Salient Objects in Clutter: Bringing Salient Object Detection to the Foreground

We provide a comprehensive evaluation of salient object detection (SOD) models. Our analysis identifies a serious design bias of existing SOD datasets which assumes that each image contains at least one clearly outstanding salient object in low clutter. The design bias has led to a saturated high performance for state-of-the-art SOD models when evaluated on existing datasets. The models, however, still perform far from being satisfactory when applied to real-world daily scenes. Based on our analyses, we first identify 7 crucial aspects that a comprehensive and balanced dataset should fulfill. Then, we propose a new high quality dataset and update the previous saliency benchmark. Specifically, our SOC (Salient Objects in Clutter) dataset, includes images with salient and non-salient objects from daily object categories. Beyond object category annotations, each salient image is accompanied by attributes that reflect common challenges in real-world scenes. Finally, we report attribute-based performance assessment on our dataset.Comment: ECCV 201

Probabilistic Fragmentation and Effective Power Law

A simple fragmentation model is introduced and analysed. We show that, under very general conditions, an effective power law for the mass distribution arises with realistic exponent. This exponent has a universal limit, but in practice the effective exponent depends on the detailed breaking mechanism and the initial conditions. This dependence is in good agreement with experimental results of fragmentation.Comment: 4 pages Revtex, 2 figures, zipped and uuencode

Non Gaussianity of General Multiple-Field Inflationary Models

Using the "$\delta N$-formalism", We obtain the expression of the non-Gaussianity of multiple-field inflationary models with the nontrivial field-space metric. Further, we rewritten the result by using the slow-rolling approximation.Comment: 10 pages, no figure, references is added; mistakes is correcte

Advanced liposome-loaded scaffolds for therapeutic and tissue engineering applications

Liposome is one of the most commonly used drug delivery systems in the world, due to its excellent biocompatibility, satisfactory ability in controlling drug release, and passive targeting capability. However, some drawbacks limit the application of liposomes in clinical, such as problems in transporting, storing, and difficulties in maintaining the drug concentration in the local area. Scaffolds usually are used as implants to supply certain mechanical supporting to the defective area or utilized as diagnosis and imaging methods. But, in general, unmodified scaffolds show limited abilities in promoting tissue regeneration and treating diseases. Therefore, liposome-scaffold composite systems are designed to take advantages of both liposomes’ biocompatibility and scaffolds’ strength to provide a novel system that is more suitable for clinical applications. This review introduces and discusses different types of liposomes and scaffolds, and also the application of liposome-scaffold composite systems in different diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, skin-related diseases, infection and human immunodeficiency virus, and in tissue regeneration like bone, teeth, spinal cord and wound healing.Peer reviewe

A Biomimetic 3D-Self-Forming Approach for Microvascular Scaffolds

The development of science and technology often drew lessons from natural phenomena. Herein, inspired by drying-driven curling of apple peels, hydrogel-based micro-scaled hollow tubules (MHTs) are proposed for biomimicking microvessels, which promote microcirculation and improve the survival of random skin flaps. MHTs with various pipeline structures are fabricated using hydrogel in corresponding shapes, such as Y-branches, anastomosis rings, and triangle loops. Adjustable diameters can be achieved by altering the concentration and cross-linking time of the hydrogel. Based on this rationale, biomimetic microvessels with diameters of 50-500 mu m are cultivated in vitro by coculture of MHTs and human umbilical vein endothelial cells. In vivo studies show their excellent performance to promote microcirculation and improve the survival of random skin flaps. In conclusion, the present work proposes and validifies a biomimetic 3D self-forming method for the fabrication of biomimetic vessels and microvascular scaffolds with high biocompatibility and stability based on hydrogel materials, such as gelatin and hyaluronic acid.Peer reviewe

Discretized Diffusion Processes

We study the properties of the ``Rigid Laplacian'' operator, that is we consider solutions of the Laplacian equation in the presence of fixed truncation errors. The dynamics of convergence to the correct analytical solution displays the presence of a metastable set of numerical solutions, whose presence can be related to granularity. We provide some scaling analysis in order to determine the value of the exponents characterizing the process. We believe that this prototype model is also suitable to provide an explanation of the widespread presence of power-law in social and economic system where information and decision diffuse, with errors and delay from agent to agent.Comment: 4 pages 5 figure, to be published in PR

Dynamics of social contagions with limited contact capacity

Individuals are always limited by some inelastic resources, such as time and energy, which restrict them to dedicate to social interaction and limit their contact capacities. Contact capacity plays an important role in dynamics of social contagions, which so far has eluded theoretical analysis. In this paper, we first propose a non-Markovian model to understand the effects of contact capacity on social contagions, in which each adopted individual can only contact and transmit the information to a finite number of neighbors. We then develop a heterogeneous edge-based compartmental theory for this model, and a remarkable agreement with simulations is obtained. Through theory and simulations, we find that enlarging the contact capacity makes the network more fragile to behavior spreading. Interestingly, we find that both the continuous and discontinuous dependence of the final adoption size on the information transmission probability can arise. There is a crossover phenomenon between the two types of dependence. More specifically, the crossover phenomenon can be induced by enlarging the contact capacity only when the degree exponent is above a critical degree exponent, while the final behavior adoption size always grows continuously for any contact capacity when degree exponent is below the critical degree exponent

Minority games, evolving capitals and replicator dynamics

We discuss a simple version of the Minority Game (MG) in which agents hold only one strategy each, but in which their capitals evolve dynamically according to their success and in which the total trading volume varies in time accordingly. This feature is known to be crucial for MGs to reproduce stylised facts of real market data. The stationary states and phase diagram of the model can be computed, and we show that the ergodicity breaking phase transition common for MGs, and marked by a divergence of the integrated response is present also in this simplified model. An analogous majority game turns out to be relatively void of interesting features, and the total capital is found to diverge in time. Introducing a restraining force leads to a model akin to replicator dynamics of evolutionary game theory, and we demonstrate that here a different type of phase transition is observed. Finally we briefly discuss the relation of this model with one strategy per player to more sophisticated Minority Games with dynamical capitals and several trading strategies per agent.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure