Ensemble of Hankel Matrices for Face Emotion Recognition

In this paper, a face emotion is considered as the result of the composition of multiple concurrent signals, each corresponding to the movements of a specific facial muscle. These concurrent signals are represented by means of a set of multi-scale appearance features that might be correlated with one or more concurrent signals. The extraction of these appearance features from a sequence of face images yields to a set of time series. This paper proposes to use the dynamics regulating each appearance feature time series to recognize among different face emotions. To this purpose, an ensemble of Hankel matrices corresponding to the extracted time series is used for emotion classification within a framework that combines nearest neighbor and a majority vote schema. Experimental results on a public available dataset shows that the adopted representation is promising and yields state-of-the-art accuracy in emotion classification.Comment: Paper to appear in Proc. of ICIAP 2015. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1506.0500

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY WITH DIFFERENT STRATEGIES AND AIR-DILUTION USING OPTICAL SI ENGINE FUELED WITH HYDRATED ETHANOL

Several dilution conditions techniques are used in internal combustion engines to increase fuel economy and reduce pollutant emissions, primarily nitrogen oxide (NOX), which are generated by the thermal pathway. Among the techniques, we can highlight air dilution (lean combustion) and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). The control of these operations using different types of fuels and biofuels and their peculiarities, are of fundamental importance to remove the maximum efficiency from the process, generating the lowest level of emission and respecting the current legislation. Although several studies have achieved interesting results for reducing emissions and knocks thanks to the dilution of the air, it has been observed that the diluent without oxygen is more efficient. Although air dilution has a slightly lesser effect than EGR, this mode of operation can help to understand the dynamics of engine load dilution, mainly due to the complexity of EGR tests on research engines. Therefore, as a background, tests were carried out experimentally with air dilution in order to understand the behavior for the prediction of future tests with EGR. The tests were performed with hydrated ethanol and speeds of 1500 rpm and 2500 rpm. It was possible to observe that with increasing dilution, there is a gradual increase in the variability of the burn and its displacement to the region close to the inlet valve. It was observed that the dilution provided a decrease in the formation of NOX and CO and an increase in hydrocarbon emissions. Increased rotation due to increased turbulence causes changes in emission values

MEASUREMENT OF THE REGRESSION RATE IN A HYBRID ROCKET MOTOR BY ACQUIRING THE HELMHOLTZ FREQUENCY IN THE COMBUSTION CHAMBER

Low thrust values obtained with a hybrid rocket motor (HRM) are a consequence of the difficulty in quickly mixing the fuel and oxidizer, which is characterized by a low regression rate of the fuel grain. Therefore, the measurement of this parameter is of great importance in studies that aim at solutions for this deficiency in HRM. Several studies calculate a reliable value of the average regression rate over time by measuring the total mass of fuel before and after each burn. A method to measure instantaneous regression rate is by acquiring the Helmholtz resonance frequency in the combustion chamber. This work uses a piezoelectric pressure transducer to obtain the Helmholtz frequency mode of the combustion chamber in a laboratory scale test bench with high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and gaseous oxygen, and is based on the principle that this frequency is inversely proportional to the square-root of the chamber volume. With the chamber volume variation, the port diameter of the grain variation is obtained. In conclusion, the calculated variation of port diameter agreed well with the correlation for average regression rate, determined from mass loss during operation

Penile Exogenous Pigmentation Mimicking Melanoma

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On the use of AMSU-based products for the description of soil water content at basin scale

Abstract. Characterizing the dynamics of soil moisture fields is a key issue in hydrology, offering a strategy to improve our understanding of complex climate-soil-vegetation interactions. Besides in-situ measurements and hydrological models, soil moisture dynamics can be inferred by analyzing data acquired by sensors on board of airborne and/or satellite platforms. In this work, we investigated the use of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (NOAA-AMSU-A) radiometer for the remote characterization of soil water content. To this aim, a field measurement campaign, lasted about three months (3 March 2010–18 May 2010), was carried out using a portable time-domain reflectometer (TDR) to get soil water content measures over five different locations within an experimental basin of 32.5 km2, located in the South of Italy. In detail, soil moisture measurements were carried out systematically at the times of satellite overpasses, over two square areas of 400 m2, a triangular area of 200 m2 and two transects of 60 and 170 m, respectively. Each monitored site is characterized by different land covers and soil textures, to account for spatial heterogeneity of land surface. Afterwards, a more extensive comparison (i.e. analyzing a 5 yr data time series) was made using soil moisture simulated by a hydrological model. Measured and modeled soil moisture data were compared with two AMSU-based indices: the Surface Wetness Index (SWI) and the Soil Wetness Variation Index (SWVI). Both time series of indices have been filtered by means of an exponential filter to account for the fact that microwave sensors only provide information at the skin surface. This allowed to understand the ability of each satellite-based index to account for soil moisture dynamics and to understand its performances under different conditions. As a general remark, the comparison shows a higher ability of the filtered SWI to describe the general trend of soil moisture, while the SWVI can capture soil moisture variations with a precision that increases at the higher values of SWVI

Iatrogenic Delirium in an Elderly Patient: When Drugs are Harmful

Delirium is a global disorder of cognition that represents a medical emergency and, particularly in elderly, is often unrecognized or misdiagnosed and commonly mistaken for dementia, depression, mania, or an acute schizophrenic reaction. Drug-induced delirium is a common matter in the elderly and in this paper we report the onset of delirium induced by -drug interaction in a previously health elderly patient

NREL Gearbox Reliability Collaborative: Comparing In-Field Gearbox Response to Different Dynamometer Test Conditions: Preprint

This paper presents the results of NREL's Gearbox Reliability Collaborative comparison of dynamometer tests conducted on a 750-kW gearbox to field testing

The first level muon trigger in the central toroid of the ATLAS experiment

We present the design of the first level muon trigger in the central toroid of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A trigger is foreseen based on fast, finely segmented gaseous detectors, Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC), to unambiguously identify the interaction bunch crossing. We describe the detectors and the logic scheme of the trigger. © 1995