Facial Expression Recognition Using Uniform Local Binary Pattern with Improved Firefly Feature Selection

Facial expressions are essential communication tools in our daily life. In this paper, the uniform local binary pattern is employed to extract features from the face. However, this feature representation is very high in dimensionality. The high dimensionality would not only affect the recognition accuracy but also can impose computational constraints. Hence, to reduce the dimensionality of the feature vector, the firefly algorithm is used to select the optimal subset that leads to better classification accuracy. However, the standard firefly algorithm suffers from the risk of being trapped in local optima after a certain number of generations. Hence, this limitation has been addressed by proposing an improved version of the firefly where the great deluge algorithm (GDA) has been integrated. The great deluge is a local search algorithm that helps to enhance the exploitation ability of the firefly algorithm, thus preventing being trapped in local optima. The improved firefly algorithm has been employed in a facial expression system. Experimental results using the Japanese female facial expression database show that the proposed approach yielded good classification accuracy compared to state-of-the-art methods. The best classification accuracy obtained by the proposed method is 96.7% with 1230 selected features, whereas, Gabor-SRC method achieved 97.6% with 2560 features

The Ecology and Evolution of Human Reproductive Behavior

The complexity of human reproductive behavior has necessitated its examination through a variety of scientific disciplines, each focusing on specific elements of our biology, behavior, and society. However, this complexity also necessitates that we reintegrate the information learned from each discipline into a single framework, one rooted in the evolutionary principles that have shaped the development of all life on earth. In this dissertation, I use this framework to explore human reproductive behavior, with a particular focus on sexual coercion and fertility-mediated sexual behavior. In Chapter 1, I introduce the approach taken in this document, identify several key limitations, and outline the general structure. In Chapter 2, I conduct a comprehensive and interdisciplinary review that includes the fundamentals of sexual conflict and reproductive strategies; the evolution of human reproductive characteristics in response to socio-cognitive demands; the aspects of human sociality expected to influence reproductive behavior; the identified trends in human mating behavior; the proposed pressures behind concealed ovulation in primates; the essentials of the menstrual cycle; and the existing evidence for behavioral fertility in humans. In Chapter 3, I use a game-theory model to investigate the emergence of sexually coercive behavior across a variety of species, including humans, in which male coercion is a non-developmentally-determined reproductive strategy to identify several ecological and behavioral characteristics that predict the emergence of coercive behavior generally consistent with observed trends. In Chapter 4, I use face-trait research to investigate the degree to which women recognize and discriminate between images of men with personality traits associated with different male reproductive strategies as well as how these preferences might be mediated by her relationship and fertility status. In Chapter 5, explore the intersection of fertility, fertility belief, and sexuality, specifically testing the hypothesis that a woman’s sexual interest shifts in response to her fertility while taking into consideration her beliefs regarding her fertility. Finally, in Chapter 6, I review the primary take-home messages of this work and recommend that future research take these into consideration as they move forward. By taking an interdisciplinary approach rooted in evolutionary biology, this work reveals the need for an understanding of human reproductive behavior that incorporates a wider view of reproductive ecology. In doing so, we can gain a more accurate, comprehensive, and nuanced understanding of human reproductive behavior

2013 Oklahoma Research Day Full Program

This document contains all abstracts from the 2013 Oklahoma Research Day held at the University of Central Oklahoma

Lexical database enrichment through semi-automated morphological analysis

Derivational morphology proposes meaningful connections between words and is largely unrepresented in lexical databases. This thesis presents a project to enrich a lexical database with morphological links and to evaluate their contribution to disambiguation. A lexical database with sense distinctions was required. WordNet was chosen because of its free availability and widespread use. Its suitability was assessed through critical evaluation with respect to specifications and criticisms, using a transparent, extensible model. The identification of serious shortcomings suggested a portable enrichment methodology, applicable to alternative resources. Although 40% of the most frequent words are prepositions, they have been largely ignored by computational linguists, so addition of prepositions was also required. The preferred approach to morphological enrichment was to infer relations from phenomena discovered algorithmically. Both existing databases and existing algorithms can capture regular morphological relations, but cannot capture exceptions correctly; neither of them provide any semantic information. Some morphological analysis algorithms are subject to the fallacy that morphological analysis can be performed simply by segmentation. Morphological rules, grounded in observation and etymology, govern associations between and attachment of suffixes and contribute to defining the meaning of morphological relationships. Specifying character substitutions circumvents the segmentation fallacy. Morphological rules are prone to undergeneration, minimised through a variable lexical validity requirement, and overgeneration, minimised by rule reformulation and restricting monosyllabic output. Rules take into account the morphology of ancestor languages through co-occurrences of morphological patterns. Multiple rules applicable to an input suffix need their precedence established. The resistance of prefixations to segmentation has been addressed by identifying linking vowel exceptions and irregular prefixes. The automatic affix discovery algorithm applies heuristics to identify meaningful affixes and is combined with morphological rules into a hybrid model, fed only with empirical data, collected without supervision. Further algorithms apply the rules optimally to automatically pre-identified suffixes and break words into their component morphemes. To handle exceptions, stoplists were created in response to initial errors and fed back into the model through iterative development, leading to 100% precision, contestable only on lexicographic criteria. Stoplist length is minimised by special treatment of monosyllables and reformulation of rules. 96% of words and phrases are analysed. 218,802 directed derivational links have been encoded in the lexicon rather than the wordnet component of the model because the lexicon provides the optimal clustering of word senses. Both links and analyser are portable to an alternative lexicon. The evaluation uses the extended gloss overlaps disambiguation algorithm. The enriched model outperformed WordNet in terms of recall without loss of precision. Failure of all experiments to outperform disambiguation by frequency reflects on WordNet sense distinctions

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

Shortest Route at Dynamic Location with Node Combination-Dijkstra Algorithm

Abstract— Online transportation has become a basic requirement of the general public in support of all activities to go to work, school or vacation to the sights. Public transportation services compete to provide the best service so that consumers feel comfortable using the services offered, so that all activities are noticed, one of them is the search for the shortest route in picking the buyer or delivering to the destination. Node Combination method can minimize memory usage and this methode is more optimal when compared to A* and Ant Colony in the shortest route search like Dijkstra algorithm, but can’t store the history node that has been passed. Therefore, using node combination algorithm is very good in searching the shortest distance is not the shortest route. This paper is structured to modify the node combination algorithm to solve the problem of finding the shortest route at the dynamic location obtained from the transport fleet by displaying the nodes that have the shortest distance and will be implemented in the geographic information system in the form of map to facilitate the use of the system. Keywords— Shortest Path, Algorithm Dijkstra, Node Combination, Dynamic Location (key words

The social life of placebos: proximate and evolutionary mechanisms of biocultural interactions in Asante medical encounters

The Social Life of Placebos is an interdisciplinary study of the evolution of placebogenic responses – beneficial ones activated by psychosocial triggers -- and their elicitation in Asante medical contexts. Based on an extensive literature review in social, cultural, and medical studies and over 26 months of intensive research in rural Ghana, West Africa, it examines the therapeutic efficacy of Asante medical encounters by analyzing rites of care-giving within an evolutionary framework. Section 1 investigates why evolutionary processes appear to have made human physiology susceptible to psychosocial manipulation, what the health consequences of that susceptibility are in modern environments, and how culturally specific expectations and healing rituals might dampen or amplify that susceptibility. Because of key transitions in human evolution, the fitness consequences of sociality have increased rapidly and created the conditions whereby endogenous mechanisms have become responsive to sociocultural conditions. This explanation helps us better understand why culturally specific rituals can elicit powerful beneficial (placebo) and adverse (nocebo) physiological responses. Using a mixed methodology of physiological data and ethnographic case studies collected from hundreds of Asante medical encounters, Section 2 illuminates evolutionary and proximate processes in Asante contexts of care-giving and healing rituals in detailed chapters on pain, emotion, and stress. It examines the social and cultural resources and techniques that Asante health practitioners rely on for pain management in contexts where no pain medication is available. It analyzes the biocultural interactions that can take place when healers modify patient perceptions, emotions, and expectations. The dissertation concludes with biometric evidence that Asante indigenous ritual healing ceremonies actually promote significant entrainment and relaxation effects