Planar Object Tracking in the Wild: A Benchmark

Planar object tracking is an actively studied problem in vision-based robotic applications. While several benchmarks have been constructed for evaluating state-of-the-art algorithms, there is a lack of video sequences captured in the wild rather than in constrained laboratory environment. In this paper, we present a carefully designed planar object tracking benchmark containing 210 videos of 30 planar objects sampled in the natural environment. In particular, for each object, we shoot seven videos involving various challenging factors, namely scale change, rotation, perspective distortion, motion blur, occlusion, out-of-view, and unconstrained. The ground truth is carefully annotated semi-manually to ensure the quality. Moreover, eleven state-of-the-art algorithms are evaluated on the benchmark using two evaluation metrics, with detailed analysis provided for the evaluation results. We expect the proposed benchmark to benefit future studies on planar object tracking.Comment: Accepted by ICRA 201

Single-shot compressed ultrafast photography: a review

Compressed ultrafast photography (CUP) is a burgeoning single-shot computational imaging technique that provides an imaging speed as high as 10 trillion frames per second and a sequence depth of up to a few hundred frames. This technique synergizes compressed sensing and the streak camera technique to capture nonrepeatable ultrafast transient events with a single shot. With recent unprecedented technical developments and extensions of this methodology, it has been widely used in ultrafast optical imaging and metrology, ultrafast electron diffraction and microscopy, and information security protection. We review the basic principles of CUP, its recent advances in data acquisition and image reconstruction, its fusions with other modalities, and its unique applications in multiple research fields

Thermo-mechanical controls of flat subduction: insights from numerical modeling

This study was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (2014CB440901), the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of CAS (XDB18020104), National Science Foundation of China (41190073, 41372198 and 41304071), and NERC grant NE/J021822/1.Numerical experiments are used to investigate the thermo- mechanical controls for inducing flat subduction and why flat subduction is rare relative to normal/steep subduction. Our modeling results demonstrate that flat subduction is an end-member of a steady state subduction geometry and is characterized by a curved slab with a nearly-horizontal slab section. Intermediate cases between normal/steep and flat subduction appear to be transient in origin and evolve toward one of the stable end-members. Physical parameters inducing flat subduction can be classified into four categories: buoyancy of the subducting oceanic lithosphere (e.g., slab age, oceanic crustal thickness), viscous coupling between the overriding and downgoing plates (e.g., initial subduction angle), external kinematic conditions, and rheological properties of the subduction zone. On the basis of parameter sensitivity tests and the main characteristics of present-day flat subduction zones, positive buoyancy from either the young slab or the thickened oceanic crust are considered the primary controlling parameter. Our results show that the possibility of flat subduction is directly proportional to oceanic crustal thickness and inversely proportional to the slab age. Furthermore, oceanic crust must be thicker than 8 km to induce flat subduction, when the slab is older than 30 Ma with an initial subduction angle of ≥ 20°, and without absolute trenchward motion of the overriding plate. The lower the initial subduction angle or the thicker the overriding continental lithosphere, the more likelihood for flat subduction. The initial subduction angle is more influential for the development of flat subduction than the overriding lithospheric thickness, and a thick overriding lithosphere induces flat subduction only under the condition of an initial subduction angle of ≤ 25°, with a slab age of ≥ 30 Ma and without absolute trenchward motion of the overriding plate. However, when the initial subduction angle is increased to > 25°, no flat subduction is predicted. All the parameters are evaluated within the constraints of a mechanical framework in which the slab geometry is regarded as a result of a balance between the gravitational and hydrodynamic torque. Any factor that can sufficiently reduce gravitational torque or increase hydrodynamic torque will exert a strong effect on flat subduction development. Our results are consistent with the observations of modern flat subduction zones on Earth.PostprintPeer reviewe

Notch signaling regulates adipose browning and energy metabolism

Beige adipocytes in white adipose tissue (WAT) are similar to classical brown adipocytes in that they can burn lipids to produce heat. Thus, an increase in beige adipocyte content in WAT browning would raise energy expenditure and reduce adiposity. Here we report that adipose-specific inactivation of Notch1 or its signaling mediator Rbpj in mice results in browning of WAT and elevated expression of uncoupling protein 1 (Ucp1), a key regulator of thermogenesis. Consequently, as compared to wild-type mice, Notch mutants exhibit elevated energy expenditure, better glucose tolerance and improved insulin sensitivity and are more resistant to high fat diet-induced obesity. By contrast, adipose-specific activation of Notch1 leads to the opposite phenotypes. At the molecular level, constitutive activation of Notch signaling inhibits, whereas Notch inhibition induces, Ppargc1a and Prdm16 transcription in white adipocytes. Notably, pharmacological inhibition of Notch signaling in obese mice ameliorates obesity, reduces blood glucose and increases Ucp1 expression in white fat. Therefore, Notch signaling may be therapeutically targeted to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes

Factors Shaping People’s Memories of the Covid-19 Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense damage to the world, including its impact on the global economy and public health. The pandemic has also exposed the weaknesses in the healthcare and economic systems. While many factors have influenced the global COVID-19 pandemic, there is a lack of research on the key shapers of COVID-19 and their importance. This article explores this issue through the perspectives of media, narratives of COVID-19-infected individuals, and visual images. The impact of COVID-19 on the global pandemic is analyzed from the viewpoint of self-reports and visual images of COVID-19-infected individuals. The paper suggests ways to improve preparedness for future global health crises by analyzing these issues and ensuring that we can learn from the pandemic’s memory

How Users can Solve the Trust Problem in the Digital Age

The digital age has brought new changes to both the production and dissemination of information, and these changes are both positive and negative. This paper focuses on the trust problems in information that has arisen in the digital age, analyses the problem of disinformation and the weakening influence of opinion leaders in the Internet environment from the perspective of users, and makes suggestions for improvement

Proposal Report for the 2nd SciCAP Competition 2024

In this paper, we propose a method for document summarization using auxiliary information. This approach effectively summarizes descriptions related to specific images, tables, and appendices within lengthy texts. Our experiments demonstrate that leveraging high-quality OCR data and initially extracted information from the original text enables efficient summarization of the content related to described objects. Based on these findings, we enhanced popular text generation model models by incorporating additional auxiliary branches to improve summarization performance. Our method achieved top scores of 4.33 and 4.66 in the long caption and short caption tracks, respectively, of the 2024 SciCAP competition, ranking highest in both categories

Concentration retrieval in a calibration-free wavelength modulation spectroscopy system using particle swarm optimization algorithm

This paper develops a spectral fitting technology based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, which is applied to a calibration-free wavelength modulation spectroscopy system to achieve concentration retrieval. As compared with other spectral fitting technology based on the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm, this technology is relatively weakly dependent on the pre-characterization of the laser parameters. The gas concentration is calculated by fitting the simulated spectra to the measured spectra using the PSO algorithm. We validated the simulation with the LM algorithm and PSO algorithm for the target gas C2H2. The results showed that the convergence speed of the spectral fitting technique based on the PSO algorithm was about 63 times faster than the LM algorithm when the fitting accuracy remained the same. Within 5 seconds, the PSO algorithm can produce findings that are generally consistent with the values anticipated.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2210.1654