Difficulties in Image Retrieval

The semantic gap is often regarded as a major problem in the field of image retrieval research. In this paper, I will show that there are other important topics that should be addressed for improving the image retrieval utility. Among them, the exploitation of limited information and motivating the use of images are considered to be central to the development of image retrieval

Direct Mapping of Massive Compact Objects in Extragalactic Dark Halos

A significant fraction of non-baryonic or baryonic dark matter in galactic halos may consist of MASsive Compact Objects (MASCOs) with mass M=10^{1-4}M_{sun}. Possible candidates for such compact objects include primordial black holes or remnants of primordial (Population III) stars. We propose a method for directly detecting MASCOs in extragalactic halos, using the VLBI techniques with extremely high resolution. If a galactic halo comprising a large number of MASCOs produces multiple images of a background radio-loud QSO by gravitational lensing, then a high-resolution radio map of each macro-lensed image should reveal microlensing effects by MASCOs. To assess their observational feasibility, we simulate microlensing of the radio-loud, four-image lensed QSO, B1422+231, assuming angular resolution of ~0.01 mas. MASCOs are represented by point masses. For comparison, we also simulate microlensing of B1422+231 by singular isothermal spheres. We find that the surface brightness of the macro-lensed images shows distinct spatial patterns on the scale of the Einstein radius of the perturbers. In the case of point-mass perturbers, many tiny dark spots also appear in the macro-lensed images associated with a decrease in the surface brightness toward the fringe of the original QSO image, whereas no such spots are available in the SIS models. Based on the size, position and magnified or demagnified patterns of images, we shall be able to determine the mass and density profile of a MASCO as well as its spatial distribution and abundance in a galactic halo.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Direct Detection of Intermediate Mass Compact Objects via Submillilensing

A galaxy-sized halo may contain a large number of intermediate mass (10^{2-4} solar mass) compact objects (IMCOs), which can be intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) or the CDM subhalos. We propose to directly detect the IMBHs by observing multiply imaged QSO-galaxy lens systems with a high angular resolution (~ 0.03mas), which would be achieved by the next-VLBI space missions. The silhouette of the IMBHs would appear as an either monopole-like or dipole-like variation at the scale of the Einstein radius against the QSO jets. As a byproduct, we can also directly detect the 10^{4-5} solar mass CDM subhalos. From a measurement of the local distortion in the surface brightness of the QSO jet, we can make a distinction between a point mass (corresponding to an IMBH) and an extended structure (corresponding to a CDM subhalo). It would be a unique probe of the IMCOs whose nature has been under the veil of mistery.Comment: 4 pages, 1 eps file, to appear in Science and Technology (Kinki University Press), 200

Universal dark halo scaling relation for the dwarf spheroidal satellites

Motivated by a recently found interesting property of the dark halo surface density within a radius, $r_{\rm max}$, giving the maximum circular velocity, $V_{\rm max}$, we investigate it for dark halos of the Milky Way's and Andromeda's dwarf satellites based on cosmological simulations. We select and analyze the simulated subhalos associated with Milky Way-sized dark halos and find that the values of their surface densities, $\Sigma_{V_{\rm max}}$, are in good agreement with those for the observed dwarf spheroidal satellites even without employing any fitting procedures. This implies that this surface density would not be largely affected by any baryonic feedbacks and thus universal. Moreover, all subhalos on the small scales of dwarf satellites are expected to obey the relation $\Sigma_{V_{\rm max}}\propto V_{\rm max}$, irrespective of differences in their orbital evolutions, host halo properties, and observed redshifts. Therefore, we find that the universal scaling relation for dark halos on dwarf galaxy mass scales surely exists and provides us important clues to understanding fundamental properties of dark halos. We also investigate orbital and dynamical evolutions of subhalos to understand the origin of this universal dark halo relation and find that most of subhalos evolve generally along the $r_{\rm max}\propto V_{\rm max}$ sequence, even though these subhalos have undergone different histories of mass assembly and tidal stripping. This sequence, therefore, should be the key feature to understand the nature of the universality of $\Sigma_{V_{\rm max}}$.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures and 3 tables, submitted to Ap

Three-dimensional Mapping of CDM Substructure at Submillimeter Wavelengths

The cold dark matter (CDM) structure formation model predicts that about 5-10 percent of a typical galactic halo of mass \sim 10^{12} \ms is in substructures with masses \lesssim 10^8 \ms. To directly detect such substructures, we propose to observe dust continuum emission from a strongly lensed QSO-host galaxy using a large submillimeter interferometer array with a high angular resolution of $\sim 0.01$arcsec such as the planned Atacama Large Submillimeter Array (ALMA). To assess their observational feasibility, we numerically simulate millilensing of an extended circular source by a CDM substructure modeled as a tidally truncated singular isothermal sphere (SIS) embedded in a typical QSO-galaxy lens system, B1422+231, modeled as a singular isothermal ellipsoid (SIE) with an external constant shear and a constant convergence. Assuming an angular resolution of 0.01arcsec, we find that the angular positions of \sim 10^8 \ms substructures at several kpc from the center of the macrolens halo can be directly measured if the size of the dust continuum emission region and the gradient of the surface brightness at the position of the perturber are sufficiently large. From the astrometric shift on a scale of a few times $10~$mas of an image perturbed by a subhalo with respect to an unperturbed macrolensed image, we can break the degeneracy between subhalo mass and distance provided that macrolensing parameters are determined from positions and fluxes of multiple images.Comment: 7 pages, 7 EPS files. An assessment of our assumption of constancy in shear and convergence has been included. Version accepted for publication in Ap

Gender Recognition Using a Gaze-Guided Self-Attention Mechanism Robust Against Background Bias in Training Samples

We propose an attention mechanism in deep learning networks for gender recognition using the gaze distribution of human observers when they judge the gender of people in pedestrian images. Prevalent attention mechanisms spatially compute the correlation among values of all cells in an input feature map to calculate attention weights. If a large bias in the background of pedestrian images (e.g., test samples and training samples containing different backgrounds) is present, the attention weights learned using the prevalent attention mechanisms are affected by the bias, which in turn reduces the accuracy of gender recognition. To avoid this problem, we incorporate an attention mechanism called gaze-guided self-attention (GSA) that is inspired by human visual attention. Our method assigns spatially suitable attention weights to each input feature map using the gaze distribution of human observers. In particular, GSA yields promising results even when using training samples with the background bias. The results of experiments on publicly available datasets confirm that our GSA, using the gaze distribution, is more accurate in gender recognition than currently available attention-based methods in the case of background bias between training and test samples