Video Manipulation Techniques for the Protection of Privacy in Remote Presence Systems

Systems that give control of a mobile robot to a remote user raise privacy concerns about what the remote user can see and do through the robot. We aim to preserve some of that privacy by manipulating the video data that the remote user sees. Through two user studies, we explore the effectiveness of different video manipulation techniques at providing different types of privacy. We simultaneously examine task performance in the presence of privacy protection. In the first study, participants were asked to watch a video captured by a robot exploring an office environment and to complete a series of observational tasks under differing video manipulation conditions. Our results show that using manipulations of the video stream can lead to fewer privacy violations for different privacy types. Through a second user study, it was demonstrated that these privacy-protecting techniques were effective without diminishing the task performance of the remote user.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Spectroscopy of Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies in Distant Clusters I. Spectroscopic Data

We used the DEIMOS spectrograph on the Keck II Telescope to obtain spectra of galaxies in the fields of five distant, rich galaxy clusters over the redshift range 0.5 < z < 0.9 in a search for luminous, compact, blue galaxies (LCBGs). Unlike traditional studies of galaxy clusters, we preferentially targeted blue cluster members identified via multi-band photometric pre-selection based on imaging data from the WIYN telescope. Of the 1288 sources that we targeted, we determined secure spectroscopic redshifts for 848 sources, yielding a total success rate of 66%. Our redshift measurements are in good agreement with those previously reported in the literature, except for 11 targets which we believe were previously in error. Within our sample, we confirm the presence of 53 LCBGs in the five galaxy clusters. The clusters all stand out as distinct peaks in the redshift distribution of LCBGs with the average number density of LCBGs ranging from 1.65+-0.25 Mpc^-3 at z=0.55 to 3.13+-0.65 Mpc^-3 at z=0.8. The number density of LCBGs in clustes exceeds the field desnity by a factor of 749+-116 at z=0.55; at z=0.8, the corresponding ratio is E=416+-95. At z=0.55, this enhancement is well above that seen for blue galaxies or the overall cluster population, indicating that LCBGs are preferentially triggered in high-density environments at intermediate redshifts.Comment: 45 pages, 19 figures, accepted to ApJ. For Full resolution figure and data tables, see http://www.salt.ac.za/~crawford/projects/deimos

Infrastructure Model Development to Enhance Resilience against future changes using InfraWorks & GIS

The Smart City idea is becoming more popular because cities are getting too crowded. This study looks at how BIM and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) work together. The study focused on infrastructure and figuring out how long a building would last, as early stages of infrastructure development would help the public organization to better plan and design. The GIS mapping shows which areas are more likely to become cities or towns. The AEC industry stakeholders can benefit from mapping to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). The AEC industry has also been constantly moving towards Building Information Modelling (BIM). In this study, the city of London was considered, and Land Cover predictions from 2000 to 2025 were made. The predicted Map of 2025 would help developers and planning authorities on decision making on housing development. Based on the current study, more research could be extended on how BIM and GIS could work together for urban development

Building Legal Case Retrieval Systems with Lexical Matching and Summarization using A Pre-Trained Phrase Scoring Model

We present our method for tackling the legal case retrieval task of the Competition on Legal Information Extraction/Entailment 2019. Our approach is based on the idea that summarization is important for retrieval. On one hand, we adopt a summarization based model called encoded summarization which encodes a given document into continuous vector space which embeds the summary properties of the document. We utilize the resource of COLIEE 2018 on which we train the document representation model. On the other hand, we extract lexical features on different parts of a given query and its candidates. We observe that by comparing different parts of the query and its candidates, we can achieve better performance. Furthermore, the combination of the lexical features with latent features by the summarization-based method achieves even better performance. We have achieved the state-of-the-art result for the task on the benchmark of the competition

Infrared to millimetre photometry of ultra-luminous IR galaxies: new evidence favouring a 3-stage dust model

Infrared to millimetre spectral energy distributions have been obtained for 41 bright ultra-luminous infrared galaxies. The observations were carried out with ISOPHOT between 10 and 200 micron and supplemented for 16 sources with SCUBA at 450 and 850 micron and with SEST at 1.3 mm. In addition, seven sources were observed at 1.2 and 2.2 $\mu$m with the 2.2 m telescope on Calar Alto. These new SEDs represent the most complete set of infrared photometric templates obtained so far on ULIRGs in the local universe.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Star Clusters in the Tidal Tails of Interacting Galaxies: Cluster Populations Across a Variety of Tail Environments

We have searched for compact stellar structures within 17 tidal tails in 13 different interacting galaxies using F606W- and F814W- band images from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The sample of tidal tails includes a diverse population of optical properties, merging galaxy mass ratios, HI content, and ages. Combining our tail sample with Knierman et al. (2003), we find evidence of star clusters formed in situ with Mv < -8.5 and V-I < 2.0 in 10 of 23 tidal tails; we are able to identify cluster candidates to Mv = -6.5 in the closest tails. Three tails offer clear examples of "beads on a string" star formation morphology in V-I color maps. Two tails present both tidal dwarf galaxy (TDG) candidates and cluster candidates. Statistical diagnostics indicate that clusters in tidal tails may be drawn from the same power-law luminosity functions (with logarithmic slopes ~ -2 - -2.5) found in quiescent spiral galaxies and the interiors of interacting systems. We find that the tail regions with the largest number of observable clusters are relatively young (< 250 Myr old) and bright (V < 24 mag arcsec^(-2)), probably attributed to the strong bursts of star formation in interacting systems soon after periapse. Otherwise, we find no statistical difference between cluster-rich and cluster-poor tails in terms of many observable characteristics, though this analysis suffers from complex, unresolved gas dynamics and projection effects.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 27 pages, 8 figure

Assessment of seasonal winter temperature forecast errors in the regcm model over northern Vietnam

This study verified the seasonal six-month forecasts for winter temperatures for northern Vietnam in 1998–2018 using a regional climate model (RegCM4) with the boundary conditions of the climate forecast system Version 2 (CFSv2) from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). First, different physical schemes (land-surface process, cumulus, and radiation parameterizations) in RegCM4 were applied to generate 12 single forecasts. Second, the simple ensemble forecasts were generated through the combinations of those different physical formulations. Three subclimate regions (R1, R2, R3) of northern Vietnam were separately tested with surface observations and a reanalysis dataset (Japanese 55-year reanalysis (JRA55)). The highest sensitivity to the mean monthly temperature forecasts was shown by the land-surface parameterizations (the biosphere−atmosphere transfer scheme (BATS) and community land model version 4.5 (CLM)). The BATS forecast groups tended to provide forecasts with lower temperatures than the actual observations, while the CLM forecast groups tended to overestimate the temperatures. The forecast errors from single forecasts could be clearly reduced with ensemble mean forecasts, but ensemble spreads were less than those root-mean-square errors (RMSEs). This indicated that the ensemble forecast was underdispersed and that the direct forecast from RegCM4 needed more postprocessing

Theoretical predictions of melting behaviors of hcp iron up to 4000 GPa

The high-pressure melting diagram of iron is a vital ingredient for the geodynamic modeling of planetary interiors. Nonetheless, available data for molten iron show an alarming discrepancy. Herein, we propose an efficient one-phase approach to capture the solid-liquid transition of iron under extreme conditions. Our basic idea is to extend the statistical moment method to determine the density of iron in the TPa region. On that basis, we adapt the work-heat equivalence principle to appropriately link equation-of-state parameters with melting properties. This strategy allows explaining cutting-edge experimental and ab initio results without massive computational workloads. Our theoretical calculations would be helpful to constrain the chemical composition, internal dynamics, and thermal evolution of the Earth and super-Earths