Feature space analysis for human activity recognition in smart environments

Activity classification from smart environment data is typically done employing ad hoc solutions customised to the particular dataset at hand. In this work we introduce a general purpose collection of features for recognising human activities across datasets of different type, size and nature. The first experimental test of our feature collection achieves state of the art results on well known datasets, and we provide a feature importance analysis in order to compare the potential relevance of features for activity classification in different datasets

Unsupervised grounding of textual descriptions of object features and actions in video

We propose a novel method for learning visual concepts and their correspondence to the words of a natural language. The concepts and correspondences are jointly inferred from video clips depicting simple actions involving multiple objects, together with corresponding natural language commands that would elicit these actions. Individual objects are first detected, together with quantitative measurements of their colour, shape, location and motion. Visual concepts emerge from the co-occurrence of regions within a measurement space and words of the language. The method is evaluated on a set of videos generated automatically using computer graphics from a database of initial and goal configurations of objects. Each video is annotated with multiple commands in natural language obtained from human annotators using crowd sourcing

Multi-strange particle measurements in 7 TeV proton-proton and 2.76 TeV PbPb collisions with the ALICE experiment at the LHC

The production of charged multi-strange particles is studied with the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. Measurements of the central rapidity yields of $\Xi^-$ and $\Omega^-$ baryons, as well as their antiparticles, are presented as a function of transverse momentum ($p_\mathrm{t}$) for inelastic pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV and compared to existing measurements performed at the same and/or at lower energies. The results are also compared to predictions from two different tunes of the PYTHIA event generator. We find that data significantly exceed the production rates from those models. Finally, we present the status of the multi-strange particle production studies in Pb-Pb at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV performed as a function of collision centrality.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to the Proceedings of QM201

Anticipating economic market crises using measures of collective panic

Sem informaçãoPredicting panic is of critical importance in many areas of human and animal behavior, notably in the context of economics. The recent financial crisis is a case in point. Panic may be due to a specific external threat or self-generated nervousness. Here we show that the recent economic crisis and earlier large single-day panics were preceded by extended periods of high levels of market mimicry-direct evidence of uncertainty and nervousness, and of the comparatively weak influence of external news. High levels of mimicry can be a quite general indicator of the potential for self-organized crises.Predicting panic is of critical importance in many areas of human and animal behavior, notably in the context of economics. The recent financial crisis is a case in point. Panic may be due to a specific external threat or self-generated nervousness. Here we show that the recent economic crisis and earlier large single-day panics were preceded by extended periods of high levels of market mimicry-direct evidence of uncertainty and nervousness, and of the comparatively weak influence of external news. High levels of mimicry can be a quite general indicator of the potential for self-organized crises.107127Sem informaçãoSem informaçãoSem informaçã

Nonextensive statistical effects in the hadron to quark-gluon phase transition

We investigate the relativistic equation of state of hadronic matter and quark-gluon plasma at finite temperature and baryon density in the framework of the nonextensive statistical mechanics, characterized by power-law quantum distributions. We study the phase transition from hadronic matter to quark-gluon plasma by requiring the Gibbs conditions on the global conservation of baryon number and electric charge fraction. We show that nonextensive statistical effects play a crucial role in the equation of state and in the formation of mixed phase also for small deviations from the standard Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure