Enhancing human action recognition with region proposals

Deep convolutional network models have dominated recent work in human action recognition as well as image classification. However, these methods are often unduly influenced by the image background, learning and exploiting the presence of cues in typical computer vision datasets. For unbiased robotics applications, the degree of variation and novelty in action backgrounds is far greater than in computer vision datasets. To address this challenge, we propose an “action region proposal” method that, informed by optical flow, extracts image regions likely to contain actions for input into the network both during training and testing. In a range of experiments, we demonstrate that manually segmenting the background is not enough; but through active action region proposals during training and testing, state-of-the-art or better performance can be achieved on individual spatial and temporal video components. Finally, we show by focusing attention through action region proposals, we can further improve upon the existing state-of-the-art in spatio-temporally fused action recognition performance.

Genetic variation in tumour necrosis factor and lymphotoxin is not associated with endometriosis in an Australian sample

BACKGROUND Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) is a pleiotropic cytokine with a wide range of immunoregulatory effects. Variation in the promoter region of TNF and the neighbouring lymphotoxin alpha (LTA) gene might be associated with endometriosis. METHODS We examined the association between endometriosis and common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or haplotypes in the TNF/LTA region in an Australian sample by analysing 26 SNPs in 958 endometriosis cases and 959 unrelated controls. We selected functional SNPs in the coding and the promoter region of the TNF gene and HapMap tagging SNPs and typed them on a Sequenom MassARRAY platform. A key SNP (rs1800630) in the promoter region typed in previous studies did not give reliable results. Therefore, we also examined a statistically identical (r(2) = 1) SNP (siSNP) (rs2844482), identified using the web based program ssSNPer. RESULTS Genotype completion rate was 99.5% for SNPs spanning a region of 15.5 kb across the TNF/LTA locus. There was no evidence for association between endometriosis and TNF/LTA SNPs or SNP haplotypes in our case-control study. CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest both TNF and LTA genes are not major susceptibility genes for endometriosis.

Association study of the dystrobrevin-binding gene with schizophrenia in Australian and Indian samples

Numerous studies have reported association between variants in the dystrobrevin binding protein 1 (dysbindin) gene (DTNBP1) and schizophrenia. However, the pattern of results is complex and to date, no specific risk marker or haplotype has been consistently identified. The number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) tested in these studies has ranged from 5 to 20. We attempted to replicate previous findings by testing 16 SNPs in samples of 41 Australian pedigrees, 194 Australian cases and 180 controls, and 197 Indian pedigrees. No globally significant evidence for association was observed in any sample, despite power calculations indicating sufficient power to replicate several previous findings. Possible explanations for our results include sample differences in background linkage disequilibrium and/or risk allele effect size, the presence of multiple risk alleles upon different haplotypes, or the presence of a single risk allele upon multiple haplotypes. Some previous associations may also represent false positives. Examination of Caucasian HapMap phase II genotype data spanning the DTNBP1 region indicates upwards of 40 SNPs are required to satisfactorily assess all nonredundant variation within DTNBP1 and its potential regulatory regions for association with schizophrenia. More comprehensive studies in multiple samples will be required to determine whether specific DTNBP1 variants function as risk factors for schizophrenia.

Re-thinking discourses of teacher professionalism in early childhood education: An Australian perspective

The professionalism of early childhood teachers has been the subject of increasing attention globally for over a decade (Moss, 2006; Osgood, 2012; Urban, 2010. In order to understand ways pre-service early childhood teachers make sense of professionalism, this chapter examines some of the discourses of early childhood teacher professionalism, and focuses on qualifications as one way in which being professional is discursively produced. In particular, the chapter makes visible some of the discursive tensions involved in student intentions to pursue careers in primary school teaching/specialist early childhood teacher in primary school, rather than in the child care sector. In doing so, it makes visible some of the effects of particular discourses of professionalism and the ways they may be taken up by students as they make important career decisions.