Amodal Instance Segmentation (AIS) aims to segment the regions of both visible and invisible parts of overlapping objects. The mainstream Mask R-CNN-based methods are unsuitable for thin objects with large overlaps because of their object proposal features with bounding boxes for three reasons. First, capturing the entire shapes of overlapping thin objects is difficult. Second, the bounding boxes of close objects are almost identical. Third, a bounding box contains many objects in most cases. In this paper, we propose a box-free AIS method, Seed-to-Mask, for thin objects with large overlaps. The method specifies a target object using a seed and iteratively extends the segmented region. We have achieved better performance in experiments on artificial data consisting only of thin objects.

To achieve precise measurement without landing, the high-mobility vehicle-mounted theodolite needs to be leveled quickly with high precision and ensure sufficient support stability before work. After the measurement, it is also necessary to ensure that the high-mobility vehicle-mounted theodolite can be quickly withdrawn. Therefore, this paper proposes a hierarchical automatic leveling strategy and establishes a two-stage electromechanical automatic leveling mechanism model. Using coarse leveling of the first-stage automatic leveling mechanism and fine leveling of the second-stage automatic leveling mechanism, the model realizes high-precision and fast leveling of the vehicle-mounted theodolites. Then, the leveling control method based on repeated positioning is proposed for the first-stage automatic leveling mechanism. To realize the rapid withdrawal for high-mobility vehicle-mounted theodolites, the method ensures the coincidence of spatial movement paths when the structural parts are unfolded and withdrawn. Next, the leg static balance equation is constructed in the leveling state, and the support force detection method is discussed in realizing the stable support for vehicle-mounted theodolites. Furthermore, a mathematical model for “false leg” detection is established furtherly, and a “false leg” detection scheme based on the support force detection method is analyzed to significantly improve the support stability of vehicle-mounted theodolites. Finally, an experimental platform is constructed to perform the performance test for automatic leveling mechanisms. The experimental results show that the leveling accuracy of established two-stage electromechanical automatic leveling mechanism can reach 3.6″, and the leveling time is no more than 2 mins. The maximum support force error of the support force detection method is less than 15%, and the average support force error is less than 10%. In contrast, the maximum support force error of the drive motor torque detection method reaches 80.12%, and its leg support stability is much less than the support force detection method. The model and analysis method proposed in this paper can also be used for vehicle-mounted radar, vehicle-mounted laser measurement devices, vehicle-mounted artillery launchers and other types of vehicle-mounted equipment with high-precision and high-mobility working requirements.

Simple and quick tests at medical clinics have become increasingly important. Magnetic sensing techniques have been developed to detect biomarkers using magnetic nanoparticles in liquid-phase assays. We developed a biomarker assay that involves using an alternating current (AC) susceptibility measurement system that uses functional magnetic particles and magnetic sensing technology. We also developed compact biomarker measuring equipment to enable quick testing. Our assay is a one-step homogeneous assay that involves simply mixing a sample with a reagent, shortening testing time and simplifying processing. Using our compact measuring equipment, which includes anisotropic magneto resistance (AMR) sensors, we conducted high-sensitivity measurements of extremely small amounts of two biomarkers (C-reactive protein, CRP and α-Fetoprotein, AFP) used for diagnosing arteriosclerosis and malignant tumors. The results indicate that an extremely small amount of CRP and AFP could be detected within 15 min, which demonstrated the possibility of a simple and quick high-sensitivity immunoassay that involves using an AC-susceptibility measurement system.

The steady-state and convergence performances are important indicators to evaluate adaptive algorithms. The step-size affects these two important indicators directly. Many relevant scholars have also proposed some variable step-size adaptive algorithms for improving performance. However, there are still some problems in these existing variable step-size adaptive algorithms, such as the insufficient theoretical analysis, the imbalanced performance and the unachievable parameter. These problems influence the actual performance of some algorithms greatly. Therefore, we intend to further explore an inherent relationship between the key performance and the step-size in this paper. The variation of mean square deviation (MSD) is adopted as the cost function. Based on some theoretical analyses and derivations, a novel variable step-size algorithm with a dynamic limited function (DLF) was proposed. At the same time, the sufficient theoretical analysis is conducted on the weight deviation and the convergence stability. The proposed algorithm is also tested with some typical algorithms in many different environments. Both the theoretical analysis and the experimental result all have verified that the proposed algorithm equips a superior performance.

The automatic defect detection for fabric images is an essential mission in textile industry. However, there are some inherent difficulties in the detection of fabric images, such as complexity of the background and the highly uneven scales of defects. Moreover, the trade-off between accuracy and speed should be considered in real applications. To address these problems, we propose a novel model based on YOLOv4 to detect defects in fabric images, called Feature Augmentation YOLO (FA-YOLO). In terms of network structure, FA-YOLO adds an additional detection head to improve the detection ability of small defects and builds a powerful Neck structure to enhance feature fusion. First, to reduce information loss during feature fusion, we perform the residual feature augmentation (RFA) on the features after dimensionality reduction by using 1×1 convolution. Afterward, the attention module (SimAM) is embedded into the locations with rich features to improve the adaptation ability to complex backgrounds. Adaptive spatial feature fusion (ASFF) is also applied to output of the Neck to filter inconsistencies across layers. Finally, the cross-stage partial (CSP) structure is introduced for optimization. Experimental results based on three real industrial datasets, including Tianchi fabric dataset (72.5% mAP), ZJU-Leaper fabric dataset (0.714 of average F1-score) and NEU-DET steel dataset (77.2% mAP), demonstrate the proposed FA-YOLO achieves competitive results compared to other state-of-the-art (SoTA) methods.

This study investigates the efficacy of a partial decomposition approach in concept map recomposition tasks to reduce cognitive load while maintaining the benefits of traditional recomposition approaches. Prior research has demonstrated that concept map recomposition, involving the rearrangement of unconnected concepts and links, can enhance reading comprehension. However, this task often imposes a significant burden on learners’ working memory. To address this challenge, this study proposes a partial recomposition approach where learners are tasked with recomposing only a portion of the concept map, thereby reducing the problem space. The proposed approach aims at lowering the cognitive load while maintaining the benefits of traditional recomposition task, that is, learning effect and motivation. To investigate the differences in cognitive load, learning effect, and motivation between the full decomposition (the traditional approach) and partial decomposition (the proposed approach), we have conducted an experiment (N=78) where the participants were divided into two groups of “full decomposition” and “partial decomposition”. The full decomposition group was assigned the task of recomposing a concept map from a set of unconnected concept nodes and links, while the partial decomposition group worked with partially connected nodes and links. The experimental results show a significant reduction in the embedded cognitive load of concept map recomposition across different dimensions while learning effect and motivation remained similar between the conditions. On the basis of these findings, educators are recommended to incorporate partially disconnected concept maps in recomposition tasks to optimize time management and sustain learner motivation. By implementing this approach, instructors can conserve cognitive resources and allocate saved energy and time to other activities that enhance the overall learning process.

When new users join a recommender system, traditional approaches encounter challenges in accurately understanding their interests due to the absence of historical user behavior data, thus making it difficult to provide personalized recommendations. Currently, two main methods are employed to address this issue from different perspectives. One approach is centered on meta-learning, enabling models to adapt faster to new tasks by sharing knowledge and experiences across multiple tasks. However, these methods often overlook potential improvements based on cross-domain information. The other method involves cross-domain recommender systems, which transfer learned knowledge to different domains using shared models and transfer learning techniques. Nonetheless, this approach has certain limitations, as it necessitates a substantial amount of labeled data for training and may not accurately capture users’ latent preferences when dealing with a limited number of samples. Therefore, a crucial need arises to devise a novel method that amalgamates cross-domain information and latent preference extraction to address this challenge. To accomplish this objective, we propose a Cross-domain Recommender System based on Domain Knowledge Transferor and Latent Preference Extractor (TECDR).  In TECDR, we have designed a Latent Preference Extractor that transforms user behaviors into representations of their latent interests in items. Additionally, we have introduced a Domain Knowledge Transfer mechanism for transferring knowledge and patterns between domains. Moreover, we leverage meta-learning-based optimization methods to assist the model in adapting to new tasks. The experimental results from three cross-domain scenarios demonstrate that TECDR exhibits outstanding performance across various cross-domain recommender scenarios.

To reduce the common mode voltage (CMV), suppress the CMV spikes, and improve the steady-state performance, a simplified reactive torque model predictive control (RT-MPC) for induction motors (IMs) is proposed. The proposed prediction model can effectively reduce the complexity of the control algorithm with the direct torque control (DTC) based voltage vector (VV) preselection approach. In addition, the proposed CMV suppression strategy can restrict the CMV within ±Vdc/6, and does not require the exclusion of non-adjacent non-opposite VVs, thus resulting in the system showing good steady-state performance. The effectiveness of the proposed design has been tested and verified by the practical experiment. The proposed algorithm can reduce the execution time by an average of 26.33% compared to the major competitors.

When a mathematical model is not available for a dynamical system, it is reasonable to use a data-driven approach for analysis and control of the system. With this motivation, the authors have recently developed a data-driven solution to Lyapunov equations, which uses not the model but the data of several state trajectories of the system. However, the number of state trajectories to uniquely determine the solution is O(n2) for the dimension n of the system. This prevents us from applying the method to a case with a large n. Thus, this paper proposes a novel class of data-driven Lyapunov equations, which requires a smaller amount of data. Although the previous method constructs one scalar equation from one state trajectory, the proposed method constructs three scalar equations from any combination of two state trajectories. Based on this idea, we derive data-driven Lyapunov equations such that the number of state trajectories to uniquely determine the solution is O(n).

Cloud computing has become the mainstream computing paradigm nowadays. More and more data owners (DO) choose to outsource their data to a cloud service provider (CSP), who is responsible for data management and query processing on behalf of DO, so as to cut down operational costs for the DO.  However, in real-world applications, CSP may be untrusted, hence it is necessary to authenticate the query result returned from the CSP.  In this paper, we consider the problem of approximate string query result authentication in the context of database outsourcing. Based on Merkle Hash Tree (MHT) and Trie, we propose an authenticated tree structure named MTrie for authenticating approximate string query results. We design efficient algorithms for query processing and query result authentication. To verify effectiveness of our method, we have conducted extensive experiments on real datasets and the results show that our proposed method can effectively authenticate approximate string query results.

Displacement current is the last piece of the puzzle of electromagnetic theory. Its existence implies that electromagnetic disturbance can propagate at the speed of light and finally it led to the discovery of Hertzian waves. On the other hand, since magnetic fields can be calculated only with conduction currents using Biot-Savart's law, a popular belief that displacement current does not produce magnetic fields has started to circulate. But some people think if this is correct, what is the displacement current introduced for. The controversy over the meaning of displacement currents has been going on for more than hundred years. Such confusion is caused by forgetting the fact that in the case of non-stationary currents, neither magnetic fields created by conduction currents nor those created by displacement currents can be defined. It is also forgotten that the effect of displacement current is automatically incorporated in the magnetic field calculated by Biot-Savart's law. In this paper, mainly with the help of Helmholtz decomposition, we would like to clarify the confusion surrounding displacement currents and provide an opportunity to end the long standing controversy.

This letter deals with the joint direction of arrival and direction of departure estimation problem for overloaded target in bistatic multiple-input multiple-output radar system. In order to achieve the purpose of effective estimation, the presented Khatri-Rao (KR) MUSIC estimator with the ability to handle overloaded targets mainly combines the subspace characteristics of the target reflected wave signal and the KR product based on the array response. This letter also presents a computationally efficient KR noise subspace projection matrix estimation technique to reduce the computational load due to perform high-dimensional singular value decomposition. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by computer simulation.

Stabilizer-based quantum secret sharing has two methods to reconstruct a quantum secret: The erasure correcting procedure and the unitary procedure. It is known that the unitary procedure has a smaller circuit width. On the other hand, it is unknown which method has smaller depth and fewer circuit gates. In this letter, it is shown that the unitary procedure has smaller depth and fewer circuit gates than the erasure correcting procedure which follows a standard framework performing measurements and unitary operators according to the measurements outcomes, when the circuits are designed for quantum secret sharing using the [[5, 1, 3]] binary stabilizer code. The evaluation can be reversed if one discovers a better circuit for the erasure correcting procedure which does not follow the standard framework.

Previously, we proposed a probabilistic data generation model represented by an unobservable tree and a sequential updating method to calculate a posterior distribution over a set of trees. The set is called a meta-tree. In this paper, we propose a more efficient batch updating method.

In this work we propose a Bayesian version of the Nagaoka-Hayashi bound when estimating a parametric family of quantum states. This lower bound is a generalization of a recently proposed bound for point estimation to Bayesian estimation. We then show that the proposed lower bound can be efficiently computed as a semidefinite programming problem. As a lower bound, we also derive a Bayesian version of the Holevo-type bound from the Bayesian Nagaoka-Hayashi bound. Lastly, we prove that the new lower bound is tighter than the Bayesian quantum logarithmic derivative bounds.

The context tree model has the property that the occurrence probability of symbols is determined from a finite past sequence and is a broader class of sources that includes i.i.d. or Markov sources. This paper proposes a non-stationary source with context tree models that change from interval to interval. The Bayes code for this source requires weighting of the posterior probabilities of the context tree models and change points, so the computational complexity of it usually increases to exponential order. Therefore, the challenge is how to reduce the computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a special class of prior probability distribution of context tree models and change points and develop an efficient Bayes coding algorithm by combining two existing Bayes coding algorithms. The algorithm minimizes the Bayes risk function of the proposed source in this paper, and the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is polynomial order. We investigate the behavior and performance of the proposed algorithm by conducting experiments.

Information-theoretic security and computational security are fundamental paradigms of security in the theory of cryptography. The two paradigms interact with each other but have shown different progress, which motivates us to explore the intersection between them. In this paper, we focus on Multi-Party Computation (MPC) because the security of MPC is formulated by simulation-based security, which originates from computational security, even if it requires information-theoretic security. We provide several equivalent formalizations of the security of MPC under a semi-honest model from the viewpoints of information theory and statistics. The interpretations of these variants are so natural that they support the other aspects of simulation-based security. Specifically, the variants based on conditional mutual information and sufficient statistics are interesting because security proofs for those variants can be given by information measures and factorization theorem, respectively. To exemplify this, we show several security proofs of BGW (Ben-Or, Goldwasser, Wigderson) protocols, which are basically proved by constructing a simulator.

In recent years, demand for smart windows with dimming and other functions has been increasing, e.g., polymer dispersed liquid crystals. Liquid crystal (LC) gels also have the potential for smart glass applications owing to their light-scattering properties. In this study, LC gels were prepared by mixing nematic LC (E7) with poly(9,9-di-n-octylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl) (PFO) as a gelator. The LC gel formed a dense PFO network as the concentration increased. The PFO network structure changed in response to the change in the cooling rate. High contrast ratio of light scattering was obtained for the LC gel device that was fabricated via the 2-wt%-doping of PFO and natural cooling. Furthermore, the PFO concentration and cooling rate were found to affect the response time of the LC gel device.

Distance-aware quality adaptation is a potential approach to reduce the resource requirement for the transmission and rendering of textured 3D meshes. In this paper, we carry out a subjective experiment to investigate the effects of the distance from the camera on the perceptual quality of textured 3D meshes. Besides, we evaluate the effectiveness of eight image-based objective quality metrics in representing the user's perceptual quality. Our study found that the perceptual quality in terms of mean opinion score increases as the distance from the camera increases. In addition, it is shown that normalized mutual information (NMI), a full-reference objective quality metric, is highly correlated with subjective scores.

The Volterra filter is one of the digital filters that can describe nonlinearity. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic behaviors of an adaptive signal processing system with the Volterra filter for nonwhite input signals by a statistical-mechanical method. Assuming the self-averaging property with an infinitely long tapped-delay line, we derive simultaneous differential equations that describe the behaviors of macroscopic variables in a deterministic and closed form. We analytically solve the derived equations to reveal the effect of the nonwhiteness of the input signal on the adaptation process. The results for the second-order Volterra filter show that the nonwhiteness decreases the mean-square error (MSE) in the early stages of the adaptation process and increases the MSE in the later stages.