Weight measurement using image-based pose analysis

Image-based gait analysis as a means of biometric identification has attracted much research attention. Most of the existing methods focus on human identification, posture analysis and movement tracking. There have been few investigations on measuring the carried load based on the carrier＇s gait characteristics by automatic image processing. Nevertheless, this measurement is very useful in a number of applications, such as the study of the carried load on the postural development of children and adolescence. In this paper, we investigate how to automatically estimate the carried weight from a sequence of images. We present a method to extract human gait silhouette based on an observation that humans tend to minimize the energy during motion. We compute several angles of body leaning and determine the relationship of the carried weight, the leaning angles and the centroid location according to a human kinetic study. Our weight determination method has been verified successfully by experiments.     

Nonlinear response of biophoton emission to external perturbations.

By considering an exciplex system consisting of collective molecules in interaction with both the 'pumping' fields and the biophoton fields, the two-level exciplex model and the three-level exciplex model are presented. They are useful for the investigation of the quasi-stationary behaviour of biophoton emission, and biophoton emission as a dynamic process in the presence of external perturbations. Our theoretical results predict a series of nonlinear effects, such as chaos, fractal behaviour, and non-equilibrium phase transition. These effects characterize the coherence nature of living systems. In our approaches, there are two important quantities f and x, which can be used to mark the working points of the two-level and three-level exciplex systems. All the influences of external perturbations on the exciplex systems, e.g. change of temperature, the addition of agents, exposure to light, etc., can be interpreted as shifts of the working points of the systems, leading to a diversity of nonlinear response of biophoton emission. In addition, the agreements of the theoretical results and the corresponding experimental observations on biophoton emission from biological systems in the presence of external perturbations are demonstrated.     

Sister chromatid exchanges in lymphocytes of normal and alcoholic subjects.

The effects of alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking and age on sister chromatid exchange (SCE) frequency in human lymphocytes were assessed by means of multiple linear regression. An increase in SCE rates was associated with alcohol consumption (p = 0.0001), smoking (p = 0.0231), and, to a small extent (p = 0.057), age. These three confounding factors explain 48% of the inter-personal variation in SCE rates among subjects studied.     

Channel Mismatching in Sidelobe Canceler: Limitations and Remedies

After a brief recall of the Sidelobe Canceler (SLC) working principle, including the derivation of a general formula for the Cancellation Ratio (CR), the effects of channel mismatching are investigated. In particular, curves providing CRvalues as a function of amplitude and phase channel mismatching, radar bandwidth, and jammer direction of arrival (JDOA) are provided for the cases of one and two auxiliary antennas. Subsequently, a time -space processor for performance restoration is analyzed in detail. In addition to the above mentioned quantities, the attainable CR value is expressed as a function of the space-time processor parameters. The contribution of the paper is related to the derivation of a number of mathematical equations of CR for several cases of practical interest for the radar engineer. In addition, several curves are presented to assist design of SLC systems.     

Chromosomal localization of a unique gene by non-autoradiographic in situ hybridization

During the past few years, several methods have been developed for the detection of specific nucleic acid sequences by in situ hybridization using non-radioactive labels such as fluorochromes, cytochemically detectable enzymes and electron-dense markers. These methods are preferable to autoradiography in terms of speed of performance and topological resolution. Their limited sensitivity, however, has so far restricted their use to the detection of repeated sequences. Here we report single gene detection with a procedure using 2-acetylaminofluorene (AAF)-modified probes, immunoperoxidase cytochemistry and reflection-contrast microscopy. We confirmed the autoradiographic data on the localization of the human thyroglobulin (Tg) gene to the distal end of the long arm of chromosome 8. A mixture of cosmid cHT2-derived subclones of the 3' part of the Tg gene, 22.3 kilobase pairs (kbp) in total, was used as a hybridization probe. This procedure can be used to map other unique sequences, if genomic clones are available from which clones with an appropriate amount of inserts can be isolated.