Query: Eye Gaze Tracking Using an Active Stereo Head

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Direct least squares fitting of ellipses <=SEP=> This work presents a new efficient method for fitting ellipses to scattered data. Previous algorithms either fitted general conics or were computationally expensive. By minimizing the algebraic distance subject to the constraint 4 2 1 the new method incorporates the ellipticity constraint into the normalization factor. The new method combines several advantages: (i) It is ellipse-specific so that even bad data will always return an ellipse; (ii) It can be solved naturally by a generalized eigensystem and (iii) it is extremely robust, efficient and easy to implement. We compare the proposed method to other approaches and show its robustness on several examples in which other non-ellipse-specific approaches would fail or require computationally expensive iterative refinements. Source code for the algorithm is supplied and a demonstration is available on ! " ! $#% '& () "*) & +, ./10 0 32, . 4) "*) "*) % 5* 0

SUITOR: an attentive information system <=SEP=> Attentive systems pay attention to what users do so that they can attend to what users need. Such systems track user behavior, model user interests, and anticipate user desires and actions. Because the general class of attentive systems is broad — ranging from human butlers to web sites that profile users — we have focused specifically on attentive information systems, which observe user actions with information resources, model user information states, and suggest information that might be helpful to users. In particular, we describe an implemented system, Simple User Interest Tracker (Suitor), that tracks computer users through multiple channels — gaze, web browsing, application focus — to determine their interests and to satisfy their information needs. By observing behavior and modeling users, Suitor finds and displays potentially relevant information that is both timely and non-disruptive to the users' ongoing activities.

A real-time face tracker <=SEP=> We present a real-time face tracker in this paper The system has achieved a rate of 30% frameshecond using an HP-9000 workstation with a framegrabber and a Canon VC-CI camera. It can track a person 'sface while the person moves freely (e.g., walks, jumps, sits down and stands up) in a room. Three types of models have been employed in developing the system. First, we present a stochastic model to characterize skin-color distributions of human faces. The information provided by the model is sufJicient for tracking a human face in various poses and views. This model is adaptable to different people and different lighting conditions in real-time. Second, a motion model e's used to estimate image motion and to predict search window. Third, a camera model is used toprediet and to compensate for camera motion. The system can be applied to tele-conferencing and many HCI applications including lip-reading and gaze tracking. The principle in developing this system can be extended to other tracking problems such as tracking the human hand.

Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms <=SEP=> This paper presents our vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): "Tangible Bits." Tangible Bits allows users to "grasp & manipulate" bits in the center of users’ attention by coupling the bits with everyday physical objects and architectural surfaces. Tangible Bits also enables users to be aware of background bits at the periphery of human perception using ambient display media such as light, sound, airflow, and water movement in an augmented space. The goal of Tangible Bits is to bridge the gaps between both cyberspace and the physical environment, as well as the foreground and background of human activities. This paper describes three key concepts of Tangible Bits: interactive surfaces; the coupling of bits with graspable physical objects; and ambient media for background awareness. We illustrate these concepts with three prototype systems – the metaDESK, transBOARD and ambientROOM – to identify underlying research issues.

Using vanishing points for camera calibration <=SEP=> In this article a new method for the calibration of a vision system which consists of two (or more) cameras is presented. The proposed method, which uses simple properties of vanishing points, is divided into two steps. In the first step, the intrinsic parameters of each camera, that is, the focal length and the location of the intersection between the optical axis and the image plane, are recovered from a single image of a cube. In the second step, the extrinsic parameters of a pair of cameras, that is, the rotation matrix and the translation vector which describe the rigid motion between the coordinate systems fixed in the two cameras are estimated from an image stereo pair of a suitable planar pattern. Firstly, by matching the corresponding vanishing points in the two images the rotation matrix can be computed, then the translation vector is estimated by means of a simple triangulation. The robustness of the method against noise is discussed, and the conditions for optimal estimation of the rotation matrix are derived. Extensive experimentation shows that the precision that can be achieved with the proposed method is sufficient to efficiently perform machine vision tasks that require camera calibration, like depth from stereo and motion from image sequence.

Single Image Super-Resolution via Multiple Mixture Prior Models <=SEP=> Example learning-based single image super-resolution (SR) is a promising method for reconstructing a high-resolution (HR) image from a single-input low-resolution (LR) image. Lots of popular SR approaches are more likely either time-or space-intensive, which limit their practical applications. Hence, some research has focused on a subspace view and delivered state-of-the-art results. In this paper, we utilize an effective way with mixture prior models to transform the large nonlinear feature space of LR images into a group of linear subspaces in the training phase. In particular, we first partition image patches into several groups by a novel selective patch processing method based on difference curvature of LR patches, and then learning the mixture prior models in each group. Moreover, different prior distributions have various effectiveness in SR, and in this case, we find that student-t prior shows stronger performance than the well-known Gaussian prior. In the testing phase, we adopt the learned multiple mixture prior models to map the input LR features into the appropriate subspace, and finally reconstruct the corresponding HR image in a novel mixed matching way. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach is both quantitatively and qualitatively superior to some state-of-the-art SR methods.

Pharmacogenetics and adverse drug reactions <=SEP=> Polymorphisms in the genes that code for drug-metabolising enzymes, drug transporters, drug receptors, and ion channels can affect an individual's risk of having an adverse drug reaction, or can alter the efficacy of drug treatment in that individual. Mutant alleles at a single gene locus are the best studied individual risk factors for adverse drug reactions, and include many genes coding for drug-metabolising enzymes. These genetic polymorphisms of drug metabolism produce the phenotypes of "poor metabolisers" or "ultrarapid metabolisers" of numerous drugs. Together, such phenotypes make up a substantial proportion of the population. Pharmacogenomic techniques allow efficient analysis of these risk factors, and genotyping tests have the potential to optimise drug therapy in the future.

High performance work systems: the gap between policy and practice in health care reform. <=SEP=> PURPOSE
Studies of high-performing organisations have consistently reported a positive relationship between high performance work systems (HPWS) and performance outcomes. Although many of these studies have been conducted in manufacturing, similar findings of a positive correlation between aspects of HPWS and improved care delivery and patient outcomes have been reported in international health care studies. The purpose of this paper is to bring together the results from a series of studies conducted within Australian health care organisations. First, the authors seek to demonstrate the link found between high performance work systems and organisational performance, including the perceived quality of patient care. Second, the paper aims to show that the hospitals studied do not have the necessary aspects of HPWS in place and that there has been little consideration of HPWS in health system reform.


DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH
The paper draws on a series of correlation studies using survey data from hospitals in Australia, supplemented by qualitative data collection and analysis. To demonstrate the link between HPWS and perceived quality of care delivery the authors conducted regression analysis with tests of mediation and moderation to analyse survey responses of 201 nurses in a large regional Australian health service and explored HRM and HPWS in detail in three casestudy organisations. To achieve the second aim, the authors surveyed human resource and other senior managers in all Victorian health sector organisations and reviewed policy documents related to health system reform planned for Australia.


FINDINGS
The findings suggest that there is a relationship between HPWS and the perceived quality of care that is mediated by human resource management (HRM) outcomes, such as psychological empowerment. It is also found that health care organisations in Australia generally do not have the necessary aspects of HPWS in place, creating a policy and practice gap. Although the chief executive officers of health service organisations reported high levels of strategic HRM, the human resource and other managers reported a distinct lack of HPWS from their perspectives. The authors discuss why health care organisations may have difficulty in achieving HPWS.


ORIGINALITY/VALUE
Leaders in health care organisations should focus on ensuring human resource management systems, structures and processes that support HPWS. Policy makers need to consider HPWS as a necessary component of health system reform. There is a strong need to reorient organisational human resource management policies and procedures in public health care organisations towards high performing work systems.

Analysis and design of HBT Cherry-Hooper amplifiers with emitter-follower feedback for optical communications <=SEP=> In this article, the large-signal, small-signal, and noise performance of the Cherry-Hooper amplifier with emitter-follower feedback are analyzed from a design perspective. A method for choosing the component values to obtain a low group delay distortion or Bessel transfer function is given. The design theory is illustrated with an implementation of the circuit in a 47-GHz SiGe process. The amplifier has 19.7-dB gain, 13.7-GHz bandwidth, and /spl plusmn/10-ps group delay distortion. The amplifier core consumes 34 mW from a -3.3-V supply.

Stealthy Denial of Service Strategy in Cloud Computing <=SEP=> The success of the cloud computing paradigm is due to its on-demand, self-service, and pay-by-use nature. According to this paradigm, the effects of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks involve not only the quality of the delivered service, but also the service maintenance costs in terms of resource consumption. Specifically, the longer the detection delay is, the higher the costs to be incurred. Therefore, a particular attention has to be paid for stealthy DoS attacks. They aim at minimizing their visibility, and at the same time, they can be as harmful as the brute-force attacks. They are sophisticated attacks tailored to leverage the worst-case performance of the target system through specific periodic, pulsing, and low-rate traffic patterns. In this paper, we propose a strategy to orchestrate stealthy attack patterns, which exhibit a slowly-increasing-intensity trend designed to inflict the maximum financial cost to the cloud customer, while respecting the job size and the service arrival rate imposed by the detection mechanisms. We describe both how to apply the proposed strategy, and its effects on the target system deployed in the cloud.

A Deep Learning Framework for Smart Street Cleaning <=SEP=> Conventional street cleaning methods include street sweepers going to various spots in the city and manually verifying if the street needs cleaning and taking action if required. However, this method is not optimized and demands a huge investment in terms of time and money. This paper introduces an automated framework which addresses street cleaning problem in a better way by making use of modern equipment with cameras and computational techniques to analyze, find and efficiently schedule clean-up crews for the areas requiring more attention. Deep learning-based neural network techniques can be used to achieve better accuracy and performance for object detection and classification than conventional machine learning algorithms for large volume of images. The proposed framework for street cleaning leverages the deep learning algorithm pipeline to analyze the street photographs and determines if the streets are dirty by detecting litter objects. The pipeline further determines the the degree to which the streets are littered by classifying the litter objects detected in earlier stages. The framework also provides information on the cleanliness status of the streets on a dashboard updated in real-time. Such framework can prove effective in reducing resource consumption and overall operational cost involved in street cleaning.

New reverse-conducting IGBT (1200V) with revolutionary compact package <=SEP=> Fuji Electric developed a 1200V class RC-IGBT based on our latest thin wafer process. The performance of this RC-IGBT shows the same relationship between conduction loss and switching loss as our 6th generation conventional IGBT and FWD. In addition its trade-off can be optimized for hard switching by lifetime killer. Calculations of the hard switching inverter loss and chip junction temperature (Tj) show that the optimized RC-IGBT can handle 35% larger current density per chip area. In order to utilize the high performance characteristics of the RC-IGBT, we assembled them in our newly developed compact package. This module can handle 58% higher current than conventional 100A modules at a 51% smaller footprint.

A New Paradigm for Collision-free Hashing: Incrementality at Reduced Cost <=SEP=> We present a simple, new paradigm for the design of collision-free hash functions. Any function emanating from this paradigm is incremental. (This means that if a message x which I have previously hashed is modi ed to x0 then rather than having to re-compute the hash of x 0 from scratch, I can quickly \update" the old hash value to the new one, in time proportional to the amount of modi cation made in x to get x.) Also any function emanating from this paradigm is parallelizable, useful for hardware implementation. We derive several speci c functions from our paradigm. All use a standard hash function, assumed ideal, and some algebraic operations. The rst function, MuHASH, uses one modular multiplication per block of the message, making it reasonably e cient, and signi cantly faster than previous incremental hash functions. Its security is proven, based on the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem. A second function, AdHASH, is even faster, using additions instead of multiplications, with security proven given either that approximation of the length of shortest lattice vectors is hard or that the weighted subset sum problem is hard. A third function, LtHASH, is a practical variant of recent lattice based functions, with security proven based, again on the hardness of shortest lattice vector approximation. Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093, USA. E-Mail: mihir@cs.ucsd.edu. URL: http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/mihir. Supported in part by NSF CAREER Award CCR-9624439 and a Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering. yMIT Laboratory for Computer Science, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. E-Mail: miccianc@theory.lcs.mit.edu. Supported in part by DARPA contract DABT63-96-C-0018.

Bayesian Rose Trees <=SEP=> Hierarchical structure is ubiquitous in data across many domains. There are many hierarchical clustering methods, frequently used by domain experts, which strive to discover this structure. However, most of these methods limit discoverable hierarchies to those with binary branching structure. This limitation, while computationally convenient, is often undesirable. In this paper we explore a Bayesian hierarchical clustering algorithm that can produce trees with arbitrary branching structure at each node, known as rose trees. We interpret these trees as mixtures over partitions of a data set, and use a computationally efficient, greedy agglomerative algorithm to find the rose trees which have high marginal likelihood given the data. Lastly, we perform experiments which demonstrate that rose trees are better models of data than the typical binary trees returned by other hierarchical clustering algorithms.

Digital Business Strategy and Value Creation: Framing the Dynamic Cycle of Control Points <=SEP=> Within changing value networks, the profits and competitive advantages of participation reside dynamically at control points that are the positions of greatest value and/or power. The enterprises that hold these positions have a great deal of control over how the network operates, how the benefits are redistributed, and how this influences the execution of a digital business strategy. This article is based on a field study that provides preliminary, yet promising, empirical evidence that sheds light on the dynamic cycle of value creation and value capture points in digitally enabled networks in response to triggers related to technology and business strategy. We use the context of the European and U.S. broadcasting industry. Specifically, we illustrate how incremental innovations may shift value networks from static, vertically integrated networks to more loosely coupled networks, and how cross-boundary industry disruptions may then, in turn, shift those to two-sided markets. Based on our analysis we provide insights and implications for digital business strategy research and practice.

Attitude Detection for One-Round Conversation: Jointly Extracting Target-Polarity Pairs <=SEP=> We tackle Attitude Detection, which we define as the task of extracting the replier's attitude, i.e., a target-polarity pair, from a given one-round conversation. While previous studies considered Target Extraction and Polarity Classification separately, we regard them as subtasks of Attitude Detection. Our experimental results show that treating the two subtasks independently is not the optimal solution for Attitude Detection, as achieving high performance in each subtask is not sufficient for obtaining correct target-polarity pairs. Our jointly trained model AD-NET substantially outperforms the separately trained models by alleviating the target-polarity mismatch problem. Moreover, we proposed a method utilising the attitude detection model to improve retrieval-based chatbots by re-ranking the response candidates with attitude features. Human evaluation indicates that with attitude detection integrated, the new responses to the sampled queries from are statistically significantly more consistent, coherent, engaging and informative than the original ones obtained from a commercial chatbot.

Robust misinterpretation of confidence intervals. <=SEP=> Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is undoubtedly the most common inferential technique used to justify claims in the social sciences. However, even staunch defenders of NHST agree that its outcomes are often misinterpreted. Confidence intervals (CIs) have frequently been proposed as a more useful alternative to NHST, and their use is strongly encouraged in the APA Manual. Nevertheless, little is known about how researchers interpret CIs. In this study, 120 researchers and 442 students-all in the field of psychology-were asked to assess the truth value of six particular statements involving different interpretations of a CI. Although all six statements were false, both researchers and students endorsed, on average, more than three statements, indicating a gross misunderstanding of CIs. Self-declared experience with statistics was not related to researchers' performance, and, even more surprisingly, researchers hardly outperformed the students, even though the students had not received any education on statistical inference whatsoever. Our findings suggest that many researchers do not know the correct interpretation of a CI. The misunderstandings surrounding p-values and CIs are particularly unfortunate because they constitute the main tools by which psychologists draw conclusions from data.

Low-complexity image denoising based on statistical modeling of wavelet coefficients <=SEP=> We introduce a simple spatially adaptive statistical model for wavelet image coefficients and apply it to image denoising. Our model is inspired by a recent wavelet image compression algorithm, the estimation-quantization (EQ) coder. We model wavelet image coefficients as zero-mean Gaussian random variables with high local correlation. We assume a marginal prior distribution on wavelet coefficients variances and estimate them using an approximate maximum a posteriori probability rule. Then we apply an approximate minimum mean squared error estimation procedure to restore the noisy wavelet image coefficients. Despite the simplicity of our method, both in its concept and implementation, our denoising results are among the best reported in the literature.

Crowdlet: Optimal worker recruitment for self-organized mobile crowdsourcing <=SEP=> In this paper, we advocate Crowdlet, a novel self-organized mobile crowdsourcing paradigm, in which a mobile task requester can proactively exploit a massive crowd of encountered mobile workers at real-time for quick and high-quality results. We present a comprehensive system model of Crowdlet that defines task, worker arrival and worker ability models. Further, we introduce a service quality concept to indicate the expected service gain that a requester can enjoy when he recruits an encountered worker, by jointly taking into account worker ability, real-timeness and task reward. Based on the models, we formulate an online worker recruitment problem to maximize the expected sum of service quality. We derive an optimal worker recruitment policy through the dynamic programming principle, and show that it exhibits a nice threshold based structure. We conduct extensive performance evaluation based on real traces, and numerical results demonstrate that our policy can achieve superior performance and improve more than 30% performance gain over classic policies. Besides, our Android prototype shows that Crowdlet is cost-efficient, requiring less than 7 seconds and 6 Joule in terms of time and energy cost for policy computation in most cases.

The population genetics of the Jewish people <=SEP=> Adherents to the Jewish faith have resided in numerous geographic locations over the course of three millennia. Progressively more detailed population genetic analysis carried out independently by multiple research groups over the past two decades has revealed a pattern for the population genetic architecture of contemporary Jews descendant from globally dispersed Diaspora communities. This pattern is consistent with a major, but variable component of shared Near East ancestry, together with variable degrees of admixture and introgression from the corresponding host Diaspora populations. By combining analysis of monoallelic markers with recent genome-wide variation analysis of simple tandem repeats, copy number variations, and single-nucleotide polymorphisms at high density, it has been possible to determine the relative contribution of sex-specific migration and introgression to map founder events and to suggest demographic histories corresponding to western and eastern Diaspora migrations, as well as subsequent microevolutionary events. These patterns have been congruous with the inferences of many, but not of all historians using more traditional tools such as archeology, archival records, linguistics, comparative analysis of religious narrative, liturgy and practices. Importantly, the population genetic architecture of Jews helps to explain the observed patterns of health and disease-relevant mutations and phenotypes which continue to be carefully studied and catalogued, and represent an important resource for human medical genetics research. The current review attempts to provide a succinct update of the more recent developments in a historical and human health context.

Learning deep physiological models of affect <=SEP=> More than 15 years after the early studies in Affective Computing (AC), [1] the problem of detecting and modeling emotions in the context of human-computer interaction (HCI) remains complex and largely unexplored. The detection and modeling of emotion is, primarily, the study and use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for the construction of computational models of emotion. The key challenges one faces when attempting to model emotion [2] are inherent in the vague definitions and fuzzy boundaries of emotion, and in the modeling methodology followed. In this context, open research questions are still present in all key components of the modeling process. These include, first, the appropriateness of the modeling tool employed to map emotional manifestations and responses to annotated affective states; second, the processing of signals that express these manifestations (i.e., model input); and third, the way affective annotation (i.e., model output) is handled. This paper touches upon all three key components of an affective model (i.e., input, model, output) and introduces the use of deep learning (DL) [3], [4], [5] methodologies for affective modeling from multiple physiological signals.

Three Implementations of SquishQL, a Simple RDF Query Language <=SEP=> RDF provides a basic way to represent data for the Semantic Web. We have been experimenting with the query paradigm for working with RDF data in semantic web applications. Query of RDF data provides a declarative access mechanism that is suitable for application usage and remote access. We describe work on a conceptual model for querying RDF data that refines ideas first presented in at the W3C workshop on Query Languages [14] and the design of one possible syntax, derived from [7], that is suitable for application programmers. Further, we present experience gained in three implementations of the query language.

Introduction to Statistical Learning Theory <=SEP=> The goal of statistical learning theory is to study, in a statistical framework, the properties of learning algorithms. In particular, most results take the form of so-called error bounds. This tutorial introduces the techniques that are used to obtain such results.

Fast Texture Transfer <=SEP=> 

Social Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly <=SEP=> Companies when strategizing are looking for innovative ways to have a competitive advantage over their competitors. One way in which they compete is by the adoption of social media. Social media has evolved over the years and as a result, new concepts and applications are developed which promises to provide business value to a company. However, despite the usefulness of social media, many businesses fail to reap its full benefits. The current literature shows evidence of lack of strategically designed process for companies to successfully implement social media. The purpose of this study is to suggest a framework which provides the necessary alignment between social media goals with business objectives. From the literature review, a social media strategy framework was derived to offer an effective step by step approach to the development and imple‐ mentation of social media goals aligned with a company’s business objectives. The contribution to this study is the development of a social media strategy framework that can be used by organisations for business value.

Web Mining for Information Retrieval <=SEP=> The present era is engulfed in data and it is quite difficult to churn the emergence of unstructured data in order to mine relevant information. In this paper we present a basic outline of web mining techniques which changed the scenario of today world and help in retrieval of information. Web Mining actually referred as mining of interesting pattern by using set of tools and techniques from the vast pool of web. It focuses on different aspects of web mining referred as Web Content Mining, Web Structure Mining and Web Usage Mining. The overview of these mining techniques which help in retrieving desired information are covered along with the approaches used and algorithm employed.

Argumentation Mining: Where are we now, where do we want to be and how do we get there? <=SEP=> This paper gives a short overview of the state-of-the-art and goals of argumentation mining and it provides ideas for further research. Its content is based on two invited lectures on argumentation mining respectively at the FIRE 2013 conference at the India International Center in New Delhi, India and a lecture given as SICSA distinguished visitor at the University of Dundee, UK in the summer of 2014.

1 Unsupervised Feature Learning in Time Series 2 Prediction Using Continuous Deep Belief Network 3 <=SEP=> A continuous Deep Belief Network (cDBN) with two hidden layers is proposed in this 18 paper, focusing on the problem of weak feature learning ability when dealing with continuous data. 19 In cDBN, the input data is trained in an unsupervised way by using continuous version of transfer 20 functions, the contrastive divergence is designed in hidden layer training process to raise 21 convergence speed, an improved dropout strategy is then implemented in unsupervised training to 22 realize features learning by de-cooperating between the units, and then the network is fine-tuned 23 using back propagation algorithm. Besides, hyper-parameters are analysed through stability 24 analysis to assure the network can find the optimal. Finally, the experiments on Lorenz chaos series, 25 CATS benchmark and other real world like CO2 and waste water parameters forecasting show that 26 cDBN has the advantage of higher accuracy, simpler structure and faster convergence speed than 27 other methods. 28

Influence of Some Parameters on the Effectiveness of Induction Heating <=SEP=> We have investigated the effectiveness of heating conductive plates by induction in low frequencies analytically and numerically, in relation to the shape of the plate, the area of the region exposed to the magnetic flux, and the position of the exposed region with respect to the center of the plate. We considered both uniform and nonuniform magnetic fields. For plates with equivalent area exposed to the same uniform magnetic flux, the one with the most symmetrical shape is heated most effectively. If a coil is employed for the excitation, the results depend on the shape of the plate, the shape of the coil section, and the coil lift-off. When only the central region of a plate is exposed to a variable magnetic flux, there is a specific value of the exposed area for which the power dissipated in the plate material reaches a maximum. The most effective heating of a plate partially exposed occurs when the axis of the exciting coil is at the plate center.

A Model of a Localized Cross-Border E-Commerce <=SEP=> By the explosive growth of B2B e-commerce transactions in international supply chains and the rapid increase of business documents in Iran’s cross-border trading, effective management of trade processes over borders is vital in B2B e-commerce systems. Structure of the localized model in this paper is based on three major layers of a B2B e-commerce infrastructure, which are messaging layer, business process layer and content layer. For each of these layers proper standards and solutions are chosen due to Iran’s e-commerce requirements. As it is needed to move smoothly towards electronic documents in Iran, UNedocs standard is suggested to support the contents of both paper and electronic documents. The verification of the suggested model is done by presenting a four phase scenario through case study method. The localized model in this paper tries to make a strategic view of business documents exchange in trade processes, and getting closer to the key target of regional single windows establishment in global trade e-supply chains.