This reports documents work undertaken in optimising a kinematic model of the human thumb. It is motivated by the high rejection rate observed with myoelectric hand prostheses, which increases with the period of wear and can reach 50% after 5 years. We find that the most commonly-cited reasons for rejecting a prosthesis are its weight, slow actuation speed, and poor durability, whereas the cosm...

In this report, I presented my results to the tasks of 2008 UC San Diego Data Mining Contest. This contest consists of two classification tasks based on data from scientific experiment. The first task is a binary classification task which is to maximize accuracy of classification on an evenly-distributed test data set, given a fully labeled imbalanced training data set. The second task is also ...

Analogical learning is based on a twostep inference process: (i) computation of a structural mapping between a new and a memorized situation; (ii) transfer of knowledge from the known to the unknown situation. This approach requires the ability to search for and exploit such mappings, hence the need to properly define analogical relationships, and to efficiently implement their computation. In ...

We present a body pose estimation method for user interface and telecommunication applications, such as avatar control and desktop operations. We designed our method to meet the following conditions: marker-less, real-time and robust. The estimation is done with twostep matching. First, the acquired image is compared with the prepared CG model images. These model images are pre-generated by usi...

In this talk we consider the numerical difficulties that arise when horizontal advection is coupled with chemistry on a sphere, using operator splitting. From a numerical point of view, these two processes are the most difficult parts of an atmospheric model for global studies. The advection process is solved on a uniform grid and on a so-called reduced grid, where less cells are used near the ...

This paper explores seven international stock markets (DJIA, Euro STOXX 600, Russell 2000, Nikkei, NASDAQ, FTSE, Global Dow) in the quest for jumps and regime-switches. The methodological framework borrows from the Markov-switching approach and the stochastic modelling literature based on Lévy processes. The econometric procedure is detailed in a twostep fashion. The dataset covers the period f...

In this paper we develop a two-step survival time approach – a discrete logit model with survival time dummies – that allows for time-varying explanatory variables and interval censored data. Our empirical analysis reveals that the twostep approach outperforms the benchmark logit model with respect to out-ofsample prediction accuracy. Survival time, however, does not play an important role. The...