Binary Decision Diagrams: from Tree Compaction to Sampling

Any Boolean function corresponds with a complete full binary decision tree. This tree can in turn be represented in a maximally compact form as a direct acyclic graph where common subtrees are factored and shared, keeping only one copy of each unique subtree. This yields the celebrated and widely used structure called reduced ordered binary decision diagram (ROBDD). We propose to revisit the classical compaction process to give a new way of enumerating ROBDDs of a given size without considering fully expanded trees and the compaction step. Our method also provides an unranking procedure for the set of ROBDDs. As a by-product we get a random uniform and exhaustive sampler for ROBDDs for a given number of variables and size

Highlights of the SLD Physics Program at the SLAC Linear Collider

Starting in 1989, and continuing through the 1990s, high-energy physics witnessed a flowering of precision measurements in general and tests of the standard model in particular, led by e+e- collider experiments operating at the Z0 resonance. Key contributions to this work came from the SLD collaboration at the SLAC Linear Collider. By exploiting the unique capabilities of this pioneering accelerator and the SLD detector, including a polarized electron beam, exceptionally small beam dimensions, and a CCD pixel vertex detector, SLD produced a broad array of electroweak, heavy-flavor, and QCD measurements. Many of these results are one of a kind or represent the world's standard in precision. This article reviews the highlights of the SLD physics program, with an eye toward associated advances in experimental technique, and the contribution of these measurements to our dramatically improved present understanding of the standard model and its possible extensions.Comment: To appear in 2001 Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science; 78 pages, 31 figures; A version with higher resolution figures can be seen at http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/slacpubs/8000/slac-pub-8985.html; Second version incorporates minor changes to the tex

Lysosomal enzyme precursors in coated vesicles derived from the exocytic and endocytic pathways.

The molecular forms of two lysosomal enzymes, cathepsin C and cathepsin D, have been examined in lysosomes and coated vesicles (CVs) of rat liver. In addition, the relative proportion of these lysosomal enzymes residing in functionally distinct CV subpopulations was quantitated. CVs contained newly synthesized precursor forms of the enzymes in contrast to lysosomes where only the mature forms were detected. Exocytic and endocytic CV subpopulations were prepared by two completely different protocols. One procedure, a density shift method, uses cholinesterase to alter the density of CVs derived from exocytic or endocytic pathways. The other relies on electrophoretic heterogeneity to accomplish the CV subfractionation. Subpopulations of CVs prepared by either procedure showed similar results, when examined for their relative proportion of cathepsin C and cathepsin D precursors. Within the starting CV preparation, exocytic CVs contained approximately 80-90% of the total steady-state levels of these enzymes while the level in the endocytic population was approximately 10-13%. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to lysosome trafficking

Multiple Object Tracking in Urban Traffic Scenes with a Multiclass Object Detector

Multiple object tracking (MOT) in urban traffic aims to produce the trajectories of the different road users that move across the field of view with different directions and speeds and that can have varying appearances and sizes. Occlusions and interactions among the different objects are expected and common due to the nature of urban road traffic. In this work, a tracking framework employing classification label information from a deep learning detection approach is used for associating the different objects, in addition to object position and appearances. We want to investigate the performance of a modern multiclass object detector for the MOT task in traffic scenes. Results show that the object labels improve tracking performance, but that the output of object detectors are not always reliable.Comment: 13th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC

Deep Adaptive Attention for Joint Facial Action Unit Detection and Face Alignment

Facial action unit (AU) detection and face alignment are two highly correlated tasks since facial landmarks can provide precise AU locations to facilitate the extraction of meaningful local features for AU detection. Most existing AU detection works often treat face alignment as a preprocessing and handle the two tasks independently. In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-end deep learning framework for joint AU detection and face alignment, which has not been explored before. In particular, multi-scale shared features are learned firstly, and high-level features of face alignment are fed into AU detection. Moreover, to extract precise local features, we propose an adaptive attention learning module to refine the attention map of each AU adaptively. Finally, the assembled local features are integrated with face alignment features and global features for AU detection. Experiments on BP4D and DISFA benchmarks demonstrate that our framework significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for AU detection.Comment: This paper has been accepted by ECCV 201

Using Bars As Signposts of Galaxy Evolution at High and Low Redshifts

An analysis of the NICMOS Deep Field shows that there is no evidence of a decline in the bar fraction beyond z~0.7, as previously claimed; both bandshifting and spatial resolution must be taken into account when evaluating the evolution of the bar fraction. Two main caveats of this study were a lack of a proper comparison sample at low redshifts and a larger number of galaxies at high redshifts. We address these caveats using two new studies. For a proper local sample, we have analyzed 134 spirals in the near-infrared using 2MASS (main results presented by Menendez-Delmestre in this volume) which serves as an ideal anchor for the low-redshift Universe. In addition to measuring the mean bar properties, we find that bar size is correlated with galaxy size and brightness, but the bar ellipticity is not correlated with these galaxy properties. The bar length is not correlated with the bar ellipticity. For larger high redshift samples we analyze the bar fraction from the 2-square degree COSMOS ACS survey. We find that the bar fraction at z~0.7 is ~50%, consistent with our earlier finding of no decline in bar fraction at high redshifts.Comment: In the proceedings of "Penetrating Bars through Masks of Cosmic Dust: The Hubble Tuning Fork strikes a New Note

NLO Higgs boson production via gluon fusion matched with shower in POWHEG

We present a next-to-leading order calculation of Higgs boson production via gluon fusion interfaced to shower Monte Carlo programs, implemented according to the POWHEG method. A detailed comparison with MC@NLO and PYTHIA is carried out for several observables, for the Tevatron and LHC colliders. Comparisons with next-to-next-to-leading order results and with resummed ones are also presented.Comment: Version accepted for publication by JHEP. One more figure added to Sec 4.1.2 and two more explanatory figures and comments added to Sec 4.3 on p_T distribution

Long lasting pain hypersensitivity following ligation of the tendon of the masseter muscle in rats: A model of myogenic orofacial pain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A major subgroup of patients with temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders have masticatory muscle hypersensitivity. To study myofacial temporomandibular pain, a number of preclinical models have been developed to induce myogenic pain of the masseter muscle, one of the four muscles involved in mastication. The currently used models, however, generate pain that decreases over time and only lasts from hours to weeks and hence are not suitable for studying chronicity of the myogenic pain in TMJ disorders. Here we report a model of constant myogenic orofacial pain that lasts for months.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The model involves unilateral ligation of the tendon of the anterior superficial part of the rat masseter muscle (TASM). The ligation of the TASM was achieved with two chromic gut (4.0) ligatures via an intraoral approach. Nocifensive behavior of the rat was assessed by probing the skin site above the TASM with a series of von Frey filaments. The response frequencies were determined and an EF₅₀value, defined as the von Frey filament force that produces a 50% response frequency, was derived and used as a measure of mechanical sensitivity. Following TASM ligation, the EF₅₀of the injured side was significantly reduced and maintained throughout the 8-week observation period, suggesting the presence of mechanical hyperalgesia/allodynia. In sham-operated rats, the EF₅₀of the injured side was transiently reduced for about a week, likely due to injury produced by the surgery. Somatotopically relevant Fos protein expression was indentified in the subnucleus caudalis of the spinal trigeminal sensory complex. In the same region, persistent upregulation of NMDA receptor NR1 phosphorylation and protein expression and increased expression of glial markers glial fibrillary acidic protein (astroglia) and CD11b (microglia) were found. Morphine (0.4-8 mg/kg, s.c.) and duloxetine (0.4-20 mg/kg, i.p.), a selective serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, produced dose-dependent attenuation of hyperalgesia.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Ligation injury of the TASM in rats led to long-lasting and constant mechanical hypersensitivity of myogenic origin. The model will be particularly useful in studying the chronicity of myogenic pain TMJ disorders. The model can also be adapted to other regions of the body for studying pathology of painful tendinopathy seen in sports injury, muscle overuse, and rheumatoid arthritis.</p

Suppressing nano-scale stick-slip motion by feedback

When a micro cantilever with a nano-scale tip is manipulated on a substrate with atomic-scale roughness, the periodic lateral frictional force and stochastic fluctuations may induce stick-slip motion of the cantilever tip, which greatly decreases the precision of the nano manipulation. This unwanted motion cannot be reduced by open-loop control especially when there exist parameter uncertainties in the system model, and thus needs to introduce feedback control. However, real-time feedback cannot be realized by the existing virtual reality virtual feedback techniques based on the position sensing capacity of the atomic force microscopy (AFM). To solve this problem, we propose a new method to design real-time feedback control based on the force sensing approach to compensate for the disturbances and thus reduce the stick-slip motion of the cantilever tip. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that the controlled motion of the cantilever tip tracks the desired trajectory with much higher precision. Further investigation shows that our proposal is robust under various parameter uncertainties. Our study opens up new perspectives of real-time nano manipulation.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure