Applications of MATLAB in Science and Engineering

The book consists of 24 chapters illustrating a wide range of areas where MATLAB tools are applied. These areas include mathematics, physics, chemistry and chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, biological (molecular biology) and medical sciences, communication and control systems, digital signal, image and video processing, system modeling and simulation. Many interesting problems have been included throughout the book, and its contents will be beneficial for students and professionals in wide areas of interest

A cortical model of object perception based on Bayesian networks and belief propagation.

Evidence suggests that high-level feedback plays an important role in visual perception by shaping the response in lower cortical levels (Sillito et al. 2006, Angelucci and Bullier 2003, Bullier 2001, Harrison et al. 2007). A notable example of this is reflected by the retinotopic activation of V1 and V2 neurons in response to illusory contours, such as Kanizsa figures, which has been reported in numerous studies (Maertens et al. 2008, Seghier and Vuilleumier 2006, Halgren et al. 2003, Lee 2003, Lee and Nguyen 2001). The illusory contour activity emerges first in lateral occipital cortex (LOC), then in V2 and finally in V1, strongly suggesting that the response is driven by feedback connections. Generative models and Bayesian belief propagation have been suggested to provide a theoretical framework that can account for feedback connectivity, explain psychophysical and physiological results, and map well onto the hierarchical distributed cortical connectivity (Friston and Kiebel 2009, Dayan et al. 1995, Knill and Richards 1996, Geisler and Kersten 2002, Yuille and Kersten 2006, Deneve 2008a, George and Hawkins 2009, Lee and Mumford 2003, Rao 2006, Litvak and Ullman 2009, Steimer et al. 2009). The present study explores the role of feedback in object perception, taking as a starting point the HMAX model, a biologically inspired hierarchical model of object recognition (Riesenhuber and Poggio 1999, Serre et al. 2007b), and extending it to include feedback connectivity. A Bayesian network that captures the structure and properties of the HMAX model is developed, replacing the classical deterministic view with a probabilistic interpretation. The proposed model approximates the selectivity and invariance operations of the HMAX model using the belief propagation algorithm. Hence, the model not only achieves successful feedforward recognition invariant to position and size, but is also able to reproduce modulatory effects of higher-level feedback, such as illusory contour completion, attention and mental imagery. Overall, the model provides a biophysiologically plausible interpretation, based on state-of-theart probabilistic approaches and supported by current experimental evidence, of the interaction between top-down global feedback and bottom-up local evidence in the context of hierarchical object perception

NASA Tech Briefs, September 1990

Topics covered include: New Product Ideas; NASA TU Services; Electronic Components and Circuits; Electronic Systems; Physical Sciences; Materials; Computer Programs; Mechanics; Machinery; Fabrication Technology; Mathematics and Information Sciences; Life Sciences

Role of Wnt pathway genes in complex and monogenic phenotypes of low and high bone mass

[eng] Osteoporosis is a complex disease characterized by low bone mass, microarchitectural deterioration, and increased fracture risk. It is the most common bone disease that affects more than 200 million people worldwide and is responsible for more than 8.9 million fractures every year, especially affecting the elderly. This makes it one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality and generates a high social-health cost, which is expected to grow as life expectancy has been increasing considerably over the last decades. Although nowadays there are different treatments available that reduce bone loss, few of them target bone formation enhancement. Therefore, it is essential to discover new anabolic therapeutic targets that restore bone mass and skeletal architecture. In this doctoral thesis, I have used two tools to identify new therapeutic targets by elucidating the genetic bases of the disease. On the one hand, I have performed a search for variants in three Wnt pathway genes, that might explain the GWAS significant association with different bone parameters, and subsequently I characterized them functionally. Specifically, I have studied DKK1, SOST, and WNT16, identifying common and rare variants that may explain the susceptibility to the complex disease of osteoporosis or the extreme high bone mass (HBM) phenotype. Regarding DKK1, I have shown the loss of inhibitory function associated with missense mutations found in patients with HBM and/or in the general population. I have also detected for the first time a physical contact between the region enriched in BMD-GWAS signals and the DKK1 promoter and also with, LNCAROD, a lncRNA known to regulate DKK1 expression. For WNT16, I have identified a promoter region in intron 2 that interacts with different regulatory elements located in introns of the neighboring gene CPED1. Finally, in SOST, I have shown a decrease in gene expression associated with the minor allele of a variant that modifies an extended TATA box motif, a reduction in protein expression of a missense variant in the signal peptide found in an HBM women, and, for the first time, physical interactions between the SOST proximal promoter and ECR5 and several enhancer elements upstream of it. These functional studies reinforce the importance of the Wnt pathway in bone homeostasis and demonstrate the need to study in-depth the GWAS signals that often do not correspond to a functional variant. On the other hand, using whole-exome sequencing (WES), I have also investigated a family case of HBM in the search for a causal gene. Manual filtering of the low- frequency variants found in this case suggests that mutated VAV3 - along with other variants in SIK3- could determine the HBM phenotype in the family due to an inhibitory effect on osteoclastogenesis. Importantly, the results have pointed at novel genes and regions which may constitute a new therapeutic target for osteoporosis

Consistent pan-sharpening based on multistage joint and dual bilateral filters

A pan-sharpening method using joint and dual bilateral filters (DBFs) has been proposed. This approach is based on a consistent combination of large- and small-scale features obtained from the decomposition of high spectral resolution multispectral (MS) and high spatial resolution panchromatic (PAN) images. In the decomposition process, MS and PAN images are used to extract the features using joint and DBFs, respectively. These filters accommodate the relationship between MS and PAN images and decompose them into a base layer (large-scale) and a detail layer (small-scale). Since the joint bilateral filter (JBF) preserves the edges of an auxiliary image, it is used for decomposition of MS images where different layers are estimated using the PAN image as an auxiliary image. Similarly, different layers of the PAN image are obtained from a DBF which preserves the edges of both (MS and PAN) input images. This process is further extended to multistage decomposition to obtain a bilateral image pyramid. The base and detail layers of both MS and PAN images obtained at various stages are combined using a weighted sum. Finally, the estimated weighted sum of detail layer (small-scale) of the PAN image is fused separately to the weighted base layers (large-scale) of the MS images. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated by conducting the experiments on degraded as well as undegraded datasets, captured using different satellites such as Quickbird, Ikonos-2, and Worldview-2. The noise rejection capabilities of the proposed method are also tested by conducting experiments on the noisy data. The results are compared with the widely popular methods and the recently proposed fusion approaches based on a bilateral filter. Along with qualitative evaluation, the quantitative performance of the proposed fusion technique has also been verified by estimating different measures for degraded and undegraded experiments. The experimental results and quantitative measures demonstrate that the proposed method performs better in degraded and undegraded conditions along with noisy situations when compared to other state-of-art methods.by Sharad Joshi, Kishor P. Upla and Nitin Khann

Advances in Character Recognition

This book presents advances in character recognition, and it consists of 12 chapters that cover wide range of topics on different aspects of character recognition. Hopefully, this book will serve as a reference source for academic research, for professionals working in the character recognition field and for all interested in the subject

Intelligent Circuits and Systems

ICICS-2020 is the third conference initiated by the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Lovely Professional University that explored recent innovations of researchers working for the development of smart and green technologies in the fields of Energy, Electronics, Communications, Computers, and Control. ICICS provides innovators to identify new opportunities for the social and economic benefits of society.　 This conference bridges the gap between academics and R&D institutions, social visionaries, and experts from all strata of society to present their ongoing research activities and foster research relations between them. It provides opportunities for the exchange of new ideas, applications, and experiences in the field of smart technologies and finding global partners for future collaboration. The ICICS-2020 was conducted in two broad categories, Intelligent Circuits & Intelligent Systems and Emerging Technologies in Electrical Engineering

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Kinanthropology

The 11th International Conference on Kinantropology was held on the Nov 29 – Dec 1, 2017 in Brno and was organized by the Faculty of Sports Studies, Masaryk University and the Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb. This year was divided into several themes: sports medicine, sport and social science, sport training, healthy lifestyle and healthy ageing, sports management, analysis of human movement. Part of the conference was also a symposium Atletika and Ortoreha that gathered specialists in physiotherapy

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse