Classification of Two Comic Books based on Convolutional Neural Networks

Unphotographic images are the powerful representations described various situations. Thus, understanding intellectual products such as comics and picture books is one of the important topics in the field of artificial intelligence. Hence, stepwise analysis of a comic story, i.e., features of a part of the image, information features, features relating to continuous scene etc., was pursued. Especially, the length and each scene of four-scene comics are limited so as to ensure a clear interpretation of the contents.In this study, as the first step in this direction, the problem to classify two four-scene comics by the same artists were focused as the example. Several classifiers were constructed by utilizing a Convolutional Neural Network(CNN), and the results of classification by a human annotator and by a computational method were compared.From these experiments, we have clearly shown that CNN is efficient way to classify unphotographic gray scaled images and found that characteristic features of images to classify incorrectly

Table tennis for patients with Parkinson’s disease: A single-center, prospective pilot study

Introduction: Table tennis is a popular sport worldwide. However, no study has examined whether it is an effective exercise for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). The efficacy and safety of table tennis exercise for PD patients was examined. Methods: This 6-month prospective study investigated if our table tennis exercise program could improve parkinsonian motor symptoms, cognition and psychiatric symptoms. Twelve PD patients with Hoehn & Yahr stage ≤4 were recruited. Patients participated in a 6-hour exercise session once weekly. All patients were assessed with the Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) parts I-IV, Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), and Starkstein Apathy Scale (SAS) at baseline, 3 months, and 6 months. Results: Nine of 12 PD patients were analyzed, except for three patients for which data was missing. MDS-UPDRS parts II and III were improved at 3 months (median −4.0, p = 0.012 and median −10.0, p = 0.012) and 6 months (median −7.0, p = 0.015 and median −12.0, p = 0.008), whereas MDS-UPDRS total parts I scores and total IV scores, MoCA, FAB, SDS, and SAS were unchanged. Adverse events included fall and backache in one patient each. Conclusion: A table tennis exercise program is relatively safe and may improve activities of daily living and motor symptoms in patients with PD