Mutual information maximizing GAN inversion for real face with identity preservation

Recent generative adversarial networks (GANs) have yielded remarkable performance in face image synthesis. GAN inversion embeds an image into the latent space of a pretrained generator, enabling it to be used for real face manipulation. However, current inversion approaches for real faces suffer the dilemma of initialization collapse and identity loss. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical GAN inversion for real faces with identity preservation based on mutual information maximization. We first use a facial domain guaranteed initialization to avoid the initialization collapse. Furthermore, we prove that maximizing the mutual information between inverted faces and their identities is equivalent to minimizing the distance between identity features from inverted and original faces. Optimization for real face inversion with identity preservation is implemented on this mutual information-maximizing constraint. Extensive experimental results show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art solutions for inverting and editing real faces, particularly in terms of face identity preservation.     

Collaborative Distribution Alignment for 2D image-based 3D shape retrieval

Retrieving 3D shapes with 2D images has become a popular research area nowadays, and a great deal of work has been devoted to reducing the discrepancy between 3D shapes and 2D images to improve retrieval performance. However, most approaches ignore the semantic information and decision boundaries of the two domains, and cannot achieve both domain alignment and category alignment in one module. In this paper, a novel Collaborative Distribution Alignment (CDA) model is developed to address the above existing challenges. Specifically, we first adopt a dual-stream CNN, following a similarity guided constraint module, to generate discriminative embeddings for input 2D images and 3D shapes (described as multiple views). Subsequently, we explicitly introduce a joint domain-class alignment module to dynamically learn a class-discriminative and domain-agnostic feature space, which can narrow the distance between 2D image and 3D shape instances of the same underlying category, while pushing apart the instances from different categories. Furthermore, we apply a decision boundary refinement module to avoid generating class-ambiguity embeddings by dynamically adjusting inconsistencies between two discriminators. Extensive experiments and evaluations on two challenging benchmarks, MI3DOR and MI3DOR-2, demonstrate the superiority of the proposed CDA method for 2D image-based 3D shape retrieval task.     

Multi-scale and multi-patch transformer for sandstorm image enhancement

Sandstorm is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. A sandstorm can carry large volumes of sand unexpectedly, which leads to severe color deviations and significantly degraded visibility when an image is taken in such a scenario. However, existing image enhancement methods cannot enhance sandstorm images well due to the challenging degradations and the scarcity of sandstorm training data. In this paper, we propose a Transformer with rotary position embedding to perform sandstorm image enhancement via building multi-scale and multi-patch dependencies. Our key insights in this work are 1) a multi-scale Transformer can globally eliminate the color deviations of sandstorm images via aggregating global information, 2) a multi-patch Transformer can recover local details well via learning the spatial variant degradations, and 3) a U-shape Transformer with rotary position embedding as the core unit of multi-scale and multi-patch Transformer can effectively build the long-range dependencies. We also contribute a real-world Sandstorm Image Enhancement (SIE) dataset including 1,400 sandstorm images with different degrees of degradations and various scenes. Experiments performed on synthetic images and real-world sandstorm images demonstrate that our proposed method not only obtains visually pleasing results but also outperforms state-of-the-art methods qualitatively and quantitatively.     

Influencer-defaulter mutation-based optimization algorithms for predicting electricity prices

Efficient electricity price forecasting plays a significant role in our society. In this paper, a novel influencer-defaulter mutation (IDM) mutation operator has been proposed. The IDM operator has been combined with six well-known optimization algorithms to create mutated optimization algorithms whose performance has been tested on twenty-four standard benchmark functions. Further, the artificial neural network is integrated with mutated optimization algorithms to solve the electricity price prediction problem. The policymakers can identify appropriate variables based on the predicted prices to help future market planning. The statistical results prove the efficacy of the IDM operator on the recent optimization algorithms.     

Spatial–Temporal Fusion Based Path Planning for Source Seeking in Wireless Sensor Network

International Journal of Wireless Information Networks - Source seeking problem has been faced in many fields, especially in search and rescue applications. We proposed a virtual structure-based...     

Priority-MECE: A Mobile Edge Cloud Ecosystem Based on Priority Tasks Offloading

Mobile Networks and Applications - With the rapid development of Internet of things, the traditional city model is no longer applicable. Therefore, the emerging concept of smart city meets the...     

个性化学习路径推荐综述

近年来，伴随着现代信息技术的迅猛发展，以人工智能为代表的新兴技术在教育领域得到了广泛应用，引发了学习理念和方式的深刻变革.在这种大背景下，在线学习超越了时空的限制，为学习者“随时随地”学习提供了更多的可能性，从而得到了蓬勃发展.然而，在线学习中师生时间、空间分离的特征，导致教师无法及时掌握学生的学习状态，一定程度上制约了在线学习中教学质量的提升.面对多元化的学习需求及海量学习资源，如何迅速完成学习目标、降低学习成本、合理分配学习资源等问题成为限制个人和时代发展的重大问题.然而，传统的“一刀切”的教育模式已经不能满足人们获取知识的需求了，需要一个更高效、更科学的个性化教育模式，以帮助学习者以最小的学习成本最大限度地完成学习目标.基于以上背景，如何自动高效识别学习者特征，高效地组织和分配学习资源，为每一位学习者规划个性化路径，成为面向个体的精准化教育资源匹配机制研究中亟待解决的问题.系统地综述并分析了当前个性化学习路径推荐的研究现状，并从多学科领域的角度分析了对于同一问题的不同研究思路，同时也归纳总结了当前研究中最为主流的核心推荐算法.最后，强调当前研究存在的主要不足之处.     

Importance of optical homogeneity for high-quality transparent ceramics

Two types of transparent Y₂O₃ ceramics without including large scattering sources such as residual pores, one with very high optical homogeneity (type A) and another one with slightly insufficient optical homogeneity (type B), are purposely prepared, and their optical properties are investigated and compared qualitatively and quantitatively. Type A ceramic exhibits transmittance characteristics with very low internal loss in the visible to infrared wavelength region, while type B ceramic is inferior in various optical performances especially in the short (visible) wavelength region. In type B ceramic, birefringence occurs due to optical inhomogeneity in the visible region, resulting in a decrease in the extinction ratio. Non-uniform refractive index distribution is also observed in the Schlieren image of type B ceramic, hence the laser beam quality through that material is degraded. This study proved the importance of optical homogeneity of transparent ceramics and clarified the problems in actual applications.     

Software Optimization in Ultrasound Imaging Technique Using Improved Deep Belief Learning Network on the Internet of Medical Things Platform

Wireless Personal Communications - The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is the array of medical instruments and related technologies that link Information Technology (IT) systems in...