Information gains from commercial spectral filters in anomalous trichromacy

Red-green color discrimination is compromised in anomalous trichromacy, the most common inherited color vision deficiency. This computational analysis tested whether three commercial optical filters with medium-to-long-wavelength stop bands increased information about colored surfaces. The surfaces were sampled from 50 hyperspectral images of outdoor scenes. At best, potential gains in the effective number of surfaces discriminable solely by color reached 9% in protanomaly and 15% in deuteranomaly, much less than with normal trichromacy. Gains were still less with lower scene illumination and more severe color vision deficiency. Stop-band filters may offer little improvement in objective real-world color discrimination.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UIDB/04650/2020); Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (GR/R39412/01), EP/B000257/1)

A Framework for Efficient Adaptively Secure Composable Oblivious Transfer in the ROM

Oblivious Transfer (OT) is a fundamental cryptographic protocol that finds a number of applications, in particular, as an essential building block for two-party and multi-party computation. We construct a round-optimal (2 rounds) universally composable (UC) protocol for oblivious transfer secure against active adaptive adversaries from any OW-CPA secure public-key encryption scheme with certain properties in the random oracle model (ROM). In terms of computation, our protocol only requires the generation of a public/secret-key pair, two encryption operations and one decryption operation, apart from a few calls to the random oracle. In~terms of communication, our protocol only requires the transfer of one public-key, two ciphertexts, and three binary strings of roughly the same size as the message. Next, we show how to instantiate our construction under the low noise LPN, McEliece, QC-MDPC, LWE, and CDH assumptions. Our instantiations based on the low noise LPN, McEliece, and QC-MDPC assumptions are the first UC-secure OT protocols based on coding assumptions to achieve: 1) adaptive security, 2) optimal round complexity, 3) low communication and computational complexities. Previous results in this setting only achieved static security and used costly cut-and-choose techniques.Our instantiation based on CDH achieves adaptive security at the small cost of communicating only two more group elements as compared to the gap-DH based Simplest OT protocol of Chou and Orlandi (Latincrypt 15), which only achieves static security in the ROM

Exploring film language with a digital analysis tool: The case of kinolab

This article presents a case study of Kinolab, a digital platform for the analysis of narrative film language. It describes the need for a scholarly database of clips focusing on film language for cinema and media studies faculty and students, highlighting recent technological and legal advances that have created a favorable environment for this kind of digital humanities work. Discussion of the project is situated within the broader context of contemporary developments in moving image annotation and a discussion of the unique challenges posed by computationally-driven moving image analysis. The article also argues for a universally accepted data model for film language to facilitate the academic crowdsourcing of film clips and the sharing of research and resources across the Semantic Web

Detecting changes of spatial cone-excitation ratios in dichoptic viewing

AbstractSpatial ratios of cone excitations produced by light reflected by different surfaces in a scene may provide the cue for discriminating changes in illuminant from changes in surface reflectances. To test whether these ratios can be computed across the two eyes, observers were presented with simulations on a computer-controlled monitor of pairs of juxtaposed or separated Munsell surfaces undergoing an illuminant change with a small change in cone-excitation ratios or a change with constant cone-excitation ratios. Surfaces were viewed either binocularly or dichoptically. Observers reliably discriminated the two changes in both viewing conditions, although less well dichoptically. Cone-excitation ratios, which may in principle be computed retinally, may also be computed cortically

An analysis of pulverized coal injection in blast furnaces by rist diagram / Uma análise sobre a injeção de carvão pulverizado em altos-fornos por meio do diagrama de rist

The reduction process in blast furnace involves the higher cost of a steel company. The operational stability of the reduction process should be accompanied by low fuel rate and a good productivity. Thus, it is extremely important to control the main parameters of this process as the ratio between the direct and indirect reduction, the efficiency of the stack, the temperature of the Thermal Reserve Zone and energy balance of the Elaboration Zone. This analysis was performed using the Rist diagram, to assess the operational changes of operation All Coke in relation to the use of pulverized coal injection in a blast furnace 1 at ArcelorMittal Tubarão. The Rist diagram was effective in to relate the parameters studied with these operational changes

Little information loss with red-green color deficient vision in natural environments

Inherited color vision deficiency affects red-green discrimination in about one in twelve men from European populations. Its effects have been studied mainly in primitive foraging but also in detecting blushing and breaking camouflage. Yet there is no obvious relationship between these specific tasks and vision in the real world. The aim here was to quantify the impact of color vision deficiency by estimating computationally the information available to observers about colored surfaces in natural scenes. With representative independent sets of 50 and 100 hyperspectral images, estimated information was found to be only a little less in red-green color vision deficiency than in normal trichromacy. Colorimetric analyses revealed the importance of large lightness variations within scenes, small redness-greenness variations, and uneven frequencies of different colored surfaces. While red-green color vision deficiency poses challenges in some tasks, it has much less effect on gaining information from natural environments.Wearegrateful to K. Amano for collaborating in the acquisition of the set of 50 hyperspectral images and for critically reading the manuscript. We also thank K. Berger and O. Ben-Shahar for advice. This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Funding UIDB/04650/2020 and by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (GR/ R39412/01), EP/B000257/1, EP/E056512/1, EP/W033968/1)

Wine Magic: Consumer Culture, Tourism, and Terroir

International audienc

Artificial neural networks for predicting the generation of acetaldehyde in pet resin in the process of injection of plastic packages

The industrial production of preforms for the manufacture of PET bottles, during the plastic injection process, is essential to regulate the drying temperature of the PET resin, to control the generation of Acetaldehyde (ACH), which alters the flavor of carbonated or non-carbonated drinks, giving the drink a citrus flavor and putting in doubt the quality of packaged products. In this work, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) of the Backpropagation type (Cascadeforwardnet) is specified to support the decision-making process in controlling the ideal drying temperature of the PET resin, allowing specialists to make the necessary temperature regulation decisions  for the best performance by decreasing ACH levels. The materials and methods were applied according to the manufacturer\u27s characteristics on the moisture in the PET resin grain, which may contain between 50 ppm and 100 ppm of ACH. Data were collected for the method analysis, according to temperatures and residence times used in the blow injection process in the manufacture of the bottle preform, the generation of ACH from the PET bottle after solid post-condensation stage reached residual ACH levels below (3-4) ppm, according to the desired specification, reaching levels below 1 ppm. The results found through the Computational Intelligence (IC) techniques applied by the ANNs, where they allowed the prediction of the ACH levels generated in the plastic injection process of the bottle packaging preform, allowing an effective management of the parameters of production, assisting in strategic decision making regarding the use of temperature control during the drying process of PET resin

Flow regime map of a liquid-solid micro-circulating fluidized bed

Solid-liquid micro-fluidised beds (FBs), which are essentially fluidisation of micro-particles in sub-centimetre beds, hold promise of applications in the microfluidics and micro-process technology context. This is mainly due to fluidised particles providing enhancement of mixing, mass and heat transfer under the low Reynolds number flows that dominate in micro-devices. Sometimes particle circulations is required or desirable (e.g. continuous regeneration of a catalyst) for which circulating fluidised beds are ideal, not to mention advantages of better interfacial contacting and reduced backmixing compared to a classical fluidised bed (1). Albeit there are quite a few studies of solid-liquid micro-fluidised beds, we are presenting the first study of micro-circulating fluidised bed. A transparent micro-circulating fluidised bed was made by micro-machining channels of 1 mm2 square cross section in Perspex as shown in Fig. 1. We used soda-lime glass microparticles and tap water as fluidising medium to study flow regime transition for this micro-circulating fluidised bed. The flow regime map as proposed by Liang et al. (2) was produced for a micro-circulating fluidised bed and is given in Fig. 2. Essentially results are almost the same as for the macroscopic counterparts with the transition to the circulating fluidised regime occurring at velocities, Ucr, slightly above the particle terminal velocities, Ut (1,2). The reported critical transition velocity is for high enough solid inventories (above 10% of the system volume) where this transition velocity is constant, while for lower solid inventories it is bigger as in previous experiments (1,2). While the minimum fluidization velocity, Umf, is influenced by adhesion forces and wall effects (3), there is a weak increase in the normalized critical transition velocity for circulating regime, Ucr/Ut, with an increase of particle diameter (not shown here). This may be due to the wall effects but more studies are needed to elucidate this further. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract