84 research outputs found
Class-Agnostic Counting
Nearly all existing counting methods are designed for a specific object
class. Our work, however, aims to create a counting model able to count any
class of object. To achieve this goal, we formulate counting as a matching
problem, enabling us to exploit the image self-similarity property that
naturally exists in object counting problems. We make the following three
contributions: first, a Generic Matching Network (GMN) architecture that can
potentially count any object in a class-agnostic manner; second, by
reformulating the counting problem as one of matching objects, we can take
advantage of the abundance of video data labeled for tracking, which contains
natural repetitions suitable for training a counting model. Such data enables
us to train the GMN. Third, to customize the GMN to different user
requirements, an adapter module is used to specialize the model with minimal
effort, i.e. using a few labeled examples, and adapting only a small fraction
of the trained parameters. This is a form of few-shot learning, which is
practical for domains where labels are limited due to requiring expert
knowledge (e.g. microbiology). We demonstrate the flexibility of our method on
a diverse set of existing counting benchmarks: specifically cells, cars, and
human crowds. The model achieves competitive performance on cell and crowd
counting datasets, and surpasses the state-of-the-art on the car dataset using
only three training images. When training on the entire dataset, the proposed
method outperforms all previous methods by a large margin.Comment: Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV), 201
Representation of tropical deep convection in atmospheric models - Part 1 : Meteorology and comparison with satellite observations
Published under Creative Commons Licence 3.0. Original article can be found at : http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/ "The author's copyright for this publication is transferred to University of Hertfordshire".Fast convective transport in the tropics can efficiently redistribute water vapour and pollutants up to the upper troposphere. In this study we compare tropical convection characteristics for the year 2005 in a range of atmospheric models, including numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, chemistry transport models (CTMs), and chemistry-climate models (CCMs). The model runs have been performed within the framework of the SCOUT-O3 (Stratospheric-Climate Links with Emphasis on the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere) project. The characteristics of tropical convection, such as seasonal cycle, land/sea contrast and vertical extent, are analysed using satellite observations as a benchmark for model simulations. The observational datasets used in this work comprise precipitation rates, outgoing longwave radiation, cloud-top pressure, and water vapour from a number of independent sources, including ERA-Interim analyses. Most models are generally able to reproduce the seasonal cycle and strength of precipitation for continental regions but show larger discrepancies with observations for the Maritime Continent region. The frequency distribution of high clouds from models and observations is calculated using highly temporally-resolved (up to 3-hourly) cloud top data. The percentage of clouds above 15 km varies significantly between the models. Vertical profiles of water vapour in the upper troposphere-lower stratosphere (UTLS) show large differences between the models which can only be partly attributed to temperature differences. If a convective plume reaches above the level of zero net radiative heating, which is estimated to be ~15 km in the tropics, the air detrained from it can be transported upwards by radiative heating into the lower stratosphere. In this context, we discuss the role of tropical convection as a precursor for the transport of short-lived species into the lower stratosphere.Peer reviewe
The Expanded mtDNA Phylogeny of the Franco-Cantabrian Region Upholds the Pre-Neolithic Genetic Substrate of Basques
The European genetic landscape has been shaped by several human migrations occurred since Paleolithic times. The accumulation of archaeological records and the concordance of different lines of genetic evidence during the last two decades have triggered an interesting debate concerning the role of ancient settlers from the Franco-Cantabrian region in the postglacial resettlement of Europe. Among the Franco-Cantabrian populations, Basques are regarded as one of the oldest and more intriguing human groups of Europe. Recent data on complete mitochondrial DNA genomes focused on macrohaplogroup R0 revealed that Basques harbor some autochthonous lineages, suggesting a genetic continuity since pre-Neolithic times. However, excluding haplogroup H, the most representative lineage of macrohaplogroup R0, the majority of maternal lineages of this area remains virtually unexplored, so that further refinement of the mtDNA phylogeny based on analyses at the highest level of resolution is crucial for a better understanding of the European prehistory. We thus explored the maternal ancestry of 548 autochthonous individuals from various Franco-Cantabrian populations and sequenced 76 mitogenomes of the most representative lineages. Interestingly, we identified three mtDNA haplogroups, U5b1f, J1c5c1 and V22, that proved to be representative of Franco-Cantabria, notably of the Basque population. The seclusion and diversity of these female genetic lineages support a local origin in the Franco-Cantabrian area during the Mesolithic of southwestern Europe, ∼10,000 years before present (YBP), with signals of expansions at ∼3,500 YBP. These findings provide robust evidence of a partial genetic continuity between contemporary autochthonous populations from the Franco-Cantabrian region, specifically the Basques, and Paleolithic/Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups. Furthermore, our results raise the current proportion (≈15%) of the Franco-Cantabrian maternal gene pool with a putative pre-Neolithic origin to ≈35%, further supporting the notion of a predominant Paleolithic genetic substrate in extant European populations
Dentes inclusos
The aim of this work is to establish a routine for clinicai and radiographical examination of unerupted teeth in order to facilitate the diagnosis and the choice of a suitable surgical technice.O objetivo deste trabalho é estabelecer uma rotina para exame clínico e radiográfico de dentes inclusos a fim de facilitar o diagnóstico e a escolha da técnica cirúrgica indicada
Single-molecule techniques in biophysics : a review of the progress in methods and applications
Single-molecule biophysics has transformed our understanding of the
fundamental molecular processes involved in living biological systems, but also
of the fascinating physics of life. Far more exotic than a collection of
exemplars of soft matter behaviour, active biological matter lives far from
thermal equilibrium, and typically covers multiple length scales from the
nanometre level of single molecules up several orders of magnitude to longer
length scales in emergent structures of cells, tissues and organisms.
Biological molecules are often characterized by an underlying instability, in
that multiple metastable free energy states exist which are separated by energy
levels of typically just a few multiples of the thermal energy scale of kBT,
where kB is the Boltzmann constant and T the absolute temperature, implying
complex, dynamic inter-conversion kinetics across this bumpy free energy
landscape in the relatively hot, wet environment of real, living biological
matter. The key utility of single-molecule biophysics lies in its ability to
probe the underlying heterogeneity of free energy states across a population of
molecules, which in general is too challenging for conventional ensemble level
approaches which measure mean average properties. Parallel developments in both
experimental and theoretical techniques have been key to the latest insights
and are enabling the development of highly-multiplexed, correlative techniques
to tackle previously intractable biological problems. Experimentally,
technological developments in the sensitivity and speed of biomolecular
detectors, the stability and efficiency of light sources, probes and
microfluidics, have enabled and driven the study of heterogeneous behaviours
both in vitro and in vivo that were previously undetectable by ensemble
methods..
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