Gait recognition under carrying condition : a static dynamic fusion method

When an individual carries an object, such as a briefcase, conventional gait recognition algorithms based on average silhouette/Gait Energy Image (GEI) do not always perform well as the object carried may have the potential of being mistakenly regarded as a part of the human body. To solve such a problem, in this paper, instead of directly applying GEI to represent the gait information, we propose a novel dynamic feature template for classification. Based on this extracted dynamic information and some static feature templates (i.e., head part and trunk part), we cast gait recognition on the large USF (University of South Florida) database by adopting a static/dynamic fusion strategy. For the experiments involving carrying condition covariate, significant improvements are achieved when compared with other classic algorithms

Great East Japan Earthquake Emergency Evolution and Contingency Decision Based on System Engineering Approach

AbstractIn recent years, unconventional emergencies that have generated widespread concern in the society have frequently occurred. In 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake and the nuclear crisis as a result of this disaster have gained tremendous attention worldwide. The present paper used a system engineering approach, an extended event graph, to analyze this earthquake and its event evolution as well as associated contingency decisions. Some pertinent countermeasures are also presented for reference of similar emergency event evolution in the future

Interculturality in a Different Light : Modesty towards democracy in education?

This article problematizes interculturality in relation to how the notion of democracy is constructed, especially in education. Discourses of democracy have become more central in ‘interculturalspeak’ (a somewhat uncritical approach to intercultural matters), especially after the mass arrival of asylum seekers and the spread of terrorism around the world. The authors challenge the often Western-centric considerations of the Other’s democracy, through a close reading of a Chinese textbook. China seems to represent the Other par excellence when democracy is discussed. The article does not decide ‘subjectively’ which country is better than others at ‘doing’ democracy, especially in education. Neither do the authors wish to accuse anyone of ‘doing’ it wrongly. What is demonstrated is that the topic of ‘democracy’ is indeed found in China’s secondary school textbooks. The following questions are asked: Which topics are covered? How is democracy problematized explicitly/implicitly? What potential similarities are to be found with the ‘Western’ understanding of democracy? This rare insight into discourses of democracy (the changing self; relations between self-other; citizenship, rights, duties in the textbooks) from China proposes to rethink how we see self-other in intercultural terms, to develop more intercultural modesty and to learn with each other rather than against or merely from the other.Peer reviewe

Beyond the Slippery Slope of a-Politicised Linguistic Diversity

Peer reviewe

Social Justice is Not Somebody Else's Concern!

Peer reviewe

Constructions of social justice, marginalization, and belonging

Peer reviewe

Daytime temperature is sensed by phytochrome B in Arabidopsis through a transcriptional activator HEMERA.

Ambient temperature sensing by phytochrome B (PHYB) in Arabidopsis is thought to operate mainly at night. Here we show that PHYB plays an equally critical role in temperature sensing during the daytime. In daytime thermosensing, PHYB signals primarily through the temperature-responsive transcriptional regulator PIF4, which requires the transcriptional activator HEMERA (HMR). HMR does not regulate PIF4 transcription, instead, it interacts directly with PIF4, to activate the thermoresponsive growth-relevant genes and promote warm-temperature-dependent PIF4 accumulation. A missense allele hmr-22, which carries a loss-of-function D516N mutation in HMR's transcriptional activation domain, fails to induce the thermoresponsive genes and PIF4 accumulation. Both defects of hmr-22 could be rescued by expressing a HMR22 mutant protein fused with the transcriptional activation domain of VP16, suggesting a causal relationship between HMR-mediated activation of PIF4 target-genes and PIF4 accumulation. Together, this study reveals a daytime PHYB-mediated thermosensing mechanism, in which HMR acts as a necessary activator for PIF4-dependent induction of temperature-responsive genes and PIF4 accumulation