Learning a Pose Lexicon for Semantic Action Recognition

This paper presents a novel method for learning a pose lexicon comprising semantic poses defined by textual instructions and their associated visual poses defined by visual features. The proposed method simultaneously takes two input streams, semantic poses and visual pose candidates, and statistically learns a mapping between them to construct the lexicon. With the learned lexicon, action recognition can be cast as the problem of finding the maximum translation probability of a sequence of semantic poses given a stream of visual pose candidates. Experiments evaluating pre-trained and zero-shot action recognition conducted on MSRC-12 gesture and WorkoutSu-10 exercise datasets were used to verify the efficacy of the proposed method.Comment: Accepted by the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME 2016). 6 pages paper and 4 pages supplementary materia

Effects Of Metacognitive Scaffolding On Reading Strategy Use And Reading Performance Of Chinese Efl Tertiary Students

Sebagai kemahiran bahasa yang penting diantara empat kemahiran bahasa, pembacaan sememangnya menerima perhatian yang khas dalam situasi pengajaran dan pembelajaran dalam bidang Bahsasa Inggeris Sebagai Bahasa Kedua (ESL) dan Bahasa Inggeris Sebagai Bahasa Asing (EFL). Being particularly important among the four language skills, reading has always received special attention in the EFL teaching and learning situations. In China, the EFL reading instruction has always been given primary prominence

Design of optimal equalizers and precoders for MIMO channels

Channel equalization has been extensively studied as a method of combating ISI and ICI for high speed MIMO data communication systems. This dissertation focuses on optimal channel equalization in the presence of non-white observation noises with unknown PSD but bounded power-norm. A worst-case approach to optimal design of channel equalizers leads to an equivalent optimal H-infinity filtering problem for the MIMO communication systems. An explicit design algorithm is derived which not only achieves the zero-forcing (ZF) condition, but also minimizes the RMS error between the transmitted symbols and the received symbols. The second part of this dissertation investigates the design of optimal precoders which minimize the bit error rate (BER) subject to a fixed transmit-power constraint for the multiple antennas downlink communication channels under the perfect reconstruction (PR) condition. The closed form solutions are derived and an efficient design algorithm is proposed. The performance evaluations indicate that the optimal precoder design for multiple antennas communication systems proposed herein is an attractive/reasonable alternative to the existing precoder design techniques

Textbook reading strategies and its relationship to reading test performance

Research studies on reading strategy use among ESL/EFL readers are increasingly becoming one of the most attended topics for researchers and educators. This study investigated the reading strategies used by 290 Chinese EFL second year undergraduates and examined the relationship between their reading strategy use and reading test performance. The participants reported their use of reading strategies through the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) in three categories: global reading strategies (GLOB), problem solving strategies (PROB) and support reading strategies (SUP). Students’ reading test performance was measured by using the national College English Test Band-4 (CET-4). Results showed that students used overall reading strategies at a medium frequency level. They used PROB strategies most frequently (at a high level), followed by GLOB strategies (at a medium level). The least frequently used were SUP strategies (at a medium level). The most frequently used individual strategies were re-reading, regaining concentration and guessing the content of the text. The least frequently used strategies included reading aloud, questioning, paraphrasing, and translating. There was no significant relationship between students’ overall reading strategy use and their general reading test performance. However, significant relationship was found between some individual reading strategies and different test formats. Students’ banked cloze test performance was positively correlated to GLOB strategies. SUP strategies were negatively correlated to students’ skimming and scanning performance. Most PROB strategies were related to student performance in fast reading either positively or negatively. Pedagogical implications are discussed in relation to the Chinese EFL context