Invariant representation of facial expressions for blended expression recognition on unknown subjects

Facial expressions analysis plays an important part in emotion detection. However, having an automatic and non-intrusive system to detect blended facial expression is still a challenging problem, especially when the subject is unknown to the system. Here, we propose a method that adapts to the morphology of the subject and that is based on a new invariant representation of facial expressions. In our system, one expression is defined by its relative position to 8 other expressions. As the mode of representation is relative, we show that the resulting expression space is person-independent. The 8 expressions are synthesized for each unknown subject from plausible distortions. Recognition tasks are performed in this space with a basic algorithm. The experiments have been performed on 22 different blended expressions and on either known or unknown subjects. The recognition results on known subjects demonstrate that the representation is robust to the type of data (shape and/or texture information) and to the dimensionality of the expression space. The recognition results on 22 expressions of unknown subjects show that a dimensionality of the expression space of 4 is enough to outperform traditional methods based on active appearance models and accurately describe an expression.     

Transverse Thermoelectricity in a Tilted Metallic Multilayer Structure

Thermoelectricity is investigated in a material designed to show anisotropic transport properties: Copper/constantan/copper $ \cdot \cdot \cdot $ multilayer structures were prepared by sintering of a compressed stack of alternating foils of these materials and are described by effective “in-plane” properties $S_\parallel $ and $k_\parallel $ for the Seebeck-coefficient and the thermal conductivity along the layers, and “out-of-plane”-properties $S_ \bot $ and $k_ \bot $ along the stack axis. Samples in form of thin slabs prepared by cutting the stack obliquely to the stack axis showed thermoelectric fields transverse to temperature gradients across the slab due to off-diagonal elements in the Seebeck-tensor, and may be used as devices for detection of laser radiation.     

Revisiting efforts on constructing a knowledge base of evidence-based intervention within school psychology.

Responds to comments (see records 2003-01789-008, 2003-01789-009, 2003-01789-010, 2003-01789-011, 2003-01789-012, and 2003-01789-013) on the mini-series on evidence-based interventions (EBIs) in school psychology (see records 2003-01789-005, 2003-01789-006, and 2003-01789-007). The author focuses on clarifications regarding decisions made by the Task Force and Manual Subcommittee on what constitutes EBIs, realizations about critical issues surrounding these decisions, and specifications for the future. In clarifying the purpose of the Procedural and Coding Manual, 4 design ideals or standards that underlie the conceptualization of the EBI coding structure are reviewed. The design ideals provide underlying assumptions for evaluating intervention studies within the discipline, and include: (1) build researcher-practitioner alliance, (2) respond to the unique issues of school psychology, (3) promote and enhance scientific study, and (4) reflect the broad, diverse nature of the field. Next, central issues raised across the commentary articles are discussed with respect to two sets of juxtaposed considerations: Provide Comprehensive Information vs Maintain Practicality, and Invoke Rigorous Research Design Features vs Reflect School Context Features. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial animation retargeting and control based on a human appearance space

Expressive facial animations are essential to enhance the realism and the credibility of virtual characters. Parameter‐based animation methods offer a precise control over facial configurations while performance‐based animation benefits from the naturalness of captured human motion. In this paper, we propose an animation system that gathers the advantages of both approaches. By analyzing a database of facial motion, we create the human appearance space. The appearance space provides a coherent and continuous parameterization of human facial movements, while encapsulating the coherence of real facial deformations. We present a method to optimally construct an analogous appearance face for a synthetic character. The link between both appearance spaces makes it possible to retarget facial animation on a synthetic face from a video source. Moreover, the topological characteristics of the appearance space allow us to detect the principal variation patterns of a face and automatically reorganize them on a low‐dimensional control space. The control space acts as an interactive user‐interface to manipulate the facial expressions of any synthetic face. This interface makes it simple and intuitive to generate still facial configurations for keyframe animation, as well as complete temporal sequences of facial movements. The resulting animations combine the flexibility of a parameter‐based system and the realism of real human motion. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quantum effects at TSCC1-xBx monocrystals: The influence of an external electric field on the permittivity peak

The results of model calculations and of experimental investigations of the shift of the temperature T_M of the maximum of the permittivity ε_b due to an external electric d.c. field on tris-sarcosine calcium chloride_1-x bromide_x (TSCC_1-xB_x) monocrystals with different concentrations x are described. It is shown that in the low temperature region a marked enhancement of the response of the permittivity maximum to an external electric d.c. field is caused by quantum effects.     

A "complement-ary" AIDS vaccine

The human immunodeficiency virus uses the human complement system to its advantage. Is it possible to turn the tables with a vaccine?     

Intuitive Facial Animation Editing Based On A Generative RNN Framework

For the last decades, the concern of producing convincing facial animation has garnered great interest, that has only been accelerating with the recent explosion of 3D content in both entertainment and professional activities. The use of motion capture and retargeting has arguably become the dominant solution to address this demand. Yet, despite high level of quality and automation performance-based animation pipelines still require manual cleaning and editing to refine raw results, which is a time- and skill-demanding process. In this paper, we look to leverage machine learning to make facial animation editing faster and more accessible to non-experts. Inspired by recent image inpainting methods, we design a generative recurrent neural network that generates realistic motion into designated segments of an existing facial animation, optionally following user-provided guiding constraints. Our system handles different supervised or unsupervised editing scenarios such as motion filling during occlusions, expression corrections, semantic content modifications, and noise filtering. We demonstrate the usability of our system on several animation editing use cases.     

Sera from HIV-1 infected individuals in all stages of disease preferentially recognize the V3 loop of the prototypic macrophage-tropic glycoprotein gp120 ADA

The outer membrane glycoprotein gp120 and the transmembrane glycoprotein gp41 are predominant targets of the humoral immune response to infection by human immunodeficiency virus type 1. The third hypervariable region (V3 loop) is the principal neutralizing domain and is the primary target of neutralizing antibodies directed against the envelope proteins of HIV-1. The V3 loop is also the major determinant for HIV-1 cell-specific tropism. To further characterize the humoral immune response directed against the gp120 envelope proteins, we expressed two prototypic gp120 envelope proteins (LAI/HXB2 and ADA) and chimeric gp120 envelope proteins in stable transfected Drosophila melanogaster Schneider 2 cells. Sera from four infected adults over the course of infection [McNearney et al. (1992) Proc. natn. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 89, p. 10,242] were assayed for reactivity with the respective envelope proteins. Sera obtained at early stages preferentially recognized the gp120 envelope protein ADA, whereas in later stages of infection the sera showed diminished reactivity with both gp120 LAI/HXB2 and gp120 ADA. Chimeric envelope proteins revealed that the humoral response was directed primarily against the V3 loop of gp120 ADA. Furthermore, 22 sera from HIV-1 infected individuals in different stages of the disease were tested. Reactivity of sera with the gp120 envelope protein ADA was seven-fold higher than with the gp120 envelope protein LAI/HXB2. Our results suggest that the humoral immune response is preferentially elicited against the V3 loop of the prototypic macrophage-tropic gp120 envelope protein ADA.