Trials with Microwave Detection of Vulnerable Road Users and Preliminary Empirical Modal Test. DRIVE Project V1031 Deliverable 11.

The general objective of the project is to provide a set of tools for the creation of traffic systems that enhance the safety and mobility of vulnerable road users (VRUs). This is being achieved in two ways: 1. By evaluating a number of RTI applications in signalling and junction control, in order to ascertain what benefits can be obtained for vulnerable road users by such local measures. 2. By developing a model of the traffic system that incorporates vulnerable road users as an integral part. The present workpackage, one of the last ones within the project, is intended to link the two strands together. The workpackage consists of two main parts: 1. Experiments with pedestrians and bicyclists. Two experiments were carried out, one in England (Bradford) and one in Sweden (Vijrjo), both applying microwave detectors for detection of pedestrians in a signalized intersection, but applying the detection in different ways. An observational study was carried out in Groningen (the Netherlands) to analyze bicycle/car interactions at an intersection with a cycle path. The aim of the experiment was to test the usefulness of a system giving car drivers warning in situations when a bicyclist approaches an intersection on a parallel bicycle path. 2. Reliability and validity testing of the submodels of the VRU-oriented traffic model WLCAN

Impact of forestry practices on fitness correlates and population productivity in an open-nesting bird species

In the boreal forests of Fennoscandia, over 99% of the forest area has been altered by forestry practices, which has created forests of differing age structures and stand characteristics than primary forest stands. Although many researchers have investigated how forestry affects species abundance, few have assessed how forestry affects fitness correlates of species living in altered habitats, and this has negatively affected management efforts. We experimentally addressed the effect of standard forestry practices on fitness correlates of an open-nesting, long-lived bird species typical to boreal forests of Eurasia, the Siberian Jay (Perisoreus infaustus L.). Using a before-after comparison of reproductive data on the level of territories, we found that standard forestry practices had a strong negative effect on the breeding success of jays. Both partial thinning of territories and partial clearcutting of territories reduced future breeding success by a factor of 0.35. Forestry practices reduced territory occupancy. Thus, over the 15 years of the study the productivity of the affected population declined over 50% as a result of territory abandonment and reduced breeding success. Results of previous studies on Siberian Jays suggest that the strong effect of forest thinning on fitness is explained by the fact that most common predators of nests and adults are visually oriented, and thinning makes prey and nests more visible to predators. The consequences of thinning we observed are likely to apply to a wide range of species that rely on understory to provide visual protection from predators. Thus, our results are important for the development of effective conservation management protocols and for the refinement of thinning practices

Word contexts enhance the neural representation of individual letters in early visual cortex

Visual context facilitates perception, but how this is neurally implemented remains unclear. One example of contextual facilitation is found in reading, where letters are more easily identified when embedded in a word. Bottom-up models explain this word advantage as a post-perceptual decision bias, while top-down models propose that word contexts enhance perception itself. Here, we arbitrate between these accounts by presenting words and nonwords and probing the representational fidelity of individual letters using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In line with top-down models, we find that word contexts enhance letter representations in early visual cortex. Moreover, we observe increased coupling between letter information in visual cortex and brain activity in key areas of the reading network, suggesting these areas may be the source of the enhancement. Our results provide evidence for top-down representational enhancement in word recognition, demonstrating that word contexts can modulate perceptual processing already at the earliest visual regions

The effect of relationship status on communicating emotions through touch

Research into emotional communication to date has largely focused on facial and vocal expressions. In contrast, recent studies by Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka (2006) and Hertenstein, Holmes, McCullough, and Keltner (2009) exploring nonverbal communication of emotion discovered that people could identify anger, disgust, fear, gratitude, happiness, love, sadness and sympathy from the experience of being touched on either the arm or body by a stranger, without seeing the touch. The study showed that strangers were unable to communicate the self-focused emotions embarrassment, envy and pride, or the universal emotion surprise. Literature relating to touch indicates that the interpretation of a tactile experience is significantly influenced by the relationship between the touchers (Coan, Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006). The present study compared the ability of romantic couples and strangers to communicate emotions solely via touch. Results showed that both strangers and romantic couples were able to communicate universal and prosocial emotions, whereas only romantic couples were able to communicate the self-focused emotions envy and pride

Distinguishing Posed and Spontaneous Smiles by Facial Dynamics

Smile is one of the key elements in identifying emotions and present state of mind of an individual. In this work, we propose a cluster of approaches to classify posed and spontaneous smiles using deep convolutional neural network (CNN) face features, local phase quantization (LPQ), dense optical flow and histogram of gradient (HOG). Eulerian Video Magnification (EVM) is used for micro-expression smile amplification along with three normalization procedures for distinguishing posed and spontaneous smiles. Although the deep CNN face model is trained with large number of face images, HOG features outperforms this model for overall face smile classification task. Using EVM to amplify micro-expressions did not have a significant impact on classification accuracy, while the normalizing facial features improved classification accuracy. Unlike many manual or semi-automatic methodologies, our approach aims to automatically classify all smiles into either `spontaneous' or `posed' categories, by using support vector machines (SVM). Experimental results on large UvA-NEMO smile database show promising results as compared to other relevant methods.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, ACCV 2016, Second Workshop on Spontaneous Facial Behavior Analysi

Deception and self-awareness

This paper presents a study conducted for the Shades of Grey EPSRC research project (EP/H02302X/1), which aims to develop a suite of interventions for identifying terrorist activities. The study investigated the body movements demonstrated by participants while waiting to be interviewed, in one of two conditions: preparing to lie or preparing to tell the truth. The effect of self-awareness was also investigated, with half of the participants sitting in front of a full length mirror during the waiting period. The other half faced a blank wall. A significant interaction was found for the duration of hand/arm movements between the deception and self-awareness conditions (F=4.335, df=1;76, p<0.05). Without a mirror, participants expecting to lie spent less time moving their hands than those expecting to tell the truth; the opposite was seen in the presence of a mirror. This finding indicates a new research area worth further investigation

Cultural-based visual expression: Emotional analysis of human face via Peking Opera Painted Faces (POPF)

© 2015 The Author(s) Peking Opera as a branch of Chinese traditional cultures and arts has a very distinct colourful facial make-up for all actors in the stage performance. Such make-up is stylised in nonverbal symbolic semantics which all combined together to form the painted faces to describe and symbolise the background, the characteristic and the emotional status of specific roles. A study of Peking Opera Painted Faces (POPF) was taken as an example to see how information and meanings can be effectively expressed through the change of facial expressions based on the facial motion within natural and emotional aspects. The study found that POPF provides exaggerated features of facial motion through images, and the symbolic semantics of POPF provides a high-level expression of human facial information. The study has presented and proved a creative structure of information analysis and expression based on POPF to improve the understanding of human facial motion and emotion

STEPS - an approach for human mobility modeling

In this paper we introduce Spatio-TEmporal Parametric Stepping (STEPS) - a simple parametric mobility model which can cover a large spectrum of human mobility patterns. STEPS makes abstraction of spatio-temporal preferences in human mobility by using a power law to rule the nodes movement. Nodes in STEPS have preferential attachment to favorite locations where they spend most of their time. Via simulations, we show that STEPS is able, not only to express the peer to peer properties such as inter-ontact/contact time and to reflect accurately realistic routing performance, but also to express the structural properties of the underlying interaction graph such as small-world phenomenon. Moreover, STEPS is easy to implement, exible to configure and also theoretically tractable

Political Settlement in Somaliland: a gendered perspective

Research suggests that inclusive political settlements tend to be more stable. For Somaliland in the northern Horn of Africa, stability is underpinned by a patriarchal clan-based system that is non-gender-inclusive. The question therefore arises as to how the transition to greater inclusivity might be achieved without destabilising Somaliland’s political settlement in the process. The most recent 2012 Gender Inequality Index for Somalia rates the whole of the old Somali Republic at 0.776 (1 indicating maximum gender inequality), the fourth-lowest position in the index (UNDP Gender Unit, 2012). In practice, this means that the Somali territories are characterised by high levels of maternal mortality, gender-based violence, illiteracy, child marriage, rape, female genital mutilation and inadequate health services for women and girls. While this data does not relate to Somaliland alone, it provides a likely indication of the severity of the imbalance between women and men in the country. The data that is available for Somaliland shows similar gender disparities. Girls are less likely to be enrolled in primary school, for example, with 95,578 recorded in Somaliland in 2012/13 against an enrolment of 119,453 for boys. That disparity increases significantly at secondary level, with 12,306 female enrolments in the same year against 26,932 for males (MoLSA, 2014). Despite the pains of transition, there is good reason to consider a more inclusive political settlement as a means of reinvigorating the Somaliland polity. Our research and other evidence in the secondary literature show that people in Somaliland are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the ‘politicisation’ of clan and the rise of ‘clannism’. These developments in the political settlement are themselves potentially destabilising, but this time of change offers room for gender-focused activism that uses greater inclusivity for women and men (as well as minority groups) to help promote peaceful transition in Somaliland. In this report, we argue not only that the Somaliland political settlement is currently relatively stable but non-inclusive in gender terms, but that there are compelling reasons on both normative and instrumental grounds to urgently improve this situation. We present the results of a 21-month research project, including new primary data about attitudes towards improving women’s political participation and reducing gender-based violence. We conclude the report with a number of suggested initiatives, the contours of which are worth emphasising from the start. Firstly, it is important that international involvement is not seen to dominate gender initiatives to the degree that these interventions add to the growing perception that ‘women’s issues’ are a concern of liberal foreigners and are therefore ‘un-Somali’. Secondly, it is important that donor programmes seeking to address the gender-inclusivity of Somaliland’s political settlement take a long-term view, and are grounded in principles supported within Islamic ethical structures. The Somaliland government and political parties also have a significant role to play in opening spaces for both men and women to participate actively in political activities at all levels. Thirdly, therefore, we recommend a return to closed lists in elections, and a focus on finding ways to deliver on the constitutional guarantee of equal rights for all citizens. While it has supported Somaliland’s peace effectively in many ways, clan-based justice is manifestly unjust in many cases of sexual violence. Fourthly, we therefore suggest that it is important that mechanisms be found to draw customary elders into a legal system that provides more effectively for the victims in such cases. Somaliland’s success in establishing a viable political settlement in the face of considerable odds is impressive, but the transition from customary structures to those of representative nation-state politics exposes gender imbalances that could threaten to undermine that success. The research outlined in this report supports efforts to engender an inclusive and robust political settlement for the future