PEA265: Perceptual Assessment of Video Compression Artifacts

The most widely used video encoders share a common hybrid coding framework that includes block-based motion estimation/compensation and block-based transform coding. Despite their high coding efficiency, the encoded videos often exhibit visually annoying artifacts, denoted as Perceivable Encoding Artifacts (PEAs), which significantly degrade the visual Qualityof- Experience (QoE) of end users. To monitor and improve visual QoE, it is crucial to develop subjective and objective measures that can identify and quantify various types of PEAs. In this work, we make the first attempt to build a large-scale subjectlabelled database composed of H.265/HEVC compressed videos containing various PEAs. The database, namely the PEA265 database, includes 4 types of spatial PEAs (i.e. blurring, blocking, ringing and color bleeding) and 2 types of temporal PEAs (i.e. flickering and floating). Each containing at least 60,000 image or video patches with positive and negative labels. To objectively identify these PEAs, we train Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) using the PEA265 database. It appears that state-of-theart ResNeXt is capable of identifying each type of PEAs with high accuracy. Furthermore, we define PEA pattern and PEA intensity measures to quantify PEA levels of compressed video sequence. We believe that the PEA265 database and our findings will benefit the future development of video quality assessment methods and perceptually motivated video encoders.Comment: 10 pages,15 figures,4 table

Status and strategies analysis on international standardization of auricular acupuncture points

AbstractObjectiveTo supply literature for developing an international standard of auricular acupuncture points.MethodsElectronic database searches were conducted in the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure and VIP, and the Western databases, Pubmed, the National Science and Technology Library, and the German Journal of Acupuncture, from 1990 to April, 2012. We also searched the documents of international symposiums for auricular acupuncture points (AAPs). Keywords were “auricular points”, “auricular acupuncture points”, “ear points”, or “auriculotherapy”.ResultsBasic and clinical research on AAPs was performed in China, the United States, France, and Germany. Clinical AAP research was done in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, the UK, Holland, Japan, Russia, and Africa. However, AAP research was not communicated internationally. The World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies recommended international standard of auricular acupuncture points (ISAAPs). Standardized nomenclature and locations of AAPs would provide a solid basis to draft an international standard organization.ConclusionExperts need to find common points from different countries or regions, provide evidence of different ideas, and list the proposal as a recommendation for an international standard

A Barrier-Lyapunov Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning Approach for Safe and Stable Control

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated impressive performance in various areas such as video games and robotics. However, ensuring safety and stability, which are two critical properties from a control perspective, remains a significant challenge when using RL to control real-world systems. In this paper, we first provide definitions of safety and stability for the RL system, and then combine the control barrier function (CBF) and control Lyapunov function (CLF) methods with the actor-critic method in RL to propose a Barrier-Lyapunov Actor-Critic (BLAC) framework which helps maintain the aforementioned safety and stability for the system. In this framework, CBF constraints for safety and CLF constraint for stability are constructed based on the data sampled from the replay buffer, and the augmented Lagrangian method is used to update the parameters of the RL-based controller. Furthermore, an additional backup controller is introduced in case the RL-based controller cannot provide valid control signals when safety and stability constraints cannot be satisfied simultaneously. Simulation results show that this framework yields a controller that can help the system approach the desired state and cause fewer violations of safety constraints compared to baseline algorithms.Comment: Preprint submitted to IEEE CDC 202

Status and strategies analysis on international standardization of auricular acupuncture points

AbstractObjectiveTo supply literature for developing an international standard of auricular acupuncture points.MethodsElectronic database searches were conducted in the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure and VIP, and the Western databases, Pubmed, the National Science and Technology Library, and the German Journal of Acupuncture, from 1990 to April, 2012. We also searched the documents of international symposiums for auricular acupuncture points (AAPs). Keywords were “auricular points”, “auricular acupuncture points”, “ear points”, or “auriculotherapy”.ResultsBasic and clinical research on AAPs was performed in China, the United States, France, and Germany. Clinical AAP research was done in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, the UK, Holland, Japan, Russia, and Africa. However, AAP research was not communicated internationally. The World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies recommended international standard of auricular acupuncture points (ISAAPs). Standardized nomenclature and locations of AAPs would provide a solid basis to draft an international standard organization.ConclusionExperts need to find common points from different countries or regions, provide evidence of different ideas, and list the proposal as a recommendation for an international standard

Symmetric Stationary Boundary Layer

Considering the boundary layer problem in the case of two-dimensional flow past a wedge with the wedge angle $\varphi=\pi\frac{2m}{m+1}$, Oleinik and Samokhin obtained the local well-posedness results for $m \geq 1$. In this paper, we establish the existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the Prandtl systems for arbitrary $m>0$, which solves the steady case in Open problem 6 proposed by Oleinik and Samokhin. Our proof is based on the maximum principle technique at the Crocco coordinates and the most important observation that when the fluid approaches a sharp point, it seems the self-similar solutions. Then we obtain the existence and uniqueness of the solution with the help of the self-similar solutions by the Line Method. Furthermore, we similarly establish the well-posedness results of three-dimensional flow past a cone.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figure

Characterization of Pin1 function in zebrafish development

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Saliency-Aware Spatio-Temporal Artifact Detection for Compressed Video Quality Assessment

Compressed videos often exhibit visually annoying artifacts, known as Perceivable Encoding Artifacts (PEAs), which dramatically degrade video visual quality. Subjective and objective measures capable of identifying and quantifying various types of PEAs are critical in improving visual quality. In this paper, we investigate the influence of four spatial PEAs (i.e. blurring, blocking, bleeding, and ringing) and two temporal PEAs (i.e. flickering and floating) on video quality. For spatial artifacts, we propose a visual saliency model with a low computational cost and higher consistency with human visual perception. In terms of temporal artifacts, self-attention based TimeSFormer is improved to detect temporal artifacts. Based on the six types of PEAs, a quality metric called Saliency-Aware Spatio-Temporal Artifacts Measurement (SSTAM) is proposed. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art metrics. We believe that SSTAM will be beneficial for optimizing video coding techniques