Learning to Detect Violent Videos using Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory

Developing a technique for the automatic analysis of surveillance videos in order to identify the presence of violence is of broad interest. In this work, we propose a deep neural network for the purpose of recognizing violent videos. A convolutional neural network is used to extract frame level features from a video. The frame level features are then aggregated using a variant of the long short term memory that uses convolutional gates. The convolutional neural network along with the convolutional long short term memory is capable of capturing localized spatio-temporal features which enables the analysis of local motion taking place in the video. We also propose to use adjacent frame differences as the input to the model thereby forcing it to encode the changes occurring in the video. The performance of the proposed feature extraction pipeline is evaluated on three standard benchmark datasets in terms of recognition accuracy. Comparison of the results obtained with the state of the art techniques revealed the promising capability of the proposed method in recognizing violent videos.Comment: Accepted in International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal based Surveillance(AVSS 2017

LSTA: Long Short-Term Attention for Egocentric Action Recognition

Egocentric activity recognition is one of the most challenging tasks in video analysis. It requires a fine-grained discrimination of small objects and their manipulation. While some methods base on strong supervision and attention mechanisms, they are either annotation consuming or do not take spatio-temporal patterns into account. In this paper we propose LSTA as a mechanism to focus on features from spatial relevant parts while attention is being tracked smoothly across the video sequence. We demonstrate the effectiveness of LSTA on egocentric activity recognition with an end-to-end trainable two-stream architecture, achieving state of the art performance on four standard benchmarks.Comment: Accepted to CVPR 201

Research Directions, Challenges and Issues in Opinion Mining

Rapid growth of Internet and availability of user reviews on the web for any product has provided a need for an effective system to analyze the web reviews. Such reviews are useful to some extent, promising both the customers and product manufacturers. For any popular product, the number of reviews can be in hundreds or even thousands. This creates difficulty for a customer to analyze them and make important decisions on whether to purchase the product or to not. Mining such product reviews or opinions is termed as opinion mining which is broadly classified into two main categories namely facts and opinions. Though there are several approaches for opinion mining, there remains a challenge to decide on the recommendation provided by the system. In this paper, we analyze the basics of opinion mining, challenges, pros & cons of past opinion mining systems and provide some directions for the future research work, focusing on the challenges and issues

Potential energy savings and benefits to thermal comfort from the effective use of window blinds

This research work involves the study of usage patterns of window blinds by the occupants of a multi-story apartment buildings in Lafayette, IN. The goal of this study is to understand the processes of enhancing comfort by changing window blind positioning through various times of the day. To achieve this the researcher studied the actual window blind usage pattern of the building under consideration. The researcher also surveyed the occupants of the building to record comfort preferences and its effect on window blind usage. The window pattern is simulated into an energy model and its predicted energy consumption is compared with the predicted energy consumption under optimum window blind usage to maximize energy savings. To conclude the study, the researcher will quantify the energy that can be saved by proper positioning of window blinds

The use of prepositions among malay adult ESL learners

One predicament facing an educationist is whether grammar should be taught formally, or allowed to be naturally acquired. This question is pertinent in the face of the fact that there has generally been a deterioration of students‟ grammar skills among English as a second language (ESL) learners in Malaysia, especially in the use of syntactical categories such as prepositions and articles.In order to get to the depth of the issue, a protracted study using a case study research design was carried out. This study was carried out on seven Malay students from the International Islamic University Malaysia. The study sought to determine the extent to which students acquired English prepositions in the naturalistic setting in the oral and written modes, the different types of errors in students‟ use of prepositions, in the use of alternative locative frames, and whether there was a specific pattern in acquisition of prepositions. Data from students‟ written samples, interviews and presentations were collected. The baseline data was collected initially, and subsequent data collected at six monthly intervals over three years. The progress of the students was monitored over this period. An analysis of students‟ use of prepositions in the various speaking and writing tasks was carried out. Although errors persist, most subjects showed improvements in their use of prepositions for both speaking and writing tasks. The errors they committed were of two kinds: errors of commission and errors of omission. They had more errors of commission than errors of omission. In the use of alternative locative frames, one of the most common errors was the unnecessary use of the phrase involving a preposition, „for me‟. Persistent errors could arise due to incomplete linguistic rule formation. It also cannot be denied that there could be transfer from the students‟ first language (L1). There were also instances of other words like adverbs being used instead of prepositions. With respect to the performances of students in the most commonly used prepositions, and in certain clusters of prepositions, in the speaking tasks, the best improvement was seen in the prepositions „for‟, „in‟ and „about‟, while in the writing tasks, the prepositions „to, „of‟ and „in‟ were among those where the students had the best results. These findings imply that grammar should be taught in a way that is compatible with the natural processes of acquisition. The subjects‟ overall competency was not of a very high level, not having gained native use of the various prepositions. Consequently, language instructors should also be equipped with special skills to be able to teach prepositions; they should be provided with suitable, accurate teaching materials. Learners should also be developmentally ready to acquire prepositions, and changes have to be made in the curriculum for instruction of prepositions that pose greater problems to second language (L2) learners

Acquisition of English prepositions among Malaysian learners: a case study

Educationists are often in a predicament as to whether grammar should be taught formally, or whether it can be deliberately learned. This question is especially pertinent in Malaysia where there has been a general deterioration of grammar skills among English as a second language (ESL) learner. A prospective case study was carried out on seven Malay students from the International Islamic University Malaysia. The study sought to determine the extent to which students acquired English prepositions in the naturalistic setting in the written mode, the different types of errors, the use of alternative locative frames, and whether there was a specific pattern in the learning of prepositions. The study used writing tasks where students were required to write essays as well as make journal entries. Data was collected at six monthly intervals over three years. An analysis of students’ use of prepositions was carried out to monitor progress. It was found that most subjects had improvements in their use of prepositions, with more errors of commission than omission. One of the most common errors was the unnecessary use of the phrase involving a preposition, ‘for me’. Persistent errors could arise due to incomplete linguistic rule formation and transfer from the students’ first language (L1). There were also instances of other words like adverbs being used instead of prepositions. The best improvement was seen in the prepositions ‘for’, ‘in’ and ‘about’. These findings necessitate the need for corrective feedback on errors, and for grammar instruction to be compatible with the natural processes of acquisition

Early Childhood Educational Toys through an Architectural Perspective

This capstone explores the overlaps between architectural training and early childhood education, and how architectural design can inform the design process of creating educational toys for young children. Through an analysis of pedagogies used throughout history in early childhood education and my own personal experiences of architecture school, an understanding of how an architectural perspective can influence activities for three- to five-year-olds is developed. Precedent studies of open-ended educational toys designed by educators and designers introduced the design thinking mindset necessary to create an effectively enriching toy. The next phase of this project involves designing an educational toy for the given age group based off the principles derived from the background and research of early childhood education techniques. A project statement is then formed to determine intended effects of the educational toy and then a design process is initiated to achieve these results. The iterative process tests various textures, shapes, sizes, and connections. The designed toy was tested with a group of children in the targeted age range attending the Jean Tyson Child Development Study Center. Edits to the designed toy are made based off the children’s verbal and indicated feedback and the trial is repeated to gauge success of functionality and the children’s preferences. Although further and longer-term testing is required to determine the lasting educational effects of the toy, the design is evaluated using the initial project statement