Trinocular stereovision using figural continuity, dealing with curved objects

A method to build a dense and reliable 3-D description of a scene from three digital images by means of passive stereovision is presented. This method uses figural continuity to improve the results of a previously developed algorithm. In particular, it copes much better with curved objects and produces results which are organized as 3-D chains of segments

Isolation and characterization ofmicrosatellitemarkers for Acacia senegal (L.)Willd., amultipurpose arid and semi-arid tree

International audienceAcacia senegal is a multipurpose African tree that improves the soil fertility of degraded areas. The species is exploited mainly for gum arabic, but it also supplies fuel wood and fod- der for animals. Despite its wide distribution in Africa, no microsatellite markers have yet been characterized for this species. In this study, we characterized 11 polymorphic microsatel- lite loci specifically designed for A. senegal and analysed 247 individuals from three popula- tions from Niger. On average, 10.9 alleles per locus were detected and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.160 to 0.794, showing the ability of the markers to detect genetic diversity in this species

Facing the music or burying our heads in the sand?: Adaptive emotion regulation in mid- and late-life

Psychological defense theories postulate that keeping threatening information out of awareness brings short-term reduction of anxiety at the cost of longer-term dysfunction. By contrast, Socioemotional Selectivity Theory suggests that preference for positively-valenced information is a manifestation of adaptive emotion regulation in later life. Using six decades of longitudinal data on 61 men, we examined links between emotion regulation indices informed by these distinct conceptualizations: defense patterns in earlier adulthood and selective memory for positively-valenced images in late life. Men who used more avoidant defenses in midlife recognized fewer emotionally-valenced and neutral images in a memory test 35-40 years later. Late-life satisfaction was positively linked with mid-life engaging defenses but negatively linked at the trend level with concurrent positivity bias

Social support as protective factor of the effects of part- time work on psychological health: a moderated mediation model

Purpose:The purpose of this study is to examine the protective effect of social support on psychological health and how it differs by gender in the context of part-time employment. Design/methodology/approach: The sample consisted of 22,786 employees from four service sector organisations. Structural equation modelling was used to test a moderated mediation model assessing the relationship between employment status (part-time vs full-time) and psychological health mediated by social support (from management and colleagues) and moderated by gender. Findings: Social support from management and colleagues was associated with fewer symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression. Notably, management support had a stronger association than that of colleagues’ support on each of the three health-related variables. Social support was also found to be a mediator of part-time working on health such that lower social support led to increased health symptoms. Moreover, we found moderating gender effects between social support and psychological health such that colleague support had a stronger effect on reduced depression and stress among men than women whilst management support had a stronger effect on reduced anxiety for women. Finally, significant moderated mediating paths were found, but further research is needed to identify other potential moderators of the mediating effects. Originality/value: The findings suggest complex relationships between part-time employment, social support, psychological health and gender not examined in previous studies. It highlights the value of diverse sources of support and the necessity of addressing specific gender’s needs for enhancing psychological health of part-time employees

Grid Loss: Detecting Occluded Faces

Detection of partially occluded objects is a challenging computer vision problem. Standard Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) detectors fail if parts of the detection window are occluded, since not every sub-part of the window is discriminative on its own. To address this issue, we propose a novel loss layer for CNNs, named grid loss, which minimizes the error rate on sub-blocks of a convolution layer independently rather than over the whole feature map. This results in parts being more discriminative on their own, enabling the detector to recover if the detection window is partially occluded. By mapping our loss layer back to a regular fully connected layer, no additional computational cost is incurred at runtime compared to standard CNNs. We demonstrate our method for face detection on several public face detection benchmarks and show that our method outperforms regular CNNs, is suitable for realtime applications and achieves state-of-the-art performance.Comment: accepted to ECCV 201

New Treatment Approach in Indian Visceral Leishmaniasis: Single-Dose Liposomal Amphotericin B Followed by Short-Course Oral Miltefosine

Background. In Bihar, India, home to nearly one-half of the world's burden of visceral leishmaniasis, drug resistance has ended the usefulness of pentavalent antimony, which is the traditional first-line treatment. Although monotherapy with other agents is available, the use of 2 drugs with different modes of action might increase efficacy, shorten treatment duration, enhance compliance, and/or reduce the risk of parasite resistance. To test the feasibility of a new approach to combination therapy in visceral leishmaniasis (also known a kala-azar), we treated Indian patients with a single infusion of liposomal amphotericin B (L-AmB), followed 1 day later by short-course oral miltefosine. Methods. We used a randomized, noncomparative, group-sequential, triangular design and assigned 181 subjects to treatment with 5 mg/kg of L-AmB alone (group A; 45 subjects), 5 mg/kg of L-AmB followed by miltefosine for 10 days (group B; 46 subjects) or 14 days (group C; 45 subjects), or 3.75 mg/kg of L-AmB followed by miltefosine for 14 days (group D; 45 subjects). When it became apparent that all regimens were effective, 45 additional, nonrandomized patients were assigned to receive 5 mg/kg of L-AmB followed by miltefosine for 7 days (group E). Results. Each regimen was satisfactorily tolerated, and all 226 subjects showed initial apparent cure responses. Nine months after treatment, final cure rates were similar: group A, 91% (95% confidence interval [CI], 78%-97%]; group B, 98% (95% CI, 87%-100%); group C, 96% (95% CI, 84%-99%]; group D, 96% (95% CI, 84%-99%); and group E, 98% (95% CI, 87%-100%). Conclusions. These results suggest that treatment with single-dose L-AmB followed by 7-14 days of miltefosine is active against Indian kala-azar. This short-course, sequential regimen warrants additional testing in India and in those regions of endemicity where visceral leishmaniasis may be more difficult to treat. Trial registration. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT0037082

A theoretical and numerical study of a phase field higher-order active contour model of directed networks.

We address the problem of quasi-automatic extraction of directed networks, which have characteristic geometric features, from images. To include the necessary prior knowledge about these geometric features, we use a phase field higher-order active contour model of directed networks. The model has a large number of unphysical parameters (weights of energy terms), and can favour different geometric structures for different parameter values. To overcome this problem, we perform a stability analysis of a long, straight bar in order to find parameter ranges that favour networks. The resulting constraints necessary to produce stable networks eliminate some parameters, replace others by physical parameters such as network branch width, and place lower and upper bounds on the values of the rest. We validate the theoretical analysis via numerical experiments, and then apply the model to the problem of hydrographic network extraction from multi-spectral VHR satellite images

Extracting surface representations from rim curves

LNCS v. 3852 is the conference proceedings of ACCV 2006In this paper, we design and implement a novel method for constructing a mixed triangle/quadrangle mesh from the 3D space curves (rims) estimated from the profiles of an object in an image sequence without knowing the original 3D topology of the object. To this aim, a contour data structure for representing visual hull, which is different from that for CT/MRI, is introduced. In this paper, we (1) solve the "branching structure" problem by introducing some additional "directed edge", and (2) extract a triangle/ quadrangle closed mesh from the contour structure with an algorithm based on dynamic programming. Both theoretical demonstration and real world results show that our proposed method has sufficient robustness with respect to the complex topology of the object, and the extracted mesh is of high quality. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.postprintThe 7th Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV 2006), Hyderabad, India, 13-16 January 2006. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006, v. 3852, p. 732-74

Optokinetic stimulation rehabilitation in preventing seasickness

SummaryObjectivesSeasickness occurs when traveling on a boat: symptoms such as vomiting are very disturbing and may be responsible for discontinuing travel or occupation and can become life-threatening. The failure of classical treatment to prevent seasickness has motivated this retrospective study exploring optokinetic stimulation in reducing these symptoms.Patients and methodsExperimental training of 75 sailors with optokinetic stimulation attempted to reduce seasickness manifestations and determine the factors that could predict accommodation problems.ResultsEighty percent of the trained subjects were able to return on board. No predictive factors such as sex, occupation, degree of illness, number of treatment sessions, time to follow-up, and age were found to influence training efficacy.ConclusionOptokinetic stimulation appears to be promising in the treatment of seasickness. Nevertheless, statistically significant results have yet to demonstrate its efficacy