Looking ahead: Joint small group detection and tracking in crowd scenes

Small group detection and tracking in crowd scenes are basis for high level crowd analysis tasks. However, it suffers from the ambiguities in generating proper groups and in handling dynamic changes of group configurations. In this paper, we propose a novel delay decision-making based method for addressing the above problems, motivated by the idea that these ambiguities can be solved using rich temporal context. Specifically, given individual detections, small group hypotheses are generated. Then candidate group hypotheses across consecutive frames and their potential associations are built in a tree. By seeking for the best non-conflicting subset from the hypothesis tree, small groups are determined and simultaneously their trajectories are got. So this framework is called joint detection and tracking. This joint framework reduces the ambiguities in small group decision and tracking by looking ahead for several frames. However, it results in the unmanageable solution space because the number of track hypotheses grows exponentially over time. To solve this problem, effective pruning strategies are developed, which can keep the solution space manageable and also improve the credibility of small groups. Experiments on public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. The method achieves the state-of-the-art performance even in noisy crowd scenes.     

Comment on Greenwood (2007): Solving the puzzle of structure/function relations in the aging brain?

Neuroimaging experiments have shown that prefrontal regions of the brain, which have the most age-related volume loss, are also the regions most likely to be more active in older adults than in younger adults. In an attempt to solve this puzzle, P. M. Greenwood (see record 2007-15625-001) has proposed a cascade that flows from age-related atrophy in the brain to changed processing strategies that result in plastic changes in regions adjacent and contralateral to the atrophic areas, culminating in greater functional activity. This hypothesis should stimulate research into these mechanisms and hopefully will ultimately inform researchers' ability to rehabilitate cognitive disorders in the elderly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

金属－橡胶硫化粘接过程中分子取向行为的间接证据

对金属－橡胶热硫化粘接复合体的剥离行为进行了研究，同一粘接试样的双向１８０°剥离试验显示出了巨大的差异。本文分析了弹性材料在硫化过程中的分子行为，并提出了相应的新假设，认为这是由于金属－橡胶在硫化粘接过程中分子取向交联行为所致。这种双向１８０°剥离破坏现象可被看作是金属－橡胶硫化粘接过程中分子取向行为的间接证据。     

The Social Risk Hypothesis of Depressed Mood: Evolutionary, Psychosocial, and Neurobiological Perspectives.

The authors hypothesize that depressed states evolved to minimize risk in social interactions in which individuals perceive that the ratio of their social value to others, and their social burden on others, is at a critically low level. When this ratio reaches a point where social value and social burden are approaching equivalence, the individual is in danger of exclusion from social contexts that, over the course of evolution, have been critical to fitness. Many features of depressed states can be understood in relation to mechanisms that reduce social risk in such circumstances, including (a) hyper-sensitivity to signals of social threat from others, (b) sending signals to others that reduce social risks, and (c) inhibiting risk-seeking (e.g., confident, acquisitive) behaviors. These features are discussed in terms of psychosocial and neurobiological research on depressive phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age effects in coding tasks: Componential analysis and test of the sensory deficit hypothesis.

Multiple forms of a symbol-digit substitution task were used to provide a componential analysis of age differences in coding task performance. The results demonstrated age differences in feature encoding, memory, and visual search. A 2nd experiment was conducted with young adults to investigate a sensory deficit as a locus of age differences. The spatial contrast sensitivity deficit of older adults was simulated on forms by applying a digital filter. Persons in the age-simulated contrast condition performed worse than those in the normal contrast condition. The stimulus degradation effect was linked to visual search speed. The study illustrates the utility of componential analysis and offers direct support for the hypothesis that sensory deficits affect performance on tasks used to assess intelligence (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Joint spatial registration and multi-target tracking using an extended PM-CPHD filter

An extended product multi-sensor cardinalized probability hypothesis density (PM-CPHD) filter for spatial registration and multi-target tracking (MTT) is proposed. The number and states of targets and the biases of sensors are jointly estimated by this method without the data association. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation results show that the proposed method (i) outperforms, although computationally more expensive than, the extended multi-sensor PHD filter which has been proposed for joint spatial registration and MTT; (ii) outperforms the multi-sensor joint probabilistic data association (MSJPDA) filter which is also extended in this study for joint spatial registration and MTT when the clutter is relatively dense.     

异类传感器实时信息融合的STMHM算法

异类传感器实时信息融合由于两类设备的数据率不同和数据误差的限制,一直未得到有效解决,提出一种空时二维多假设模型(STMHM)算法来解决该问题。设计的融合数据模型,将异类传感器的测量数据映射在二维直角坐标系下;按照新的融合数据模型分别构建两类传感器的目标量测空间和融合空间;设计量测空间时间初始化方法和目标实体空间的滤波算法;通过仿真验证表明:该算法能够实现异类传感器的信息融合,初次融合成功的确认时间在3～5个主动传感器扫描周期。     

基于互补原理确定黄土高原Budyko方程的流域特性参数

Budyko方程的流域特性参数一般根据植被覆盖度等下垫面特征进行确定,但相关资料不易获取。本文针对黄土高原地区29个小流域,通过分析流域特性参数、植被覆盖度和互补关系中大气湿润指数之间的关系发现,大气湿润指数能够间接反映植被覆盖度的大小,进而能够利用常规气象数据确定流域特性参数,并拟合出了经验公式。相比采用固定流域特性参数,这种方法能够提高Budyko方程对实际蒸散发量的模拟效果。相比于植被覆盖度等下垫面资料,常规气象数据时间序列长、且更易获取,因此本方法具有较好的应用前景。     

Alzheimer’s Disease Animal Models: Elucidation of Biomarkers and Therapeutic Approaches for Cognitive Impairment

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an age-related and progressive neurodegenerative disorder. It is widely accepted that AD is mainly caused by the accumulation of extracellular amyloid β (Aβ) and intracellular neurofibrillary tau tangles. Aβ begins to accumulate years before the onset of cognitive impairment, suggesting that the benefit of currently available interventions would be greater if they were initiated in the early phases of AD. To understand the mechanisms of AD pathogenesis, various transgenic mouse models with an accelerated accumulation of Aβ and tau tangles have been developed. However, none of these models exhibit all pathologies present in human AD. To overcome these undesirable phenotypes, APP knock-in mice, which were presented with touchscreen-based tasks, were developed to better evaluate the efficacy of candidate therapeutics in mouse models of early-stage AD. This review assesses several AD mouse models from the aspect of biomarkers and cognitive impairment and discusses their potential as tools to provide novel AD therapeutic approaches.