Improving Texture Categorization with Biologically Inspired Filtering

Within the domain of texture classification, a lot of effort has been spent on local descriptors, leading to many powerful algorithms. However, preprocessing techniques have received much less attention despite their important potential for improving the overall classification performance. We address this question by proposing a novel, simple, yet very powerful biologically-inspired filtering (BF) which simulates the performance of human retina. In the proposed approach, given a texture image, after applying a DoG filter to detect the "edges", we first split the filtered image into two "maps" alongside the sides of its edges. The feature extraction step is then carried out on the two "maps" instead of the input image. Our algorithm has several advantages such as simplicity, robustness to illumination and noise, and discriminative power. Experimental results on three large texture databases show that with an extremely low computational cost, the proposed method improves significantly the performance of many texture classification systems, notably in noisy environments. The source codes of the proposed algorithm can be downloaded from https://sites.google.com/site/nsonvu/code.Comment: 11 page

SUSTAINABLE BIOCOMPOSITES FROM RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND RECYCLED POLYMERS

The advantages and disadvantages of each biopolymer and biocomposite produced will be summarized, based on their mechanical properties, thermal resistance, and morphology. From this viewpoint, some of the materials will be developed on an industrial scale for the production of "green composites" with a pilot extrusion machine. The results of this thesis could not only be applied to Italian plastic companies but to the whole European bioplastic industry,and in general to allenterprises active in the most advanced countries of the world

The acoustic and perceptual nature of tone in Vietnamese

This study presents a description of Vietnamese tones in the three major dialects -Northern, Central and Southern - in their various aspects and at different levels of analysis. Acoustic phonetic materials were gathered from voice recordings of 34 informants, analyzed instrumentally and measured. The data obtained were treated statistically and normalized to yield typical values for the parameters of Fo, Intensity, Duration and Laryngealization, which serve to characterize all Vietnamese tones. The results established six non-stopped tones (level, falling, rising, drop, curve and broken) and two stopped tones (stopped rising and stopped drop) for Northern Vietnamese, which in this respect also represents Modern Standard Vietnamese. The Central and Southern dialects have only five non-stopped tones and two stopped tones,since there are no differences in the phonetic realizations of the standard curve and broken tones in these dialects. Four types of Fo contour (level, falling, rising and concave) and three levels of average Fo (high, mid and low) were established. Useful data on intensity, duration and laryngealization occurring on different tones were also obtained. Analysis of the variation of tone parameters in their relationships with segmental and suprasegmental environments points to the complex interaction various factors in the production of tone. The phonetic nature of Vietnamese tones can thus be understood to have acoustic properties related to the laryngeal mechanisms for the production of voice, with Fo contour, relative Fo level and voice quality as the basis for differentiating the tones. Perceptual tests on cross-dialect tone recognition with natural and synthetic tones, involving 84 Northern, Central and Southern Vietnamese subjects, showed that natural tones of the three dialects in meaningful contexts were readily identified by all subjects, while isolated real speech tones and synthetic tones presented varying degrees of difficulty in recognition according to individual tones, dialects and subjects. Analysis of tone features involved in misperceptions suggested that contour features played a dominant role in tone identification. A model of tone perception is proposed, including conversion processes and interpretation rules for translating the physical phonetic parameters into phonetic features (pitch targets and degrees of laryngealization) then into phonological features (contour, concave, high, low, falling, rising, creaky, stopped). The model is supposed to reflect the dynamic process of tone perception in which the phonetic properties of tones are perceived in terms of the native speakers' phonological structures

Statistical binary patterns for rotational invariant texture classification

International audienceA new texture representation framework called statistical binary patterns (SBP) is presented. It consists in applying rotation invariant local binary pattern operators (LBP riu2) to a series of moment images, defined by local statistics uniformly computed using a given spatial support. It can be seen as a generalisation of the commonly used complementation approach (CLBP), since it extends the local description not only to local contrast information, but to higher order local variations. In short, SBPs aim at expanding LBP self-similarity operator from the local gray level to the regional distribution level. Thanks to a richer local description, the SBPs have better discrimination power than other LBP variants. Furthermore, thanks to the regularisation effect of the statistical moments, the SBP descriptors show better noise robustness than classical CLBPs. The interest of the approach is validated through a large experimental study performed on five texture databases: KTH-TIPS, KTH-TIPS 2b, CUReT, UIUC and DTD. The results show that, for the four first datasets, the SBPs are comparable or outperform the recent state-of-the-art methods, even using small support for the LBP operator, and using limited size spatial support for the computation of the local statistics

Volumes of Blurred-Invariant Gaussians for Dynamic Texture Classification

International audienceAn effective model, which jointly captures shape and motion cues, for dynamic texture (DT) description is introduced by taking into account advantages of volumes of blurred-invariant features in three main following stages. First, a 3-dimensional Gaussian kernel is used to form smoothed sequences that allow to deal with well-known limitations of local encoding such as near uniform regions and sensitivity to noise. Second , a receptive volume of the Difference of Gaussians (DoG) is figured out to mitigate the negative impacts of environmental and illumination changes which are major challenges in DT understanding. Finally, a local encoding operator is addressed to construct a discriminative descriptor of enhancing patterns extracted from the filtered volumes. Evaluations on benchmark datasets (i.e., UCLA, DynTex, and DynTex++) for issue of DT classification have positively validated our crucial contributions

Synergistic effects of nucleating agents and plasticizers on the crystallization behavior of Poly(lactic acid)

The synergistic effect of nucleating agents and plasticizers on the thermal and mechanical performance of PLA nanocomposites was investigated with the objective of increasing the crystallinity and balancing the stiffness and toughness of PLA mechanical properties. Calcium carbonate, halloysite nanotubes, talc and LAK (sulfates) were compared with each other as heterogeneous nucleating agents. Both the DSC isothermal and non-isothermal studies indicated that talc and LAK were the more effective nucleating agents among the selected fillers. Poly(D-lactic acid) (PDLA) acted also as a nucleating agent due to the formation of the PLA stereocomplex. The half crystallization time was reduced by the addition of talc to about 2 min from 37.5 min of pure PLA by the isothermal crystallization study. The dynamic mechanical thermal study (DMTA) indicated that nanofillers acted as both reinforcement fillers and nucleating agents in relation to the higher storage modulus. The plasticized PLA studied by DMTA indicated a decreasing glass transition temperature with the increasing of the PEG content. The addition of nanofiller increased the Young's modulus. PEG had the plasticization effect of increasing the break deformation, while sharply decreasing the stiffness and strength of PLA. The synergistic effect of nanofillers and plasticizer achieved the balance between stiffness and toughness with well-controlled crystallization

The Impact of Viral Marketing on Emotion and Impulse Buying Behavior: A Case Study of Online Fashion

Impulsive online shopping is becoming a habit for many young consumers, especially for fashion products. This study aims to analyze the influence of viral marketing on emotions and impulsive online shopping behavior of young people for fashion products in Vietnam. The results showed that viral marketing with characteristics such as entertainment, source credibility, visual appeal, informativeness, and irritation all had a significant impact on emotions and impulsive online shopping behavior. Therefore,some suggestions are proposed for applying viral marketing to promote impulsive online shopping behavior for fashion products. Keywords: Viral marketing, Impulse buying behavior, Online shopping, Emotions, Fashion. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-7-03 Publication date: April 30th 202

Factors Affecting Business Angels Investment in Vietnam

The paper aims at investigating and comparing the factors determining investment decisions by business angels (BAs) from the viewpoints of BAs and startups in Vietnam based on a framework synthesized from a literature review and primary data from in-depth interviews conducted with 8 startups and 15 angel investors. The results show that the startups’ founder, working team, financial issues, product and market, and strategy related to exit and the roles of BAs are startup-related factors determining BAs’ investment in Vietnam. For BA-related factors, the BAs’ experience, investment objectives and preferences, and culture are key determinants. The novelty of the paper is to find out the gaps between the perspectives of BAs and startups, and the difference between Vietnamese and foreign BAs’ viewpoints. The finding is that BAs, more strictly than startups, assess their business plan, financial state, product, market, and targeted consumers. Startups neglect the exit strategy and role of BAs in invested startups. In addition, foreign and domestic BAs have different opinions on startups’ market scale, and expectation of profits and BAs’ roles in startups. The paper ends by providing some implications for Vietnamese startups to attract more angel investment, focusing on improving the quality of human resources, developing a profitable, honest, and realistic business plan, and setting up a long-run vision towards the global market. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2023-07-02-07 Full Text: PD

Evaluating household coal slag emissions in Binh Chanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam and recommended solutions

In Viet Nam, apart from coal-fired power plants, coal slag also emitted from households via coal burning activities. However, the quantity of slag emitted from households has been rarely determined, and most of it is not been well-treated. In addition, it is well-known that the untreated or mistreated coal slag can lead to severe impacts on both the environment and human health. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the emission of this slag, and thereafter to provide recommendations for improved management. In this study, the emission of household coal slag in Binh Chanh District of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was investigated by undertaking a fact-finding survey coupled with GPS. Coal burning experiments were also performed for various fuels including large-sized honeycomb charcoal (3 kg/piece); small-sized honeycomb charcoal (1.7 kg/piece); charcoal (1 kg) and dried firewood with rice husk (1 kg) to estimate the quantity of household coal slag emissions slag, as well as to primarily examine the impact to the environment and human health. Results showed that the emissions of household coal slag in the study area was considerable, up to 146 tonnes per year,  almost 60% of which, was directly discharged into the environment. The burning coal for household purposes was found to dramatically change the quality of air with high concentration of pollutants including formaldehyde (HCHC), total volatile organic compound (TVOC), as well as particulate matters (PM2.5 and PM10) in exceedance of national standards which led to health effects. Finally, solutions for managing the slag were proposed

EVALUATION OF SOLAR RADIATION ESTIMATED FROM HIMAWARI-8 SATELLITE OVER VIETNAM REGION

The development of Solar energy system is growing rapidly in Vietnam in recent years by encouragement of the Government in renewable energy. Requirement for accurate knowledge of the solar radiation reaching the surface is increasingly important in the successful deployment of Solar photovoltaic plants. However, measurements of different components of solar resources including direct normal irradiance (DNI) and global horizontal irradiance (GHI) are limited to few stations over whole country. Satellite imagery provides an ability to monitor the surface radiation over large areas at high spatial and temporal resolution as alternatives at low cost. Observations from the new Japanese geostationary satellite Himawari-8 produce imagery covering Asia-Pacific region, permitting estimation of GHI and DNI over Vietnam at 10-minute temporal resolution. However, accurate comparisons with ground observations are essential to assess their uncertainty. In this study, we evaluated the Himawari-8 radiation product AMATERASS provided by JST/CREST TEEDDA using observations recorded at 5 stations in different regions of Vietnam. The result shows good agreement between satellite estimation and observed data with high correlation of range 0.92-0.94, but better in clear-sky episodes.Because of AMATERASS outperform, we used it for validating ERA-Interim reanalysis in the spatial scale. The comparison was made dividedly for 7 climate zones and 4 seasons. The conclusion is that ERA-Interim is also well associated with satellite-based estimates in seasonal trend for all season, but in average the reanalysis has negative bias towards satellite estimates. This underestimation is more pronounced in the months of JJA and SON periods and in the north part of Vietnam because of unpredicted cloud in the ERA reanalysis