Bright Boundaries Research Articles

Misshaped boundary classifier model for license plate detection in haze weather using entropy CNN

Weather that creates haze can cover up car license plates, creating warped lines that make it difficult to see and identify them. This paper suggests a novel Primitive Boundary Classifier Model (PBCM) that uses the unique properties of bright and dark boundaries to solve this problem. Iteratively extracting characteristics from the input image, the PBCM draws volatile borders and ends linearity at particular pixel positions. To detect irregular boundaries in the hidden layers through changes in entropy and regularity terminations, this procedure is combined with linear entropy learning, which is accomplished by altering a convolutional neural network. Identifying the license plate area and its related embedding is possible by finding these terminating border pixel locations. The model evaluates its performance during validation by considering similarity and false rate metrics. The comparative analysis, this model improves the 7.34% detection precision with 15.98% high similarity and 8.95% less false rate for the maximum epochs performance ratio of 90.1% and error rate of 11.2%.

In search of a cool identity: how young people negotiate religious and ethnic boundaries in a superdiverse context

In this paper, we aim to study how young people navigate a super-diverse majority-minority context, and how they negotiate bright religious and ethnic symbolic boundaries. Our study is based on 40 in-depth interviews with young people from various ethnic, social and religious backgrounds in the super-diverse city of Antwerp. Our analysis shows that young people generally draw on a cultural repertoire of commonplace diversity to navigate various peer relations and present diversity as a normal element of everyday life. However, our analysis also shows how ethnic minority youth experience bright ethnic and religious boundaries and need to navigate social exclusion processes. While minority youth rework bright boundaries by inverting their othered position and redefining coolness through a repertoire of ethnic hybridity, white majority youth face new challenges as their previously taken-for-granted dominant position becomes questioned and contested within a super-diverse setting. Our analysis shows how white majority youth manage their changing social position by drawing upon cultural repertoires of ethnic purity and ‘normal’ youthfulness, yet this also raises the question of whether they can draw on cultural repertoires, which do not imply nativist white identity politics.

Observation of the bubble-like morphology of atmospheric air plasma in two-phase flow of vaporizing water

The splitting and/or coalescing branched streamer network patterns are the most common settings of the atmospheric plasma. In this work, it is reported that a volumetric bubble cluster pattern can be realized in the interaction process of an atmospheric pressure diffuse plasma with a two-phase jet flow of superheated water. A new method using electric heating of a metallic tube filled with water is proposed to generate such a kind of vaporizing fluid. The plasma characteristics during the hydrodynamic process have been investigated by means of the high-speed Mach–Zehnder laser interferometry. The crucial feature of the morphology of plasmas, marked by the shifted fringes, has been enveloped with high contrast bright boundaries in both schlieren and shadowgraph photography, suggesting a critical phenomenon may exist in the heat and mass transfer process. The formation of the bubble-like morphology has induced higher electron density, and it is also found that the increase in the temperature during the jet flow and the increase in the discharge current are accompanied. The methodology exhibits the potential of applications relevant in the context of atmospheric diffuse plasma sources of high electron density and tunable chemistry of the neutral species.

Religious friendship preferences of Muslim and non-Muslim students in German schools: Bright boundaries everywhere or contingent on the proportion of Muslim classmates?

While network studies have shown that preferences of both Muslim and non-Muslim adolescents contribute to religious friendship segregation, it is unclear whether these preferences are ubiquitous or dependent on local context. Examining large-scale longitudinal friendship network data of adolescents in Germany, we investigate how the proportion of Muslim classmates affects friendship preferences of Muslims and non-Muslims. We find that Muslim youth favor Muslims over non-Muslims to a similar degree at all proportions of Muslim classmates. Non-Muslims’ reluctance to be friends with Muslims peaks in classrooms in which about half of the students are Muslims but is otherwise lower or absent.

Being inclusive when talking about diversity

This paper explores how discourses of national identity are managed in one of Norway’s core institutions – the educational system. As Norway changed into a multi-ethnic society, classrooms became a central arena for individuals with different religious and ethnic backgrounds to meet. How boundaries of ‘Norwegianness’ are managed in the classroom is therefore of importance. Based on a thematic analysis of observations of classroom lessons and interviews with teachers in schools in Oslo, I argue that teachers navigate between several different yet overlapping discourses of 'being Norwegian'. Using the theoretical framework of bright and blurred boundaries and different understandings of ‘Norwegianness’, I show how teachers manage different discourses rooted in citizenship, cultural traditions, values, ethnic boundaries or Whiteness. These discourses can be activated simultaneously in society and in the classroom. However, the Norwegian school system’s core value of equality and inclusiveness gives precedence to the discourse based on citizenship. To manage the other discourses, teachers use different strategies when addressing boundaries along different dimensions of national belonging.

Multicultural citizenship for the highly skilled? Naturalization, human capital, and the boundaries of belonging in Canada’s middle-class nation-building

Taking Canada as a widely envied and imitated example of liberal, “difference-blind” economic immigration, in this paper, I examine the permeability, constraints, and symbolic meaning of the different requirements of the naturalization process from the perspective of those who have undergone the process. Based on interviews with recently naturalized Canadians, my study reveals that the three steps of the application process – filing the application, studying the citizenship guide and sitting the test, attending the citizenship ceremony and swearing the citizenship oath – constitute mostly blurred boundaries for skilled and highly educated immigrants, with occasional bright boundaries related to management flaws, classed naturalization, and cultural biases. Specifically, immigrants endowed with valued forms of human capital are naturalizing fast and easily even if they are members of racial, ethnic or religious minorities. This underscores the strength of multiculturalism as national identity and ethos of societal integration. However, the attainment of citizenship in the multicultural nation does not come quasi-automatically as a right for everyone after years of lawful residency. Rather, it is granted as an earned privilege only to those who demonstrate the successful mastery of the skills and mindset of middle-class professionals. Since naturalization now operates along the same econocentric logic that governs immigrant selection through the points system, individuals admitted through non-economic streams, such as refugees and immigrants in the family class are increasingly struggling with the naturalization process. This raises questions about the implicit biases and new fault lines of seemingly difference-blind middle-class nation-building through immigration.

Toward a general model for reflection recovery and single image enhancement

Images often suffer from low visual quality due to poor imaging conditions such as low light or hazy weather. The haze imaging model is widely used in contrast enhancement in daylight condition with haze, while the retinex model is universal for low-light conditions. Although their forms and applications are different, they can be unified into a more general form through the proposed observation. Based on this model, the authors can estimate the reflection of the scene more accurately in more complex imaging conditions. In this study, the authors propose a simple but effective method for estimating the reflection and enhancing the image contrast based on a general imaging model. To preserve the image details and control contrast, the authors introduce dark boundary and bright boundary to handle the high-light and low-light conditions, and a guided structure-preserving optimization algorithm is proposed to estimate them. After obtaining the dark and bright boundaries, the reflection is calculated and the image is enhanced accordingly. Different from previous approaches, which were designed for specific applications, the proposed method can be used for more diverse imaging conditions. Experiments show that the proposed method can be applied to many poor imaging conditions and maintain good performance.

Borders and belonging: displaced Syrian youth navigating symbolic boundaries in Lebanon

ABSTRACT We examine the ways in which young Syrian refugees perceive and navigate the symbolic boundaries of belonging when displaced in Lebanon. Using portraiture, we identify three dimensions of belonging for refugees – safety, dignity, and relationships – and we explore the role of education in cultivating each one. We find that educational spaces, such as formal school and informal volunteering experiences, are places where refugee young people are at times able to blur bright boundaries of belonging. We also find that this belonging is tenuous and serves to reinforce boundaries of citizenship, rights, and everyday practices that exclude refugee young people. Our findings emphasize the need for the field of refugee education to address the question of how schools can actively resist and counter state-established bright boundaries of belonging to instead serve as spaces that blur and redefine those boundaries.

Perceived discrimination as a major factor behind return migration? The return of Turkish qualified migrants from the USA and Germany

ABSTRACTThis paper explains discrimination perceptions of Turkish qualified migrants who returned from Germany and the United States, and the impact of perceived discrimination on their return. It depends on in-depth interviews with 80 qualified Turkish returnees. Our findings indicate that: (i) returnees from Germany think they experienced ethnic discrimination; (ii) discrimination is a major reason behind their return; (iii) returnees from the US did not mention discrimination; (iv) discrimination is not a reason for return for them. We discuss these findings and explain the differences between German and American contexts in terms of ethnic boundaries. We use Alba’s (2005) distinction between bright and blurry ethnic boundaries to explain the difference between the two countries. However, going beyond his argument, we also connect this distinction to cultural capital. We argue that in a context where there are bright ethnic boundaries, high cultural capital does not free the individual from experiences of discrimination, whereas it can make a difference in a context where there are blurry ethnic boundaries. Qualified migrants choose to return from contexts where there are bright ethnic boundaries to escape from experiences of discrimination, as they can afford return due to their high levels of cultural and economic capital.

Cluster structure in amorphous Ti-Ni-Cu alloys subjected to high-pressure torsion deformation

The features of the internal structure's evolution of melt-spun (MS) amorphous Ti50Ni25Cu25 alloy samples subjected to high-pressure torsion (HPT) at 20 and 150 °C were revealed by TEM and STEM – in the planar direction and the cross-sectional direction of the HPT-processed disc-shaped samples.In STEM HAADF observations in the planar direction, areas with brightness contrast with a size of 20 nm are revealed. We assume them to be “amorphous nanoclusters”. In dark-field TEM images, in many areas nanocrystals (with sizes about 5 nm) are revealed, resulting from strain-induced nanocrystallization. In STEM HAADF images, there can be seen nanoclusters (with sizes about 20 nm) separated by bright boundaries. Groups of shear bands (SBs) are revealed on the cross-sectional directions on lamellae cut from the HPT-processed samples. Nanocrystals form directly in the shear bands as a result of strain-induced nanocrystallization. Amorphous nanoclusters are also observed in the amorphous phase surrounding the SBs. Formation of the amorphous nanocluster in the areas surrounding the shear bands has been discovered for the first time. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to study the surface morphology of foils prepared by ion polishing from the initial amorphous ribbons and HPT-processed samples. A hollows-like surface morphology in the HPT-processed state is revealed by AFM, which is reflected as nanocluster contrast in TEM images. The hollows-like surface morphology could be explained by the specifics of etching processes in the HPT-processed state. Brittle fracture of melt-spun Ti50Ni25Cu25 in the as-cast state and after HPT processing is determined during tensile tests. However, observable changes in the fracture surfaces correspond to an increased local ductility in samples subjected to HPT, in comparison with the initial state.

Passing as hybrid: Arab-Palestinian teachers in Jewish schools

In this paper I examine how Arab-Palestinians who teach Arabic in Jewish schools appropriate performative identity strategies through passing as hybrid to gain inclusion into the schools. The paradox is that although these teachers are recruited specifically because they are Arabs, they are expected by teachers and students to conceal their Arabness. I argue that because of the ethno-national bright boundaries in Israel, which do not encourage integration but hybridization into roles defined by the state, Arabs cannot and mostly do not want to pass as Israeli-Jews but as good Arabs who do not reside beyond the binarism Jew/Arab but are in-betweens.

Gender, Religion, and Ethnicity: Intersections and Boundaries in Immigrant Integration Policy Making

In this paper, we analyze Dutch policy debates that focused on the development of a distinct program to advance the social and economic participation of ethnic minority women (where this label captures immigrant women from non-Western countries). Drawing on intersectional analysis and theories of ethnic boundary formation, we argue that the parliamentary debates surrounding this policy program framed the social problems of these women to effectively reduce a diverse range of ethnic minority women into a narrowly defined group of Muslim women. Referencing multiple axes of difference, the adopted policies encouraged women to overcome ethnic distinctions and gender inequality by abandoning their (imputed) religious practices. Parliamentary debates on these policies generated bright boundaries and assimilationist approaches to the integration of ethnic minority women. In our conclusion, we suggest how our framework might be applied to inform analyses of integration policy making and boundary construction in other countries.

Creating and Refining Boundaries – Church Splitting Among Pentecostal Vietnamese Migrants in Berlin

In many parts of the world, Pentecostalism is becoming the fastest growing religious movement. As a result of migration, people from Asia, Africa and Latin America carry religious ideas and practices across borders, in other cases, migrants establish religious networks in the diaspora. However, while embracing newcomers from various backgrounds, Pentecostal believers constantly cross cultural boundaries by incorporating people from different ethnic, national and language backgrounds. While Pentecostal charismatic practitioners blurr boundaries in many situations, simultaneously, they create 'bright boundaries' by rejecting 'traditional' religious practices, imagined as the Other of Pentecostalism and thus to be eliminated. By referring to the concept of boundaries (Barth 1969; Alba (Ethnic and Racial Studies 1:20-69, 2005)) this article argues that charismatic Pentecostal Christianity, alongside its embracing practices with regard to social, ethnic and political boundaries, generates religious boundaries: First, church members reject "traditional" religious practices such as ancestor veneration and spirit possession, practices migrants carry across borders. Second, Pentecostal believers create boundaries towards those who split from the church. By exploring the ambiguities of migrant converts, I will investigate, how some of them subvert and reject control and authority exerted by religious leaders. Therefore, this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork among Vietnamese Pentecostalists, contributes to widely underresearched practices of boundary making and church splitting in the diaspora.

Institutionalizing precarious migratory status in Canada

This paper analyzes the institutionalized production of precarious migration status in Canada. Building on recent work on the legal production of illegality and non-dichotomous approaches to migratory status, we review Canadian immigration and refugee policy, and analyze pathways to loss of migratory status and the implications of less than full status for access to social services. In Canada, policies provide various avenues of authorized entry, but some entrants lose work and/or residence authorization and end up with variable forms of less-than-full immigration status. We argue that binary conceptions of migration status (legal/illegal) do not reflect this context, and advocate the use of ‘precarious status’ to capture variable forms of irregular status and illegality, including documented illegality. We find that elements of Canadian policy routinely generate pathways to multiple forms of precarious status, which is accompanied by precarious access to public services. Our analysis of the production of precarious status in Canada is consistent with approaches that frame citizenship and illegality as historically produced and changeable. Considering variable pathways to and forms of precarious status supports theorizing citizenship and illegality as having blurred rather than bright boundaries. Identifying differences between Canada and the US challenges binary and tripartite models of illegality, and supports conducting contextually specific and comparative work.

Islam, gender, and immigrant integration: boundary drawing in discourses on honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany

Public discourse on Muslim immigrant integration in Europe is increasingly framed around the presumed incompatibility of Islam and Western values. To understand how such framing constructs boundaries between immigrants and majority society in the media, we analyse newspaper discussions of honour killing in the Netherlands and Germany. These debates reinforce existing bright boundaries, or a strong sense of us versus them, between immigrants from Muslim and/or Turkish backgrounds and the majority population. Limited elements of boundary blurring are also present. We extend existing theory by showing that these boundaries are inscribed in the intersection of ethnicity, national origin, religion and gender.

Line drawings via abstracted shading

We describe a GPU-based algorithm for rendering a 3D model as a line drawing, based on the insight that a line drawing can be understood as an abstraction of a shaded image. We thus render lines along tone boundaries or thin dark areas in the shaded image. We extend this notion to the dual: we render highlight lines along thin bright areas and tone boundaries. We combine the lines with toon shading to capture broad regions of tone.

Line drawings via abstracted shading

We describe a GPU-based algorithm for rendering a 3D model as a line drawing, based on the insight that a line drawing can be understood as an abstraction of a shaded image. We thus render lines along tone boundaries or thin dark areas in the shaded image. We extend this notion to the dual: we render highlight lines along thin bright areas and tone boundaries. We combine the lines with toon shading to capture broad regions of tone. The resulting line drawings effectively convey both shape and material cues. The lines produced by the method can include silhouettes. creases, and ridges, along with a generalization of suggestive contours that responds to lighting as well as viewing changes. The method supports automatic level of abstraction, where the size of depicted shape features adjusts appropriately as the camera zooms in or out. Animated models can be rendered in real time because costly mesh curvature calculations are not needed.

Bright vs. blurred boundaries: Second-generation assimilation and exclusion in France, Germany, and the United States

In all immigration societies, a social distinction between immigrant and second generations, on the one hand, and natives, on the other, is imposed by the ethnic majority and becomes a sociologically complex fault line. Building on a comparison of second-generation Mexicans in the U.S., North Africans in France, and Turks in Germany, this article argues that the concepts associated with boundary processes offer the best opportunity to understand the ramifications of this distinction. The difference between bright boundaries, which involve no ambiguity about membership, and blurred ones, which do, is hypothesized to be associated with the prospects and processes of assimilation and exclusion. The institutionalization of boundaries is examined in the key domains of citizenship, religion, language, and race. The analysis leads to the specific conclusion that blurred boundaries generally characterize the situation of Mexicans in the U.S., with race the great, albeit not well understood, exception, while bright boundaries characterize the European context for Muslim groups.

Synthetic aperture radar imaging of ship wakes in the Gulf of Alaska

The Gulf of Alaska SAR experiment was conducted during March 9–14, 1984 to investigate SAR imaging of narrow‐V wakes in a deep mixed layer environment so that surface manifestations of ship‐generated internal waves would be made small. Five SAR flights were executed over large ships of opportunity in deep water where the mixed layer depth exceeded 100 m in all cases. SAR images were obtained in sea states 1–4. Range and azimuthally traveling ships were imaged. The incidence angles of azimuthally traveling ships ranged from 24° to 53°. The following results are reported: (1) The half angles associated with narrow‐V wakes are consistent with first‐order Bragg surface wave theory described by Case et al. (1984). (2) The decay rate along the bright arms of the narrow‐V wake is consistent with the combined viscous and radiation decay of short surface waves with first‐order Bragg wavelengths. (3) Narrow‐V wakes are observed in sea states 1–3 at incidence angles less than 45°, with the longest narrow‐V wakes bright‐arm observed being 3.3 km. (4) Turbulent wakes (dark band between the bright arms) are observed in sea states 1–4 at incidence angles less than 53°, with the longest turbulent wake length observed being 41 km. (5) Bright boundaries along one side of the turbulent wake are observed.

Peeking beneath the Sun's Skirts

olar scientists are getting an eyeful this summer-more than they had ever hoped for. Their sensitive solar instruments on board Skylab are clicking away in unison like finely tuned machines. (Such flawless performance is not guaranteed on any space mission let alone on a patched-up space station.) resulting photographs of sun have a clarity and resolution never before achieved. And that monstrous, churning, ever-changing ball of gas spewing out enough energy to feed a solar system (SN: 1/27/73, p. 61) is turning out to be much inore complex than they ever imagined. After only two months of looking through telescopes' eyes at some 40,000 pictures of their favorite star, scientists sit knee-deep in unanalyzed data, speak of mind-boggling phenomena and structure, and confess they don't know what it all means-yet. But answers about how sun works are all there just awaiting discovery, and they know it. sun is full of mystery, true teaser of science. six telescopes in orbit photograph sun simultaneously over a broad range of electromagnetic spectrum (the first time this has been done). photographs reveal features on sun only hinted at before from rocket flights and ground based studies: features in corona (the hot, thin outer atmosphere), transition region, chromosphere (the lower atmosphere) and photosphere (the surface). corona has yielded some of biggest surprises. Before Skylab, most scientists studying corona called it quiet, homogeneous outer layer of atmosphere. No more. The quiet homogeneous corona doesn't exist anymore, says Giuseppe A. Vaiana of American Science and Engineering. Robert MacQueen of High Altitude Observatory in Boulder agrees. see changes-dramatic, large-scale changes day by day and even orbit by orbit. We are impressed with bewildering array of structure. corona is a dynamic beast. photographs reveal clearly for first time whole range of coronal features, from intensely active regions to weakest bright points, filament boundaries and limb brightening in coronal holes. But most impressive scenes in corona are ribbon-like structures that look like piles of spaghetti. These are magnetic fields believed to trigger much of sun's spectacular events. fields themselves cannot be seen. But plasma that follows field lines can. These looped features, says Vaiana, emphasize .that major force controlling and shaping corona are magnetic fields. ribbons change with time, both in shape and in spectrum (what frequencies of light they emit). This was a surprise. For decades we've been looking at magnetic fields during flares and fields never seemed to says Goetz Oertel, chief of solar science at NASA headquarters. Not only do fields change, they sometimes change drastically. During a flare they may get unstable, blow up or combine. larger ribbons become prominences that arch for hundreds of kilometers out in corona. (See related story on Aug. 10 prominence, page 123.) On other hand, during June 15 flare (SN: 6/23/73, p. 402), changes were not large-scale at all. 'The increase of surface brightness registered during event [flare], from its moment of triggering to its peak, was in excess of a thousand, says Vaiana. But the resulting structural changes in region which flared are minimal in comparison with those shown previously. This indicates that N