Automatic Detection of Pain from Spontaneous Facial Expressions

This paper presents a new approach for detecting pain in sequences of spontaneous facial expressions. The motivation for this work is to accompany mobile-based self-management of chronic pain as a virtual sensor for tracking patients' expressions in real-world settings. Operating under such constraints requires a resource efficient approach for processing non-posed facial expressions from unprocessed temporal data. In this work, the facial action units of pain are modeled as sets of distances among related facial landmarks. Using standardized measurements of pain versus no-pain that are specific to each user, changes in the extracted features in relation to pain are detected. The activated features in each frame are combined using an adapted form of the Prkachin and Solomon Pain Intensity scale (PSPI) to detect the presence of pain per frame. Painful features must be activated in N consequent frames (time window) to indicate the presence of pain in a session. The discussed method was tested on 171 video sessions for 19 subjects from the McMaster painful dataset for spontaneous facial expressions. The results show higher precision than coverage in detecting sequences of pain. Our algorithm achieves 94% precision (F-score=0.82) against human observed labels, 74% precision (F-score=0.62) against automatically generated pain intensities and 100% precision (F-score=0.67) against self-reported pain intensities

Developement And Evaluation Of A Nasba System For The Diagnosis Of Cholera Using Elisa And Biosensor Methods

Taun (kolera) ialah penyakit ciri-birit yang disebabkan Vibrio cholerae. Cholera is a diarrheal disease caused by Vibrio cholerae. Cholera is potentially lethal if not diagnosed on time

Development And Evaluation Of A Nasba System For The Diagnosis Of Cholera Using Elisa And Biosensor Methods [RA644.C3 L481 2008 f rb].

Taun (kolera) ialah penyakit ciri-birit yang disebabkan Vibrio cholerae. Taun boleh membawa maut jika tidak dikesan dengan serta-merta. Cholera is a diarrheal disease caused by Vibrio cholerae. Cholera is potentially lethal if not diagnosed on time

Analyzing the Factors Contributing to the Establishment of Thailand as a Hub for Regional Operating Headquarters

In June 2010, the Thai government proposed improved investment tax incentive schemes to attract more foreign companies to establish Regional Operating Headquarters (ROH) in Thailand. The major theme of incentive packages has historically been the waiving of income tax on ROHs locating in the Kingdom. In the wake of recent political crises, these tax benefits are considered as important measures in reinforcing the Kingdom’s position as an important manufacturing and service hub for the ASEAN region. While investor confidence was wavering because of the unstable political environment that has appertained since 2006, investors are weighing business continuity and safety concerns against the provided and proposed incentives. This paper briefly compares the original ROH tax incentives from 2002 with the new ones, examines the factors contributing to the establishment of Thailand as a hub for ROHs and analyzes the competitiveness of Thailand in comparison with Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia in the context of national competitiveness for establishing ROH. National competitiveness is measured by using the Double Diamond-based nine factor model (IPS Model) from the IPS national competitiveness research study

“They ate macaroni-and-cheese or TV dinners; my mother made curry instead”: A narrative inquiry of South Asian American writers’ identity negotiation

As the demographic and linguistic landscape in the United States is shifting—the Asian population has increased significantly in the last decade, particularly the South Asian population—these changes are reflected in the classrooms all over the country. As such, it becomes imperative to investigate who these multilinguals are, and as several scholars have pointed out, the Asian population has not been studied to the same extent as other minorities. In addition, the notion of a homogenous Asian identity persists and hides the internal differences that exist within the Asian population. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to challenge the notion of a homogenous Asian identity by exploring the identity struggles and identity negotiation of South Asian Americans. To understand their identity struggles and negotiation processes, a post-structural perspective was adopted and narrative inquiry was employed to broaden the range of methodologies that are used to research multilingual identities. A corpus consisting of memoirs and short narratives written by South Asian Americans was created and analyzed. From the analysis of the narratives, four themes emerged: Theme 1: Indexing the “Other,” Theme 2: Labels and self-identification, Theme 3: Positioning of self and others, and Theme 4: Linguistic identities. Theme 1 concerns the ways in which the writers were “othered,” mainly through physical attributes, their names, and cultural practices that they engaged in that were not seen as American. Theme 2 shows that the writers mainly identified and referred to themselves through their ethnic heritage, and Theme 3 reveals that the writers commonly positioned themselves as outsiders and different from the white American. Lastly, Theme 4 highlights the writers’ complicated relationship with English and that a standard language ideology persists. Echoing previous research, the findings of this study suggest that the construction and negotiation of multilingual identities are very much linked to larger societal issues grounded in a limited view of what it means to be American, pervasive language ideologies that promote Standard English varieties, as well as the persisting notion of a singular Asian identity. Additionally, employing narrative inquiry has opened up for additional possibilities to study multilingual identities, which I suggest should be explored further to expand on identity research that is currently conducted in applied linguistics and related fields

Purchasing Power Parity and Country Characteristics: Evidence from Time Series Analysis

This paper investigates the relationships between country characteristics and the validity of PPP. We use three alternative time series methods to test for the stationarity of real exchange rates for each of the 72 countries over the period from 1976 to 2005. Our result shows that the evidence of PPP exhibits geographic difference. It is most likely to find stationary real exchange rates for European countries, whereas it is least likely to obtain the result of supporting PPP for Asian countries. We then use a probit regression model to examine if county characteristics are related to the validity of PPP. The probit regression result reveals that the validity of PPP decreases with inflation rate and increases with nominal exchange rate volatility.Purchasing power parity, Country characteristics, Unit root tests