Using Self-Contradiction to Learn Confidence Measures in Stereo Vision

Learned confidence measures gain increasing importance for outlier removal and quality improvement in stereo vision. However, acquiring the necessary training data is typically a tedious and time consuming task that involves manual interaction, active sensing devices and/or synthetic scenes. To overcome this problem, we propose a new, flexible, and scalable way for generating training data that only requires a set of stereo images as input. The key idea of our approach is to use different view points for reasoning about contradictions and consistencies between multiple depth maps generated with the same stereo algorithm. This enables us to generate a huge amount of training data in a fully automated manner. Among other experiments, we demonstrate the potential of our approach by boosting the performance of three learned confidence measures on the KITTI2012 dataset by simply training them on a vast amount of automatically generated training data rather than a limited amount of laser ground truth data.Comment: This paper was accepted to the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2016. The copyright was transfered to IEEE (https://www.ieee.org). The official version of the paper will be made available on IEEE Xplore (R) (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org). This version of the paper also contains the supplementary material, which will not appear IEEE Xplore (R

Thyroid hormones increase insulin-like growth factor mRNA levels in the clonal osteoblastic cell line MC3T3-E1

AbstractThyroid hormones are known to affect skeletal growth and maturation by influencing both bone resorption and bone formation. Their exact mechanism of action, however, is still unknown. Local factors such as prostaglandins, TGF-β or IGF-I were suggested to mediate their effects. Thyroid hormones were reported to stimulate expression of IGF-I mRNA in liver and kidney and to increase IGF-I release from bone organ cultures and osteoblast-like cells. Therefore we studied the effect of thyroid hormones on IGF-I mRNA expression in MC3T3-E1 cells. The cells were grown in culture for 5 to 7 days and treated with triiodothyronine (10−11 - 10−6 M) and thyroxin (10−6 M) for 1–24 h. Cellular mRNA was isolated and subjected to Northern hybridization. The amount of IGF-I mRNA, which is already expressed in this cell line under control conditions, was markedly enhanced by T3 and T4. This effect was found to be dose-dependent with a maximum at 10−7M and could already be seen after 3 h increasing up to 24 h. Our findings indicate that IGF-I expression in osteoblasts is directly regulated by thyroid hormones. We conclude that IGF-I expression belongs to the phenotypic characteristics of mature osteoblasts, and that thyroid hormones play an important role in differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells along the osteoblastic lineage

Tour-scapes or how to convert mature tourism destinations to complex sustainable landscapes: the strategy of the "second coast"

The paper discusses the innovation potential of landscape design to mature tourism destinations in the Mediterranean, especially in relation to its contribution to generate new imagery as well as to configure sustainability criteria in order to improve tourist consolidated environments. It is structured in two parts: The first deals with the intense relationship between Landscape and Tourism. The second focuses on a review of the research results developed within the frame of the Master’s in Landscape Architecture, UPC, in the territories of Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain and Languedoc, France. The works presented explore protocols of developing a sustainable tourist imagery based on the identity and natural potential of these landscapes in relation to the development of a holistic tourist project that involves landscape not as a background but as a tourist product in itself. The experiences include approaches that relate the existing coastal developments to its agricultural "hinterland", specifically denominated as "second coast".Peer Reviewe

Tour-Scapes Or How To Convert Mature Tourism Destinations To Complex Sustainable Landscapes; The Strategy Of The “Second Coast”

The paper discusses the innovation potential of landscape design to mature tourism destinations in the Mediterranean, especially in relation to its contribution to generate new imagery as well as to configure sustainability criteria in order to improve tourist consolidated environments. It is structured in two parts: The first deals with the intense relationship between Landscape and Tourism. The second focuses on a review of the research results developed within the frame of the Master’s in Landscape Architecture, UPC, in the territories of Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain and Languedoc, France. The works presented explore protocols of developing a sustainable tourist imagery based on the identity and natural potential of these landscapes in relation to the development of a holistic tourist project that involves landscape not as a background but as a tourist product in itself. The experiences include approaches that relate the existing coastal developments to its agricultural “hinterland”, specifically denominated as “second coast”.Este artículo aborda el potencial de innovación del diseño paisajístico en destinaciones turísticas maduras del Mediterráneo, especialmente en relación a su contribución a la creación de un nuevo imaginario así como también a la configuración de criterios sostenibles con el fin de mejorar entornos consolidados turísticamente. Se estructura en dos partes: La primera trata la intensa relación entre el Paisaje y el Turismo. La segunda se centra en la evaluación de los resultados de la investigación desarrollados en el marco del Máster en Paisajismo, UPC, en los territorios de la Costa Brava, Cataluña, España y Languedoc, Francia. Los trabajos presentados exploran los protocolos del desarrollo de un imaginario turístico sostenible basado en la identidad y el potencial natural de estos paisajes en relación al desarrollo de un proyecto de turismo holístico que involucra el paisaje no como fondo sino como un producto turístico en sí. Las experiencias incluyen aproximaciones que relacionan el ya existente desarrollo de la costa con la zona agrónoma “interior”, específicamente denominada “segunda costa”