Recognizing License Plates in Real-Time

License plate detection and recognition (LPDR) is of growing importance for enabling intelligent transportation and ensuring the security and safety of the cities. However, LPDR faces a big challenge in a practical environment. The license plates can have extremely diverse sizes, fonts and colors, and the plate images are usually of poor quality caused by skewed capturing angles, uneven lighting, occlusion, and blurring. In applications such as surveillance, it often requires fast processing. To enable real-time and accurate license plate recognition, in this work, we propose a set of techniques: 1) a contour reconstruction method along with edge-detection to quickly detect the candidate plates; 2) a simple zero-one-alternation scheme to effectively remove the fake top and bottom borders around plates to facilitate more accurate segmentation of characters on plates; 3) a set of techniques to augment the training data, incorporate SIFT features into the CNN network, and exploit transfer learning to obtain the initial parameters for more effective training; and 4) a two-phase verification procedure to determine the correct plate at low cost, a statistical filtering in the plate detection stage to quickly remove unwanted candidates, and the accurate CR results after the CR process to perform further plate verification without additional processing. We implement a complete LPDR system based on our algorithms. The experimental results demonstrate that our system can accurately recognize license plate in real-time. Additionally, it works robustly under various levels of illumination and noise, and in the presence of car movement. Compared to peer schemes, our system is not only among the most accurate ones but is also the fastest, and can be easily applied to other scenarios.Comment: License Plate Detection and Recognition, Computer Vision, Supervised Learnin

Outstanding supercapacitive properties of Mn-doped TiO2 micro/nanostructure porous film prepared by anodization method.

Mn-doped TiO2 micro/nanostructure porous film was prepared by anodizing a Ti-Mn alloy. The film annealed at 300 °C yields the highest areal capacitance of 1451.3 mF/cm(2) at a current density of 3 mA/cm(2) when used as a high-performance supercapacitor electrode. Areal capacitance retention is 63.7% when the current density increases from 3 to 20 mA/cm(2), and the capacitance retention is 88.1% after 5,000 cycles. The superior areal capacitance of the porous film is derived from the brush-like metal substrate, which could greatly increase the contact area, improve the charge transport ability at the oxide layer/metal substrate interface, and thereby significantly enhance the electrochemical activities toward high performance energy storage. Additionally, the effects of manganese content and specific surface area of the porous film on the supercapacitive performance were also investigated in this work

Acute Impact of Moderate-Intensity and Vigorous-Intensity Exercise Bouts on Daily Physical Activity Energy Expenditure in Postmenopausal Women

This study determined whether performing a single moderate- or vigorous-intensity exercise bout impacts daily physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE, by accelerometer). Overweight/obese postmenopausal women underwent a 5-month caloric restriction and moderate- (n = 18) or vigorous-intensity (n = 18) center-based aerobic exercise intervention. During the last month of intervention, in women performing moderate-intensity exercise, PAEE on days with exercise (577.7 ± 219.7 kcal·d−1) was higher (P = .011) than on days without exercise (450.7 ± 140.5 kcal·d−1); however, the difference (127.0 ± 188.1 kcal·d−1) was much lower than the energy expended during exercise. In women performing vigorous-intensity exercise, PAEE on days with exercise (450.6 ± 153.6 kcal·d−1) was lower (P = .047) than on days without exercise (519.2 ± 127.4 kcal·d−1). Thus, women expended more energy on physical activities outside of prescribed exercise on days they did NOT perform center-based exercise, especially if the prescribed exercise was of a higher intensity

Finite Element Analysis and Lightweight Optimization Design on Main Frame Structure of Large Electrostatic Precipitator

The geometric modeling and finite element modeling of the whole structure of an electrostatic precipitator and its main components consisting of top beam, column, bottom beam, and bracket were finished. The strength calculation was completed. As a result, the design of the whole structure of the electrostatic precipitator and the main components were reasonable, the structure was in a balance state, its working condition was safe and reliable, its stress variation was even, and the stress distribution was regular. The maximum von Mises stress of the whole structure is 20.14 MPa. The safety factor was large, resulting in a waste of material. An optimization mathematical model is established. Using the ANSYS first-order method, the dimension parameters of the main frame structure of the electrostatic precipitator were optimized. After optimization, more reasonable structural design parameters were obtained. The model weight is 72,344.11 kg, the optimal weight is 49,239.35 kg, and the revised weight is 53,645.68 kg. Compared with the model weight, the optimal weight decreased by 23,104.76 kg and the objective function decreased by 31.94%, while the revised weight decreased by 18,698.43 kg and the objective function decreased by 25.84%

Dielectric geometric phase optical elements from femtosecond direct laser writing

We propose to use femtosecond direct laser writing technique to realize dielectric optical elements from photo-resist materials for the generation of structured light from purely geometrical phase transformations. This is illustrated by the fabrication and characterization of spin-to-orbital optical angular momentum couplers generating optical vortices of topological charge from 1 to 20. In addition, the technique is scalable and allows obtaining microscopic to macroscopic flat optics. These results thus demonstrate that direct 3D photopolymerization technology qualifies for the realization of spin-controlled geometric phase optical elements.Comment: 6 figure

Hierarchical Mutual Information Analysis: Towards Multi-view Clustering in The Wild

Multi-view clustering (MVC) can explore common semantics from unsupervised views generated by different sources, and thus has been extensively used in applications of practical computer vision. Due to the spatio-temporal asynchronism, multi-view data often suffer from view missing and are unaligned in real-world applications, which makes it difficult to learn consistent representations. To address the above issues, this work proposes a deep MVC framework where data recovery and alignment are fused in a hierarchically consistent way to maximize the mutual information among different views and ensure the consistency of their latent spaces. More specifically, we first leverage dual prediction to fill in missing views while achieving the instance-level alignment, and then take the contrastive reconstruction to achieve the class-level alignment. To the best of our knowledge, this could be the first successful attempt to handle the missing and unaligned data problem separately with different learning paradigms. Extensive experiments on public datasets demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods on multi-view clustering even in the cases of view missing and unalignment

Analysis of Taste-and-odor Compounds in Drinking Water Using Gas Chromatography and Flame Ionization Detection (Gc-fid)

Geosmin (GSM) and 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB) are known to cause taste and odor problems in water. This study investigated the usefulness of a SPME-GC-FID method for analyzing aqueous geosmin and 2-MIB and better understanding the capacity of a copper-based algaecide for controlling these compounds in a drinking water treatment process.Analysis of geosmin and 2-MIB are possible with a standard SPME-GC-FID method, although the method sensitivity is at or slightly above the odor threshold concentrations. This renders the method less useful for situations with very low concentration, but it was still confirmed to be a rapid and reliable method. The detection limit of GC-FID can reach the threshold (25 ng/l) of these compounds. The copper-based algaecide did show a potential for removing 2-MIB, but the variables that control its reaction rate remain unknown. For the recommended dosage of 1.188�10-9 mg/l, no significant difference was found, even though the 2-MIB showed a slow decrease to about 18%. In another experiment which the algaecide dosage was doubled, both GSM and 2-MIB exhibited a slight decrease. These results indicate that an acidic, copper algaecide does result in reductions in 2-MIB, but not at the rate observed in the full-scale plant. It is concluded that one or more additional factors plays a role in the reaction, a factor not present in the bench-scale experiments.Civil Engineerin

Relation of Breastfeeding Duration with Blood Pressure and Arterial Stiffness

Background: The purpose of this analysis was to investigate the effects of differing breastfeeding duration on vascular function. Methods: A study was designed to explore the breastfeeding patterns of 79 participants who delivered a singleton fetus 6 months-3 years ago and were aged 18-45 years old. Participant breastfeeding and dietary habits were self-reported using surveys. Breastfeeding groups were established by following the American Association of Pediatric guidelines on breastfeeding duration: Women who did versus did not breastfeeding for 6 months continuously. Blood pressure was measured using a standard oscillometric cuff, while SphygmoCor® technology was used to measure pulse wave velocity. PWV, BSP, and BDP were regressed against breastfeeding status (Y/N) to observe any association between the variables, adjusting for potential covariates. Correlations between breastfeeding duration and vascular function were analyzed. Results: Neither pulse wave velocity (PWV) nor brachial systolic or diastolic blood pressure (B-SP and B-DP) were related to breastfeeding duration in women 6 months – 3 years after delivery. Of the women who did not breastfeed for 6 months, the mean SBP was 115 mmHg, the mean DBP was 74 mmHg, and the mean pulse wave velocity was 5.87 m/s. Of women who did breastfeed for 6 months continuously, the mean SBP was 111 mmHg, the mean DBP was 71 mmHg, and the mean pulse wave velocity was 6 m/s. There was no difference in mean SBP (p=0.4240) or DBP (p=0.82) and arterial stiffness (p=0.4932) between breastfeeding groups. The mean age of participants was found to be approximately 30 years for women who did not meet AAP guidelines, and 33 years for women who did meet AAP guidelines (p=0.0222). There was a statistically significant difference in BMI of women who did versus did not meet AAP guidelines (p=0.0383). Women who did not meet AAP guidelines were more likely to be African American (p=0.033). Conclusion: No significant differences in arterial stiffness or blood pressure were found between women who did versus did not meet American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for breastfeeding in their most recent births. As breastfeeding duration had been linked to longer term cardiometabolic outcomes, it is possible that differences in vascular function might emerge over mid-life, rather than 6 months to 3 years post pregnancy. Women who did not meet AAP guidelines were primarily younger, African American, and had a higher BMI. The results of this study call for further investigation