Robust Multimodal Person Identification With Limited Training Data

This paper presents a novel method of audio-visual feature-level fusion for person identification where both the speech and facial modalities may be corrupted, and there is a lack of prior knowledge about the corruption. Furthermore, we assume there are limited amount of training data for each modality (e.g., a short training speech segment and a single training facial image for each person). A new multimodal feature representation and a modified cosine similarity are introduced to combine and compare bimodal features with limited training data, as well as vastly differing data rates and feature sizes. Optimal feature selection and multicondition training are used to reduce the mismatch between training and testing, thereby making the system robust to unknown bimodal corruption. Experiments have been carried out on a bimodal dataset created from the SPIDRE speaker recognition database and AR face recognition database with variable noise corruption of speech and occlusion in the face images. The system's speaker identification performance on the SPIDRE database, and facial identification performance on the AR database, is comparable with the literature. Combining both modalities using the new method of multimodal fusion leads to significantly improved accuracy over the unimodal systems, even when both modalities have been corrupted. The new method also shows improved identification accuracy compared with the bimodal systems based on multicondition model training or missing-feature decoding alone.

Behind the Headlines: Media Representation of Children and Young People in Northern Ireland:Summary of Research Findings

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council this partnership project between the Childhood, Transition and Social Justice Initiative at Queen’s University and Include Youth focuses on the negative stereotyping of children and young people and the role and responsibilities of the media in the creation and transmission of negative images. Engaging with children, young people, organisations working with children and young people and media representatives, the project uses research evidence to explore negative media representation and its consequences for children’s rights, public reaction and policy initiatives in Northern Ireland. This report represents a summary of the findings of engagement with 141 children and young people. It outlines how they feel they are presented by the media and the impacts of this. It concludes by noting ways forward in challenging negative portrayals.

Linguistics and Information Theory: Analytic advantages

The analytic advantages of central concepts from linguistics and information theory, and the analogies demonstrated between them, for understanding patterns of retrieval from full-text indexes to documents are developed. The interaction between the syntagm and the paradigm in computational operations on written language in indexing, searching, and retrieval is used to account for transformations of the signified or meaning between documents and their representation and between queries and documents retrieved. Characteristics of the message, and messages for selection for written language, are brought to explain the relative frequency of occurrence of words and multiple word sequences in documents. The examples given in the companion article are revisited and a fuller example introduced. The signified of the sequence stood for, the term classically used in the definitions of the sign, as something standing for something else, can itself change rapidly according to its syntagm. A greater than ordinary discourse understanding of patterns in retrieval is obtained.

Genealogies of Partition: History, History-Writing and 'The Troubles' in Ireland

Contemporary political disputes have a long history of expression and contestation through the genre of history-writing in Ireland. The role of history writing and political science writing during the nearly 40 years of the so-called 'Troubles' has been no exception to this. Battles between competing versions of what the conflict 'is about', mediated through academic and popular texts have themselves in turn become constitutive of it. This builds upon centuries of the representation of the complicated politics of this island as 'an issue' in British domestic politics - first 'the Catholic question', then 'the Irish question'. The location of political power outside the island for centuries has created successive battles for the representation of sectional interests in a metropolitan centre. The skills of propaganda, history writing, newspaper writing have consequently been deployed at a remarkable level of skill and intensity. In the recent period one of the consequences of this has been the removal from the debate of the actuality of partition; this builds upon a particular historical representation of partition as an historical inevitability. To seek to restore partition to the debate is not to call for its undoing but to recognise that seeking to circumvent debates about its origins in the key period of democratisation in Irish politics (1880-1920) has been counter-productive. This essay examines the genealogies of partition in Irish and international contexts in the light of these battles for representation, and aims to return a lost dimension to the debate about the so-called 'Troubles'in Ireland. The genealogy of partition is the issue that has been marginalised in academic study and this has affected both policy and politics.

Quantum teleportation via mixed two-mode squeezed states in the coherent-state representation

Quantum teleportation for continuous variables is generally described in phase space by using the Wigner functions. We study quantum teleportation via a mixed two-mode squeezed state in Hilbert-Schmidt space by using the coherent-state representation and operators. This shows directly how the teleported state is related to the original state.

Robust Extraction of Text from Camera Images using Colour and Spatial Information Simultaneously

The importance and use of text extraction from camera based coloured scene images is rapidly increasing with time. Text within a camera grabbed image can contain a huge amount of meta data about that scene. Such meta data can be useful for identification, indexing and retrieval purposes. While the segmentation and recognition of text from document images is quite successful, detection of coloured scene text is a new challenge for all camera based images. Common problems for text extraction from camera based images are the lack of prior knowledge of any kind of text features such as colour, font, size and orientation as well as the location of the probable text regions. In this paper, we document the development of a fully automatic and extremely robust text segmentation technique that can be used for any type of camera grabbed frame be it single image or video. A new algorithm is proposed which can overcome the current problems of text segmentation. The algorithm exploits text appearance in terms of colour and spatial distribution. When the new text extraction technique was tested on a variety of camera based images it was found to out perform existing techniques (or something similar). The proposed technique also overcomes any problems that can arise due to an unconstraint complex background. The novelty in the works arises from the fact that this is the first time that colour and spatial information are used simultaneously for the purpose of text extraction.

A survey of formalisms for representing and reasoning with scientific knowledge

With the rapid growth in the quantity and complexity of scientific knowledge available for scientists, and allied professionals, the problems associated with harnessing this knowledge are well recognized. Some of these problems are a result of the uncertainties and inconsistencies that arise in this knowledge. Other problems arise from heterogeneous and informal formats for this knowledge. To address these problems, developments in the application of knowledge representation and reasoning technologies can allow scientific knowledge to be captured in logic-based formalisms. Using such formalisms, we can undertake reasoning with the uncertainty and inconsistency to allow automated techniques to be used for querying and combining of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, by harnessing background knowledge, the querying and combining tasks can be carried out more intelligently. In this paper, we review some of the significant proposals for formalisms for representing and reasoning with scientific knowledge.

Gender and Welfare States in East Asia: Confucianism or Equality?

Is a Confucian cultural climate hostile to gender equality in families and public decision-making? What is the impact of gender equality legislation in East Asia? Approaches to these welfare regimes have ignored gender, while gendered accounts of welfare have neglected East Asia. Comparisons with Western welfare states show strong economies with life expectancy in Japan and South Korea above those of Western social democracies but in contrast there are extremely large gender gaps in employment, earning, unpaid work and parliamentary representation and conjoined with this low fertility rates and and minimal public social spending on childcare and early education.

In this volume, contributors address questions about gender equality in a Confucian context across a wide and varied social policy landscape, from Korea and Taiwan, where Confucian culture is deeply embedded, through China, with its transformations from Confucianism to communism and back, to the mixed cultural environments of Hong Kong and Japan. Overall, the collections asks: Has East Asia's rapid economic transformation been accompanied by social and cultural transformation?

Community Cohesion and Social Inclusion: Unravelling a Complex Relationship

In a global context of an emphasis on identity politics and a ‘cultural turn’ in social analysis, deep concern has been expressed about multiethnic Britain becoming a broken society with many ‘sleepwalking’ into segregation and separatism. Given the close correspondence between areas of acute ethnic segregation and those of multiple deprivation, intercommunal tensions have included disputes about the equitable allocation of scarce urban resources across ethnicity. This creates the possibility that urban programmes may inadvertently accentuate intercommunal tension and confound efforts to synchronise cohesion and inclusion agendas. Following recent debates about the implications of increased diversity, influenced by arguments that multiculturalism has encouraged ‘parallel lives’, an emergent policy framework emphasises more proactive integration to promote ‘common belonging’. Criticism of this agenda includes its confusion between community and social cohesion, and its disproportionate focus on cultural aspects such as identity formation and recognition, relative to structural issues of income and class. In exploring this contested terrain in Britain, the article suggests that the longer-term debate about segregation, deprivation and community differentials in Northern Ireland can offer useful insight for Britain’s policy discourse.

Learning and organization in the knowledge-based information economy: Initial findings from a participatory action research case study

This paper reports on an ongoing, multiphase, project-based action learning and research project. In particular, it summarizes some aspects of the learning climate and outcomes for a case study company In the software industry, Using a participatory action research approach, the learning company framework developed by Pedler et al, (1997) is used to initiate critical reflection in the company at three levels: managing director, senior management team and technical and professional staff. As such, this is one of the first systematic attempts to apply this framework to the entire organization and to a company in the knowledge-based learning economy. Two sets of issues are of general concern to the company: internal issues surrounding the company's reward and recognition policies and practices and the provision of accounting and control information in a business relevant way to all levels of staff; and external issues concerning the extent to which the company and its members actively learn from other companies and effectively capture, disseminate and use information accessed by staff in boundary-spanning roles. The paper concludes with some illustrations of changes being introduced by the company as a result of the feedback on and discussion of these issues.

Episodic memory and learning in patients with chronic schizophrenia

This study explored the pattern of memory functioning in 58 patients with chronic schizophrenia and compared their performance with 53 normal controls. Multiple domains of memory were assessed, including verbal and nonverbal memory span, verbal and non-verbal paired associate learning, verbal and visual long-term memory, spatial and non-spatial conditional associative learning, recognition memory and memory for temporal order. Consistent with previous studies, substantial deficits in long-term memory were observed, with relative preservation of memory span. Memory for temporal order and recognition memory was intact, although significant deficits were observed on the conditional associative learning tasks. There was no evidence of lateralized memory impairment. In these respects, the pattern of memory impairment in schizophrenia is more similar in nature to that found in patients with memory dysfunction following mesiotemporal lobe lesions, rather than that associated with focal frontal lobe damage. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Neonatal facial and cry responses to invasive and non-invasive procedures

Evaluation of pain in neonates is difficult due to their limited means of communication. The aim was to determine whether behavioural reactions of cry and facial activity provoked by an invasive procedure could be discriminated from responses to non-invasive tactile events. Thirty-six healthy full-term infants (mean age 2.2 h) received 3 procedures in counterbalanced order: intramuscular injection, application of triple dye to the umbilical stub, and rubbing thigh with alcohol. Significant effects of procedure were found for total face activity and latency to face movement. A cluster of facial actions comprised of brow bulging, eyes squeezed shut, deepening of the naso-labial furrow and open mouth was associated most frequently with the invasive procedure. Comparisons between the 2 non-invasive procedures showed more facial activity to thigh swabbing and least to application of triple dye to the umbilical cord. Acoustic analysis of cry showed statistically significant differences across procedures only for latency to cry and cry duration for the group as a whole. However, babies who cried to two procedures showed higher pitch and greater intensity to the injection. There were no significant differences in melody, dysphonation, or jitter. Methodological difficulties for investigators in this area were examined, including criteria for the selection of cries for analysis, and the logical and statistical challenges of contrasting cries induced by different conditions when some babies do not always cry. It was concluded that facial expression, in combination with short latency to onset of cry and long duration of first cry cycle typifies reaction to acute invasive procedures.

Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600

'Mapping Medieval Geographies' explores the ways in which geographical knowledge, ideas and traditions were formed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Leading scholars reveal the connections between Islamic, Christian, Biblical, and Classical geographical traditions from Antiquity to the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. The book is divided into two parts: Part I focuses on the notion of geographical tradition and charts the evolution of celestial and earthly geography in terms of its intellectual, visual and textual representations; whilst Part II explores geographical imaginations; that is to say, those 'imagined geographies' that came into being as a result of everyday spatial and spiritual experience. Bringing together approaches from art, literary studies, intellectual history and historical geography, this pioneering volume will be essential reading for scholars concerned with visual and textual modes of geographical representation and transmission, as well as the spaces and places of knowledge creation and consumption.

Nonclassicality Criteria from Phase-Space Representations and Information-Theoretical Constraints Are Maximally Inequivalent

We consider two celebrated criteria for defining the nonclassicality of bipartite bosonic quantum systems, the first stemming from information theoretic concepts and the second from physical constraints on the quantum phase space. Consequently, two sets of allegedly classical states are singled out: (i) the set C composed of the so-called classical-classical (CC) states—separable states that are locally distinguishable and do not possess quantum discord; (ii) the set P of states endowed with a positive P representation (P-classical states)—mixtures of Glauber coherent states that, e.g., fail to show negativity of their Wigner function. By showing that C and P are almost disjoint, we prove that the two defining criteria are maximally inequivalent. Thus, the notions of classicality that they put forward are radically different. In particular, generic CC states show quantumness in their P representation, and vice versa, almost all P-classical states have positive quantum discord and, hence, are not CC. This inequivalence is further elucidated considering different applications of P-classical and CC states. Our results suggest that there are other quantum correlations in nature than those revealed by entanglement and quantum discord.