Multi-q pattern analysis: A case study in image classification

This paper compares the effectiveness of the Tsallis entropy over the classic Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy for general pattern recognition, and proposes a multi-q approach to improve pattern analysis using entropy. A series of experiments were carried out for the problem of classifying image patterns. Given a dataset of 40 pattern classes, the goal of our image case study is to assess how well the different entropies can be used to determine the class of a newly given image sample. Our experiments show that the Tsallis entropy using the proposed multi-q approach has great advantages over the Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy for pattern classification, boosting image recognition rates by a factor of 3. We discuss the reasons behind this success, shedding light on the usefulness of the Tsallis entropy and the multi-q approach. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Network-based high level data classification

Traditional supervised data classification considers only physical features (e. g., distance or similarity) of the input data. Here, this type of learning is called low level classification. On the other hand, the human (animal) brain performs both low and high orders of learning and it has facility in identifying patterns according to the semantic meaning of the input data. Data classification that considers not only physical attributes but also the pattern formation is, here, referred to as high level classification. In this paper, we propose a hybrid classification technique that combines both types of learning. The low level term can be implemented by any classification technique, while the high level term is realized by the extraction of features of the underlying network constructed from the input data. Thus, the former classifies the test instances by their physical features or class topologies, while the latter measures the compliance of the test instances to the pattern formation of the data. Our study shows that the proposed technique not only can realize classification according to the pattern formation, but also is able to improve the performance of traditional classification techniques. Furthermore, as the class configuration's complexity increases, such as the mixture among different classes, a larger portion of the high level term is required to get correct classification. This feature confirms that the high level classification has a special importance in complex situations of classification. Finally, we show how the proposed technique can be employed in a real-world application, where it is capable of identifying variations and distortions of handwritten digit images. As a result, it supplies an improvement in the overall pattern recognition rate.

BayGO: Bayesian analysis of ontology term enrichment in microarray data

Abstract Background The search for enriched (aka over-represented or enhanced) ontology terms in a list of genes obtained from microarray experiments is becoming a standard procedure for a system-level analysis. This procedure tries to summarize the information focussing on classification designs such as Gene Ontology, KEGG pathways, and so on, instead of focussing on individual genes. Although it is well known in statistics that association and significance are distinct concepts, only the former approach has been used to deal with the ontology term enrichment problem. Results BayGO implements a Bayesian approach to search for enriched terms from microarray data. The R source-code is freely available at http://blasto.iq.usp.br/~tkoide/BayGO in three versions: Linux, which can be easily incorporated into pre-existent pipelines; Windows, to be controlled interactively; and as a web-tool. The software was validated using a bacterial heat shock response dataset, since this stress triggers known system-level responses. Conclusion The Bayesian model accounts for the fact that, eventually, not all the genes from a given category are observable in microarray data due to low intensity signal, quality filters, genes that were not spotted and so on. Moreover, BayGO allows one to measure the statistical association between generic ontology terms and differential expression, instead of working only with the common significance analysis.

Combining fractal and deterministic walkers for texture analysis and classification

In this paper,we present a novel texture analysis method based on deterministic partially self-avoiding walks and fractal dimension theory. After finding the attractors of the image (set of pixels) using deterministic partially self-avoiding walks, they are dilated in direction to the whole image by adding pixels according to their relevance. The relevance of each pixel is calculated as the shortest path between the pixel and the pixels that belongs to the attractors. The proposed texture analysis method is demonstrated to outperform popular and state-of-the-art methods (e.g. Fourier descriptors, occurrence matrix, Gabor filter and local binary patterns) as well as deterministic tourist walk method and recent fractal methods using well-known texture image datasets.

Supervised classification of basaltic aggregate particles based on texture properties

The strength and durability of materials produced from aggregates (e.g., concrete bricks, concrete, and ballast) are critically affected by the weathering of the particles, which is closely related to their mineral composition. It is possible to infer the degree of weathering from visual features derived from the surface of the aggregates. By using sound pattern recognition methods, this study shows that the characterization of the visual texture of particles, performed by using texture-related features of gray scale images, allows the effective differentiation between weathered and nonweathered aggregates. The selection of the most discriminative features is also performed by taking into account a feature ranking method. The evaluation of the methodology in the presence of noise suggests that it can be used in stone quarries for automatic detection of weathered materials.

Gender classification in large databases

[EN]In this paper, we address the challenge of gender classi - cation using large databases of images with two goals. The rst objective is to evaluate whether the error rate decreases compared to smaller databases. The second goal is to determine if the classi er that provides the best classi cation rate for one database, improves the classi cation results for other databases, that is, the cross-database performance.

Improving gender classification accuracy in the wild

[EN]In this paper, we focus on gender recognition in challenging large scale scenarios. Firstly, we review the literature results achieved for the problem in large datasets, and select the currently hardest dataset: The Images of Groups. Secondly, we study the extraction of features from the face and its local context to improve the recognition accuracy. Diff erent descriptors, resolutions and classfii ers are studied, overcoming previous literature results, reaching an accuracy of 89.8%.

Pattern recognition analysis on heavy ion reaction data

One of the problems in the analysis of nucleus-nucleus collisions is to get information on the value of the impact parameter b. This work consists in the application of pattern recognition techniques aimed at associating values of b to groups of events. To this end, a support vec- tor machine (SVM) classifier is adopted to analyze multifragmentation reactions. This method allows to backtracing the values of b through a particular multidimensional analysis. The SVM classification con- sists of two main phase. In the first one, known as training phase, the classifier learns to discriminate the events that are generated by two different model:Classical Molecular Dynamics (CMD) and Heavy- Ion Phase-Space Exploration (HIPSE) for the reaction: 58Ni +48 Ca at 25 AMeV. To check the classification of events in the second one, known as test phase, what has been learned is tested on new events generated by the same models. These new results have been com- pared to the ones obtained through others techniques of backtracing the impact parameter. Our tests show that, following this approach, the central collisions and peripheral collisions, for the CMD events, are always better classified with respect to the classification by the others techniques of backtracing. We have finally performed the SVM classification on the experimental data measured by NUCL-EX col- laboration with CHIMERA apparatus for the previous reaction.

Dalla città alla casa, dalla casa alla città: la mutevole ricerca di un Piano per il ben-essere urbano

La ricerca si propone di definire le linee guida per la stesura di un Piano che si occupi di qualità della vita e di benessere. Il richiamo alla qualità e al benessere è positivamente innovativo, in quanto impone agli organi decisionali di sintonizzarsi con la soggettività attiva dei cittadini e, contemporaneamente, rende evidente la necessità di un approccio più ampio e trasversale al tema della città e di una più stretta relazione dei tecnici/esperti con i responsabili degli organismi politicoamministrativi. La ricerca vuole indagare i limiti dell’urbanistica moderna di fronte alla complessità di bisogni e di nuove necessità espresse dalle popolazioni urbane contemporanee. La domanda dei servizi è notevolmente cambiata rispetto a quella degli anni Sessanta, oltre che sul piano quantitativo anche e soprattutto sul piano qualitativo, a causa degli intervenuti cambiamenti sociali che hanno trasformato la città moderna non solo dal punto di vista strutturale ma anche dal punto di vista culturale: l’intermittenza della cittadinanza, per cui le città sono sempre più vissute e godute da cittadini del mondo (turisti e/o visitatori, temporaneamente presenti) e da cittadini diffusi (suburbani, provinciali, metropolitani); la radicale trasformazione della struttura familiare, per cui la famiglia-tipo costituita da una coppia con figli, solido riferimento per l’economia e la politica, è oggi minoritaria; l’irregolarità e flessibilità dei calendari, delle agende e dei ritmi di vita della popolazione attiva; la mobilità sociale, per cui gli individui hanno traiettorie di vita e pratiche quotidiane meno determinate dalle loro origini sociali di quanto avveniva nel passato; l’elevazione del livello di istruzione e quindi l’incremento della domanda di cultura; la crescita della popolazione anziana e la forte individualizzazione sociale hanno generato una domanda di città espressa dalla gente estremamente variegata ed eterogenea, frammentata e volatile, e per alcuni aspetti assolutamente nuova. Accanto a vecchie e consolidate richieste – la città efficiente, funzionale, produttiva, accessibile a tutti – sorgono nuove domande, ideali e bisogni che hanno come oggetto la bellezza, la varietà, la fruibilità, la sicurezza, la capacità di stupire e divertire, la sostenibilità, la ricerca di nuove identità, domande che esprimono il desiderio di vivere e di godere la città, di stare bene in città, domande che non possono essere più soddisfatte attraverso un’idea di welfare semplicemente basata sull’istruzione, la sanità, il sistema pensionistico e l’assistenza sociale. La città moderna ovvero l’idea moderna della città, organizzata solo sui concetti di ordine, regolarità, pulizia, uguaglianza e buon governo, è stata consegnata alla storia passata trasformandosi ora in qualcosa di assai diverso che facciamo fatica a rappresentare, a descrivere, a raccontare. La città contemporanea può essere rappresentata in molteplici modi, sia dal punto di vista urbanistico che dal punto di vista sociale: nella letteratura recente è evidente la difficoltà di definire e di racchiudere entro limiti certi l’oggetto “città” e la mancanza di un convincimento forte nell’interpretazione delle trasformazioni politiche, economiche e sociali che hanno investito la società e il mondo nel secolo scorso. La città contemporanea, al di là degli ambiti amministrativi, delle espansioni territoriali e degli assetti urbanistici, delle infrastrutture, della tecnologia, del funzionalismo e dei mercati globali, è anche luogo delle relazioni umane, rappresentazione dei rapporti tra gli individui e dello spazio urbano in cui queste relazioni si muovono. La città è sia concentrazione fisica di persone e di edifici, ma anche varietà di usi e di gruppi, densità di rapporti sociali; è il luogo in cui avvengono i processi di coesione o di esclusione sociale, luogo delle norme culturali che regolano i comportamenti, dell’identità che si esprime materialmente e simbolicamente nello spazio pubblico della vita cittadina. Per studiare la città contemporanea è necessario utilizzare un approccio nuovo, fatto di contaminazioni e saperi trasversali forniti da altre discipline, come la sociologia e le scienze umane, che pure contribuiscono a costruire l’immagine comunemente percepita della città e del territorio, del paesaggio e dell’ambiente. La rappresentazione del sociale urbano varia in base all’idea di cosa è, in un dato momento storico e in un dato contesto, una situazione di benessere delle persone. L’urbanistica moderna mirava al massimo benessere del singolo e della collettività e a modellarsi sulle “effettive necessità delle persone”: nei vecchi manuali di urbanistica compare come appendice al piano regolatore il “Piano dei servizi”, che comprende i servizi distribuiti sul territorio circostante, una sorta di “piano regolatore sociale”, per evitare quartieri separati per fasce di popolazione o per classi. Nella città contemporanea la globalizzazione, le nuove forme di marginalizzazione e di esclusione, l’avvento della cosiddetta “new economy”, la ridefinizione della base produttiva e del mercato del lavoro urbani sono espressione di una complessità sociale che può essere definita sulla base delle transazioni e gli scambi simbolici piuttosto che sui processi di industrializzazione e di modernizzazione verso cui era orientata la città storica, definita moderna. Tutto ciò costituisce quel complesso di questioni che attualmente viene definito “nuovo welfare”, in contrapposizione a quello essenzialmente basato sull’istruzione, sulla sanità, sul sistema pensionistico e sull’assistenza sociale. La ricerca ha quindi analizzato gli strumenti tradizionali della pianificazione e programmazione territoriale, nella loro dimensione operativa e istituzionale: la destinazione principale di tali strumenti consiste nella classificazione e nella sistemazione dei servizi e dei contenitori urbanistici. E’ chiaro, tuttavia, che per poter rispondere alla molteplice complessità di domande, bisogni e desideri espressi dalla società contemporanea le dotazioni effettive per “fare città” devono necessariamente superare i concetti di “standard” e di “zonizzazione”, che risultano essere troppo rigidi e quindi incapaci di adattarsi all’evoluzione di una domanda crescente di qualità e di servizi e allo stesso tempo inadeguati nella gestione del rapporto tra lo spazio domestico e lo spazio collettivo. In questo senso è rilevante il rapporto tra le tipologie abitative e la morfologia urbana e quindi anche l’ambiente intorno alla casa, che stabilisce il rapporto “dalla casa alla città”, perché è in questa dualità che si definisce il rapporto tra spazi privati e spazi pubblici e si contestualizzano i temi della strada, dei negozi, dei luoghi di incontro, degli accessi. Dopo la convergenza dalla scala urbana alla scala edilizia si passa quindi dalla scala edilizia a quella urbana, dal momento che il criterio del benessere attraversa le diverse scale dello spazio abitabile. Non solo, nei sistemi territoriali in cui si è raggiunto un benessere diffuso ed un alto livello di sviluppo economico è emersa la consapevolezza che il concetto stesso di benessere sia non più legato esclusivamente alla capacità di reddito collettiva e/o individuale: oggi la qualità della vita si misura in termini di qualità ambientale e sociale. Ecco dunque la necessità di uno strumento di conoscenza della città contemporanea, da allegare al Piano, in cui vengano definiti i criteri da osservare nella progettazione dello spazio urbano al fine di determinare la qualità e il benessere dell’ambiente costruito, inteso come benessere generalizzato, nel suo significato di “qualità dello star bene”. E’ evidente che per raggiungere tale livello di qualità e benessere è necessario provvedere al soddisfacimento da una parte degli aspetti macroscopici del funzionamento sociale e del tenore di vita attraverso gli indicatori di reddito, occupazione, povertà, criminalità, abitazione, istruzione, etc.; dall’altra dei bisogni primari, elementari e di base, e di quelli secondari, culturali e quindi mutevoli, trapassando dal welfare state allo star bene o well being personale, alla wellness in senso olistico, tutte espressioni di un desiderio di bellezza mentale e fisica e di un nuovo rapporto del corpo con l’ambiente, quindi manifestazione concreta di un’esigenza di ben-essere individuale e collettivo. Ed è questa esigenza, nuova e difficile, che crea la diffusa sensazione dell’inizio di una nuova stagione urbana, molto più di quanto facciano pensare le stesse modifiche fisiche della città.

Exploring the use of local descriptors for fish recognition in LifeCLEF 2015

[EN]This paper summarizes the proposal made by the SIANI team for the LifeCLEF 2015 Fish task. The approach makes use of standard detection techniques, applying a multiclass SVM based classifier on large enough Regions Of Interest (ROIs) automatically extracted from the provided video frames. The selection of the detection and classification modules is based on the best performance achieved for the validation dataset consisting of 20 annotated videos. For that dataset, the best classification achieved for an ideal detection module, reaches an accuracy around 40%.

On using periocular biometric for gender classification in the wild

[EN]Gender information may serve to automatically modulate interaction to the user needs, among other applications. Within the Computer Vision community, gender classification (GC) has mainly been accomplished with the facial pattern. Periocular biometrics has recently attracted researchers attention with successful results in the context of identity recognition. But, there is a lack of experimental evaluation of the periocular pattern for GC in the wild. The aim of this paper is to study the performance of this specific facial area in the currently most challenging large dataset for the problem.

Percorsi di gender performance: fotografia tra arte e moda dagli anni Novanta ad oggi

My project explores and compares different forms of gender performance in contemporary art and visual culture according to a perspective centered on photography. Thanks to its attesting power this medium can work as a ready-made. In fact during the 20th century it played a key role in the cultural emancipation of the body which (using a Michel Foucault’s expression) has now become «the zero point of the world». Through performance the body proves to be a living material of expression and communication while photography ensures the recording of any ephemeral event that happens in time and space. My questioning approach considers the gender constructed imagery from the 1990s to the present in order to investigate how photography’s strong aura of realism promotes and allows fantasies of transformation. The contemporary fascination with gender (especially for art and fashion) represents a crucial issue in the global context of postmodernity and is manifested in a variety of visual media, from photography to video and film. Moreover the internet along with its digital transmission of images has deeply affected our world (from culture to everyday life) leading to a postmodern preference for performativity over the more traditional and linear forms of narrativity. As a consequence individual borders get redefined by the skin itself which (dissected through instant vision) turns into a ductile material of mutation and hybridation in the service of identity. My critical assumptions are taken from the most relevant changes occurred in philosophy during the last two decades as a result of the contributions by Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze who developed a cross-disciplinary and comparative approach to interpret the crisis of modernity. They have profoundly influenced feminist studies so that the category of gender has been reassessed in contrast with sex (as a biological connotation) and in relation to history, culture, society. The ideal starting point of my research is the year 1990. I chose it as the approximate historical moment when the intersection of race, class and gender were placed at the forefront of international artistic production concerned with identity, diversity and globalization. Such issues had been explored throughout the 1970s but it was only from the mid-1980s onward that they began to be articulated more consistently. Published in 1990, the book "Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity" by Judith Butler marked an important breakthrough by linking gender to performance as well as investigating the intricate connections between theory and practice, embodiment and representation. It inspired subsequent research in a variety of disciplines, art history included. In the same year Teresa de Lauretis launched the definition of queer theory to challenge the academic perspective in gay and lesbian studies. In the meantime the rise of Third Wave Feminism in the US introduced a racially and sexually inclusive vision over the global situation in order to reflect on subjectivity, new technologies and popular culture in connection with gender representation. These conceptual tools have enabled prolific readings of contemporary cultural production whether fine arts or mass media. After discussing the appropriate framework of my project and taking into account the postmodern globalization of the visual, I have turned to photography to map gender representation both in art and in fashion. Therefore I have been creating an archive of images around specific topics. I decided to include fashion photography because in the 1990s this genre moved away from the paradigm of an idealized and classical beauty toward a new vernacular allied with lifestyles, art practices, pop and youth culture; as one might expect the dominant narrative modes in fashion photography are now mainly influenced by cinema and snapshot. These strategies originate story lines and interrupted narratives using models’ performance to convey a particular imagery where identity issues emerge as an essential part of fashion spectacle. Focusing on the intersections of gender identities with socially and culturally produced identities, my approach intends to underline how the fashion world has turned to current trends in art photography and in some case turned to the artists themselves. The growing fluidity of the categories that distinguish art from fashion photography represents a particularly fruitful moment of visual exchange. Varying over time the dialogue between these two fields has always been vital; nowadays it can be studied as a result of this close relationship between contemporary art world and consumer culture. Due to the saturation of postmodern imagery the feedback between art and fashion has become much more immediate and then increasingly significant for anyone who wants to investigate the construction of gender identity through performance. In addition to that a lot of magazines founded in the 1990s bridged the worlds of art and fashion because some of their designers and even editors were art-school graduates encouraging innovation. The inclusion of art within such magazines aimed at validating them as a form of art in themselves supporting a dynamic intersection for music, fashion, design and youth culture: an intersection that also contributed to create and spread different gender stereotypes. This general interest in fashion produced many exhibitions of and about fashion itself at major international venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Since then this celebrated success of fashion has been regarded as a typical element of postmodern culture. Owing to that I have also based my analysis on some important exhibitions dealing with gender performance like "Féminin-Masculin" at the Centre Pompidou of Paris (1995), "Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose. Gender performance in photography" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York (1997), "Global Feminisms" at the Brooklyn Museum (2007), "Female Trouble" at the Pinakothek der Moderne in München together with the workshops dedicated to "Performance: gender and identity" in June 2005 at the Tate Modern of London. Since 2003 in Italy we have had Gender Bender - an international festival held annually in Bologna - to explore the gender imagery stemming from contemporary culture. In few days this festival offers a series of events ranging from visual arts, performance, cinema, literature to conferences and music. Being aware that any method of research is neither race nor gender neutral I have traced these critical paths to question gender identity in a multicultural perspective taking account of the political implications too. In fact, if visibility may be equated with exposure, we can also read these images as points of intersection of visibility with social power. Since gender assignations rely so heavily on the visual, the postmodern dismantling of gender certainty through performance has wide-ranging effects that need to be analyzed. In some sense this practice can even contest the dominance of visual within postmodernism. My visual map in contemporary art and fashion photography includes artists like Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Hellen van Meene, Rineke Dijkstra, Ed Templeton, Ryan McGinley, Anne Daems, Miwa Yanagi, Tracey Moffat, Catherine Opie, Tomoko Sawada, Vanessa Beecroft, Yasumasa Morimura, Collier Schorr among others.

Algorithms for on-line image registration from multiple views

Images of a scene, static or dynamic, are generally acquired at different epochs from different viewpoints. They potentially gather information about the whole scene and its relative motion with respect to the acquisition device. Data from different (in the spatial or temporal domain) visual sources can be fused together to provide a unique consistent representation of the whole scene, even recovering the third dimension, permitting a more complete understanding of the scene content. Moreover, the pose of the acquisition device can be achieved by estimating the relative motion parameters linking different views, thus providing localization information for automatic guidance purposes. Image registration is based on the use of pattern recognition techniques to match among corresponding parts of different views of the acquired scene. Depending on hypotheses or prior information about the sensor model, the motion model and/or the scene model, this information can be used to estimate global or local geometrical mapping functions between different images or different parts of them. These mapping functions contain relative motion parameters between the scene and the sensor(s) and can be used to integrate accordingly informations coming from the different sources to build a wider or even augmented representation of the scene. Accordingly, for their scene reconstruction and pose estimation capabilities, nowadays image registration techniques from multiple views are increasingly stirring up the interest of the scientific and industrial community. Depending on the applicative domain, accuracy, robustness, and computational payload of the algorithms represent important issues to be addressed and generally a trade-off among them has to be reached. Moreover, on-line performance is desirable in order to guarantee the direct interaction of the vision device with human actors or control systems. This thesis follows a general research approach to cope with these issues, almost independently from the scene content, under the constraint of rigid motions. This approach has been motivated by the portability to very different domains as a very desirable property to achieve. A general image registration approach suitable for on-line applications has been devised and assessed through two challenging case studies in different applicative domains. The first case study regards scene reconstruction through on-line mosaicing of optical microscopy cell images acquired with non automated equipment, while moving manually the microscope holder. By registering the images the field of view of the microscope can be widened, preserving the resolution while reconstructing the whole cell culture and permitting the microscopist to interactively explore the cell culture. In the second case study, the registration of terrestrial satellite images acquired by a camera integral with the satellite is utilized to estimate its three-dimensional orientation from visual data, for automatic guidance purposes. Critical aspects of these applications are emphasized and the choices adopted are motivated accordingly. Results are discussed in view of promising future developments.

Transatlantic negotiations on "hell"?: W. E. B. Du Bois's visit to fascist Germany and Theodor W. Adorno's exile in the land of the culture industry

In 1936, the African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois visited Nazi Germany for a period of five months. Two years later, the eleven-year-long American exile of the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno began. From the latter’s perspective, the United States was the “home” of the Culture Industry. One intuitively assumes that these sojourns abroad must have amounted to “hell on earth” for both the civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and the subtle intellectual Adorno. But was this really the case? Or did they perhaps arrive at totally different conclusions? This thesis deals with these questions and attempts to make sense of the experiences of both men. By way of a systematic and comparative analysis of published texts, hitherto unpublished documents and secondary literature, this dissertation first contextualizes Du Bois’s and Adorno’s transatlantic negotiations and then depicts them. The panoply of topics with which both men concerned themselves was diverse. In Du Bois’s case it encompassed Europe, science and technology, Wagner operas, the Olympics, industrial education, race relations, National Socialism and the German Africanist Diedrich Westermann. The opinion pieces which Du Bois wrote for the newspaper “Pittsburgh Courier” during his stay in Germany serve as a major source for this thesis. In his writings on America, Adorno concentrated on what he regarded as the universally victorious Enlightenment and the predominance of mass culture. This investigation also sheds light on the correspondences between the philosopher and Max Horkheimer, Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Oskar and Maria Wiesengrund. In these autobiographical texts, Adorno’s thoughts revolve around such diverse topics as the American landscape, his fears as German, Jew and Left-Hegelian as well as the loneliness of the refugee. This dissertation has to refute the intuitive assumption that Du Bois’s and Adorno’s experiences abroad were horrible events for them. Both men judged the foreign countries in which they were staying in an extremely differentiated and subtle manner. Du Bois, for example, was not racially discriminated against in Germany. He was also delighted by the country’s rich cultural offerings. Adorno, for his part, praised the U.S.’s humanity of everyday life and democratic spirit. In short: Although both men partly did have to deal with utterly negative experiences, the metaphor of “hell on earth” is simply untenable as an overall conclusion.