Video retrieval using dialogue, keyframe similarity and video objects

There are several different approaches to video retrieval which vary in sophistication, and in the level of their deployment. Some are well-known, others are not yet within our reach for any kind of large volumes of video. In particular, object-based video retrieval, where an object from within a video is used for retrieval, is often particularly desirable from a searcher's perspective. In this paper we introduce Fischlar-Simpsons, a system providing retrieval from an archive of video using any combination of text searching, keyframe image matching, shot-level browsing, as well as object-based retrieval. The system is driven by user feedback and interaction rather than having the conventional search/browse/search metaphor and the purpose of the system is to explore how users can use detected objects in a shot as part of a retrieval task

The TREC-2002 video track report

TREC-2002 saw the second running of the Video Track, the goal of which was to promote progress in content-based retrieval from digital video via open, metrics-based evaluation. The track used 73.3 hours of publicly available digital video (in MPEG-1/VCD format) downloaded by the participants directly from the Internet Archive (Prelinger Archives) (internetarchive, 2002) and some from the Open Video Project (Marchionini, 2001). The material comprised advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films produced between the 1930's and the 1970's by corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, educational institutions, and individuals. 17 teams representing 5 companies and 12 universities - 4 from Asia, 9 from Europe, and 4 from the US - participated in one or more of three tasks in the 2001 video track: shot boundary determination, feature extraction, and search (manual or interactive). Results were scored by NIST using manually created truth data for shot boundary determination and manual assessment of feature extraction and search results. This paper is an introduction to, and an overview of, the track framework - the tasks, data, and measures - the approaches taken by the participating groups, the results, and issues regrading the evaluation. For detailed information about the approaches and results, the reader should see the various site reports in the final workshop proceedings

Effect of whey protein isolate on strength, body composition and muscle hypertrophy during resistance training

Purpose of Review: Sarcopenia (skeletal muscle wasting with aging) is thought to underlie a number of serious age-related health issues. While it may be seen as inevitable, decreasing this gradual loss of muscle is vital for healthy aging. Thus, it is imperative to investigate exercise and nutrition-based strategies designed to build a reservoir of muscle mass as early as possible. Recent Findings: Elderly individuals are still able to respond to both resistance training and the anabolic signals provided by protein ingestion, provided specific amino acids, such as leucine, are present. Whey proteins are a rich source of these essential amino acids and rapidly elevate plasma amino acids, thus providing the foundations for preservation of muscle mass. Several studies involving supplementation with whey protein have shown to be effective in augmenting the effects of resistance exercise, in particular when supplementation occurs in the hours surrounding the exercise training. Summary: While further work is required, particularly in elderly people, simple dietary and exercise strategies that may improve the maintenance of skeletal muscle mass will likely result in a decrease in the overall burden of a number of diseases and improve the quality of life as we age

Massachusetts Immigrants by the Numbers: Demographic Characteristics and Economic Footprint

Massachusetts Immigrants by the Numbers: Demographic Characteristics and Economic Footprint is the first ILC-commissioned study that looks across the contributions that immigrants make in all their roles as members of the Massachusetts community. It is a groundbreaking study that provides basic and new data about Massachusetts immigrants including pioneering compilations of data about immigrants as tax payers and consumers. This one report provides a comprehensive picture of immigrants' characteristics and their contributions as well as challenges to their effective integration into the economic and social life of the state. The ILC hopes that this study will reinforce its continuing mission to raise the visibility of immigrants as assets to America

Characterizing the Shape of Activation Space in Deep Neural Networks

The representations learned by deep neural networks are difficult to interpret in part due to their large parameter space and the complexities introduced by their multi-layer structure. We introduce a method for computing persistent homology over the graphical activation structure of neural networks, which provides access to the task-relevant substructures activated throughout the network for a given input. This topological perspective provides unique insights into the distributed representations encoded by neural networks in terms of the shape of their activation structures. We demonstrate the value of this approach by showing an alternative explanation for the existence of adversarial examples. By studying the topology of network activations across multiple architectures and datasets, we find that adversarial perturbations do not add activations that target the semantic structure of the adversarial class as previously hypothesized. Rather, adversarial examples are explainable as alterations to the dominant activation structures induced by the original image, suggesting the class representations learned by deep networks are problematically sparse on the input space

Hog Round Marketing, Seed Quality, and Government Policy: Institutional Change in U.S. Cotton Production, 1920-1960

Between 1928 and 1960 U.S. cotton production witnessed a revolution with average yields roughly tripling while the quality of the crop increased significantly. This paper analyzes the key institutional and scientific developments that facilitated the revolution in biological technologies, pointing to the importance of two government programs -- the one-variety community movement and the Smith-Doxey Act -- as catalysts for change. The story displays two phenomena of interest in light of the recent literature: 1. an important real-world example of the workings of Akerlof's lemons model and 2. a case where inventors, during an early phase of the product cycle, actually encouraged consumers to copy and disseminate their intellectual property.

Biological Globalization: the other Grain Invasion

Contemporary accounts of the history of globalization place the grain trade in a leading role. Narrowing price gaps for wheat in world markets serve as the key indicator of increasing market integration. And the chief example of an early policy backlash is the rising protectionism of European importers in response to the “Great Grain Invasion” of New World grain in the late nineteenth century. These accounts focus on the important role of falling transportation cost, but neglect other crucial biological innovations that allowed expanding the wheat cultivation in the new lands, what we call the “other grain invasion.” This paper documents that over the 1866-1930 the average distance of world wheat production from the core consumer markets doubled, as the wheat frontier moved on much harsher (colder and more arid) climates. Examining the detailed histories of major producers on the periphery, we show that this move involved, and indeed required extensive experimentation by farmers and crop scientists to find new suitable cultivars that could thrive in the new environments and survive the evolving pest and disease threats. Flows of germplasm and knowledge about breeding occurred not only from center to periphery, but also and importantly within the periphery and from the periphery to the center as an increasing integrated global community of crop scientists emerged over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Finally, we speculate about why in some regions pioneering plant breeders are heralded as national heroes whereas in others they are sadly under-appreciated.