallel correlator was implemented and tested successfully with a 100-person database. The design and the fabrication of a 20-channel BZPA for phonetic character recognition are also included.

Toward Data-Driven Radiology Education-Early Experience Building Multi-Institutional Academic Trainee Interpretation Log Database (MATILDA).

PubMed

Chen, Po-Hao; Loehfelm, Thomas W; Kamer, Aaron P; Lemmon, Andrew B; Cook, Tessa S; Kohli, Marc D

2016-12-01

The residency review committee of the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) collects data on resident exam volume and sets minimum requirements. However, this data is not made readily available, and the ACGME does not share their tools or methodology. It is therefore difficult to assess the integrity of the data and determine if it truly reflects relevant aspects of the resident experience. This manuscript describes our experience creating a multi-institutional case log, incorporating data from three American diagnostic radiology residency programs. Each of the three sites independently established automated query pipelines from the various radiology information systems in their respective hospital groups, thereby creating a resident-specific database. Then, the three institutional resident case log databases were aggregated into a single centralized database schema. Three hundred thirty residents and 2,905,923 radiologic examinations over a 4-year span were catalogued using 11 ACGME categories. Our experience highlights big data challenges including internal data heterogeneity and external data discrepancies faced by informatics researchers.

Illumination-tolerant face verification of low-bit-rate JPEG2000 wavelet images with advanced correlation filters for handheld devices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wijaya, Surya Li; Savvides, Marios; Vijaya Kumar, B. V. K.

2005-02-01

Face recognition on mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants and cell phones, is a big challenge owing to the limited computational resources available to run verifications on the devices themselves. One approach is to transmit the captured face images by use of the cell-phone connection and to run the verification on a remote station. However, owing to limitations in communication bandwidth, it may be necessary to transmit a compressed version of the image. We propose using the image compression standard JPEG2000, which is a wavelet-based compression engine used to compress the face images to low bit rates suitable for transmission over low-bandwidth communication channels. At the receiver end, the face images are reconstructed with a JPEG2000 decoder and are fed into the verification engine. We explore how advanced correlation filters, such as the minimum average correlation energy filter [Appl. Opt. 26, 3633 (1987)] and its variants, perform by using face images captured under different illumination conditions and encoded with different bit rates under the JPEG2000 wavelet-encoding standard. We evaluate the performance of these filters by using illumination variations from the Carnegie Mellon University's Pose, Illumination, and Expression (PIE) face database. We also demonstrate the tolerance of these filters to noisy versions of images with illumination variations.

Neural network face recognition using wavelets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karunaratne, Passant V.; Jouny, Ismail I.

1997-04-01

The recognition of human faces is a phenomenon that has been mastered by the human visual system and that has been researched extensively in the domain of computer neural networks and image processing. This research is involved in the study of neural networks and wavelet image processing techniques in the application of human face recognition. The objective of the system is to acquire a digitized still image of a human face, carry out pre-processing on the image as required, an then, given a prior database of images of possible individuals, be able to recognize the individual in the image. The pre-processing segment of the system includes several procedures, namely image compression, denoising, and feature extraction. The image processing is carried out using Daubechies wavelets. Once the images have been passed through the wavelet-based image processor they can be efficiently analyzed by means of a neural network. A back- propagation neural network is used for the recognition segment of the system. The main constraints of the system is with regard to the characteristics of the images being processed. The system should be able to carry out effective recognition of the human faces irrespective of the individual's facial-expression, presence of extraneous objects such as head-gear or spectacles, and face/head orientation. A potential application of this face recognition system would be as a secondary verification method in an automated teller machine.

Identification using face regions: application and assessment in forensic scenarios.

PubMed

Tome, Pedro; Fierrez, Julian; Vera-Rodriguez, Ruben; Ramos, Daniel

2013-12-10

This paper reports an exhaustive analysis of the discriminative power of the different regions of the human face on various forensic scenarios. In practice, when forensic examiners compare two face images, they focus their attention not only on the overall similarity of the two faces. They carry out an exhaustive morphological comparison region by region (e.g., nose, mouth, eyebrows, etc.). In this scenario it is very important to know based on scientific methods to what extent each facial region can help in identifying a person. This knowledge obtained using quantitative and statical methods on given populations can then be used by the examiner to support or tune his observations. In order to generate such scientific knowledge useful for the expert, several methodologies are compared, such as manual and automatic facial landmarks extraction, different facial regions extractors, and various distances between the subject and the acquisition camera. Also, three scenarios of interest for forensics are considered comparing mugshot and Closed-Circuit TeleVision (CCTV) face images using MORPH and SCface databases. One of the findings is that depending of the acquisition distances, the discriminative power of the facial regions change, having in some cases better performance than the full face. Crown Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

3D Face Recognition Based on Multiple Keypoint Descriptors and Sparse Representation

PubMed Central

Zhang, Lin; Ding, Zhixuan; Li, Hongyu; Shen, Ying; Lu, Jianwei

2014-01-01

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in developing methods for 3D face recognition. However, 3D scans often suffer from the problems of missing parts, large facial expressions, and occlusions. To be useful in real-world applications, a 3D face recognition approach should be able to handle these challenges. In this paper, we propose a novel general approach to deal with the 3D face recognition problem by making use of multiple keypoint descriptors (MKD) and the sparse representation-based classification (SRC). We call the proposed method 3DMKDSRC for short. Specifically, with 3DMKDSRC, each 3D face scan is represented as a set of descriptor vectors extracted from keypoints by meshSIFT. Descriptor vectors of gallery samples form the gallery dictionary. Given a probe 3D face scan, its descriptors are extracted at first and then its identity can be determined by using a multitask SRC. The proposed 3DMKDSRC approach does not require the pre-alignment between two face scans and is quite robust to the problems of missing data, occlusions and expressions. Its superiority over the other leading 3D face recognition schemes has been corroborated by extensive experiments conducted on three benchmark databases, Bosphorus, GavabDB, and FRGC2.0. The Matlab source code for 3DMKDSRC and the related evaluation results are publicly available at http://sse.tongji.edu.cn/linzhang/3dmkdsrcface/3dmkdsrc.htm. PMID:24940876

Database for propagation models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kantak, Anil V.

1991-07-01

A propagation researcher or a systems engineer who intends to use the results of a propagation experiment is generally faced with various database tasks such as the selection of the computer software, the hardware, and the writing of the programs to pass the data through the models of interest. This task is repeated every time a new experiment is conducted or the same experiment is carried out at a different location generating different data. Thus the users of this data have to spend a considerable portion of their time learning how to implement the computer hardware and the software towards the desired end. This situation may be facilitated considerably if an easily accessible propagation database is created that has all the accepted (standardized) propagation phenomena models approved by the propagation research community. Also, the handling of data will become easier for the user. Such a database construction can only stimulate the growth of the propagation research it if is available to all the researchers, so that the results of the experiment conducted by one researcher can be examined independently by another, without different hardware and software being used. The database may be made flexible so that the researchers need not be confined only to the contents of the database. Another way in which the database may help the researchers is by the fact that they will not have to document the software and hardware tools used in their research since the propagation research community will know the database already. The following sections show a possible database construction, as well as properties of the database for the propagation research.

Mnemonic discrimination of similar face stimuli and a potential mechanism for the “other race” effect

PubMed Central

Chang, Allen; Murray, Elizabeth; Yassa, Michael A.

2016-01-01

Face recognition is an important component of successful social interactions in humans. A large literature in social psychology has focused on the phenomenon termed “the other race” (ORE) effect, the tendency to be more proficient with face recognition within one’s own ethnic group, as compared to other ethnic groups. Several potential hypotheses have been proposed for this effect including perceptual expertise, social grouping, and holistic face processing. Recent work on mnemonic discrimination (i.e. the ability to resolve mnemonic interference among similar experiences) may provide a mechanistic account for the ORE. In the current study, we examined how discrimination and generalization in the presence of mnemonic interference may contribute to the ORE. We developed a database of computerized faces divided evenly among ethnic origins (Black, Caucasian, East Asian, South Asian), as well as morphed face stimuli that varied in the amount of similarity to the original stimuli (30%, 40%, 50%, and 60% morphs). Participants first examined the original unmorphed stimuli during study, then during test were asked to judge the prior occurrence of repetitions (targets), morphed stimuli (lures), and new stimuli (foils). We examined participants’ ability to correctly reject similar morphed lures and found that it increased linearly as a function of face dissimilarity. We additionally found that Caucasian participants’ mnemonic discrimination/generalization functions were sharply tuned for Caucasian faces but considerably less tuned for East Asian and Black faces. These results suggest that expertise plays an important role in resolving mnemonic interference, which may offer a mechanistic account for the ORE. PMID:26413724

Support Vector Machine Based on Adaptive Acceleration Particle Swarm Optimization

PubMed Central

Abdulameer, Mohammed Hasan; Othman, Zulaiha Ali

2014-01-01

Existing face recognition methods utilize particle swarm optimizer (PSO) and opposition based particle swarm optimizer (OPSO) to optimize the parameters of SVM. However, the utilization of random values in the velocity calculation decreases the performance of these techniques; that is, during the velocity computation, we normally use random values for the acceleration coefficients and this creates randomness in the solution. To address this problem, an adaptive acceleration particle swarm optimization (AAPSO) technique is proposed. To evaluate our proposed method, we employ both face and iris recognition based on AAPSO with SVM (AAPSO-SVM). In the face and iris recognition systems, performance is evaluated using two human face databases, YALE and CASIA, and the UBiris dataset. In this method, we initially perform feature extraction and then recognition on the extracted features. In the recognition process, the extracted features are used for SVM training and testing. During the training and testing, the SVM parameters are optimized with the AAPSO technique, and in AAPSO, the acceleration coefficients are computed using the particle fitness values. The parameters in SVM, which are optimized by AAPSO, perform efficiently for both face and iris recognition. A comparative analysis between our proposed AAPSO-SVM and the PSO-SVM technique is presented. PMID:24790584

Segmentation of human face using gradient-based approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baskan, Selin; Bulut, M. Mete; Atalay, Volkan

2001-04-01

This paper describes a method for automatic segmentation of facial features such as eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and ears in color images. This work is an initial step for wide range of applications based on feature-based approaches, such as face recognition, lip-reading, gender estimation, facial expression analysis, etc. Human face can be characterized by its skin color and nearly elliptical shape. For this purpose, face detection is performed using color and shape information. Uniform illumination is assumed. No restrictions on glasses, make-up, beard, etc. are imposed. Facial features are extracted using the vertically and horizontally oriented gradient projections. The gradient of a minimum with respect to its neighbor maxima gives the boundaries of a facial feature. Each facial feature has a different horizontal characteristic. These characteristics are derived by extensive experimentation with many face images. Using fuzzy set theory, the similarity between the candidate and the feature characteristic under consideration is calculated. Gradient-based method is accompanied by the anthropometrical information, for robustness. Ear detection is performed using contour-based shape descriptors. This method detects the facial features and circumscribes each facial feature with the smallest rectangle possible. AR database is used for testing. The developed method is also suitable for real-time systems.

Modeling first impressions from highly variable facial images.

PubMed

Vernon, Richard J W; Sutherland, Clare A M; Young, Andrew W; Hartley, Tom

2014-08-12

First impressions of social traits, such as trustworthiness or dominance, are reliably perceived in faces, and despite their questionable validity they can have considerable real-world consequences. We sought to uncover the information driving such judgments, using an attribute-based approach. Attributes (physical facial features) were objectively measured from feature positions and colors in a database of highly variable "ambient" face photographs, and then used as input for a neural network to model factor dimensions (approachability, youthful-attractiveness, and dominance) thought to underlie social attributions. A linear model based on this approach was able to account for 58% of the variance in raters' impressions of previously unseen faces, and factor-attribute correlations could be used to rank attributes by their importance to each factor. Reversing this process, neural networks were then used to predict facial attributes and corresponding image properties from specific combinations of factor scores. In this way, the factors driving social trait impressions could be visualized as a series of computer-generated cartoon face-like images, depicting how attributes change along each dimension. This study shows that despite enormous variation in ambient images of faces, a substantial proportion of the variance in first impressions can be accounted for through linear changes in objectively defined features.

Face recognition based on symmetrical virtual image and original training image

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ke, Jingcheng; Peng, Yali; Liu, Shigang; Li, Jun; Pei, Zhao

2018-02-01

In face representation-based classification methods, we are able to obtain high recognition rate if a face has enough available training samples. However, in practical applications, we only have limited training samples to use. In order to obtain enough training samples, many methods simultaneously use the original training samples and corresponding virtual samples to strengthen the ability of representing the test sample. One is directly using the original training samples and corresponding mirror samples to recognize the test sample. However, when the test sample is nearly symmetrical while the original training samples are not, the integration of the original training and mirror samples might not well represent the test samples. To tackle the above-mentioned problem, in this paper, we propose a novel method to obtain a kind of virtual samples which are generated by averaging the original training samples and corresponding mirror samples. Then, the original training samples and the virtual samples are integrated to recognize the test sample. Experimental results on five face databases show that the proposed method is able to partly overcome the challenges of the various poses, facial expressions and illuminations of original face image.

Structure Identification Using High Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data and the EPA’s CompTox Chemistry Dashboard (EAS)

EPA Science Inventory

The iCSS CompTox Dashboard is a publicly accessible dashboard provided by the National Center for Computation Toxicology at the US-EPA. It serves a number of purposes, including providing a chemistry database underpinning many of our public-facing projects (e.g. ToxCast and ExpoC...

2004/06 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/06). Methodology Report. NCES 2008-184

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cominole, Melissa; Wheeless, Sara; Dudley, Kristin; Franklin, Jeff; Wine, Jennifer

2007-01-01

The "2004/06 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/06)" is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to respond to the need for a national, comprehensive database concerning issues students may face in enrollment, persistence, progress, and attainment in postsecondary education and in consequent early rates of…

Improving Forsyth Technical Community College's Ability to Develop and Maintain Partnerships: Leveraging Technology to Develop Partnerships

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murdock, Alan K.

2017-01-01

Forsyth Technical Community College (FTCC) face a shortage of funding to meet the demands of students, faculty, staff and businesses. Through this practitioner research, the utilization of the college's current customer relationship management (CRM) database advanced. By leveraging technology, the researcher assisted the college in meeting the…

Increasing Teachers' Use of Evidence-Based Classroom Management Strategies through Consultation: Overview and Case Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

MacSuga, Ashley S.; Simonsen, Brandi

2011-01-01

Many classroom teachers are faced with challenging student behaviors that impact their ability to facilitate learning in productive, safe environments. At the same time, high-stakes testing, increased emphasis on evidence-based instruction, data-based decision making, and response-to-intervention models have put heavy demands on teacher time and…

Children of Parents with Intellectual Disability: Facing Poor Outcomes or Faring Okay?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Collings, Susan; Llewellyn, Gwynnyth

2012-01-01

Background: Children of parents with intellectual disability are assumed to be at risk of poor outcomes but a comprehensive review of the literature has not previously been undertaken. Method: A database and reference search from March 2010 to March 2011 resulted in 26 studies for review. Results: Two groups of studies were identified. The first…

Challenges in the Use of Social Networking Sites to Trace Potential Research Participants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marsh, Jackie; Bishop, Julia C.

2014-01-01

This paper reports on a number of challenges faced in tracing contributors to research projects that were originally conducted many decades previously. The need to trace contributors in this way arises in projects which focus on involving research participants in previous studies who have not been maintained on a database, or with whom the…

You Got a Problem with That? Exploring Evaluators' Disagreements about Ethics.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morris, Michael; Jacobs, Lynette

Research has suggested that evaluators vary in the extent to which they interpret the challenges they face in ethical terms. The question of what accounts for these differences was explored through a survey completed by 391 individuals listed in the database of the American Evaluation Association. The first section of the questionnaire presented…

Development of an In Silico Metabolic Simulator and Searchable Metabolism Database for Chemical Risk Assessments

EPA Science Inventory

The US EPA is faced with long lists of chemicals that need to be assessed for hazard, and a gap in evaluating chemical risk is accounting for metabolic activation resulting in increased toxicity. The goals of this project are to develop a capability to predict metabolic maps of x...

3D face analysis by using Mesh-LBP feature

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Haoyu; Yang, Fumeng; Zhang, Yuming; Wu, Congzhong

2017-11-01

Objective: Face Recognition is one of the widely application of image processing. Corresponding two-dimensional limitations, such as the pose and illumination changes, to a certain extent restricted its accurate rate and further development. How to overcome the pose and illumination changes and the effects of self-occlusion is the research hotspot and difficulty, also attracting more and more domestic and foreign experts and scholars to study it. 3D face recognition fusing shape and texture descriptors has become a very promising research direction. Method: Our paper presents a 3D point cloud based on mesh local binary pattern grid (Mesh-LBP), then feature extraction for 3D face recognition by fusing shape and texture descriptors. 3D Mesh-LBP not only retains the integrity of the 3D geometry, is also reduces the need for recognition process of normalization steps, because the triangle Mesh-LBP descriptor is calculated on 3D grid. On the other hand, in view of multi-modal consistency in face recognition advantage, construction of LBP can fusing shape and texture information on Triangular Mesh. In this paper, some of the operators used to extract Mesh-LBP, Such as the normal vectors of the triangle each face and vertex, the gaussian curvature, the mean curvature, laplace operator and so on. Conclusion: First, Kinect devices obtain 3D point cloud face, after the pretreatment and normalization, then transform it into triangular grid, grid local binary pattern feature extraction from face key significant parts of face. For each local face, calculate its Mesh-LBP feature with Gaussian curvature, mean curvature laplace operator and so on. Experiments on the our research database, change the method is robust and high recognition accuracy.

Try to look on the bright side: Children and adults can (sometimes) override their tendency to prioritize negative faces.

PubMed

Lagattuta, Kristin Hansen; Kramer, Hannah J

2017-01-01

We used eye tracking to examine 4- to 10-year-olds' and adults' (N = 173) visual attention to negative (anger, fear, sadness, disgust) and neutral faces when paired with happy faces in 2 experimental conditions: free-viewing ("look at the faces") and directed ("look only at the happy faces"). Regardless of instruction, all age groups more often looked first to negative versus positive faces (no age differences), suggesting that initial orienting is driven by bottom-up processes. In contrast, biases in more sustained attention-last looks and looking duration-varied by age and could be modified by top-down instruction. On the free-viewing task, all age groups exhibited a negativity bias which attenuated with age and remained stable across trials. When told to look only at happy faces (directed task), all age groups shifted to a positivity bias, with linear age-related improvements. This ability to implement the "look only at the happy faces" instruction, however, fatigued over time, with the decrement stronger for children. Controlling for age, individual differences in executive function (working memory and inhibitory control) had no relation to the free-viewing task; however, these variables explained substantial variance on the directed task, with children and adults higher in executive function showing better skill at looking last and looking longer at happy faces. Greater anxiety predicted more first looks to angry faces on the directed task. These findings advance theory and research on normative development and individual differences in the bias to prioritize negative information, including contributions of bottom-up salience and top-down control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

The many faces of a face: Comparing stills and videos of facial expressions in eight dimensions (SAVE database).

PubMed

Garrido, Margarida V; Lopes, Diniz; Prada, Marília; Rodrigues, David; Jerónimo, Rita; Mourão, Rui P

2017-08-01

This article presents subjective rating norms for a new set of Stills And Videos of facial Expressions-the SAVE database. Twenty nonprofessional models were filmed while posing in three different facial expressions (smile, neutral, and frown). After each pose, the models completed the PANAS questionnaire, and reported more positive affect after smiling and more negative affect after frowning. From the shooting material, stills and 5 s and 10 s videos were edited (total stimulus set = 180). A different sample of 120 participants evaluated the stimuli for attractiveness, arousal, clarity, genuineness, familiarity, intensity, valence, and similarity. Overall, facial expression had a main effect in all of the evaluated dimensions, with smiling models obtaining the highest ratings. Frowning expressions were perceived as being more arousing, clearer, and more intense, but also as more negative than neutral expressions. Stimulus presentation format only influenced the ratings of attractiveness, familiarity, genuineness, and intensity. The attractiveness and familiarity ratings increased with longer exposure times, whereas genuineness decreased. The ratings in the several dimensions were correlated. The subjective norms of facial stimuli presented in this article have potential applications to the work of researchers in several research domains. From our database, researchers may choose the most adequate stimulus presentation format for a particular experiment, select and manipulate the dimensions of interest, and control for the remaining dimensions. The full stimulus set and descriptive results (means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals) for each stimulus per dimension are provided as supplementary material.

Semantic-JSON: a lightweight web service interface for Semantic Web contents integrating multiple life science databases.

PubMed

Kobayashi, Norio; Ishii, Manabu; Takahashi, Satoshi; Mochizuki, Yoshiki; Matsushima, Akihiro; Toyoda, Tetsuro

2011-07-01

Global cloud frameworks for bioinformatics research databases become huge and heterogeneous; solutions face various diametric challenges comprising cross-integration, retrieval, security and openness. To address this, as of March 2011 organizations including RIKEN published 192 mammalian, plant and protein life sciences databases having 8.2 million data records, integrated as Linked Open or Private Data (LOD/LPD) using SciNetS.org, the Scientists' Networking System. The huge quantity of linked data this database integration framework covers is based on the Semantic Web, where researchers collaborate by managing metadata across public and private databases in a secured data space. This outstripped the data query capacity of existing interface tools like SPARQL. Actual research also requires specialized tools for data analysis using raw original data. To solve these challenges, in December 2009 we developed the lightweight Semantic-JSON interface to access each fragment of linked and raw life sciences data securely under the control of programming languages popularly used by bioinformaticians such as Perl and Ruby. Researchers successfully used the interface across 28 million semantic relationships for biological applications including genome design, sequence processing, inference over phenotype databases, full-text search indexing and human-readable contents like ontology and LOD tree viewers. Semantic-JSON services of SciNetS.org are provided at http://semanticjson.org.

A 2D range Hausdorff approach to 3D facial recognition.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Koch, Mark William; Russ, Trina Denise; Little, Charles Quentin

2004-11-01

This paper presents a 3D facial recognition algorithm based on the Hausdorff distance metric. The standard 3D formulation of the Hausdorff matching algorithm has been modified to operate on a 2D range image, enabling a reduction in computation from O(N2) to O(N) without large storage requirements. The Hausdorff distance is known for its robustness to data outliers and inconsistent data between two data sets, making it a suitable choice for dealing with the inherent problems in many 3D datasets due to sensor noise and object self-occlusion. For optimal performance, the algorithm assumes a good initial alignment between probe and templatemore » datasets. However, to minimize the error between two faces, the alignment can be iteratively refined. Results from the algorithm are presented using 3D face images from the Face Recognition Grand Challenge database version 1.0.« less

PEM-PCA: a parallel expectation-maximization PCA face recognition architecture.

PubMed

Rujirakul, Kanokmon; So-In, Chakchai; Arnonkijpanich, Banchar

2014-01-01

Principal component analysis or PCA has been traditionally used as one of the feature extraction techniques in face recognition systems yielding high accuracy when requiring a small number of features. However, the covariance matrix and eigenvalue decomposition stages cause high computational complexity, especially for a large database. Thus, this research presents an alternative approach utilizing an Expectation-Maximization algorithm to reduce the determinant matrix manipulation resulting in the reduction of the stages' complexity. To improve the computational time, a novel parallel architecture was employed to utilize the benefits of parallelization of matrix computation during feature extraction and classification stages including parallel preprocessing, and their combinations, so-called a Parallel Expectation-Maximization PCA architecture. Comparing to a traditional PCA and its derivatives, the results indicate lower complexity with an insignificant difference in recognition precision leading to high speed face recognition systems, that is, the speed-up over nine and three times over PCA and Parallel PCA.

Do women CEOs face greater threat of shareholder activism compared to male CEOs? A role congruity perspective.

PubMed

Gupta, Vishal K; Han, Seonghee; Mortal, Sandra C; Silveri, Sabatino Dino; Turban, Daniel B

2018-02-01

We examine the glass cliff proposition that female CEOs receive more scrutiny than male CEOs, by investigating whether CEO gender is related to threats from activist investors in public firms. Activist investors are extraorganizational stakeholders who, when dissatisfied with some aspect of the way the firm is being managed, seek to change the strategy or operations of the firm. Although some have argued that women will be viewed more favorably than men in top leadership positions (so-called "female leadership" advantage logic), we build on role congruity theory to hypothesize that female CEOs are significantly more likely than male CEOs to come under threat from activist investors. Results support our predictions, suggesting that female CEOs may face additional challenges not faced by male CEOs. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Issues for SME Credit Information DB Institutionsand Expectations for the Econophysics ---Scientific Economic Policies for Avoiding Moral Hazard---

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tanabe, T.

The CRD database, which has been accumulating financial data on SMEsover the ten years since its founding, and has gathered approximately 12 million records for around 2 million SMEs, approximately 3 million records for somewhere around 900,000 sole proprietors, also collected default data on these companies and sole proprietors. The CRD database's weakness is anonymity. Going forward, therefore, it appears the CRD Association is faced with questions concerning how it will enhance the attractiveness of its database whether new knowledge should be gained by using econophysics or other research approaches. We have already seen several examples of knowledge gained through econophysical analyses using the CRD database, and I would like to express my hope that we will eventually see greater application of the SME credit information database and econophysical analysis for the development of Japans SME policies which are scientific economic policies for avoiding moral hazard, and will expect elucidating risk scenarios for the global financial, natural disaster, and other shocks expected to happen with greater frequency. Therefore, the role played by econophysics will become increasingly important, and we have high expectations for the role to be played by the field of econophysics.

Blending Face-to-Face and Internet-Based Interventions for the Treatment of Mental Disorders in Adults: Systematic Review

PubMed Central

Eichert, Hans-Christoph; Riper, Heleen

2017-01-01

Background Many studies have provided evidence for the effectiveness of Internet-based stand-alone interventions for mental disorders. A newer form of intervention combines the strengths of face-to-face (f2f) and Internet approaches (blended interventions). Objective The aim of this review was to provide an overview of (1) the different formats of blended treatments for adults, (2) the stage of treatment in which these are applied, (3) their objective in combining face-to-face and Internet-based approaches, and (4) their effectiveness. Methods Studies on blended concepts were identified through systematic searches in the MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Cochrane, and PubMed databases. Keywords included terms indicating face-to-face interventions (“inpatient,” “outpatient,” “face-to-face,” or “residential treatment”), which were combined with terms indicating Internet treatment (“internet,” “online,” or “web”) and terms indicating mental disorders (“mental health,” “depression,” “anxiety,” or “substance abuse”). We focused on three of the most common mental disorders (depression, anxiety, and substance abuse). Results We identified 64 publications describing 44 studies, 27 of which were randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Results suggest that, compared with stand-alone face-to-face therapy, blended therapy may save clinician time, lead to lower dropout rates and greater abstinence rates of patients with substance abuse, or help maintain initially achieved changes within psychotherapy in the long-term effects of inpatient therapy. However, there is a lack of comparative outcome studies investigating the superiority of the outcomes of blended treatments in comparison with classic face-to-face or Internet-based treatments, as well as of studies identifying the optimal ratio of face-to-face and Internet sessions. Conclusions Several studies have shown that, for common mental health disorders, blended interventions are feasible and can be more effective compared with no treatment controls. However, more RCTs on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of blended treatments, especially compared with nonblended treatments are necessary. PMID:28916506

Blending Face-to-Face and Internet-Based Interventions for the Treatment of Mental Disorders in Adults: Systematic Review.

PubMed

Erbe, Doris; Eichert, Hans-Christoph; Riper, Heleen; Ebert, David Daniel

2017-09-15

Many studies have provided evidence for the effectiveness of Internet-based stand-alone interventions for mental disorders. A newer form of intervention combines the strengths of face-to-face (f2f) and Internet approaches (blended interventions). The aim of this review was to provide an overview of (1) the different formats of blended treatments for adults, (2) the stage of treatment in which these are applied, (3) their objective in combining face-to-face and Internet-based approaches, and (4) their effectiveness. Studies on blended concepts were identified through systematic searches in the MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Cochrane, and PubMed databases. Keywords included terms indicating face-to-face interventions ("inpatient," "outpatient," "face-to-face," or "residential treatment"), which were combined with terms indicating Internet treatment ("internet," "online," or "web") and terms indicating mental disorders ("mental health," "depression," "anxiety," or "substance abuse"). We focused on three of the most common mental disorders (depression, anxiety, and substance abuse). We identified 64 publications describing 44 studies, 27 of which were randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Results suggest that, compared with stand-alone face-to-face therapy, blended therapy may save clinician time, lead to lower dropout rates and greater abstinence rates of patients with substance abuse, or help maintain initially achieved changes within psychotherapy in the long-term effects of inpatient therapy. However, there is a lack of comparative outcome studies investigating the superiority of the outcomes of blended treatments in comparison with classic face-to-face or Internet-based treatments, as well as of studies identifying the optimal ratio of face-to-face and Internet sessions. Several studies have shown that, for common mental health disorders, blended interventions are feasible and can be more effective compared with no treatment controls. However, more RCTs on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of blended treatments, especially compared with nonblended treatments are necessary. ©Doris Erbe, Hans-Christoph Eichert, Heleen Riper, David Daniel Ebert. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 15.09.2017.

Cloud-Based NoSQL Open Database of Pulmonary Nodules for Computer-Aided Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Reproducible Research.

PubMed

Ferreira Junior, José Raniery; Oliveira, Marcelo Costa; de Azevedo-Marques, Paulo Mazzoncini

2016-12-01

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the world, and its main manifestation is pulmonary nodules. Detection and classification of pulmonary nodules are challenging tasks that must be done by qualified specialists, but image interpretation errors make those tasks difficult. In order to aid radiologists on those hard tasks, it is important to integrate the computer-based tools with the lesion detection, pathology diagnosis, and image interpretation processes. However, computer-aided diagnosis research faces the problem of not having enough shared medical reference data for the development, testing, and evaluation of computational methods for diagnosis. In order to minimize this problem, this paper presents a public nonrelational document-oriented cloud-based database of pulmonary nodules characterized by 3D texture attributes, identified by experienced radiologists and classified in nine different subjective characteristics by the same specialists. Our goal with the development of this database is to improve computer-aided lung cancer diagnosis and pulmonary nodule detection and classification research through the deployment of this database in a cloud Database as a Service framework. Pulmonary nodule data was provided by the Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative (LIDC-IDRI), image descriptors were acquired by a volumetric texture analysis, and database schema was developed using a document-oriented Not only Structured Query Language (NoSQL) approach. The proposed database is now with 379 exams, 838 nodules, and 8237 images, 4029 of them are CT scans and 4208 manually segmented nodules, and it is allocated in a MongoDB instance on a cloud infrastructure.

The ATLAS conditions database architecture for the Muon spectrometer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Verducci, Monica; ATLAS Muon Collaboration

2010-04-01

The Muon System, facing the challenge requirement of the conditions data storage, has extensively started to use the conditions database project 'COOL' as the basis for all its conditions data storage both at CERN and throughout the worldwide collaboration as decided by the ATLAS Collaboration. The management of the Muon COOL conditions database will be one of the most challenging applications for Muon System, both in terms of data volumes and rates, but also in terms of the variety of data stored. The Muon conditions database is responsible for almost all of the 'non event' data and detector quality flags storage needed for debugging of the detector operations and for performing reconstruction and analysis. The COOL database allows database applications to be written independently of the underlying database technology and ensures long term compatibility with the entire ATLAS Software. COOL implements an interval of validity database, i.e. objects stored or referenced in COOL have an associated start and end time between which they are valid, the data is stored in folders, which are themselves arranged in a hierarchical structure of folder sets. The structure is simple and mainly optimized to store and retrieve object(s) associated with a particular time. In this work, an overview of the entire Muon conditions database architecture is given, including the different sources of the data and the storage model used. In addiction the software interfaces used to access to the conditions data are described, more emphasis is given to the Offline Reconstruction framework ATHENA and the services developed to provide the conditions data to the reconstruction.

RTS2: a powerful robotic observatory manager

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kubánek, Petr; Jelínek, Martin; Vítek, Stanislav; de Ugarte Postigo, Antonio; Nekola, Martin; French, John

2006-06-01

RTS2, or Remote Telescope System, 2nd Version, is an integrated package for remote telescope control under the Linux operating system. It is designed to run in fully autonomous mode, picking targets from a database table, storing image meta data to the database, processing images and storing their WCS coordinates in the database and offering Virtual-Observatory enabled access to them. It is currently running on various telescope setups world-wide. For control of devices from various manufacturers we developed an abstract device layer, enabling control of all possible combinations of mounts, CCDs, photometers, roof and cupola controllers. We describe the evolution of RTS2 from Python-based RTS to C and later C++ based RTS2, focusing on the problems we faced during development. The internal structure of RTS2, focusing on object layering, which is used to uniformly control various devices and provides uniform reporting layer, is also discussed.

Doors for memory: A searchable database.

PubMed

Baddeley, Alan D; Hitch, Graham J; Quinlan, Philip T; Bowes, Lindsey; Stone, Rob

2016-11-01

The study of human long-term memory has for over 50 years been dominated by research on words. This is partly due to lack of suitable nonverbal materials. Experience in developing a clinical test suggested that door scenes can provide an ecologically relevant and sensitive alternative to the faces and geometrical figures traditionally used to study visual memory. In pursuing this line of research, we have accumulated over 2000 door scenes providing a database that is categorized on a range of variables including building type, colour, age, condition, glazing, and a range of other physical characteristics. We describe an illustrative study of recognition memory for 100 doors tested by yes/no, two-alternative, or four-alternative forced-choice paradigms. These stimuli, together with the full categorized database, are available through a dedicated website. We suggest that door scenes provide an ecologically relevant and participant-friendly source of material for studying the comparatively neglected field of visual long-term memory.

Fusion of footsteps and face biometrics on an unsupervised and uncontrolled environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vera-Rodriguez, Ruben; Tome, Pedro; Fierrez, Julian; Ortega-Garcia, Javier

2012-06-01

This paper reports for the first time experiments on the fusion of footsteps and face on an unsupervised and not controlled environment for person authentication. Footstep recognition is a relatively new biometric based on signals extracted from people walking over floor sensors. The idea of the fusion between footsteps and face starts from the premise that in an area where footstep sensors are installed it is very simple to place a camera to capture also the face of the person that walks over the sensors. This setup may find application in scenarios like ambient assisted living, smart homes, eldercare, or security access. The paper reports a comparative assessment of both biometrics using the same database and experimental protocols. In the experimental work we consider two different applications: smart homes (small group of users with a large set of training data) and security access (larger group of users with a small set of training data) obtaining results of 0.9% and 5.8% EER respectively for the fusion of both modalities. This is a significant performance improvement compared with the results obtained by the individual systems.

Implementation of an RBF neural network on embedded systems: real-time face tracking and identity verification.

PubMed

Yang, Fan; Paindavoine, M

2003-01-01

This paper describes a real time vision system that allows us to localize faces in video sequences and verify their identity. These processes are image processing techniques based on the radial basis function (RBF) neural network approach. The robustness of this system has been evaluated quantitatively on eight video sequences. We have adapted our model for an application of face recognition using the Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL), Cambridge, UK, database so as to compare the performance against other systems. We also describe three hardware implementations of our model on embedded systems based on the field programmable gate array (FPGA), zero instruction set computer (ZISC) chips, and digital signal processor (DSP) TMS320C62, respectively. We analyze the algorithm complexity and present results of hardware implementations in terms of the resources used and processing speed. The success rates of face tracking and identity verification are 92% (FPGA), 85% (ZISC), and 98.2% (DSP), respectively. For the three embedded systems, the processing speeds for images size of 288 /spl times/ 352 are 14 images/s, 25 images/s, and 4.8 images/s, respectively.

Relations of emotion-related temperamental characteristics to attentional biases and social functioning.

PubMed

Nozadi, Sara S; Spinrad, Tracy L; Johnson, Scott P; Eisenberg, Nancy

2018-06-01

The current study examined whether an important temperamental characteristic, effortful control (EC), moderates the associations between dispositional anger and sadness, attention biases, and social functioning in a group of preschool-aged children (N = 77). Preschoolers' attentional biases toward angry and sad facial expressions were assessed using eye-tracking, and we obtained teachers' reports of children's temperament and social functioning. Associations of dispositional anger and sadness with time looking at relevant negative emotional stimuli were moderated by children's EC, but relations between time looking at emotional faces and indicators of social functioning, for the most part, were direct and not moderated by EC. In particular, time looking at angry faces (and low EC) predicted high levels of aggressive behaviors, whereas longer time looking at sad faces (and high EC) predicted higher social competence. Finally, latency to detect angry faces predicted aggressive behavior under conditions of average and low levels of EC. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of differentiating between components of attention biases toward distinct negative emotions, and implications for attention training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of an online alternative to face-to-face consultation in general practice: a mixed-methods study of webGP in six Devon practices.

PubMed

Carter, Mary; Fletcher, Emily; Sansom, Anna; Warren, Fiona C; Campbell, John L

2018-02-15

To evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of webGP as piloted by six general practices. Mixed-methods evaluation, including data extraction from practice databases, general practitioner (GP) completion of case reports, patient questionnaires and staff interviews. General practices in NHS Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group's area approximately 6 months after implementing webGP (February-July 2016). Six practices provided consultations data; 20 GPs completed case reports (regarding 61 e-consults); 81 patients completed questionnaires; 5 GPs and 5 administrators were interviewed. Attitudes and experiences of practice staff and patients regarding webGP. WebGP uptake during the evaluation was small, showing no discernible impact on practice workload. The completeness of cross-sectional data on consultation workload varied between practices.GPs judged 41/61 (72%) of webGP requests to require a face-to-face or telephone consultation. Introducing webGP appeared to be associated with shifts in responsibility and workload between practice staff and between practices and patients.81/231 patients completed a postal survey (35.1% response rate). E-Consulters were somewhat younger and more likely to be employed than face-to-face respondents. WebGP appeared broadly acceptable to patients regarding timeliness and quality/experience of care provided. Similar problems were presented by all respondents. Both groups appeared equally familiar with other practice online services; e-consulters were somewhat more likely to have used them.From semistructured staff interviews, it appeared that, while largely acceptable within practice, introducing e-consults had potential for adverse interactions with pre-existing practice systems. There is potential to assess the impact of new systems on consultation patterns by extracting routine data from practice databases. Staff and patients noticed subtle changes to responsibilities associated with online options. Greater uptake requires good communication between practice and patients, and organisation of systems to avoid conflicts and misuse. Further research is required to evaluate the full potential of webGP in managing practice workload. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Recognizing Action Units for Facial Expression Analysis

PubMed Central

Tian, Ying-li; Kanade, Takeo; Cohn, Jeffrey F.

2010-01-01

Most automatic expression analysis systems attempt to recognize a small set of prototypic expressions, such as happiness, anger, surprise, and fear. Such prototypic expressions, however, occur rather infrequently. Human emotions and intentions are more often communicated by changes in one or a few discrete facial features. In this paper, we develop an Automatic Face Analysis (AFA) system to analyze facial expressions based on both permanent facial features (brows, eyes, mouth) and transient facial features (deepening of facial furrows) in a nearly frontal-view face image sequence. The AFA system recognizes fine-grained changes in facial expression into action units (AUs) of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), instead of a few prototypic expressions. Multistate face and facial component models are proposed for tracking and modeling the various facial features, including lips, eyes, brows, cheeks, and furrows. During tracking, detailed parametric descriptions of the facial features are extracted. With these parameters as the inputs, a group of action units (neutral expression, six upper face AUs and 10 lower face AUs) are recognized whether they occur alone or in combinations. The system has achieved average recognition rates of 96.4 percent (95.4 percent if neutral expressions are excluded) for upper face AUs and 96.7 percent (95.6 percent with neutral expressions excluded) for lower face AUs. The generalizability of the system has been tested by using independent image databases collected and FACS-coded for ground-truth by different research teams. PMID:25210210

State-dependent alterations in inhibitory control and emotional face identification in seasonal affective disorder.

PubMed

Hjordt, Liv V; Stenbæk, Dea S; Madsen, Kathrine Skak; Mc Mahon, Brenda; Jensen, Christian G; Vestergaard, Martin; Hageman, Ida; Meder, David; Hasselbalch, Steen G; Knudsen, Gitte M

2017-04-01

Depressed individuals often exhibit impaired inhibition to negative input and identification of positive stimuli, but it is unclear whether this is a state or trait feature. We here exploited a naturalistic model, namely individuals with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), to study this feature longitudinally. The goal of this study was to examine seasonal changes in inhibitory control and identification of emotional faces in individuals with SAD. Twenty-nine individuals diagnosed with winter-SAD and 30 demographically matched controls with no seasonality symptoms completed an emotional Go/NoGo task, requiring inhibition of prepotent responses to emotional facial expressions and an emotional face identification task twice, in winter and summer. In winter, individuals with SAD showed impaired ability to inhibit responses to angry (p = .0006) and sad faces (p = .011), and decreased identification of happy faces (p = .032) compared with controls. In summer, individuals with SAD and controls performed similarly on these tasks (ps > .24). We provide novel evidence that inhibition of angry and sad faces and identification of happy faces are impaired in SAD in the symptomatic phase, but not in the remitted phase. The affective biases in cognitive processing constitute state-dependent features of SAD. Our data show that reinstatement of a normal affective cognition should be possible and would constitute a major goal in psychiatric treatment to improve the quality of life for these patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Clinical application of the FACES score for face transplantation.

PubMed

Chopra, Karan; Susarla, Srinivas M; Goodrich, Danielle; Bernard, Steven; Zins, James E; Papay, Frank; Lee, W P Andrew; Gordon, Chad R

2014-01-01

This study aimed to systematically evaluate all reported outcomes of facial allotransplantation (FT) using the previously described FACES scoring instrument. This was a retrospective study of all consecutive face transplants to date (January 2012). Candidates were identified using medical and general internet database searches. Medical literature and media reports were reviewed for details regarding demographic, operative, anatomic, and psychosocial data, which were then used to formulate FACES scores. Pre-transplant and post-transplant scores for "functional status", "aesthetic deformity", "co-morbidities", "exposed tissue", and "surgical history" were calculated. Scores were statistically compared using paired-samples analyses. Twenty consecutive patients were identified, with 18 surviving recipients. The sample was composed of 3 females and 17 males, with a mean age of 35.0 ± 11.0 years (range: 19-57 years). Overall, data reporting for functional parameters was poor. Six subjects had complete pre-transplant and post-transplant data available for all 5 FACES domains. The mean pre-transplant FACES score was 33.5 ± 8.8 (range: 23-44); the mean post-transplant score was 21.5 ± 5.9 (range: 14-32) and was statistically significantly lower than the pre-transplant score (P = 0.02). Among the individual domains, FT conferred a statistically significant improvement in aesthetic defect scores and exposed tissue scores (P ≤ 0.01) while, at the same time, it displayed no significant increases in co-morbidity (P = 0.17). There is a significant deficiency in functional outcome reports thus far. Moreover, FT resulted in improved overall FACES score, with the most dramatic improvements noted in aesthetic defect and exposed tissue scores.

Callousness and affective face processing in adults: Behavioral and brain-potential indicators.

PubMed

Brislin, Sarah J; Yancey, James R; Perkins, Emily R; Palumbo, Isabella M; Drislane, Laura E; Salekin, Randall T; Fanti, Kostas A; Kimonis, Eva R; Frick, Paul J; Blair, R James R; Patrick, Christopher J

2018-03-01

The investigation of callous-unemotional (CU) traits has been central to contemporary research on child behavior problems, and served as the impetus for inclusion of a specifier for conduct disorder in the latest edition of the official psychiatric diagnostic system. Here, we report results from 2 studies that evaluated the construct validity of callousness as assessed in adults, by testing for affiliated deficits in behavioral and neural processing of fearful faces, as have been shown in youthful samples. We hypothesized that scores on an established measure of callousness would predict reduced recognition accuracy and diminished electocortical reactivity for fearful faces in adult participants. In Study 1, 66 undergraduate participants performed an emotion recognition task in which they viewed affective faces of different types and indicated the emotion expressed by each. In Study 2, electrocortical data were collected from 254 adult twins during viewing of fearful and neutral face stimuli, and scored for event-related response components. Analyses of Study 1 data revealed that higher callousness was associated with decreased recognition accuracy for fearful faces specifically. In Study 2, callousness was associated with reduced amplitude of both N170 and P200 responses to fearful faces. Current findings demonstrate for the first time that callousness in adults is associated with both behavioral and physiological deficits in the processing of fearful faces. These findings support the validity of the CU construct with adults and highlight the possibility of a multidomain measurement framework for continued study of this important clinical construct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Getting older isn't all that bad: better decisions and coping when facing "sunk costs".

PubMed

Bruine de Bruin, Wändi; Strough, JoNell; Parker, Andrew M

2014-09-01

Because people of all ages face decisions that affect their quality of life, decision-making competence is important across the life span. According to theories of rational decision making, one crucial decision skill involves the ability to discontinue failing commitments despite irrecoverable investments also referred to as "sunk costs." We find that older adults are better than younger adults at making decisions to discontinue such failing commitments especially when irrecoverable losses are large, as well as at coping with the associated irrecoverable losses. Our results are relevant to interventions that aim to promote better decision-making competence across the life span. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

What ASRS incident data tell about flight crew performance during aircraft malfunctions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sumwalt, Robert L.; Watson, Alan W.

1995-01-01

This research examined 230 reports in NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System's (ASRS) database to develop a better understanding of factors that can affect flight crew performance when crew are faced with inflight aircraft malfunctions. Each report was placed into one of two categories, based on severity of the malfunction. Report analysis was then conducted to extract information regarding crew procedural issues, crew communications and situational awareness. A comparison of these crew factors across malfunction type was then performed. This comparison revealed a significant difference in ways that crews dealt with serious malfunctions compared to less serious malfunctions. The authors offer recommendations toward improving crew performance when faced with inflight aircraft malfunctions.

Selecting fillers on emotional appearance improves lineup identification accuracy.

PubMed

Flowe, Heather D; Klatt, Thimna; Colloff, Melissa F

2014-12-01

Mock witnesses sometimes report using criminal stereotypes to identify a face from a lineup, a tendency known as criminal face bias. Faces are perceived as criminal-looking if they appear angry. We tested whether matching the emotional appearance of the fillers to an angry suspect can reduce criminal face bias. In Study 1, mock witnesses (n = 226) viewed lineups in which the suspect had an angry, happy, or neutral expression, and we varied whether the fillers matched the expression. An additional group of participants (n = 59) rated the faces on criminal and emotional appearance. As predicted, mock witnesses tended to identify suspects who appeared angrier and more criminal-looking than the fillers. This tendency was reduced when the lineup fillers matched the emotional appearance of the suspect. Study 2 extended the results, testing whether the emotional appearance of the suspect and fillers affects recognition memory. Participants (n = 1,983) studied faces and took a lineup test in which the emotional appearance of the target and fillers was varied between subjects. Discrimination accuracy was enhanced when the fillers matched an angry target's emotional appearance. We conclude that lineup member emotional appearance plays a critical role in the psychology of lineup identification. The fillers should match an angry suspect's emotional appearance to improve lineup identification accuracy. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Is fear in your head? A comparison of instructed and real-life expressions of emotion in the face and body.

PubMed

Abramson, Lior; Marom, Inbal; Petranker, Rotem; Aviezer, Hillel

2017-04-01

The majority of emotion perception studies utilize instructed and stereotypical expressions of faces or bodies. While such stimuli are highly standardized and well-recognized, their resemblance to real-life expressions of emotion remains unknown. Here we examined facial and body expressions of fear and anger during real-life situations and compared their recognition to that of instructed expressions of the same emotions. In order to examine the source of the affective signal, expressions of emotion were presented as faces alone, bodies alone, and naturally, as faces with bodies. The results demonstrated striking deviations between recognition of instructed and real-life stimuli, which differed as a function of the emotion expressed. In real-life fearful expressions of emotion, bodies were far better recognized than faces, a pattern not found with instructed expressions of emotion. Anger reactions were better recognized from the body than from the face in both real-life and instructed stimuli. However, the real-life stimuli were overall better recognized than their instructed counterparts. These results indicate that differences between instructed and real-life expressions of emotion are prevalent and raise caution against an overreliance of researchers on instructed affective stimuli. The findings also demonstrate that in real life, facial expression perception may rely heavily on information from the contextualizing body. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Hybrid generative-discriminative approach to age-invariant face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sajid, Muhammad; Shafique, Tamoor

2018-03-01

Age-invariant face recognition is still a challenging research problem due to the complex aging process involving types of facial tissues, skin, fat, muscles, and bones. Most of the related studies that have addressed the aging problem are focused on generative representation (aging simulation) or discriminative representation (feature-based approaches). Designing an appropriate hybrid approach taking into account both the generative and discriminative representations for age-invariant face recognition remains an open problem. We perform a hybrid matching to achieve robustness to aging variations. This approach automatically segments the eyes, nose-bridge, and mouth regions, which are relatively less sensitive to aging variations compared with the rest of the facial regions that are age-sensitive. The aging variations of age-sensitive facial parts are compensated using a demographic-aware generative model based on a bridged denoising autoencoder. The age-insensitive facial parts are represented by pixel average vector-based local binary patterns. Deep convolutional neural networks are used to extract relative features of age-sensitive and age-insensitive facial parts. Finally, the feature vectors of age-sensitive and age-insensitive facial parts are fused to achieve the recognition results. Extensive experimental results on morphological face database II (MORPH II), face and gesture recognition network (FG-NET), and Verification Subset of cross-age celebrity dataset (CACD-VS) demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for age-invariant face recognition well.

Supporting reputation based trust management enhancing security layer for cloud service models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karthiga, R.; Vanitha, M.; Sumaiya Thaseen, I.; Mangaiyarkarasi, R.

2017-11-01

In the existing system trust between cloud providers and consumers is inadequate to establish the service level agreement though the consumer’s response is good cause to assess the overall reliability of cloud services. Investigators recognized the significance of trust can be managed and security can be provided based on feedback collected from participant. In this work a face recognition system that helps to identify the user effectively. So we use an image comparison algorithm where the user face is captured during registration time and get stored in database. With that original image we compare it with the sample image that is already stored in database. If both the image get matched then the users are identified effectively. When the confidential data are subcontracted to the cloud, data holders will become worried about the confidentiality of their data in the cloud. Encrypting the data before subcontracting has been regarded as the important resources of keeping user data privacy beside the cloud server. So in order to keep the data secure we use an AES algorithm. Symmetric-key algorithms practice a shared key concept, keeping data secret requires keeping this key secret. So only the user with private key can decrypt data.

MPEG-7 audio-visual indexing test-bed for video retrieval

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gagnon, Langis; Foucher, Samuel; Gouaillier, Valerie; Brun, Christelle; Brousseau, Julie; Boulianne, Gilles; Osterrath, Frederic; Chapdelaine, Claude; Dutrisac, Julie; St-Onge, Francis; Champagne, Benoit; Lu, Xiaojian

2003-12-01

This paper reports on the development status of a Multimedia Asset Management (MAM) test-bed for content-based indexing and retrieval of audio-visual documents within the MPEG-7 standard. The project, called "MPEG-7 Audio-Visual Document Indexing System" (MADIS), specifically targets the indexing and retrieval of video shots and key frames from documentary film archives, based on audio-visual content like face recognition, motion activity, speech recognition and semantic clustering. The MPEG-7/XML encoding of the film database is done off-line. The description decomposition is based on a temporal decomposition into visual segments (shots), key frames and audio/speech sub-segments. The visible outcome will be a web site that allows video retrieval using a proprietary XQuery-based search engine and accessible to members at the Canadian National Film Board (NFB) Cineroute site. For example, end-user will be able to ask to point on movie shots in the database that have been produced in a specific year, that contain the face of a specific actor who tells a specific word and in which there is no motion activity. Video streaming is performed over the high bandwidth CA*net network deployed by CANARIE, a public Canadian Internet development organization.

Privacy and policy for genetic research.

PubMed

DeCew, Judith Wagner

2004-01-01

I begin with a discussion of the value of privacy and what we lose without it. I then turn to the difficulties of preserving privacy for genetic information and other medical records in the face of advanced information technology. I suggest three alternative public policy approaches to the problem of protecting individual privacy and also preserving databases for genetic research: (1) governmental guidelines and centralized databases, (2) corporate self-regulation, and (3) my hybrid approach. None of these are unproblematic; I discuss strengths and drawbacks of each, emphasizing the importance of protecting the privacy of sensitive medical and genetic information as well as letting information technology flourish to aid patient care, public health and scientific research.

Staffing matters-every shift: data from the Military Nursing Outcomes Database can be used to demonstrate that the right number and mix of nurses prevent errors.

PubMed

West, Gordon; Patrician, Patricia A; Loan, Lori

2012-12-01

Data from the Military Nursing Outcomes Database (MilNOD) project demonstrate that inadequately staffed shifts can increase the likelihood of adverse events, such as falls with injury, medication errors, and needlestick injuries to nurses. Such evidence can be used to show that it takes not only the right number of nursing staff on every shift to ensure safe patient care, but also the right mix of expertise and experience. Based on findings from the MilNOD project, the authors present realistic scenarios of common dilemmas hospitals face in nurse staffing, illustrating the potential hazards for patients and nurses alike.

Mining Bug Databases for Unidentified Software Vulnerabilities

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dumidu Wijayasekara; Milos Manic; Jason Wright

2012-06-01

Identifying software vulnerabilities is becoming more important as critical and sensitive systems increasingly rely on complex software systems. It has been suggested in previous work that some bugs are only identified as vulnerabilities long after the bug has been made public. These vulnerabilities are known as hidden impact vulnerabilities. This paper discusses the feasibility and necessity to mine common publicly available bug databases for vulnerabilities that are yet to be identified. We present bug database analysis of two well known and frequently used software packages, namely Linux kernel and MySQL. It is shown that for both Linux and MySQL, amore » significant portion of vulnerabilities that were discovered for the time period from January 2006 to April 2011 were hidden impact vulnerabilities. It is also shown that the percentage of hidden impact vulnerabilities has increased in the last two years, for both software packages. We then propose an improved hidden impact vulnerability identification methodology based on text mining bug databases, and conclude by discussing a few potential problems faced by such a classifier.« less

Blending online therapy into regular face-to-face therapy for depression: content, ratio and preconditions according to patients and therapists using a Delphi study.

PubMed

van der Vaart, Rosalie; Witting, Marjon; Riper, Heleen; Kooistra, Lisa; Bohlmeijer, Ernst T; van Gemert-Pijnen, Lisette J E W C

2014-12-14

Blending online modules into face-to-face therapy offers perspectives to enhance patient self-management and to increase the (cost-)effectiveness of therapy, while still providing the support patients need. The aim of this study was to outline optimal usage of blended care for depression, according to patients and therapists. A Delphi method was used to find consensus on suitable blended protocols (content, sequence and ratio). Phase 1 was an explorative phase, conducted in two rounds of online questionnaires, in which patients' and therapists' preferences and opinions about online psychotherapy were surveyed. In phase 2, data from phase 1 was used in face-to-face interviews with therapists to investigate how blended therapy protocols could be set up and what essential preconditions would be. Twelve therapists and nine patients completed the surveys. Blended therapy was positively perceived among all respondents, especially to enhance the self-management of patients. According to most respondents, practical therapy components (assignments, diaries and psycho-education) may be provided via online modules, while process-related components (introduction, evaluation and discussing thoughts and feelings), should be supported face-to-face. The preferred blend of online and face-to-face sessions differs between therapists and patients; most therapists prefer 75% face-to-face sessions, most patients 50 to 60%. The interviews showed that tailoring treatment to individual patients is essential in secondary mental health care, due to the complexity of their problems. The amount and ratio of online modules needs to be adjusted according to the patient's problems, skills and characteristics. Therapists themselves should also develop skills to integrate online and face-to-face sessions. Blending online and face-to-face sessions in an integrated depression therapy is viewed as a positive innovation by patients and therapists. Following a standard blended protocol, however, would be difficult in secondary mental health care. A database of online modules could provide flexibility to tailor treatment to individual patients, which asks motivation and skills of both patients and therapists. Further research is necessary to determine the (cost-)effectiveness of blended care, but this study provides starting points and preconditions to blend online and face-to-face sessions and create a treatment combining the best of both worlds.

New data acquisition system for the focal plane polarimeter of the Grand Raiden spectrometer

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Tamii, A.; Sakaguchi, H.; Takeda, H.

1996-10-01

This paper describes a new data acquisition system for the focal plane polarimeter of the Grand Raiden spectrometer at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) in Osaka, Japan. Data are acquired by a Creative Electronic Systems (CES) Starburst, which is a CAMAC auxiliary crate controller equipped with a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) J11 microprocessor., The data on the Starburst are transferred to a VME single-board computer. A VME reflective memory module broadcasts the data to other systems through a fiber-optic link. A data transfer rate of 2.0 Mbytes/s between VME modules has been achieved by reflective memories. This ratemore » includes the overhead of buffer management. The overall transfer rate, however, is limited by the performance of the Starburst to about 160 Kbytes/s at maximum. In order to further improve the system performance, the authors developed a new readout module called the Rapid Data Transfer Module (RDTM). RDTM`s transfer data from LeCroy PCOS III`s or 4298`s, and FERA/FERET`s directly to CES 8170 High Speed Memories (HSM) in VME crates. The data transfer rate of the RDTM from PCOS III`s to the HSM is about 4 Mbytes/s.« less

Separating morphologically similar pollen types using basic shape features from digital images: A preliminary study1

PubMed Central

Holt, Katherine A.; Bebbington, Mark S.

2014-01-01

• Premise of the study: One of the many advantages offered by automated palynology systems is the ability to vastly increase the number of observations made on a particular sample or samples. This is of particular benefit when attempting to fully quantify the degree of variation within or between closely related pollen types. • Methods: An automated palynology system (Classifynder) has been used to further investigate the variation in pollen morphology between two New Zealand species of Myrtaceae (Leptospermum scoparium and Kunzea ericoides) that are of significance in the New Zealand honey industry. Seven geometric features extracted from automatically gathered digital images were used to characterize the range of shape and size of the two taxa, and to examine the extent of previously reported overlap in these variables. • Results: Our results indicate a degree of overlap in all cases. The narrowest overlap was in measurements of maximum Feret diameter (MFD) in grains oriented in polar view. Multivariate statistical analysis using all seven factors provided the most robust discrimination between the two types. • Discussion: Further work is required before this approach could be routinely applied to separating the two pollen types used in this study, most notably the development of comprehensive reference distributions for the types in question. PMID:25202650

2D DOST based local phase pattern for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moniruzzaman, Md.; Alam, Mohammad S.

2017-05-01

A new two dimensional (2-D) Discrete Orthogonal Stcokwell Transform (DOST) based Local Phase Pattern (LPP) technique has been proposed for efficient face recognition. The proposed technique uses 2-D DOST as preliminary preprocessing and local phase pattern to form robust feature signature which can effectively accommodate various 3D facial distortions and illumination variations. The S-transform, is an extension of the ideas of the continuous wavelet transform (CWT), is also known for its local spectral phase properties in time-frequency representation (TFR). It provides a frequency dependent resolution of the time-frequency space and absolutely referenced local phase information while maintaining a direct relationship with the Fourier spectrum which is unique in TFR. After utilizing 2-D Stransform as the preprocessing and build local phase pattern from extracted phase information yield fast and efficient technique for face recognition. The proposed technique shows better correlation discrimination compared to alternate pattern recognition techniques such as wavelet or Gabor based face recognition. The performance of the proposed method has been tested using the Yale and extended Yale facial database under different environments such as illumination variation and 3D changes in facial expressions. Test results show that the proposed technique yields better performance compared to alternate time-frequency representation (TFR) based face recognition techniques.

The feasibility test of state-of-the-art face detection algorithms for vehicle occupant detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Makrushin, Andrey; Dittmann, Jana; Vielhauer, Claus; Langnickel, Mirko; Kraetzer, Christian

2010-01-01

Vehicle seat occupancy detection systems are designed to prevent the deployment of airbags at unoccupied seats, thus avoiding the considerable cost imposed by the replacement of airbags. Occupancy detection can also improve passenger comfort, e.g. by activating air-conditioning systems. The most promising development perspectives are seen in optical sensing systems which have become cheaper and smaller in recent years. The most plausible way to check the seat occupancy by occupants is the detection of presence and location of heads, or more precisely, faces. This paper compares the detection performances of the three most commonly used and widely available face detection algorithms: Viola- Jones, Kienzle et al. and Nilsson et al. The main objective of this work is to identify whether one of these systems is suitable for use in a vehicle environment with variable and mostly non-uniform illumination conditions, and whether any one face detection system can be sufficient for seat occupancy detection. The evaluation of detection performance is based on a large database comprising 53,928 video frames containing proprietary data collected from 39 persons of both sexes and different ages and body height as well as different objects such as bags and rearward/forward facing child restraint systems.

Pose invariant face recognition: 3D model from single photo

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Napoléon, Thibault; Alfalou, Ayman

2017-02-01

Face recognition is widely studied in the literature for its possibilities in surveillance and security. In this paper, we report a novel algorithm for the identification task. This technique is based on an optimized 3D modeling allowing to reconstruct faces in different poses from a limited number of references (i.e. one image by class/person). Particularly, we propose to use an active shape model to detect a set of keypoints on the face necessary to deform our synthetic model with our optimized finite element method. Indeed, in order to improve our deformation, we propose a regularization by distances on graph. To perform the identification we use the VanderLugt correlator well know to effectively address this task. On the other hand we add a difference of Gaussian filtering step to highlight the edges and a description step based on the local binary patterns. The experiments are performed on the PHPID database enhanced with our 3D reconstructed faces of each person with an azimuth and an elevation ranging from -30° to +30°. The obtained results prove the robustness of our new method with 88.76% of good identification when the classic 2D approach (based on the VLC) obtains just 44.97%.

Modeling first impressions from highly variable facial images

PubMed Central

Vernon, Richard J. W.; Sutherland, Clare A. M.; Young, Andrew W.; Hartley, Tom

2014-01-01

First impressions of social traits, such as trustworthiness or dominance, are reliably perceived in faces, and despite their questionable validity they can have considerable real-world consequences. We sought to uncover the information driving such judgments, using an attribute-based approach. Attributes (physical facial features) were objectively measured from feature positions and colors in a database of highly variable “ambient” face photographs, and then used as input for a neural network to model factor dimensions (approachability, youthful-attractiveness, and dominance) thought to underlie social attributions. A linear model based on this approach was able to account for 58% of the variance in raters’ impressions of previously unseen faces, and factor-attribute correlations could be used to rank attributes by their importance to each factor. Reversing this process, neural networks were then used to predict facial attributes and corresponding image properties from specific combinations of factor scores. In this way, the factors driving social trait impressions could be visualized as a series of computer-generated cartoon face-like images, depicting how attributes change along each dimension. This study shows that despite enormous variation in ambient images of faces, a substantial proportion of the variance in first impressions can be accounted for through linear changes in objectively defined features. PMID:25071197

Facial expression identification using 3D geometric features from Microsoft Kinect device

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, Dongxu; Al Jawad, Naseer; Du, Hongbo

2016-05-01

Facial expression identification is an important part of face recognition and closely related to emotion detection from face images. Various solutions have been proposed in the past using different types of cameras and features. Microsoft Kinect device has been widely used for multimedia interactions. More recently, the device has been increasingly deployed for supporting scientific investigations. This paper explores the effectiveness of using the device in identifying emotional facial expressions such as surprise, smile, sad, etc. and evaluates the usefulness of 3D data points on a face mesh structure obtained from the Kinect device. We present a distance-based geometric feature component that is derived from the distances between points on the face mesh and selected reference points in a single frame. The feature components extracted across a sequence of frames starting and ending by neutral emotion represent a whole expression. The feature vector eliminates the need for complex face orientation correction, simplifying the feature extraction process and making it more efficient. We applied the kNN classifier that exploits a feature component based similarity measure following the principle of dynamic time warping to determine the closest neighbors. Preliminary tests on a small scale database of different facial expressions show promises of the newly developed features and the usefulness of the Kinect device in facial expression identification.

An online database for informing ecological network models: http://kelpforest.ucsc.edu.

PubMed

Beas-Luna, Rodrigo; Novak, Mark; Carr, Mark H; Tinker, Martin T; Black, August; Caselle, Jennifer E; Hoban, Michael; Malone, Dan; Iles, Alison

2014-01-01

Ecological network models and analyses are recognized as valuable tools for understanding the dynamics and resiliency of ecosystems, and for informing ecosystem-based approaches to management. However, few databases exist that can provide the life history, demographic and species interaction information necessary to parameterize ecological network models. Faced with the difficulty of synthesizing the information required to construct models for kelp forest ecosystems along the West Coast of North America, we developed an online database (http://kelpforest.ucsc.edu/) to facilitate the collation and dissemination of such information. Many of the database's attributes are novel yet the structure is applicable and adaptable to other ecosystem modeling efforts. Information for each taxonomic unit includes stage-specific life history, demography, and body-size allometries. Species interactions include trophic, competitive, facilitative, and parasitic forms. Each data entry is temporally and spatially explicit. The online data entry interface allows researchers anywhere to contribute and access information. Quality control is facilitated by attributing each entry to unique contributor identities and source citations. The database has proven useful as an archive of species and ecosystem-specific information in the development of several ecological network models, for informing management actions, and for education purposes (e.g., undergraduate and graduate training). To facilitate adaptation of the database by other researches for other ecosystems, the code and technical details on how to customize this database and apply it to other ecosystems are freely available and located at the following link (https://github.com/kelpforest-cameo/databaseui).

An Online Database for Informing Ecological Network Models: http://kelpforest.ucsc.edu

PubMed Central

Beas-Luna, Rodrigo; Novak, Mark; Carr, Mark H.; Tinker, Martin T.; Black, August; Caselle, Jennifer E.; Hoban, Michael; Malone, Dan; Iles, Alison

2014-01-01

Ecological network models and analyses are recognized as valuable tools for understanding the dynamics and resiliency of ecosystems, and for informing ecosystem-based approaches to management. However, few databases exist that can provide the life history, demographic and species interaction information necessary to parameterize ecological network models. Faced with the difficulty of synthesizing the information required to construct models for kelp forest ecosystems along the West Coast of North America, we developed an online database (http://kelpforest.ucsc.edu/) to facilitate the collation and dissemination of such information. Many of the database's attributes are novel yet the structure is applicable and adaptable to other ecosystem modeling efforts. Information for each taxonomic unit includes stage-specific life history, demography, and body-size allometries. Species interactions include trophic, competitive, facilitative, and parasitic forms. Each data entry is temporally and spatially explicit. The online data entry interface allows researchers anywhere to contribute and access information. Quality control is facilitated by attributing each entry to unique contributor identities and source citations. The database has proven useful as an archive of species and ecosystem-specific information in the development of several ecological network models, for informing management actions, and for education purposes (e.g., undergraduate and graduate training). To facilitate adaptation of the database by other researches for other ecosystems, the code and technical details on how to customize this database and apply it to other ecosystems are freely available and located at the following link (https://github.com/kelpforest-cameo/databaseui). PMID:25343723

An online database for informing ecological network models: http://kelpforest.ucsc.edu

USGS Publications Warehouse

Beas-Luna, Rodrigo; Tinker, M. Tim; Novak, Mark; Carr, Mark H.; Black, August; Caselle, Jennifer E.; Hoban, Michael; Malone, Dan; Iles, Alison C.

2014-01-01

Ecological network models and analyses are recognized as valuable tools for understanding the dynamics and resiliency of ecosystems, and for informing ecosystem-based approaches to management. However, few databases exist that can provide the life history, demographic and species interaction information necessary to parameterize ecological network models. Faced with the difficulty of synthesizing the information required to construct models for kelp forest ecosystems along the West Coast of North America, we developed an online database (http://kelpforest.ucsc.edu/) to facilitate the collation and dissemination of such information. Many of the database's attributes are novel yet the structure is applicable and adaptable to other ecosystem modeling efforts. Information for each taxonomic unit includes stage-specific life history, demography, and body-size allometries. Species interactions include trophic, competitive, facilitative, and parasitic forms. Each data entry is temporally and spatially explicit. The online data entry interface allows researchers anywhere to contribute and access information. Quality control is facilitated by attributing each entry to unique contributor identities and source citations. The database has proven useful as an archive of species and ecosystem-specific information in the development of several ecological network models, for informing management actions, and for education purposes (e.g., undergraduate and graduate training). To facilitate adaptation of the database by other researches for other ecosystems, the code and technical details on how to customize this database and apply it to other ecosystems are freely available and located at the following link (https://github.com/kelpforest-cameo/data​baseui).

The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts

PubMed Central

Hudson, Lawrence N; Newbold, Tim; Contu, Sara; Hill, Samantha L L; Lysenko, Igor; De Palma, Adriana; Phillips, Helen R P; Senior, Rebecca A; Bennett, Dominic J; Booth, Hollie; Choimes, Argyrios; Correia, David L P; Day, Julie; Echeverría-Londoño, Susy; Garon, Morgan; Harrison, Michelle L K; Ingram, Daniel J; Jung, Martin; Kemp, Victoria; Kirkpatrick, Lucinda; Martin, Callum D; Pan, Yuan; White, Hannah J; Aben, Job; Abrahamczyk, Stefan; Adum, Gilbert B; Aguilar-Barquero, Virginia; Aizen, Marcelo A; Ancrenaz, Marc; Arbeláez-Cortés, Enrique; Armbrecht, Inge; Azhar, Badrul; Azpiroz, Adrián B; Baeten, Lander; Báldi, András; Banks, John E; Barlow, Jos; Batáry, Péter; Bates, Adam J; Bayne, Erin M; Beja, Pedro; Berg, Åke; Berry, Nicholas J; Bicknell, Jake E; Bihn, Jochen H; Böhning-Gaese, Katrin; Boekhout, Teun; Boutin, Céline; Bouyer, Jérémy; Brearley, Francis Q; Brito, Isabel; Brunet, Jörg; Buczkowski, Grzegorz; Buscardo, Erika; Cabra-García, Jimmy; Calviño-Cancela, María; Cameron, Sydney A; Cancello, Eliana M; Carrijo, Tiago F; Carvalho, Anelena L; Castro, Helena; Castro-Luna, Alejandro A; Cerda, Rolando; Cerezo, Alexis; Chauvat, Matthieu; Clarke, Frank M; Cleary, Daniel F R; Connop, Stuart P; D'Aniello, Biagio; da Silva, Pedro Giovâni; Darvill, Ben; Dauber, Jens; Dejean, Alain; Diekötter, Tim; Dominguez-Haydar, Yamileth; Dormann, Carsten F; Dumont, Bertrand; Dures, Simon G; Dynesius, Mats; Edenius, Lars; Elek, Zoltán; Entling, Martin H; Farwig, Nina; Fayle, Tom M; Felicioli, Antonio; Felton, Annika M; Ficetola, Gentile F; Filgueiras, Bruno K C; Fonte, Steven J; Fraser, Lauchlan H; Fukuda, Daisuke; Furlani, Dario; Ganzhorn, Jörg U; Garden, Jenni G; Gheler-Costa, Carla; Giordani, Paolo; Giordano, Simonetta; Gottschalk, Marco S; Goulson, Dave; Gove, Aaron D; Grogan, James; Hanley, Mick E; Hanson, Thor; Hashim, Nor R; Hawes, Joseph E; Hébert, Christian; Helden, Alvin J; Henden, John-André; Hernández, Lionel; Herzog, Felix; Higuera-Diaz, Diego; Hilje, Branko; Horgan, Finbarr G; Horváth, Roland; Hylander, Kristoffer; Isaacs-Cubides, Paola; Ishitani, Masahiro; Jacobs, Carmen T; Jaramillo, Víctor J; Jauker, Birgit; Jonsell, Mats; Jung, Thomas S; Kapoor, Vena; Kati, Vassiliki; Katovai, Eric; Kessler, Michael; Knop, Eva; Kolb, Annette; Kőrösi, Ádám; Lachat, Thibault; Lantschner, Victoria; Le Féon, Violette; LeBuhn, Gretchen; Légaré, Jean-Philippe; Letcher, Susan G; Littlewood, Nick A; López-Quintero, Carlos A; Louhaichi, Mounir; Lövei, Gabor L; Lucas-Borja, Manuel Esteban; Luja, Victor H; Maeto, Kaoru; Magura, Tibor; Mallari, Neil Aldrin; Marin-Spiotta, Erika; Marshall, E J P; Martínez, Eliana; Mayfield, Margaret M; Mikusinski, Grzegorz; Milder, Jeffrey C; Miller, James R; Morales, Carolina L; Muchane, Mary N; Muchane, Muchai; Naidoo, Robin; Nakamura, Akihiro; Naoe, Shoji; Nates-Parra, Guiomar; Navarrete Gutierrez, Dario A; Neuschulz, Eike L; Noreika, Norbertas; Norfolk, Olivia; Noriega, Jorge Ari; Nöske, Nicole M; O'Dea, Niall; Oduro, William; Ofori-Boateng, Caleb; Oke, Chris O; Osgathorpe, Lynne M; Paritsis, Juan; Parra-H, Alejandro; Pelegrin, Nicolás; Peres, Carlos A; Persson, Anna S; Petanidou, Theodora; Phalan, Ben; Philips, T Keith; Poveda, Katja; Power, Eileen F; Presley, Steven J; Proença, Vânia; Quaranta, Marino; Quintero, Carolina; Redpath-Downing, Nicola A; Reid, J Leighton; Reis, Yana T; Ribeiro, Danilo B; Richardson, Barbara A; Richardson, Michael J; Robles, Carolina A; Römbke, Jörg; Romero-Duque, Luz Piedad; Rosselli, Loreta; Rossiter, Stephen J; Roulston, T'ai H; Rousseau, Laurent; Sadler, Jonathan P; Sáfián, Szabolcs; Saldaña-Vázquez, Romeo A; Samnegård, Ulrika; Schüepp, Christof; Schweiger, Oliver; Sedlock, Jodi L; Shahabuddin, Ghazala; Sheil, Douglas; Silva, Fernando A B; Slade, Eleanor M; Smith-Pardo, Allan H; Sodhi, Navjot S; Somarriba, Eduardo J; Sosa, Ramón A; Stout, Jane C; Struebig, Matthew J; Sung, Yik-Hei; Threlfall, Caragh G; Tonietto, Rebecca; Tóthmérész, Béla; Tscharntke, Teja; Turner, Edgar C; Tylianakis, Jason M; Vanbergen, Adam J; Vassilev, Kiril; Verboven, Hans A F; Vergara, Carlos H; Vergara, Pablo M; Verhulst, Jort; Walker, Tony R; Wang, Yanping; Watling, James I; Wells, Konstans; Williams, Christopher D; Willig, Michael R; Woinarski, John C Z; Wolf, Jan H D; Woodcock, Ben A; Yu, Douglas W; Zaitsev, Andrey S; Collen, Ben; Ewers, Rob M; Mace, Georgina M; Purves, Drew W; Scharlemann, Jörn P W; Purvis, Andy

2014-01-01

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project – and avert – future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups – including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems – http://www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015. PMID:25558364

The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts.

PubMed

Hudson, Lawrence N; Newbold, Tim; Contu, Sara; Hill, Samantha L L; Lysenko, Igor; De Palma, Adriana; Phillips, Helen R P; Senior, Rebecca A; Bennett, Dominic J; Booth, Hollie; Choimes, Argyrios; Correia, David L P; Day, Julie; Echeverría-Londoño, Susy; Garon, Morgan; Harrison, Michelle L K; Ingram, Daniel J; Jung, Martin; Kemp, Victoria; Kirkpatrick, Lucinda; Martin, Callum D; Pan, Yuan; White, Hannah J; Aben, Job; Abrahamczyk, Stefan; Adum, Gilbert B; Aguilar-Barquero, Virginia; Aizen, Marcelo A; Ancrenaz, Marc; Arbeláez-Cortés, Enrique; Armbrecht, Inge; Azhar, Badrul; Azpiroz, Adrián B; Baeten, Lander; Báldi, András; Banks, John E; Barlow, Jos; Batáry, Péter; Bates, Adam J; Bayne, Erin M; Beja, Pedro; Berg, Åke; Berry, Nicholas J; Bicknell, Jake E; Bihn, Jochen H; Böhning-Gaese, Katrin; Boekhout, Teun; Boutin, Céline; Bouyer, Jérémy; Brearley, Francis Q; Brito, Isabel; Brunet, Jörg; Buczkowski, Grzegorz; Buscardo, Erika; Cabra-García, Jimmy; Calviño-Cancela, María; Cameron, Sydney A; Cancello, Eliana M; Carrijo, Tiago F; Carvalho, Anelena L; Castro, Helena; Castro-Luna, Alejandro A; Cerda, Rolando; Cerezo, Alexis; Chauvat, Matthieu; Clarke, Frank M; Cleary, Daniel F R; Connop, Stuart P; D'Aniello, Biagio; da Silva, Pedro Giovâni; Darvill, Ben; Dauber, Jens; Dejean, Alain; Diekötter, Tim; Dominguez-Haydar, Yamileth; Dormann, Carsten F; Dumont, Bertrand; Dures, Simon G; Dynesius, Mats; Edenius, Lars; Elek, Zoltán; Entling, Martin H; Farwig, Nina; Fayle, Tom M; Felicioli, Antonio; Felton, Annika M; Ficetola, Gentile F; Filgueiras, Bruno K C; Fonte, Steven J; Fraser, Lauchlan H; Fukuda, Daisuke; Furlani, Dario; Ganzhorn, Jörg U; Garden, Jenni G; Gheler-Costa, Carla; Giordani, Paolo; Giordano, Simonetta; Gottschalk, Marco S; Goulson, Dave; Gove, Aaron D; Grogan, James; Hanley, Mick E; Hanson, Thor; Hashim, Nor R; Hawes, Joseph E; Hébert, Christian; Helden, Alvin J; Henden, John-André; Hernández, Lionel; Herzog, Felix; Higuera-Diaz, Diego; Hilje, Branko; Horgan, Finbarr G; Horváth, Roland; Hylander, Kristoffer; Isaacs-Cubides, Paola; Ishitani, Masahiro; Jacobs, Carmen T; Jaramillo, Víctor J; Jauker, Birgit; Jonsell, Mats; Jung, Thomas S; Kapoor, Vena; Kati, Vassiliki; Katovai, Eric; Kessler, Michael; Knop, Eva; Kolb, Annette; Kőrösi, Ádám; Lachat, Thibault; Lantschner, Victoria; Le Féon, Violette; LeBuhn, Gretchen; Légaré, Jean-Philippe; Letcher, Susan G; Littlewood, Nick A; López-Quintero, Carlos A; Louhaichi, Mounir; Lövei, Gabor L; Lucas-Borja, Manuel Esteban; Luja, Victor H; Maeto, Kaoru; Magura, Tibor; Mallari, Neil Aldrin; Marin-Spiotta, Erika; Marshall, E J P; Martínez, Eliana; Mayfield, Margaret M; Mikusinski, Grzegorz; Milder, Jeffrey C; Miller, James R; Morales, Carolina L; Muchane, Mary N; Muchane, Muchai; Naidoo, Robin; Nakamura, Akihiro; Naoe, Shoji; Nates-Parra, Guiomar; Navarrete Gutierrez, Dario A; Neuschulz, Eike L; Noreika, Norbertas; Norfolk, Olivia; Noriega, Jorge Ari; Nöske, Nicole M; O'Dea, Niall; Oduro, William; Ofori-Boateng, Caleb; Oke, Chris O; Osgathorpe, Lynne M; Paritsis, Juan; Parra-H, Alejandro; Pelegrin, Nicolás; Peres, Carlos A; Persson, Anna S; Petanidou, Theodora; Phalan, Ben; Philips, T Keith; Poveda, Katja; Power, Eileen F; Presley, Steven J; Proença, Vânia; Quaranta, Marino; Quintero, Carolina; Redpath-Downing, Nicola A; Reid, J Leighton; Reis, Yana T; Ribeiro, Danilo B; Richardson, Barbara A; Richardson, Michael J; Robles, Carolina A; Römbke, Jörg; Romero-Duque, Luz Piedad; Rosselli, Loreta; Rossiter, Stephen J; Roulston, T'ai H; Rousseau, Laurent; Sadler, Jonathan P; Sáfián, Szabolcs; Saldaña-Vázquez, Romeo A; Samnegård, Ulrika; Schüepp, Christof; Schweiger, Oliver; Sedlock, Jodi L; Shahabuddin, Ghazala; Sheil, Douglas; Silva, Fernando A B; Slade, Eleanor M; Smith-Pardo, Allan H; Sodhi, Navjot S; Somarriba, Eduardo J; Sosa, Ramón A; Stout, Jane C; Struebig, Matthew J; Sung, Yik-Hei; Threlfall, Caragh G; Tonietto, Rebecca; Tóthmérész, Béla; Tscharntke, Teja; Turner, Edgar C; Tylianakis, Jason M; Vanbergen, Adam J; Vassilev, Kiril; Verboven, Hans A F; Vergara, Carlos H; Vergara, Pablo M; Verhulst, Jort; Walker, Tony R; Wang, Yanping; Watling, James I; Wells, Konstans; Williams, Christopher D; Willig, Michael R; Woinarski, John C Z; Wolf, Jan H D; Woodcock, Ben A; Yu, Douglas W; Zaitsev, Andrey S; Collen, Ben; Ewers, Rob M; Mace, Georgina M; Purves, Drew W; Scharlemann, Jörn P W; Purvis, Andy

2014-12-01

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - http://www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.

3D landmarking in multiexpression face analysis: a preliminary study on eyebrows and mouth.

PubMed

Vezzetti, Enrico; Marcolin, Federica

2014-08-01

The application of three-dimensional (3D) facial analysis and landmarking algorithms in the field of maxillofacial surgery and other medical applications, such as diagnosis of diseases by facial anomalies and dysmorphism, has gained a lot of attention. In a previous work, we used a geometric approach to automatically extract some 3D facial key points, called landmarks, working in the differential geometry domain, through the coefficients of fundamental forms, principal curvatures, mean and Gaussian curvatures, derivatives, shape and curvedness indexes, and tangent map. In this article we describe the extension of our previous landmarking algorithm, which is now able to extract eyebrows and mouth landmarks using both old and new meshes. The algorithm has been tested on our face database and on the public Bosphorus 3D database. We chose to work on the mouth and eyebrows as a separate study because of the role that these parts play in facial expressions. In fact, since the mouth is the part of the face that moves the most and affects mainly facial expressions, extracting mouth landmarks from various facial poses means that the newly developed algorithm is pose-independent. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each submission to which Evidence-Based Medicine rankings are applicable. This excludes Review Articles, Book Reviews, and manuscripts that concern Basic Science, Animal Studies, Cadaver Studies, and Experimental Studies. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors http://www.springer.com/00266 .

Automatic pattern localization across layout database and photolithography mask

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morey, Philippe; Brault, Frederic; Beisser, Eric; Ache, Oliver; Röth, Klaus-Dieter

2016-03-01

Advanced process photolithography masks require more and more controls for registration versus design and critical dimension uniformity (CDU). The distribution of the measurement points should be distributed all over the whole mask and may be denser in areas critical to wafer overlay requirements. This means that some, if not many, of theses controls should be made inside the customer die and may use non-dedicated patterns. It is then mandatory to access the original layout database to select patterns for the metrology process. Finding hundreds of relevant patterns in a database containing billions of polygons may be possible, but in addition, it is mandatory to create the complete metrology job fast and reliable. Combining, on one hand, a software expertise in mask databases processing and, on the other hand, advanced skills in control and registration equipment, we have developed a Mask Dataprep Station able to select an appropriate number of measurement targets and their positions in a huge database and automatically create measurement jobs on the corresponding area on the mask for the registration metrology system. In addition, the required design clips are generated from the database in order to perform the rendering procedure on the metrology system. This new methodology has been validated on real production line for the most advanced process. This paper presents the main challenges that we have faced, as well as some results on the global performances.

Semantic-JSON: a lightweight web service interface for Semantic Web contents integrating multiple life science databases

PubMed Central

Kobayashi, Norio; Ishii, Manabu; Takahashi, Satoshi; Mochizuki, Yoshiki; Matsushima, Akihiro; Toyoda, Tetsuro

2011-01-01

Global cloud frameworks for bioinformatics research databases become huge and heterogeneous; solutions face various diametric challenges comprising cross-integration, retrieval, security and openness. To address this, as of March 2011 organizations including RIKEN published 192 mammalian, plant and protein life sciences databases having 8.2 million data records, integrated as Linked Open or Private Data (LOD/LPD) using SciNetS.org, the Scientists' Networking System. The huge quantity of linked data this database integration framework covers is based on the Semantic Web, where researchers collaborate by managing metadata across public and private databases in a secured data space. This outstripped the data query capacity of existing interface tools like SPARQL. Actual research also requires specialized tools for data analysis using raw original data. To solve these challenges, in December 2009 we developed the lightweight Semantic-JSON interface to access each fragment of linked and raw life sciences data securely under the control of programming languages popularly used by bioinformaticians such as Perl and Ruby. Researchers successfully used the interface across 28 million semantic relationships for biological applications including genome design, sequence processing, inference over phenotype databases, full-text search indexing and human-readable contents like ontology and LOD tree viewers. Semantic-JSON services of SciNetS.org are provided at http://semanticjson.org. PMID:21632604

A meta-synthesis on parenting a child with autism

PubMed Central

Ooi, Khim Lynn; Ong, Yin Sin; Jacob, Sabrina Anne; Khan, Tahir Mehmood

2016-01-01

Background The lifelong nature of autism in a child has deep implications on parents as they are faced with a range of challenges and emotional consequences in raising the child. The aim of this meta-synthesis was to explore the perspectives of parents in raising a child with autism in the childhood period to gain an insight of the adaptations and beliefs of parents toward autism, their family and social experiences, as well as their perceptions toward health and educational services. Methods A systematic search of six databases (PubMed, EMBASE, PsychInfo, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects [DARE]) was conducted from inception up to September 30, 2014. Full-text English articles of qualitative studies describing parents’ perceptions relating to the care of children younger than 12 years of age and diagnosed with a sole disorder of autism were included. Results A total of 50 eligible articles were appraised and analyzed, identifying four core themes encompassing all thoughts, emotions, and experiences commonly expressed by parents: 1) The Parent, 2) Impact on the Family, 3) Social Impact, and 4) Health and Educational Services. Findings revealed that parents who have a child with autism experienced multiple challenges in different aspects of care, impacting on parents’ stress and adaptation. Conclusion Health care provision should be family centered, addressing and supporting the needs of the whole family and not just the affected child, to ensure the family’s well-being and quality of life in the face of a diagnosis of autism. PMID:27103804

Method to assess the temporal persistence of potential biometric features: Application to oculomotor, gait, face and brain structure databases

PubMed Central

Nixon, Mark S.; Komogortsev, Oleg V.

2017-01-01

We introduce the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) to the biometric community as an index of the temporal persistence, or stability, of a single biometric feature. It requires, as input, a feature on an interval or ratio scale, and which is reasonably normally distributed, and it can only be calculated if each subject is tested on 2 or more occasions. For a biometric system, with multiple features available for selection, the ICC can be used to measure the relative stability of each feature. We show, for 14 distinct data sets (1 synthetic, 8 eye-movement-related, 2 gait-related, and 2 face-recognition-related, and one brain-structure-related), that selecting the most stable features, based on the ICC, resulted in the best biometric performance generally. Analyses based on using only the most stable features produced superior Rank-1-Identification Rate (Rank-1-IR) performance in 12 of 14 databases (p = 0.0065, one-tailed), when compared to other sets of features, including the set of all features. For Equal Error Rate (EER), using a subset of only high-ICC features also produced superior performance in 12 of 14 databases (p = 0. 0065, one-tailed). In general, then, for our databases, prescreening potential biometric features, and choosing only highly reliable features yields better performance than choosing lower ICC features or than choosing all features combined. We also determined that, as the ICC of a group of features increases, the median of the genuine similarity score distribution increases and the spread of this distribution decreases. There was no statistically significant similar relationships for the impostor distributions. We believe that the ICC will find many uses in biometric research. In case of the eye movement-driven biometrics, the use of reliable features, as measured by ICC, allowed to us achieve the authentication performance with EER = 2.01%, which was not possible before. PMID:28575030

Method to assess the temporal persistence of potential biometric features: Application to oculomotor, gait, face and brain structure databases.

PubMed

Friedman, Lee; Nixon, Mark S; Komogortsev, Oleg V

2017-01-01

We introduce the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) to the biometric community as an index of the temporal persistence, or stability, of a single biometric feature. It requires, as input, a feature on an interval or ratio scale, and which is reasonably normally distributed, and it can only be calculated if each subject is tested on 2 or more occasions. For a biometric system, with multiple features available for selection, the ICC can be used to measure the relative stability of each feature. We show, for 14 distinct data sets (1 synthetic, 8 eye-movement-related, 2 gait-related, and 2 face-recognition-related, and one brain-structure-related), that selecting the most stable features, based on the ICC, resulted in the best biometric performance generally. Analyses based on using only the most stable features produced superior Rank-1-Identification Rate (Rank-1-IR) performance in 12 of 14 databases (p = 0.0065, one-tailed), when compared to other sets of features, including the set of all features. For Equal Error Rate (EER), using a subset of only high-ICC features also produced superior performance in 12 of 14 databases (p = 0. 0065, one-tailed). In general, then, for our databases, prescreening potential biometric features, and choosing only highly reliable features yields better performance than choosing lower ICC features or than choosing all features combined. We also determined that, as the ICC of a group of features increases, the median of the genuine similarity score distribution increases and the spread of this distribution decreases. There was no statistically significant similar relationships for the impostor distributions. We believe that the ICC will find many uses in biometric research. In case of the eye movement-driven biometrics, the use of reliable features, as measured by ICC, allowed to us achieve the authentication performance with EER = 2.01%, which was not possible before.

Active Authentication: Beyond Passwords

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-11-18

103m 26-Jul-07 208k 27-Dec-10 4.9m Source: www.privacyrights.org/data-breach Hackers broke into a Gannett Co database containing personal...Pattern • Knuckle Pattern • Lip Pattern • Nail bed Pattern • Nose Pattern • Oto-acoustic Emissions • Palmprint • Retina Pattern • Skin... Palmprint Knuckle Pattern Pulse Electrocardiogram Electroencephalogram Face Geometry Lip Pattern Blue may be suitable for continuous monitoring

Air Land Sea Bulletin. Issue No. 2013-1

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-01-01

face, finger- print, iris , DNA, and palm print. Biometric capabilities may achieve enabling effects such as the ability to separate, identify...to obtain forensic-quality fingerprints, latent fingerprints, iris images, photos, and other biometric data. Figure 1. SEEK II ALSB 2013-1 12...logical and biographical contextual data of POIs and matches fingerprints and iris images against an internal biomet- rics enrollment database. The

Data mining and frequency analysis for licorice as a "Two-Face" herb in Chinese Formulae based on Chinese Formulae Database.

PubMed

Guo, Jianming; Shang, Erxin; Zhao, Jinlong; Fan, Xinsheng; Duan, Jinao; Qian, Dawei; Tao, Weiwei; Tang, Yuping

2014-09-25

Liquorice is the root of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. or Glycyrrhiza glabra L., Leguminosae. Licorice is described as 'National Venerable Master' in Chinese medicine and plays paradoxical roles, i.e. detoxification/strengthen efficacy and inducing/enhancing toxicity. Therefore, licorice was called "Two-Face" herb in this paper. The aim of this study is to discuss the paradoxical roles and the perspective usage of this "Two-Face" herb using data mining and frequency analysis. More than 96,000 prescriptions from Chinese Formulae Database were selected. The frequency and the prescription patterns were analyzed using Microsoft SQL Server 2000. Data mining methods (frequent itemsets) were used to analyze the regular patterns and compatibility laws of the constituent herbs in the selected prescriptions. The result showed that licorice (Radix glycyrrhizae) was the most frequently used herb in Chinese Formulae Database, other frequently used herbs including Radix Angelicae Sinensis (Dang gui), Radix et rhizoma ginseng (Ren shen), etc. Toxic herbs such as Radix aconiti lateralis praeparata (Fu zi), Rhizoma pinelliae (Ban xia) and Cinnabaris (Zhu sha) are top 3 herbs that most frequently used in combination with licorice. Radix et rhizoma ginseng (Ren shen), Poria (Fu ling), Radix Angelicae Sinensis (Dang gui) are top 3 nontoxic herbs that most frequently used in combination with licorice. Moreover, Licorice was seldom used with sargassum (Hai Zao), Herba Cirsii Japonici (Da Ji), Euphorbia kansui (Gan Sui) and Flos genkwa (Yuan Hua), which proved the description of contradictory effect of Radix glycyrrhizae and these herbs as recorded in Chinese medicine theory. This study showed the principle pattern of Chinese herbal drugs used in combination with licorice or not. The principle patterns and special compatibility laws reported here could be useful and instructive for scientific usage of licorice in clinic application. Further pharmacological and chemical researches are needed to evaluate the efficacy and the combination pattern of these Chinese herbs. The mechanism of the combination pattern of these prescriptions should also be investigated whether additive, synergistic or antagonistic effect exist using in vitro or in vivo models. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Learning toward practical head pose estimation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sang, Gaoli; He, Feixiang; Zhu, Rong; Xuan, Shibin

2017-08-01

Head pose is useful information for many face-related tasks, such as face recognition, behavior analysis, human-computer interfaces, etc. Existing head pose estimation methods usually assume that the face images have been well aligned or that sufficient and precise training data are available. In practical applications, however, these assumptions are very likely to be invalid. This paper first investigates the impact of the failure of these assumptions, i.e., misalignment of face images, uncertainty and undersampling of training data, on head pose estimation accuracy of state-of-the-art methods. A learning-based approach is then designed to enhance the robustness of head pose estimation to these factors. To cope with misalignment, instead of using hand-crafted features, it seeks suitable features by learning from a set of training data with a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN), such that the training data can be best classified into the correct head pose categories. To handle uncertainty and undersampling, it employs multivariate labeling distributions (MLDs) with dense sampling intervals to represent the head pose attributes of face images. The correlation between the features and the dense MLD representations of face images is approximated by a maximum entropy model, whose parameters are optimized on the given training data. To estimate the head pose of a face image, its MLD representation is first computed according to the model based on the features extracted from the image by the trained DCNN, and its head pose is then assumed to be the one corresponding to the peak in its MLD. Evaluation experiments on the Pointing'04, FacePix, Multi-PIE, and CASIA-PEAL databases prove the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.

The New Face of FLUXNET: Redesigning the Web Site and Data Organization to Enhance the User Experience

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shanafield, Harold; Shamblin, Stephanie; Devarakonda, Ranjeet; McMurry, Ben; Walker Beaty, Tammy; Wilson, Bruce; Cook, Robert B.

2011-02-01

The FLUXNET global network of regional flux tower networks serves to coordinate the regional and global analysis of eddy covariance based CO2, water vapor and energy flux measurements taken at more than 500 sites in continuous long-term operation. The FLUXNET database presently contains information about the location, characteristics, and data availability of each of these sites. To facilitate the coordination and distribution of this information, we redesigned the underlying database and associated web site. We chose the PostgreSQL database as a platform based on its performance, stability and GIS extensions. PostreSQL allows us to enhance our search and presentation capabilities, which will in turn provide increased functionality for users seeking to understand the FLUXNET data. The redesigned database will also significantly decrease the burden of managing such highly varied data. The website is being developed using the Drupal content management system, which provides many community-developed modules and a robust framework for custom feature development. In parallel, we are working with the regional networks to ensure that the information in the FLUXNET database is identical to that in the regional networks. Going forward, we also plan to develop an automated way to synchronize information with the regional networks.

Calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase mediates the intracellular signalling pathways of cardiac apoptosis in mice with impaired glucose tolerance.

PubMed

Federico, Marilen; Portiansky, Enrique L; Sommese, Leandro; Alvarado, Francisco J; Blanco, Paula G; Zanuzzi, Carolina N; Dedman, John; Kaetzel, Marcia; Wehrens, Xander H T; Mattiazzi, Alicia; Palomeque, Julieta

2017-06-15

Spontaneous sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca 2+ release events increased in fructose-rich diet mouse (FRD) myocytes vs. control diet (CD) mice, in the absence of significant changes in SR Ca 2+ load. In HEK293 cells, hyperglycaemia significantly enhanced [ 3 H]ryanodine binding and Ca 2+ /calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) phosphorylation of RyR2-S2814 residue vs. normoglycaemia. These increases were prevented by CaMKII inhibition. FRD significantly augmented cardiac apoptosis in WT vs. CD-WT mice, which was prevented by co-treatment with the reactive oxygen species scavenger Tempol. Oxidative stress was also increased in FRD-SR-autocamide inhibitory peptide (AIP) mice, expressing the SR-targeted CaMKII inhibitor AIP, without any significant enhancement of apoptosis vs. CD-SR-AIP mice. FRD produced mitochondrial swelling and membrane depolarization in FRD-WT mice but not in FRD-S2814A mice, in which the CaMKII site on ryanodine receptor 2 was ablated. FRD decreased mitochondrial area, mean Feret diameter and the mean distance between SR and the outer mitochondrial membrane vs. CD hearts. This remodelling was prevented in AC3I mice, with cardiac-targeted CaMKII inhibition. The impact of cardiac apoptosis in pre-diabetic stages of diabetic cardiomyopathy is unknown. We show that myocytes from fructose-rich diet (FRD) animals exhibit arrhythmias produced by exacerbated Ca 2+ /calmodulin-protein kinase (CaMKII) activity, ryanodine receptor 2 (RyR2) phosphorylation and sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca 2+ leak. We tested the hypothesis that this mechanism also underlies cardiac apoptosis in pre-diabetes. We generated a pre-diabetic model in FRD mice. FRD mice showed an increase in oxidative stress, hypertrophy and systolic dysfunction. FRD myocytes exhibited enhanced SR Ca 2+ spontaneous events in the absence of SR Ca 2+ load alterations vs. control-diet (CD) myocytes. In HEK293 cells, hyperglycaemia significantly enhanced [ 3 H]ryanodine binding and CaMKII phosphorylation of RyR2-S2814 residue vs. normoglycaemia. CaMKII inhibition prevented hyperglycaemia-induced alterations. FRD also evoked cardiac apoptosis in WT mice vs. CD-WT mice. Co-treatment with the reactive oxygen species scavenger Tempol prevented FRD-induced apoptosis in WT mice. In contrast, FRD enhanced oxidative stress but not apoptosis in FRD-SR-AIP mice, in which a CaMKII inhibitor is targeted to the SR. FRD produced mitochondrial membrane depolarization in WT mice but not in S2814A mice, in which the CaMKII phosphorylation site on RyR2 was ablated. Furthermore, FRD decreased mitochondrial area, mean Feret diameter and mean SR-mitochondrial distance vs. CD-WT hearts. This remodelling was prevented in AC3I mice, with cardiac-targeted CaMKII inhibition. CaMKII phosphorylation of RyR2, SR Ca 2+ leak and mitochondrial membrane depolarization are critically involved in the apoptotic pathway of the pre-diabetic heart. The FRD-induced decrease in SR-mitochondrial distance is likely to additionally favour Ca 2+ transit between the two organelles. © 2017 The Authors. The Journal of Physiology © 2017 The Physiological Society.

Music to my ears: Age-related decline in musical and facial emotion recognition.

PubMed

Sutcliffe, Ryan; Rendell, Peter G; Henry, Julie D; Bailey, Phoebe E; Ruffman, Ted

2017-12-01

We investigated young-old differences in emotion recognition using music and face stimuli and tested explanatory hypotheses regarding older adults' typically worse emotion recognition. In Experiment 1, young and older adults labeled emotions in an established set of faces, and in classical piano stimuli that we pilot-tested on other young and older adults. Older adults were worse at detecting anger, sadness, fear, and happiness in music. Performance on the music and face emotion tasks was not correlated for either age group. Because musical expressions of fear were not equated for age groups in the pilot study of Experiment 1, we conducted a second experiment in which we created a novel set of music stimuli that included more accessible musical styles, and which we again pilot-tested on young and older adults. In this pilot study, all musical emotions were identified similarly by young and older adults. In Experiment 2, participants also made age estimations in another set of faces to examine whether potential relations between the face and music emotion tasks would be shared with the age estimation task. Older adults did worse in each of the tasks, and had specific difficulty recognizing happy, sad, peaceful, angry, and fearful music clips. Older adults' difficulties in each of the 3 tasks-music emotion, face emotion, and face age-were not correlated with each other. General cognitive decline did not appear to explain our results as increasing age predicted emotion performance even after fluid IQ was controlled for within the older adult group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

HappyFace as a generic monitoring tool for HEP experiments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kawamura, Gen; Magradze, Erekle; Musheghyan, Haykuhi; Quadt, Arnulf; Rzehorz, Gerhard

2015-12-01

The importance of monitoring on HEP grid computing systems is growing due to a significant increase in their complexity. Computer scientists and administrators have been studying and building effective ways to gather information on and clarify a status of each local grid infrastructure. The HappyFace project aims at making the above-mentioned workflow possible. It aggregates, processes and stores the information and the status of different HEP monitoring resources into the common database of HappyFace. The system displays the information and the status through a single interface. However, this model of HappyFace relied on the monitoring resources which are always under development in the HEP experiments. Consequently, HappyFace needed to have direct access methods to the grid application and grid service layers in the different HEP grid systems. To cope with this issue, we use a reliable HEP software repository, the CernVM File System. We propose a new implementation and an architecture of HappyFace, the so-called grid-enabled HappyFace. It allows its basic framework to connect directly to the grid user applications and the grid collective services, without involving the monitoring resources in the HEP grid systems. This approach gives HappyFace several advantages: Portability, to provide an independent and generic monitoring system among the HEP grid systems. Eunctionality, to allow users to perform various diagnostic tools in the individual HEP grid systems and grid sites. Elexibility, to make HappyFace beneficial and open for the various distributed grid computing environments. Different grid-enabled modules, to connect to the Ganga job monitoring system and to check the performance of grid transfers among the grid sites, have been implemented. The new HappyFace system has been successfully integrated and now it displays the information and the status of both the monitoring resources and the direct access to the grid user applications and the grid collective services.

Face recognition using 3D facial shape and color map information: comparison and combination

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Godil, Afzal; Ressler, Sandy; Grother, Patrick

2004-08-01

In this paper, we investigate the use of 3D surface geometry for face recognition and compare it to one based on color map information. The 3D surface and color map data are from the CAESAR anthropometric database. We find that the recognition performance is not very different between 3D surface and color map information using a principal component analysis algorithm. We also discuss the different techniques for the combination of the 3D surface and color map information for multi-modal recognition by using different fusion approaches and show that there is significant improvement in results. The effectiveness of various techniques is compared and evaluated on a dataset with 200 subjects in two different positions.

From Pixels to Response Maps: Discriminative Image Filtering for Face Alignment in the Wild.

PubMed

Asthana, Akshay; Zafeiriou, Stefanos; Tzimiropoulos, Georgios; Cheng, Shiyang; Pantic, Maja

2015-06-01

We propose a face alignment framework that relies on the texture model generated by the responses of discriminatively trained part-based filters. Unlike standard texture models built from pixel intensities or responses generated by generic filters (e.g. Gabor), our framework has two important advantages. First, by virtue of discriminative training, invariance to external variations (like identity, pose, illumination and expression) is achieved. Second, we show that the responses generated by discriminatively trained filters (or patch-experts) are sparse and can be modeled using a very small number of parameters. As a result, the optimization methods based on the proposed texture model can better cope with unseen variations. We illustrate this point by formulating both part-based and holistic approaches for generic face alignment and show that our framework outperforms the state-of-the-art on multiple "wild" databases. The code and dataset annotations are available for research purposes from http://ibug.doc.ic.ac.uk/resources.

Interfering effects of retrieval in learning new information.

PubMed

Finn, Bridgid; Roediger, Henry L

2013-11-01

In 7 experiments, we explored the role of retrieval in associative updating, that is, in incorporating new information into an associative memory. We tested the hypothesis that retrieval would facilitate incorporating a new contextual detail into a learned association. Participants learned 3 pieces of information-a person's face, name, and profession (in Experiments 1-5). In the 1st phase, participants in all conditions learned faces and names. In the 2nd phase, participants either restudied the face-name pair (the restudy condition) or were given the face and asked to retrieve the name (the test condition). In the 3rd phase, professions were presented for study just after restudy or testing. Our prediction was that the new information (the profession) would be more readily learned following retrieval of the face-name association compared to restudy of the face-name association. However, we found that the act of retrieval generally undermined acquisition of new associations rather than facilitating them. This detrimental effect emerged on both immediate and delayed tests. Further, the effect was not due to selective attention to feedback because we found impairment whether or not feedback was provided after the Phase 2 test. The data are novel in showing that the act of retrieving information can inhibit the ability to learn new information shortly thereafter. The results are difficult to accommodate within current theories that mostly emphasize benefits of retrieval for learning. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Judgments of facial attractiveness as a combination of facial parts information over time: Social and aesthetic factors.

PubMed

Saegusa, Chihiro; Watanabe, Katsumi

2016-02-01

Facial attractiveness can be judged on the basis of visual information acquired in a very short duration, but the absolute level of attractiveness changes depending on the duration of the observation. However, how information from individual facial parts contributes to the judgment of whole-face attractiveness is unknown. In the current study, we examined how contributions of facial parts to the judgment of whole-face attractiveness would change over time. In separate sessions, participants evaluated the attractiveness of whole faces, as well as of the eyes, nose, and mouth after observing them for 20, 100, and 1,000 ms. Correlation and multiple regression analyses indicated that the eyes made a consistently high contribution to whole-face attractiveness, even with an observation duration of 20 ms, whereas the contribution of other facial parts increased as the observation duration grew longer. When the eyes were averted, the attractiveness ratings for the whole face were decreased marginally. In addition, the contribution advantage of the eyes at the 20-ms observation duration was diminished. We interpret these results to indicate that (a) eye gaze signals social attractiveness at the early stage (perhaps in combination with emotional expression), (b) other facial parts start contributing to the judgment of whole-face attractiveness by forming aesthetic attractiveness, and (c) there is a dynamic interplay between social and aesthetic attractiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional experiences of preservice science teachers in online learning: the formation, disruption and maintenance of social bonds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bellocchi, Alberto; Mills, Kathy A.; Ritchie, Stephen M.

2016-09-01

The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally charged experience. We attend to the formation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds experienced by online preservice science teachers as they shared their emotional online learning experiences through blogs, or e-motion diaries, in reaction to videos of face-to-face lessons. A multi-theoretic framework drawing on microsociological perspectives of emotion informed our hermeneutic interpretations of students' first-person accounts reported through an e-motion diary. These accounts were analyzed through our own database of emotion labels constructed from the synthesis of existing literature on emotion across a range of fields of inquiry. Preservice science teachers felt included in the face-to-face group as they watched videos of classroom transactions. The strength of these feelings of social solidarity were dependent on the quality of the video recording. E-motion diaries provided a resource for interactions focused on shared emotional experiences leading to formation of social bonds and the alleviation of feelings of fear, trepidation and anxiety about becoming science teachers. We offer implications to inform practitioners who wish to improve feelings of inclusion amongst their online learners in science education.

A Multi-Modal Face Recognition Method Using Complete Local Derivative Patterns and Depth Maps

PubMed Central

Yin, Shouyi; Dai, Xu; Ouyang, Peng; Liu, Leibo; Wei, Shaojun

2014-01-01

In this paper, we propose a multi-modal 2D + 3D face recognition method for a smart city application based on a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and various kinds of sensors. Depth maps are exploited for the 3D face representation. As for feature extraction, we propose a new feature called Complete Local Derivative Pattern (CLDP). It adopts the idea of layering and has four layers. In the whole system, we apply CLDP separately on Gabor features extracted from a 2D image and depth map. Then, we obtain two features: CLDP-Gabor and CLDP-Depth. The two features weighted by the corresponding coefficients are combined together in the decision level to compute the total classification distance. At last, the probe face is assigned the identity with the smallest classification distance. Extensive experiments are conducted on three different databases. The results demonstrate the robustness and superiority of the new approach. The experimental results also prove that the proposed multi-modal 2D + 3D method is superior to other multi-modal ones and CLDP performs better than other Local Binary Pattern (LBP) based features. PMID:25333290

A systematic review of the evidence for 'myths and misconceptions' in acne management: diet, face-washing and sunlight.

PubMed

Magin, Parker; Pond, Dimity; Smith, Wayne; Watson, Alan

2005-02-01

Lay perceptions that diet, hygiene and sunlight exposure are strongly associated with acne causation and exacerbation are common but at variance with the consensus of current dermatological opinion. The objective of this study was to carry out a review of the literature to assess the evidence for diet, face-washing and sunlight exposure in acne management. Original studies were identified by searches of the Medline, EMBASE, AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine), CINAHL, Cochrane, and DARE databases. Methodological information was extracted from identified articles but, given the paucity of high quality studies found, no studies were excluded from the review on methodological grounds. Given the prevalence of lay perceptions, and the confidence of dermatological opinion in rebutting these perceptions as myths and misconceptions, surprisingly little evidence exists for the efficacy or lack of efficacy of dietary factors, face-washing and sunlight exposure in the management of acne. Much of the available evidence has methodological limitations. Based on the present state of evidence, clinicians cannot be didactic in their recommendations regarding diet, hygiene and face-washing, and sunlight to patients with acne. Advice should be individualized, and both clinician and patient cognizant of its limitations.

Mapping correspondence between facial mimicry and emotion recognition in healthy subjects.

PubMed

Ponari, Marta; Conson, Massimiliano; D'Amico, Nunzia Pina; Grossi, Dario; Trojano, Luigi

2012-12-01

We aimed at verifying the hypothesis that facial mimicry is causally and selectively involved in emotion recognition. For this purpose, in Experiment 1, we explored the effect of tonic contraction of muscles in upper or lower half of participants' face on their ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. We found that the "lower" manipulation specifically impaired recognition of happiness and disgust, the "upper" manipulation impaired recognition of anger, while both manipulations affected recognition of fear; recognition of surprise and sadness were not affected by either blocking manipulations. In Experiment 2, we verified whether emotion recognition is hampered by stimuli in which an upper or lower half-face showing an emotional expression is combined with a neutral half-face. We found that the neutral lower half-face interfered with recognition of happiness and disgust, whereas the neutral upper half impaired recognition of anger; recognition of fear and sadness was impaired by both manipulations, whereas recognition of surprise was not affected by either manipulation. Taken together, the present findings support simulation models of emotion recognition and provide insight into the role of mimicry in comprehension of others' emotional facial expressions. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Log-Gabor Weber descriptor for face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Jing; Sang, Nong; Gao, Changxin

2015-09-01

The Log-Gabor transform, which is suitable for analyzing gradually changing data such as in iris and face images, has been widely used in image processing, pattern recognition, and computer vision. In most cases, only the magnitude or phase information of the Log-Gabor transform is considered. However, the complementary effect taken by combining magnitude and phase information simultaneously for an image-feature extraction problem has not been systematically explored in the existing works. We propose a local image descriptor for face recognition, called Log-Gabor Weber descriptor (LGWD). The novelty of our LGWD is twofold: (1) to fully utilize the information from the magnitude or phase feature of multiscale and orientation Log-Gabor transform, we apply the Weber local binary pattern operator to each transform response. (2) The encoded Log-Gabor magnitude and phase information are fused at the feature level by utilizing kernel canonical correlation analysis strategy, considering that feature level information fusion is effective when the modalities are correlated. Experimental results on the AR, Extended Yale B, and UMIST face databases, compared with those available from recent experiments reported in the literature, show that our descriptor yields a better performance than state-of-the art methods.

An embedded system for face classification in infrared video using sparse representation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saavedra M., Antonio; Pezoa, Jorge E.; Zarkesh-Ha, Payman; Figueroa, Miguel

2017-09-01

We propose a platform for robust face recognition in Infrared (IR) images using Compressive Sensing (CS). In line with CS theory, the classification problem is solved using a sparse representation framework, where test images are modeled by means of a linear combination of the training set. Because the training set constitutes an over-complete dictionary, we identify new images by finding their sparsest representation based on the training set, using standard l1-minimization algorithms. Unlike conventional face-recognition algorithms, we feature extraction is performed using random projections with a precomputed binary matrix, as proposed in the CS literature. This random sampling reduces the effects of noise and occlusions such as facial hair, eyeglasses, and disguises, which are notoriously challenging in IR images. Thus, the performance of our framework is robust to these noise and occlusion factors, achieving an average accuracy of approximately 90% when the UCHThermalFace database is used for training and testing purposes. We implemented our framework on a high-performance embedded digital system, where the computation of the sparse representation of IR images was performed by a dedicated hardware using a deeply pipelined architecture on an Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).

Korean association of medical journal editors at the forefront of improving the quality and indexing chances of its member journals.

PubMed

Suh, Chang-Ok; Oh, Se Jeong; Hong, Sung-Tae

2013-05-01

The article overviews some achievements and problems of Korean medical journals published in the highly competitive journal environment. Activities of Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) are viewed as instrumental for improving the quality of Korean articles, indexing large number of local journals in prestigious bibliographic databases and launching new abstract and citation tracking databases or platforms (eg KoreaMed, KoreaMed Synapse, the Western Pacific Regional Index Medicus [WPRIM]). KAMJE encourages its member journals to upgrade science editing standards and to legitimately increase citation rates, primarily by publishing more great articles with global influence. Experience gained by KAMJE and problems faced by Korean editors may have global implications.

Does language matter? A case study of epidemiological and public health journals, databases and professional education in French, German and Italian

PubMed Central

Baussano, Iacopo; Brzoska, Patrick; Fedeli, Ugo; Larouche, Claudia; Razum, Oliver; Fung, Isaac C-H

2008-01-01

Epidemiology and public health are usually context-specific. Journals published in different languages and countries play a role both as sources of data and as channels through which evidence is incorporated into local public health practice. Databases in these languages facilitate access to relevant journals, and professional education in these languages facilitates the growth of native expertise in epidemiology and public health. However, as English has become the lingua franca of scientific communication in the era of globalisation, many journals published in non-English languages face the difficult dilemma of either switching to English and competing internationally, or sticking to the native tongue and having a restricted circulation among a local readership. This paper discusses the historical development of epidemiology and the current scene of epidemiological and public health journals, databases and professional education in three Western European languages: French, German and Italian, and examines the dynamics and struggles they have today. PMID:18826570

JPRS Report, Science & Technology, China: Energy

DTIC Science & Technology

1989-06-26

certain areas such as modular HTGR technology. In nuclear power develop - ment we currently face both challenges and opportunities, both risks and...22161 JmC QUALITY EJSPSÜSED 3 Science & Technology China: Energy JPRS-CEN-89-006 CONTENTS 26 June 1989 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS No Easy Solution Seen...Be Developed [XINHUA, 16 May 89] 21 National Oil Firm Sets 5-Year Goals [CEI Database, 9 May 89] , 21 Zhongyuan Oil Field Is Among Fastest

Students views of integrating web-based learning technology into the nursing curriculum - A descriptive survey.

PubMed

Adams, Audrey; Timmins, Fiona

2006-01-01

This paper describes students' experiences of a Web-based innovation at one university. This paper reports on the first phase of this development where two Web-based modules were developed. Using a survey approach (n=44) students' access to and use of computer technology were explored. Findings revealed that students' prior use of computers and Internet technologies was higher than previously reported, although use of databases was low. Skills in this area increased during the programme, with a significant rise in database, email, search engine and word processing use. Many specific computer skills were learned during the programme, with high numbers reporting ability to deal adequately with files and folders. Overall, the experience was a positive one for students. While a sense of student isolation was not reported, as many students kept in touch by phone and class attendance continued, some individual students did appear to isolate themselves. This teaching methodology has much to offer in the provision of convenient easy to access programmes that can be easily adapted to the individual lifestyle. However, student support mechanisms need careful consideration for students who are at risk of becoming isolated. Staff also need to supported in the provision of this methodology and face-to-face contact with teachers for some part of the programme is preferable.

Broad issues to consider for library involvement in bioinformatics*

PubMed Central

Geer, Renata C.

2006-01-01

Background: The information landscape in biological and medical research has grown far beyond literature to include a wide variety of databases generated by research fields such as molecular biology and genomics. The traditional role of libraries to collect, organize, and provide access to information can expand naturally to encompass these new data domains. Methods: This paper discusses the current and potential role of libraries in bioinformatics using empirical evidence and experience from eleven years of work in user services at the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Findings: Medical and science libraries over the last decade have begun to establish educational and support programs to address the challenges users face in the effective and efficient use of a plethora of molecular biology databases and retrieval and analysis tools. As more libraries begin to establish a role in this area, the issues they face include assessment of user needs and skills, identification of existing services, development of plans for new services, recruitment and training of specialized staff, and establishment of collaborations with bioinformatics centers at their institutions. Conclusions: Increasing library involvement in bioinformatics can help address information needs of a broad range of students, researchers, and clinicians and ultimately help realize the power of bioinformatics resources in making new biological discoveries. PMID:16888662

Construction of a linked health and social care database resource--lessons on process, content and culture.

PubMed

Witham, Miles D; Frost, Helen; McMurdo, Marion; Donnan, Peter T; McGilchrist, Mark

2015-01-01

Combining routinely collected health and social care data on older people is essential to advance both service delivery and research for this client group. Little data is available on how to combine health and social care data; this article provides an overview of a successful data linkage process and discusses potential barriers to executing such projects. We successfully obtained and linked data on older people within Dundee from three sources: Dundee Social Work Department database (30,000 individuals aged 65 years and over), healthcare data held on NHS Tayside patients by the Health Informatics Centre (400,000 individuals), Dundee, and the Dundee of Medicine for the Elderly rehabilitation database (4300 individuals). Data were linked, anonymized and transferred to a Safe Haven environment to ensuring confidentiality and strict access control. Challenges were faced around workflows, culture and documentation. Exploiting the resultant data set raises further challenges centered on database documentation, understanding the way data were collected, dealing with missing data, data validity and collection at different time periods. Routinely collected health and social care data sets can be linked, but significant process barriers must be overcome to allow successful linkage and integration of data and its full exploitation.

Effects of speaker emotional facial expression and listener age on incremental sentence processing.

PubMed

Carminati, Maria Nella; Knoeferle, Pia

2013-01-01

We report two visual-world eye-tracking experiments that investigated how and with which time course emotional information from a speaker's face affects younger (N = 32, Mean age  = 23) and older (N = 32, Mean age  = 64) listeners' visual attention and language comprehension as they processed emotional sentences in a visual context. The age manipulation tested predictions by socio-emotional selectivity theory of a positivity effect in older adults. After viewing the emotional face of a speaker (happy or sad) on a computer display, participants were presented simultaneously with two pictures depicting opposite-valence events (positive and negative; IAPS database) while they listened to a sentence referring to one of the events. Participants' eye fixations on the pictures while processing the sentence were increased when the speaker's face was (vs. wasn't) emotionally congruent with the sentence. The enhancement occurred from the early stages of referential disambiguation and was modulated by age. For the older adults it was more pronounced with positive faces, and for the younger ones with negative faces. These findings demonstrate for the first time that emotional facial expressions, similarly to previously-studied speaker cues such as eye gaze and gestures, are rapidly integrated into sentence processing. They also provide new evidence for positivity effects in older adults during situated sentence processing.

Influence of Education on Disease Activity and Damage in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Data From the 1000 Canadian Faces of Lupus.

PubMed

George, Angela; Wong-Pak, Andrew; Peschken, Christine A; Silverman, Earl; Pineau, Christian; Smith, C Douglas; Arbillaga, Hector; Zummer, Michel; Bernatsky, Sasha; Hudson, Marie; Hitchon, Carol; Fortin, Paul R; Nevskaya, Tatiana; Pope, Janet E

2017-01-01

To determine whether socioeconomic status assessed by education is associated with disease activity and the risk of organ damage in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Data from the 1000 Canadian Faces of Lupus, a multicenter database of adult SLE patients, was used to compare education as either low (did not complete high school) or high (completed high school or further) for disease activity and damage. Education was also studied as a continuous variable. The relationships between education and SLE outcomes (any organ damage defined as a Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics/American College of Rheumatology Damage Index [SDI] score ≥1, serious organ damage [SDI score ≥3], and end-stage renal disease) were evaluated using logistic regression analyses adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and disease duration. A total of 562 SLE patients met inclusion criteria (mean age 47 years, 91% female, and mean disease duration of 10 years); 81% had high education. The low education group was twice as likely to be work disabled (30%; P < 0.0001); they had higher disease activity and reduced renal function. Linear regression analysis revealed that low education was significantly associated with higher disease activity at enrollment into the 1000 Canadian Faces of Lupus database, after adjustment for age (at entry and at diagnosis), race/ethnicity, and sex (B 1.255 + 0.507 [SE], β = 0.115, P = 0.014). In our adjusted logistic regression models we were unable to demonstrate significant associations between education and SLE damage. Results did not change when varying the education variable. In this cohort, low education was associated cross-sectionally with higher disease activity and work disability, but not damage. © 2016, American College of Rheumatology.

Face Search at Scale.

PubMed

Wang, Dayong; Otto, Charles; Jain, Anil K

2017-06-01

Given the prevalence of social media websites, one challenge facing computer vision researchers is to devise methods to search for persons of interest among the billions of shared photos on these websites. Despite significant progress in face recognition, searching a large collection of unconstrained face images remains a difficult problem. To address this challenge, we propose a face search system which combines a fast search procedure, coupled with a state-of-the-art commercial off the shelf (COTS) matcher, in a cascaded framework. Given a probe face, we first filter the large gallery of photos to find the top- k most similar faces using features learned by a convolutional neural network. The k retrieved candidates are re-ranked by combining similarities based on deep features and those output by the COTS matcher. We evaluate the proposed face search system on a gallery containing 80 million web-downloaded face images. Experimental results demonstrate that while the deep features perform worse than the COTS matcher on a mugshot dataset (93.7 percent versus 98.6 percent TAR@FAR of 0.01 percent), fusing the deep features with the COTS matcher improves the overall performance ( 99.5 percent TAR@FAR of 0.01 percent). This shows that the learned deep features provide complementary information over representations used in state-of-the-art face matchers. On the unconstrained face image benchmarks, the performance of the learned deep features is competitive with reported accuracies. LFW database: 98.20 percent accuracy under the standard protocol and 88.03 percent TAR@FAR of 0.1 percent under the BLUFR protocol; IJB-A benchmark: 51.0 percent TAR@FAR of 0.1 percent (verification), rank 1 retrieval of 82.2 percent (closed-set search), 61.5 percent FNIR@FAR of 1 percent (open-set search). The proposed face search system offers an excellent trade-off between accuracy and scalability on galleries with millions of images. Additionally, in a face search experiment involving photos of the Tsarnaev brothers, convicted of the Boston Marathon bombing, the proposed cascade face search system could find the younger brother's (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) photo at rank 1 in 1 second on a 5 M gallery and at rank 8 in 7 seconds on an 80 M gallery.

Neural networks related to dysfunctional face processing in autism spectrum disorder

PubMed Central

Nickl-Jockschat, Thomas; Rottschy, Claudia; Thommes, Johanna; Schneider, Frank; Laird, Angela R.; Fox, Peter T.; Eickhoff, Simon B.

2016-01-01

One of the most consistent neuropsychological findings in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a reduced interest in and impaired processing of human faces. We conducted an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis on 14 functional imaging studies on neural correlates of face processing enrolling a total of 164 ASD patients. Subsequently, normative whole-brain functional connectivity maps for the identified regions of significant convergence were computed for the task-independent (resting-state) and task-dependent (co-activations) state in healthy subjects. Quantitative functional decoding was performed by reference to the BrainMap database. Finally, we examined the overlap of the delineated network with the results of a previous meta-analysis on structural abnormalities in ASD as well as with brain regions involved in human action observation/imitation. We found a single cluster in the left fusiform gyrus showing significantly reduced activation during face processing in ASD across all studies. Both task-dependent and task-independent analyses indicated significant functional connectivity of this region with the temporo-occipital and lateral occipital cortex, the inferior frontal and parietal cortices, the thalamus and the amygdala. Quantitative reverse inference then indicated an association of these regions mainly with face processing, affective processing, and language-related tasks. Moreover, we found that the cortex in the region of right area V5 displaying structural changes in ASD patients showed consistent connectivity with the region showing aberrant responses in the context of face processing. Finally, this network was also implicated in the human action observation/imitation network. In summary, our findings thus suggest a functionally and structurally disturbed network of occipital regions related primarily to face (but potentially also language) processing, which interact with inferior frontal as well as limbic regions and may be the core of aberrant face processing and reduced interest in faces in ASD. PMID:24869925

Using the ICF to develop the capability-oriented database of persons with disabilities: a case study in Nakornpanom province, Thailand.

PubMed

Tongsiri, Sirinart; Riewpaiboon, Wachara

2013-06-01

This study aims to determine functioning information, rehabilitation needs, and environmental barriers of persons with disabilities (PWDs) using a developed ICF-based questionnaire with community survey approach in Thailand. A systematic review of the use of ICF and disability surveys from January 2000- June 2010 was undertaken. A questionnaire was then developed and tested in two pilot studies before using in a face-to-face interview conducted with legally registered PWDs in Nakornpanom province. Forty-six ICF codes were used in the questionnaire; two second-level codes in body functions, 18 second-level and six third-level codes in activities & participation and 14 second-level and six third-level codes in environmental factors. Each code had 2-6 qualifiers. One thousand and seven PWDs (56.6% male, mean age = 48.4 ± 0.64 years) were interviewed by 16 trained-interviewers. Interview duration was approximately 17 min. The functioning profile could be revealed for both individual and population. These reflected the need for rehabilitation. Several cut-off points to identify "disabled persons" were offered. Regarding participation, PWDs were concerned more about environmental barriers. One-fourth of PWDs needed home environment adaptation, almost 13% were uneducated and 23% had limited chance to participate in social activities. ICF framework and codes can be used to develop a questionnaire to measure population functioning profile and rehabilitation needs of PWDs by community survey. Results can be used to develop a capability-oriented disability database to identify prevalence of disabilities and rehabilitation needs. Policy makers may use this database to plan, monitor and evaluate rehabilitation service programs and removal of environmental barriers.

Combining Deep and Handcrafted Image Features for Presentation Attack Detection in Face Recognition Systems Using Visible-Light Camera Sensors

PubMed Central

Nguyen, Dat Tien; Pham, Tuyen Danh; Baek, Na Rae; Park, Kang Ryoung

2018-01-01

Although face recognition systems have wide application, they are vulnerable to presentation attack samples (fake samples). Therefore, a presentation attack detection (PAD) method is required to enhance the security level of face recognition systems. Most of the previously proposed PAD methods for face recognition systems have focused on using handcrafted image features, which are designed by expert knowledge of designers, such as Gabor filter, local binary pattern (LBP), local ternary pattern (LTP), and histogram of oriented gradients (HOG). As a result, the extracted features reflect limited aspects of the problem, yielding a detection accuracy that is low and varies with the characteristics of presentation attack face images. The deep learning method has been developed in the computer vision research community, which is proven to be suitable for automatically training a feature extractor that can be used to enhance the ability of handcrafted features. To overcome the limitations of previously proposed PAD methods, we propose a new PAD method that uses a combination of deep and handcrafted features extracted from the images by visible-light camera sensor. Our proposed method uses the convolutional neural network (CNN) method to extract deep image features and the multi-level local binary pattern (MLBP) method to extract skin detail features from face images to discriminate the real and presentation attack face images. By combining the two types of image features, we form a new type of image features, called hybrid features, which has stronger discrimination ability than single image features. Finally, we use the support vector machine (SVM) method to classify the image features into real or presentation attack class. Our experimental results indicate that our proposed method outperforms previous PAD methods by yielding the smallest error rates on the same image databases. PMID:29495417

Age differences in conscious versus subconscious social perception: the influence of face age and valence on gaze following.

PubMed

Bailey, Phoebe E; Slessor, Gillian; Rendell, Peter G; Bennetts, Rachel J; Campbell, Anna; Ruffman, Ted

2014-09-01

Gaze following is the primary means of establishing joint attention with others and is subject to age-related decline. In addition, young but not older adults experience an own-age bias in gaze following. The current research assessed the effects of subconscious processing on these age-related differences. Participants responded to targets that were either congruent or incongruent with the direction of gaze displayed in supraliminal and subliminal images of young and older faces. These faces displayed either neutral (Study 1) or happy and fearful (Study 2) expressions. In Studies 1 and 2, both age groups demonstrated gaze-directed attention by responding faster to targets that were congruent as opposed to incongruent with gaze-cues. In Study 1, subliminal stimuli did not attenuate the age-related decline in gaze-cuing, but did result in an own-age bias among older participants. In Study 2, gaze-cuing was reduced for older relative to young adults in response to supraliminal stimuli, and this could not be attributed to reduced visual acuity or age group differences in the perceived emotional intensity of the gaze-cue faces. Moreover, there were no age differences in gaze-cuing when responding to subliminal faces that were emotionally arousing. In addition, older adults demonstrated an own-age bias for both conscious and subconscious gaze-cuing when faces expressed happiness but not fear. We discuss growing evidence for age-related preservation of subconscious relative to conscious social perception, as well as an interaction between face age and valence in social perception. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Designing Patient-facing Health Information Technologies for the Outpatient Settings: A Literature Review.

PubMed

Yang, Yushi; Asan, Onur

2016-04-06

  The implementation of health information technologies (HITs) has changed the dynamics of doctor-patient communication in outpatient settings. Designing patient-facing HITs provides patients with easy access to healthcare information during the visit and has the potential to enhance the patient-centred care.  The objectives of this study are to systematically review how the designs of patient-facing HITs have been suggested and evaluated, and how they may potentially affect the doctor-patient communication and patient-centred care.  We conducted an online database search to identify articles published before December 2014 relevant to the objectives of this study. A total of nine papers have been identified and reviewed in this study.  Designing patient-facing HITs is at an early stage. The current literature has been exploring the impact of HITs on doctor-patient communication dynamics. Based on the findings of these studies, there is an emergent need to design more patient-centred HITs. There are also some papers that focus on the usability evaluation of some preliminary prototypes of the patient-facing HITs. The design styles of patient-facing HITs included sharing the health information with the patients on: (1) a separate patient display, (2) a projector, (3) a portable tablet, (4) a touch-based screen and (5) a shared computer display that can be viewed by both doctors and patients. Each of them had the strengths and limitations to facilitate the patient-centred care, and it is worthwhile to make a comparison of them in order to identify future research directions.  The designs of patient-facing HITs in outpatient settings are promising in facilitating the doctor-patient communication and patient engagement. However, their effectiveness and usefulness need to be further evaluated and improved from a systems perspective.

Combining Deep and Handcrafted Image Features for Presentation Attack Detection in Face Recognition Systems Using Visible-Light Camera Sensors.

PubMed

Nguyen, Dat Tien; Pham, Tuyen Danh; Baek, Na Rae; Park, Kang Ryoung

2018-02-26

Although face recognition systems have wide application, they are vulnerable to presentation attack samples (fake samples). Therefore, a presentation attack detection (PAD) method is required to enhance the security level of face recognition systems. Most of the previously proposed PAD methods for face recognition systems have focused on using handcrafted image features, which are designed by expert knowledge of designers, such as Gabor filter, local binary pattern (LBP), local ternary pattern (LTP), and histogram of oriented gradients (HOG). As a result, the extracted features reflect limited aspects of the problem, yielding a detection accuracy that is low and varies with the characteristics of presentation attack face images. The deep learning method has been developed in the computer vision research community, which is proven to be suitable for automatically training a feature extractor that can be used to enhance the ability of handcrafted features. To overcome the limitations of previously proposed PAD methods, we propose a new PAD method that uses a combination of deep and handcrafted features extracted from the images by visible-light camera sensor. Our proposed method uses the convolutional neural network (CNN) method to extract deep image features and the multi-level local binary pattern (MLBP) method to extract skin detail features from face images to discriminate the real and presentation attack face images. By combining the two types of image features, we form a new type of image features, called hybrid features, which has stronger discrimination ability than single image features. Finally, we use the support vector machine (SVM) method to classify the image features into real or presentation attack class. Our experimental results indicate that our proposed method outperforms previous PAD methods by yielding the smallest error rates on the same image databases.

Constructing a safety and security system by medical applications of a fast face recognition optical parallel correlator

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watanabe, Eriko; Ishikawa, Mami; Ohta, Maiko; Murakami, Yasuo; Kodate, Kashiko

2006-01-01

Medical errors and patient safety have always received a great deal of attention, as they can be critically life-threatening and significant matters. Hospitals and medical personnel are trying their utmost to avoid these errors. Currently in the medical field, patients' record is identified through their PIN numbers and ID cards. However, for patients who cannot speak or move, or who suffer from memory disturbances, alternative methods would be more desirable, and necessary in some cases. The authors previously proposed and fabricated a specially-designed correlator called FARCO (Fast Face Recognition Optical Correlator) based on the Vanderlugt Correlator1, which operates at the speed of 1000 faces/s 2,3,4. Combined with high-speed display devices, the four-channel processing could achieve such high operational speed as 4000 faces/s. Running trial experiments on a 1-to-N identification basis using the optical parallel correlator, we succeeded in acquiring low error rates of 1 % FMR and 2.3 % FNMR. In this paper, we propose a robust face recognition system using the FARCO for focusing on the safety and security of the medical field. We apply our face recognition system to registration of inpatients, in particular children and infants, before and after medical treatments or operations. The proposed system has recorded a higher recognition rate by multiplexing both input and database facial images from moving images. The system was also tested and evaluated for further practical use, leaving excellent results. Hence, our face recognition system could function effectively as an integral part of medical system, meeting these essential requirements of safety, security and privacy.

Individual differences in face-looking behavior generalize from the lab to the world.

PubMed

Peterson, Matthew F; Lin, Jing; Zaun, Ian; Kanwisher, Nancy

2016-05-01

Recent laboratory studies have found large, stable individual differences in the location people first fixate when identifying faces, ranging from the brows to the mouth. Importantly, this variation is strongly associated with differences in fixation-specific identification performance such that individuals' recognition ability is maximized when looking at their preferred location (Mehoudar, Arizpe, Baker, & Yovel, 2014; Peterson & Eckstein, 2013). This finding suggests that face representations are retinotopic and individuals enact gaze strategies that optimize identification, yet the extent to which this behavior reflects real-world gaze behavior is unknown. Here, we used mobile eye trackers to test whether individual differences in face gaze generalize from lab to real-world vision. In-lab fixations were measured with a speeded face identification task, while real-world behavior was measured as subjects freely walked around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. We found a strong correlation between the patterns of individual differences in face gaze in the lab and real-world settings. Our findings support the hypothesis that individuals optimize real-world face identification by consistently fixating the same location and thus strongly constraining the space of retinotopic input. The methods developed for this study entailed collecting a large set of high-definition, wide field-of-view natural videos from head-mounted cameras and the viewer's fixation position, allowing us to characterize subjects' actually experienced real-world retinotopic images. These images enable us to ask how vision is optimized not just for the statistics of the "natural images" found in web databases, but of the truly natural, retinotopic images that have landed on actual human retinae during real-world experience.

Cascade heterogeneous face sketch-photo synthesis via dual-scale Markov Network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yao, Saisai; Chen, Zhenxue; Jia, Yunyi; Liu, Chengyun

2018-03-01

Heterogeneous face sketch-photo synthesis is an important and challenging task in computer vision, which has widely applied in law enforcement and digital entertainment. According to the different synthesis results based on different scales, this paper proposes a cascade sketch-photo synthesis method via dual-scale Markov Network. Firstly, Markov Network with larger scale is used to synthesise the initial sketches and the local vertical and horizontal neighbour search (LVHNS) method is used to search for the neighbour patches of test patches in training set. Then, the initial sketches and test photos are jointly entered into smaller scale Markov Network. Finally, the fine sketches are obtained after cascade synthesis process. Extensive experimental results on various databases demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method compared with several state-of-the-art methods.

Women and women of color in leadership: complexity, identity, and intersectionality.

PubMed

Sanchez-Hucles, Janis V; Davis, Donald D

2010-04-01

This article describes the challenges that women and women of color face in their quest to achieve and perform in leadership roles in work settings. We discuss the barriers that women encounter and specifically address the dimensions of gender and race and their impact on leadership. We identify the factors associated with gender evaluations of leaders and the stereotypes and other challenges faced by White women and women of color. We use ideas concerning identity and the intersection of multiple identities to understand the way in which gender mediates and shapes the experience of women in the workplace. We conclude with suggestions for research and theory development that may more fully capture the complex experience of women who serve as leaders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

HTM Spatial Pooler With Memristor Crossbar Circuits for Sparse Biometric Recognition.

PubMed

James, Alex Pappachen; Fedorova, Irina; Ibrayev, Timur; Kudithipudi, Dhireesha

2017-06-01

Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) is an online machine learning algorithm that emulates the neo-cortex. The development of a scalable on-chip HTM architecture is an open research area. The two core substructures of HTM are spatial pooler and temporal memory. In this work, we propose a new Spatial Pooler circuit design with parallel memristive crossbar arrays for the 2D columns. The proposed design was validated on two different benchmark datasets, face recognition, and speech recognition. The circuits are simulated and analyzed using a practical memristor device model and 0.18 μm IBM CMOS technology model. The databases AR, YALE, ORL, and UFI, are used to test the performance of the design in face recognition. TIMIT dataset is used for the speech recognition.

The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS): introduction to a novel, standardized, wide-range, high-quality, realistic picture database.

PubMed

Marchewka, Artur; Zurawski, Łukasz; Jednoróg, Katarzyna; Grabowska, Anna

2014-06-01

Selecting appropriate stimuli to induce emotional states is essential in affective research. Only a few standardized affective stimulus databases have been created for auditory, language, and visual materials. Numerous studies have extensively employed these databases using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. However, some limitations of the existing databases have recently been reported, including limited numbers of stimuli in specific categories or poor picture quality of the visual stimuli. In the present article, we introduce the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS), which consists of 1,356 realistic, high-quality photographs that are divided into five categories (people, faces, animals, objects, and landscapes). Affective ratings were collected from 204 mostly European participants. The pictures were rated according to the valence, arousal, and approach-avoidance dimensions using computerized bipolar semantic slider scales. Normative ratings for the categories are presented for each dimension. Validation of the ratings was obtained by comparing them to ratings generated using the Self-Assessment Manikin and the International Affective Picture System. In addition, the physical properties of the photographs are reported, including luminance, contrast, and entropy. The new database, with accompanying ratings and image parameters, allows researchers to select a variety of visual stimulus materials specific to their experimental questions of interest. The NAPS system is freely accessible to the scientific community for noncommercial use by request at http://naps.nencki.gov.pl .

The Chinese Facial Emotion Recognition Database (CFERD): a computer-generated 3-D paradigm to measure the recognition of facial emotional expressions at different intensities.

PubMed

Huang, Charles Lung-Cheng; Hsiao, Sigmund; Hwu, Hai-Gwo; Howng, Shen-Long

2012-12-30

The Chinese Facial Emotion Recognition Database (CFERD), a computer-generated three-dimensional (3D) paradigm, was developed to measure the recognition of facial emotional expressions at different intensities. The stimuli consisted of 3D colour photographic images of six basic facial emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, anger and surprise) and neutral faces of the Chinese. The purpose of the present study is to describe the development and validation of CFERD with nonclinical healthy participants (N=100; 50 men; age ranging between 18 and 50 years), and to generate normative data set. The results showed that the sensitivity index d' [d'=Z(hit rate)-Z(false alarm rate), where function Z(p), p∈[0,1

A framework for analysis of large database of old art paintings

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Da Rugna, Jérome; Chareyron, Ga"l.; Pillay, Ruven; Joly, Morwena

2011-03-01

For many years, a lot of museums and countries organize the high definition digitalization of their own collections. In consequence, they generate massive data for each object. In this paper, we only focus on art painting collections. Nevertheless, we faced a very large database with heterogeneous data. Indeed, image collection includes very old and recent scans of negative photos, digital photos, multi and hyper spectral acquisitions, X-ray acquisition, and also front, back and lateral photos. Moreover, we have noted that art paintings suffer from much degradation: crack, softening, artifact, human damages and, overtime corruption. Considering that, it appears necessary to develop specific approaches and methods dedicated to digital art painting analysis. Consequently, this paper presents a complete framework to evaluate, compare and benchmark devoted to image processing algorithms.

Semi-Supervised Sparse Representation Based Classification for Face Recognition With Insufficient Labeled Samples

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gao, Yuan; Ma, Jiayi; Yuille, Alan L.

2017-05-01

This paper addresses the problem of face recognition when there is only few, or even only a single, labeled examples of the face that we wish to recognize. Moreover, these examples are typically corrupted by nuisance variables, both linear (i.e., additive nuisance variables such as bad lighting, wearing of glasses) and non-linear (i.e., non-additive pixel-wise nuisance variables such as expression changes). The small number of labeled examples means that it is hard to remove these nuisance variables between the training and testing faces to obtain good recognition performance. To address the problem we propose a method called Semi-Supervised Sparse Representation based Classification (S$^3$RC). This is based on recent work on sparsity where faces are represented in terms of two dictionaries: a gallery dictionary consisting of one or more examples of each person, and a variation dictionary representing linear nuisance variables (e.g., different lighting conditions, different glasses). The main idea is that (i) we use the variation dictionary to characterize the linear nuisance variables via the sparsity framework, then (ii) prototype face images are estimated as a gallery dictionary via a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), with mixed labeled and unlabeled samples in a semi-supervised manner, to deal with the non-linear nuisance variations between labeled and unlabeled samples. We have done experiments with insufficient labeled samples, even when there is only a single labeled sample per person. Our results on the AR, Multi-PIE, CAS-PEAL, and LFW databases demonstrate that the proposed method is able to deliver significantly improved performance over existing methods.

Developmental changes in face visual scanning in autism spectrum disorder as assessed by data-based analysis

PubMed Central

Amestoy, Anouck; Guillaud, Etienne; Bouvard, Manuel P.; Cazalets, Jean-René

2015-01-01

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present reduced visual attention to faces. However, contradictory conclusions have been drawn about the strategies involved in visual face scanning due to the various methodologies implemented in the study of facial screening. Here, we used a data-driven approach to compare children and adults with ASD subjected to the same free viewing task and to address developmental aspects of face scanning, including its temporal patterning, in healthy children, and adults. Four groups (54 subjects) were included in the study: typical adults, typically developing children, and adults and children with ASD. Eye tracking was performed on subjects viewing unfamiliar faces. Fixations were analyzed using a data-driven approach that employed spatial statistics to provide an objective, unbiased definition of the areas of interest. Typical adults expressed a spatial and temporal strategy for visual scanning that differed from the three other groups, involving a sequential fixation of the right eye (RE), left eye (LE), and mouth. Typically developing children, adults and children with autism exhibited similar fixation patterns and they always started by looking at the RE. Children (typical or with ASD) subsequently looked at the LE or the mouth. Based on the present results, the patterns of fixation for static faces that mature from childhood to adulthood in typical subjects are not found in adults with ASD. The atypical patterns found after developmental progression and experience in ASD groups appear to remain blocked in an immature state that cannot be differentiated from typical developmental child patterns of fixation. PMID:26236264

High Performance Databases For Scientific Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

French, James C.; Grimshaw, Andrew S.

1997-01-01

The goal for this task is to develop an Extensible File System (ELFS). ELFS attacks the problem of the following: 1. Providing high bandwidth performance architectures; 2. Reducing the cognitive burden faced by applications programmers when they attempt to optimize; and 3. Seamlessly managing the proliferation of data formats and architectural differences. The approach for ELFS solution consists of language and run-time system support that permits the specification on a hierarchy of file classes.

Encapsulation of lactase in Ca(II)-alginate beads: Effect of stabilizers and drying methods.

PubMed

Traffano-Schiffo, Maria Victoria; Castro-Giraldez, Marta; Fito, Pedro J; Santagapita, Patricio R

2017-10-01

The purpose of the present work was to analyze the effect of trehalose, arabic and guar gums on the preservation of β-galactosidase activity in freeze-dried and vacuum dried Ca(II)-alginate beads. Freezing process was also studied as a first step of freeze-drying. Trehalose was critical for β-galactosidase conservation, and guar gum as a second excipient showed the highest conservation effect (close to 95%). Systems with T g values ~40°C which were stables at ambient temperature were obtained, being trehalose the main responsible of the formation of an amorphous matrix. Vacuum dried beads showed smaller size (with Feret's diameter below 1.08±0.09mm), higher circularity (reaching 0.78±0.06) and large cracks in their surface than freeze-dried beads, which were more spongy and voluminous. Ice crystallization of the beads revealed that the crystallization of Ca(II)-alginate system follows the Avrami kinetics of nucleation and growth. Particularly, Ca(II)-alginate showed an Avrami index of 2.03±0.07, which means that crystal growing is bidimensional. Neither the addition of trehalose nor gums affected the dimension of the ice growing or its rate. These results open an opportunity in the development of new lactic products able to be consumed by lactose intolerance people. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effect of Holding Pressure on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of A356 Aluminum Alloy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Xiaoyan; Zhang, Huarui; Ma, Zhen; Jia, Lina; Zhang, Hu

2018-02-01

In this study, the effect of holding pressure on microstructure and mechanical properties of low-pressure die cast A356 aluminum alloy was investigated. The results showed that the application of high holding pressure (300 kPa) generated castings with denser structure and superior mechanical properties. By increasing the holding pressure up to 300 kPa, the size of secondary dendrite arm spacing greatly reduced by 22.7% at the cooling rate of 1°C/s and decreased by 12.8% at 10°C/s. The Feret's diameter and aspect ratio of eutectic silicon particles decreased by 8.4 and 5.1% at the cooling rate of 1°C/s and decreased by 9.3 and 6.4% at 10°C/s, respectively. Meanwhile, the density of A356 aluminum alloy increased to 2.678 g/cm3 and the area fraction of porosity decreased to 0.035%. Thus, tensile properties of A356 aluminum alloy obtained at high holding pressure were enhanced, especially the ductility. All these could be associated with the better filling capability and faster cooling rate caused by high holding pressure. In the analytical range of experimental conditions, the correlation of mechanical properties with process parameters was established by statistical models to predict the ultimate tensile strength and elongation of low-pressure die cast A356 aluminum alloy.

Automated measurement of diatom size

USGS Publications Warehouse

Spaulding, Sarah A.; Jewson, David H.; Bixby, Rebecca J.; Nelson, Harry; McKnight, Diane M.

2012-01-01

Size analysis of diatom populations has not been widely considered, but it is a potentially powerful tool for understanding diatom life histories, population dynamics, and phylogenetic relationships. However, measuring cell dimensions on a light microscope is a time-consuming process. An alternative technique has been developed using digital flow cytometry on a FlowCAM® (Fluid Imaging Technologies) to capture hundreds, or even thousands, of images of a chosen taxon from a single sample in a matter of minutes. Up to 30 morphological measures may be quantified through post-processing of the high resolution images. We evaluated FlowCAM size measurements, comparing them against measurements from a light microscope. We found good agreement between measurement of apical cell length in species with elongated, straight valves, including small Achnanthidium minutissimum (11-21 µm) and largeDidymosphenia geminata (87–137 µm) forms. However, a taxon with curved cells, Hannaea baicalensis (37–96 µm), showed differences of ~ 4 µm between the two methods. Discrepancies appear to be influenced by the choice of feret or geodesic measurement for asymmetric cells. We describe the operating conditions necessary for analysis of size distributions and present suggestions for optimal instrument conditions for size analysis of diatom samples using the FlowCAM. The increased speed of data acquisition through use of imaging flow cytometers like the FlowCAM is an essential step for advancing studies of diatom populations.

Three dimensional microstructural characterization of nanoscale precipitates in AA7075-T651 by focused ion beam (FIB) tomography

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Singh, Sudhanshu S.; Loza, Jose J.

2016-08-15

The size and distribution of precipitates in Al 7075 alloys affects both the mechanical and corrosion behavior (including stress corrosion cracking and fatigue corrosion) of the alloy. Three dimensional (3D) quantitative microstructural analysis of Al 7075 in the peak aged condition (T651) allows for a better understanding of these behaviors. In this study, Focused ion beam (FIB) tomography was used to characterize the microstructure in three dimensions. Analysis of grains and precipitates was performed in terms of volume, size, and morphology. It was found that the precipitates at the grain boundaries are larger in size, higher in aspect ratios andmore » maximum Feret diameter compared to the precipitates inside the grains, due to earlier nucleation of the precipitates at the grain boundaries. Our data on the precipitates at the interface between grains and Mg{sub 2}Si inclusion show that the surfaces of inclusion (impurity) particles can serve as a location for heterogeneous nucleation of precipitates. - Highlights: •Focused ion beam (FIB) tomography was used to characterize the microstructure of Al 7075 in three dimensions. •Analysis of grains and precipitates was performed in terms of volume, size, and morphology. •Precipitates at the grain boundaries have larger size and aspect ratio compared to the precipitates inside the grains.« less

The reference ballistic imaging database revisited.

PubMed

De Ceuster, Jan; Dujardin, Sylvain

2015-03-01

A reference ballistic image database (RBID) contains images of cartridge cases fired in firearms that are in circulation: a ballistic fingerprint database. The performance of an RBID was investigated a decade ago by De Kinder et al. using IBIS(®) Heritage™ technology. The results of that study were published in this journal, issue 214. Since then, technologies have evolved quite significantly and novel apparatus have become available on the market. The current research article investigates the efficiency of another automated ballistic imaging system, Evofinder(®) using the same database as used by De Kinder et al. The results demonstrate a significant increase in correlation efficiency: 38% of all matches were on first position of the Evofinder correlation list in comparison to IBIS(®) Heritage™ where only 19% were on the first position. Average correlation times are comparable to the IBIS(®) Heritage™ system. While Evofinder(®) demonstrates specific improvement for mutually correlating different ammunition brands, ammunition dependence of the markings is still strongly influencing the correlation result because the markings may vary considerably. As a consequence a great deal of potential hits (36%) was still far down in the correlation lists (positions 31 and lower). The large database was used to examine the probability of finding a match as a function of correlation list verification. As an example, the RBID study on Evofinder(®) demonstrates that to find at least 90% of all potential matches, at least 43% of the items in the database need to be compared on screen and this for breech face markings and firing pin impression separately. These results, although a clear improvement to the original RBID study, indicate that the implementation of such a database should still not be considered nowadays. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fast Face-Recognition Optical Parallel Correlator Using High Accuracy Correlation Filter

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watanabe, Eriko; Kodate, Kashiko

2005-11-01

We designed and fabricated a fully automatic fast face recognition optical parallel correlator [E. Watanabe and K. Kodate: Appl. Opt. 44 (2005) 5666] based on the VanderLugt principle. The implementation of an as-yet unattained ultra high-speed system was aided by reconfiguring the system to make it suitable for easier parallel processing, as well as by composing a higher accuracy correlation filter and high-speed ferroelectric liquid crystal-spatial light modulator (FLC-SLM). In running trial experiments using this system (dubbed FARCO), we succeeded in acquiring remarkably low error rates of 1.3% for false match rate (FMR) and 2.6% for false non-match rate (FNMR). Given the results of our experiments, the aim of this paper is to examine methods of designing correlation filters and arranging database image arrays for even faster parallel correlation, underlining the issues of calculation technique, quantization bit rate, pixel size and shift from optical axis. The correlation filter has proved its excellent performance and higher precision than classical correlation and joint transform correlator (JTC). Moreover, arrangement of multi-object reference images leads to 10-channel correlation signals, as sharply marked as those of a single channel. This experiment result demonstrates great potential for achieving the process speed of 10000 face/s.

The design, implementation, and evaluation of online credit nutrition courses: a systematic review.

PubMed

Cohen, Nancy L; Carbone, Elena T; Beffa-Negrini, Patricia A

2011-01-01

To assess how postsecondary online nutrition education courses (ONEC) are delivered, determine ONEC effectiveness, identify theoretical models used, and identify future research needs. Systematic search of database literature. Postsecondary education. Nine research articles evaluating postsecondary ONEC. Knowledge/performance outcomes and student satisfaction, motivation, or perceptions. Systematic search of 922 articles and review of 9 articles meeting search criteria. Little research regarding ONEC marketing/management existed. Studies primarily evaluated introductory courses using email/websites (before 2000), or course management systems (after 2002). None used true experimental designs; just 3 addressed validity or reliability of measures or pilot-tested instruments. Three articles used theoretical models in course design; few used theories to guide evaluations. Four quasi-experimental studies indicated no differences in nutrition knowledge/performance between online and face-to-face learners. Results were inconclusive regarding student satisfaction, motivation, or perceptions. Students can gain knowledge in online as well as in face-to-face nutrition courses, but satisfaction was mixed. More up-to-date investigations on effective practices are warranted, using theories to identify factors that enhance student outcomes, addressing emerging technologies, and documenting ONEC marketing, management, and delivery. Adequate training/support for faculty is needed to improve student experiences and faculty time management. Copyright © 2011 Society for Nutrition Education. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Audio-visual imposture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karam, Walid; Mokbel, Chafic; Greige, Hanna; Chollet, Gerard

2006-05-01

A GMM based audio visual speaker verification system is described and an Active Appearance Model with a linear speaker transformation system is used to evaluate the robustness of the verification. An Active Appearance Model (AAM) is used to automatically locate and track a speaker's face in a video recording. A Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based classifier (BECARS) is used for face verification. GMM training and testing is accomplished on DCT based extracted features of the detected faces. On the audio side, speech features are extracted and used for speaker verification with the GMM based classifier. Fusion of both audio and video modalities for audio visual speaker verification is compared with face verification and speaker verification systems. To improve the robustness of the multimodal biometric identity verification system, an audio visual imposture system is envisioned. It consists of an automatic voice transformation technique that an impostor may use to assume the identity of an authorized client. Features of the transformed voice are then combined with the corresponding appearance features and fed into the GMM based system BECARS for training. An attempt is made to increase the acceptance rate of the impostor and to analyzing the robustness of the verification system. Experiments are being conducted on the BANCA database, with a prospect of experimenting on the newly developed PDAtabase developed within the scope of the SecurePhone project.

Reading the lines in the face: The contribution of angularity and roundness to perceptions of facial anger and joy.

PubMed

Franklin, Robert G; Adams, Reginald B; Steiner, Troy G; Zebrowitz, Leslie A

2018-05-14

Through 3 studies, we investigated whether angularity and roundness present in faces contributes to the perception of anger and joyful expressions, respectively. First, in Study 1 we found that angry expressions naturally contain more inward-pointing lines, whereas joyful expressions contain more outward-pointing lines. Then, using image-processing techniques in Studies 2 and 3, we filtered images to contain only inward-pointing or outward-pointing lines as a way to approximate angularity and roundness. We found that filtering images to be more angular increased how threatening and angry a neutral face was rated, increased how intense angry expressions were rated, and enhanced the recognition of anger. Conversely, filtering images to be rounder increased how warm and joyful a neutral face was rated, increased the intensity of joyful expressions, and enhanced recognition of joy. Together these findings show that angularity and roundness play a direct role in the recognition of angry and joyful expressions. Given evidence that angularity and roundness may play a biological role in indicating threat and safety in the environment, this suggests that angularity and roundness represent primitive facial cues used to signal threat-anger and warmth-joy pairings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding the use of email consultation in primary care using a retrospective observational study with data of Dutch electronic health records

PubMed Central

Huygens, Martine W J; Swinkels, Ilse C S; Verheij, Robert A; Friele, Roland D; van Schayck, Onno C P; de Witte, Luc P

2018-01-01

Objectives It is unclear why the use of email consultation is not more widespread in Dutch general practice, particularly because, since 2006, its costs can be reimbursed. To encourage further implementation, it is needed to understand the current use of email consultations. This study aims to understand the use of email consultation by different patient groups, compared with other general practice (GP) consultations. Setting For this retrospective observational study, we used Dutch routine electronic health record data obtained from NIVEL Primary Care Database for the years 2010 and 2014. Participants 200 general practices were included in 2010 (734 122 registered patients) and 434 in 2014 (1 630 386 registered patients). Primary outcome measures The number and percentage of email consultations and patient characteristics (age, gender, neighbourhood socioeconomic status and diagnoses) of email consultation users were investigated and compared with those who had a telephone or face-to-face consultation. General practice characteristics were also taken into account. Results 32.0% of the Dutch general practices had at least one email consultation in 2010, rising to 52.8% in 2014. In 2014, only 0.7% of the GP consultations were by email (the others comprised home visits, telephone and face-to-face consultations). Its use highly varied among general practices. Most email consultations were done for psychological (14.7%); endocrine, metabolic and nutritional (10.9%); and circulatory (10.7%) problems. These diagnosis categories appeared less frequently in telephone and face-to-face consultations. Patients who had an email consultation were older than patients who had a telephone or face-to-face consultation. In contrast, patients with diabetes who had an email consultation were younger. Conclusion Even though email consultation was done in half the general practices in the Netherlands in 2014, the actual use of it is extremely low. Patients who had an email consultation differ from those who had a telephone or face-to-face consultation. In addition, the use of email consultation by patients is dependent on its provision by GPs. PMID:29358442

Effects of Facial Symmetry and Gaze Direction on Perception of Social Attributes: A Study in Experimental Art History.

PubMed

Folgerø, Per O; Hodne, Lasse; Johansson, Christer; Andresen, Alf E; Sætren, Lill C; Specht, Karsten; Skaar, Øystein O; Reber, Rolf

2016-01-01

This article explores the possibility of testing hypotheses about art production in the past by collecting data in the present. We call this enterprise "experimental art history". Why did medieval artists prefer to paint Christ with his face directed towards the beholder, while profane faces were noticeably more often painted in different degrees of profile? Is a preference for frontal faces motivated by deeper evolutionary and biological considerations? Head and gaze direction is a significant factor for detecting the intentions of others, and accurate detection of gaze direction depends on strong contrast between a dark iris and a bright sclera, a combination that is only found in humans among the primates. One uniquely human capacity is language acquisition, where the detection of shared or joint attention, for example through detection of gaze direction, contributes significantly to the ease of acquisition. The perceived face and gaze direction is also related to fundamental emotional reactions such as fear, aggression, empathy and sympathy. The fast-track modulator model presents a related fast and unconscious subcortical route that involves many central brain areas. Activity in this pathway mediates the affective valence of the stimulus. In particular, different sub-regions of the amygdala show specific activation as response to gaze direction, head orientation and the valence of facial expression. We present three experiments on the effects of face orientation and gaze direction on the judgments of social attributes. We observed that frontal faces with direct gaze were more highly associated with positive adjectives. Does this help to associate positive values to the Holy Face in a Western context? The formal result indicates that the Holy Face is perceived more positively than profiles with both direct and averted gaze. Two control studies, using a Brazilian and a Dutch database of photographs, showed a similar but weaker effect with a larger contrast between the gaze directions for profiles. Our findings indicate that many factors affect the impression of a face, and that eye contact in combination with face direction reinforce the general impression of portraits, rather than determine it.

Distrust and the positive test heuristic: dispositional and situated social distrust improves performance on the Wason rule discovery task.

PubMed

Mayo, Ruth; Alfasi, Dana; Schwarz, Norbert

2014-06-01

Feelings of distrust alert people not to take information at face value, which may influence their reasoning strategy. Using the Wason (1960) rule identification task, we tested whether chronic and temporary distrust increase the use of negative hypothesis testing strategies suited to falsify one's own initial hunch. In Study 1, participants who were low in dispositional trust were more likely to engage in negative hypothesis testing than participants high in dispositional trust. In Study 2, trust and distrust were induced through an alleged person-memory task. Paralleling the effects of chronic distrust, participants exposed to a single distrust-eliciting face were 3 times as likely to engage in negative hypothesis testing as participants exposed to a trust-eliciting face. In both studies, distrust increased negative hypothesis testing, which was associated with better performance on the Wason task. In contrast, participants' initial rule generation was not consistently affected by distrust. These findings provide first evidence that distrust can influence which reasoning strategy people adopt. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Effect of pharmacist care on medication adherence and cardiovascular outcomes among patients post-acute coronary syndrome: A systematic review.

PubMed

El Hajj, Maguy Saffouh; Jaam, Myriam Jihad; Awaisu, Ahmed

2018-06-01

The impact of collaborative and multidisciplinary health care on the outcomes of care in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) is well-established in the literature. However, there is lack of high quality evidence on the role of pharmacist care in this setting. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the impact of pharmacist care on patient outcomes (readmission, mortality, emergency visits, and medication adherence) in patients with ACS at or post-discharge. The following electronic databases and search engines were searched from their inception to September 2016: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, Campbell Library, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), Health System Evidence, Global Health Database, Joanna Briggs Institute Evidence-Based Practice Database, Academic Search Complete, ProQuest, PROSPERO, and Google Scholar. Studies were included if they evaluated the impact of pharmacist's care (compared with no pharmacist's care or usual care) on the outcomes of rehospitalization, mortality, and medication adherence in patients post-ACS discharge. Comparison of the outcomes with relevant statistics was summarized and reported. A total of 17 studies [13 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and four non-randomized clinical studies] involving 8391 patients were included in the review. The studies were of variable quality (poor to good quality) or risk of bias (moderate to critical risk). The nature and intensity of pharmacist interventions varied among the studies including medication reconciliation, medication therapy management, discharge medication counseling, motivational interviewing, and post-discharge face-to-face or telephone follow-up. Pharmacist-delivered interventions significantly improved medication adherence in four out of 12 studies. However, these did not translate to significant improvements in the rates of readmissions, hospitalizations, emergency visits, and mortality among ACS patients. Pharmacist care of patients discharged after ACS admission was not associated with significant improvement in medication adherence or reductions in readmissions, emergency visits, and mortality. Future studies should use well-designed RCTs to assess the short- and long-terms effects of pharmacist interventions in ACS patients. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Active learning for solving the incomplete data problem in facial age classification by the furthest nearest-neighbor criterion.

PubMed

Wang, Jian-Gang; Sung, Eric; Yau, Wei-Yun

2011-07-01

Facial age classification is an approach to classify face images into one of several predefined age groups. One of the difficulties in applying learning techniques to the age classification problem is the large amount of labeled training data required. Acquiring such training data is very costly in terms of age progress, privacy, human time, and effort. Although unlabeled face images can be obtained easily, it would be expensive to manually label them on a large scale and getting the ground truth. The frugal selection of the unlabeled data for labeling to quickly reach high classification performance with minimal labeling efforts is a challenging problem. In this paper, we present an active learning approach based on an online incremental bilateral two-dimension linear discriminant analysis (IB2DLDA) which initially learns from a small pool of labeled data and then iteratively selects the most informative samples from the unlabeled set to increasingly improve the classifier. Specifically, we propose a novel data selection criterion called the furthest nearest-neighbor (FNN) that generalizes the margin-based uncertainty to the multiclass case and which is easy to compute, so that the proposed active learning algorithm can handle a large number of classes and large data sizes efficiently. Empirical experiments on FG-NET and Morph databases together with a large unlabeled data set for age categorization problems show that the proposed approach can achieve results comparable or even outperform a conventionally trained active classifier that requires much more labeling effort. Our IB2DLDA-FNN algorithm can achieve similar results much faster than random selection and with fewer samples for age categorization. It also can achieve comparable results with active SVM but is much faster than active SVM in terms of training because kernel methods are not needed. The results on the face recognition database and palmprint/palm vein database showed that our approach can handle problems with large number of classes. Our contributions in this paper are twofold. First, we proposed the IB2DLDA-FNN, the FNN being our novel idea, as a generic on-line or active learning paradigm. Second, we showed that it can be another viable tool for active learning of facial age range classification.

Memory for reputational trait information: is social-emotional information processing less flexible in old age?

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Giang, Trang; Mund, Iris; Buchner, Axel

2013-12-01

How do younger and older adults remember reputational trait information about other people? In the present study, trustworthy-looking and untrustworthy-looking faces were paired with cooperation or cheating in a cooperation game. In a surprise source-memory test, participants were asked to rate the likability of the faces, and were required to remember whether the faces were associated with negative or positive outcomes. The social expectations of younger and older adults were clearly affected by a priori facial trustworthiness. Facial trustworthiness was associated with high cooperation-game investments, high likability ratings, and a tendency toward guessing that a face belonged to a cooperator instead of a cheater in both age groups. Consistent with previous results showing that emotional memory is spared from age-related decline, memory for the association between faces and emotional reputational information was well preserved in older adults. However, younger adults used a flexible encoding strategy to remember the social interaction partners. Source-memory was best for information that violated their (positive) expectations. Older adults, in contrast, showed a uniform memory bias for negative social information; their memory performance was not modulated by their expectations. This finding suggests that older adults are less likely to adjust their encoding strategies to their social expectations than younger adults. This may be in line with older adults' motivational goals to avoid risks in social interactions. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Improving communication between doctor and patient: eHealth in the Netherlands, an established cloud solution

PubMed Central

Kool, Anton

2012-01-01

In the Netherlands, like in many West European countries, demand for healthcare is already sharply increasing, with further acceleration expected soon. All parties involved are convinced that the resulting demand for funding of healthcare will not be met by economic growth. The resulting paradigma shift (live longer healthy, self-care and patient centred care) is a challenge not only for scientists, but for politicians and healthcare-providers as well. One of the solutions in the paradigma shift is eHealth. eHealth can refer to automated data-exchange between a device and a central database, but also to healthcare practices that use webbased communication. Strengthening patient participation, motivation and self-management is the hope for better therapy outcome. Early deviations need to be recognized, adverse reactions to be understood and appropriate action to be taken. In itself not new, diaries have been around for decades, but appropriate assessment of its content is too time-consuming. Therefore, the challenge is to involve both the patient and the attending professional (-s) and give eHealth solutions a place in the context of regular care. We combined the internet cloud with advanced security-technology to provide an answer to that: Curavista health, a database driven internetplatform for patient@home and doctor@work. Patient@home replies to webquestionnaires and fill online diaries. The responses are summarized in tables, graphs or automated follow-ups and the patient has immediate insight in the progression achieved. Not only does database technology allow for immediate processing of the responses into summaries; it is also possible to highlight differences, produce alerts or (refer to) educational information. Doctor@work, using an own account, has access to the responses as well as to the summaries, resulting in early insight. Because the patient@home does not necessarily record only biometrics, but also has the opportunity to add other types of replies, which gives a broader context to the actual situation the patient is in. Regular care is not only faced with an ageing population but, as a result of new interventions, also with an increased incidence of people with multiple diseases. Curavista health has therefore been designed with the process of chronic care as its cornerstone: the basic architecture for each indication is identical, the content is different. Multiple indications can be attained to one account (doctor or patient) and multiple relations (doctor to patients, patient to professionals) maintained. Started in 2002, today more than 20 indications are covered using this platform. It is used in both primary care (GPs) as well in out-clinic hospital care: 1000+doctors monitor(-ed) 50,000+patients. The first reports are that face-to-face consultations not only run more effective and more efficient when using the summaries, but also more satisfactorily: the available time can be devoted to the patient need, rather than to the inventory of the patient needs. Is it only a matter of time until timing of face-to-face consultations can be based upon cloud-based eHealth solutions?

Damming the genomic data flood using a comprehensive analysis and storage data structure

PubMed Central

Bouffard, Marc; Phillips, Michael S.; Brown, Andrew M.K.; Marsh, Sharon; Tardif, Jean-Claude; van Rooij, Tibor

2010-01-01

Data generation, driven by rapid advances in genomic technologies, is fast outpacing our analysis capabilities. Faced with this flood of data, more hardware and software resources are added to accommodate data sets whose structure has not specifically been designed for analysis. This leads to unnecessarily lengthy processing times and excessive data handling and storage costs. Current efforts to address this have centered on developing new indexing schemas and analysis algorithms, whereas the root of the problem lies in the format of the data itself. We have developed a new data structure for storing and analyzing genotype and phenotype data. By leveraging data normalization techniques, database management system capabilities and the use of a novel multi-table, multidimensional database structure we have eliminated the following: (i) unnecessarily large data set size due to high levels of redundancy, (ii) sequential access to these data sets and (iii) common bottlenecks in analysis times. The resulting novel data structure horizontally divides the data to circumvent traditional problems associated with the use of databases for very large genomic data sets. The resulting data set required 86% less disk space and performed analytical calculations 6248 times faster compared to a standard approach without any loss of information. Database URL: http://castor.pharmacogenomics.ca PMID:21159730

Glance Information System for ATLAS Management

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Grael, F. F.; Maidantchik, C.; Évora, L. H. R. A.; Karam, K.; Moraes, L. O. F.; Cirilli, M.; Nessi, M.; Pommès, K.; ATLAS Collaboration

2011-12-01

ATLAS Experiment is an international collaboration where more than 37 countries, 172 institutes and laboratories, 2900 physicists, engineers, and computer scientists plus 700 students participate. The management of this teamwork involves several aspects such as institute contribution, employment records, members' appointment, authors' list, preparation and publication of papers and speakers nomination. Previously, most of the information was accessible by a limited group and developers had to face problems such as different terminology, diverse data modeling, heterogeneous databases and unlike users needs. Moreover, the systems were not designed to handle new requirements. The maintenance has to be an easy task due to the long lifetime experiment and professionals turnover. The Glance system, a generic mechanism for accessing any database, acts as an intermediate layer isolating the user from the particularities of each database. It retrieves, inserts and updates the database independently of its technology and modeling. Relying on Glance, a group of systems were built to support the ATLAS management and operation aspects: ATLAS Membership, ATLAS Appointments, ATLAS Speakers, ATLAS Analysis Follow-Up, ATLAS Conference Notes, ATLAS Thesis, ATLAS Traceability and DSS Alarms Viewer. This paper presents the overview of the Glance information framework and describes the privilege mechanism developed to grant different level of access for each member and system.

Sociocultural Behavior Sensemaking: State of the Art in Understanding the Operational Environment

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-01-01

and environmental change have expanded the number and frequency of “game-changing moments” that a community can face. Now more than ever, we need...August 2011: Establishment of the rebel interim government in Tripoli (8/26/ 11 ). This analysis can also be applied to single communication ...information. The Psychological Review, 63, 81–89. Miller, G.A. (1995). WordNet: A lexical database for English. Communications of the ACM 38( 11 ), 39

Application of database methods to the prediction of B3LYP-optimized polyhedral water cluster geometries and electronic energies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Anick, David J.

2003-12-01

A method is described for a rapid prediction of B3LYP-optimized geometries for polyhedral water clusters (PWCs). Starting with a database of 121 B3LYP-optimized PWCs containing 2277 H-bonds, linear regressions yield formulas correlating O-O distances, O-O-O angles, and H-O-H orientation parameters, with local and global cluster descriptors. The formulas predict O-O distances with a rms error of 0.85 pm to 1.29 pm and predict O-O-O angles with a rms error of 0.6° to 2.2°. An algorithm is given which uses the O-O and O-O-O formulas to determine coordinates for the oxygen nuclei of a PWC. The H-O-H formulas then determine positions for two H's at each O. For 15 test clusters, the gap between the electronic energy of the predicted geometry and the true B3LYP optimum ranges from 0.11 to 0.54 kcal/mol or 4 to 18 cal/mol per H-bond. Linear regression also identifies 14 parameters that strongly correlate with PWC electronic energy. These descriptors include the number of H-bonds in which both oxygens carry a non-H-bonding H, the number of quadrilateral faces, the number of symmetric angles in 5- and in 6-sided faces, and the square of the cluster's estimated dipole moment.

Influence of gender in the recognition of basic facial expressions: A critical literature review

PubMed Central

Forni-Santos, Larissa; Osório, Flávia L

2015-01-01

AIM: To conduct a systematic literature review about the influence of gender on the recognition of facial expressions of six basic emotions. METHODS: We made a systematic search with the search terms (face OR facial) AND (processing OR recognition OR perception) AND (emotional OR emotion) AND (gender or sex) in PubMed, PsycINFO, LILACS, and SciELO electronic databases for articles assessing outcomes related to response accuracy and latency and emotional intensity. The articles selection was performed according to parameters set by COCHRANE. The reference lists of the articles found through the database search were checked for additional references of interest. RESULTS: In respect to accuracy, women tend to perform better than men when all emotions are considered as a set. Regarding specific emotions, there seems to be no gender-related differences in the recognition of happiness, whereas results are quite heterogeneous in respect to the remaining emotions, especially sadness, anger, and disgust. Fewer articles dealt with the parameters of response latency and emotional intensity, which hinders the generalization of their findings, especially in the face of their methodological differences. CONCLUSION: The analysis of the studies conducted to date do not allow for definite conclusions concerning the role of the observer’s gender in the recognition of facial emotion, mostly because of the absence of standardized methods of investigation. PMID:26425447

Automatic 2.5-D Facial Landmarking and Emotion Annotation for Social Interaction Assistance.

PubMed

Zhao, Xi; Zou, Jianhua; Li, Huibin; Dellandrea, Emmanuel; Kakadiaris, Ioannis A; Chen, Liming

2016-09-01

People with low vision, Alzheimer's disease, and autism spectrum disorder experience difficulties in perceiving or interpreting facial expression of emotion in their social lives. Though automatic facial expression recognition (FER) methods on 2-D videos have been extensively investigated, their performance was constrained by challenges in head pose and lighting conditions. The shape information in 3-D facial data can reduce or even overcome these challenges. However, high expenses of 3-D cameras prevent their widespread use. Fortunately, 2.5-D facial data from emerging portable RGB-D cameras provide a good balance for this dilemma. In this paper, we propose an automatic emotion annotation solution on 2.5-D facial data collected from RGB-D cameras. The solution consists of a facial landmarking method and a FER method. Specifically, we propose building a deformable partial face model and fit the model to a 2.5-D face for localizing facial landmarks automatically. In FER, a novel action unit (AU) space-based FER method has been proposed. Facial features are extracted using landmarks and further represented as coordinates in the AU space, which are classified into facial expressions. Evaluated on three publicly accessible facial databases, namely EURECOM, FRGC, and Bosphorus databases, the proposed facial landmarking and expression recognition methods have achieved satisfactory results. Possible real-world applications using our algorithms have also been discussed.

Why is happy-sad more difficult? Focal emotional information impairs inhibitory control in children and adults.

PubMed

Kramer, Hannah J; Lagattuta, Kristin Hansen; Sayfan, Liat

2015-02-01

This study compared the relative difficulty of the happy-sad inhibitory control task (say "happy" for the sad face and "sad" for the happy face) against other card tasks that varied by the presence and type (focal vs. peripheral; negative vs. positive) of emotional information in a sample of 4- to 11-year-olds and adults (N = 264). Participants also completed parallel "name games" (direct labeling). All age groups made more errors and took longer to respond to happy-sad compared to other versions, and the relative difficulty of happy-sad increased with age. The happy-sad name game even posed a greater challenge than some opposite games. These data provide insight into the impact of emotions on cognitive processing across a wide age range. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

E learning in surgery.

PubMed

Aryal, Kamal Raj; Pereira, Jerome

2014-12-01

E learning means use of electronic media and information technologies in education. Virtual learning environment (VLE) provides learning platforms consisting of online tools, databases and managed resources. This article is a review of use of E learning in medical and surgical education including available evidence favouring this approach. E learning has been shown to be more effective, less costly and more satisfying to the students than the traditional methods. E learning cannot however replace direct consultant supervision at their place of work in surgical trainees and a combination of both called blended learning has been shown to be most useful. As an example of university-based qualification, one such programme is presented to clarify the components and the process of E learning. Increasing use of E learning and occasional face to face focussed supervision by the teacher is likely to enhance surgical training in the future.

Task 1.6 -- Mixed waste. Topical report, April 1994--September 1995

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rindt, J.R.; Jones, F.A.

1996-01-01

For fifty years, the United States was involved in a nuclear arms race of immense proportions. During the majority of this period, the push was always to design new weapons, produce more weapons, and increase the size of the arsenal, maintaining an advantage over the opposition in order to protect US interests. Now that the Cold War is over, the US is faced with the imposing tasks of dismantling, cleaning up, and remediating the wide variety of problems created by this arms race. The ability to understand the problems encountered when dealing with radioactive waste, both from a scientific standpointmore » and from a legislative standpoint, requires knowledge of treatment and disposal subject areas. This required the accumulation of applicable information. A literature database was developed; site visits were made; and contact relationships were established. Informational databases from government agencies involved in environmental remediation were ordered or purchased, and previously established private sector relationships were used to develop an information base. An appendix contains 482 bibliographic citations that have been integrated into a Microsoft Access{reg_sign} database.« less

Recent Developments in the NIST Atomic Databases

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kramida, Alexander

2011-05-01

New versions of the NIST Atomic Spectra Database (ASD, v. 4.0) and three bibliographic databases (Atomic Energy Levels and Spectra, v. 2.0, Atomic Transition Probabilities, v. 9.0, and Atomic Line Broadening and Shapes, v. 3.0) have recently been released. In this contribution I will describe the main changes in the way users get the data through the Web. The contents of ASD have been significantly extended. In particular, the data on highly ionized tungsten (W III-LXXIV) have been added from a recently published NIST compilation. The tables for Fe I and Fe II have been replaced with newer, much more extensive lists (10000 lines for Fe I). The other updated or new spectra include H, D, T, He I-II, Li I-III, Be I-IV, B I-V, C I-II, N I-II, O I-II, Na I-X, K I-XIX, and Hg I. The new version of ASD now incorporates data on isotopes of several elements. I will describe some of the issues the NIST ASD Team faces when updating the data.

3D facial expression recognition using maximum relevance minimum redundancy geometrical features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rabiu, Habibu; Saripan, M. Iqbal; Mashohor, Syamsiah; Marhaban, Mohd Hamiruce

2012-12-01

In recent years, facial expression recognition (FER) has become an attractive research area, which besides the fundamental challenges, it poses, finds application in areas, such as human-computer interaction, clinical psychology, lie detection, pain assessment, and neurology. Generally the approaches to FER consist of three main steps: face detection, feature extraction and expression recognition. The recognition accuracy of FER hinges immensely on the relevance of the selected features in representing the target expressions. In this article, we present a person and gender independent 3D facial expression recognition method, using maximum relevance minimum redundancy geometrical features. The aim is to detect a compact set of features that sufficiently represents the most discriminative features between the target classes. Multi-class one-against-one SVM classifier was employed to recognize the seven facial expressions; neutral, happy, sad, angry, fear, disgust, and surprise. The average recognition accuracy of 92.2% was recorded. Furthermore, inter database homogeneity was investigated between two independent databases the BU-3DFE and UPM-3DFE the results showed a strong homogeneity between the two databases.

Recent Developments in the NIST Atomic Databases

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kramida, Alexander

New versions of the NIST Atomic Spectra Database (ASD, v. 4.0) and three bibliographic databases (Atomic Energy Levels and Spectra, v. 2.0, Atomic Transition Probabilities, v. 9.0, and Atomic Line Broadening and Shapes, v. 3.0) have recently been released. In this contribution I will describe the main changes in the way users get the data through the Web. The contents of ASD have been significantly extended. In particular, the data on highly ionized tungsten (W III-LXXIV) have been added from a recently published NIST compilation. The tables for Fe I and Fe II have been replaced with newer, much moremore » extensive lists (10000 lines for Fe I). The other updated or new spectra include H, D, T, He I-II, Li I-III, Be I-IV, B I-V, C I-II, N I-II, O I-II, Na I-X, K I-XIX, and Hg I. The new version of ASD now incorporates data on isotopes of several elements. I will describe some of the issues the NIST ASD Team faces when updating the data.« less

Challenges and disparities in the application of personalized genomic medicine to populations with African ancestry

PubMed Central

Kessler, Michael D.; Yerges-Armstrong, Laura; Taub, Margaret A.; Shetty, Amol C.; Maloney, Kristin; Jeng, Linda Jo Bone; Ruczinski, Ingo; Levin, Albert M.; Williams, L. Keoki; Beaty, Terri H.; Mathias, Rasika A.; Barnes, Kathleen C.; Boorgula, Meher Preethi; Campbell, Monica; Chavan, Sameer; Ford, Jean G.; Foster, Cassandra; Gao, Li; Hansel, Nadia N.; Horowitz, Edward; Huang, Lili; Ortiz, Romina; Potee, Joseph; Rafaels, Nicholas; Scott, Alan F.; Vergara, Candelaria; Gao, Jingjing; Hu, Yijuan; Johnston, Henry Richard; Qin, Zhaohui S.; Padhukasahasram, Badri; Dunston, Georgia M.; Faruque, Mezbah U.; Kenny, Eimear E.; Gietzen, Kimberly; Hansen, Mark; Genuario, Rob; Bullis, Dave; Lawley, Cindy; Deshpande, Aniket; Grus, Wendy E.; Locke, Devin P.; Foreman, Marilyn G.; Avila, Pedro C.; Grammer, Leslie; Kim, Kwang-YounA; Kumar, Rajesh; Schleimer, Robert; Bustamante, Carlos; De La Vega, Francisco M.; Gignoux, Chris R.; Shringarpure, Suyash S.; Musharoff, Shaila; Wojcik, Genevieve; Burchard, Esteban G.; Eng, Celeste; Gourraud, Pierre-Antoine; Hernandez, Ryan D.; Lizee, Antoine; Pino-Yanes, Maria; Torgerson, Dara G.; Szpiech, Zachary A.; Torres, Raul; Nicolae, Dan L.; Ober, Carole; Olopade, Christopher O.; Olopade, Olufunmilayo; Oluwole, Oluwafemi; Arinola, Ganiyu; Song, Wei; Abecasis, Goncalo; Correa, Adolfo; Musani, Solomon; Wilson, James G.; Lange, Leslie A.; Akey, Joshua; Bamshad, Michael; Chong, Jessica; Fu, Wenqing; Nickerson, Deborah; Reiner, Alexander; Hartert, Tina; Ware, Lorraine B.; Bleecker, Eugene; Meyers, Deborah; Ortega, Victor E.; Pissamai, Maul R. N.; Trevor, Maul R. N.; Watson, Harold; Araujo, Maria Ilma; Oliveira, Ricardo Riccio; Caraballo, Luis; Marrugo, Javier; Martinez, Beatriz; Meza, Catherine; Ayestas, Gerardo; Herrera-Paz, Edwin Francisco; Landaverde-Torres, Pamela; Erazo, Said Omar Leiva; Martinez, Rosella; Mayorga, Alvaro; Mayorga, Luis F.; Mejia-Mejia, Delmy-Aracely; Ramos, Hector; Saenz, Allan; Varela, Gloria; Vasquez, Olga Marina; Ferguson, Trevor; Knight-Madden, Jennifer; Samms-Vaughan, Maureen; Wilks, Rainford J.; Adegnika, Akim; Ateba-Ngoa, Ulysse; Yazdanbakhsh, Maria; O'Connor, Timothy D.

2016-01-01

To characterize the extent and impact of ancestry-related biases in precision genomic medicine, we use 642 whole-genome sequences from the Consortium on Asthma among African-ancestry Populations in the Americas (CAAPA) project to evaluate typical filters and databases. We find significant correlations between estimated African ancestry proportions and the number of variants per individual in all variant classification sets but one. The source of these correlations is highlighted in more detail by looking at the interaction between filtering criteria and the ClinVar and Human Gene Mutation databases. ClinVar's correlation, representing African ancestry-related bias, has changed over time amidst monthly updates, with the most extreme switch happening between March and April of 2014 (r=0.733 to r=−0.683). We identify 68 SNPs as the major drivers of this change in correlation. As long as ancestry-related bias when using these clinical databases is minimally recognized, the genetics community will face challenges with implementation, interpretation and cost-effectiveness when treating minority populations. PMID:27725664

Privacy Preserving Facial and Fingerprint Multi-biometric Authentication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Anzaku, Esla Timothy; Sohn, Hosik; Ro, Yong Man

The cases of identity theft can be mitigated by the adoption of secure authentication methods. Biohashing and its variants, which utilizes secret keys and biometrics, are promising methods for secure authentication; however, their shortcoming is the degraded performance under the assumption that secret keys are compromised. In this paper, we extend the concept of Biohashing to multi-biometrics - facial and fingerprint traits. We chose these traits because they are widely used, howbeit, little research attention has been given to designing privacy preserving multi-biometric systems using them. Instead of just using a single modality (facial or fingerprint), we presented a framework for using both modalities. The improved performance of the proposed method, using face and fingerprint, as against either facial or fingerprint trait used in isolation is evaluated using two chimerical bimodal databases formed from publicly available facial and fingerprint databases.

Complexity-entropy causality plane: A useful approach for distinguishing songs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ribeiro, Haroldo V.; Zunino, Luciano; Mendes, Renio S.; Lenzi, Ervin K.

2012-04-01

Nowadays we are often faced with huge databases resulting from the rapid growth of data storage technologies. This is particularly true when dealing with music databases. In this context, it is essential to have techniques and tools able to discriminate properties from these massive sets. In this work, we report on a statistical analysis of more than ten thousand songs aiming to obtain a complexity hierarchy. Our approach is based on the estimation of the permutation entropy combined with an intensive complexity measure, building up the complexity-entropy causality plane. The results obtained indicate that this representation space is very promising to discriminate songs as well as to allow a relative quantitative comparison among songs. Additionally, we believe that the here-reported method may be applied in practical situations since it is simple, robust and has a fast numerical implementation.

A new "virtual" patient pathway for the management of radial head and neck fractures.

PubMed

Jayaram, Prem R; Bhattacharyya, Rahul; Jenkins, Paul J; Anthony, Iain; Rymaszewski, Lech A

2014-03-01

Minimally displaced radial head and neck fractures are common and the outcome with conservative treatment is generally excellent. A new protocol was introduced to manage patients with these suspected fractures at a major urban hospital. Simple, undisplaced fractures without other associated injuries or instability were discharged with structured advice but no further face-to-face review. Patients with more complex injuries were reviewed at a "virtual clinic." The aim of this study was to examine the outcome of this process in terms of patient flow, satisfaction, reattendance, and reintervention. The 202 eligible patients, who presented during a 1-year period from October 2011 to October 2012, were identified retrospectively from a prospectively collected administrative database. Mason type III and IV fractures were excluded. A questionnaire was administered by mail or phone call to assess satisfaction with the process, information received, and function. Twenty (10%) patients required face-to-face review in a clinic, whereas 182 (90%) were managed with direct discharge; 155 patients responded to the survey (77%). The overall satisfaction rate was 96% in the suspected fracture group and 87% in the definite fracture group (P = .08). Satisfaction with the information provided was 95%. Two (1%) required late surgical intervention. In this study, patients with suspected Mason I or II fractures were managed with limited face-to-face follow-up with high satisfaction rates. The reintervention rate was extremely low. This process has significant benefits to patients, who have fewer hospital visits, and to orthopaedic departments, which have more time to devote to complex cases. Copyright © 2014 Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery Board of Trustees. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ground truth and benchmarks for performance evaluation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Takeuchi, Ayako; Shneier, Michael; Hong, Tsai Hong; Chang, Tommy; Scrapper, Christopher; Cheok, Geraldine S.

2003-09-01

Progress in algorithm development and transfer of results to practical applications such as military robotics requires the setup of standard tasks, of standard qualitative and quantitative measurements for performance evaluation and validation. Although the evaluation and validation of algorithms have been discussed for over a decade, the research community still faces a lack of well-defined and standardized methodology. The range of fundamental problems include a lack of quantifiable measures of performance, a lack of data from state-of-the-art sensors in calibrated real-world environments, and a lack of facilities for conducting realistic experiments. In this research, we propose three methods for creating ground truth databases and benchmarks using multiple sensors. The databases and benchmarks will provide researchers with high quality data from suites of sensors operating in complex environments representing real problems of great relevance to the development of autonomous driving systems. At NIST, we have prototyped a High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) system with a suite of sensors including a Riegl ladar, GDRS ladar, stereo CCD, several color cameras, Global Position System (GPS), Inertial Navigation System (INS), pan/tilt encoders, and odometry . All sensors are calibrated with respect to each other in space and time. This allows a database of features and terrain elevation to be built. Ground truth for each sensor can then be extracted from the database. The main goal of this research is to provide ground truth databases for researchers and engineers to evaluate algorithms for effectiveness, efficiency, reliability, and robustness, thus advancing the development of algorithms.

Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology: Fabian A. Soto.

PubMed

2016-11-01

APA's Awards for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology recognize psychologists who have demonstrated excellence early in their careers. One of the 2016 award winners is Fabian A. Soto, whose work "has shed fresh light on a broad range of fundamental psychological issues, including basic associative conditioning, causal judgment, categorization, visual object recognition, and face processing." Soto's award citation, biography, and selected bibliography are presented here. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

A Hadoop-based Molecular Docking System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dong, Yueli; Guo, Quan; Sun, Bin

2017-10-01

Molecular docking always faces the challenge of managing tens of TB datasets. It is necessary to improve the efficiency of the storage and docking. We proposed the molecular docking platform based on Hadoop for virtual screening, it provides the preprocessing of ligand datasets and the analysis function of the docking results. A molecular cloud database that supports mass data management is constructed. Through this platform, the docking time is reduced, the data storage is efficient, and the management of the ligand datasets is convenient.

A Password System Based on Sketches

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-07-12

than traditional passwords. Biometrics include biological properties such as fingerprints, voices, faces, and even handwriting . Fingerprints have been...perturbation of the sketch495 results in a corresponding change in the model, which is exactly what we imply when we say that model is (locally...Conf. on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (2010) 339–344.690 [29] M. Martinez-Diaz, J. Fierrez, J. Galbally, The DooDB Graphical Password Database: Data Analysis and Benchmark Results, IEEE Access 1 (2013) 596–605. 32 33

Conjunctival malignant melanoma: A rare variant and review of important diagnostic and therapeutic considerations

PubMed Central

Albreiki, Danah H.; Gilberg, Steven M.; Farmer, James P.

2012-01-01

Malignant melanoma of the conjunctiva is a relatively infrequent neoplasm that can be associated with significant morbidity and cause diagnostic difficulty to both the ophthalmologist and pathologist. We herein describe the first reported case in North American and European databases of a rare variant-signet ring cell melanoma – arising in the background of primary acquired melanosis (PAM) and use this case as a review of important diagnostic and therapeutic considerations when faced with this condition. PMID:23960986

Privacy protection and public goods: building a genetic database for health research in Newfoundland and Labrador

PubMed Central

Pullman, Daryl; Perrot-Daley, Astrid; Hodgkinson, Kathy; Street, Catherine; Rahman, Proton

2013-01-01

Objective To provide a legal and ethical analysis of some of the implementation challenges faced by the Population Therapeutics Research Group (PTRG) at Memorial University (Canada), in using genealogical information offered by individuals for its genetics research database. Materials and methods This paper describes the unique historical and genetic characteristics of the Newfoundland and Labrador founder population, which gave rise to the opportunity for PTRG to build the Newfoundland Genealogy Database containing digitized records of all pre-confederation (1949) census records of the Newfoundland founder population. In addition to building the database, PTRG has developed the Heritability Analytics Infrastructure, a data management structure that stores genotype, phenotype, and pedigree information in a single database, and custom linkage software (KINNECT) to perform pedigree linkages on the genealogy database. Discussion A newly adopted legal regimen in Newfoundland and Labrador is discussed. It incorporates health privacy legislation with a unique research ethics statute governing the composition and activities of research ethics boards and, for the first time in Canada, elevating the status of national research ethics guidelines into law. The discussion looks at this integration of legal and ethical principles which provides a flexible and seamless framework for balancing the privacy rights and welfare interests of individuals, families, and larger societies in the creation and use of research data infrastructures as public goods. Conclusion The complementary legal and ethical frameworks that now coexist in Newfoundland and Labrador provide the legislative authority, ethical legitimacy, and practical flexibility needed to find a workable balance between privacy interests and public goods. Such an approach may also be instructive for other jurisdictions as they seek to construct and use biobanks and related research platforms for genetic research. PMID:22859644

Privacy protection and public goods: building a genetic database for health research in Newfoundland and Labrador.

PubMed

Kosseim, Patricia; Pullman, Daryl; Perrot-Daley, Astrid; Hodgkinson, Kathy; Street, Catherine; Rahman, Proton

2013-01-01

To provide a legal and ethical analysis of some of the implementation challenges faced by the Population Therapeutics Research Group (PTRG) at Memorial University (Canada), in using genealogical information offered by individuals for its genetics research database. This paper describes the unique historical and genetic characteristics of the Newfoundland and Labrador founder population, which gave rise to the opportunity for PTRG to build the Newfoundland Genealogy Database containing digitized records of all pre-confederation (1949) census records of the Newfoundland founder population. In addition to building the database, PTRG has developed the Heritability Analytics Infrastructure, a data management structure that stores genotype, phenotype, and pedigree information in a single database, and custom linkage software (KINNECT) to perform pedigree linkages on the genealogy database. A newly adopted legal regimen in Newfoundland and Labrador is discussed. It incorporates health privacy legislation with a unique research ethics statute governing the composition and activities of research ethics boards and, for the first time in Canada, elevating the status of national research ethics guidelines into law. The discussion looks at this integration of legal and ethical principles which provides a flexible and seamless framework for balancing the privacy rights and welfare interests of individuals, families, and larger societies in the creation and use of research data infrastructures as public goods. The complementary legal and ethical frameworks that now coexist in Newfoundland and Labrador provide the legislative authority, ethical legitimacy, and practical flexibility needed to find a workable balance between privacy interests and public goods. Such an approach may also be instructive for other jurisdictions as they seek to construct and use biobanks and related research platforms for genetic research.

Morphological quantitative criteria and aesthetic evaluation of eight female Han face types.

PubMed

Zhao, Qiming; Zhou, Rongrong; Zhang, XuDong; Sun, Huafeng; Lu, Xin; Xia, Dongsheng; Song, Mingli; Liang, Yang

2013-04-01

Human facial aesthetics relies on the classification of facial features and standards of attractiveness. However, there are no widely accepted quantitative criteria for facial attractiveness, particularly for Chinese Han faces. Establishing quantitative standards of attractiveness for facial landmarks within facial types is important for planning outcomes in cosmetic plastic surgery. The aim of this study was to determine quantitatively the criteria for attractiveness of eight female Chinese Han facial types. A photographic database of young Chinese Han women's faces was created. Photographed faces (450) were classified based on eight established types and scored for attractiveness. Measurements taken at seven standard facial landmarks and their relative proportions were analyzed for correlations to attractiveness scores. Attractive faces of each type were averaged via an image-morphing algorithm to generate synthetic facial types. Results were compared with the neoclassical ideal and data for Caucasians. Morphological proportions corresponding to the highest attractiveness scores for Chinese Han women differed from the neoclassical ideal. In our population of young, normal, healthy Han women, high attractiveness ratings were given to those with greater temporal width and pogonion-gonion distance, and smaller bizygomatic and bigonial widths. As attractiveness scores increased, the ratio of the temporal to bizygomatic widths increased, and the ratio of the distance between the pogonion and gonion to the bizygomatic width also increased slightly. Among the facial types, the oval and inverted triangular were the most attractive. The neoclassical ideal of attractiveness does not apply to Han faces. However, the proportion of faces considered attractive in this population was similar to that of Caucasian populations. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .