Second-Order Abstract Categorial Grammars as Hyperedge Replacement Grammars

Second-order abstract categorial grammars (de Groote in Association for computational linguistics, 39th annual meeting and 10th conference of the European chapter, proceedings of the conference, pp. 148–155, 2001) and hyperedge replacement grammars (Bauderon and Courcelle in Math Syst Theory 20:83–127, 1987; Habel and Kreowski in STACS 87: 4th Annual symposium on theoretical aspects of computer science. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 247, Springer, Berlin, pp 207–219, 1987) are two natural ways of generalizing “context-free” grammar formalisms for string and tree languages. It is known that the string generating power of both formalisms is equivalent to (non-erasing) multiple context-free grammars (Seki et al. in Theor Comput Sci 88:191–229, 1991) or linear context-free rewriting systems (Weir in Characterizing mildly context-sensitive grammar formalisms, University of Pennsylvania, 1988). In this paper, we give a simple, direct proof of the fact that second-order ACGs are simulated by hyperedge replacement grammars, which implies that the string and tree generating power of the former is included in that of the latter. The normal form for tree-generating hyperedge replacement grammars given by Engelfriet and Maneth (Graph transformation. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1764. Springer, Berlin, pp 15–29, 2000) can then be used to show that the tree generating power of second-order ACGs is exactly the same as that of hyperedge replacement grammars.     

Animating Pictures of Fluid using Video Examples

We propose a system that allows the user to design a continuous flow animation starting from a still fluid image. The basic idea is to apply the fluid motion extracted from a video example to the target image. The system first decomposes the video example into three components, an average image, a flow field and residuals. The user then specifies equivalent information over the target image. The user manually paints the rough flow field, and the system automatically refines it using the estimated gradients of the target image. The user semi-automatically transfers the residuals onto the target image. The system then approximates the average image and synthesizes an animation on the target image by adding the transferred residuals and warping them according to the user-specified flow field. Finally, the system adjusts the appearance of the resulting animation by applying histogram matching. We designed animations of various pictures, such as rivers, waterfalls, fires, and smoke.     

Estimation of a nonvisible field-of-view mobile target incorporating optical and acoustic sensors

This paper presents a nonvisible field-of-view (NFOV) target estimation approach that incorporates optical and acoustic sensors. An optical sensor can accurately localize a target in its field-of-view whereas the acoustic sensor could estimate the target location over a much larger space, but only with limited accuracy. A recursive Bayesian estimation framework where observations of the optical and acoustic sensors are probabilistically treated and fused is proposed in this paper. A technique to construct the observation likelihood when two microphones are used as the acoustic sensor is also described. The proposed technique derives and stores the interaural level difference of observations from the two microphones for different target positions in advance and constructs the likelihood through correlation. A parametric study of the proposed acoustic sensing technique in a controlled test environment, and experiments with an NFOV target in an actual indoor environment are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed technique.     

The motion capturing of female divers under water and the trial production of motion viewers for developing a virtual diving experience learning system

The virtual diving experience learning system of “Ama”, Japanese traditional female divers, has been developed to simulate how divers move in a virtual space using the diving interface and utilizing an accelerometer and a gyroscope. This interface not only detects the diving motion but also outputs the movement. Diving motion is shown in the ways of hand motion while standing. Although this makes it possible for a learner to understand the divers’ actions more clearly, this system’s difficulty is in visualizing a divers’ actions including their hands or bodies. Therefore, our study focuses on developing the operation system to reproduce actual ways of Amas’ diving with a virtual human body in a virtual space. First, the motion capture was done in an underwater condition. In the next process, the virtual human body was created. Finally, with the motion viewer, the more vivid actions of the Ama were successfully reproduced much more than in previous attempts. Using this system, the effectiveness of the Amas’ movement learning was confirmed, because a learner practices Amas’ movement.     

Preconditioned iterative solver on the coarsest level of a multi-grid method for high frequency time harmonic electromagnetic field analyses

A multi-grid method is one of the most powerful linear solvers for finite element electromagnetic field analysis. However, as the discretized model has recently been enlarged, a solution process for a linear system arising on the coarsest level tends to be problematic in a complete multi-grid solution process. Whereas a linear system on the coarsest level is generally solved by a direct solver, we solve it here by means of an iterative solver to reduce the memory requirements. Since a conventional preconditioning technique is not effective for such a linear system, we introduce preconditioning techniques based on Arnold, Falk, and Winther’s and on Hiptmair’s smoothers. Numerical tests show that the newly installed preconditioning technique greatly improves the convergence rate.     

Bottom-up pyramid cellular acceptors with three-dimensional layers

In 1997, C.R. Dyer and A. Rosenfeld introduced an acceptor on a two-dimensional pattern (or tape), called the pyramid cellular acceptor, and demonstrated that many useful recognition tasks are executed by pyramid cellular acceptors in time proportional to the logarithm of the diameter of the input. They also introduced a bottom-up pyramid cellular acceptor which is a restricted version of the pyramid cellular acceptor, and proposed some interesting open problems of the bottom-up pyramid cellular acceptors. On the other hand, we think that the study of threedimensional automata has been meaningful as the computational model of three-dimensional information processing such as computer vision, robotics, and so forth. In this paper, we investigate about bottom-up pyramid cellular acceptors with three-dimensional layers, and show their some accepting powers. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

An application of the 2-nitrobenzenesulfenyl method to proteomic profiling of human colorectal carcinoma: A novel approach for biomarker discovery

In the development of novel biomarkers, the proteomic approach is advantageous because using it the cancer-associated proteins can be directly identified. We previously developed a 2-nitrobenzenesulfenyl (NBS) method to improve quantitative proteome analysis. Here, we applied this method to proteomic profiling of colorectal carcinoma (CRC) to identify novel proteins with altered expression in CRC. Each pair of tumor and normal tissue specimens from 12 CRC patients was analyzed, and approximately 5000 NBS-labeled paired peaks were quantified. Peaks with altered signal intensities (>1.5-fold) and occurring frequently in the samples (>70%) were selected, and 128 proteins were identified by MS/MS analyses as differentially expressed proteins in CRC tissues. Many proteins were newly revealed to be CRC related; 30 were reported in earlier studies of CRC. Six proteins that were up-regulated in CRC (ZYX, RAN, RCN1, AHCY, LGALS1, and VIM) were further characterized and validated by Western blot and immunohistochemistry. All six were found to be CRC-localized, either in cancer cells or in stroma cells near the cancer cells. These results indicate that the proteins identified in this study are novel candidates for CRC markers, and that the NBS method is useful in proteome mining to discover novel biomarkers.     

Sparse least squares support vector training in the reduced empirical feature space

In this paper we discuss sparse least squares support vector machines (sparse LS SVMs) trained in the empirical feature space, which is spanned by the mapped training data. First, we show that the kernel associated with the empirical feature space gives the same value with that of the kernel associated with the feature space if one of the arguments of the kernels is mapped into the empirical feature space by the mapping function associated with the feature space. Using this fact, we show that training and testing of kernel-based methods can be done in the empirical feature space and that training of LS SVMs in the empirical feature space results in solving a set of linear equations. We then derive the sparse LS SVMs restricting the linearly independent training data in the empirical feature space by the Cholesky factorization. Support vectors correspond to the selected training data and they do not change even if the value of the margin parameter is changed. Thus for linear kernels, the number of support vectors is the number of input variables at most. By computer experiments we show that we can reduce the number of support vectors without deteriorating the generalization ability.

Role of granulosa and theca cell interactions in ovarian follicular maturation

We developed a culture system in which two types of ovarian follicular cells were allowed to attach to opposite sides of a collagen membrane. Using this in vitro cell culture system, we studied the effects of granulosa- and theca-cell interaction on the morphology, structure, and function of bovine ovarian follicular cells. In the first part of the study, we explored how the interaction between theca and granulosa cells affects the morphology and structure of the cells. This study was done using follicular cells collected from bovine ovarian follicles at the early developmental stage. Granulosa cells cultured alone were flattened, and formed a monolayer sheet. By contrast, granulosa cells cultured with theca cells were convex, and formed multilayer sheets. Theca cells cultured alone were thin, flat, and spindle-shaped. Theca cells cultured with granulosa cells were also spindle-shaped; however, they appeared convex and more densely packed when compared with theca cells cultured alone. In the second part of the study, the possible role of the cellular interaction in the control of differentiation and growth of granulosa and theca cells was investigated. When follicular cells were isolated from the early stage of follicular development, theca cells reduced progesterone and inhibin production by granulosa cells and augmented the growth of granulosa cells. When the cells were isolated from the late stage of follicular development, by contrast, theca cells augmented hormonal production by granulosa cells, and did not affect the growth of granulosa cells. The growth and androstenedione production by theca cells were increased by the presence of granulosa cells, irrespective of the origin of follicular cells. These results demonstrated that communication between two types of follicular cells results in reciprocal modulation of their morphology, structure, growth, and function. Cellular interactions seem to be one of the major factors controlling the differentiation and growth of the follicular cells during the follicular maturation process. In contrast to granulosa and theca cells cultured alone, cells in the coculture seemed to possess morphological and functional characteristics more similar to those of cells in the growing follicular wall in vivo. Thus, we speculate that the interaction between these two types of follicular cells is essential for the maintenance of original structure and function of the bovine follicular wall.