Reliable camera motion estimation from compressed MPEG videos using machine learning approach

As an important feature in characterizing video content, camera motion has been widely applied in various multimedia and computer vision applications. A novel method for fast and reliable estimation of camera motion from MPEG videos is proposed, using support vector machine for estimation in a regression model trained on a synthesized sequence. Experiments conducted on real sequences show that the proposed method yields much improved results in estimating camera motions while the difficulty in selecting valid macroblocks and motion vectors is skipped

The Causative Agent of FMD Disease

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is an acute infection of cloven-hoofed animals caused by foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV). It is one of the most serious infectious diseases affecting animal husbandry and a major impediment to international trade in livestock and their products. Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV), a member of the Picornaviridae family of Aphthovirus, is an icosahedral virus without envelope, 25–30 nm in diameter, containing about 8.4 kb of positive-sense single-stranded RNA. The virus exists in seven different serotypes: A, O, C, Asia1, SAT1, SAT2, and SAT3, but a large number of subtypes have evolved in each serotype. This chapter reviews the genome, structure, serotype, and epidemiology of FMDV, which will help people to further explore the mechanism of the interaction between foot-and-mouth disease virus and host and provide reference for scientific prevention and control of FMDV

Grape seed extract prevents skeletal muscle wasting in interleukin 10 knockout mice

BACKGROUND: Muscle wasting is frequently a result of cancers, AIDS, chronic diseases and aging, which often links to muscle inflammation. Although grape seed extract (GSE) has been widely used as a human dietary supplement for health promotion and disease prevention primarily due to its anti-oxidative and anti-inflammative effects, it is unknown whether GSE affects muscle wasting. The objective is to test the effects of GSE supplementation on inflammation and muscle wasting in interleukin (IL)-10 knockout mice, a recently developed model for human frailty. METHODS: Male IL-10 knockout (IL10KO) C57BL/6 mice at 6 weeks of age were assigned to either 0% or 0.1% GSE (in drinking water) groups (n = 10) for 12 weeks, when skeletal muscle was sampled for analyses. Wild-type C57BL/6 male mice were used as controls. RESULTS: Tibialis anterior muscle weight and fiber size of IL10KO mice were much lower than wild-type mice. IL10KO enhanced nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) signaling and inflammasome formation when compared to wild-type mice. Phosphorylation of anabolic signaling was inhibited, whereas muscle specific ubiquitin ligase, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and apoptotic signaling were up-regulated in IL10KO mice. GSE supplementation effectively rectified these adverse changes in IL10KO muscle, which provide an explanation for the enhanced muscle mass, reduced protein degradation and apoptosis in GSE supplemented mice compared to IL10KO mice without supplementation. CONCLUSION: GSE supplementation effectively prevents muscle wasting in IL10KO mice, showing that GSE can be used as an auxiliary treatment for muscle loss associated with chronic inflammation and frailty

Monte Carlo convex hull model for classification of traditional Chinese paintings

While artists demonstrate their individual styles through paintings and drawings, how to describe such artistic styles well selected visual features towards computerized analysis of the arts remains to be a challenging research problem. In this paper, we propose an integrated feature-based artistic descriptor with Monte Carlo Convex Hull (MCCH) feature selection model and support vector machine (SVM) for characterizing the traditional Chinese paintings and validate its effectiveness via automated classification of Chinese paintings authored by well-known Chinese artists. The integrated artistic style descriptor essentially contains a number of visual features including a novel feature of painting composition and object feature, each of which describes one element of the artistic style. In order to ensure an integrated discriminating power and certain level of adaptability to the variety of artistic styles among different artists, we introduce a novel feature selection method to process the correlations and the synergy across all elements inside the integrated feature and hence complete the proposed style-based descriptor design. Experiments on classification of Chinese paintings via a parallel MCCH model illustrate that the proposed descriptor outperforms the existing representative technique in terms of precision and recall rates