Query: Movement segmentation using a primitive library

Relevant passages:
Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning <=SEP=> The first € price and the £ and $ price are net prices, subject to local VAT. Prices indicated with * include VAT for books; the €(D) includes 7% for Germany, the €(A) includes 10% for Austria. Prices indicated with ** include VAT for electronic products; 19% for Germany, 20% for Austria. All prices exclusive of carriage charges. Prices and other details are subject to change without notice. All errors and omissions excepted. C. Bishop Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Action MACH a spatio-temporal Maximum Average Correlation Height filter for action recognition <=SEP=> In this paper we introduce a template-based method for recognizing human actions called action MACH. Our approach is based on a maximum average correlation height (MACH) filter. A common limitation of template-based methods is their inability to generate a single template using a collection of examples. MACH is capable of capturing intra-class variability by synthesizing a single Action MACH filter for a given action class. We generalize the traditional MACH filter to video (3D spatiotemporal volume), and vector valued data. By analyzing the response of the filter in the frequency domain, we avoid the high computational cost commonly incurred in template-based approaches. Vector valued data is analyzed using the Clifford Fourier transform, a generalization of the Fourier transform intended for both scalar and vector-valued data. Finally, we perform an extensive set of experiments and compare our method with some of the most recent approaches in the field by using publicly available datasets, and two new annotated human action datasets which include actions performed in classic feature films and sports broadcast television.

Optimal Brain Damage <=SEP=> We have used information-theoretic ideas to derive a class of practical and nearly optimal schemes for adapting the size of a neural network. By removing unimportant weights from a network, several improvements can be expected: better generalization, fewer training examples required, and improved speed of learning and/or classification. The basic idea is to use second-derivative information to make a tradeoff between network complexity and training set error. Experiments confirm the usefulness of the methods on a real-world application.

A new class of upper bounds on the log partition function <=SEP=> We introduce a new class of upper bounds on the log partition function of a Markov random field (MRF). This quantity plays an important role in various contexts, including approximating marginal distributions, parameter estimation, combinatorial enumeration, statistical decision theory, and large-deviations bounds. Our derivation is based on concepts from convex duality and information geometry: in particular, it exploits mixtures of distributions in the exponential domain, and the Legendre mapping between exponential and mean parameters. In the special case of convex combinations of tree-structured distributions, we obtain a family of variational problems, similar to the Bethe variational problem, but distinguished by the following desirable properties: i) they are convex, and have a unique global optimum; and ii) the optimum gives an upper bound on the log partition function. This optimum is defined by stationary conditions very similar to those defining fixed points of the sum-product algorithm, or more generally, any local optimum of the Bethe variational problem. As with sum-product fixed points, the elements of the optimizing argument can be used as approximations to the marginals of the original model. The analysis extends naturally to convex combinations of hypertree-structured distributions, thereby establishing links to Kikuchi approximations and variants.

A 3-dimensional sift descriptor and its application to action recognition <=SEP=> In this paper we introduce a 3-dimensional (3D) SIFT descriptor for video or 3D imagery such as MRI data. We also show how this new descriptor is able to better represent the 3D nature of video data in the application of action recognition. This paper will show how 3D SIFT is able to outperform previously used description methods in an elegant and efficient manner. We use a bag of words approach to represent videos, and present a method to discover relationships between spatio-temporal words in order to better describe the video data.

Continuous N-gram Representations for Authorship Attribution <=SEP=> This paper presents work on using continuous representations for authorship attribution. In contrast to previous work, which uses discrete feature representations, our model learns continuous representations for n-gram features via a neural network jointly with the classification layer. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art on two datasets, while producing comparable results on the remaining two.

Autotagger: A Model for Predicting Social Tags from Acoustic Features on Large Music Databases <=SEP=> Social tags are user-generated keywords associated with some resource on the Web. In the case of music, social tags have become an important component of “Web 2.0” recommender systems, allowing users to generate playlists based on use-dependent terms such as chill or jogging that have been applied to particular songs. In this paper, we propose a method for predicting these social tags directly from MP3 files. Using a set of 360 classifiers trained using the online ensemble learning algorithm FilterBoost, we map audio features onto social tags collected from the Web. The resulting automatic tags (or autotags) furnish information about music that is otherwise untagged or poorly tagged, allowing for insertion of previously unheard music into a social recommender. This avoids the “cold-start problem” common in such systems. Autotags can also be used to smooth the tag space from which similarities and recommendations are made by providing a set of comparable baseline tags for all tracks in a recommender system. Because the words we learn are the same as those used by people who label their music collections, it is easy to integrate our predictions into existing similarity and prediction methods based on web data.

Does Your Model Know the Digit 6 Is Not a Cat? A Less Biased Evaluation of "Outlier" Detectors <=SEP=> In the real world, a learning system could receive an input that looks nothing like anything it has seen during training, and this can lead to unpredictable behaviour. We thus need to know whether any given input belongs to the population distribution of the training data to prevent unpredictable behaviour in deployed systems. A recent surge of interest on this problem has led to the development of sophisticated techniques in the deep learning literature. However, due to the absence of a standardized problem formulation or an exhaustive evaluation, it is not evident if we can rely on these methods in practice. What makes this problem different from a typical supervised learning setting is that we cannot model the diversity of out-of-distribution samples in practice. The distribution of outliers used in training may not be the same as the distribution of outliers encountered in the application. Therefore, classical approaches that learn inliers vs. outliers with only two datasets can yield optimistic results. We introduce OD-test, a three-dataset evaluation scheme as a practical and more reliable strategy to assess progress on this problem. The OD-test benchmark provides a straightforward means of comparison for methods that address the out-of-distribution sample detection problem. We present an exhaustive evaluation of a broad set of methods from related areas on image classification tasks. Furthermore, we show that for realistic applications of high-dimensional images, the existing methods have low accuracy. Our analysis reveals areas of strength and weakness of each method.

Privacy Aware Learning <=SEP=> We study statistical risk minimization problems under a privacy model in which the data is kept confidential even from the learner. In this local privacy framework, we establish sharp upper and lower bounds on the convergence rates of statistical estimation procedures. As a consequence, we exhibit a precise tradeoff between the amount of privacy the data preserves and the utility, as measured by convergence rate, of any statistical estimator or learning procedure.

Autonomous Object Manipulation Using a Soft Planar Grasping Manipulator <=SEP=> This article presents the development of an autonomous motion planning algorithm for a soft planar grasping manipulator capable of grasp-and-place operations by encapsulation with uncertainty in the position and shape of the object. The end effector of the soft manipulator is fabricated in one piece without weakening seams using lost-wax casting instead of the commonly used multilayer lamination process. The soft manipulation system can grasp randomly positioned objects within its reachable envelope and move them to a desired location without human intervention. The autonomous planning system leverages the compliance and continuum bending of the soft grasping manipulator to achieve repeatable grasps in the presence of uncertainty. A suite of experiments is presented that demonstrates the system's capabilities.

Fetal left brachiocephalic vein in normal and abnormal conditions. <=SEP=> OBJECTIVES
To establish values of fetal left brachiocephalic vein (LBCV) dimensions during normal pregnancy and determine whether routine assessment of the LBCV may help in identifying fetuses with congenital abnormalities of this vessel.


METHODS
Fetal LBCV was assessed prospectively during ultrasound examinations in 431 normal singleton pregnancies. The visualization rate of the transverse view of the upper fetal chest at the level of drainage of the LBCV into the superior vena cava (SVC) by two-dimensional (2D) and 2D plus color Doppler ultrasound was evaluated. Reference ranges of LBCV diameter during non-complicated pregnancies were established. Interobserver and intraobserver measurement variability was analyzed. In addition, a retrospective review of the hospital medical records of 91 pregnancies with fetuses diagnosed with LBCV abnormalities was performed.


RESULTS
Sonographic assessment of the fetal LBCV was consistently achieved in the second and third trimesters and in some fetuses in the first trimester of pregnancy. In normal fetuses LBCV diameter increased significantly throughout pregnancy, with a mean value of 0.7 mm at 11 weeks and 4.9 mm at term. Dilation of the fetal LBCV was noted in five cases of intracranial arteriovenous malformation and six cases of supracardiac type total anomalous pulmonary venous connection. Abnormal course of the LBCV was noted in 12 fetuses. In 63 fetuses with a persistent left SVC and a right SVC the LBCV was absent.


CONCLUSION
This is the first study describing an effective sonographic approach for the assessment of fetal LBCV dimensions during pregnancy. The normative data may provide an additional means of detecting rare anomalies of systemic and pulmonary veins during pregnancy.

The importance of drawing in the mechanical design process <=SEP=> -This paper is a study on the importance of drawing ( both formal drafting and informal sketching) during the process of mechanical design. Five hypotheses, focused on the t~es of drawings, their necessity in mechanical problem solving, and their relation to the external representation medium, are presented and supported. Support is through referenced studies in other domains and the results of protocol studies performed on five mechanical designers. Videotapes of all the marks-on-paper made by designers in representative sections of the design process were studied in detail for their type and purpose. The resulting data is supportive of the hypotheses. These results also give requirements for future computer aided design tools and graphics education, and goals for further studies. I. I N T R O D U C T I O N The goal of this paper is to study the importance of drawing (both formal drafting and informal sketching) during the process of mechanical design. This goal can be extended to state that we intend to show the necessio" of drawing during all the developmental stages of a mechanical design. Through the information presented here, the requirements for future computer aided design tools, graphics education, and further studies will be developed. All mechanical engineers are taught drafting. Thus, most engineers are skilled at making and interpreting these formal mechanical drawings. These drawings are representations of a final design (the end product of the design process) and they are intended to archive the completed design and communicate it to other designers and manufacturing personnel. Additionally, engineers are notorious for not being able to think without making "'back-of-the-envelope" sketches of rough ideas. Sometimes these informal sketches serve to communicate a concept to a colleague, but more often they just help the idea take shape on paper. It is in considering how these sketches help an idea take form that gives a hint that drawing's role in engineering is more than just to archive a concept or to communicate with others. Understanding the use of both drafting and sketching in design is important to help formulate the future development of Computer Aided Design or Drafting (CAD) systems. As CAD evolves and becomes more "'intelligent,'" the question of what attributes these systems must have becomes more important. In the past, CAD system attributes have primarily been driven from developments in the computer industry, it is only through understanding drawing's importance in the design process that these systems can be based on design needs. Additionally, the pressures of CAD tool development, faculty time demands, and course expenses cause academic institutions to reevaluate the content of their "graphics'" courses. Understanding drawing's importance in the design process helps establish what skills need to be taught to engineers during their training. This paper is organized by first, in Section 2, clarifying the types of drawings used in mechanical design. The hypotheses to be addressed in this paper are given in Section 3. A discussion of research on the understanding of visual imagery to be used as a basis for arguments in support of the hypotheses is in Section 4. In Section 5 is a discussion of the results of data taken on how mechanical engineers use drawings during design. Lastly, in Section 6, is a discussion of how well the hypotheses have been supported and the implications of our findings on CAD development, educational requirements, and future research directions. 2. TYPES OF D R A W I N G S USED IN DESIGN Engineers make many types of marks-on-paper. In research, to be described in Section 5, we have broken down these marks into two main groupings: support notation and graphic representations. Support notation includes textual notes, lists, dimensions (including leaders and arrows), and calculations. Graphic representations include drawings of objects and their functions, and plots and charts. Mechanical design graphic representations are often scale drawings made with mechanical instruments or CAD computer systems. These drawings, made in accordance with a set of widely accepted rules, are defined as having been drafted. Sketches, on the other hand, are defined as "free-hand" drawings. They are usually not to scale and may use shorthand notations to represent both objects and their function. A differentiation must be made between the act of graphic representation and the medium on which it occurs. The medium, whether it be paper and pencil, a computer stylus on a tablet, chalk on a blackboard, or other medium may put interface restrictions on the representation. The following discussions are concerned with what is being represented, not with how the representation is made. However, the discussions point to the medium's restriction on representation and the need for improved interfaces. Another aspect of drawings to be considered is the level of abstraction of the information to be represented. During the design process, the design is refined

Anticipative Interaction Primitives for Human-Robot Collaboration <=SEP=> This paper introduces our initial investigation on the problem of providing a semi-autonomous robot collaborator with anticipative capabilities to predict human actions. Anticipative robot behavior is a desired characteristic of robot collaborators that lead to fluid, proactive interactions. We are particularly interested in improving reactive methods that rely on human action recognition to activate the corresponding robot action. Action recognition invariably causes delay in the robot’s response, and the goal of our method is to eliminate this delay by predicting the next human action. Prediction is achieved by using a lookup table containing variations of assembly sequences, previously demonstrated by different users. The method uses the nearest neighbor sequence in the table that matches the actual sequence of human actions. At the movement level, our method uses a probabilistic representation of interaction primitives to generate robot trajectories. The method is demonstrated using a 7 degree-offreedom lightweight arm equipped with a 5-finger hand on an assembly task consisting of 17 steps.

The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and
the Khazarian Hypotheses <=SEP=> The question of Jewish ancestry has been the subject of controversy for over two centuries and has yet to be resolved. The "Rhineland hypothesis" depicts Eastern European Jews as a "population isolate" that emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrated eastward and expanded rapidly. Alternatively, the "Khazarian hypothesis" suggests that Eastern European Jews descended from the Khazars, an amalgam of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries CE and converted to Judaism in the 8th century. Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman Jews continuously reinforced the Judaized empire until the 13th century. Following the collapse of their empire, the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is therefore explained by the contribution of the Judeo-Khazars. Thus far, however, the Khazars' contribution has been estimated only empirically, as the absence of genome-wide data from Caucasus populations precluded testing the Khazarian hypothesis. Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry. We further describe a major difference among Caucasus populations explained by the early presence of Judeans in the Southern and Central Caucasus. Our results have important implications for the demographic forces that shaped the genetic diversity in the Caucasus and for medical studies.

Energy efficient wearable sensor node for IoT-based fall detection systems <=SEP=> Falls can cause serious traumas such as brain injuries and bone fractures, especially among elderly people. Fear of falling might reduce physical activities resulting in declining social interactions and eventually causing depression. To lessen the effects of a fall, timely delivery of medical treatment can play a vital role. In a similar scenario, an IoT-based wearable system can pave the most promising way to mitigate serious consequences of a fall while providing the convenience of usage. However, to deliver sufficient degree of monitoring and reliability, wearable devices working at the core of fall detection systems are required to work for a prolonged period of time. In this work, we focus on energy efficiency of a wearable sensor node in an Internet-of-Things (IoT) based fall detection system. We propose the design of a tiny, lightweight, flexible and energy efficient wearable device. We investigate different parameters (e.g. sampling rate, communication bus interface, transmission protocol, and transmission rate) impacting on energy consumption of the wearable device. In addition, we provide a comprehensive analysis of energy consumption of the wearable in different configurations and operating conditions. Furthermore, we provide hints (hardware and software) for system designers implementing the optimal wearable device for IoT-based fall detection systems in terms of energy efficiency and high quality of service. The results clearly indicate that the proposed sensor node is novel and energy efficient. In a critical condition, the wearable device can be used continuously for 76 h with a 1000 mAh li-ion battery.

Predicting function from sequence in venom peptide families <=SEP=> Toxins from animal venoms are small peptides that recognize specific molecular targets in the brains of prey or predators. Next generation sequencing has uncovered thousands of diverse toxin sequences, but the functions of these peptides are poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that the use of machine learning techniques on sequence-derived features enables high accuracy in the task of predicting a toxin’s functionality using only its amino acid sequence. Comparison of the performance of several learning algorithms in this prediction task demonstrates that both physiochemical properties of the amino acid residues in a sequence as well as noncontiguous sequence motifs can be used independently to model the sequence dependence of venom function. We rationalize the observed model performance using unsupervised learning and make broad predictions about the distribution of toxin functions in the venome. Keywords—Bioinformatics, machine learning, protein function prediction, venomics.

ParaPIM: a parallel processing-in-memory accelerator for binary-weight deep neural networks <=SEP=> Recent algorithmic progression has brought competitive classification accuracy despite constraining neural networks to binary weights (+1/-1). These findings show remarkable optimization opportunities to eliminate the need for computationally-intensive multiplications, reducing memory access and storage. In this paper, we present ParaPIM architecture, which transforms current Spin Orbit Torque Magnetic Random Access Memory (SOT-MRAM) sub-arrays to massively parallel computational units capable of running inferences for Binary-Weight Deep Neural Networks (BWNNs). ParaPIM's in-situ computing architecture can be leveraged to greatly reduce energy consumption dealing with convolutional layers, accelerate BWNNs inference, eliminate unnecessary off-chip accesses and provide ultra-high internal bandwidth. The device-to-architecture co-simulation results indicate ~4x higher energy efficiency and 7.3x speedup over recent processing-in-DRAM acceleration, or roughly 5x higher energy-efficiency and 20.5x speedup over recent ASIC approaches, while maintaining inference accuracy comparable to baseline designs.

Automated Transplantation and Differential Testing for Clones <=SEP=> Code clones are common in software. When applying similar edits to clones, developers often find it difficult to examine the runtime behavior of clones. The problem is exacerbated when some clones are tested, while their counterparts are not. To reuse tests for similar but not identical clones, Grafter transplants one clone to its counterpart by (1) identifying variations in identifier names, types, and method call targets, (2) resolving compilation errors caused by such variations through code transformation, and (3) inserting stub code to transfer input data and intermediate output values for examination. To help developers examine behavioral differences between clones, Grafter supports fine-grained differential testing at both the test outcome level and the intermediate program state level. In our evaluation on three open source projects, Grafter successfully reuses tests in 94% of clone pairs without inducing build errors, demonstrating its automated code transplantation capability. To examine the robustness of G RAFTER, we systematically inject faults using a mutation testing tool, Major, and detect behavioral differences induced by seeded faults. Compared with a static cloning bug finder, Grafter detects 31% more mutants using the test-level comparison and almost 2X more using the state-level comparison. This result indicates that Grafter should effectively complement static cloning bug finders.

Bone graphs: Medial shape parsing and abstraction <=SEP=> 1077-3142/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Inc. A doi:10.1016/j.cviu.2010.12.011 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: dmac@cs.toronto.edu (D. Macrini) The recognition of 3-D objects from their silhouettes demands a shape representation which is stable with respect to minor changes in viewpoint and articulation. This can be achieved by parsing a silhouette into parts and relationships that do not change across similar object views. Medial descriptions, such as skeletons and shock graphs, provide part-based decompositions but suffer from instabilities. As a result, similar shapes may be represented by dissimilar part sets. We propose a novel shape parsing approach which is based on identifying and regularizing the ligature structure of a medial axis, leading to a bone graph, a medial abstraction which captures a more stable notion of an object’s parts. Our experiments show that it offers improved recognition and pose estimation performance in the presence of within-class deformation over the shock graph. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Discrete Model for Inelastic Deformation of Thin Shells <=SEP=> We introduce a method for simulating the inelastic deformation of thin shells: we model plasticity and fracture of curved, deformable objects such as light bulbs, egg-shells and bowls. Our novel approach uses triangle meshes yet evolves fracture lines unrestricted to mesh edges. We present a novel measure of bending strain expressed in terms of surface invariants such as lengths and angles. We also demonstrate simple techniques to improve the robustness of standard timestepping as well as collisionresponse algorithms.

The estimation of the gradient of a density function, with applications in pattern recognition <=SEP=> Nonparametric density gradient estimation using a generalized kernel approach is investigated. Conditions on the kernel functions are derived to guarantee asymptotic unbiasedness, consistency, and uniform consistenby of the estimates. The results are generalized to obtain a simple mean-shift estimate that can be extended in a k-nearestneighbor approach. Applications of gradient estimation to pattern recognition are presented using clustering and intrinsic dimensionality problems, with the ultimate goal of providing further understanding of these problems in terms of density gradients.

NVIDIA Jetson Platform Characterization <=SEP=> This study characterizes the NVIDIA Jetson TK1 and TX1 Platforms, both built on a NVIDIA Tegra System on Chip and combining a quad-core ARM CPU and an NVIDIA GPU. Their heterogeneous nature, as well as their wide operating frequency range, make it hard for application developers to reason about performance and determine which optimizations are worth pursuing. This paper attempts to inform developers’ choices by characterizing the platforms’ performance using Roofline models obtained through an empirical measurement-based approach as well as through a case study of a heterogeneous application (matrix multiplication). Our results highlight a difference of more than an order of magnitude in compute performance between the CPU and GPU on both platforms. Given that the CPU and GPU share the same memory bus, their Roofline models’ balance points are also more than an order of magnitude apart. We also explore the impact of frequency scaling: build CPU and GPU Roofline profiles and characterize both platforms’ balance point variation, power consumption, and performance per watt as frequency is scaled. The characterization we provide can be used in two main ways. First, given an application, it can inform the choice and number of processing elements to use (i.e., CPU/GPU and number of cores) as well as the optimizations likely to lead to high performance gains. Secondly, this characterization indicates that developers can use frequency scaling to tune the Jetson Platform to suit the requirements of their applications. Third, given a required power/performance budget, application developers can identify the appropriate parameters to use to tune the Jetson platforms to their specific workload requirements. We expect that this optimization approach can lead to overall gains in performance and/or power efficiency without requiring application changes.

Scan, Attend and Read: End-to-End Handwritten Paragraph Recognition with MDLSTM Attention <=SEP=> We present an attention-based model for end-to-end handwriting recognition. Our system does not require any segmentation of the input paragraph. The model is inspired by the differentiable attention models presented recently for speech recognition, image captioning or translation. The main difference is the implementation of covert and overt attention with a multi-dimensional LSTM network. Our principal contribution towards handwriting recognition lies in the automatic transcription without a prior segmentation into lines, which was critical in previous approaches. Moreover, the system is able to learn the reading order, enabling it to handle bidirectional scripts such as Arabic. We carried out experiments on the well-known IAM Database and report encouraging results which bring hope to perform full paragraph transcription in the near future.

Accidental displacement and migration of endosseous implants into 
adjacent craniofacial structures: A review and update <=SEP=> OBJECTIVES
Accidental displacement of endosseous implants into the maxillary sinus is an unusual but potential complication in implantology procedures due to the special features of the posterior aspect of the maxillary bone; there is also a possibility of migration throughout the upper paranasal sinuses and adjacent structures. The aim of this paper is to review the published literature about accidental displacement and migration of dental implants into the maxillary sinus and other adjacent structures.


STUDY DESIGN
A review has been done based on a search in the main on-line medical databases looking for papers about migration of dental implants published in major oral surgery, periodontal, dental implant and ear-nose-throat journals, using the keywords "implant," "migration," "complication," "foreign body" and "sinus."


RESULTS
24 articles showing displacement or migration to maxillary, ethmoid and sphenoid sinuses, orbit and cranial fossae, with different degrees of associated symptoms, were identified. Techniques found to solve these clinical issues include Cadwell-Luc approach, transoral endoscopy approach via canine fossae and transnasal functional endoscopy surgery.


CONCLUSION
Before removing the foreign body, a correct diagnosis should be done in order to evaluate the functional status of the ostiomeatal complex and the degree of affectation of paranasal sinuses and other involved structures, determining the size and the exact location of the foreign body. After a complete diagnosis, an indicated procedure for every case would be decided.

Language and life history: a new perspective on the development and evolution of human language. <=SEP=> It has long been claimed that Homo sapiens is the only species that has language, but only recently has it been recognized that humans also have an unusual pattern of growth and development. Social mammals have two stages of pre-adult development: infancy and juvenility. Humans have two additional prolonged and pronounced life history stages: childhood, an interval of four years extending between infancy and the juvenile period that follows, and adolescence, a stage of about eight years that stretches from juvenility to adulthood. We begin by reviewing the primary biological and linguistic changes occurring in each of the four pre-adult ontogenetic stages in human life history. Then we attempt to trace the evolution of childhood and juvenility in our hominin ancestors. We propose that several different forms of selection applied in infancy and childhood; and that, in adolescence, elaborated vocal behaviors played a role in courtship and intrasexual competition, enhancing fitness and ultimately integrating performative and pragmatic skills with linguistic knowledge in a broad faculty of language. A theoretical consequence of our proposal is that fossil evidence of the uniquely human stages may be used, with other findings, to date the emergence of language. If important aspects of language cannot appear until sexual maturity, as we propose, then a second consequence is that the development of language requires the whole of modern human ontogeny. Our life history model thus offers new ways of investigating, and thinking about, the evolution, development, and ultimately the nature of human language.

Gender differences in the relationship between internet addiction and depression: A cross-lagged study in Chinese adolescents <=SEP=> The present study explored the role of gender in the association between Internet addiction and depression. Three-wave longitudinal panel data were collected from self-reported questionnaires that were completed by 1715 adolescents in grades 6e8 in China. Cross-lagged structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationship between Internet addiction and depression. In male adolescents, depression was found to significantly predict subsequent Internet addiction, suggesting that depression was the cause of Internet addiction and supporting the mood enhancement hypothesis. In female adolescents, Internet addiction was found to significantly predict subsequent depression, indicating that Internet addiction leads to depression and supporting the social displacement hypothesis. These results indicate that the relationship between Internet addiction and depression depended on gender. In addition, it was found that males and females exhibit different behavioral patterns and motivations of Internet usage. Males were more likely to use the Internet for pleasure and less likely to surf the Internet to search for information, compared with females. Although both males and females were prone to surfing the Internet alone, males were more likely to go online with friends compared with females. These findings suggest that gender-specific preventative and interventional strategies should be developed to reduce Internet addiction. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus for Breaking News: Is There a Winner? <=SEP=> Twitter is widely seen as being the go to place for breaking news. Recently however, competing Social Media have begun to carry news. Here we examine how Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter report on breaking news. We consider coverage (whether news events are reported) and latency (the time when they are reported). Using data drawn from three weeks in December 2013, we identify 29 major news events, ranging from celebrity deaths, plague outbreaks to sports events. We find that all media carry the same major events, but Twitter continues to be the preferred medium for breaking news, almost consistently leading Facebook or Google Plus. Facebook and Google Plus largely repost newswire stories and their main research value is that they conveniently package multitple sources of information together.

A Compact Circularly Polarized Cross-Shaped Slotted Microstrip Antenna <=SEP=> A compact cross-shaped slotted microstrip patch antenna is proposed for circularly polarized (CP) radiation. A symmetric, cross shaped slot is embedded along one of the diagonal axes of the square patch for CP radiation and antenna size reduction. The structure is asymmetric (unbalanced) along the diagonal axes. The overall size of the antenna with CP radiation can be reduced by increasing the perimeter of the symmetric cross-shaped slot within the first patch quadrant of the square patch. The performance of the CP radiation is also studied by varying the size and angle variation of the cross-shaped slot. A measured 3-dB axial-ratio (AR) bandwidth of around 6.0 MHz is achieved with the CP cross-shaped slotted microstrip antenna, with an 18.0 MHz 10-dB return-loss bandwidth. The measured boresight gain is more than 3.8 dBic over the operating band, while the overall antenna volume is 0.273λo × 0.273λo × 0.013λo (λο operating wavelength at 910 MHz).

Linkages between Depressive Symptomatology and Internet Harassment among Young Regular Internet Users <=SEP=> Recent reports indicate 97% of youth are connected to the Internet. As more young people have access to online communication, it is integrally important to identify youth who may be more vulnerable to negative experiences. Based upon accounts of traditional bullying, youth with depressive symptomatology may be especially likely to be the target of Internet harassment. The current investigation will examine the cross-sectional relationship between depressive symptomatology and Internet harassment, as well as underlying factors that may help explain the observed association. Youth between the ages of 10 and 17 (N = 1,501) participated in a telephone survey about their Internet behaviors and experiences. Subjects were required to have used the Internet at least six times in the previous 6 months to ensure a minimum level of exposure. The caregiver self-identified as most knowledgeable about the young person's Internet behaviors was also interviewed. The odds of reporting an Internet harassment experience in the previous year were more than three times higher (OR: 3.38, CI: 1.78, 6.45) for youth who reported major depressive symptomatology compared to mild/absent symptomatology. When female and male respondents were assessed separately, the adjusted odds of reporting Internet harassment for males who also reported DSM IV symptoms of major depression were more than three times greater (OR: 3.64, CI: 1.16, 11.39) than for males who indicated mild or no symptoms of depression. No significant association was observed among otherwise similar females. Instead, the association was largely explained by differences in Internet usage characteristics and other psychosocial challenges. Internet harassment is an important public mental health issue affecting youth today. Among young, regular Internet users, those who report DSM IV-like depressive symptomatology are significantly more likely to also report being the target of Internet harassment. Future studies should focus on establishing the temporality of events, that is, whether young people report depressive symptoms in response to the negative Internet experience, or whether symptomatology confers risks for later negative online incidents. Based on these cross-sectional results, gender differences in the odds of reporting an unwanted Internet experience are suggested, and deserve special attention in future studies.

Exploration of adaptive gait patterns with a reconfigurable linkage mechanism <=SEP=> Legged robots are able to move across irregular terrains and some can be energy efficient, but are often constrained by a limited range of gaits which can limit their locomotion capabilities considerably. This paper reports a reconfigurable design approach to robotic legged locomotion that produces a wide variety of gait cycles, opening new possibilities for innovative applications. In this paper, we present a distance-based formulation and its application to solve the position analysis problem of a standard Theo Jansen mechanism. By changing the configuration of a linkage, our objective in this study is to identify novel gait patterns of interest for a walking platform. The exemplary gait variations presented in this work demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, and considerably extend the capabilities of the original design to not only produce novel cum useful gait patterns but also to realize behaviors beyond locomotion.