Automatic Detection of Pain from Spontaneous Facial Expressions

This paper presents a new approach for detecting pain in sequences of spontaneous facial expressions. The motivation for this work is to accompany mobile-based self-management of chronic pain as a virtual sensor for tracking patients' expressions in real-world settings. Operating under such constraints requires a resource efficient approach for processing non-posed facial expressions from unprocessed temporal data. In this work, the facial action units of pain are modeled as sets of distances among related facial landmarks. Using standardized measurements of pain versus no-pain that are specific to each user, changes in the extracted features in relation to pain are detected. The activated features in each frame are combined using an adapted form of the Prkachin and Solomon Pain Intensity scale (PSPI) to detect the presence of pain per frame. Painful features must be activated in N consequent frames (time window) to indicate the presence of pain in a session. The discussed method was tested on 171 video sessions for 19 subjects from the McMaster painful dataset for spontaneous facial expressions. The results show higher precision than coverage in detecting sequences of pain. Our algorithm achieves 94% precision (F-score=0.82) against human observed labels, 74% precision (F-score=0.62) against automatically generated pain intensities and 100% precision (F-score=0.67) against self-reported pain intensities

Convergence of energy-dependent incommensurate antiferromagnetic neutron scattering peaks to commensurate resonance in underdoped bilayer cuprates

The recently discovered coexistence of incommensurate antiferromagnetic neutron scattering peaks and commensurate resonance in underdoped YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ is calling for an explanation. Within the t-J model, the doping and energy dependence of the spin dynamics of the underdoped bilayer cuprates in the normal state is studied based on the fermion-spin theory by considering the bilayer interactions. Incommensurate peaks are found at $[(1\pm\delta)\pi,\pi]$ and $[\pi,(1\pm\delta)\pi]$ at low energies with $\delta$ initially increasing with doping at low dopings and then saturating at higher dopings. These incommensurate peaks are suppressed, and the parameter $\delta$ is reduced with increasing energy. Eventually it converges to the $[\pi,\pi]$ resonance peak. Thus the recently observed coexistence is interpreted in terms of bilayer interactions.Comment: 15 pages, Revtex, five figures are included, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Methods for Assessing the Impact of Fog Oil Smoke on Availability, Palatability, & Food Quality of Relevant Life Stages of Insects for Threatened and Endangered Species

A methodology for quantifying population dynamics and food source value of insect fauna in areas subjected to fog oil smoke was developed. Our approach employed an environmentally controlled re-circulating wind tunnel outfitted with a high-heat vaporization and re-condensation fog oil generator that has been shown to produce aerosols of comparable chemistry and droplet-size distribution as those of field releases of the smoke. This method provides reproducible exposures of insects under realistic climatic and environmental conditions to fog oil aerosols that duplicate chemical and droplet-size characteristics of field releases of the smoke. The responses measured take into account reduction in food sources due to death and to changes in availability of relevant life stages of insects that form the prey base for the listed Threatened and Endangered Species. The influence of key environmental factors, wind speed and canopy structure on these responses were characterized. Data generated using this method was used to develop response functions related to particle size, concentration, wind speed, and canopy structure that will allow military personnel to assess and manage impacts to endangered species from fog oil smoke used in military training

Fluorescent nanoparticles for sensing

Nanoparticle-based fluorescent sensors have emerged as a competitive alternative to small molecule sensors, due to their excellent fluorescence-based sensing capabilities. The tailorability of design, architecture, and photophysical properties has attracted the attention of many research groups, resulting in numerous reports related to novel nanosensors applied in sensing a vast variety of biological analytes. Although semiconducting quantum dots have been the best-known representative of fluorescent nanoparticles for a long time, the increasing popularity of new classes of organic nanoparticle-based sensors, such as carbon dots and polymeric nanoparticles, is due to their biocompatibility, ease of synthesis, and biofunctionalization capabilities. For instance, fluorescent gold and silver nanoclusters have emerged as a less cytotoxic replacement for semiconducting quantum dot sensors. This chapter provides an overview of recent developments in nanoparticle-based sensors for chemical and biological sensing and includes a discussion on unique properties of nanoparticles of different composition, along with their basic mechanism of fluorescence, route of synthesis, and their advantages and limitations

Association of maternal Vitamin D status with glucose tolerance and caesarean section in a multi-ethnic Asian cohort: the growing up in Singapore towards healthy outcomes study

10.1371/journal.pone.0142239PLoS ONE10111-16GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes

Results of Large-Scale Testing on Effects of Anti-Foam Agent on Gas Retention and Release

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection’s Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) will process and treat radioactive waste that is stored in tanks at the Hanford Site. The waste treatment process in the pretreatment facility will mix both Newtonian and non-Newtonian slurries in large process tanks. Process vessels mixing non-Newtonian slurries will use pulse jet mixers (PJMs), air sparging, and recirculation pumps. An anti-foam agent (AFA) will be added to the process streams to prevent surface foaming, but may also increase gas holdup and retention within the slurry. The work described in this report addresses gas retention and release in simulants with AFA through testing and analytical studies. Gas holdup and release tests were conducted in a 1/4-scale replica of the lag storage vessel operated in the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Applied Process Engineering Laboratory using a kaolin/bentonite clay and AZ-101 HLW chemical simulant with non-Newtonian rheological properties representative of actual waste slurries. Additional tests were performed in a small-scale mixing vessel in the PNNL Physical Sciences Building using liquids and slurries representing major components of typical WTP waste streams. Analytical studies were directed at discovering how the effect of AFA might depend on gas composition and predicting the effect of AFA on gas retention and release in the full-scale plant, including the effects of mass transfer to the sparge air. The work at PNNL was part of a larger program that included tests conducted at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) that is being reported separately. SRNL conducted gas holdup tests in a small-scale mixing vessel using the AZ-101 high-level waste (HLW) chemical simulant to investigate the effects of different AFAs, their components, and of adding noble metals. Full-scale, single-sparger mass transfer tests were also conducted at SRNL in water and AZ-101 HLW simulant to provide data for PNNL’s WTP gas retention and release modeling