Object extraction using genetic algorithms and morphological processing

This paper introduces a novel methodology for object detection using genetic algorithms and morphological processing. The method employs a kind of object oriented structuring element, which are derived using genetic algorithm operating. The population of morphological filters iteratively evaluated according to a statistical performance index corresponding to object extraction ability, and evolves into an optimal structuring elements using the evolution principles of genetic search. Experimental results of object extraction in high resolution satellite images are presented to illustrate the merit and feasibility of the proposed method.

A scalable and extensible segment-event-object-based sports video retrieval system

Sport video data is growing rapidly as a result of the maturing digital technologies that support digital video capture, faster data processing, and large storage. However, (1) semi-automatic content extraction and annotation, (2) scalable indexing model, and (3) effective retrieval and browsing, still pose the most challenging problems for maximizing the usage of large video databases. This article will present the findings from a comprehensive work that proposes a scalable and extensible sports video retrieval system with two major contributions in the area of sports video indexing and retrieval. The first contribution is a new sports video indexing model that utilizes semi-schema-based indexing scheme on top of an Object-Relationship approach. This indexing model is scalable and extensible as it enables gradual index construction which is supported by ongoing development of future content extraction algorithms. The second contribution is a set of novel queries which are based on XQuery to generate dynamic and user-oriented summaries and event structures. The proposed sports video retrieval system has been fully implemented and populated with soccer, tennis, swimming, and diving video. The system has been evaluated against 20 users to demonstrate and confirm its feasibility and benefits. The experimental sports genres were specifically selected to represent the four main categories of sports domain: period-, set-point-, time (race)-, and performance-based sports. Thus, the proposed system should be generic and robust for all types of sports.

Object focused simultaneous estimation of optical flow and state dynamics

The framework of differential optical flow has been built upon to enhance the performance of motion estimation from optical flow. By coupling optical flow and object state parameters, an effective procedure for object tracking is implemented with the dasiaSimultaneous Estimation of Optical Flow and Object Statepsila (SEOS) technique. The SEOS method utilizes dynamic object parameter information when calculating optical flow for tracking a moving object within a video stream. Optical flow estimation for the SEOS method requires minimization of an error functional containing object physical parameter data. The convergence of an energy functional to a feasible or optimal solution set is not guaranteed. Convergence criteria is often assumed and not shown explicitly. Convergence of the SEOS method for both the Jacobi and Gauss-Seidel numerical resolution methods is evaluated.

Object classification under ignorance using CaRBS : the case of the European barn swallow

This article investigates the potential of a novel technique for object classification, called Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex (CaRBS), which is based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. As such, the classification of objects and the evidence from their characteristics have a level of ignorance associated with them. Its potential is exposited in the application of the classification of European barn swallows according to their gender. The classification of biological data in the presence of ignorance about such data sets is a common problem in biology. Comparisons of the results from CaRBS with those from multivariate discriminant analysis and neural networks are made. Also shown throughout the investigation is the interpretability of the results with the utilisation of the simplex plot method of representing data

'Energetic space' : literary experience and learning

This essay is part of an interdisciplinary research project into literary aesthetics and its relationship with pedagogy. The paper brings cognitive and evolutionary scientific perspectives to bear on literary and cultural theory to address the aesthetic effect (defined as the transporting and transformative power of the literary text) and its potential personal or civic benefits. The paper offers non-transcendentalist explanations for the aesthetic experience, viewing it less as a privileged category of feeling than as an experience available to all symbolic beings. The paper also proposes an original thesis about the virtual and transformative space of reading as one that ultimately epitomises intellectual freedom. The inquiry is lent urgency by the current cultural and political climate in which not only literature but also literary studies, despite its long association with education and its prominent place in the Culture Wars, is in institutional decline.

Is near to . . . and is . . . distant from : exegetical manoeuvres in Janet Frame’s The Carpathians

This paper argues that Janet Frame’s 1988 novel, The Carpathians, can be read as a series of manoeuvres operating at the frontiers of exegesis and fiction. The overall effect of these manoeuvres is to interrogate the conditions of an exegetical (or literary critical) engagement with Frame’s writings. In particular, The Carpathians drills down into the metaphorics of one of the key notions of literary criticism: critical distance. Critical distance is a catch phrase of exegesis, as well as of literary criticism, because it serves to appropriately position the exegete (like the literary critic) as both near to and distant from the object of study: the literary text. However, Frame’s fictional/Scientific concept of the Gravity Star deconstructs the metaphorics of distance and, by extension, critical distance itself, by suggesting a para-doxical relationship of propinquity and remoteness. The Gravity Star is ‘both relatively close and seven billion light years away.’ Thus, Frame introduces chaos into language and logic, with the dual effect of undermining exegetical activity (which depends on the  metaphorics linked to critical distance) and of creatively multiplying the meanings of The Carpathians. In this way, Frame’s novel replaces conventional exegesis with creative exegesis. My paper also looks at the games Frame plays, in this novel and in Towards Another Summer (2007), with Roland Barthes’s notion of the ‘death of the Author.’ Like critical distance, the Author is a prop for exegesis that certain manoeuvres of writing can undermine, thus allowing the literary text to reproduce itself on an interior plane.