Can we ID from CCTV? Image quality in digital CCTV and face identification performance

CCTV is used for an increasing number Of purposes, and the new generation of digital systems can be tailored to serve a wide range of security requirements. However, configuration decisions are often made without considering specific task requirements, e.g. the video quality needed for reliable person identification. Our Study investigated the relationship between video quality and the ability of untrained viewers to identify faces from digital CCTV images. The task required 80 participants to identify 64 faces belonging to 4 different ethnicities. Participants compared face images taken from a high quality photographs and low quality CCTV stills, which were recorded at 4 different video quality bit rates (32, 52, 72 and 92 Kbps). We found that the number of correct identifications decreased by 12 (similar to 18%) as MPEG-4 quality decreased from 92 to 32 Kbps, and by 4 (similar to 6%) as Wavelet video quality decreased from 92 to 32 Kbps. To achieve reliable and effective face identification, we recommend that MPEG-4 CCTV systems should be used over Wavelet, and video quality should not be lowered below 52 Kbps during video compression. We discuss the practical implications of these results for security, and contribute a contextual methodology for assessing CCTV video quality

The enriched Crouzeix-Raviart elements are equivalent to the Raviart-Thomas elements

For both the Poisson model problem and the Stokes problem in any dimension, this paper proves that the enriched Crouzeix-Raviart elements are actually identical to the first order Raviart-Thomas elements in the sense that they produce the same discrete stresses. This result improves the previous result in literature which, for two dimensions, states that the piecewise constant projection of the stress by the first order Raviart-Thomas element is equal to that by the Crouzeix-Raviart element. For the eigenvalue problem of Laplace operator, this paper proves that the error of the enriched Crouzeix-Raviart element is equivalent to that of the Raviart-Thomas element up to higher order terms

Robust Preconditioners for Incompressible MHD Models

In this paper, we develop two classes of robust preconditioners for the structure-preserving discretization of the incompressible magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) system. By studying the well-posedness of the discrete system, we design block preconditioners for them and carry out rigorous analysis on their performance. We prove that such preconditioners are robust with respect to most physical and discretization parameters. In our proof, we improve the existing estimates of the block triangular preconditioners for saddle point problems by removing the scaling parameters, which are usually difficult to choose in practice. This new technique is not only applicable to the MHD system, but also to other problems. Moreover, we prove that Krylov iterative methods with our preconditioners preserve the divergence-free condition exactly, which complements the structure-preserving discretization. Another feature is that we can directly generalize this technique to other discretizations of the MHD system. We also present preliminary numerical results to support the theoretical results and demonstrate the robustness of the proposed preconditioners

Quantum Monte Carlo Study of Pairing Symmetry and Correlation in Iron-based Superconductors

We perform a systematic quantum Monte Carlo study of the pairing correlation in the $S_4$ symmetric microscopic model for iron-based superconductors. It is found that the pairing with an extensive s-wave symmetry robustly dominates over other pairings at low temperature in reasonable parameter region. The pairing susceptibility, the effective pairing interaction and the $(\pi,0)$antiferromagnetic correlation strongly increase as the on-site Coulomb interaction increases, indicating the importance of the effect of electron-electron correlation. Our non-biased numerical results provide a unified understanding of superconducting mechanism in iron-pnictides and iron-chalcogenides and demonstrate that the superconductivity is driven by strong electron-electron correlation effects.Comment: Accepted for publication as a Letter in Physical Review Letters, and more discussions are adde