Laina Y. Bay-Cheng, No Choice But “Yes”: Strategic Consent to Unwanted Sex

One of the most widely-used comprehensive sex ed curricula in the U.S. is entitled, Making Proud Choices! Echoing this cheerleading (and imploring) sentiment is the sex ed program offered youth in Maryland’s juvenile justice and child welfare systems, Power Through Choices, which includes the lesson, Creating the Future You Want

Superconductivity and magnetic order in the non-centrosymmetric Half Heusler compound ErPdBi

We report superconductivity at $T_c = 1.22$ K and magnetic order at $T_N = 1.06$ K in the semi-metallic noncentrosymmetric Half Heusler compound ErPdBi. The upper critical field, $B_{c2}$, has an unusual quasi-linear temperature variation and reaches a value of 1.6 T for $T \rightarrow 0$. Magnetic order is found below $T_c$ and is suppressed at $B{_M} \sim 2.5$ T for $T \rightarrow 0$. Since $T_c \simeq T_N$, the interaction of superconductivity and magnetism is expected to give rise to a complex ground state. Moreover, electronic structure calculations show ErPdBi has a topologically nontrivial band inversion and thus may serve as a new platform to study the interplay of topological states, superconductivity and magnetic order.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter

Angular variation of the magnetoresistance of the superconducting ferromagnet UCoGe

We report a magnetoresistance study of the superconducting ferromagnet UCoGe. The data, taken on single-crystalline samples, show a pronounced structure at $B^* = 8.5$~T for a field applied along the ordered moment $m_0$. Angle dependent measurements reveal this field-induced phenomenon has an uniaxial anisotropy. Magnetoresistance measurements under pressure show a rapid increase of $B^*$ to 12.8~T at 1.0~GPa. We discuss $B^*$ in terms of a field induced polarization change. Upper critical field measurements corroborate the unusual S-shaped $B_{c2}(T)$-curve for a field along the $b$-axis of the orthorhombic unit cell.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Face Detection with Effective Feature Extraction

There is an abundant literature on face detection due to its important role in many vision applications. Since Viola and Jones proposed the first real-time AdaBoost based face detector, Haar-like features have been adopted as the method of choice for frontal face detection. In this work, we show that simple features other than Haar-like features can also be applied for training an effective face detector. Since, single feature is not discriminative enough to separate faces from difficult non-faces, we further improve the generalization performance of our simple features by introducing feature co-occurrences. We demonstrate that our proposed features yield a performance improvement compared to Haar-like features. In addition, our findings indicate that features play a crucial role in the ability of the system to generalize.Comment: 7 pages. Conference version published in Asian Conf. Comp. Vision 201

Numerical modelling of drawbeads for forming of aluminium alloys

The drawbeads in stamping tools are usually designed based on experience from the forming of steel. However, aluminium alloys display different forming behaviour to steels, which is not reflected in the drawbead design for tools used for stamping aluminium. This paper presents experimental results from different semi-circular drawbead geometries commonly encountered in automotive dies and compares them to those obtained from Stoughton's analytical drawbead model and the 2D plane strain drawbead model set up using LS-DYNA. The study was conducted on lubricated NG5754 strips. The results presented are in terms of drawbead restraining force versus strip displacement, as a function of drawbead depth. The FE drawbead model agrees well with the experiments whereas the analytical model overpredicted the drawbead forces

MinMax Radon Barcodes for Medical Image Retrieval

Content-based medical image retrieval can support diagnostic decisions by clinical experts. Examining similar images may provide clues to the expert to remove uncertainties in his/her final diagnosis. Beyond conventional feature descriptors, binary features in different ways have been recently proposed to encode the image content. A recent proposal is "Radon barcodes" that employ binarized Radon projections to tag/annotate medical images with content-based binary vectors, called barcodes. In this paper, MinMax Radon barcodes are introduced which are superior to "local thresholding" scheme suggested in the literature. Using IRMA dataset with 14,410 x-ray images from 193 different classes, the advantage of using MinMax Radon barcodes over \emph{thresholded} Radon barcodes are demonstrated. The retrieval error for direct search drops by more than 15\%. As well, SURF, as a well-established non-binary approach, and BRISK, as a recent binary method are examined to compare their results with MinMax Radon barcodes when retrieving images from IRMA dataset. The results demonstrate that MinMax Radon barcodes are faster and more accurate when applied on IRMA images.Comment: To appear in proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Visual Computing, December 12-14, 2016, Las Vegas, Nevada, US

Visual counts, bioacoustics and RADAR: three methods to study waterfowl prenuptial migration in Southern France

Conteos visuales, bioacústica y RADAR: tres métodos para estudiar la migración prenupcial de aves acuáticas en el sur de Francia Este estudio es el resultado de cuatro años de monitorización (2006–2009) en dos lugares durante la migración prenupcial. En cada uno, se llevó a cabo un seguimiento de 24 horas, durante periodos de 10 días, a lo largo de la segunda década de enero (J2), el mes de febrero (F1–F3), marzo (M1–M3) y la primera década de abril (A1). La migración se monitorizó mediante RADAR (FURUNO FAR2127), asociado con grabaciones bioacústicas nocturnas, y censos visuales en las mismas áreas. El esfuerzo de muestreo fue considerable: los conteos visuales totalizaron 282 conteos–sitios (n = 262.030 patos contados), mediante bioacústica se obtuvierono 9.573 vocalizaciones en 814 horas de grabación nocturna y mediante RADAR se registraron 67.368 ecos durante 2.128 horas de vigilancia. Los censos visuales muestran una disminución del número de aves a finales de enero/principios de febrero. Los registros nocturnos presentan un máximo o mínimo del índice bioacústico en F2 y F3 función del año. El RADAR, el mejor método para estudiar los movimientos de aves a nivel de población, identificó dos picos de abundancia diferentes, utilizando las variables “altura de vuelo > 400m” y “dirección de vuelo hacia noreste/sureste” consideradas como características de la migración prenupcial. El primer pico se detectó en F1 en el Sitio 1 sólo en el 2007 (un año de cada cuatro) y en F2 en el Sitio 2 sólo en el 2006 (un año de cada cuatro). Un segundo pico, de mayor intensidad, se detectó en M1 (Sitio 1) y en M2 (Sitio 2). Aunque todos los métodos considerados pueden tener sesgos, el uso de dos nuevas tecnologías en combinación con los conteos visuales, nos ha permitido obtener datos fiables y actuales sobre la migración de aves acuáticas en el área mediterránea.Conteos visuales, bioacústica y RADAR: tres métodos para estudiar la migración prenupcial de aves acuáticas en el sur de Francia Este estudio es el resultado de cuatro años de monitorización (2006–2009) en dos lugares durante la migración prenupcial. En cada uno, se llevó a cabo un seguimiento de 24 horas, durante periodos de 10 días, a lo largo de la segunda década de enero (J2), el mes de febrero (F1–F3), marzo (M1–M3) y la primera década de abril (A1). La migración se monitorizó mediante RADAR (FURUNO FAR2127), asociado con grabaciones bioacústicas nocturnas, y censos visuales en las mismas áreas. El esfuerzo de muestreo fue considerable: los conteos visuales totalizaron 282 conteos–sitios (n = 262.030 patos contados), mediante bioacústica se obtuvierono 9.573 vocalizaciones en 814 horas de grabación nocturna y mediante RADAR se registraron 67.368 ecos durante 2.128 horas de vigilancia. Los censos visuales muestran una disminución del número de aves a finales de enero/principios de febrero. Los registros nocturnos presentan un máximo o mínimo del índice bioacústico en F2 y F3 función del año. El RADAR, el mejor método para estudiar los movimientos de aves a nivel de población, identificó dos picos de abundancia diferentes, utilizando las variables “altura de vuelo > 400m” y “dirección de vuelo hacia noreste/sureste” consideradas como características de la migración prenupcial. El primer pico se detectó en F1 en el Sitio 1 sólo en el 2007 (un año de cada cuatro) y en F2 en el Sitio 2 sólo en el 2006 (un año de cada cuatro). Un segundo pico, de mayor intensidad, se detectó en M1 (Sitio 1) y en M2 (Sitio 2). Aunque todos los métodos considerados pueden tener sesgos, el uso de dos nuevas tecnologías en combinación con los conteos visuales, nos ha permitido obtener datos fiables y actuales sobre la migración de aves acuáticas en el área mediterránea.This study comes from four years (2006–2009) of monitoring on two sites during the prenuptial migration. On each site, a monitoring of 24 hours per each 10–day period from the second 10–day period of January (J2), though February (F1–F3) and March (M1–M3), up to the first 10–day period of April (A1). Monitoring was carried out by RADAR (FURUNO FAR2127), associated with nocturnal bioacoustics recordings, and visual censuses on the same areas. The monitoring effort was considerable: visual counts carried out represent 282 counts–sites (n = 262,030 ducks counted), bioacoustics detected 9,573 calls during 814 hours of nocturnal recording and RADAR recorded 67,368 echoes on a set of 2,128 hours of monitoring. Visual counts showed a decline in the number of birds from late January/early February. Two patterns were observed with the nocturnal recordings with a maximum or a minimum of the value of bioacoustics index on F2 and F3, depending on the years. RADAR, the most relevant method for tracking of bird movements at a population level, identified two different abundance peaks using variables ‘flight altitude > 400 m’ and ‘flight direction towards north–east/south–east’, considered as characteritics of the prenuptial migration. The first peak was detected during F1 on Site 1 only in 2007 (once every four years) and during F2 on Site 2 only in 2006 (once every four years). A second peak with a higher number of echoes was recorded on M1 (Site 1) and on M2 (Site 2). Although all methods may suffer from different biases, the combination of two new technologies complementary to visual counts provided reliable and updated data for waterfowl migration in the Mediterranean area

Deep Discrete Hashing with Self-supervised Pairwise Labels

Hashing methods have been widely used for applications of large-scale image retrieval and classification. Non-deep hashing methods using handcrafted features have been significantly outperformed by deep hashing methods due to their better feature representation and end-to-end learning framework. However, the most striking successes in deep hashing have mostly involved discriminative models, which require labels. In this paper, we propose a novel unsupervised deep hashing method, named Deep Discrete Hashing (DDH), for large-scale image retrieval and classification. In the proposed framework, we address two main problems: 1) how to directly learn discrete binary codes? 2) how to equip the binary representation with the ability of accurate image retrieval and classification in an unsupervised way? We resolve these problems by introducing an intermediate variable and a loss function steering the learning process, which is based on the neighborhood structure in the original space. Experimental results on standard datasets (CIFAR-10, NUS-WIDE, and Oxford-17) demonstrate that our DDH significantly outperforms existing hashing methods by large margin in terms of~mAP for image retrieval and object recognition. Code is available at \url{https://github.com/htconquer/ddh}