Construction of recurrent fractal interpolation surfaces(RFISs) on rectangular grids

A recurrent iterated function system (RIFS) is a genaralization of an IFS and provides nonself-affine fractal sets which are closer to natural objects. In general, it's attractor is not a continuous surface in R3. A recurrent fractal interpolation surface (RFIS) is an attractor of RIFS which is a graph of bivariate continuous interpolation function. We introduce a general method of generating recurrent interpolation surface which are at- tractors of RIFSs about any data set on a grid.

Attribute exploration with background implications and exceptions

Implications between attributes can represent knowledge about objects in a specified context. This knowledge representation is especially useful when it is not possible to list all specified objects. Attribute exploration is a tool of formal concept analysis that supports the acquisition of this knowledge. For a specified context this interactive procedure determines a miminal list of valid implications between attributes of this context together with a list of objects which are counterexamples for all implications not valid in the context. This paper describes how the exploration can be modified such that it determines a mimimal set of implications that fills the gap between previously given implications (called background implications) and all valid implications. The list of implications can be simplified further if exceptions are allowed for the implications.

Enhancing the Dexterity of a Robot Hand Using Controlled Slip

Humans can effortlessly manipulate objects in their hands, dexterously sliding and twisting them within their grasp. Robots, however, have none of these capabilities, they simply grasp objects rigidly in their end effectors. To investigate this common form of human manipulation, an analysis of controlled slipping of a grasped object within a robot hand was performed. The Salisbury robot hand demonstrated many of these controlled slipping techniques, illustrating many results of this analysis. First, the possible slipping motions were found as a function of the location, orientation, and types of contact between the hand and object. Second, for a given grasp, the contact types were determined as a function of the grasping force and the external forces on the object. Finally, by changing the grasping force, the robot modified the constraints on the object and affect controlled slipping slipping motions.

Object Recognition with Pictorial Structures

This thesis presents a statistical framework for object recognition. The framework is motivated by the pictorial structure models introduced by Fischler and Elschlager nearly 30 years ago. The basic idea is to model an object by a collection of parts arranged in a deformable configuration. The appearance of each part is modeled separately, and the deformable configuration is represented by spring-like connections between pairs of parts. These models allow for qualitative descriptions of visual appearance, and are suitable for generic recognition problems. The problem of detecting an object in an image and the problem of learning an object model using training examples are naturally formulated under a statistical approach. We present efficient algorithms to solve these problems in our framework. We demonstrate our techniques by training models to represent faces and human bodies. The models are then used to locate the corresponding objects in novel images.

3D Object Recognition: Symmetry and Virtual Views

Many 3D objects in the world around us are strongly constrained. For instance, not only cultural artifacts but also many natural objects are bilaterally symmetric. Thoretical arguments suggest and psychophysical experiments confirm that humans may be better in the recognition of symmetric objects. The hypothesis of symmetry-induced virtual views together with a network model that successfully accounts for human recognition of generic 3D objects leads to predictions that we have verified with psychophysical experiments.

Validating Co-Training Models for Web Image Classification

Co-training is a semi-supervised learning method that is designed to take advantage of the redundancy that is present when the object to be identified has multiple descriptions. Co-training is known to work well when the multiple descriptions are conditional independent given the class of the object. The presence of multiple descriptions of objects in the form of text, images, audio and video in multimedia applications appears to provide redundancy in the form that may be suitable for co-training. In this paper, we investigate the suitability of utilizing text and image data from the Web for co-training. We perform measurements to find indications of conditional independence in the texts and images obtained from the Web. Our measurements suggest that conditional independence is likely to be present in the data. Our experiments, within a relevance feedback framework to test whether a method that exploits the conditional independence outperforms methods that do not, also indicate that better performance can indeed be obtained by designing algorithms that exploit this form of the redundancy when it is present.

Quantifying rock fabrics: a test of autocorrelation of the spatial distribution of cristals

A novel test of spatial independence of the distribution of crystals or phases in rocks based on compositional statistics is introduced. It improves and generalizes the common joins-count statistics known from map analysis in geographic information systems. Assigning phases independently to objects in RD is modelled by a single-trial multinomial random function Z(x), where the probabilities of phases add to one and are explicitly modelled as compositions in the K-part simplex SK. Thus, apparent inconsistencies of the tests based on the conventional joins{count statistics and their possibly contradictory interpretations are avoided. In practical applications we assume that the probabilities of phases do not depend on the location but are identical everywhere in the domain of de nition. Thus, the model involves the sum of r independent identical multinomial distributed 1-trial random variables which is an r-trial multinomial distributed random variable. The probabilities of the distribution of the r counts can be considered as a composition in the Q-part simplex SQ. They span the so called Hardy-Weinberg manifold H that is proved to be a K-1-affine subspace of SQ. This is a generalisation of the well-known Hardy-Weinberg law of genetics. If the assignment of phases accounts for some kind of spatial dependence, then the r-trial probabilities do not remain on H. This suggests the use of the Aitchison distance between observed probabilities to H to test dependence. Moreover, when there is a spatial uctuation of the multinomial probabilities, the observed r-trial probabilities move on H. This shift can be used as to check for these uctuations. A practical procedure and an algorithm to perform the test have been developed. Some cases applied to simulated and real data are presented. Key words: Spatial distribution of crystals in rocks, spatial distribution of phases, joins-count statistics, multinomial distribution, Hardy-Weinberg law, Hardy-Weinberg manifold, Aitchison geometry

Capaware: plataforma de desarrollo de software libre para aplicacines geográficas 3D multicapa

En este trabajo se presenta Capaware, una plataforma de software libre para el desarrollo de aplicaciones geográficas 3D multicapa, que surge a partir de la iniciativa del Instituto Tecnológico de Canarias en colaboración con la Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Este entorno simplifica la creación de aplicaciones 3D sobre territorios geográficos extensos, disponiendo de una herramienta muy visual que aporta un nuevo punto de vista muy importante para una toma de decisiones eficaz. Capaware proporciona una interfaz fácil de usar y muy flexible que simplifica el desarrollo de nuevas aplicaciones, permitiéndonos crear rápidamente entornos virtuales con múltiples capas de información sobre el terreno. Con las capacidades clásicas de un Sistema de Información Geográfica (SIG), Capaware permite actualmente la carga de capas WMS sobre entornos 3D, añadir objetos 3D sobre el terreno, y visualizar elementos dinámicos, ofreciendo una nueva perspectiva de la información analizada. Así mismo, podemos administrar las capas de recursos y elementos que se pueden representar sobre la zona geográfica en cuestión. (...)

Object and Scene Classification: what does a Supervised Approach Provide us?

Given a set of images of scenes containing different object categories (e.g. grass, roads) our objective is to discover these objects in each image, and to use this object occurrences to perform a scene classification (e.g. beach scene, mountain scene). We achieve this by using a supervised learning algorithm able to learn with few images to facilitate the user task. We use a probabilistic model to recognise the objects and further we classify the scene based on their object occurrences. Experimental results are shown and evaluated to prove the validity of our proposal. Object recognition performance is compared to the approaches of He et al. (2004) and Marti et al. (2001) using their own datasets. Furthermore an unsupervised method is implemented in order to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of our supervised classification approach versus an unsupervised one

Analysis and regeneration of hypermedia contents through Java and XML tools

This paper presents a tool for the analysis and regeneration of Web contents, implemented through XML and Java. At the moment, the Web content delivery from server to clients is carried out without taking into account clients' characteristics. Heterogeneous and diverse characteristics, such as user's preferences, different capacities of the client's devices, different types of access, state of the network and current load on the server, directly affect the behavior of Web services. On the other hand, the growing use of multimedia objects in the design of Web contents is made without taking into account this diversity and heterogeneity. It affects, even more, the appropriate content delivery. Thus, the objective of the presented tool is the treatment of Web pages taking into account the mentioned heterogeneity and adapting contents in order to improve the performance on the Web

Una perspectiva de las teorías de la emoción: hacia un estudio de las implicaciones de las emociones en la vida del hombre

En esta monografía se propone que las emociones son una forma de relación con el mundo que implica apreciaciones y creencias del sujeto que las experimenta. Si bien es cierto que el cuerpo humano puede ser considerado como un producto de la evolución y, en general, todas sus funciones necesitan del sustento de dicho cuerpo, cuando hablamos de las emociones debemos hablar de su conexión con el carácter, la voluntad, las escalas de valores y muchos otros factores que no pueden ser explicados a partir de una base como la determinación física, dado que las emociones son una variable indispensable para la organización social y, más específicamente, para la moral. Las emociones son definidas, consecuentemente, como una serie de juicios, basados en prioridades y escalas de valor, que califican y median nuestra relación con los objetos del mundo.

WAIS seminar: Linked Cultural Media

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Speaker(s): Guus Schreiber Time: 09/04/2014 11:00-11:50 Location: B32/3077 File size: 546Mb Abstract In this talk I will discuss linked data for museums, archives and libraries. This area is known for its knowledge-rich and heterogeneous data landscape. The objects in this field range from old manuscripts to recent TV programs. Challenges in this field include common metadata schema's, inter-linking of the omnipresent vocabularies, cross-collection search strategies, user-generated annotations and object-centric versus event-centric views of data. This work can be seen as part of the rapidly evolving field of digital humanities. Speaker Biography Guus Schreiber Guus is a professor of Intelligent Information Systems at the Department of Computer Science at VU University Amsterdam. Guus’ research interests are mainly in knowledge and ontology engineering with a special interest for applications in the field of cultural heritage. He was one of the key developers of the CommonKADS methodology. Guus acts as chair of W3C groups for Semantic Web standards such as RDF, OWL, SKOS and REFa. His research group is involved in a wide range of national and international research projects. He is now project coordinator of the EU Integrated project No Tube concerned with integration of Web and TV data with the help of semantics and was previously Scientific Director of the EU Network of Excellence “Knowledge Web”.

Terapia asistida con perros en niños con autismo revisión sistemática

Introducción: El autismo es un trastorno temprano y masivo del desarrollo en el cual se afecta la interacción social, el desarrollo del lenguaje, se presentan rituales y estereotipias. Hay evidencia que la interacción con un perro está asociada con efectos positivos en la salud del niño, lo cual se extiende al terreno terapéutico donde la compañía del perro estimula habilidades comunicativas para conectarse con el mundo exterior y romper el aislamiento que lo hace refractario a formas convencionales de tratamiento. El objetivo del estudio fue realizar una Revisión Sistemática sobre efectos de la terapia con perros en niños autistas entre dos y doce años. Metodología: Revisión sistemática de la literatura de artículos obtenidos de bases de datos, revisiones sistemáticas y Meta-buscadores que proporcionaron evidencia de la terapia con perros en niños autistas. Se describió características y resultados de estudios obtenidos. Resultados: Dos artículos cumplieron criterios de inclusión. Cuatro niños fueron evaluados en dichos estudios. La presencia del perro disminuyó la agresividad, las conductas ritualizadas y obsesivas. Potencializó los comportamientos positivos como contacto visual y comunicación social. Discusión: la terapia asistida con perros proporciona un gran potencial en la intervención del trastorno autista. Relevante tener en cuenta algunos factores como: efectos a largo plazo, el perro a utilizar y la heterogeneidad del espectro autista que pueden condicionar líneas de investigación futura. Conclusiones: Es importante la realización de estudios de mayor rigor metodológico que permitan fortalecer la evidencia sobre los resultados de la terapia con perros en niños con autismo.

The Inner Meaning of Outer Space: Human Nature and the Celestial Realm

Kant argued that humans possess a priori knowledge of space; although his argument focused on a physics of bodies, it also has implications for a psychology of beings. Many human cultures organize stars in the night sky into constellations (i.e., impose structure); attribute properties, behaviors, and abilities to objects in the celestial realm (i.e., impose meaning); and use perceived regularity in the celestial realms in development of calendars, long-range navigation, agriculture, and astrology (i.e., seek predictability and control). The physical inaccessibility of the celestial realm allows a potent source of metaphor, and also allows projection of myths regarding origin and ascension, places of power, and dwelling places of gods, immortals, and other souls. Developments in astronomy and cosmology influenced views of human nature and the place of humanity in the universe, and these changes parallel declines in egocentrism with human development. Views regarding alleged beings (e.g., angels, extraterrestrials) from the celestial realm (and to how communicate with such beings) are anthropocentric and ignore evolutionary factors in physical and cognitive development. It is suggested that in considering views and uses of the celestial realm, we learn not just about the universe, but also about ourselves. 

Proyección Memoria

El proyecto consiste en realizar una proyección de videomapping acompañada por una agenda cultural que busca promover a través del video y la tecnología la construcción colectiva de memoria histórica compartida y con perspectiva de futuro, inicialmente a una población que no ha tenido contacto directo con la guerra (población de Bogotá de alto poder adquisitivo). Se analiza el arte como factor generador de empatía entre ciudadanos.