To accelerate shot boundary detection by reducing detection region and scope

Video Shot Boundary Detection (SBD) is the fundamental process towards video summarization and retrieval. A fast and efficient SBD algorithm is necessary for real-time video processing applications. Extensive work has focused on accurate shot boundary detection at the expense of demanding computational costs. In this paper, we propose a fast SBD approach that reduces the computation pixel-wise and frame-wise while still giving satisfactory accuracy. The proposed approach substantially speeds up the computation through reducing both detection region and scope. Color histogram and mutual information are used together to measure the difference between frames. Corner distribution of frames is utilized to exclude most of false boundaries. We conduct extensive experiments to evaluate the proposed approach, and the results show that our approach can not only speed up SBD, but also detect shot boundaries with high accuracy in both Cut (CUT) and Gradual Transition (GT) boundaries.     

Optimal entropy-constrained non-uniform scalar quantizer design for low bit-rate pixel domain DVC

In this paper, an optimal entropy-constrained non-uniform scalar quantizer is proposed for the pixel domain DVC. The uniform quantizer is efficient for the hybrid video coding since the residual signals conforming to a single-variance Laplacian distribution. However, the uniform quantizer is not optimal for pixel domain distributed video coding (DVC). This is because the uniform quantizer is not adaptive to the joint distribution of the source and the SI, especially for low level quantization. The signal distribution of pixel domain DVC conforms to the mixture model with multi-variance. The optimal non-uniform quantizer is designed according to the joint distribution, the error between the source and the SI can be decreased. As a result, the bit rate can be saved and the video quality won’t sacrifice too much. Accordingly, a better R-D trade-off can be achieved. First, the quantization level is fixed and the optimal RD trade-off is achieved by using a Lagrangian function J(Q). The rate and distortion components is designed based on P(Y|Q). The conditional probability density function of SI Y depend on quantization partitions Q, P(Y|Q), is approximated by a Guassian mixture model at encocder. Since the SI can not be accessed at encoder, an estimation of P(Y|Q) based on the distribution of the source is proposed. Next, J(Q) is optimized by an iterative Lloyd-Max algorithm with a novel quantization partition updating algorithm. To guarantee the convergence of J(Q), the monotonicity of the interval in which the endpoints of the quantizer lie must be satisfied. Then, a quantizer partition updating algorithm which considers the extreme points of the histogram of the source is proposed. Consequently, the entropy-constrained optimal non-uniform quantization partitions are derived and a better RD trade-off is achieved by applying them. Experiment results show that the proposed scheme can improve the performance by 0.5 dB averagely compared to the uniform scalar quantization.     

A comparative study of iterative and non-iterative feature selection techniques for software defect prediction

Two important problems which can affect the performance of classification models are high-dimensionality (an overabundance of independent features in the dataset) and imbalanced data (a skewed class distribution which creates at least one class with many fewer instances than other classes). To resolve these problems concurrently, we propose an iterative feature selection approach, which repeated applies data sampling (in order to address class imbalance) followed by feature selection (in order to address high-dimensionality), and finally we perform an aggregation step which combines the ranked feature lists from the separate iterations of sampling. This approach is designed to find a ranked feature list which is particularly effective on the more balanced dataset resulting from sampling while minimizing the risk of losing data through the sampling step and missing important features. To demonstrate this technique, we employ 18 different feature selection algorithms and Random Undersampling with two post-sampling class distributions. We also investigate the use of sampling and feature selection without the iterative step (e.g., using the ranked list from a single iteration, rather than combining the lists from multiple iterations), and compare these results from the version which uses iteration. Our study is carried out using three groups of datasets with different levels of class balance, all of which were collected from a real-world software system. All of our experiments use four different learners and one feature subset size. We find that our proposed iterative feature selection approach outperforms the non-iterative approach.     

A keyword retrieval system for historical Mongolian document images

In this paper, we propose a keyword retrieval system for locating words in historical Mongolian document images. Based on the word spotting technology, a collection of historical Mongolian document images is converted into a collection of word images by word segmentation, and a number of profile-based features are extracted to represent word images. For each word image, a fixed-length feature vector is formulated by obtaining the appropriate number of the complex coefficients of discrete Fourier transform on each profile feature. The system supports online image-to-image matching by calculating similarities between a query word image and each word image in the collection, and consequently, a ranked result is returned in descending order of the similarities. Therein, the query word image can be generated by synthesizing a sequence of glyphs when being retrieved. By experimental evaluations, the performance of the system is confirmed.     

支持多种手机客户端的校园信息发布系统

针对数字化校园建设中存在的信息孤岛问题,设计开发了基于客户服务架构的能支持多种手机客户端的校园信息发布系统。分析了系统功能,描述了系统拓扑结构和软件架构,对数据交换接口、网页和手机客户端信息提醒等关键技术进行了探讨。试用结果表明系统运行良好,达到了设计目的。     

Deterministic transmission of an arbitrary single-photon polarization state through bit-flip error channel

We present two error-tolerance transmission protocols of a single-photon polarization state when bit-flip error is taken into account. For achieving the transmission target of the single-photon state, the first protocol needs to encode it to a nonmaximally entangled Bell state. Exploiting the interaction of the polarization entanglement with spatial entanglement between two photons, its success probability is 100 %. Different from the first protocol, the second one utilizes the idea of teleportation with an auxiliary Bell state. By performing quantum nondemolition measurement to analyze the parity, conventional measurement, and unitary transformation operations, the success probability of the second protocol is approximately unity. Furthermore, the second protocol can be generalized to the error-tolerance transmission of an arbitrary mixed state or the distribution of an arbitrary multi-photon entangled state.     

An alternate quantum adiabatic evolution for the Deutsch–Jozsa problem

Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm has been implemented via quantum adiabatic evolutions by Das et al. (Phys Rev A 65:062310, 2002) and Wei et al. (Phys Lett A 354:271, 2006). In the latter literature, the authors have shown a modified version of the adiabatic evolution which can improve the performance of the algorithm of S. Das et al’s to constant time. In this paper, we also improve the algorithm of S. Das et al’s in a constant time but by using a different construction of adiabatic evolution, i.e., adding ancillary qubits. The algorithm in this paper provides an alternative option to potential users.     

Optimality of partial adiabatic search and its circuit model

In this paper, we first uncover a fact that a partial adiabatic quantum search with \(O(\sqrt{N/M})\) time complexity is in fact optimal, in which \(N\) is the total number of elements in an unstructured database, and \(M\) ( \(M\ge 1\) ) of them are the marked ones(one) \((N\gg M)\) . We then discuss how to implement a partial adiabatic search algorithm on the quantum circuit model. From the implementing procedure on the circuit model, we can find out that the approximating steps needed are always in the same order of the time complexity of the adiabatic algorithm.     

Chaotic fluid mixing by alternating microparticle topologies to enhance biochemical reactions

We report experimental results on chaotic mass transport induced by alternating topological changes of magnetic particle chains actuated by a rotating magnetic field. Results on the induced fluid flows, through particle tracing experiments and mixing experiments, are obtained for (1) the regime of rigid chain rotation and (2) the regime wherein chains periodically fragment and reform. In the case of rigid rotating chains, the overall tracer particle trajectories are steady, slightly modulated circles around the center of the microparticle chains. In the regime of periodic chain breaking and reformation, the tracer particle trajectories become chaotic. The level of mixing is measured by using a mixing index (M) in a water–dye system, i.e., in a perfectly mixed system M = 0, while in an unmixed system M = 1. When particle chains periodically break and reform, we observe that the mixing index M decreases from 1 to 0.1 within 15 rotational cycles. For rigid rotating chains, M reaches a minimum of only 0.5. We also report the effect of the different actuation regimes on a biological binding reaction in the solution and indeed found that the reaction product (at equal actuation time) is significantly enhanced (3 times) by the dynamic chain regime as compared to the rigid chain regime. We conclude that the alternating topological change of microparticle chains—with repetitive chain breakup and chain reformation—is an effective mechanism to achieve chaotic mixing and thereby promote and homogenize reactions in lab-on-a-chip systems.     

Tuning a two-round group key agreement

In 2007, Bohli et al. (Int J Inf Secur 6:243–254, 2007) proposed a two-round group key agreement protocol in the random oracle model, which in addition to semantic security offers strong entity authentication and a security guarantee against malicious insiders. We suggest a modification of this protocol that preserves the security guarantees and the round complexity, but reduces the amount of data that has to be sent and also reduces the number of signature computations and verifications by 50 %. Moreover, we propose a variant of Bohli et al.’s protocol whose security analysis does not require a random oracle or other idealizing assumptions.