The cruise of Her Majesty's ship "Challenger." Voyages over many seas, scenes in many lands.

Mode of access: Internet.

Non-rigid object tracking in complex scenes

A recently proposed colour based tracking algorithm has been established to track objects in real circumstances [Zivkovic, Z., Krose, B. 2004. An EM-like algorithm for color-histogram-based object tracking. In: Proc, IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 798-803]. To improve the performance of this technique in complex scenes, in this paper we propose a new algorithm for optimally adapting the ellipse outlining the objects of interest. This paper presents a Lagrangian based method to integrate a regularising component into the covariance matrix to be computed. Technically, we intend to reduce the residuals between the estimated probability distribution and the expected one. We argue that, by doing this, the shape of the ellipse can be properly adapted in the tracking stage. Experimental results show that the proposed method has favourable performance in shape adaption and object localisation.

Behind the scenes:a week in the life of a Senior Pro-Vice Chancellor

Helen Higson graduated from Cambridge University in 1982 and followed this up with an MSc with the Open University and a PhD at Birkbeck College London. She started working in HE at Southampton University and has spent the last 25 years at Aston University. Her roles there have been various, starting as PA to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor External Relations and spending 20 years with Aston Business School. Helen was awarded a Personal Chair in Higher Education Learning and Management in 2008 and is currently Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor, with responsibility for International Relations, Employability, Schools Liaison, Registry and Planning. Helen was awarded an AUA Fellowship in 2010 and an OBE in the 2011 New Year Honours list.

Textural segmentation of natural water scenes for surface pollution detection

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False recognition of objects in visual scenes:findings from a combined direct and indirect memory test

We report an extension of the procedure devised by Weinstein and Shanks (Memory & Cognition 36:1415-1428, 2008) to study false recognition and priming of pictures. Participants viewed scenes with multiple embedded objects (seen items), then studied the names of these objects and the names of other objects (read items). Finally, participants completed a combined direct (recognition) and indirect (identification) memory test that included seen items, read items, and new items. In the direct test, participants recognized pictures of seen and read items more often than new pictures. In the indirect test, participants' speed at identifying those same pictures was improved for pictures that they had actually studied, and also for falsely recognized pictures whose names they had read. These data provide new evidence that a false-memory induction procedure can elicit memory-like representations that are difficult to distinguish from "true" memories of studied pictures. © 2012 Psychonomic Society, Inc.

Dialog Based on Graphical Static Scenes Managed by an Ontology

A new method to implementation of dialog based on graphical static scenes using an ontology-based approach to user interface development is proposed. The main idea of the approach is to form necessary to the user interface development and implementation information using ontologies and then based on this high-level specification to generate the user interface.

An augmented reality pipeline to create scenes with coherent illumination using textured cuboids

Shadows and illumination play an important role when generating a realistic scene in computer graphics. Most of the Augmented Reality (AR) systems track markers placed in a real scene and retrieve their position and orientation to serve as a frame of reference for added computer generated content, thereby producing an augmented scene. Realistic depiction of augmented content with coherent visual cues is a desired goal in many AR applications. However, rendering an augmented scene with realistic illumination is a complex task. Many existent approaches rely on a non automated pre-processing phase to retrieve illumination parameters from the scene. Other techniques rely on specific markers that contain light probes to perform environment lighting estimation. This study aims at designing a method to create AR applications with coherent illumination and shadows, using a textured cuboid marker, that does not require a training phase to provide lighting information. Such marker may be easily found in common environments: most of product packaging satisfies such characteristics. Thus, we propose a way to estimate a directional light configuration using multiple texture tracking to render AR scenes in a realistic fashion. We also propose a novel feature descriptor that is used to perform multiple texture tracking. Our descriptor is an extension of the binary descriptor, named discrete descriptor, and outperforms current state-of-the-art methods in speed, while maintaining their accuracy.

Scenes of provincial life: an online video sequence and commentary

I present here a sequence of short videos, Scenes of Provincial Life, forming a unified, ongoing online work. In my written commentary I discuss the work‘s context, genesis and facture and presentation and thereby demonstrate its claim to originality as art work. I go on to suggest one possible interpretive framework for it. I then discuss the nature of art works as candidates for the generation of new knowledge and conclude that art works in general fulfil this function, in a very carefully defined way, as a necessary condition of being art works. I further connect the success of any work as art work with the richness of its knowledge generating capacity, inseparably allied to its aesthetic force. I conclude that if Scenes of Provincial Life is seen to have value as artwork it will therefore by definition be a creator of new knowledge.

Contextual anomaly detection in crowded surveillance scenes

This work addresses the problem of detecting human behavioural anomalies in crowded surveillance environments. We focus in particular on the problem of detecting subtle anomalies in a behaviourally heterogeneous surveillance scene. To reach this goal we implement a novel unsupervised context-aware process. We propose and evaluate a method of utilising social context and scene context to improve behaviour analysis. We find that in a crowded scene the application of Mutual Information based social context permits the ability to prevent self-justifying groups and propagate anomalies in a social network, granting a greater anomaly detection capability. Scene context uniformly improves the detection of anomalies in both datasets. The strength of our contextual features is demonstrated by the detection of subtly abnormal behaviours, which otherwise remain indistinguishable from normal behaviour.

Punks and believers An ethnographic study of subcultural, religious and non-religious identities in Indonesian punk scenes

Punk subculture is often assumed to have an antagonistic disposition towards religion. In this thesis, I examine this relationship in the Indonesian context, where the level of religious devotion is higher than in Western societies. I concentrate on how Indonesian punks who belong to secular punk communities negotiate the relationship between their religious or non-religious and subcultural identities. In addition, I examine the status of religion on the collective level in the punk communities. I collected the ethnographic data on Java in 2012. In addition to semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the analyzed data consists of social media sites, punk records and an online enquiry. I utilized thematic analysis in the study. The notion of identity is understood the way Stuart Hall has conceptualized it. Another essential concept, affect, is derived from Lawrence Grossberg’s theorization. The religious participants separated punk and religion in their lives. Many Muslim informants used an Islamic typology to separate one’s personal relationship with Allah and one’s relationship with other people. While some participants filtered away certain elements of “Western punk”, the majority of them saw ideological similarities between punk and Islam. This relationship was negotiated using both affective and ideological rationalizations. Non-religious punks respected religious people, but criticized radical forms of religiosity. Some of them described the difficulties of maintaining a non-religious identity in Indonesia, and that they have felt less marginalized in the punk community. Almost all of the participants stated that punk scenes should be religiously neutral and viewed integrating punk and religion as a problematic phenomenon.

Object detection and recognition in complex scenes

Dissertação de Mestrado, Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2014

Sistematização do dimensionamento técnico e econômico de sistemas fotovoltaicos isolados por meio de programa computacional

One of the main referring subjects to the solar energy is how to compare it economically with other sources of energy, as much alternatives as with conventionals (like the electric grid). The purpose of this work was to develop a software which congregates the technical and economic main data to identify, through methods of microeconomic analysis, the commercial viability in the sizing of photovoltaic systems, besides considering the benefits proceeding from the proper energy generation. Considering the period of useful life of the components of the generation system of photovoltaic electricity, the costs of the energy proceeding from the conventional grid had been identified. For the comparison of the conventional sources, electric grid and diesel generation, three scenes of costs of photovoltaic panels and two for the factor of availability of diesel generation had been used. The results have shown that if the cost of the panels is low and the place of installation is more distant of the electric grid, the photovoltaic system becomes the best option.

Autoscopia: um procedimento de pesquisa e de formação

This article considers a procedure for data collection called autoscopy. Autoscopy entails the video recording of a practice with the purpose of allowing analysis and self-evaluation by one of the protagonists of that practice. The objective of the video recording is that of apprehending the actions of the agent (or agents), the scenario, and the plot that make up a situation. The recorded material is subjected to sessions of analysis after the action that aim at the understanding of the reflective process of the agent (or agents) through their verbalizations during the analysis of video recorded scenes. The present text introduces a theoretical basis for the procedure of autoscopy, deals with advantages and limitations of its use, as well as with aspects that deserve attention and, finally, describes the authors' experiences in two studies in which the procedure was employed. Starting from these two experiences, differences and similarities are pointed out between the studies, especially regarding the participants, object, and the time distribution of the video recordings. The authors draw considerations about the formative-reflective potential of the procedure, both for research situations and for the learning and training of various professionals, considering it to be an excellent educational instrument. It is, however, vital to keep in mind the need to recognize and return to the teacher, as an autoscopic participant, his condition as subject of his own profession, thereby promoting, besides the self-evaluation, also the autonomy of his thinking and doing.

Juventude, lazer e uso abusivo de alcool

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física