Group Membership Prediction

The group membership prediction (GMP) problem involves predicting whether or not a collection of instances share a certain semantic property. For instance, in kinship verification given a collection of images, the goal is to predict whether or not they share a {\it familial} relationship. In this context we propose a novel probability model and introduce latent {\em view-specific} and {\em view-shared} random variables to jointly account for the view-specific appearance and cross-view similarities among data instances. Our model posits that data from each view is independent conditioned on the shared variables. This postulate leads to a parametric probability model that decomposes group membership likelihood into a tensor product of data-independent parameters and data-dependent factors. We propose learning the data-independent parameters in a discriminative way with bilinear classifiers, and test our prediction algorithm on challenging visual recognition tasks such as multi-camera person re-identification and kinship verification. On most benchmark datasets, our method can significantly outperform the current state-of-the-art.Comment: accepted for ICCV 201

Similarity learning for person re-identification and semantic video retrieval

Many computer vision problems boil down to the learning of a good visual similarity function that calculates a score of how likely two instances share the same semantic concept. In this thesis, we focus on two problems related to similarity learning: Person Re-Identification, and Semantic Video Retrieval. Person Re-Identification aims to maintain the identity of an individual in diverse locations through different non-overlapping camera views. Starting with two cameras, we propose a novel visual word co-occurrence based appearance model to measure the similarities between pedestrian images. This model naturally accounts for spatial similarities and variations caused by pose, illumination and configuration changes across camera views. As a generalization to multiple camera views, we introduce the Group Membership Prediction (GMP) problem. The GMP problem involves predicting whether a collection of instances shares the same semantic property. In this context, we propose a novel probability model and introduce latent view-specific and view-shared random variables to jointly account for the view-specific appearance and cross-view similarities among data instances. Our method is tested on various benchmarks demonstrating superior accuracy over state-of-art. Semantic Video Retrieval seeks to match complex activities in a surveillance video to user described queries. In surveillance scenarios with noise and clutter usually present, visual uncertainties introduced by error-prone low-level detectors, classifiers and trackers compose a significant part of the semantic gap between user defined queries and the archive video. To bridge the gap, we propose a novel probabilistic activity localization formulation that incorporates learning of object attributes, between-object relationships, and object re-identification without activity-level training data. Our experiments demonstrate that the introduction of similarity learning components effectively compensate for noise and error in previous stages, and result in preferable performance on both aerial and ground surveillance videos. Considering the computational complexity of our similarity learning models, we attempt to develop a way of training complicated models efficiently while remaining good performance. As a proof-of-concept, we propose training deep neural networks for supervised learning of hash codes. With slight changes in the optimization formulation, we could explore the possibilities of incorporating the training framework for Person Re-Identification and related problems.2019-07-09T00:00:00

Symbolic Capital, Existential Insecurity, and Industrial Policies: A Neo-Bourdieusian Theory of the Leninist State in China (1927-1982)

HonorsPolitical ScienceUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167896/1/yutingch.pd

Reference of Western Hydraulic Technologies in a Garden during the Late Ming Dynasty : Taking Qieyuan and the Hydraulic Methods of the Far West as an Example

The description of “Matteo Ricci’s Jiegao (桔槔)” in Zhang An (章闇)’s Qieyuan ji (且園記) evidences the presence of Western hydraulic technology in a garden during the late Ming Dynasty. Located in Lingcheng District (陵城區), Dezhou City, Shandong Province, the garden was built between 1629 and 1634. It belonged to Fan Jingwen (范景文), with Mai Erxuan (麥而炫) as the author of Qieyuan ji. Speculations surround the hydraulic technology used in “Matteo Ricci’s Jiegao,” positing the utilization of Yuheng Che (玉衡車) or Hengsheng Che (恆升車) as documented in Hydraulic Methods of the Far West (Taixi shuifa 泰西水法). This work may have been a reference to Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s (1439–1501) Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare (1476–1477). The application of hydraulic technologies in late Ming gardens was not widespread, and writings introducing Western hydraulic technologies tended to focus on practicality

The Role of China's Social Credit Management in the Socialist Market Economy System

Social credit management is a global issue, has become an important aspect of the economic development of various countries. In the process of social transformation in modern China, the social credit management system has undergone three stages of evolution: from scratch to existence, from existence to reality, and from reality to refinement. Based on the review of the transformation of market order and the construction of social credit system in China, this paper makes a systematic analysis of its main content and internal logic. From the perspective of Huntington's "political decline" and other Chinese and foreign theories, this paper discusses the relationship between the three main bodies of social credit construction - market, society, government and market order respectively, in an attempt to provide inspiration and ideas for the construction of China's future social credit system