Sparsity in Dynamics of Spontaneous Subtle Emotions: Analysis \& Application

Spontaneous subtle emotions are expressed through micro-expressions, which are tiny, sudden and short-lived dynamics of facial muscles; thus poses a great challenge for visual recognition. The abrupt but significant dynamics for the recognition task are temporally sparse while the rest, irrelevant dynamics, are temporally redundant. In this work, we analyze and enforce sparsity constrains to learn significant temporal and spectral structures while eliminate irrelevant facial dynamics of micro-expressions, which would ease the challenge in the visual recognition of spontaneous subtle emotions. The hypothesis is confirmed through experimental results of automatic spontaneous subtle emotion recognition with several sparsity levels on CASME II and SMIC, the only two publicly available spontaneous subtle emotion databases. The overall performances of the automatic subtle emotion recognition are boosted when only significant dynamics are preserved from the original sequences.Comment: IEEE Transaction of Affective Computing (2016

Proceedings of the second "international Traveling Workshop on Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST'14)

The implicit objective of the biennial "international - Traveling Workshop on Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST) is to foster collaboration between international scientific teams by disseminating ideas through both specific oral/poster presentations and free discussions. For its second edition, the iTWIST workshop took place in the medieval and picturesque town of Namur in Belgium, from Wednesday August 27th till Friday August 29th, 2014. The workshop was conveniently located in "The Arsenal" building within walking distance of both hotels and town center. iTWIST'14 has gathered about 70 international participants and has featured 9 invited talks, 10 oral presentations, and 14 posters on the following themes, all related to the theory, application and generalization of the "sparsity paradigm": Sparsity-driven data sensing and processing; Union of low dimensional subspaces; Beyond linear and convex inverse problem; Matrix/manifold/graph sensing/processing; Blind inverse problems and dictionary learning; Sparsity and computational neuroscience; Information theory, geometry and randomness; Complexity/accuracy tradeoffs in numerical methods; Sparsity? What's next?; Sparse machine learning and inference.Comment: 69 pages, 24 extended abstracts, iTWIST'14 website: http://sites.google.com/site/itwist1

High-speed surface profilometry based on an adaptive microscope with axial chromatic encoding

An adaptive microscope with axial chromatic encoding is designed and developed, namely the AdaScope. With the ability to confocally address any locations within the measurement volume, the AdaScope provides the hardware foundation for a cascade measurement strategy to be developed, dramatically accelerating the speed of 3D confocal microscopy

Comparison of Primary Stability of Tapered and Parallel Walled Implants in Poor Quality Bone: An in vitro study

ABSTRACT Objectives: Obtaining primary stability upon placement is crucial for predictable healing and long-term success of dental implants. Primary stability is very difficult and challenging to achieve in poorer quality bone. Currently, two of the more common dental implant designs are tapered and parallel walled dental implants. The objective of this study was to determine if there was a difference in the primary stability of tapered and parallel dental implants in poor quality bone. The null hypothesis of this study was that there is no difference in the primary stability of tapered and parallel walled dental implants in poor quality bone. Material and Methods: Two implant designs (tapered and parallel walled dental implants) were evaluated for the primary stability in a medium that represented poor bone quality (Balsa wood). Twenty-four 4.3 x 11.5 mm HahnTM tapered implants (Glidewell Dental Laboratories, Newport Beach, CA) along with a twenty-four 4.3 mm x 11.5 mm parallel walled prototype HahnTM implants (Glidewell Dental Laboratories, Newport Beach, CA) were used. All implants had identical surface texture, diameter, length, thread design, and pitch thereby eliminating extraneous variables. The only difference between the two dental implants was the taper. After implant placement in the poor quality bone medium, resonance frequency analysis was recorded for each implant using the Penguin RFA (Aseptico®, Woodinville, WA). The ISQ scores were uploaded into Stata 16 (StataCorp, College Station, TX) and evaluated. A two-sample t-test was calculated to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in the primary stability between the two implant designs. Results: In the evaluation of 24 tapered and 24 parallel walled implants, the average ISQ value for the tapered was 67.125 +/- 1.974 and the parallel walled was 64.813 +/- 0.93. The 2-sample ttest yielded a p-value = 0.0000. Since the p-value <0.05, there was a statistically significant difference between the ISQ scores of the two implant designs. The null hypothesis was rejected. Conclusion: The results of this in vitro study concluded that the tapered implant design provides greater primary stability than parallel walled implants in poor quality bone