Query: Effectiveness of virtual reality exposure therapy for active duty soldiers in a military mental health clinic.

Relevant passages:
Virtual reality exposure therapy. <=SEP=> It has been proposed that virtual reality (VR) exposure may be an alternative to standard in vivo exposure. Virtual reality integrates real-time computer graphics, body tracking devices, visual displays, and other sensory input devices to immerse a participant in a computer-generated virtual environment. Virtual reality exposure is potentially an efficient and cost-effective treatment of anxiety disorders. VR exposure therapy reduced the fear of heights in the first controlled study of virtual reality in treatment of a psychiatric disorder. A case study supported the efficacy of VR exposure therapy for the fear of flying. The potential for virtual reality exposure treatment for these and other disorders is explored, and therapeutic issues surrounding the delivery of VR exposure are discussed.

Virtual reality exposure therapy for Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. <=SEP=> BACKGROUND
Virtual reality (VR) integrates real-time computer graphics, body-tracking devices, visual displays, and other sensory input devices to immerse a participant in a computer-generated virtual environment that changes in a natural way with head and body motion. VR exposure (VRE) is proposed as an alternative to typical imaginal exposure treatment for Vietnam combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).


METHOD
This report presents the results of an open clinical trial using VRE to treat Vietnam combat veterans who have DSM-IV PTSD. In 8 to 16 sessions, 10 male patients were exposed to 2 virtual environments: a virtual Huey helicopter flying over a virtual Vietnam and a clearing surrounded by jungle.


RESULTS
Clinician-rated PTSD symptoms as measured by the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale, the primary outcome measure, at 6-month follow-up indicated an overall statistically significant reduction from baseline (p = .0021) in symptoms associated with specific reported traumatic experiences. All 8 participants interviewed at the 6-month follow-up reported reductions in PTSD symptoms ranging from 15% to 67%. Significant decreases were seen in all 3 symptom clusters (p < .02). Patient self-reported intrusion symptoms as measured by the Impact of Event Scale were significantly lower (p < .05) at 3 months than at baseline but not at 6 months, although there was a clear trend toward fewer intrusive thoughts and somewhat less avoidance.


CONCLUSION
Virtual reality exposure therapy holds promise for treating PTSD in Vietnam veterans.

Influence of emotional engagement and habituation on exposure therapy for PTSD. <=SEP=> This study examined 2 process variables, emotional engagement and habituation, and outcome of exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder. Thirty-seven female assault victims received treatment that involved repeated imaginal reliving of their trauma, and rated their distress at 10-min intervals. The average distress levels during each of 6 exposure sessions were submitted to a cluster analysis. Three distinct groups of clients with different patterns of distress were found: high initial engagement and gradual habituation between sessions, high initial engagement without habituation, and moderate initial engagement without habituation. Clients with the 1st distress pattern improved more in treatment than the other clients. The results are discussed within the framework of emotional processing theory, emphasizing the crucial role of emotional engagement and habituation in exposure therapy.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for World Trade Center Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A Case Report <=SEP=> Done properly by experienced therapists, re-exposure to memories of traumatic events via imaginal exposure therapy can lead to a reduction of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Exposure helps the patient process and habituate to memories and strong emotions associated with the traumatic event: memories and emotions they have been carefully avoiding. But many patients are unwilling or unable to self-generate and re-experience painful emotional images. The present case study describes the treatment of a survivor of the World Trade Center (WTC) attack of 9-11-01 who had developed acute PTSD. After she failed to improve with traditional imaginal exposure therapy, we sought to increase emotional engagement and treatment success using virtual reality (VR) exposure therapy. Over the course of six 1-h VR exposure therapy sessions, we gradually and systematically exposed the PTSD patient to virtual planes flying over the World Trade Center, jets crashing into the World Trade Center with animated explosions and sound effects, virtual people jumping to their deaths from the burning buildings, towers collapsing, and dust clouds. VR graded exposure therapy was successful for reducing acute PTSD symptoms. Depression and PTSD symptoms as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory and the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale indicated a large (83%) reduction in depression, and large (90%) reduction in PTSD symptoms after completing VR exposure therapy. Although case reports are scientifically inconclusive by nature, these strong preliminary results suggest that VR exposure therapy is a promising new medium for treating acute PTSD. This study may be examined in more detail at www.vrpain.com.

Emotional processing of fear: exposure to corrective information. <=SEP=> In this article we propose mechanisms that govern the processing of emotional information, particularly those involved in fear reduction. Emotions are viewed as represented by information structures in memory, and anxiety is thought to occur when an information structure that serves as program to escape or avoid danger is activated. Emotional processing is denned as the modification of memory structures that underlie emotions. It is argued that some form of exposure to feared situations is common to many psychotherapies for anxiety, and that confrontation with feared objects or situations is an effective treatment. Physiological activation and habituation within and across exposure sessions are cited as indicators of emotional processing, and variables that influence activation and habituation of fear responses are examined. These variables and the indicators are analyzed to yield an account of what information must be integrated for emotional processing of a fear structure. The elements of such a structure are viewed as cognitive representations of the stimulus characteristic of the fear situation, the individual's responses in it, and aspects of its meaning for the individual. Treatment failures are interpreted with respect to the interference of cognitive defenses, autonomic arousal, mood state, and erroneous ideation with reformation of targeted fear structures. Applications of the concepts advanced here to therapeutic practice and to the broader study of psychopathology are discussed.

A Simple and Effective Unsupervised Word Segmentation Approach <=SEP=> In this paper, we propose a new unsupervised approach for word segmentation. The core idea of our approach is a novel word induction criterion called WordRank, which estimates the goodness of word hypotheses (character or phoneme sequences). We devise a method to derive exterior word boundary information from the link structures of adjacent word hypotheses and incorporate interior word boundary information to complete the model. In light of WordRank, word segmentation can be modeled as an optimization problem. A Viterbistyled algorithm is developed for the search of the optimal segmentation. Extensive experiments conducted on phonetic transcripts as well as standard Chinese and Japanese data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. On the standard Brent version of BernsteinRatner corpora, our approach outperforms the state-ofthe-art Bayesian models by more than 3%. Plus, our approach is simpler and more efficient than the Bayesian methods. Consequently, our approach is more suitable for real-world applications.

Question Answering Over Knowledge Graphs: Question Understanding Via Template Decomposition <=SEP=> The gap between unstructured natural language and structured data makes it challenging to build a system that supports using natural language to query large knowledge graphs. Many existing methods construct a structured query for the input question based on a syntactic parser. Once the input question is parsed incorrectly, a false structured query will be generated, which may result in false or incomplete answers. The problem gets worse especially for complex questions. In this paper, we propose a novel systematic method to understand natural language questions by using a large number of binary templates rather than semantic parsers. As sufficient templates are critical in the procedure, we present a low-cost approach that can build a huge number of templates automatically. To reduce the search space, we carefully devise an index to facilitate the online template decomposition. Moreover, we design effective strategies to perform the two-level disambiguations (i.e., entity-level ambiguity and structure-level ambiguity) by considering the query semantics. Extensive experiments over several benchmarks demonstrate that our proposed approach is effective as it significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of both precision and recall. PVLDB Reference Format: Weiguo Zheng, Jeffrey Xu Yu, Lei Zou, and Hong Cheng. Question Answering Over Knowledge Graphs: Question Understanding Via Template Decomposition. PVLDB, 11 (11): 1373-1386, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14778/3236187.3236192.

Demand Characteristics in Assessing Motion Sickness in a Virtual Environment: Or Does Taking a Motion Sickness Questionnaire Make You Sick? <=SEP=> The experience of motion sickness in a virtual environment may be measured through pre and postexperiment self-reported questionnaires such as the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). Although research provides converging evidence that users of virtual environments can experience motion sickness, there have been no controlled studies to determine to what extent the user's subjective response is a demand characteristic resulting from pre and posttest measures. In this study, subjects were given either SSQ's both pre and postvirtual environment immersion, or only postimmersion. This technique tested for contrast effects due to demand characteristics in which administration of the questionnaire itself suggested to the participant that the virtual environment may produce motion sickness. Results indicate that reports of motion sickness after immersion in a virtual environment are much greater when both pre and postquestionnaires are given than when only a posttest questionnaire is used. The implications for assessments of motion sickness in virtual environments are discussed.

Semantic image retrieval system based on object relationships <=SEP=> Semantic-based image retrieval has recently become popular as an avenue to improve retrieval accuracy. The “semantic gap” between the visual features and the high-level semantic features could be narrowed down by utilizing this kind of retrieval method. However, most of the current methods of semantic-based image retrieval utilize visual semantic features and do not consider spatial relationships. We build a system for content-based image retrieval from image collections on the web and tackle the challenges of distinguishing between images that contain similar objects, in order to capture the semantic meaning of a search query. In order to do so, we utilize a combination of segmentation into objects as well as the relationships of these objects with each other.

The security of modern password expiration: an algorithmic framework and empirical analysis <=SEP=> This paper presents the first large-scale study of the success of password expiration in meeting its intended purpose, namely revoking access to an account by an attacker who has captured the account's password. Using a dataset of over 7700 accounts, we assess the extent to which passwords that users choose to replace expired ones pose an obstacle to the attacker's continued access. We develop a framework by which an attacker can search for a user's new password from an old one, and design an efficient algorithm to build an approximately optimal search strategy. We then use this strategy to measure the difficulty of breaking newly chosen passwords from old ones. We believe our study calls into question the merit of continuing the practice of password expiration.

Automatic Gleason grading of prostate cancer using quantitative phase imaging and machine learning. <=SEP=> We present an approach for automatic diagnosis of tissue biopsies. Our methodology consists of a quantitative phase imaging tissue scanner and machine learning algorithms to process these data. We illustrate the performance by automatic Gleason grading of prostate specimens. The imaging system operates on the principle of interferometry and, as a result, reports on the nanoscale architecture of the unlabeled specimen. We use these data to train a random forest classifier to learn textural behaviors of prostate samples and classify each pixel in the image into different classes. Automatic diagnosis results were computed from the segmented regions. By combining morphological features with quantitative information from the glands and stroma, logistic regression was used to discriminate regions with Gleason grade 3 versus grade 4 cancer in prostatectomy tissue. The overall accuracy of this classification derived from a receiver operating curve was 82%, which is in the range of human error when interobserver variability is considered. We anticipate that our approach will provide a clinically objective and quantitative metric for Gleason grading, allowing us to corroborate results across instruments and laboratories and feed the computer algorithms for improved accuracy.

Novel Six-Slot Four-Pole Axial Flux-Switching Permanent Magnet Machine for Electric Vehicle <=SEP=> This paper proposes several novel 6-slot/4-pole axial flux-switching machine topologies for electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The proposed topologies include stator shifting, rotor shifting, and a combination of shifting both the stator and the rotor. The proposed topologies eliminate the even harmonics of the flux linkage that create unbalanced flux linkage in the traditional 6-slot/4-pole machine. Fundamental frequency will be reduced by 60% compared with a 12-slot/10-pole axial flux-switching machine without unbalanced flux linkage. An analytical method is used to find the offset angle between stator a-axis and the rotor pole axis to realize the elimination of even harmonics of the flux linkage. The analytical method is verified by finite-element analysis and experiments. The results confirm that the proposed novel topologies efficiently eliminate the even harmonics of the flux linkage in the 6-slot/4-pole machine.

The inconspicuous penis in children <=SEP=> The term 'inconspicuous penis' refers to a group of anatomical abnormalities in which the penis looks smaller than is expected. Micropenis can be defined as 'true micropenis'—which results from a defect in the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis—and 'micropenis secondary to congenital anatomical anomalies of the surrounding and overlying structures'—also known as 'concealed penis'. The different forms of concealed penis include webbed penis, congenital megaprepuce and partially hidden penis caused by prepubic adiposity. This disorder can also have iatrogenic causes resulting from adhesions that are secondary to circumcision—this type of concealed penis is known as 'trapped penis'. However, in both groups, micropenis is defined as a stretched penile length that is at least 2.5 SD below the mean for the patient's age, but without any other penile defects. Patients with true micropenis can be managed with testosterone, which has demonstrated good penile elongation results in the long term. Surgery also has a pivotal role in reconstruction for elongating the penis and for correction of anatomical abnormalities in concealed penis.

AutoHair: fully automatic hair modeling from a single image <=SEP=> We introduce AutoHair, the first fully automatic method for 3D hair modeling from a single portrait image, with no user interaction or parameter tuning. Our method efficiently generates complete and high-quality hair geometries, which are comparable to those generated by the state-of-the-art methods, where user interaction is required. The core components of our method are: a novel hierarchical deep neural network for automatic hair segmentation and hair growth direction estimation, trained over an annotated hair image database; and an efficient and automatic data-driven hair matching and modeling algorithm, based on a large set of 3D hair exemplars. We demonstrate the efficacy and robustness of our method on Internet photos, resulting in a database of around 50K 3D hair models and a corresponding hairstyle space that covers a wide variety of real-world hairstyles. We also show novel applications enabled by our method, including 3D hairstyle space navigation and hair-aware image retrieval.

Neural Network based Performance Tuning in Distributed Database Environment <=SEP=> The self-tuning of database management systems has important advantages like efficient use of resources, improved performance, reduced total cost of ownership, improved customer satisfaction etc. To support large database driven web-applications with high scalability and availability, the data tier invariably will have distributed database systems. The self-tuning of database systems in a distributed database environment is most desirable as it not only improves the quality of service to the end user applications, but it also provides central control over the entire tuning process. In this paper, a novel technique that leverages the learning ability of the Artificial Neural Network(ANN) has been employed to estimate the extent of tuning required at each database location. Further, the estimated values are used to fine-tune the Database systems at every location from remote control panel. The proposed method has been tested under OLTP workload-type with database distributed on three nodes and the experimental results are validated with workload characteristics based selftuning method. The results show a significant performance improvement og 18.64% as compared to built in selftuning feature of the Database Management System. The self-tuning method not only makes the end-user applications more responsive, but it will also help improve the business prospects of the enterprise.

Characterization of soft errors caused by single event upsets in CMOS processes <=SEP=> Radiation-induced single event upsets (SEUs) pose a major challenge for the design of memories and logic circuits in high-performance microprocessors in technologies beyond 90nm. Historically, we have considered power-performance-area trade offs. There is a need to include the soft error rate (SER) as another design parameter. In this paper, we present radiation particle interactions with silicon, charge collection effects, soft errors, and their effect on VLSI circuits. We also discuss the impact of SEUs on system reliability. We describe an accelerated measurement of SERs using a high-intensity neutron beam, the characterization of SERs in sequential logic cells, and technology scaling trends. Finally, some directions for future research are given.

Multitechnique paraphrase alignment: A contribution to pinpointing sub-sentential paraphrases <=SEP=> This work uses parallel monolingual corpora for a detailed study of the task of sub-sentential paraphrase acquisition. We argue that the scarcity of this type of resource is compensated by the fact that it is the most suited type for studies on paraphrasing. We propose a large exploration of this task with experiments on two languages with five different acquisition techniques, selected for their complementarity, their combinations, as well as four monolingual corpus types of varying comparability. We report, under all conditions, a significant improvement over all techniques by validating candidate paraphrases using a maximum entropy classifier. An important result of our study is the identification of difficult-to-acquire paraphrase pairs, which are classified and quantified in a bilingual typology.

Automatic Model Generation from Documentation for Java API Functions <=SEP=> Modern software systems are becoming increasingly complex, relying on a lot of third-party library support. Library behaviors are hence an integral part of software behaviors. Analyzing them is as important as analyzing the software itself. However, analyzing libraries is highly challenging due to the lack of source code, implementation in different languages, and complex optimizations. We observe that many Java library functions provide excellent documentation, which concisely describes the functionalities of the functions. We develop a novel technique that can construct models for Java API functions by analyzing the documentation. These models are simpler implementations in Java compared to the original ones and hence easier to analyze. More importantly, they provide the same functionalities as the original functions. Our technique successfully models 326 functions from 14 widely used Java classes. We also use these models in static taint analysis on Android apps and dynamic slicing for Java programs, demonstrating the effectiveness and efficiency of our models.

Practical graph isomorphism, II <=SEP=> We report the current state of the graph isomorphism problem from the practical point of view. After describing the general principles of the refinement-individualization paradigm and proving its validity, we explain how it is implemented in several of the key programs. In particular, we bring the description of the best known program nauty up to date and describe an innovative approach called Traces that outperforms the competitors for many difficult graph classes. Detailed comparisons against saucy, Bliss and conauto are presented. Email addresses: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan D. McKay), piperno@di.uniroma1.it (Adolfo Piperno). 1 Supported by the Australian Research Council. Preprint submitted to Elsevier — nautytraces2b — 11 December 2013 — ar X iv :1 30 1. 14 93 v1 [ cs .D M ] 8 J an 2 01 3

Breast Cancer Classification from Histopathological Images with Inception Recurrent Residual Convolutional Neural Network <=SEP=> The Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) is one of the most powerful and successful deep learning approaches. DCNNs have already provided superior performance in different modalities of medical imaging including breast cancer classification, segmentation, and detection. Breast cancer is one of the most common and dangerous cancers impacting women worldwide. In this paper, we have proposed a method for breast cancer classification with the Inception Recurrent Residual Convolutional Neural Network (IRRCNN) model. The IRRCNN is a powerful DCNN model that combines the strength of the Inception Network (Inception-v4), the Residual Network (ResNet), and the Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network (RCNN). The IRRCNN shows superior performance against equivalent Inception Networks, Residual Networks, and RCNNs for object recognition tasks. In this paper, the IRRCNN approach is applied for breast cancer classification on two publicly available datasets including BreakHis and Breast Cancer (BC) classification challenge 2015. The experimental results are compared against the existing machine learning and deep learning–based approaches with respect to image-based, patch-based, image-level, and patient-level classification. The IRRCNN model provides superior classification performance in terms of sensitivity, area under the curve (AUC), the ROC curve, and global accuracy compared to existing approaches for both datasets.

Adaptive Clock Gating Technique for Low Power IP Core in SoC Design <=SEP=> Clock gating is a well-known technique to reduce chip dynamic power. This paper analyzes the disadvantages of some recent clock gating techniques and points out that they are difficult in system-on-chip (SoC) design. Based on the analysis of the intellectual property (IP) core model, an adaptive clock gating (ACG) technique which can be easily realized is introduced for the low power IP core design. ACG can automatically enable or disable the IP clock to reduce not only dynamic power but also leakage power with power gating technique. The experimental results on some IP cores in a real SoC show an average of 62.2% dynamic power reduction and 70.9% leakage power reduction without virtually performance impact.

Co-word analysis and thematic landscapes in Spanish information science literature, 1985–2014 <=SEP=> This paper discusses the thematic backdrop for Spanish library and information science output. It draws from Web of Science records on papers authored by researchers at Spanish institutions and published under the category ‘Information Science & Library Science’ between 1985 and 2014. Two analytical techniques were used, one based on co-keyword and the other on document co-citation networks. Burst detection was applied to noun phrases and references of the intellectual base. Co-citation analysis identified nine research fronts: ‘digital rights management’, ‘citation analysis’, ‘translation services’, ‘bibliometric analysis’, ‘co-authorship’, ‘electronic books’, ‘webometrics’, ‘information systems’ and ‘world wide web’. The most recent trends in the subject areas addressed in Spain were found to lie in metrics-related sub-specialities: the h-index, scientific collaboration, journal bibliometric indicators, rankings, universities and webometrics.

Five Facts About Prices : A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models <=SEP=> We establish five facts about prices in the U.S. economy: 1) The median duration of consumer prices when sales are excluded at the product level is 11 months. The median duration of finished goods producer prices is 8.7 months. 2) Two-thirds of regular price changes are price increases. 3) The frequency of price increases responds strongly to inflation while the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not. 4) The frequency of price change is highly seasonal: It is highest in the 1st quarter and lowest in the 4th quarter. 5) The hazard function of price changes for individual consumer and producer goods is downward sloping for the first few months and then flat (except for a large spike at 12 months in consumer services and all producer prices). These facts are based on CPI microdata and a new comprehensive data set of microdata on producer prices that we construct from raw production files underlying the PPI. We show that the 1st, 2nd and 3rd facts are consistent with a benchmark menu-cost model, while the 4th and 5th facts are not.

Animal-assisted therapy and loneliness in nursing homes: use of robotic versus living dogs. <=SEP=> Loneliness is a common problem in long-term care facilities (LTCF) and previous work has shown that animal-assisted therapy (AAT) can to some degree reverse loneliness. Here, we compared the ability of a living dog (Dog) and a robotic dog (AIBO) to treat loneliness in elderly patients living in LTCF. In comparison with a control group not receiving AAT, both the Dog and AIBO groups had statistically significant improvements in their levels of loneliness. As measured by a modified Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (MLAPS), residents showed high levels of attachment to both the dog and AIBO. Subscale analysis showed that the AIBO group scored lower than the living dog on "animal rights/animal welfare" but not on "general attachment" or "people substituting." However, MLAPS measures did not correlate with changes in loneliness, showing that attachment was not the mechanism by which AAT decreases loneliness. We conclude that interactive robotic dogs can reduce loneliness in residents of LTCF and that residents become attached to these robots. However, level of attachment does not explain the decrease in loneliness associated with AAT conducted with either a living or robotic dog.

Random projections fuzzy k-nearest neighbor(RPFKNN) for big data classification <=SEP=> As the number of features in pattern recognition applications continuously grows, new algorithms are necessary to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space while producing comparable results. For example, a dynamic area of research, activity recognition, produces large quantities of high-velocity, high-dimensionality data that require real time classification. While dimensionality reduction approaches such as principle component analysis (PCA) and feature selection work well for datasets of reasonable size and dimensionality, they fail on big data. A possible approach to classification of high-dimensionality datasets is to combine a typical classifier, fuzzy k-nearest neighbor in our case (FKNN), with feature reduction by random projection (RP). As opposed to PCA where one projection matrix is computed based on least square optimality, in RP, a projection matrix is chosen at random multiple times. As the random projection procedure is repeated many times, the question is how to aggregate the values of the classifier obtained in each projection. In this paper we present a fusion strategy for RP FKNN, denoted as RPFKNN. The fusion strategy is based on the class membership values produced by FKNN and classification accuracy in each projection. We test RPFKNN on several synthetic and activity recognition datasets.

Course Enrollment Recommender System <=SEP=> One of the main problems faced by university students is to create and manage the semester course plan. In this paper, we present a course enrollment recommender system based on data mining techniques. The system mainly helps with students’ enrollment decisions. More specifically, it provides recommendation of selective and optional courses with respect to students’ skills, knowledge, interests and free time slots in their timetables. The system also warns students against difficult courses and reminds them mandatory study duties. We evaluate the usability of designed methods by analyzing real-world data obtained from the Information System of Masaryk University.

Convolution-based memory models Memory <=SEP=> Definition: Convolution-Based Memory Models are a mathematical model of neural storage of complex data structures using distributed representations. Data structures stored range from lists of pairs through sequences, trees and networks.

MilkyWay-2 supercomputer: system and application <=SEP=> On June 17, 2013, MilkyWay-2 (Tianhe-2) supercomputer was crowned as the fastest supercomputer in the world on the 41th TOP500 list. This paper provides an overview of the MilkyWay-2 project and describes the design of hardware and software systems. The key architecture features of MilkyWay-2 are highlighted, including neo-heterogeneous compute nodes integrating commodity-off-the-shelf processors and accelerators that share similar instruction set architecture, powerful networks that employ proprietary interconnection chips to support the massively parallel message-passing communications, proprietary 16-core processor designed for scientific computing, efficient software stacks that provide high performance file system, emerging programming model for heterogeneous systems, and intelligent system administration. We perform extensive evaluation with wide-ranging applications from LINPACK and Graph500 benchmarks to massively parallel software deployed in the system.

Road traffic sign detection and classification <=SEP=> A vision-based vehicle guidance system for road vehicles can have three main roles: 1) road detection; 2) obstacle detection; and 3) sign recognition. The first two have been studied for many years and with many good results, but traffi c sign recognition is a less-studied field. Traffi c signs provide drivers with very valuable informatio n about the road, in order to make drivin g safer and easier. We think that traffi c signs must play the same role for autonomous vehicles. They are designed to be easily recognized by human driver s mainly because their color and shapes are very different from natural environments. The algorithm described in this paper takes advantage of these features. I t has two main parts. The first one, for the detection, uses color thresholding to segment the image and shape analysis to detect the signs. The second one, for the classification, uses a neural network. Some results from natural scenes are shown. On the other hand, the algorithm is valid to detect other kinds of marks that would tell the mobile robot to perform some task at that place.

Study on WeChat User Behaviors of University Graduates <=SEP=> WeChat was published in China by Tencent company since Jan. 21st 2011. After 100 million users in Mar. 2012, Tencent announced that the number of WeChat's users reached 300 million in Jan 15th 2013. WeChat has become one of the most heated topics within the last 2 years and its every move is attracting attention from various academia, industries, and enterprises. This study selected 50 university graduates as object and analyzed their We Chat using patterns through investigation and survey with statistic methods. The author designed the methods of user study and invited users to participate in the user study at first. Second, by using the collected data from university graduates from 2013 to Mar 2014, the author analyzed the quantities and composition of their contacts in We Chat, figured out the source, type and goal of the public platform they are following, recorded the time, type, form and time relativity of their first 100 posts in the "Moments" function. Through analyzing the data, the author intended to study the real situation in which university graduates virtually socialize and communicate with each other using WeChat and the popularity of WeChat on building social network with strangers. Also, this paper has certain contribution to how to improve the function and service of WeChat. What's more, it analyzed both positive and negative influence of We Chat on students' socialization.