Around the globe several observatories are seeking the first direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs). These
waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity [Einstein, A., Annalen der Physik 49, 769-822
(1916)] and are generated e.g. by black-hole binary systems [Sathyaprakash, B. S. and Schutz, B. F., Living
Rev. Relativity 12, 2 (2009)]. Current GW detectors are Michelson-type kilometer-scale laser interferometers
measuring the distance changes between in vacuum suspended mirrors. The sensitivity of these detectors at
frequencies above several hundred hertz is limited by the vacuum (zero-point) fluctuations of the
electromagnetic field. A quantum technology - the injection of squeezed light [Caves, C. M., Phys. Rev. D 23,
1693-1708 (1981)] - offers a solution to this problem. Here we demonstrate the squeezed-light enhancement
of GEO600, which will be the GW observatory operated by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration in its search for GWs
for the next 3-4 years. GEO600 now operates with its best ever sensitivity, which proves the usefulness of
quantum entanglement and the qualification of squeezed light as a key technology for future GW astronomy.

Finger vein recognition has been adopted due to its high recognition rate and the invisibility of vein in visible light.
However, because a finger vein pattern is not distinctive due to light scattering in the skin layer, the localization of a
finger vein pattern region using an image processing algorithm is a difficult procedure. Also, optical blurring increases
these difficulties. We propose a new finger vein image restoration method to deal with skin scattering and optical
blurring. Our research is novel in three ways compared to previous studies. Firstly, the amount of optically blurring of
a finger vein image is measured based on the average gradient of the orthogonal profile of a finger edge. Secondly,
the accurate point spread function (PSF) of optical blurring is adaptively determined based on the orthogonal profile of
a finger edge. Thirdly, by using a constrained least square (CLS) filter and optimized parameters in terms of the
lowest error of finger vein recognition, the restoration of a skin scattered and optically blurred finger vein pattern was
performed. Experimental results show that the equal error rate (EER) of finger vein recognition with restoration was
reduced by as much as 3.14% (5.05% ? 1.91%) compared to the EER without restoration.

We show that every gravitational instantons are SU(2) Yang-Mills instantons on a Ricci-flat four manifold although
the reverse is not necessarily true. It is shown that gravitational instantons satisfy exactly the same self-duality
equation of SU(2) Yang-Mills instantons on the Ricci-flat manifold determined by the gravitational instantons
themselves. We explicitly check the correspondence with several examples and discuss their topological properties.

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate and review the previous researches about objective measuring
fatigue caused by visual stimuli. Also, we analyze possibility of new visual fatigue measurement methods using facial
expression recognition and gesture recognition. Background: In most previous researches, visual fatigue is commonly
measured by survey or interview based subjective method. However, the subjective evaluation methods can be
affected by individual feeling’s variation or other kinds of stimuli. To solve these problems, signal and image
processing based visual fatigue measurement methods have been widely researched. Method: To analyze the signal
and image processing based methods, we categorized previous works into three groups such as bio-signal based
method, brainwave based method, and eye image based method. Also, the possibility of adopting facial expression or
gesture recognition to measure visual fatigue is analyzed. Results: Bio-signal and brainwave based methods have
problems because they can be degraded by not only visual stimuli but also the other kinds of external stimuli caused
by other sense organs. In eye image based methods, using only single feature such as blink frequency or pupil size
also has problem because the single feature can be easily degraded by other kinds of emotions. Conclusion: Multi-
modal measurement method is required by fusing several features which are extracted from the bio-signal and image.
Also, some progressive method including facial expression or gesture recognition can be considered. Application:
The objective visual fatigue measurement method can be applied into the fields of quantitative and comparative
measurement of visual fatigue of next generation display devices in terms of human factor.

In this research, we propose a new finger biometrics method. Infrared finger image is captured then feature extraction
is performed based on the modified Gaussian high pass filter and with a binarization, local binary pattern (LBP) or
local derivative pattern (LDP). Infrared finger image includes the multimodal features of finger-vein and finger geometry
in addition to the parts of fingerprint. Instead of extracting each feature by using different methods, the modified
Gaussian high pass filter is fully convolved. Therefore, the extracted binary pattern of finger image includes the
multimodal features of vein, fingerprint, and finger geometry. Experimental results showed that the equal error rate of
the proposed method was 0.13%.