GazeDPM: Early Integration of Gaze Information in Deformable Part Models

An increasing number of works explore collaborative human-computer systems in which human gaze is used to enhance computer vision systems. For object detection these efforts were so far restricted to late integration approaches that have inherent limitations, such as increased precision without increase in recall. We propose an early integration approach in a deformable part model, which constitutes a joint formulation over gaze and visual data. We show that our GazeDPM method improves over the state-of-the-art DPM baseline by 4% and a recent method for gaze-supported object detection by 3% on the public POET dataset. Our approach additionally provides introspection of the learnt models, can reveal salient image structures, and allows us to investigate the interplay between gaze attracting and repelling areas, the importance of view-specific models, as well as viewers' personal biases in gaze patterns. We finally study important practical aspects of our approach, such as the impact of using saliency maps instead of real fixations, the impact of the number of fixations, as well as robustness to gaze estimation error

Transparent code authentication at the processor level

The authors present a lightweight authentication mechanism that verifies the authenticity of code and thereby addresses the virus and malicious code problems at the hardware level eliminating the need for trusted extensions in the operating system. The technique proposed tightly integrates the authentication mechanism into the processor core. The authentication latency is hidden behind the memory access latency, thereby allowing seamless on-the-fly authentication of instructions. In addition, the proposed authentication method supports seamless encryption of code (and static data). Consequently, while providing the software users with assurance for authenticity of programs executing on their hardware, the proposed technique also protects the software manufacturers’ intellectual property through encryption. The performance analysis shows that, under mild assumptions, the presented technique introduces negligible overhead for even moderate cache sizes

Optimising the production and utilisation of forage for organic livestock (CTE0202)

On most organic farms in the UK, forages are fundamental to the application of organic farming practices, particularly where dairy cattle, beef cattle and/or sheep are the major enterprises. Methods used for the production, conservation and utilisation of these forage resources have a major influence on the productivity, efficiency and overall sustainability of organic farms. Forage management and utilisation also have a pivotal role in the maintenance of animal health and in the minimisation of environmental impacts associated with livestock farming. Specific objectives: 1. Extrapolating from published data, to review the requirements for energy and protein across the production cycle for organic milk, beef, lamb, pig and poultry production. 2. To predict the likelihood of meeting all or a minimum proportion of these requirements from a range of organically produced forages. 3. To examine the potential to adjust management or production system to achieve a better balance of nutrient supply and demand 4. To consider likely contribution from alternative forages, and protein sources, as home-grown feeds 5. To assess likely effects on animal health and product quality 6. To develop a database model to predict the potential output and benefits for organic farmers of implementing different options and strategies for forage production and utilisation 7. To determine the environmental losses and gains at each stage of production and utilisation 8. To provide specific guidelines for use by farmers, advisers and policymakers to maximise efficiency in the production and utilisation of forages within a range of organic livestock production systems. Overall, this body of work has indicated that a number of gaps in current knowledge exist such as: the particular suitability of diverse plants and animal genotypes for forage-based organic systems, methods for determining the nutritive value of organically produced forages, trace element nutrition of organic livestock and specific weed and pest control measures in organic crop production. Further dissemination of the outputs from this study, drawn from the five separate work packages in which the work was conducted, will help underpin the sustainability of the organic sector

Outlaw Community Innovations

Recent studies of outlaw communities provide qualitative evidence of their existence and the organisation of the underlying innovation processes. We provide descriptive results from a large scale survey of two online outlaw communities focussing on Microsoft's XBox. In line with previous findings, we identify two types of participants in outlaw communities - user innovators and adopters. Based on 2,256 responses, we find that users modify their XBox mainly to be able to increase the set of available functions of their XBox. Users are also motivated to modify their XBox for the sake of having fun and to conduct pirate behaviour. Finally, the results from our survey suggest that user innovators are largely intrinsically motivated by fun and the intellectual stimulation of writing code for homebrew software

Providing Self-Aware Systems with Reflexivity

We propose a new type of self-aware systems inspired by ideas from higher-order theories of consciousness. First, we discussed the crucial distinction between introspection and reflexion. Then, we focus on computational reflexion as a mechanism by which a computer program can inspect its own code at every stage of the computation. Finally, we provide a formal definition and a proof-of-concept implementation of computational reflexion, viewed as an enriched form of program interpretation and a way to dynamically "augment" a computational process.Comment: 12 pages plus bibliography, appendices with code description, code of the proof-of-concept implementation, and examples of executio

Constraint Damping in First-Order Evolution Systems for Numerical Relativity

A new constraint suppressing formulation of the Einstein evolution equations is presented, generalizing the five-parameter first-order system due to Kidder, Scheel and Teukolsky (KST). The auxiliary fields, introduced to make the KST system first-order, are given modified evolution equations designed to drive constraint violations toward zero. The algebraic structure of the new system is investigated, showing that the modifications preserve the hyperbolicity of the fundamental and constraint evolution equations. The evolution of the constraints for pertubations of flat spacetime is completely analyzed, and all finite-wavelength constraint modes are shown to decay exponentially when certain adjustable parameters satisfy appropriate inequalities. Numerical simulations of a single Schwarzschild black hole are presented, demonstrating the effectiveness of the new constraint-damping modifications.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure