Illumination normalization with time-dependent intrinsic images for video surveillance

Variation in illumination conditions caused by weather, time of day, etc., makes the task difficult when building video surveillance systems of real world scenes. Especially, cast shadows produce troublesome effects, typically for object tracking from a fixed viewpoint, since it yields appearance variations of objects depending on whether they are inside or outside the shadow. In this paper, we handle such appearance variations by removing shadows in the image sequence. This can be considered as a preprocessing stage which leads to robust video surveillance. To achieve this, we propose a framework based on the idea of intrinsic images. Unlike previous methods of deriving intrinsic images, we derive time-varying reflectance images and corresponding illumination images from a sequence of images instead of assuming a single reflectance image. Using obtained illumination images, we normalize the input image sequence in terms of incident lighting distribution to eliminate shadowing effects. We also propose an illumination normalization scheme which can potentially run in real time, utilizing the illumination eigenspace, which captures the illumination variation due to weather, time of day, etc., and a shadow interpolation method based on shadow hulls. This paper describes the theory of the framework with simulation results and shows its effectiveness with object tracking results on real scene data sets.     

Volatilization and recovery of mercury from mercury wastewater produced in the course of laboratory work using Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans SUG 2-2 cells

The iron-oxidizing bacterium Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans SUG 2-2 is markedly resistant to mercuric chloride and can volatilize mercury (Hg0) from mercuric ion (Hg2+) under acidic conditions. To develop a microbial technique to volatilize and recover mercury from acidic and organic compound-containing mercury wastewater, which is usually produced in the course of everyday laboratory work in Okayama University, the effects of organic and inorganic chemicals on the mercury volatilization activity of A. ferrooxidans cells were studied. Among 55 chemicals tested, the mercury volatilization from a reaction mixture (pH 2.5) containing resting cells of SUG 2-2 (1 mg of protein) and mercury chloride (14 nmol) was strongly inhibited by AgNO3 (0.05 mM), K2CrO7 (1.0 mM), cysteine (1.0 mM), trichloroethylene (1 microM), and commercially produced detergents (0.05%). However, the strong inhibition by trichloroethylene and detergents was not observed when these organic compounds were chemically decomposed using Fenton's method before the treatment of the wastewater with SUG 2-2 cells. When 20 ml of water acidified with sulfuric acid (pH 2.5) containing ferrous sulfate (3%), diluted mercury wastewater (17.5 nmol of Hg2+) and SUG 2-2 cells (0.05 mg of protein) were incubated for 10 d at 30 degrees C, 47% of the total mercury in the wastewater was volatilized and recovered into a trapping reagent for metal mercury. However, when the organic compounds in the mercury wastewater were decomposed using Fenton's method and then treated with A. ferrooxidans cells, approximately 100% of the total mercury in the wastewater was volatilized and recovered.     

Computer-aided design of a factor Xa inhibitor by using MCSS functionality maps and a CAVEAT linker search

We have investigated a new approach to efficiently find a novel inhibitor against a serine protease (i.e. an activated coagulation factor X, FXa) by using de novo design programs and the X-ray crystal structure of the target enzyme. FXa is a coagulant enzyme that generates thrombin (a serine protease) and participates in both intrinsic and extrinsic coagulation pathways. We adopted multiple copy simultaneous search (MCSS) and CAVEAT linker search techniques, which disclosed a novel FXa inhibitor (T01312) consisting of two binding moieties (the benzamidinyl and adamantyl groups) and a linker unit (the carboxybenzylamine group). The inhibitory activity of T01312 against FXa was determined to be a small K(i)-value of 48nM, which is two orders of magnitude smaller than that against thrombin. An X-ray crystal analysis of T01312 complexed with trypsin (an analogue of FXa) and docking studies of T01312 with trypsin and FXa showed that: (i) the benzamidinyl group is a predominant binding moiety in the anionic pocket (S1 site) with an asparatic acid residue; (ii) a hydrophobic pocket (S4 site) is the binding site of the adamantyl group; (iii) the carboxylate group of the linker contributes to the selectivity for FXa against thrombin. Thus, the combination of the knowledge of the X-ray crystal structure of the target molecule with MCSS and CAVEAT linker search techniques proved to be an effective hit-finding method that does not require the screening of huge compound libraries.     

Animated interface agent applying atms-based multimodal input interpretation

Two requirements should be met in order to develop a practical multimodal interface system , i . e ., ( 1 ) integration of delayed arrival of data and ( 2 ) elimination of ambiguity in recognition results of each modality . This paper presents an efficient and generic methodology for interpretation of multimodal input to satisfy these requirements . The proposed methodology can integrate delayed - arrival data satisfactorily and efficiently interpret multimodal input that contains ambiguity . In the input interpretation the multimodal interpretation process is regarded as hypothetical reasoning , and the control mechanismof interpretation is formalized by applying the assumption - based truth maintenance system ( ATMS ). The proposed method is applied to an interface agent system that accepts multimodal input consisting of voice and direct indication gesture on a touch display . The systemcommunicates to the user through a human - like interface agent's three - dimensional motion image with facial expressions , gestures , and a synthesized voice .     

Depth from Refraction Using a Transparent Medium with Unknown Pose and Refractive Index

In this paper, we introduce a novel method for depth acquisition based on refraction of light. A scene is captured directly by a camera and by placing a transparent medium between the scene and the camera. A depth map of the scene is then recovered from the displacements of scene points in the images. Unlike other existing depth from refraction methods, our method does not require prior knowledge of the pose and refractive index of the transparent medium, but instead can recover them directly from the input images. By analyzing the displacements of corresponding scene points in the images, we derive closed form solutions for recovering the pose of the transparent medium and develop an iterative method for estimating the refractive index of the medium. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-world data are presented, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Metal-Induced Structural Switching of a Folded Quinone-Sandwiched Porphyrin

We report the synthesis of a novel quinone-sandwiched porphyrin in which two benzoquinones are connected oppositely at the meso positions of a porphyrin through rigid 3-amido 2,2′-bipyridine linkers. ¹H-NMR and single crystal X-ray analyses revealed that the quinone-sandwiched porphyrin has a folded structure in which the porphyrin unit was inserted into the two quinone moieties via π-stacking. Insertion of a Zn(II) ion into the porphyrin center induced a drastic conformational change which is resulted in coordination of the oxygen atoms of both benzoquinone moieties to the Zn-porphyrin to afford a 6-coordinated structure.     

Flexible feature discovery and structural information control

In this paper, we propose a new information theoretic method called structural information control for flexible feature discovery. The new method has three distinctive characteristics, which traditional competitive learning fails to offer. First, the new method can directly control competitive unit activation patterns, whereas traditional competitive learning does not have any means to control them. Thus, with the new method, it is possible to extract salient features not discovered by traditional methods. Second, competitive units compete witheach other by maximizing their information content about input patterns. Consequently, this information maximization makes it possible to control flexibly competition processes. Third, in structural information control, it is possible to define many different kinds of information content, and we can choose a specific type of information according to a given objective. When applied to competitive learning, structural information can be used to control the number of dead or spare units, and to extract macro as well as micro features of input patterns in explicit ways. We first applied this method to simple pattern classification to demonstrate that information can be controlled and that different neuron firing patterns can be generated. Second, a dipole problem was used to show that structural information could provide representations similar to those by the conventional competitive learning methods. Finally, we applied the method to a language acquisition problem in which networks must flexibly discover some linguistic rules by changing structural information. Especially, we attempted to examine the effect of the information parameter to control the number of dead neurons, and thus to examine how macro and micro features in input patterns can explicitly be discovered by structural information.     

Analysis of a gyroscopic force measuring system in three-dimensional space

This paper concerns the development of an entirely new sensor for measuring forces using a gyroscope (called gyroscopic force measuring system, or simply GFMS) for measuring a force vectorially. In a previous paper [S. Kurosu, M. Adachi, K. Kamimura, Dynamical characteristics of gyroscopic weight measuring device, ASME J. Dynamic System Measurement, and Control 119 (1997) 346–350], the dynamics of the GFMS for measuring a vertical force were investigated and the principal characteristics were examined theoretically and experimentally. The results of this work are directly applicable to measurement of a vectorial force in three-dimensional space. The principle and the dynamical characteristics of the GFMS for measuring a force vector are analyzed theoretically. To measure a force vectorially, two auxiliary turntables (driven by servomechanisms) are installed around the gyroscope, in which turntable outputs are required to follow some angles of incidence of a force vector. Some unfavorable errors caused by various factors and disturbances are analyzed. Two types of compensation methods are proposed as a device both for accurate force measurement and disturbance suppression. The feasibility of the proposed GFMS is confirmed by numerical simulations.