Object Finder Research Articles

A trainable object finder, selector and identifier for pollen, spores and other things: A step towards automated pollen recognition in lake sediments

Pollen records are the most important proxy for reconstructing past terrestrial vegetation. While new approaches for improved quantitative interpretation of pollen data have been developed over the last decades, the availability of pollen records remains mostly limited because pollen samples are still analysed manually, which is a time-consuming task and requires extensive training. Here, we present an approach for automated recognition of pollen and spores from lake sediments using deep convolutional neural networks and machine learning. The approach includes two stages. The detector first locates pollen and spores in the sample matrix, and the classifier then classifies these objects. We have trained the approach on two pollen datasets from two lakes in north-eastern Germany. So far, our approach is able to automatically recognise 10 pollen types and Lycopodium spores with high accuracy. As soon as more training data are available, more pollen and spore types can be added. The preparation of training data, the training of the neural networks and their application are accessible via a freely available, browser-based user interface called TOFSI.

The Direction of The Development of the “Object Finder” from the Perspective of TRIZ Innovation

In order to promote the development of further research on the “object finder”, this paper aims to utilize the existing development mode and modern scientific and technological progress. By combining with the TRIZ innovation method, the shortcomings of the original plans are analyzed, intending to propose a new concept for the object finder, which consists of two components, i.e., “locator” and “searcher”. Additionally, this paper explores the development of both the “locator” and “searcher” respectively, to create a fresh development space for the object finder.

GO-Finder: A Registration-free Wearable System for Assisting Users in Finding Lost Hand-held Objects

People spend an enormous amount of time and effort looking for lost objects. To help remind people of the location of lost objects, various computational systems that provide information on their locations have been developed. However, prior systems for assisting people in finding objects require users to register the target objects in advance. This requirement imposes a cumbersome burden on the users, and the system cannot help remind them of unexpectedly lost objects. We propose GO-Finder (“Generic Object Finder”), a registration-free wearable camera-based system for assisting people in finding an arbitrary number of objects based on two key features: automatic discovery of hand-held objects and image-based candidate selection. Given a video taken from a wearable camera, GO-Finder automatically detects and groups hand-held objects to form a visual timeline of the objects. Users can retrieve the last appearance of the object by browsing the timeline through a smartphone app. We conducted user studies to investigate how users benefit from using GO-Finder. In the first study, we asked participants to perform an object retrieval task and confirmed improved accuracy and reduced mental load in the object search task by providing clear visual cues on object locations. In the second study, the system’s usability on a longer and more realistic scenario was verified, accompanied by an additional feature of context-based candidate filtering. Participant feedback suggested the usefulness of GO-Finder also in realistic scenarios where more than one hundred objects appear.

Micropublishing During and After the COVID-19 Era

In the COVID-19 situation, social and behavioral science evidence is accumulating rapidly through online data collection, but the options to share and publish this information are scarce. As a remedy, I recommend the adoption of micropublishing in the fields of social and behavioral sciences. While micropublishing has been gaining popularity, it is not yet widely accepted or utilized by existing academic journals. Greater implementation would improve the availability of data in the immediate COVID-19 era and establish a post-COVID-19 publishing methodology that could increase researcher and practitioner engagement in real time. I recommend micropublishing in a specific manner that bifurcates an experiment’s methodology or survey method from the subsequently published data based on that experiment protocol. Published findings could be presented in a series and edited as new data emerges. This publishing system promotes cumulative science. To provide a visual example that supports my argument, I created a demo journal with sample papers organized according to the structure I recommend. The demo journal has features—except a Digital Object Finder (DOI)—that make it possible to publish social and behavioral sciences research. It could be replicated for a newly established journal. Alternatively, existing journals could add a section dedicated to micropublication.

Index as scaffold to logical and final interpretants: Compulsive urges and modal submissions

Abstract This inquiry capitalizes on the relational character of Peirce’s index. Its evolution from object finder in the physical world, to enhancer of communication between minds, to modal/perspectival coordinator is examined. Its relational character organizes events into episodes, and obviates perspectival alterations in dialogic reasoning. This shift demonstrates Peirce’s last word regarding Index: a sign intrinsically dialogic, whose interpretants increase levels of consciousness, and advance communicational interaction by commanding self/others to believe/act in novel ways. Its power to coordinate specific, vivid images provides index with the means to suggest novel propositions, assertions, and arguments. Peirce memorializes this relational role by characterizing index as Dicisign, and afterward as Pheme (1904, CP 8.334–8.339; 1906, MS 295: 26; 1908, EP 2: 489–490). As truncated Argument, Index provides the catalyst for interpreters to determine the meaning of interpretants be they Energetic, Logical or Final. Its non-symbolic character provides interpreters the impetus to utilize inferencing powers to attach meanings, thus expanding kinds of interpretants. Index constitutes the most diverse semiotic tool for interpreters – it traces subtle deontic, epistemic, and logical shifts. In situating and resituating events in time, place, and participatedness, Index aptly measures actual and potential shifts in affect, attention, location, credibility, and the like. Ultimately, index integrates the logical with the phenomenological and the empirical with the semiotic – when it deploys relational operators to trace event templates and to predict participant’s perspectives. As such, interpreters restructure thought and action and recommend sound courses of action for diverse event participants.

A comprehensive propagation prediction model comprising microfacet based scattering and probability based coverage optimization algorithm.

Although ray tracing based propagation prediction models are popular for indoor radio wave propagation characterization, most of them do not provide an integrated approach for achieving the goal of optimum coverage, which is a key part in designing wireless network. In this paper, an accelerated technique of three-dimensional ray tracing is presented, where rough surface scattering is included for making a more accurate ray tracing technique. Here, the rough surface scattering is represented by microfacets, for which it becomes possible to compute the scattering field in all possible directions. New optimization techniques, like dual quadrant skipping (DQS) and closest object finder (COF), are implemented for fast characterization of wireless communications and making the ray tracing technique more efficient. In conjunction with the ray tracing technique, probability based coverage optimization algorithm is accumulated with the ray tracing technique to make a compact solution for indoor propagation prediction. The proposed technique decreases the ray tracing time by omitting the unnecessary objects for ray tracing using the DQS technique and by decreasing the ray-object intersection time using the COF technique. On the other hand, the coverage optimization algorithm is based on probability theory, which finds out the minimum number of transmitters and their corresponding positions in order to achieve optimal indoor wireless coverage. Both of the space and time complexities of the proposed algorithm surpass the existing algorithms. For the verification of the proposed ray tracing technique and coverage algorithm, detailed simulation results for different scattering factors, different antenna types, and different operating frequencies are presented. Furthermore, the proposed technique is verified by the experimental results.

Galaxies going MAD: the Galaxy-Finder Comparison Project

With the ever increasing size and complexity of fully self-consistent simulations of galaxy formation within the framework of the cosmic web, the demands upon object finders for these simulations has simultaneously grown. To this extent we initiated the Halo Finder Comparison Project that gathered together all the experts in the field and has so far led to two comparison papers, one for dark matter field haloes (Knebe et al. 2011), and one for dark matter subhaloes (Onions et al. 2012). However, as state-of-the-art simulation codes are perfectly capable of not only following the formation and evolution of dark matter but also account for baryonic physics (e.g. hydrodynamics, star formation, feedback) object finders should also be capable of taking these additional processes into consideration. Here we report on a comparison of codes as applied to the Constrained Local UniversE Simulation (CLUES) of the formation of the Local Group which incorporates much of the physics relevant for galaxy formation. We compare both the properties of the three main galaxies in the simulation (representing the MW, M31, and M33) as well as their satellite populations for a variety of halo finders ranging from phase-space to velocity-space to spherical overdensity based codes, including also a mere baryonic object finder. We obtain agreement amongst codes comparable to (if not better than) our previous comparisons, at least for the total, dark, and stellar components of the objects. However, the diffuse gas content of the haloes shows great disparity, especially for low-mass satellite galaxies. This is primarily due to differences in the treatment of the thermal energy during the unbinding procedure. We acknowledge that the handling of gas in halo finders is something that needs to be dealt with carefully, and the precise treatment may depend sensitively upon the scientific problem being studied.

Plucked from Obscurity: Odiferous Object Finder

Plucked from Obscurity: Odiferous Object Finder

Indirect distributed garbage collection

In new distributed systems, object mobility is usually allowed and is sometimes used by the underlying object manager system to benefit from object access locality. On the other hand, in-transit references to objects can exist at any moment in asynchronous distributed systems. In the presence of object mobility and in-transit references, many garbage collector (GC) algorithms fail to operate correctly. Others need to use the system's object finder to find the objects while performing their work. As a general principle, a GC should never interfere with object manager polices (such as forcing migration or fixing an object to a given processor). However, if the GC uses the object finder, it will change the access pattern of the system, and eventually it could foul the global allocation policy. In this article we propose a new GC family, Indirect Garbage Collectors, allowing to separate the problems of object management (placement, replication, and retrieval) from garbage collection. This property allows our algorithms to be implemented on top of almost any existent distributed object system, without having to use the object finder.

An object finder for program structure understanding in software maintenance

AbstractThe maintenance or re‐engineering of a program usually begins with considerable effort in understanding the program structure. In this paper, an interactive tool for understanding the structure of non‐object‐oriented programs, known as the Object Finder, is presented. The structure of a program is defined in terms of the groupings of routines and data into modules within the program and the hierarchical relationships among the modules. The Object Finder incorporates two complementary approaches, one being top‐down and the other bottom‐up, to assist the software engineer in understanding the structure of a program based on the object‐like features found in the program. In the top‐down approach, the user obtains an overall understanding of the entire program as a collection of hierarchically organized objects. In the bottom‐up approach, the user obtains a view of the information which is closely related to the components under examination.In both approaches, two methods are used to identify the objects in a program written in a non‐object‐oriented programming language. These methods identify sets of objects based on the data bindings and on the type bindings found in a program. An object is considered as a collection of routines, types, and/or data items of the program. The Object Finder combines the top‐down and bottom‐up approaches while using human input to guide the object identification process. Two examples of using this Object Finder are also presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the approaches to assist the software engineer in attaining a high‐level understanding of the program structure.

REMOVING COSMIC-RAY HITS FROM MULTI-ORBIT HST WIDE FIELD CAMERA IMAGES

ABSTRACT We present an optimized algorithm that removes cosmic rays ("CRs") from multi-orbit HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera ("WF/PC") images. It computes the image noise in every iteration from the WF/PC CCD equation. This includes all known sources of random and systematic calibration errors. We test this algorithm on WF/PC stacks of 2-12 orbits as a function of the number of available orbits and the formal Poissonian sigma-clipping level. We find that the algorithm needs ≥ 4 WF/PC exposures to locate the minimal sky-signal (which is noticably affected by CRs), with an optimal clipping level at 2-2.5 x sigmaPoisson. We analyze the CR flux detected on multi-orbit "CR stacks", which are constructed by subtracting the best CR filter images from the unfiletered 8-12 orbit average. We use an automated object finder to determine the surface density of CRs as a function of the apparent magnitude (or ADU flux) they would have generated in the images had they not been removed. The power law slope of the CR "counts" (gamma ~= 0.6 for Nm approaching mgamma) is steeper than that of the faint galaxy counts down to V ~= 28 mag. The CR counts show a drop off between 28 <~ 30 mag (the latter is our formal 2-sigma point source sensitivity without spherical aberration). This prevents the CR sky integral from diverging, and is likely due to a real cut-off in the CR energy distribution below ~11 ADU per orbit. The integral CR surface denisty is <~ 108 deg-2 and their sky-signal is V~= 25.5-27.0 mag arcsec-2 or 3-13% of our NEP sky background (V=23.3 mag arcsec-2), and well above the EBL integral of the deepest galaxy counts (BJ ~= 28.0 mag arcsec-2). We conclude that faint CRs will always contribute to the sky-signal in the deepest WF/PC images. Since WFPC2 has 2.7 x lower read-noise and a thicker CCDs, this will result in more CR detections than in WF/PC, potentially affecting ~10-20% of the pixels in multi-orbit WFPC2 data cubes.

Some Design Considerations for Digital Position and Velocity Detecting Systems

Design-type information is presented for a system that uses pattern recognition principles to sense position and velocity of moving objects. Judging from the literature, little or no work has been done on this type of system. It is believed that these systems have potential industrial and military applications, e.g., an optical object finder that identifies objects in addition to locating them, or a process control sensor to detect grain size and other dimensional properties. One of the most important parts of the system is the receptor. Minimum receptor matrix size as a function of pattern shapes, orientation, position, and velocity is considered and results are presented.