Asynchronous Tracking-by-Detection on Adaptive Time Surfaces for Event-based Object Tracking

Event cameras, which are asynchronous bio-inspired vision sensors, have shown great potential in a variety of situations, such as fast motion and low illumination scenes. However, most of the event-based object tracking methods are designed for scenarios with untextured objects and uncluttered backgrounds. There are few event-based object tracking methods that support bounding box-based object tracking. The main idea behind this work is to propose an asynchronous Event-based Tracking-by-Detection (ETD) method for generic bounding box-based object tracking. To achieve this goal, we present an Adaptive Time-Surface with Linear Time Decay (ATSLTD) event-to-frame conversion algorithm, which asynchronously and effectively warps the spatio-temporal information of asynchronous retinal events to a sequence of ATSLTD frames with clear object contours. We feed the sequence of ATSLTD frames to the proposed ETD method to perform accurate and efficient object tracking, which leverages the high temporal resolution property of event cameras. We compare the proposed ETD method with seven popular object tracking methods, that are based on conventional cameras or event cameras, and two variants of ETD. The experimental results show the superiority of the proposed ETD method in handling various challenging environments.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Exploiting Image-Related Inductive Biases in Single-Branch Visual Tracking

Despite achieving state-of-the-art performance in visual tracking, recent single-branch trackers tend to overlook the weak prior assumptions associated with the Vision Transformer (ViT) encoder and inference pipeline. Moreover, the effectiveness of discriminative trackers remains constrained due to the adoption of the dual-branch pipeline. To tackle the inferior effectiveness of the vanilla ViT, we propose an Adaptive ViT Model Prediction tracker (AViTMP) to bridge the gap between single-branch network and discriminative models. Specifically, in the proposed encoder AViT-Enc, we introduce an adaptor module and joint target state embedding to enrich the dense embedding paradigm based on ViT. Then, we combine AViT-Enc with a dense-fusion decoder and a discriminative target model to predict accurate location. Further, to mitigate the limitations of conventional inference practice, we present a novel inference pipeline called CycleTrack, which bolsters the tracking robustness in the presence of distractors via bidirectional cycle tracking verification. Lastly, we propose a dual-frame update inference strategy that adeptively handles significant challenges in long-term scenarios. In the experiments, we evaluate AViTMP on ten tracking benchmarks for a comprehensive assessment, including LaSOT, LaSOTExtSub, AVisT, etc. The experimental results unequivocally establish that AViTMP attains state-of-the-art performance, especially on long-time tracking and robustness.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, under revie

Safe and Sound: Proceedings of the 27th Annual International Conference on Auditory Display

Complete proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2022), June 24-27. Online virtual conference

Fracking and Goldilocks Federalism: the too loud, too quiet and just right politics of states and cities

2015 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Wicked environmental and energy challenges often originate where energy, the environment and economics intersect (Rittel and Webber 1973). Fracking is one such example. As a practice, it has prompted a certain amount of political debate at both the state and municipal levels. Proponents argue that natural gas extraction creates well-paying jobs, helps grow and revive stagnant economies and that it provides a 'cleaner' burning energy source. Its opponents counter that the technique produces a number of environmental harms such as air pollution, surface and groundwater contamination, places new demands on infrastructure and causes geological instability (Davis 2012). Ranging from intergovernmental battles to cooperative relationships, the politics of fracking are reshaping the relations between neighborhoods, city hall and the statehouse. To explore the 'second order' dynamics of fracking, this dissertation asks several interrelated questions. What are the state and local institutions, rules and informal norms governing state-municipal relationships when it comes to hydraulic fracturing? To what extent do municipalities regulate fracking and what are the types of city-level regulation? Finally, why are some cities willing to pass land use policies that challenge their state's natural gas extraction goals and preemptive authority and others are not? To answer the questions above, I consider the second order dynamics in the context of Colorado, Texas and Ohio and a sample of cities in each state. Each state has a high number of citizens living near gas wells, but offers cities and towns varying degrees of land use authority. To elucidate their second-order relationships and dynamics, each chapter tests potential explanatory variables originating from studies of environmental policy, democratic theory and urban governance. Results suggest that both macro level (environmentalism and mobilization) and micro level concerns (percentage of owner occupied homes and median home values) can affect second order relations and the willingness of local communities to exert more municipal autonomy and challenge their state. My findings offer a more complete picture of second order federalism and strengthen the scholarly and applied understanding of two key American political institutions

Good Research Practice in Non-Clinical Pharmacology and Biomedicine

This open access book, published under a CC BY 4.0 license in the Pubmed indexed book series Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, provides up-to-date information on best practice to improve experimental design and quality of research in non-clinical pharmacology and biomedicine

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act at Age 10: GINA’s Controversial Assertion that Data Transparency Protects Privacy and Civil Rights

The genomic testing industry is an edifice built on data transparency: transparent and often unconsented sharing of our genetic information with researchers to fuel scientific discovery, transparent sharing of our test results to help regulators infer whether the tests are safe and effective, and transparent sharing of our health information to help treat other patients on the premise that we gain reciprocity of advantage when each person’s health care is informed by the best available data about all of us. Transparency undeniably confers many social benefits but creates risks to the civil rights of the people whose genetic information is shared. Touted as a major civil rights law at the time of its passage, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) has endured ten years of criticism that its protections are ineffectual, insufficient, or even unethical and overtly unsafe for the people it aims to protect. At the center of this controversy are provisions of GINA that expand people’s access to genetic information that others store about them—a heavily contested assertion that data transparency implies sharing data not just with third parties, but with the people whose data are being shared. This Article traces the decades-long roots of this assertion and explores pathways to resolve the controversy that engulfs it. It is important to resolve this controversy. As GINA enters its second decade, genomics is finally starting to gain sufficient predictive power to support discriminatory and other nefarious uses that GINA was designed to prevent. We are entering a positive feedback loop in which the genomic research that exposes us to risk of unwanted data disclosures simultaneously fuels discoveries that make such disclosures potentially more damaging

Urban Planet

Global urbanization promises better services and stronger economies but also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. Urban Planet highlights the hopes and hindrances of our journey of urbanization and the need for a parallel evolution of our science and systems to ensure we reap the rewards. This title is also available as Open Access