Quantum bounds for gravitational de Sitter entropy and the Cardy-Verlinde formula

We analyze different types of quantum corrections to the Cardy-Verlinde entropy formula in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe and in an (anti)-de Sitter space. In all cases we show that quantum corrections can be represented by an effective cosmological constant which is then used to redefine the parameters entering the Cardy-Verlinde formula so that it becomes valid also with quantum corrections, a fact that we interpret as a further indication of its universality. A proposed relation between Cardy-Verlinde formula and the ADM Hamiltonian constraint is given.Comment: LaTeX file, 15 pages, reference is adde

InfoFlow: Mining Information Flow Based on User Community in Social Networking Services

Online social networking services (SNSs) have emerged rapidly and have become huge data sources for social network analysis. The spread of the content generated by users is crucial in SNS, but there is only a handful of research works on information diffusion and, more precisely, information diffusion flow. In this paper, we propose a novel method to discover information diffusion processes from SNS data. The method starts preprocessing the SNS data using a user-centric algorithm of community detection based on modularity maximization with the purpose of reducing the complexity of the noisy data. After that, the InfoFlow miner generates information diffusion flow models among the user communities discovered from the data. The algorithm is an extension of a traditional process discovery technique called the Flexible Heuristics miner, but the visualization ability of the generated process model is improved with a new measure called response weight, which effectively captures and represents the interactions among communities. An experiment with Facebook data was conducted, and information flow among user communities was visualized. Additionally, a quality assessment of the models was carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. The final constructed models allowed us to identify useful information such as how the information flows between communities and information disseminators and receptors within communities.11Ysciescopu

Inflated 3D ConvNet context analysis for violence detection

According to the Wall Street Journal, one billion surveillance cameras will be deployed around the world by 2021. This amount of information can be hardly managed by humans. Using a Inflated 3D ConvNet as backbone, this paper introduces a novel automatic violence detection approach that outperforms state-of-the-art existing proposals. Most of those proposals consider a pre-processing step to only focus on some regions of interest in the scene, i.e., those actually containing a human subject. In this regard, this paper also reports the results of an extensive analysis on whether and how the context can affect or not the adopted classifier performance. The experiments show that context-free footage yields substantial deterioration of the classifier performance (2% to 5%) on publicly available datasets. However, they also demonstrate that performance stabilizes in context-free settings, no matter the level of context restriction applied. Finally, a cross-dataset experiment investigates the generalizability of results obtained in a single-collection experiment (same dataset used for training and testing) to cross-collection settings (different datasets used for training and testing)

Gotcha-I: A Multiview Human Videos Dataset

The growing need of security in large open spaces led to the need to use video capture of people in different context and illumination and with multiple biometric traits as head pose, body gait, eyes, nose, mouth, and further more. All these traits are useful for a multibiometric identification or a person re-identification in a video surveillance context. Body Worn Cameras (BWCs) are used by the police of different countries all around the word and their use is growing significantly. This raises the need to develop new recognition methods that consider multibiometric traits on person re-identification. The purpose of this work is to present a new video dataset called Gotcha-I. This dataset has been obtained using more mobile cameras to adhere to the data of BWCs. The dataset includes videos from 62 subjects in indoor and outdoor environments to address both security and surveillance problem. During these videos, subjects may have a different behavior in videos such as freely, path, upstairs, avoid the camera. The dataset is composed by 493 videos including a set of 180° videos for each face of the subjects in the dataset. Furthermore, there are already processed data, such as: the 3D model of the face of each subject with all the poses of the head in pitch, yaw and roll; and the body keypoint coordinates of the gait for each video frame. It’s also shown an application of gender recognition performed on Gotcha-I, confirming the usefulness and innovativeness of the proposed dataset

The Dual Delivery of Y15 and Metformin in a PLGA Scaffold for the Treatment of Platinum Resistant Ovarian Cancer

Background: Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer mortality among women in the US. High mortality is linked to resistance to platinum compounds. Currently there is no treatment for platinum resistant ovarian cancer (OCpt). Platinum resistance shows increased activity of focal adhesion kinase (FAK). Y15 is a FAK inhibitor and increases OCpt sensitivity to chemotherapy. Metformin induces apoptosis, has no increased cytotoxicity, and works synergistically with Y15 in OCpt cells. Biomaterial scaffolds deliver drugs locally, maximizing drug concentration and bioavailability while minimizing systemic toxicity. PLGA copolymer has excellent biocompatibility, versatility, and a tailorable degradation rate. The objective of this study is to utilize biomaterials as a dual drug delivery system and investigate if the combined delivery of Y15 and Metformin would result in synergistic effects on cell viability. Methods: A mold-less technique combining PLGA and the drugs in tetraglycol were injected into PBS to form a globular scaffold. An MTT assay was used to analyze cell viability in OCpt OVCAR3 cells at an absorbance of 570 nm with a microplate reader. Results: Metformin and Y15 resulted in cell viabilities of 66% and 54%, respectively. When combined, the viability decreased to 23%. In studies with the fabricated PLGA scaffolds, cell viabilities were 74% and 89% for Metformin and Y15. When combined, cell viability decreased significantly to 5%. Conclusions: The delivery of Y15 and Metformin in a biomaterial scaffold can result in a synergistic effect on cell viability and thus, can be a promising approach for the treatment of OCpt

Gait Analysis for Gender Classification in Forensics

Gender Classification (GC) is a natural ability that belongs to the human beings. Recent improvements in computer vision provide the possibility to extract information for different classification/recognition purposes. Gender is a soft biometrics useful in video surveillance, especially in uncontrolled contexts such as low-light environments, with arbitrary poses, facial expressions, occlusions and motion blur. In this work we present a methodology for the construction of a gait analyzer. The methodology is divided into three major steps: (1) data extraction, where body keypoints are extracted from video sequences; (2) feature creation, where body features are constructed using body keypoints; and (3) classifier selection when such data are used to train four different classifiers in order to determine the one that best performs. The results are analyzed on the dataset Gotcha, characterized by user and camera either in motion

Acausality in Gowdy spacetimes

We present a parametrization of $T^3$ and $S^1\times S^2$ Gowdy cosmological models which allows us to study both types of topologies simultaneously. We show that there exists a coordinate system in which the general solution of the linear polarized special case (with both topologies) has exactly the same functional dependence. This unified parametrization is used to investigate the existence of Cauchy horizons at the cosmological singularities, leading to a violation of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture. Our results indicate that the only acausal spacetimes are described by the Kantowski-Sachs and the Kerr-Gowdy metrics.Comment: Typos corrected, 10 pages. Dedicated to Michael P. Ryan on the occasion of his 60-th birthda