Spatio-temporal Events Research Articles

Learning to look: probabilistic variation and noise guide infants' eye movements

Young infants have demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity to probabilistic relations among visual features (Fiser & Aslin, 2002; Kirkham et al., 2002). Previous research has raised important questions regarding the usefulness of statistical learning in an environment filled with variability and noise, such as an infant's natural world. In an eye-tracking experiment, 8-month-old infants viewed sequences of spatio-temporal events with three different transitional probabilities (1.0-Deterministic, 0.75-High probability, and 0.5-Low probability). Across two between-subjects conditions, the sequences were presented with or without competing visual distracters. Results show that as transitional probability decreased, infants distributed less attention to the predictable locations and their anticipations were less often correct. With no distraction, infants had faster saccadic latencies to the high probability events; however, with distracters present in the stimulus environment, infants' eye movements shifted to favour the deterministic relations. These findings suggest that infants integrate multiple sources of variability to guide visual attention and facilitate the detection and learning of statistically reliable events.

Large-scale and spatio-temporal extreme rain events over India: a hydrometeorological study

Frequency, intensity, areal extent (AE) and duration of rain spells during summer monsoon exhibit large intra-seasonal and inter-annual variations. Important features of the monsoon period large-scale wet spells over India have been documented. A main monsoon wet spell (MMWS) occurs over the country from 18 June to 16 September, during which, 26.5 % of the area receives rainfall 26.3 mm/day. Detailed characteristics of the MMWS period large-scale extreme rain events (EREs) and spatio-temporal EREs (ST-EREs), each concerning rainfall intensity (RI), AE and rainwater (RW), for 1 to 25 days have been studied using 1° gridded daily rainfall (1951–2007). In EREs, ‘same area’ (grids) is continuously wet, whereas in ST-EREs, ‘any area’ on the mean under wet condition for specified durations is considered. For the different extremes, second-degree polynomial gave excellent fit to increase in values from distribution of annual maximum RI and RW series with increase in duration. Fluctuations of RI, AE, RW and date of occurrence (or start) of the EREs and the ST-EREs did not show any significant trend. However, fluctuations of 1° latitude–longitude grid annual and spatial maximum rainfall showed highly significant increasing trend for 1 to 5 days, and unprecedented rains on 26–27 July 2005 over Mumbai could be a realization of this trend. The Asia–India monsoon intensity significantly influences the MMWS RW.

Macrophages Are Essential for the Early Wound Healing Response and the Formation of a Fibrovascular Scar

After wounding, multiple cell types interact to form a fibrovascular scar; the formation and cellular origins of these scars are incompletely understood. We used a laser-injury wound model of choroidal neovascularization in the eye to determine the spatiotemporal cellular events that lead to formation of a fibrovascular scar. After laser injury, F4/80(+) myeloid cells infiltrate the wound site and induce smooth muscle actin (SMA) expression in adjacent retinal pigment epithelial cells, with subsequent formation of a SMA(+)NG2(+) myofibroblastic scaffold, into which endothelial cells then infiltrate to form a fibrovascular lesion. Cells of the fibrovascular scaffold express the proangiogenic factor IL-1β strongly, whereas retinal pigment epithelial cells are the main source of VEGF-A. Subsequent choroidal neovascularization is limited to the area demarcated by this myofibroblastic scaffold and occurs independently of epithelial- or myeloid-derived VEGF-A. The SMA(+)NG2(+) myofibroblastic cells, F4/80(+) macrophages, and adjacent epithelial cells actively proliferate in the early phase of the wound healing response. Cell-lineage tracing experiments suggest that the SMA(+)NG2(+) myofibroblastic scaffold originates from choroidal pericyte-like cells. Targeted ablation of macrophages inhibits the formation of this fibrovascular scaffold, and expression analysis reveals that these macrophages are Arg1(+)YM1(+)F4/80(+) alternatively activated M2-like macrophages, which do not require IL-4/STAT6 or IL-10 signaling for their activation. Thus, macrophages are essential for the early wound healing response and the formation of a fibrovascular scar.

Detection and attribution of large spatiotemporal extreme events in Earth observation data

Latest climate projections suggest that both frequency and intensity of climate extremes will be substantially modified over the course of the coming decades. As a consequence, we need to understand to what extent and via which pathways climate extremes affect the state and functionality of terrestrial ecosystems and the associated biogeochemical cycles on a global scale. So far the impacts of climate extremes on the terrestrial biosphere were mainly investigated on the basis of case studies, while global assessments are widely lacking. In order to facilitate global analysis of this kind, we present a methodological framework that firstly detects spatiotemporally contiguous extremes in Earth observations, and secondly infers the likely pathway of the preceding climate anomaly. The approach does not require long time series, is computationally fast, and easily applicable to a variety of data sets with different spatial and temporal resolutions. The key element of our analysis strategy is to directly search in the relevant observations for spatiotemporally connected components exceeding a certain percentile threshold. We also put an emphasis on characterization of extreme event distribution, and scrutinize the attribution issue. We exemplify the analysis strategy by exploring the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fAPAR) from 1982 to 2011. Our results suggest that the hot spots of extremes in fAPAR lie in Northeastern Brazil, Southeastern Australia, Kenya and Tanzania. Moreover, we demonstrate that the size distribution of extremes follow a distinct power law. The attribution framework reveals that extremes in fAPAR are primarily driven by phases of water scarcity.

Specifying and detecting spatio-temporal events in the internet of things

Many applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) depend on the occurrences of events with temporal and spatial constraints to determine the further actions. A major challenge encountered is how to specify and detect the spatio-temporal events. The paper adopts Pub/Sub middleware to help IoT applications to capture spatio-temporal events. Specifically, the paper presents a composite subscription language CPSL and builds the corresponding Pub/Sub middleware Grus. The subscriptions in CPSL can specify diverse temporal, spatial and logical relationships of events, in particular, can describe the moving events related to mobile objects, and Grus is responsible for detecting whether events are matched with subscriptions in a distributed way. In addition, Grus provides the optimization strategies for subscriptions involving unary spatial operators. The paper also evaluates Grus's matching performance and costs through simulation experiments. The experimental results show that Grus can achieve satisfying performance and acceptable overheads, and the optimization strategies can efficiently speed up the detection of spatial events.

Inaccuracy, uncertainty and the space-time permutation scan statistic.

The space-time permutation scan statistic (STPSS) is designed to identify hot (and cool) spots of space-time interaction within patterns of spatio-temporal events. While the method has been adopted widely in practice, there has been little consideration of the effect inaccurate and/or incomplete input data may have on its results. Given the pervasiveness of inaccuracy, uncertainty and incompleteness within spatio-temporal datasets and the popularity of the method, this issue warrants further investigation. Here, a series of simulation experiments using both synthetic and real-world data are carried out to better understand how deficiencies in the spatial and temporal accuracy as well as the completeness of the input data may affect results of the STPSS. The findings, while specific to the parameters employed here, reveal a surprising robustness of the method's results in the face of these deficiencies. As expected, the experiments illustrate that greater degradation of input data quality leads to greater variability in the results. Additionally, they show that weaker signals of space-time interaction are those most affected by the introduced deficiencies. However, in stark contrast to previous investigations into the impact of these input data problems on global tests of space-time interaction, this local metric is revealed to be only minimally affected by the degree of inaccuracy and incompleteness introduced in these experiments.

Drowning in Documents: Action, Documentation, and Factography in Early Work by the Collective Actions Group

This article traces a provisional history of the early years of the conceptual performance art group Collective Actions through an examination of three critical terms—action, documentation, and factography—that came to figure prominently in the group's definition of its aesthetic project. A close reading of several of the group's actions and key theoretical texts from this period (1976–1981) reveals a dialectic of performance and documentation wherein the photographic and textual recording of actions, first carried out for purely pragmatic purposes, begins to acquire an independent aesthetic dimension that challenges the primacy of the live action. This shifting understanding of action—away from the ephemeral, spatio-temporal event and toward an aesthetics of documentation and factographic discourse—became a form of self-institutionalization that revealed fault lines in the artistic positions and ambitions of the Moscow Conceptualist circle. The article therefore attempts to locate the specific stakes of performance as an artistic practice within Moscow Conceptualism at the turn of the 1980s.

Kidins220/ARMS is dynamically expressed during Xenopus laevis development

Kidins220 (Kinase D interacting substrate of 220 kDa)/ARMS (Ankyrin Repeat-rich Membrane Spanning) is a conserved scaffold protein that acts as a downstream substrate for protein kinase D and mediates multiple receptor signalling pathways. Despite the dissecting of the function of this protein in mammals, using both in vitro and in vivo studies, a detailed characterization of its gene expression during early phases of embryogenesis has not been described yet. Here, we have used Xenopus laevis as a vertebrate model system to analyze the gene expression and the protein localization of Kidins220/ARMS. We found its expression was dynamically regulated during development. Kidins220/ARMS mRNA was expressed from neurula to larval stage in different embryonic regions including the nervous system, eye, branchial arches, heart and somites. Similar to the transcript, the protein was present in multiple embryonic domains including the central nervous system, cranial nerves, motor nerves, intersomitic junctions, retinal ganglion cells, lens, otic vesicle, heart and branchial arches. In particular, in some regions such as the retina and somites, the protein displayed a differential localization pattern in stage 42 embryos when compared to the earlier examined stages. Taken together our results suggest that this multidomain protein is involved in distinct spatio-temporal differentiative events.

Neurobiological mechanisms behind the spatiotemporal illusions of awareness used for advocating prediction or postdiction.

The fact that it takes time for the brain to process information from the changing environment underlies many experimental phenomena of awareness of spatiotemporal events, including a number of astonishing illusions. These phenomena have been explained from the predictive and postdictive theoretical perspectives. Here I describe the most extensively studied phenomena in order to see how well the two perspectives can explain them. Next, the neurobiological perceptual retouch mechanism of producing stimulation awareness is characterized and its work in causing the listed illusions is described. A perspective on how brain mechanisms of conscious perception produce the phenomena supportive of the postdictive view is presented in this article. At the same time, some of the phenomena cannot be explained by the traditional postdictive account, but can be interpreted from the perceptual retouch theory perspective.

시공간 복합 이벤트 처리의 확장을 통한 계층적 이벤트 설계 및 구현

Spatial phenomena such as environment pollution, disease and the risk of spreading information need a rapid initial response to perceive spread event. Moving data perceive spread event through real-time processing and analysis. To process and analysis the event, spatial-temporal complex event processing is used. Previous spatialtemporal complex event processing is possible basis spatial operator but insufficient apply to design spatialtemporal complex event processing to perceive spatial phenomena of high complexity. This study proposed hierarchical spatio-temporal CEP design which will efficiently manage the fast growing incoming sensor data. The implementation of the proposed design is evaluated with GPS location data of moving vehicles which are used as the incoming data stream for identifying spatial events. The spatial component of existing CEP software engine has been extended during the implementation phase to broaden the capabilities of processing spatio-temporal events.

Hop-based approach for holes and boundary detection in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensors are frequently prone to failure because of their limited batteries lifetime and external spatio-temporal events. Consequently, coverage and communication holes may appear preventing reliable and durable routing pathways. To efficiently deal with the effects of holes and prevent their expansions, it is unavoidable for any solution to detect their boundaries. This issue had been addressed by several works, many of which are based on topological approaches where sensor nodes' connectivity is used. The authors propose a topological approach for the detection of the boundaries of holes. The approach also allows for the detection of the boundaries of the sensor network which is an important concern when sensors are deployed randomly in harsh, remote areas. The approach is based on the identification and the checking of the connectivity of the x -hop neighbours surrounding every node. The results of our simulations conducted on randomly and uniformly deployed WSNs demonstrate high accuracy and reduced requirements in terms of network connectivity degree and communication overhead compared to other existing approaches.

The Anonymity of the Hunt

Hunter-gatherers are often ascribed a “monistic” worldview at odds with the nature-society dichotomy. The centerpiece of this claim is that they view hunting as similar to sharing within the band and prey animals as part of a common sphere of sociality. This article challenges this thesis. An examination of the work of its main proponents shows that it conflates two different senses of “animal”—the flesh-and-blood animals of the hunt and the animal Spirit that is said to control the animals. The sharing motif in hunting makes sense with respect to the anthropomorphic Spirit but not to the animals hunted. The conditions of the hunt as a spatiotemporal event provide further grounds for skepticism toward the idea of hunting-as-sharing. Drawing on biologist Robert Hinde’s model of relationships, I argue that hunting represents an anonymous one-off interaction that cannot develop into a personal relationship, in stark contrast to the durable forms of personalized sociality associated with the hunter-gatherer band. This is not to deny the possibility of human-animal cosociality in the form of personal relationships but rather to redirect the search away from the hunt to the interface with domesticated animals.

Spatiotemporal Relations and Modeling Motion Classes by Combined Topological and Directional Relations Method

Defining spatiotemporal relations and modeling motion events are emerging issues of current research. Motion events are the subclasses of spatiotemporal relations, where stable and unstable spatio-temporal topological relations and temporal order of occurrence of a primitive event play an important role. In this paper, we proposed a theory of spatio-temporal relations based on topological and orientation perspective. This theory characterized the spatiotemporal relations into different classes according to the application domain and topological stability. This proposes a common sense reasoning and modeling motion events in diverse application with the motion classes as primitives, which describe change in orientation and topological relations model. Orientation information is added to remove the locative symmetry of topological relations from motion events, and these events are defined as a systematic way. This will help to improve the understanding of spatial scenario in spatiotemporal applications.

Material decoupling as a mechanism of aftershock generation

Aftershocks following a large mainshock are characterized by clustering in space and time. The temporal decay in the number of aftershocks follows the empirical Omori–Utsu law. Aftershocks are regarded as delayed responses to stress changes induced by the mainshock; therefore, conventional wisdom dictates that the mechanical Maxwell or Kelvin element must be taken into account when modeling aftershock generation. We propose a novel mechanism of aftershock generation by evaluating changes in the stiffness ratio (or stiffness between two blocks) of a dynamical one-dimensional spring–block model. Simulations reveal the existence of spatiotemporal event clustering (i.e., aftershocks) associated with a preceding large event (i.e., the mainshock). In addition, the empirical Omori–Utsu law, with p~0.8, can hold for many sequences of numerical aftershocks produced in our model. Therefore, we suggest that changes in the stiffness or strength of materials play an important role in aftershock generation.

Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics

This paper addresses the issue of the applicability of David Lewis's possible world semantics of counterfactual conditionals to the explication of some quantum-mechanical phenomena. Three main reasons why counterfactual semantics may be useful for this task are given. It is further argued that two possible semantic approaches to counterfactuals should be taken into account involving spatiotemporal events that satisfy requirements of special relativity. The main problem considered in the article is how to expand both approaches into full semantic systems. The first of the approaches is known to be amenable to a generalization within the Lewis-style semantics. The second one, however, poses a greater challenge, as it has been proven (Bigaj 2004) that it cannot be incorporated into a similarity-based counterfactual semantics. In this article, an alternative method of generalization for the second counterfactual semantics is developed, which goes beyond Lewis's framework based on the rigid similarity relation between possible worlds. The proposed method of evaluating counterfactuals is then put to the test using an example from the quantum theory. As a result of this test, a small correction of the method turns out to be necessary.

A Study for Development the U-City Multiplex Center's U-Service Technology

The ultimate purpose of cities is 'the enhancement of quality of life in city'. In order to achieve this, it is required to optimize the Ontology-driven ubiquitous services included in the U-City and UIS of regions and communities and so on. Almost U-Service's contents are related to spatial or temporal extent. So it is important to design Spatio-temporal event schema for efficient access to U-City. There is a rapid change into an urban society in the shape of Ontology-driven ubiquitous services in which a content on a region or an incident is newly reconstructed through various ideas with the influence of the ubiquitous environment.

A Design of Ontology-driven U-Service in U-City

The ultimate purpose of cities is 'the enhancement of quality of life in city'. In order to achieve this, it is required to optimize the Ontology-driven ubiquitous services included in the U-City and UIS of regions and communities and so on. Almost U-Service's contents are related to spatial or temporal extent. So it is important to design Spatio-temporal event schema for efficient access to U-City. There is a rapid change into an urban society in the shape of Ontology-driven ubiquitous services in which a content on a region or an incident is newly reconstructed through various ideas with the influence of the ubiquitous environment.

Polarity sets the stage for cytokinesis

Cell polarity is important for a number of processes, from chemotaxis to embryogenesis. Recent studies suggest a new role for polarity in the orchestration of events during the final cell separation step of cell division called abscission. Abscission shares several features with cell polarization, including rearrangement of phosphatidylinositols, reorganization of microtubules, and trafficking of exocyst-associated membranes. Here we focus on how the canonical pathways for cell polarization and cell migration may play a role in spatiotemporal membrane trafficking events required for the final stages of cytokinesis.

Composed complex-cue histograms: An investigation of the information content in receptive field based image descriptors for object recognition

Recent work has shown that effective methods for recognizing objects and spatio-temporal events can be constructed based on histograms of receptive field like image operations.This paper presents the results of an extensive study of the performance of different types of receptive field like image descriptors for histogram-based object recognition, based on different combinations of image cues in terms of Gaussian derivatives or differential invariants applied to either intensity information, color-opponent channels or both. A rich set of composed complex-cue image descriptors is introduced and evaluated with respect to the problems of (i) recognizing previously seen object instances from previously unseen views, and (ii) classifying previously unseen objects into visual categories.It is shown that there exist novel histogram descriptors with significantly better recognition performance compared to previously used histogram features within the same class. Specifically, the experiments show that it is possible to obtain more discriminative features by combining lower-dimensional scale-space features into composed complex-cue histograms. Furthermore, different types of image descriptors have different relative advantages with respect to the problems of object instance recognition vs. object category classification. These conclusions are obtained from extensive evaluations on two mutually independent data sets.For the task of recognizing specific object instances, combined histograms of spatial and spatio-chromatic derivatives are highly discriminative, and several image descriptors in terms rotationally invariant (intensity and spatio-chromatic) differential invariants up to order two lead to very high recognition rates. For category classification, primary information is contained in both first-and second-order derivatives, where second-order partial derivatives constitute the most discriminative cue.Dimensionality reduction by principal component analysis and variance normalization prior to training and recognition can in many cases lead to a significant increase in recognition or classification performance. Surprisingly high recognition rates can even be obtained with binary histograms that reveal the polarity of local scale-space features, and which can be expected to be particularly robust to illumination variations.An overall conclusion from this study is that compared to previously used lower-dimensional histograms, the use of composed complex-cue histograms of higher dimensionality reveals the co-variation of multiple cues and enables much better recognition performance, both with regard to the problems of recognizing previously seen objects from novel views and for classifying previously unseen objects into visual categories.

Integrative physical oncology

Cancer is arguably the ultimate complex biological system. Solid tumors are microstructured soft matter that evolves as a consequence of spatio-temporal events at the intracellular (e.g., signaling pathways, macromolecular trafficking), intercellular (e.g., cell-cell adhesion/communication), and tissue (e.g., cell-extracellular matrix interactions, mechanical forces) scales. To gain insight, tumor and developmental biologists have gathered a wealth of molecular, cellular, and genetic data, including immunohistochemical measurements of cell type-specific division and death rates, lineage tracing, and gain-of-function/loss-of-function mutational analyses. These data are empirically extrapolated to a diagnosis/prognosis of tissue-scale behavior, e.g., for clinical decision. Integrative physical oncology (IPO) is the science that develops physically consistent mathematical approaches to address the significant challenge of bridging the nano (nm)-micro (µm) to macro (mm, cm) scales with respect to tumor development and progression. In the current literature, such approaches are referred to as multiscale modeling. In the present article, we attempt to assess recent modeling approaches on each separate scale and critically evaluate the current 'hybrid-multiscale' models used to investigate tumor growth in the context of brain and breast cancers. Finally, we provide our perspective on the further development and the impact of IPO.