An interactive and multi-level framework for summarising user generated videos

We present an interactive and multi-level abstraction framework for user-generated video (UGV) summarisation, allowing a user the flexibility to select a summarisation criterion out of a number of methods provided by the system. First, a given raw video is segmented into shots, and each shot is further decomposed into sub-shots in line with the change in dominant camera motion. Secondly, principal component analysis (PCA) is applied to the colour representation of the collection of sub-shots, and a content map is created using the first few components. Each sub-shot is represented with a ``footprint'' on the content map, which reveals its content significance (coverage) and the most dynamic segment. The final stage of abstraction is devised in a user-assisted manner whereby a user is able to specify a desired summary length, with options to interactively perform abstraction at different granularity of visual comprehension. The results obtained show the potential benefit in significantly alleviating the burden of laborious user intervention associated with conventional video editing/browsing

Le statut méontologique de la créature selon Maître Eckhart

God is Being, “esse est deus”, and only God is, He is the one and only Being, claims Meister Eckhart. What does it mean for God to be? Eckhart writes that we call the One God “Being”. Being is for him Being-One. It follows from this that everything is on the basis of God’s being. Things exist by this Being and in this Being, so that outside of this Being nothing is. If God is entirely Being and if Being and One coincide, what is the status of the created being, that is, of what is multiple by nature? Eckhart replies that the creature is “pure nothingness”. This article tries to find the right sense of this expression in the light of the relation between Being and One as it is understood by Eckhart

Renormalization Group in Quantum Mechanics

We establish the renormalization group equation for the running action in the context of a one quantum particle system. This equation is deduced by integrating each fourier mode after the other in the path integral formalism. It is free of the well known pathologies which appear in quantum field theory due to the sharp cutoff. We show that for an arbitrary background path the usual local form of the action is not preserved by the flow. To cure this problem we consider a more general action than usual which is stable by the renormalization group flow. It allows us to obtain a new consistent renormalization group equation for the action.Comment: 20 page

Phase-field simulations of viscous fingering in shear-thinning fluids

A phase-field model for the Hele-Shaw flow of non-Newtonian fluids is developed. It extends a previous model for Newtonian fluids to a wide range of shear-dependent fluids. The model is applied to perform simulations of viscous fingering in shear- thinning fluids, and it is found to be capable of describing the complete crossover from the Newtonian regime at low shear rate to the strongly shear-thinning regime at high shear rate. The width selection of a single steady-state finger is studied in detail for a 2-plateaux shear-thinning law (Carreau law) in both its weakly and strongly shear-thinning limits, and the results are related to previous analyses. In the strongly shear-thinning regime a rescaling is found for power-law (Ostwald-de-Waehle) fluids that allows for a direct comparison between simulations and experiments without any adjustable parameters, and good agreement is obtained

Sub-Gap Structure in the Conductance of a Three-Terminal Josephson Junction

Three-terminal superconductor (S) - normal metal (N) - superconductor (S) Josephson junctions are investigated. In a geometry where a T-shape normal metal is connected to three superconducting reservoirs, new sub-gap structures appear in the differential resistance for specific combinations of the superconductor chemical potentials. Those correspond to a correlated motion of Cooper pairs within the device that persist well above the Thouless energy and is consistent with the prediction of quartets formed by two entangled Cooper pairs. A simplified nonequilibrium Keldysh Green's function calculation is presented that supports this interpretation.Comment: To appear in Physical Review

On Lightweight Privacy-Preserving Collaborative Learning for IoT Objects

The Internet of Things (IoT) will be a main data generation infrastructure for achieving better system intelligence. This paper considers the design and implementation of a practical privacy-preserving collaborative learning scheme, in which a curious learning coordinator trains a better machine learning model based on the data samples contributed by a number of IoT objects, while the confidentiality of the raw forms of the training data is protected against the coordinator. Existing distributed machine learning and data encryption approaches incur significant computation and communication overhead, rendering them ill-suited for resource-constrained IoT objects. We study an approach that applies independent Gaussian random projection at each IoT object to obfuscate data and trains a deep neural network at the coordinator based on the projected data from the IoT objects. This approach introduces light computation overhead to the IoT objects and moves most workload to the coordinator that can have sufficient computing resources. Although the independent projections performed by the IoT objects address the potential collusion between the curious coordinator and some compromised IoT objects, they significantly increase the complexity of the projected data. In this paper, we leverage the superior learning capability of deep learning in capturing sophisticated patterns to maintain good learning performance. Extensive comparative evaluation shows that this approach outperforms other lightweight approaches that apply additive noisification for differential privacy and/or support vector machines for learning in the applications with light data pattern complexities.Comment: 12 pages,IOTDI 201

Dynamics of conduction blocks in a model of paced cardiac tissue

We study numerically the dynamics of conduction blocks using a detailed electrophysiological model. We find that this dynamics depends critically on the size of the paced region. Small pacing regions lead to stationary conduction blocks while larger pacing regions can lead to conduction blocks that travel periodically towards the pacing region. We show that this size-dependence dynamics can lead to a novel arrhythmogenic mechanism. Furthermore, we show that the essential phenomena can be captured in a much simpler coupled-map model.Comment: 8 pages 6 figure

Etching suspended superconducting hybrid junctions from a multilayer

A novel method to fabricate large-area superconducting hybrid tunnel junctions with a suspended central normal metal part is presented. The samples are fabricated by combining photo-lithography and chemical etch of a superconductor - insulator - normal metal multilayer. The process involves few fabrication steps, is reliable and produces extremely high-quality tunnel junctions. Under an appropriate voltage bias, a significant electronic cooling is demonstrated

Dynamic instabilities of fracture under biaxial strain using a phase field model

We present a phase field model of the propagation of fracture under plane strain. This model, based on simple physical considerations, is able to accurately reproduce the different behavior of cracks (the principle of local symmetry, the Griffith and Irwin criteria, and mode-I branching). In addition, we test our model against recent experimental findings showing the presence of oscillating cracks under bi-axial load. Our model again reproduces well observed supercritical Hopf bifurcation, and is therefore the first simulation which does so

Measuring the Magnetic Flux Density in the CMS Steel Yoke

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a general purpose detector, designed to run at the highest luminosity at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Its distinctive features include a 4 T superconducting solenoid with 6-m-diameter by 12.5-m-length free bore, enclosed inside a 10000-ton return yoke made of construction steel. The return yoke consists of five dodecagonal three-layered barrel wheels and four end-cap disks at each end comprised of steel blocks up to 620 mm thick, which serve as the absorber plates of the muon detection system. Accurate characterization of the magnetic field everywhere in the CMS detector is required. To measure the field in and around the steel, a system of 22 flux-loops and 82 3-D Hall sensors is installed on the return yoke blocks. Fast discharges of the solenoid (190 s time-constant) made during the CMS magnet surface commissioning test at the solenoid central fields of 2.64, 3.16, 3.68 and 4.01 T were used to induce voltages in the flux-loops. The voltages are measured on-line and integrated off-line to obtain the magnetic flux in the steel yoke close to the muon chambers at full excitations of the solenoid. The 3-D Hall sensors installed on the steel-air interfaces give supplementary information on the components of magnetic field and permit to estimate the remanent field in steel to be added to the magnetic flux density obtained by the voltages integration. A TOSCA 3-D model of the CMS magnet is developed to describe the magnetic field everywhere outside the tracking volume measured with the field-mapping machine. The results of the measurements and calculations are presented, compared and discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 16 references, presented at the III International Conference on Superconductivity and Magnetism (ICSM-2012), Kumburgaz, Istanbul, Turkey, 29 April - 4 May 201