Skin texture features for face recognition

Face recognition has been deployed in a wide range of important applications including surveillance and forensic identification. However, it still seems to be a challenging problem as its performance severely degrades under illumination, pose and expression variations, as well as with occlusions, and aging. In this thesis, we have investigated the use of local facial skin data as a source of biometric information to improve human recognition. Skin texture features have been exploited in three major tasks, which include (i) improving the performance of conventional face recognition systems, (ii) building an adaptive skin-based face recognition system, and (iii) dealing with circumstances when a full view of the face may not be avai'lable. Additionally, a fully automated scheme is presented for localizing eyes and mouth and segmenting four facial regions: forehead, right cheek, left cheek and chin. These four regions are divided into nonoverlapping patches with equal size. A novel skin/non-skin classifier is proposed for detecting patches containing only skin texture and therefore detecting the pure-skin regions. Experiments using the XM2VTS database indicate that the forehead region has the most significant biometric information. The use of forehead texture features improves the rank-l identification of Eigenfaces system from 77.63% to 84.07%. The rank-l identification is equal 93.56% when this region is fused with Kernel Direct Discriminant Analysis algorithm

Nature inspired surface/interface engineering towards advanced device applications

Nature inspired surface/interface with multi-faceted functions possess promises in the frontier engineering applications in flexible electronics, energy harvesting, autonomous systems, bio-mimicking tissues, micro-fluidics, etc. Understanding the relationship between nature’s architecture and underlying science could bring enabling solutions to overcome the engineering challenges. A nature inspired surface with smart resilient features provides intrinsic complexity and their multiplicity under different stimuli, i.e. chemical, physical, electronic, mechanical and (in some cases) biological properties. By mimicking/harvesting a variety of surface and interfacial features from nature, the final composition will display an integrative design to provide further explorations in deciphering the hidden physics towards advanced device applications in real world. Specifically, we bring a few engineering examples with chemical/physical approaches to construct artificial nano/micro-structured surface, yield various functional surface for different application scenarios. • A porous layer has been realised to provide controllable generation of microarchitecture to exhibit an anti-corrosion behaviour under UV exposure with multifaceted characteristics such as profound solar absorptivity, thermal emissivity. By further treating the surface with silane, a hybrid layer has been established with superhydrophobic and anti-icing features which shares innate interests in thermal transport/aero-space engineering. • The structural conformation/ elastic instabilities of the surface are exploited to devise an extreme switchable configuration to develop a morphing strategy for switchable lipophilic/oleophobic properties. The geometrical shift of soft structure is instructed to create a steady transition of surface topology rendering a unique switchable transition that are widely inspired in sub-sea/offshore engineering for oil and water separation. • We also develop a highly-replenishable thermal energy harvesting technology via a dynamical elasto-bouncing process of polymeric hydrogel to translate the thermal energy into useful elasto-kinetic energy, then further converted into electrical energy via a simple piezo-material based system, which paves way for a future portable and conformable energy harvesting tool in the regions of extreme geo-thermal residencies and industries. • Using a one drop filling technique along with interfacial pinning points between hydrophilic and hydrophobic, a unique microfluidic approach is presented to create heterogenous structures. By exploiting the communication between swelling mismatch of different functional groups, driven via in-plane and through thickness heterogeity, a highly complex 3D soft reconfiguration is achieved which is activated by stimulation inputs. • The theoretical understandings are exploited in the above applied engineering scenarios, such as elastic mechanics, morphing structure, surface/interface interactions and kinetics of of the polymer systems experienced on a hot surface, which offers further insights into the elastic recoiling evolution and tunability of the system for effective energy translation efficiency. We hope above approaches shed more lights on the nature inspired structure in device engineering, thus, advance the knowledge in the frontier science

Michigan Geology: A Bibliography, March 2016

The Michigan Geological Survey produced a historic Index of Michigan Geology with an extensive bibliography in 1956. This current bibliography is an update of the bibliography in the Martin and Straight compilation. It is not comprehensive, but provides a starting place for anyone interested in Michigan Geology. The Michigan Geological Survey plans to update this bibliography periodically with newly published citations as well as other older citations we find

Michigan Geology: A Bibliography, March 2016

The Michigan Geological Survey produced a historic Index of Michigan Geology with an extensive bibliography in 1956. This current bibliography is an update of the bibliography in the Martin and Straight compilation. It is not comprehensive, but provides a starting place for anyone interested in Michigan Geology. The Michigan Geological Survey plans to update this bibliography periodically with newly published citations as well as other older citations we find