Linking identities and viewpoints in home movies based on robust feature matching

The identification of useful structures in home video is difficult because this class of video is distinguished from other video sources by its unrestricted, non edited content and the absence of regulated storyline. In addition, home videos contain a lot of motion and erratic camera movements, with shots of the same character being captured from various angles and viewpoints. In this paper, we present a solution to the challenging problem of clustering shots and faces in home videos, based on the use of SIFT features. SIFT features have been known to be robust for object recognition; however, in dealing with the complexities of home video setting, the matching process needs to be augmented and adapted. This paper describes various techniques that can improve the number of matches returned as well as the correctness of matches. For example, existing methods for verification of matches are inadequate for cases when a small number of matches are returned, a common situation in home videos. We address this by constructing a robust classifier that works on matching sets instead of individual matches, allowing the exploitation of the geometric constraints between matches. Finally, we propose techniques for robustly extracting target clusters from individual feature matches.

Teaching out-of-field : factors shaping identities of secondary science and mathematics

It is widely recognised that many teachers work 'out of field', taking subjects outside their specialities. Studies undertaken by the author and by other researchers shed light on how teachers themselves experience and understand out-of-field teaching. The article discusses the issue in relation to junior secondary science and mathematics. Evidence is drawn from the 2009 Teacher Identity In and Across Subjects (TIIAS) study. The article also includes a table summarising the findings of eight major research reports relevant to this issue. The author draws a range of conclusions. Teachers' experience and understanding of out-of-field teaching is determined not only by their subject content knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge, but also by their context and by the personal resources available to them. Rural teachers often accept the need to teach across a number of subject areas, as part of their professional identity, despite the fact that they often lack easy access to subject specialists. Teachers tend to be more positive about out-of-field teaching when they themselves have had input into which subjects they will teach, and when they have an interest in or informal knowledge of the subject area. Teachers' interest in professional development to support their out-of-field teaching is influenced by whether they see themselves as simply filling in for someone, making the most of an opportunity, or pursuing an interest. Professional learning should ideally be initiated by or negotiated with the teachers, and should be provided at the point of need. School leaderships should maximise teachers' input into subject allocation and provision of professional learning opportunities. Teacher education courses need to prepare pre-service teachers to cope with out-of-field teaching.

Problematic identities in women's fiction of the Sri Lankan diaspora

In her thesis, Watkins investigates the representation of ‘problematic identities in women’s fiction of the Sri Lankan diaspora’. As well as scrutinizing the literature for gender specific issues, both cultural and psychological, the thesis illustrates its collective significance as culture specific literature.

Health-related religious rituals of the Greek Orthodox Church : their uptake and meanings

Aim
To examine the uptake of religious rituals of the Greek Orthodox Church by relatives of patients in critical condition in Greece and to explore their symbolic representations and spiritual meanings.
Background
Patients and their relatives want to be treated with respect and be supported for their beliefs, practices, customs and rituals. However nurses may not be ready to meet the spiritual needs of relatives of patients, while the health-related religious beliefs, practices and rituals of the Greek Orthodox Christian denomination have not been explored.
Method
This study was part of a large study encompassing 19 interviews with 25 informants, relatives of patients in intensive care units of three large hospitals in Athens, Greece, between 2000 and 2005. In this paper data were derived from personal accounts of religious rituals given by six participants.
Results
Relatives used a series of religious rituals, namely blessed oil and holy water, use of relics of saints, holy icons, offering names for pleas and pilgrimage.
Conclusion
Through the rituals, relatives experience a sense of connectedness with the divine and use the sacred powers to promote healing of their patients.
Implications for nursing management
Nurse managers should recognize, respect and facilitate the expression of spirituality through the practice of religious rituals by patients and their relatives.

Hybrid identities in a globalised world

Sociology is interested in how identities are constructed and maintained, especially how gender, race, ethnicity and class impacts on self-identity and on our life chances. Who we are, how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us has increasingly led many social scientists to describe contemporary identities as hybrid. This might be defined at one level as the intermingling or mixture of people from different cultural backgrounds. Sociologists and other social theorists have argued over the last twenty years that individuals have multiple identities that cut across many group allegiances. Nevertheless, there are problems with the use of the term hybrid. For some, hybrid suggests some kind of ‘new cultural melting pot, in which crucial cultural differences are effaced and power relations obscured’ (Hynes 2000). For others it implies that something pure or authentic and of traditional value has been lost. These debates do not hide the fact that racial and cultural hybrid identities have been fuelled by globalizing and transnational processes.

Teaching or preaching — Max Charlesworth and religious education

In this essay I elaborate on the theoretical framework – that of Millian liberalism – that Max Charlesworth brought to many public issues, including that of the relation between education and religion. I will then apply this framework to a debate in which I have been recently involved myself: a debate around the provision of religious instruction in public schools. In the first section I expound Charlesworth’s rejection of secularism in education in a liberal pluralist state and his defence of faith-based schooling. In the second section I uncover the religious motivations behind the Victorian government’s 1950 amendments to the apparently secularist Victorian Education Act of 1872. In section three, I explore the notion of secularism more fully and suggest that the struggle between those who espouse religious instruction in state schools and those who oppose it while advocating a more general form of education about religion is a symptom of a deeper tension between liberalism and communitarianism within the culture of modernist, liberal states.

The spiritual implications of sexual abuse : not just an issue for religious women?

Although there is now some recognition that sexual abuse, particularly that which occurs in religious settings, has spiritual implications for women who have been abused, the spiritual implications of sexual abuse which occurs beyond the confines of specific religious practices and beliefs tend not to be acknowledged. Taking a stance that all people, irrespective of their involvement in a formal religion, are inherently spiritual, this paper identifies the key concepts associated with spirituality as meaning, identity, connectedness, transformation and transcendence. Examples as to how each of these may be issues following the experience of sexual abuse are provided. This approach challenges prevailing notions that sexual abuse only has spiritual implications for women who identify with a particular religious tradition. Instead it is argued that an experience of sexual abuse can be critical for the spiritual life of any woman who is subjected to abuse.

Heritage destruction and violence in Iraq : bombing mosques and ethno-religious sectarian violence, 2006-7

Since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has suffered an extraordinary era of both heritage destruction and devastating spikes in violence. While cases such as the 2003 attacks on the Iraq National Museum and the Iraq National Library and Archive, as well as the systematic looting of Iraq’s sensitive archaeological sites, understandably caused outrage among scholars of heritage studies across the world, little attention has been paid to the destruction of Iraq’s many significant Islamic sites – particularly during the ethno-religious sectarian violence that raged across the nation in 2006-7. This paper presents the first results of a three year project funded by the Australian Research Council which aims to empirically test the assumption that a significant relationship exists between this spike in violence and the targeting of sites of Islamic heritage (mosques, shrines, etc.). To do this, the paper will compare and contrast the information in the world’s first database of heritage destruction (created by the author) and existing measures of violence in Iraq (such as the Iraq Body Count database). This will set the precedent for studies of both heritage and violence and enable policy formation towards the minimization of heritage destruction and spikes in violence during times of conflict.

My place: exploring children's place-related identities through reading and writing

This paper considers how children perceive and represent their placed-related identities through reading and writing. It reports on the findings of an 18-month interdisciplinary project, based at Cambridge University Faculty of Education, which aimed to consider children’s place-related identities through their engage- ment with, and creation of, texts. This paper will discuss the project, its interdisciplinary theoretical framework, and the empirical research we conducted with two classes in primary schools in Eastern England. A key text used in our research was My Place by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins. Drawing on our interdisciplinary theoretical framework, particularly Doreen Massey’s notion of place as a bundle of trajectories, and Louise Rosenblatt’s notion of the transaction between the reader and the text, this paper will examine pages from My Place, children talking about how this text connects with them, children talking about their sense of place, and maps and writing the children produced based on their place.

Place-related identities through texts : from interdisciplinary theory to research agenda

The implications of the transdisciplinary spatial turn are attract- ing growing interest in a broad range of areas related to education. This paper draws on a methodology for interdisciplinary thinking in order to articulate a new theoretical configuration of place-related identity, and its implications for a research agenda. The new configuration is created through an analy- sis of place-related identities in narrative theory, texts and literacy processes. The emerging research agenda focuses on the ways children perceive and rep- resent their place-related identities through reading and writing as inspired by and manifested in texts.

'You're no-one if you're not a netball girl' : rural and regional living adolescent girls' negotiation of physically active identities

Despite the widely articulated health implications of physical inactivity, declines in youth participation levels, particularly for adolescent girls, have fuelled social and moral panics about the importance of regular physical activity. Recent attempts to explain these participation trends have focused on the institutional and cultural discourses that are drawn on to construct particular identities and social practices connected with sport, physical education and leisure interests. In this paper we report on the findings of data collected through interview and focus group sessions with 138 females ranging from 14 to 16 years of age across six rural and regional communities in the state of Victoria, Australia. Adopting a feminist poststructuralist methodology and drawing on the work of Foucault, we explore the impact that dominant discourse-power relations operating in the context of rural and regional sport and physical education can have in the negotiation of physically active identities for adolescent girls.