With a little help from my friends

In this paper, we propose a content-based method the for semi-automatic organization of photo albums based on the analysis of how different users organize their own pictures. The goal is to help the user in dividing his pictures into groups characterized by a similar semantic content. The method is semi-automatic: the user starts to assign labels to the pictures and unlabeled pictures are tagged with proposed labels. The user can accept the recommendation or made a correction. To formulate the suggestions is exploited the knowledge encoded in how other users have partitioned their images. The method is conceptually articulated in two parts. First, we use a suitable feature representation of the images to model the different classes that the users have collected, second, we look for correspondences between the criteria used by the different users. Boosting is used to integrate the information provided by the analysis of multiple users. A quantitative evaluation of the proposed approach is obtained by simulating the amount of user interaction needed to annotate the albums of a set of members of the flickr^® photo-sharing community.     

Using physical memorabilia as opportunities to move into collocated digital photo-sharing

The uptake of digital photos vs. print photos has altered the practice of photo-sharing. Print photos are easy to share within the home, but much harder to share outside of it. The opposite is true of digital photos. People easily share digital photos outside the home, e.g., to family and friends by e-mail gift-giving, and to social networks and the broader public by web publishing. Yet within the home, collocated digital photo-sharing is harder, primarily because digital photos are typically stored on personal accounts in desktop computers located in home offices. This leads to several consequences. (1) The invisibility of digital photos implies few opportunities for serendipitous photo-sharing. (2) Access control and navigation issues inhibit family members from retrieving photo collections. (3) Photo viewing is compromised as digital photos are displayed on small screens in an uncomfortable viewing setting.To mitigate some of these difficulties, we explore how physical memorabilia collected by family members can create opportunities that encourage social and collocated digital photo-sharing. First, we studied (via contextual interviews with 20 households) how families currently practice photo-sharing and how they keep memorabilia. We identified classes of memorabilia that can serve as memory triggers to family events, trips, and times when people took photos. Second, we designed Souvenirs, a photo-viewing system that exploits memorabilia as a social instrument. Using Souvenirs, a family member can meaningfully associate physical memorabilia with particular photo-sets. Later, any family member can begin their story-telling with others through the physical memento, and then enrich the story by displaying its associated photos simply by moving the memento close to the home's large-format television screen. Third, we re-examined our design premises by evoking household reactions to an early version of Souvenirs. Based on these interviews, we redesigned Souvenirs to better reflect the preferences and real practices of photo and memorabilia use in the home.     

Emergent semantics through interaction in image databases

In this paper, we briefly discuss some aspects of image semantics and the role that it plays for the design of image databases. We argue that images don't have an intrinsic meaning, but that they are endowed with a meaning by placing them in the context of other images and by the user interaction. From this observation, we conclude that, in an image, database users should be allowed to manipulate not only the individual images, but also the relation between them. We present an interface model based on the manipulation of configurations of images     

Multiplicative updates for nonnegative quadratic programming

Many problems in neural computation and statistical learning involve optimizations with nonnegativity constraints. In this article, we study convex problems in quadratic programming where the optimization is confined to an axis-aligned region in the nonnegative orthant. For these problems, we derive multiplicative updates that improve the value of the objective function at each iteration and converge monotonically to the global minimum. The updates have a simple closed form and do not involve any heuristics or free parameters that must be tuned to ensure convergence. Despite their simplicity, they differ strikingly in form from other multiplicative updates used in machine learning. We provide complete proofs of convergence for these updates and describe their application to problems in signal processing and pattern recognition.     

The behavior of the4He viscosity near the superfluid transition

Measurements of the shear viscosity at saturated vapor pressure through the lambda transition indicate a singular behavior of the form |1 – (/)|=A ^x , (where =|1–(T/T )|, with equal values for the critical exponent on both sides of the transition.Work sponsored by Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome (Italy).     

Executive Summary—Community Water Supply: The Handpump Option

An estimated 1,800 million people need improved water supplies in the fifteen years to the end of the century, if developing countries are to reach the target of full coverage. The first half of the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981–1990) has seen increases in the percentages of the rural population with access to safe water supplies, but only in Asia has the pace been quick enough to envisage a target of essentiahy full coverage by the end of the century (ten years later than the original Decade goals). In Africa, present progress rates would leave half of the rural population still without safe water in the year 2000, while in Latin America, it may be ten years into the next century before full coverage is achieved unless progress improves dramatically.

Accelerated progress is hampered by financial and technical resource constraints faced by many developing countries, and the problem is aggravated by the growing number of completed projects which are broken down and abandoned, or functioning much below capacity. Attempts to increase the pace of providing improved community water supplies have often been frustrated because the technology used has proved impossible to sustain in village conditions.

To make a lasting impact on the urgent needs, community water supply (CWS) strategies must be based on sustainable and replicable programs, and must take account of the pace at which resource constraints can be overcome. Human resource development programs take time to produce results, and institutional changes can only be accomplished gradually.     

Project proposal for the investigation of particle-stabilised emulsions and foams by microgravity experiments

The utilisation of particle-surfactants nanostructures as stabilising agents represents today the technologic and scientific frontier in the stabilisation of liquid films in emulsion and foams. This topic will be addressed by the proposal STEFAN (STabilisation of Emulsions and FoAms by Nanoparticles), proposed by European groups in the framework of the ESA AO-2004 for Life and Physical Sciences and Applied Research projects Similarly to what can be observed for surfactant-stabilised emulsions and foams, microgravity provides ideal conditions for the investigation of the hierarchy of involved objects: interfacial layer, liquid film, dispersed systems foam or emulsion. Microgravity experiments are planned by refurbishing the Experimental Container FASES for the ISS Fluid Science Laboratory and the facility FASTER for the European Drawer Rack, already under development in existing research programmes. Here the scientific guidelines of the project are presented together with examples and preliminary results on the effect of nano-particle-surfactant structures adsorbed at liquid interfaces. First experimental results have been achieved for particle monolayers at the water/air interface and a thermodynamic model was derived to describe the obtained surface pressure-area isotherms.     

The Morning After: Limit Violations and the Self-Regulation of Alcohol Consumption.

The authors examined whether the reciprocal relationship between alcohol consumption and distress unfolded over time in 2 samples of social drinkers. Participants monitored their alcohol intake and their cognitive and emotional responses to that drinking on hand-held computers. On mornings after drinking, those who had violated their self-imposed limits the day before reported more guilt, even after controlling for acute negative symptoms of drinking and amount consumed. Reciprocally, guilt led to poorer self-regulation of alcohol intake: Greater distress over alcohol consumption was linked to more intake, intoxication, and more limit violations. Individual differences moderated the relationships among limit violations, distress, and drinking. Consistent with the limit violation effect, violating a limit produced distress over consumption among social drinkers, and they responded to that distress by drinking more. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neural networks based subgrid scale modeling in large eddy simulations

In this paper a multilayer feed-forward neural network (NN) is used as subgrid scale (SGS) model in a large eddy simulation (LES). The NN was previously off-line trained using numerical data generated by a LES of a channel flow at Re_τ=180 with Bardina's scale similar (BFR) SGS model. Results show the ability of NNs to identify and reproduce the highly nonlinear behavior of the turbulent flows, and therefore the possibility of using NN techniques in numerical simulations of turbulent flows.