Human figure segmentation using independent component analysis

In this paper, we present a Statistical Shape Model for Human Figure Segmentation in gait sequences. Point Distribution Models (PDM) generally use Principal Component analysis (PCA) to describe the main directions of variation in the training set. However, PCA assumes a number of restrictions on the data that do not always hold. In this work, we explore the potential of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) as an alternative shape decomposition to the PDM-based Human Figure Segmentation. The shape model obtained enables accurate estimation of human figures despite segmentation errors in the input silhouettes and has really good convergence qualities.

Sex, Politics and Religion: The Transformation of the Figure of the Fairy Queen from Thomas off Ersseldoune to ‘‘Thomas Rymer’’

Our earliest version of the Thomas Rymer story is the medieval romance Thomas off Ersseldoune (c.1430). There is a four hundred year lacuna before the ballad “Thomas Rymer”, our next surviving version, is recorded in the early 1800s. In the intervening time the narrative changed very little but the dynamic of the piece, radically. The romance transformed into the highly subversive ballad, “Thomas Rymer”. Central to this transformation is the reconceptualization of the romance's heroine. Referred to simply as the “lufly lady” and caught between her husband, the fay King, and a mere mortal, Thomas, she becomes in the ballad the powerful Queen of the Fairies. The ballad is structured around a series of revelations in which the enigmatic Queen assumes the roles of Eve and Mary, and finally Christ Himself. I will explore the implications of this extraordinary ballad. Moreover, I suggest that it is Queen Elizabeth herself who, ironically, enables the heroine's transformation. “Ironically” because it appears that it was Elizabeth's own restrictions, designed to suppress heretical, seditious or radical literature, which forced Thomas off Ersseldoune (and many other romances which employed religious imagery or figures) out of the written domain and into the oral tradition. And yet, it is Elizabeth who, in creating the image of herself as a female prince, as the Faerie Queen, inspires a new literary vocabulary designed to describe female executive power, without which it would have been impossible to imagine a figure such as the ballad's Queen of the Fairies.

Irradiation of oxygen and water ices at by 4 keV singly and doubly charged ions; sputtering and molecular synthesis

The icy surfaces of dust grains in the Interstellar Medium and those of comets, satellites and Kuiper Belt Objects are continuously exposed tophoton and charged particle irradiation. These energetic particles maysputter and induce chemical changes in the ices and the underlyingsurfaces.In the present work 258 nm thick O2 and H2O ices were deposited at 10 K with the thickness measured by a laser interferometer method. Asimple model fit to the reflected laser intensity as measured by aphotodiode detector enabled the refractive index of the ices to bedetermined. The ices were then irradiated with various singly and doublycharged ions such as He+, 13C+, N+, O+ , Ar+, 13C2+, N2+ and O2+ at 4keV. The decrease in ice thickness as a function of ion dose wasmonitored by a laser interferometer and the model used to determine thesputtering yield as shown in Figure 1.In the case of O2 ice thesputtering yields increased with increasing ion mass in good agreementwith a model calculation [Fama, J, Shi, R.A Baragiola, Surface Sci.,602, 156 (2007)]. In the case of O2 ice, O2+ has a significant lowersputtering yield when compared to O+. The sputtering yields for O2 icewere found to be at least 9 times larger compared to those for H2O ice.For H2O ice the sputter yields for C, N and O ions were found todecrease with increasing mass. Doubly charged C, N and O ions which werefound to have the same sputtering yield as the singly charged ionswithin the experimental errors. A preliminary TPD study was carried outusing a QMS to detect the desorbed species from water ice afterirradiation by 6 × 10^15 ions of 13C+ and 13C2+. The formation of13CO and 13CO2 was observed with the yield of 13CO almost of a factor of100 larger than of 13CO2. This is in contrast to our earlier work whereonly CO¬2 was observed.