A Visual Tracking Study and A Proposal of Modifications

On-line visual tracking of a specified target in motion throughout frames of video clips faces challenges in robust identification of the target in the current frame based on the past frames. Three approaches for tracking the target image patch are described and compared. These approaches utilize particle filtering and principal component analysis (PCA) to identify the most likely location of the target in the current frame and a low dimensional subspace representation of the patches of images to be kept as the templates in the dictionary for the identification. By using a combination of methods and compare the result of each, a new model based is proposed. The goal is to achieve a more robust and accurate tracking of a target throughout the video and continue updating the identification templates to adapt the target changes, such as apparences in lighting, angle, scale and occlusions. The challenges in tracking are to introduction of the "right" templates into the identification templates in the dictionary and identify the most accurate particle image patch while tracking the target with the right tracking patch scaling. The first approach considered and on which the structure of the visual tracker is based is the "Incremental Learning for Robust Visual Tracking" by D. Ross et al., which is a computationally fast tracker that utilizes a method of low dimensional subspace for the identification template dictionary and incremental PCA for its tracking. The tracker has a simple rule in accepting the patches of images to be in the identification template dictionary after the image patch has gone through a singular value decomposition (SVD), where it eliminates singular values are smaller than $10^{-6}$ of the sum of squared sinuglar values and the corresponding bases are also eliminated. This elimination scheme has very limited robustness in tracking, therefore, more selective processes in accepting identification templates in the dictionary are explored and introduced on top of the existing method in comparison and to address the challenges in on-line video tracking. The second approach is the "Least Soft-Threshold Squares Tracking" proposed by D. Wang et al. solves the least soft-threshold squares distance problem to identify the distances of the particles to the templates in the dictionary, which greatly improves the tracking accuracy. This method is also computationally cheap in comparison to the first approach, and its accuracy is also better than the first approach, but it would sometimes fail to track in some applications. Finally, the third approach reviewed is the "Robust Visual Tracking and Vehicle Classification via Sparse Representation" by X. Mei et al. is to weight each particles when selecting the most likely target patch so the best patch has a highest weighted probability which ensures it being selected and introduced to the template dictionary. This approach performs well in comparison to the first and the second approaches in tracking accuracy and robustness, but this approach is extremely computationally expensive. Three new components are proposed in an effort to mitigate some of the limitations that the three approaches exhibit. One such component is to simply reject the image patches that exhibit too great of difference to the current template dictionary, which resulted in improved tracking robustness. This method is computationally cheap and easy to implement. Another component introduced is a second set of dictionary that is composed of admitted image patches, which is used for tracking when the image patches appears to be too dissimilar to the dictionary with low dimensional representation. It is expected that with more well defined and stronger features, it forces the tracking to identify the target. Finally, the third component introduced is the to prevent shrinkage of the target boundary box by weighting the particles drawn with the ratio of area change so that more weight is placed on particles with less arial change. This increases the likelihood of recovering the target again if tracking loses the target, and instead of shrinking the boundary box, the tracking is biased to staying with the image patch of the same size. The resulting performance of the proposed tracking scheme has not been noticeably improved, part of the reason is because the metrics available to identify a noisy image patch from the good image patches are not always indicative of the noisy-good image patch divide

Brown adipose tissue

Obesity is currently a global pandemic, and is associated with increased mortality and co-morbidities including many metabolic diseases. Obesity is characterized by an increase in adipose mass due to increased energy intake, decreased energy expenditure, or both. While white adipose tissue is specialized for energy storage, brown adipose tissue has a high concentration of mitochondria and uniquely expresses uncoupling protein 1, enabling it to be specialized for energy expenditure and thermogenesis. Although brown fat was once considered only necessary in babies, recent morphological and imaging studies have provided evidence that, contrary to prior belief, this tissue is present and active in adult humans. In recent years, the topic of brown adipose tissue has been reinvigorated with many new studies regarding brown adipose tissue differentiation, function and therapeutic promise. This review summarizes the recent advances, discusses the emerging questions and offers perspective on the potential therapeutic applications targeting this tissue

Design Distribution and Evaluation Model for Collaborative Design Chain

A collaborative design chain incorporates the different design activities performed by various design teams that may be located at different geographical locations. In a collaborative design chain, the different parts of a product can be designed by different design teams in a collaborative way. There exist different ways for distributing the different parts to the multiple design teams. If different ways are used for distributing the different part, the time for completing the design and the final functions of the product may vary. In this research, a design evaluation model for evaluating the collaborative design chain is presented. The presented new model is aimed at finding the best way for distributing the different parts to the suitable design teams such that the designed functional value of the product can be maximized. Also, the design cost composed of design operation cost and design communication cost in collaborative design is minimized. An optimized design distribution and evaluation model is presented by maximizing the total design value which is defined as the designed functional value minus the design operation cost and the design communication cost. Implementation and test results are presented

Review on the Conflicts between Offshore Wind Power and Fishery Rights: Marine Spatial Planning in Taiwan

In recent years, Taiwan has firmly committed itself to pursue the green energy transition and a nuclear-free homeland by 2025, with an increase in renewable energy from 5% in 2016 to 20% in 2025. Offshore wind power (OWP) has become a sustainable and scalable renewable energy source in Taiwan. Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is a fundamental tool to organize the use of the ocean space by different and often conflicting multi-users within ecologically sustainable boundaries in the marine environment. MSP is capable of definitively driving the use of offshore renewable energy. Lessons from Germany and the UK revealed that MSP was crucial to the development of OWP. This paper aims to evaluate how MSP is able to accommodate the exploitation of OWP in Taiwan and contribute to the achievement of marine policy by proposing a set of recommendations. It concludes that MSP is emerging as a solution to be considered by government institutions to optimize the multiple use of the ocean space, reduce conflicts and make use of the environmental and economic synergies generated by the joint deployment of OWP facilities and fishing or aquaculture activities for the conservation and protection of marine environments.Peer Reviewe

Investigating Multi-cancer Biomarkers and Their Cross-predictability in the Expression Profiles of Multiple Cancer Types

Microarray technology has been widely applied to the analysis of many malignancies, however, integrative analyses across multiple studies are rarely investigated. In this study we performed a meta-analysis on the expression profiles of four published studies analyzing organ donor, benign tissues adjacent to tumor and tumor tissues from liver, prostate, lung and bladder samples. We identified 99 distinct multi-cancer biomarkers in the comparison of all three tissues in liver and prostate and 44 in the comparison of normal versus tumor in liver, prostate and lung. The bladder samples appeared to have a different list of biomarkers from the other three cancer types. The identified multi-cancer biomarkers achieved high accuracy similar to using whole genome in the within-cancer-type prediction. They also performed superior than the one using whole genome in inter-cancer-type prediction. To test the validity of the multi-cancer biomarkers, 23 independent prostate cancer samples were evaluated and 96% accuracy was achieved in inter-study prediction from the original prostate, liver and lung cancer data sets respectively. The result suggests that the compact lists of multi-cancer biomarkers are important in cancer development and represent the common signatures of malignancies of multiple cancer types. Pathway analysis revealed important tumorogenesis functional categories

L’étude des taishang

Les travaux portant sur les entrepreneurs taïwanais qui vivent et investissent en Chine continentale (taishang) n’attirent l’attention que depuis peu de temps. Les taishang ont été définis comme une « communauté relationnelle » (linkage community), à savoir une communauté de migrants qui crée, par ses activités économiques, son influence politique et ses expériences sociales, un lien entre Taiwan et la Chine continentale. Dans ce contexte, cet article s’efforce de déterminer comment et dans quelle mesure les taishang contribuent aux relations sino-taïwanaises et au développement des politiques sur les deux rives du détroit. Il revisite le champ des études sur les taishang (taishang studies), fait le point sur les connaissances produites à ce jour et explore les futures orientations de la recherche dans ce domaine

L’étude des taishang

Les travaux portant sur les entrepreneurs taïwanais qui vivent et investissent en Chine continentale (taishang) n’attirent l’attention que depuis peu de temps. Les taishang ont été définis comme une « communauté relationnelle » (linkage community), à savoir une communauté de migrants qui crée, par ses activités économiques, son influence politique et ses expériences sociales, un lien entre Taiwan et la Chine continentale. Dans ce contexte, cet article s’efforce de déterminer comment et dans quelle mesure les taishang contribuent aux relations sino-taïwanaises et au développement des politiques sur les deux rives du détroit. Il revisite le champ des études sur les taishang (taishang studies), fait le point sur les connaissances produites à ce jour et explore les futures orientations de la recherche dans ce domaine

Intrinsic Differences in Adipocyte Precursor Cells From Different White Fat Depots

Obesity and body fat distribution are important risk factors for the development of type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Evidence has accumulated that this risk is related to intrinsic differences in behavior of adipocytes in different fat depots. In the current study, we demonstrate that adipocyte precursor cells (APCs) isolated from visceral and subcutaneous white adipose depots of mice have distinct patterns of gene expression, differentiation potential, and response to environmental and genetic influences. APCs derived from subcutaneous fat differentiate well in the presence of classical induction cocktail, whereas those from visceral fat differentiate poorly but can be induced to differentiate by addition of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-2 or BMP-4. This difference correlates with major differences in gene expression signature between subcutaneous and visceral APCs. The number of APCs is higher in obesity-prone C57BL/6 mice than obesity-resistant 129 mice, and the number in both depots is increased by up to 270% by exposure of mice to high-fat diet. Thus, APCs from visceral and subcutaneous depots are dynamic populations, which have intrinsic differences in gene expression, differentiation properties, and responses to environmental/genetic factors. Regulation of these populations may provide a new target for the treatment and prevention of obesity and its metabolic complications