Left/Right Hand Segmentation in Egocentric Videos

Wearable cameras allow people to record their daily activities from a user-centered (First Person Vision) perspective. Due to their favorable location, wearable cameras frequently capture the hands of the user, and may thus represent a promising user-machine interaction tool for different applications. Existent First Person Vision methods handle hand segmentation as a background-foreground problem, ignoring two important facts: i) hands are not a single "skin-like" moving element, but a pair of interacting cooperative entities, ii) close hand interactions may lead to hand-to-hand occlusions and, as a consequence, create a single hand-like segment. These facts complicate a proper understanding of hand movements and interactions. Our approach extends traditional background-foreground strategies, by including a hand-identification step (left-right) based on a Maxwell distribution of angle and position. Hand-to-hand occlusions are addressed by exploiting temporal superpixels. The experimental results show that, in addition to a reliable left/right hand-segmentation, our approach considerably improves the traditional background-foreground hand-segmentation

Unsupervised Understanding of Location and Illumination Changes in Egocentric Videos

Wearable cameras stand out as one of the most promising devices for the upcoming years, and as a consequence, the demand of computer algorithms to automatically understand the videos recorded with them is increasing quickly. An automatic understanding of these videos is not an easy task, and its mobile nature implies important challenges to be faced, such as the changing light conditions and the unrestricted locations recorded. This paper proposes an unsupervised strategy based on global features and manifold learning to endow wearable cameras with contextual information regarding the light conditions and the location captured. Results show that non-linear manifold methods can capture contextual patterns from global features without compromising large computational resources. The proposed strategy is used, as an application case, as a switching mechanism to improve the hand-detection problem in egocentric videos.Comment: Submitted for publicatio

Effect of impact-activating-disintegration treatment on grain protein fraction of autumn rye

ArticleThis paper studies the distribution of rye protein fractions according to their mass and amino acid composition while milling by machines with different work tools. The research was conducted on the autumn rye of harvest year 2017 with kernel moisture con tent of 8%. Cereals were milled in the machine of an impact - activating - disintegrating type DEZI - 15 with three - row and five - row rotors which rotate at 120 s - 1 , and in the laboratory mill with a knife - rotor work tool. The milling grain size was determined by a diffraction - type grain analyser Malvern Mastersizer 2000. The average grain size obtained from three - row disintegrating rotor was 167 μm , from the five - row rotor 158.1 μm , and from the laboratory knife - rotor mill 384 μm , respectively. The free amino aci ds composition in flour samples was investigated using the size exclusion chromatography method (SEC - method). The polypeptide composition of total grain protein has been determined by One - dimensional SDS - acrylamide gel electrophoresis. According to the ele ctropherogram results obtained from all the the content of high - protein fraction of 200 kDa . The glutelin fraction with molecular weight of 116.25 kDa is definitely observed in the sample obtained from the three - row disintegrating rotor. Whereby the lowest glutelin content has been detected in the flour sample obtained from the five - row disintegrating rotor. Fractions with molecular weight of 60 – 75 kDa – globulin fractions – come up frequently in the sample obtained from the three - row disintegrating rotor. Prolamine fractions of 45 – 47 kDa are clearly observed in the flour sample obtained from the laboratory knife - rotor mill. The albumin fraction with molecular weight of 17 – 28 kDa are mostly observed in the samples obtained by three - row and five - row disintegr ating rotors. Few LMW fractions (from 6.5 to 15 kDa ) are found in samples obtained using the impact - activating - disintegrating technique, mostly in the sample milled in the laboratory knife - rotor mill. Based on the data of free amino acid content in sample investigated it can be concluded that the impact - activating - disintegrating techniques does not cause reduction in protein biological value. The albumin rich flour milled in the disintegrator can be used for production of functional food. Due to the low con tent of glutelin protein fraction the flour obtained from the five - row disintegrating rotor offers the greatest promise for production of gluten - free foods

Enrichment of the low-fat yoghurt with oat β-glucan and EPS-producing Bifidobacterium bifidum improves its quality

The addition of β-glucan or EPS-producing bacteria is mainly used to improve the quality and the acceptability of low-fat yoghurt. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of adding β-glucan, EPS-producing Bifidobacterium bifidum, or both on physical properties, fermentation time, and organoleptic criteria of low-fat yoghurt, additionally to the viability of L. bulgaricus and B. bifidum. Two types of low-fat yoghurt (1.5% fat) were prepared, with the addition of standard oat β-glucan by 0.15% or without its addition. Each type of yoghurt mixture was inoculated with two kinds of starters: traditional and probiotic (B. bifidum) culture. The physicochemical properties, the count of viable bacterial starter culture, and the organoleptic evaluation for all yoghurt types were evaluated after storage 24 h at 4 °C. Moreover, the fermentation time was monitored. The incorporation of both β-glucan and EPS in yoghurt resulted in the highest viscosity (13.7 mPa.s) and WHC (55.94%), besides to the lowest syneresis (28.47%). The acidity and pH of the yoghurt samples were significantly affected (p > 0.05) by the β-glucan addition. The yoghurt type Bifidobacterium glucan had the shortest fermentation time (215 min), and the maximum viability of both B. bifidum (7.63 Log CFU g -1 ) and L. bulgaricus (7.50 Log CFU g -1 ). The β-glucan had a pronounced effect on the overall acceptability of yoghurt more than the EPS. In conclusion, enriching the low-fat yoghurt with oat β-glucan and EPS-producing B. bifidum is the highest effective method for improving the yoghurt’s quality and the viability of probiotics

The effect of adding carrot or beetroot powders on the quality indicators of round cracknel products

Received: February 1st, 2022 ; Accepted: April 5th, 2022 ; Published: April 28th, 2022 ; Correspondence: [email protected] relationship between carrot/beetroot powders added, the quantity and quality of gluten in the flour and the moisture, acidity, swelling coefficient and the quality indicators of round cracknel products has been studied. The carrot and beetroot powders, produced by Vitbiokor, LLC, and the premium wheat flour were used. The powders were introduced in a dry and hydrated form. The hydration was carried out at the hydromodule of 1:5 for 40 minutes. The particle size analysis of raw materials was conducted with the laser diffraction analyzer Malvern Mastersizer 2000. The proportion of particles of less than 200 µm in the flour made 100%, in the carrot powder - 77%, in the beetroot powder - 71%. The introduction of carrot/beetroot powders in the amount of 1.5%, 3.0%, 6.0% and 9.0% by weight of the flour reduces the amount of gluten. Still, it strengthens the latter, making it possible to mold products with developed porosity. The introduction of dry carrot powder in the amount of 6% into the sourdough and the dough (1.5%, 3.0%, 6.0% and 9.0%) increases the swelling coefficient of the end products by an average of 15%, while the introduction of the hydrated powder does it by 40%. Similarly, the introduction of the dry beetroot powder leads, on average, to a 12% increase and of the hydrated powder to a 22% increase. The obtained results proved the effectiveness of introducing carrot/beetroot powders (preference given to their hydrated types) into the recipe of round cracknel products

Production and investigations of antioxidant rich beverage: utilizing Monascus purpureus IHEM LY2014 - 0696 and various malts

ArticleAntioxidant evokes numerous health benefits to the consumer as well as stabilisation of the beverages flavours. Therefore, this paper provides detailed information on the application of Monascus purpureus IHEM LY2014 - 0696 in combination with vario us malts in brewing antioxidant rich beverage (ARB). Starter culture Angkak was prepared by solid state bioprocessing (SSB). Single infusion method of mashing was used. Physicochemical parameters, volatile compounds, DPPH (2, 2 - diphenyl - 1 - picrylhydrazyl) r adical scavenging activity and fermentability of the wort were evaluated. Distillation procedure based on pycnometry technique was use to quantify the alcohol content (%ABV). Fermentability of the wort was found to be 97.6 ± 0.46% whilst %ABV was equal to 5.42 ± 0.03 . It was observed that ARB showed a strong DPPH radical scavenging activity of 1.00 × 10 – 4 mol × equ (R 2 = 0.91) whereas 3.43 × 10 - 5 mol × equ (R 2 = 0.81) for wort. The strong antioxidant activity (AOA) is thought to be caused by pigments produced by M. purpureus IHEM LY2014 - 0696 and other compounds originated from the malts and hops utilised in brewing ARB. A total of 4 volatile compounds were identified in the present study. Incidence of microbial load ranged from 2.14 ± 0.04 × 10 7 and 0.8 ± 0.1 × 10 5 for M. purpureus IHEM LY2014 - 0696 and bacterial respectively was observed in the ARB. This study contradicts some previous ones, as the ARB brewed did not take the red pigment produced by the M. purpureus . Panellists generally ex pressed their acceptance for the ARB as they assessed it as a new product, moreover, taking account its health benefits

Borrowing Constraints During the Housing Bubble

The impact of borrowing constraints on homeownership has been well established in the literature. Wealth is most likely to restrict homeownership followed by credit and income. Using recent movers from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and borrowing constraint definitions commonly used in the literature, we examine the impact of these constraints on the probability of homeownership during the housing market boom between 2003 and 2007. We show that whereas the pool of financially constrained households expanded, the marginal impact of borrowing constraints associated with income and credit quality declined during this period. The constraint associated with wealth, however, continued to have a negative impact on homeownership status, all else equal. The fact that lending standards became less strict is accepted; however the impact of this on homeownership has not been previously studied. Here we find that less restrictive underwriting does appear to have reduced the impact of income and credit quality on homeownership but the impact of the wealth constraint persists