On the use of textural features for writer identification in old handwritten music scores

Writer identification consists in determining the writer of a piece of handwriting from a set of writers. In this paper we present a system for writer identification in old handwritten music scores which uses only music notation to determine the author. The steps of the proposed system are the following. First of all, the music sheet is preprocessed for obtaining a music score without the staff lines. Afterwards, four different methods for generating texture images from music symbols are applied. Every approach uses a different spatial variation when combining the music symbols to generate the textures. Finally, Gabor filters and Grey-scale Co-ocurrence matrices are used to obtain the features. The classification is performed using a k-NN classifier based on Euclidean distance. The proposed method has been tested on a database of old music scores from the 17th to 19th centuries, achieving encouraging identification rates.

Luft in der Stimme - die funktionelle Dysodie

Neben virtuoser technischer Beherrschung spielt künstlerische Ausgestaltung der Stimme bei Profis eine grosse Rolle. Ihre Betreuung erfordert deshalb eine enge interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit zwischen Phoniatrie, Logopädie, Gesangspädagogik und – nicht zuletzt – Psychologie.

Enseignement et recherche

Les questions de formation et de recherche concerneront désormais le département de l’économie avec la formation d’un Secrétariat d’Etat à la formation, à la recherche et à l’innovation (SEFRI). – De nombreuses mesures visant à promouvoir les formations MINT ont été prises. – L’arrêté fédéral sur la promotion musicale des jeunes a été approuvé par 77,2% des voix. – Le niveau de la maturité fédérale a été longuement débattu. – L’initiative sur les bourses d’étude a abouti. – La loi sur l’encouragement de la recherche et de l’innovation a été révisée, avec notamment comme objectif un Swiss Innovation Park.

Monte Carlo modeling of polarized light propagation: Stokes vs Jones - Part II

In this second part of our comparative study inspecting the (dis)similarities between “Stokes” and “Jones,” we present simulation results yielded by two independent Monte Carlo programs: (i) one developed in Bern with the Jones formalism and (ii) the other implemented in Ulm with the Stokes notation. The simulated polarimetric experiments involve suspensions of polystyrene spheres with varying size. Reflection and refraction at the sample/air interfaces are also considered. Both programs yield identical results when propagating pure polarization states, yet, with unpolarized illumination, second order statistical differences appear, thereby highlighting the pre-averaged nature of the Stokes parameters. This study serves as a validation for both programs and clarifies the misleading belief according to which “Jones cannot treat depolarizing effects.”