A Mobile Robot Generating Video Summaries of Seniors' Indoor Activities

We develop a system which generates summaries from seniors' indoor-activity videos captured by a social robot to help remote family members know their seniors' daily activities at home. Unlike the traditional video summarization datasets, indoor videos captured from a moving robot poses additional challenges, namely, (i) the video sequences are very long (ii) a significant number of video-frames contain no-subject or with subjects at ill-posed locations and scales (iii) most of the well-posed frames contain highly redundant information. To address this problem, we propose to \hl{exploit} pose estimation \hl{for detecting} people in frames\hl{. This guides the robot} to follow the user and capture effective videos. We use person identification to distinguish a target senior from other people. We \hl{also make use of} action recognition to analyze seniors' major activities at different moments, and develop a video summarization method to select diverse and representative keyframes as summaries.Comment: accepted by MobileHCI'1

The Behavior of Retaining Walls Under 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake

This paper reports failure of retaining structures related to the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. On September 21 of 1999, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale struck Taiwan. At the site near Tou-Sheh, overturning failure was observed on a 2.5 m-high gravity wall located near the epicenter. At the site near the Temple of Ten-thousand Buddha, a masonry wall constructed with cobble was damaged. Upper part of wall shifted outward about 0.2 m with respect to its lower part. At the site of Cinema-Culture Town, a gravity wall built on top of the Che-Lung-Pu fault was severely damaged. The heel of the wall was uplifted by the fault rupture. At the parking lot of the Lalu Resort, the retaining wall constructed on a slope moved down the slope during the earthquake. A circular sliding surface can be observed in the collapsed backfill. At the entrance of National Chi-Nan University, a geogrid-reinforced wall was severely damaged during the earthquake. Reinforcing strips were pulled out under the seismic load and fill materials fell out

Img2Logo:Generating Golden Ratio Logos from Images

Logos are one of the most important graphic design forms that use an abstracted shape to clearly represent the spirit of a community. Among various styles of abstraction, a particular golden-ratio design is frequently employed by designers to create a concise and regular logo. In this context, designers utilize a set of circular arcs with golden ratios (i.e., all arcs are taken from circles whose radii form a geometric series based on the golden ratio) as the design elements to manually approximate a target shape. This error-prone process requires a large amount of time and effort, posing a significant challenge for design space exploration. In this work, we present a novel computational framework that can automatically generate golden ratio logo abstractions from an input image. Our framework is based on a set of carefully identified design principles and a constrained optimization formulation respecting these principles. We also propose a progressive approach that can efficiently solve the optimization problem, resulting in a sequence of abstractions that approximate the input at decreasing levels of detail. We evaluate our work by testing on images with different formats including real photos, clip arts, and line drawings. We also extensively validate the key components and compare our results with manual results by designers to demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework. Moreover, our framework can largely benefit design space exploration via easy specification of design parameters such as abstraction levels, golden circle sizes, etc

Effect and Evaluation of an Ultrasonic Atomizer With Large Vibration Amplitude

An ultrasonic atomizer can produce large vibration amplitude is designed. Different from the structure of the usually seen ultrasonic spray nozzle, the atomizer is fundamentally constructed with a hollow tube encircled with several pieces of sectional type piezoelectric actuators, which can radially oscillate the tube to generate desired vibration profile. Atomization is formed on the surface around the liquid outlet of the tube where maximum vibration amplitude occurs. In search of resonance frequency and vibration amplitude, modal and harmonic analyses of the ultrasonic atomizer are carried out by ANSYS. In comparison the simulated results with the experimental results, both are in good agreement. A measurement system is set up for detecting the atomization droplets and calculating the droplet size and distribution. An attempt is to design an ultrasonic atomizer can produce high distribution and small diameter droplets for some application-level requirements, droplet diameter around 20�60 lm is assumed to be the specification for performance verification of the proposed atomizer. In experiment, it is found nearly 90% of atomized droplets fit for the requirement. Besides the most important factor of operating frequency, a relation of amplitude is found to include in the well-known Lang and Rayleigh�s equation

Deep ocean mineral supplementation enhances the cerebral hemodynamic response during exercise and decreases inflammation postexercise in men at two age levels.

Background: Previous studies have consistently shown that oral supplementation of deep ocean minerals (DOM) improves vascular function in animals and enhances muscle power output in exercising humans. Purpose: To examine the effects of DOM supplementation on the cerebral hemodynamic response during physical exertion in young and middle-aged men. Design: Double-blind placebo-controlled crossover studies were conducted in young (N = 12, aged 21.2 ± 0.4 years) and middle-aged men (N = 9, aged 46.8 ± 1.4 years). The counter-balanced trials of DOM and Placebo were separated by a 2-week washout period. DOM and Placebo were orally supplemented in drinks before, during, and after cycling exercise. DOM comprises desalinated minerals and trace elements from seawater collected ~618 m below the earth's surface. Methods: Cerebral hemodynamic response (tissue hemoglobin) was measured during cycling at 75% VO2max using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Results: Cycling time to exhaustion at 75% VO2max and the associated plasma lactate response were similar between the Placebo and DOM trials for both age groups. In contrast, DOM significantly elevated cerebral hemoglobin levels in young men and, to a greater extent, in middle-aged men compared with Placebo. An increased neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was observed in middle-aged men, 2 h after exhaustive cycling, but was attenuated by DOM. Conclusion: Our data suggest that minerals and trace elements from deep oceans possess great promise in developing supplements to increase the cerebral hemodynamic response against a physical challenge and during post-exercise recovery for middle-aged men.This work was supported by Pacific Deep Ocean Biotech (Taipei,Taiwan) and University of Taipei (Taipei, Taiwan). The funding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results. We declare that the results of the study are presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation

Dermoscopic characterization and image study of a Sister Mary Joseph nodule in a patient with esophageal cancer

AbstractA Sister Mary Joseph nodule (SMJN) is rare cutaneous metastasis spreading to the umbilicus. It originates mostly from an intra-abdominal or pelvic malignancy and is an ominous sign. In this paper, we report a case of a SMJN in a 64-year-old man with esophageal cancer. We recorded his clinical progression, radiologic and nuclear scintigraphic images, and histopathologic and dermoscopic findings. The image study provided information on the localization of the SMJN and dermoscopy showed a polymorphous vascular pattern. The patient received palliative therapy because of terminal disease