Addresses of Rev. Drs. Park, Post, & Bacon : at the anniversary of the American Congregational Union, May, 1854.

http://www.archive.org/details/addressesofrevdr00parkuoft

Post card to George Whitaker 06/27/1881

Postal card to George Whitaker. Mailed from Ocean Grove, NJ. Dated June 27, 1881.

Singing Through Struggle: Music as a Mode of Cultural Exchange in African American Border City Churches After Emancipation, 1862-1890

This project investigates how religious music, invested with symbolic and cultural meaning, provided African Americans in border city churches with a way to negotiate conflict, assert individual values, and establish a collective identity in the post- emancipation era. In order to focus on the encounter between former slaves and free Blacks, the dissertation examines black churches that received large numbers of southern migrants during and after the Civil War. Primarily a work of history, the study also employs insights and conceptual frameworks from other disciplines including anthropology and ritual studies, African American studies, aesthetic theory, and musicology. It is a work of historical reconstruction in the tradition of scholarship that some have called "lived religion." Chapter 1 introduces the dissertation topic and explains how it contributes to scholarship. Chapter 2 examines social and religious conditions African Americans faced in Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC to show why the Black Church played a key role in African Americans' adjustment to post-emancipation life. Chapter 3 compares religious slave music and free black church music to identify differences and continuities between them, as well as their functions in religious settings. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 present case studies on Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Baltimore), Zoar Methodist Episcopal Church (Philadelphia), and St. Luke’s Protestant Episcopal Church (Washington, DC), respectively. Informed by fresh archival materials, the dissertation shows how each congregation used its musical life to uphold values like education and community, to come to terms with a shared experience, and to confront or avert authority when cultural priorities were threatened. By arguing over musical choices or performance practices, or agreeing on mutually appealing musical forms like the gospel songs of the Sunday school movement, African Americans forged lively faith communities and distinctive cultures in otherwise adverse environments. The study concludes that religious music was a crucial form of African American discourse and expression in the post-emancipation era. In the Black Church, it nurtured an atmosphere of exchange, gave structure and voice to conflict, helped create a public sphere, and upheld the values of black people.

X-ray Diffraction Tomographic Imaging and Reconstruction

Material discrimination based on conventional or dual energy X-ray computed tomography (CT) imaging can be ambiguous. X-ray diffraction imaging (XDI) can be used to construct diffraction profiles of objects, providing new molecular signature information that can be used to characterize the presence of specific materials. Combining X-ray CT and diffraction imaging can lead to enhanced detection and identification of explosives in luggage screening. In this work we are investigating techniques for joint reconstruction of CT absorption and X-ray diffraction profile images of objects to achieve improved image quality and enhanced material classification. The initial results have been validated via simulation of X-ray absorption and coherent scattering in 2 dimensions.

Type Reconstruction in the Presence of Polymorphic Recursion and the Recursive Types

We establish the equivalence of type reconstruction with polymorphic recursion and recursive types is equivalent to regular semi-unification which proves the undecidability of the corresponding type reconstruction problem. We also establish the equivalence of type reconstruction with polymorphic recursion and positive recursive types to a special case of regular semi-unification which we call positive regular semi-unification. The decidability of positive regular semi-unification is an open problem.

Stochastic Mesh-Based Multiview Reconstruction

A method for reconstruction of 3D polygonal models from multiple views is presented. The method uses sampling techniques to construct a texture-mapped semi-regular polygonal mesh of the object in question. Given a set of views and segmentation of the object in each view, constructive solid geometry is used to build a visual hull from silhouette prisms. The resulting polygonal mesh is simplified and subdivided to produce a semi-regular mesh. Regions of model fit inaccuracy are found by projecting the reference images onto the mesh from different views. The resulting error images for each view are used to compute a probability density function, and several points are sampled from it. Along the epipolar lines corresponding to these sampled points, photometric consistency is evaluated. The mesh surface is then pulled towards the regions of higher photometric consistency using free-form deformations. This sampling-based approach produces a photometrically consistent solution in much less time than possible with previous multi-view algorithms given arbitrary camera placement.

Surface Reconstruction from Multiple Views using Rational B-Splines

A method for reconstructing 3D rational B-spline surfaces from multiple views is proposed. The method takes advantage of the projective invariance properties of rational B-splines. Given feature correspondences in multiple views, the 3D surface is reconstructed via a four step framework. First, corresponding features in each view are given an initial surface parameter value (s; t), and a 2D B-spline is fitted in each view. After this initialization, an iterative minimization procedure alternates between updating the 2D B-spline control points and re-estimating each feature's (s; t). Next, a non-linear minimization method is used to upgrade the 2D B-splines to 2D rational B-splines, and obtain a better fit. Finally, a factorization method is used to reconstruct the 3D B-spline surface given 2D B-splines in each view. This surface recovery method can be applied in both the perspective and orthographic case. The orthographic case allows the use of additional constraints in the recovery. Experiments with real and synthetic imagery demonstrate the efficacy of the approach for the orthographic case.

Surface Reconstruction from Multiple Views using Rational B-Splines and Knot Insertion

A method for reconstruction of 3D rational B-spline surfaces from multiple views is proposed. Given corresponding features in multiple views, though not necessarily visible in all views, the surface is reconstructed. First 2D B-spline patches are fitted to each view. The 3D B-splines and projection matricies can then be extracted from the 2D B-splines using factorization methods. The surface fit is then further refined via an iterative procedure. Finally, a hierarchal fitting scheme is proposed to allow modeling of complex surfaces by means of knot insertion. Experiments with real imagery demonstrate the efficacy of the approach.

3D Hand Pose Reconstruction Using Specialized Mappings

A system for recovering 3D hand pose from monocular color sequences is proposed. The system employs a non-linear supervised learning framework, the specialized mappings architecture (SMA), to map image features to likely 3D hand poses. The SMA's fundamental components are a set of specialized forward mapping functions, and a single feedback matching function. The forward functions are estimated directly from training data, which in our case are examples of hand joint configurations and their corresponding visual features. The joint angle data in the training set is obtained via a CyberGlove, a glove with 22 sensors that monitor the angular motions of the palm and fingers. In training, the visual features are generated using a computer graphics module that renders the hand from arbitrary viewpoints given the 22 joint angles. We test our system both on synthetic sequences and on sequences taken with a color camera. The system automatically detects and tracks both hands of the user, calculates the appropriate features, and estimates the 3D hand joint angles from those features. Results are encouraging given the complexity of the task.