Efficient Regularization of Squared Curvature

Curvature has received increased attention as an important alternative to length based regularization in computer vision. In contrast to length, it preserves elongated structures and fine details. Existing approaches are either inefficient, or have low angular resolution and yield results with strong block artifacts. We derive a new model for computing squared curvature based on integral geometry. The model counts responses of straight line triple cliques. The corresponding energy decomposes into submodular and supermodular pairwise potentials. We show that this energy can be efficiently minimized even for high angular resolutions using the trust region framework. Our results confirm that we obtain accurate and visually pleasing solutions without strong artifacts at reasonable run times.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures, to appear at IEEE conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June 201

Brane-world cosmology

Brane-world models, where observers are restricted to a brane in a higher-dimensional spacetime, offer a novel perspective on cosmology. I discuss some approaches to cosmology in extra dimensions and some interesting aspects of gravity and cosmology in brane-world models.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, to appear in proceedings of ERE2005, the XXVIII Spanish Relativity Meeting, Oviedo, Spai

A coarse-grained biophysical model of sequence evolution and the population size dependence of the speciation rate.

Speciation is fundamental to understanding the huge diversity of life on Earth. Although still controversial, empirical evidence suggests that the rate of speciation is larger for smaller populations. Here, we explore a biophysical model of speciation by developing a simple coarse-grained theory of transcription factor-DNA binding and how their co-evolution in two geographically isolated lineages leads to incompatibilities. To develop a tractable analytical theory, we derive a Smoluchowski equation for the dynamics of binding energy evolution that accounts for the fact that natural selection acts on phenotypes, but variation arises from mutations in sequences; the Smoluchowski equation includes selection due to both gradients in fitness and gradients in sequence entropy, which is the logarithm of the number of sequences that correspond to a particular binding energy. This simple consideration predicts that smaller populations develop incompatibilities more quickly in the weak mutation regime; this trend arises as sequence entropy poises smaller populations closer to incompatible regions of phenotype space. These results suggest that a generic coarse-grained approach to evolutionary stochastic dynamics allows realistic modelling at the phenotypic level

On the negative spectrum of the Robin Laplacian in corner domains

For a bounded corner domain $\Omega$, we consider the Robin Laplacian in $\Omega$ with large Robin parameter. Exploiting multiscale analysis and a recursive procedure, we have a precise description of the mechanism giving the ground state of the spectrum. It allows also the study of the bottom of the essential spectrum on the associated tangent structures given by cones. Then we obtain the asymptotic behavior of the principal eigenvalue for this singular limit in any dimension, with remainder estimates. The same method works for the Schr\"odinger operator in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with a strong attractive delta-interaction supported on $\partial\Omega$. Applications to some Erhling's type estimates and the analysis of the critical temperature of some superconductors are also provided