Query: ARMDN: Associative and Recurrent Mixture Density Networks for eRetail Demand Forecasting

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Deep Learning <=SEP=> Machine-learning technology powers many aspects of modern society: from web searches to content filtering on social networks to recommendations on e-commerce websites, and it is increasingly present in consumer products such as cameras and smartphones. Machine-learning systems are used to identify objects in images, transcribe speech into text, match news items, posts or products with users’ interests, and select relevant results of search. Increasingly, these applications make use of a class of techniques called deep learning. Conventional machine-learning techniques were limited in their ability to process natural data in their raw form. For decades, constructing a pattern-recognition or machine-learning system required careful engineering and considerable domain expertise to design a feature extractor that transformed the raw data (such as the pixel values of an image) into a suitable internal representation or feature vector from which the learning subsystem, often a classifier, could detect or classify patterns in the input. Representation learning is a set of methods that allows a machine to be fed with raw data and to automatically discover the representations needed for detection or classification. Deep-learning methods are representation-learning methods with multiple levels of representation, obtained by composing simple but non-linear modules that each transform the representation at one level (starting with the raw input) into a representation at a higher, slightly more abstract level. With the composition of enough such transformations, very complex functions can be learned. For classification tasks, higher layers of representation amplify aspects of the input that are important for discrimination and suppress irrelevant variations. An image, for example, comes in the form of an array of pixel values, and the learned features in the first layer of representation typically represent the presence or absence of edges at particular orientations and locations in the image. The second layer typically detects motifs by spotting particular arrangements of edges, regardless of small variations in the edge positions. The third layer may assemble motifs into larger combinations that correspond to parts of familiar objects, and subsequent layers would detect objects as combinations of these parts. The key aspect of deep learning is that these layers of features are not designed by human engineers: they are learned from data using a general-purpose learning procedure. Deep learning is making major advances in solving problems that have resisted the best attempts of the artificial intelligence community for many years. It has turned out to be very good at discovering intricate structures in high-dimensional data and is therefore applicable to many domains of science, business and government. In addition to beating records in image recognition and speech recognition, it has beaten other machine-learning techniques at predicting the activity of potential drug molecules, analysing particle accelerator data, reconstructing brain circuits, and predicting the effects of mutations in non-coding DNA on gene expression and disease. Perhaps more surprisingly, deep learning has produced extremely promising results for various tasks in natural language understanding, particularly topic classification, sentiment analysis, question answering and language translation. We think that deep learning will have many more successes in the near future because it requires very little engineering by hand, so it can easily take advantage of increases in the amount of available computation and data. New learning algorithms and architectures that are currently being developed for deep neural networks will only accelerate this progress.

Convolutional LSTM Network: A Machine Learning Approach for Precipitation Nowcasting <=SEP=> The goal of precipitation nowcasting is to predict the future rainfall intensity in a local region over a relatively short period of time. Very few previous studies have examined this crucial and challenging weather forecasting problem from the machine learning perspective. In this paper, we formulate precipitation nowcasting as a spatiotemporal sequence forecasting problem in which both the input and the prediction target are spatiotemporal sequences. By extending the fully connected LSTM (FC-LSTM) to have convolutional structures in both the input-to-state and state-to-state transitions, we propose the convolutional LSTM (ConvLSTM) and use it to build an end-to-end trainable model for the precipitation nowcasting problem. Experiments show that our ConvLSTM network captures spatiotemporal correlations better and consistently outperforms FC-LSTM and the state-of-theart operational ROVER algorithm for precipitation nowcasting.

Combining Instance-Based and Model-Based Learning <=SEP=> This paper concerns learning tasks that require the prediction of a continuous value rather than a discrete class. A general method is presented that allows predictions to use both instance-based and model-based learning. Results with three approaches to constructing models and with eight datasets demonstrate improvements due to the composite method.

An Analysis of Transformations <=SEP=> In the analysis of data it is often assumed that observations y,, y,, ...,y, are independently normally distributed with constant variance and with expectations specified by a model linear in a set of parameters 0. In this paper we make the less restrictive assumption that such a normal, homoscedastic, linear model is appropriate after some suitable transformation has been applied to the y's. Inferences about the transformation and about the parameters of the linear model are made by computing the likelihood function and the relevant posterior distribution. The contributions of normality, homoscedasticity and additivity to the transformation are separated. The relation of the present methods to earlier procedures for finding transformations is discussed. The methods are illustrated with examples.

Deep Learning for Time Series Modeling CS 229 Final Project Report <=SEP=> Demand forecasting is crucial to electricity providers because their ability to produce energy exceeds their ability to store it. Excess demand can cause “brown outs,” while excess supply ends in waste. In an industry worth over $1 trillion in the U.S. alone [1], almost 9% of GDP [2], even marginal improvements can have a huge impact. Any plan toward energy efficiency should include enhanced utilization of existing production. Energy loads provide an interesting topic for Machine Learning techniques due to the availability of large datasets that exhibit fundamental nonlinear patterns. Using data from the Kaggle competition “Global Energy Forecasting Competition 2012 Load Forecasting” [3] we sought to use deep learning architectures to predict energy loads across different network grid areas, using only time and temperature data. Data included hourly demand for four and a half years from 20 different geographic regions, and similar hourly temperature readings from 11 zones. For most of our analysis we focused on short term load forecasting because this will aide online operational scheduling.

When moderation is mediated and mediation is moderated. <=SEP=> Procedures for examining whether treatment effects on an outcome are mediated and/or moderated have been well developed and are routinely applied. The mediation question focuses on the intervening mechanism that produces the treatment effect. The moderation question focuses on factors that affect the magnitude of the treatment effect. It is important to note that these two processes may be combined in informative ways, such that moderation is mediated or mediation is moderated. Although some prior literature has discussed these possibilities, their exact definitions and analytic procedures have not been completely articulated. The purpose of this article is to define precisely both mediated moderation and moderated mediation and provide analytic strategies for assessing each.

Compact ultra-wide stopband lowpass filter using transformed stepped impedance hairpin resonator <=SEP=> A compact microstrip lowpass filter (LPF) with ultra-wide stopband using transformed stepped impedance hairpin resonator is proposed. The transformed resonator consists of a stepped impedance hairpin resonator and an embedded hexagon stub loaded coupled-line structure. Without enlarging the size, the embedded structure is introduced to get a broad stopband. A prototype LPF has been simulated, fabricated and measured, and the measurements are in good agreement with simulations. The implemented lowpass filter exhibits an ultra-wide stopband up to 12.01fc with a rejection level of 14 dB. In addition, the proposed filter features a size of 0.071λg× 0.103λg, where λg is the waveguide length at the cutoff frequency 1.45 GHz.

Are Coherence Protocol States Vulnerable to Information Leakage? <=SEP=> Most commercial multi-core processors incorporate hardware coherence protocols to support efficient data transfers and updates between their constituent cores. While hardware coherence protocols provide immense benefits for application performance by removing the burden of software-based coherence, we note that understanding the security vulnerabilities posed by such oft-used, widely-adopted processor features is critical for secure processor designs in the future. In this paper, we demonstrate a new vulnerability exposed by cache coherence protocol states. We present novel insights into how adversaries could cleverly manipulate the coherence states on shared cache blocks, and construct covert timing channels to illegitimately communicate secrets to the spy. We demonstrate 6 different practical scenarios for covert timing channel construction. In contrast to prior works, we assume a broader adversary model where the trojan and spy can either exploit explicitly shared read-only physical pages (e.g., shared library code), or use memory deduplication feature to implicitly force create shared physical pages. We demonstrate how adversaries can manipulate combinations of coherence states and data placement in different caches to construct timing channels. We also explore how adversaries could exploit multiple caches and their associated coherence states to improve transmission bandwidth with symbols encoding multiple bits. Our experimental results on commercial systems show that the peak transmission bandwidths of these covert timing channels can vary between 700 to 1100 Kbits/sec. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to highlight the vulnerability of hardware cache coherence protocols to timing channels that can help computer architects to craft effective defenses against exploits on such critical processor features.

Seahawk: Stack Overflow in the IDE <=SEP=> Services, such as Stack Overflow, offer a web platform to programmers for discussing technical issues, in form of Question and Answers (Q&A). Since Q&A services store the discussions, the generated crowd knowledge can be accessed and consumed by a large audience for a long time. Nevertheless, Q&A services are detached from the development environments used by programmers: Developers have to tap into this crowd knowledge through web browsers and cannot smoothly integrate it into their workflow. This situation hinders part of the benefits of Q&A services. To better leverage the crowd knowledge of Q&A services, we created Seahawk, an Eclipse plugin that supports an integrated and largely automated approach to assist programmers using Stack Overflow. Seahawk formulates queries automatically from the active context in the IDE, presents a ranked and interactive list of results, lets users import code samples in discussions through drag & drop and link Stack Overflow discussions and source code persistently as a support for team work. Video Demo URL: http://youtu.be/DkqhiU9FYPI

Cooperative Control for A Hybrid Rehabilitation System Combining Functional Electrical Stimulation and Robotic Exoskeleton <=SEP=> Functional electrical stimulation (FES) and robotic exoskeletons are two important technologies widely used for physical rehabilitation of paraplegic patients. We developed a hybrid rehabilitation system (FEXO Knee) that combined FES and an exoskeleton for swinging movement control of human knee joints. This study proposed a novel cooperative control strategy, which could realize arbitrary distribution of torque generated by FES and exoskeleton, and guarantee harmonic movements. The cooperative control adopted feedfoward control for FES and feedback control for exoskeleton. A parameter regulator was designed to update key parameters in real time to coordinate FES controller and exoskeleton controller. Two muscle groups (quadriceps and hamstrings) were stimulated to generate active torque for knee joint in synchronization with torque compensation from exoskeleton. The knee joint angle and the interactive torque between exoskeleton and shank were used as feedback signals for the control system. Central pattern generator (CPG) was adopted that acted as a phase predictor to deal with phase confliction of motor patterns, and realized synchronization between the two different bodies (shank and exoskeleton). Experimental evaluation of the hybrid FES-exoskeleton system was conducted on five healthy subjects and four paraplegic patients. Experimental results and statistical analysis showed good control performance of the cooperative control on torque distribution, trajectory tracking, and phase synchronization.

Uniform circular array with integrated microstrip tapered baluns <=SEP=> This paper presents the design, simulation, and measurement results of a 4-element uniform circular array (UCA) using dipole antenna elements with integrated microstrip tapered baluns to convert between balanced and unbalanced signals. These baluns are compact, integrated into the array support structure, and can provide a balanced signal over a relatively wide bandwidth. Simulation results are shown for the amplitude and phase balance of the balun from 1.6 GHz to 2.2 GHz. The array was fabricated and its manifold was measured in an anechoic chamber at a frequency of 1.7 GHz. The gain and phase responses of the array are presented and are compared to a simulated ideal dipole UCA in free-space.

N-Party Encrypted Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange Using Different Passwords <=SEP=> We consider the problem of password-authenticated group Diffie-Hellman key exchange among N parties, N−1 clients and a singleserver, using different passwords. Most password-authenticated key exchange schemes in the literature have focused on an authenticated key exchange using a shared password between a client and a server. With a rapid change in modern communication environment such as ad-hoc networks and ubiquitous computing, it is necessary to construct a secure end-to-end channel between clients, which is a quite different paradigm from the existing ones. To achieve this end-to-end security, only a few schemes of three-party setting have been presented where two clients exchange a key using their own passwords with the help of a server. However, up until now, no formally treated and round efficient protocols which enable group members to generate a common session key with clients’ distinct passwords have been suggested. In this paper we securely and efficiently extend three-party case to Nparty case with a formal proof of security. Two provably secure N-party EKE protocols are suggested; N-party EKE-U in the unicast network and N-party EKE-M in the multicast network. The proposed N-party EKE-M is provable secure and provides forward secrecy. Especially, the scheme is of constant-round, hence scalable and practical.

Iterative unified clustering in big data <=SEP=> We propose a novel iterative unified clustering algorithm for data with both continuous and categorical variables, in the big data environment. Clustering is a well-studied problem and finds several applications. However, none of the big data clustering works discuss the challenge of mixed attribute datasets, with both categorical and continuous attributes. We study an application in the health care domain namely Case Based Reasoning (CBR), which refers to solving new problems based on solutions to similar past problems. This is particularly useful when there is a large set of clinical records with several types of attributes, from which similar patients need to be identified. We go one step further and include the genomic components of patient records to enhance the CBR discovery. Thus, our contributions in this paper spans across the big data algorithmic research and a key contribution to the domain of heath care information technology research. First, our clustering algorithm deals with both continuous and categorical variables in the data; second, our clustering algorithm is iterative where it finds the clusters which are not well formed and iteratively drills down to form well defined clusters at the end of the process; third we provide a novel approach to CBR across clinical and genomic data. Our research has implications for clinical trials and facilitating precision diagnostics in large and heterogeneous patient records. We present extensive experimental results to show the efficacy or our approach.

PLEdestrians: A Least-Effort Approach to Crowd Simulation <=SEP=> We present a new algorithm for simulating large-scale crowds at interactive rates based on the Principle of Least Effort. Our approach uses an optimization method to compute a biomechanically energy-efficient, collision-free trajectory that minimizes the amount of effort for each heterogeneous agent in a large crowd. Moreover, the algorithm can automatically generate many emergent phenomena such as lane formation, crowd compression, edge and wake effects ant others. We compare the results from our simulations to data collected from prior studies in pedestrian and crowd dynamics, and provide visual comparisons with real-world video. In practice, our approach can interactively simulate large crowds with thousands of agents on a desktop PC and naturally generates a diverse set of emergent behaviors.

Android taint flow analysis for app sets <=SEP=> One approach to defending against malicious Android applications has been to analyze them to detect potential information leaks. This paper describes a new static taint analysis for Android that combines and augments the FlowDroid and Epicc analyses to precisely track both inter-component and intra-component data flow in a set of Android applications. The analysis takes place in two phases: given a set of applications, we first determine the data flows enabled individually by each application, and the conditions under which these are possible; we then build on these results to enumerate the potentially dangerous data flows enabled by the set of applications as a whole. This paper describes our analysis method, implementation, and experimental results.

An Optimization Approach for Utilizing Cloud Services for Mobile Devices in Cloud Environment <=SEP=> Abstract. Mobile cloud computing has emerged aiming at assisting mobile devices in processing computationally or data intensive tasks using cloud resources. This paper presents an optimization approach for utilizing cloud services for mobile client in mobile cloud, which considers the benefit of both mobile device users and cloud datacenters. The mobile cloud service provisioning optimization is conducted in parallel under the deadline, budget and energy expenditure constraint. Mobile cloud provider runs multiple VMs to execute the jobs for mobile device users, the cloud providers want to maximize the revenue and minimize the electrical cost. The mobile device user gives the suitable payment to the cloud datacenter provider for available cloud resources for optimize the benefit. The paper proposes a distributed optimization algorithm for utilizing cloud services for mobile devices. The experiment is to test convergence of the proposed algorithm and also compare it with other related work. The experiments study the impacts of job arrival rate, deadline and mobility speeds on energy consumption ratio, execution success ratio, resource allocation efficiency and cost. The experiment shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms other related work in terms of some performance metrics such as allocation efficiency.

Inner Product Similarity Search using Compositional Codes <=SEP=> This paper addresses the nearest neighbor search problem under inner product similarity and introduces a compact code-based approach. The idea is to approximate a vector using the composition of several elements selected from a source dictionary and to represent this vector by a short code composed of the indices of the selected elements. The inner product between a query vector and a database vector is efficiently estimated from the query vector and the short code of the database vector. We show the superior performance of the proposed group M -selection algorithm that selects M elements from M source dictionaries for vector approximation in terms of search accuracy and efficiency for compact codes of the same length via theoretical and empirical analysis. Experimental results on large-scale datasets (1M and 1B SIFT features, 1M linear models and Netflix) demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach.

Lexical input as related to children's vocabulary acquisition: effects of sophisticated exposure and support for meaning. <=SEP=> A corpus of nearly 150,000 maternal word-tokens used by 53 low-income mothers in 263 mother-child conversations in 5 settings (e.g., play, mealtime, and book readings) was studied. Ninety-nine percent of maternal lexical input consisted of the 3,000 most frequent words. Children's vocabulary performance in kindergarten and later in 2nd grade related more to the occurrence of sophisticated lexical items than to quantity of lexical input overall. Density of sophisticated words heard and the density with which such words were embedded in helpful or instructive interactions, at age 5 at home, independently predicted over a third of the variance in children's vocabulary performance in both kindergarten and 2nd grade. These two variables, with controls for maternal education, child nonverbal IQ, and amount of child's talk produced during the interactive settings, at age 5, predicted 50% of the variance in children's 2nd-grade vocabulary.

Automotive radar target characterization from 22 to 29 GHz and 76 to 81 GHz <=SEP=> The radar signatures of automotive targets were measured from 22 to 29 GHz and 76 to 81 GHz inside an anechoic chamber using a vector network analyzer. Radar cross section maps of a sedan, truck, van, pedestrian, motorcycle, and bicycle as a function of effective radar sensor bandwidth, center frequency, and polarization are presented.

A model for smart agriculture using IoT <=SEP=> Climate changes and rainfall has been erratic over the past decade. Due to this in recent era, climate-smart methods called as smart agriculture is adopted by many Indian farmers. Smart agriculture is an automated and directed information technology implemented with the IOT (Internet of Things). IOT is developing rapidly and widely applied in all wireless environments. In this paper, sensor technology and wireless networks integration of IOT technology has been studied and reviewed based on the actual situation of agricultural system. A combined approach with internet and wireless communications, Remote Monitoring System (RMS) is proposed. Major objective is to collect real time data of agriculture production environment that provides easy access for agricultural facilities such as alerts through Short Massaging Service (SMS) and advices on weather pattern, crops etc.

Many-to-Many Geographically-Embedded Flow Visualisation: An Evaluation <=SEP=> Showing flows of people and resources between multiple geographic locations is a challenging visualisation problem. We conducted two quantitative user studies to evaluate different visual representations for such dense many-to-many flows. In our first study we compared a bundled node-link flow map representation and OD Maps [37] with a new visualisation we call MapTrix. Like OD Maps, MapTrix overcomes the clutter associated with a traditional flow map while providing geographic embedding that is missing in standard OD matrix representations. We found that OD Maps and MapTrix had similar performance while bundled node-link flow map representations did not scale at all well. Our second study compared participant performance with OD Maps and MapTrix on larger data sets. Again performance was remarkably similar.

"It Won't Happen To Me!": Self-Disclosure in Online Social Networks <=SEP=> Despite the considerable amount of self-disclosure in Online Social Networks (OSN), the motivation behind this phenomenon is still little understood. Building on the Privacy Calculus theory, this study fills this gap by taking a closer look at the factors behind individual self-disclosure decisions. In a Structural Equation Model with 237 subjects we find Perceived Enjoyment and Privacy Concerns to be significant determinants of information revelation. We confirm that the privacy concerns of OSN users are primarily determined by the perceived likelihood of a privacy violation and much less by the expected damage. These insights provide a solid basis for OSN providers and policy-makers in their effort to ensure healthy disclosure levels that are based on objective rationale rather than subjective misconceptions.

Finite-time posture control of a unicycle robot <=SEP=> This paper deals with the problem of posture control for a unicycle (single-wheel) robot by designing and analyzing a finite-time posture control strategy. The unicycle robot consists of a lower rotating wheel, an upper rotating disk, and a robot body. The rotating wheel enables the unicycle robot to move forward and backward to obtain pitch (longitudinal) balance. The rotating disk is used for obtaining roll (lateral) balance. Therefore, the unicycle robot can be viewed as a mobile inverted pendulum for the pitch axis and a reaction-wheel pendulum for the roll axis. The dynamics models for unicycle robots at roll and pitch axes are derived using the Lagrange equation. According to the dynamics models, two finite-time controller are designed, which includes the finite-time roll controller and the finite-time pitch controller. Moreover, the stability on the unicycle robot with the proposed finite-time posture control strategy is also analyzed. Finally, simulations are worked out to illustrate the effectiveness of the finite-time posture control strategy for the unicycle robot at roll and pitch axes.

Road Traffic Accidents Analysis in Mexico City through Crowdsourcing Data and Data Mining Techniques <=SEP=> Road traffic accidents are among the principal causes of traffic congestion, causing human losses, damages to health and the environment, economic losses and material damages. Studies about traditional road traffic accidents in urban zones represents very high inversion of time and money, additionally, the result are not current. However, nowadays in many countries, the crowdsourced GPS based traffic and navigation apps have emerged as an important source of information to low cost to studies of road traffic accidents and urban congestion caused by them. In this article we identified the zones, roads and specific time in the CDMX in which the largest number of road traffic accidents are concentrated during 2016. We built a database compiling information obtained from the social network known as Waze. The methodology employed was Discovery of knowledge in the database (KDD) for the discovery of patterns in the accidents reports. Furthermore, using data mining techniques with the help of Weka. The selected algorithms was the Maximization of Expectations (EM) to obtain the number ideal of clusters for the data and k-means as a grouping method. Finally, the results were visualized with the Geographic Information System QGIS. Keywords—Data mining, K-means, road traffic accidents, Waze, Weka.

Using Program Analysis to Improve Database Applications <=SEP=> Applications that interact with database management systems (DBMSs) are ubiquitous. Such database applications are usually hosted on an application server and perform many small accesses over the network to a DBMS hosted on the database server to retrieve data for processing. For decades, the database and programming systems research communities have worked on optimizing such applications from different perspectives: database researchers have built highly efficient DBMSs, and programming systems researchers have developed specialized compilers and runtime systems for hosting applications. However, there has been relatively little work that optimizes database applications by considering these specialized systems in combination and looking for optimization opportunities that span across them. In this article, we highlight three projects that optimize database applications by looking at both the programming system and the DBMS in a holistic manner. By carefully revisiting the interface between the DBMS and the application, and by applying a mix of declarative database optimization and modern program analysis techniques, we show that a speedup of multiple orders of magnitude is possible in real-world applications.

Exploring Models and Data for Remote Sensing Image Caption Generation <=SEP=> Inspired by recent development of artificial satellite, remote sensing images have attracted extensive attention. Recently, notable progress has been made in scene classification and target detection. However, it is still not clear how to describe the remote sensing image content with accurate and concise sentences. In this paper, we investigate to describe the remote sensing images with accurate and flexible sentences. First, some annotated instructions are presented to better describe the remote sensing images considering the special characteristics of remote sensing images. Second, in order to exhaustively exploit the contents of remote sensing images, a large-scale aerial image data set is constructed for remote sensing image caption. Finally, a comprehensive review is presented on the proposed data set to fully advance the task of remote sensing caption. Extensive experiments on the proposed data set demonstrate that the content of the remote sensing image can be completely described by generating language descriptions. The data set is available at https://github.com/201528014227051/RSICD_optimal.

Hybrid Multi-Mode Narrow-Frame Antenna for WWAN/LTE Metal-Rimmed Smartphone Applications <=SEP=> A hybrid multi-mode narrow-frame antenna for WWAN/LTE metal-rimmed smartphone applications is proposed in this paper. The ground clearance is only 5 mm × 45 mm, which is promising for narrow-frame smartphones. The metal rim with a small gap is connected to the system ground by three grounded patches. This proposed antenna can excite three coupled-loop modes and one slot mode. By incorporating these four modes, the proposed antenna can provide coverage for GSM850/900, DCS/PCS/UMTS2100, and LTE2300/2500 operations. Detailed design considerations of the proposed antenna are described, and both experimental and simulated results are also presented.

An integrated fuzzy MCDM approach for supplier evaluation and selection <=SEP=> A fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making approach that makes use of quality function deployment (QFD), fusion of fuzzy information and 2-tuple linguistic representation model is developed for supplier selection. The proposed methodology seeks to establish the relevant supplier assessment criteria while also considering the impacts of inner dependence among them. Two interrelated house of quality matrices are constructed, and fusion of fuzzy information and 2-tuple linguistic representation model are employed to compute the weights of supplier selection criteria and subsequently the ratings of suppliers. The proposed method is apt to manage non-homogeneous information in a decision setting with multiple information sources. The decision framework presented in this paper employs ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator, and the aggregation process is based on combining information by means of fuzzy sets on a basic linguistic term set. The proposed framework is illustrated through a case study conducted in a private hospital in Istanbul.

Automatic Semantic Face Recognition Nawaf <=SEP=> Recent expansion in surveillance systems has motivated research in soft biometrics that enable the unconstrained recognition of human faces. Comparative soft biometrics show superior recognition performance than categorical soft biometrics and have been the focus of several studies which have highlighted their ability for recognition and retrieval in constrained and unconstrained environments. These studies, however, only addressed face recognition for retrieval using human generated attributes, posing a question about the feasibility of automatically generating comparative labels from facial images. In this paper, we propose an approach for the automatic comparative labelling of facial soft biometrics. Furthermore, we investigate unconstrained human face recognition using these comparative soft biometrics in a human labelled gallery (and vice versa). Using a subset from the LFW dataset, our experiments show the efficacy of the automatic generation of comparative facial labels, highlighting the potential extensibility of the approach to other face recognition scenarios and larger ranges of attributes.

Emergency situation awareness from twitter for crisis management <=SEP=> This paper describes ongoing work with the Australian Government to detect, assess, summarise, and report messages of interest for crisis coordination published by Twitter. The developed platform and client tools, collectively termed the Emergency Situation Awareness - Automated Web Text Mining (ESA-AWTM) system, demonstrate how relevant Twitter messages can be identified and utilised to inform the situation awareness of an emergency incident as it unfolds.
 A description of the ESA-AWTM platform is presented detailing how it may be used for real life emergency management scenarios. These scenarios are focused on general use cases to provide: evidence of pre-incident activity; near-real-time notification of an incident occurring; first-hand reports of incident impacts; and gauging the community response to an emergency warning. Our tools have recently been deployed in a trial for use by crisis coordinators.