Image Enlargement Based on Proportional Salient Feature

This paper proposes an image enlargement methodthat produces proportional salient content of imagemagnification. To obtain the proportional salient image content:first, we enlarge the source image to the high size of the targetimage using uniform enlarging. Second, we slice the image intosections from top to bottom following the minimum energy anddetect the salient feature of the image. Third, we enlarge the sliceof the image region that does not containthe salient feature of theimage to the full size of the target image. The proposed methodhas been tested in several images, such as akiyo, butterfly,cameraman, canoe, dolphin, and parrot. The experimentalresults show that the proposed method results in a proportionalcontent for image enlargement in the different ratios comparedwith the comparison method

Face Recognition Using Holistic Features and Within Class Scatter-Based PCA

The Principle Component Analysis (PCA) and itsvariations are the most popular approach for features clustering,which is mostly implemented for face recognition. The optimumprojection matrix of the PCA is typically obtained by eigenanalysisof global covariance matrix. However, the projection datausing the PCA are lack of discriminatory power. This problem iscaused by removing the null space of data scatter that containsmuch discriminant information. To solve this problem, we presentalternative strategy to the PCA called alternative PCA, whichobtains the optimum projection matrix from within class scatterinstead of global covariance matrix. This algorithm not onlyprovides better features clustering than that of common PCA(CPCA) but also can overcome the retraining problem of theCPCA. In this paper, this algorithm is applied for face recognitionwith the holistic features of face image, which has compact sizeand powerful energy compactness as dimensional reduction ofthe raw face image. From the experimental results, the proposedmethod provides better performance for both recognition rateand accuracy parameters than those of CPCA and its variationswhen the tests were carried out using data from several databasessuch as ITS-LAB., INDIA, ORL, and FERET

Traffic Light Signal Parameters Optimization using Modification of Multielement Genetic Algorithm

A strategy to optimize traffic light signal parameters is presented for solving traffic congestion problem using modification of the Multielement Genetic Algorithm (MEGA). The aim of this method is to improve the lack of vehicle throughput (FF ) of the works called as traffic light signal parameters optimization using the MEGA and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). In this case, the modification of MEGA is done by adding Hash-Table for saving some best populations for accelerating the recombination process of MEGA which is shortly called as H-MEGA. The experimental results show that the H-MEGA based optimization provides better performance than MEGA and PSO based methods (improving the FF of both MEGA and PSO based optimization methods by about 10.01% (from 82,63% to 92.64%) and 6.88% (from 85.76% to 92.64%), respectively). In addition, the H-MEGA improve significantly the real FF of Ooe Toroku road network of Kumamoto City, Japan about 21.62%

A role for SUMO modification in transcriptional repression and activation

Since the discovery of the SUMO (small ubiquitin-like modifier) family of proteins just over a decade ago, a plethora of substrates have been uncovered including many regulators of transcription. Conjugation of SUMO to target proteins has generally been considered as a repressive modification. However, there are now a growing number of examples where sumoylation has been shown to activate transcription. Here we discuss whether there is something intrinsically repressive about sumoylation, or if the outcome of this modification in the context of transcription will prove to be largely substrate-dependent. We highlight some of the technical challenges that will be faced by attempting to answer this question

Fast pornographic image recognition using compact holistic features and multi-layer neural network

The paper presents an alternative fast pornographic image recognition using compact holistic features and multi-layer neural network (MNN). The compact holistic features of pornographic images, which are invariant features against pose and scale, is extracted by shape and frequency analysis on pornographic images under skin region of interests (ROIs). The main objective of this work is to design pornographic recognition scheme which not only can improve performances of existing methods (i.e., methods based on skin probability, scale invariant feature transform, eigenporn, and Multilayer-Perceptron and Neuro-Fuzzy (MP-NF)) but also can works fast for recognition. The experimental outcome display that our proposed system can improve 0.3% of accuracy and reduce 6.60% the false negative rate (FNR) of the best existing method (skin probability and eigenporn on YCbCr, SEP), respectively. Additionally, our proposed method also provides almost similar robust performances to the MP-NF on large size dataset. However, our proposed method needs short recognition time by about 0.021 seconds per image for both tested datasets

Association Study of Two Cannabinoid Receptor Genes, CNR1 and CNR2, with Methamphetamine Dependence

Several studies have suggested that the endocannabinoid system plays significant roles in the vulnerability to psychiatric disorders including drug abuse. To examine the possible association of the CNR1 and CNR2 genes, which encode cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2, with methamphetamine dependence, we investigated three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (rs806379, rs1535255, rs2023239) in intron 2 of the CNR1 gene and a nonsynonymous SNP, Q63R, in the CNR2 gene. The study samples consisted of 223 patients with methamphetamine dependence and 292 age- and sex- matched controls. There were no significant differences between the patients and controls in genotypic or allelic distribution of any SNP of the CNR1 and CNR2 genes. We also analyzed the clinical features of methamphetamine dependence. Rs806379 of the CNR1 gene showed a significant association with the phenotype of latency of psychosis after the first consumption of methamphetamine. Patients with the T allele or T-positive genotypes (T/T or A/T) may develop a rapid onset of psychosis after methamphetamine abuse. The present study suggests a possibility that genetic variants of the CNR1 gene may produce a liability to the complication of psychotic state after abuse of methamphetamine; however, our findings need to be confirmed by future replications

Association Between 5HT1b Receptor Gene and Methamphetamine Dependence

Several lines of evidence implicate serotonergic dysfunction in diverse psychiatric disorders including anxiety, depression, and drug abuse. Mice with a knock-out of the 5HT1b receptor gene (HTR1B) displayed increased locomotor response to cocaine and elevated motivation to self-administer cocaine and alcohol. Previous genetic studies showed significant associations of HTR1B with alcohol dependence and substance abuse, but were followed by inconsistent results. We examined a case-control genetic association study of HTR1B with methamphetamine-dependence patients in a Japanese population. The subjects were 231 patients with methamphetamine dependence, 214 of whom had a co-morbidity of methamphetamine psychosis, and 248 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. The three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), rs130058 (A-165T), rs1228814 (A-700C) and rs1228814 (A+1180G) of HTR1B were genotyped. There was no significant difference in allelic and genotypic distributions of the SNPs between methamphetamine dependence and the control. Genetic associations of HTR1B were tested with several clinical phenotypes of methamphetamine dependence and/or psychosis, such as age at first abuse, duration of latency from the first abuse to onset of psychosis, prognosis of psychosis after therapy, and complication of spontaneous relapse of psychotic state. There was, however, no asscocation between any SNP and the clinical phenotypes. Haplotype analyses showed the three SNPs examined were within linkage disequilibrium, which implied that the three SNPs covered the whole HTR1B, and distribution of estimated haplotype frequency was not different between the groups. The present findings may indicate that HTR1B does not play a major role in individual susceptibility to methamphetamine dependence or development of methamphetamine-induced psychosis

Thermohydrodynamics in Quantum Hall Systems

A theory of thermohydrodynamics in two-dimensional electron systems in quantizing magnetic fields is developed including a nonlinear transport regime. Spatio-temporal variations of the electron temperature and the chemical potential in the local equilibrium are described by the equations of conservation with the number and thermal-energy flux densities. A model of these flux densities due to hopping and drift processes is introduced for a random potential varying slowly compared to both the magnetic length and the phase coherence length. The flux measured in the standard transport experiment is derived and is used to define a transport component of the flux density. The equations of conservation can be written in terms of the transport component only. As an illustration, the theory is applied to the Ettingshausen effect, in which a one-dimensional spatial variation of the electron temperature is produced perpendicular to the current.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur