Real Pictures Research Articles

A low distortion image enhancement scheme based on multi-resolutions analysis in next generation network

With the advent of Next Generation Network (NGN), services that are currently provided by multiple specific network-centric architectures. NGN provides AAA (Anytime, Anywhere and Always on) access to users from different service providers with consistent and ubiquitous provision of services as necessary. This special issue of NGN includes pervasive, grid, and peer-to-peer computing to provide computing and communication services at anytime and anywhere. In fact, the application of NGN includes digital image processing, multimedia systems/services, and so on. Here we focus on the digital image processing technology in NGN environments. Low-contrast structure and heavy noise in NGN environments can be found in many kinds of digital images, which makes the images vague and uncertainly, especially in x-ray images. As result, some useful tiny characteristic are weakened--which are difficult to distinguish even by naked eyes. Based on the combination of no-linear grad-contrast operator and multi-resolution wavelet analysis, a kind of image enhancement processing algorithm for useful tiny characters is presented. The algorithm can enhance the tiny characters while confine amplifying noise. The analysis of the results shows that local regions of the image are enhanced by using the concept of the grad contrast to make image clearer adaptively. Experiments were conducted on real pictures, and the results show that the algorithm is flexible and convenient.

Web-based education for low-literate parents in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: Development of a website and heuristic evaluation and usability testing

Purpose Low health literacy has been associated with poor health-related outcomes. The purposes are to report the development of a website for low-literate parents in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and the findings of heuristic evaluation and a usability testing of this website. Methods To address low literacy of NICU parents, multimedia educational Website using visual aids (e.g., pictographs, photographs), voice-recorded text message in addition to a simplified text was developed. The text was created at the 5th grade readability level. The heuristic evaluation was conducted by three usability experts using 10 heuristics. End-users’ performance was measured by counting the time spent completing tasks and number of errors, as well as recording users’ perception of ease of use and usefulness (PEUU) in a sample of 10 NICU parents. Results Three evaluators identified 82 violations across the 10 heuristics. All violations, however, received scores <2, indicating minor usability problems. Participants’ time to complete task varies from 81.2 s (SD = 30.9) to 2.2 s (SD = 1.3). Participants rated the Website as easy to use and useful (PEUU mean = 4.52, SD = 0.53). Based on the participants’ comments, appropriate modifications were made. Discussion and conclusions Different types of visuals on the Website were well accepted by low-literate users and agreement of visuals with text improved understanding of the educational materials over that with text alone. The findings suggest that using concrete and realistic pictures and pictographs with clear captions would maximize the benefit of visuals. One emerging theme was “simplicity” in design (e.g., limited use of colors, one font type and size), content (e.g., avoid lengthy text), and technical features (e.g., limited use of pop-ups). The heuristic evaluation by usability experts and the usability test with actual users provided complementary expertise, which can give a richer assessment of a design for low literacy Website. These results facilitated design modification and implementation of solutions by categorizing and prioritizing the usability problems.

Real‐time Realistic Ocean Lighting using Seamless Transitions from Geometry to BRDF

AbstractRealistic animation and rendering of the ocean is an important aspect for simulators, movies and video games. By nature, the ocean is a difficult problem for Computer Graphics: it is a dynamic system, it combines wave trains at all scales, ranging from kilometric to millimetric. Worse, the ocean is usually viewed at several distances, from very close to the viewpoint to the horizon, increasing the multi‐scale issue, and resulting in aliasing problems. The illumination comes from natural light sources (the Sun and the sky dome), is also dynamic, and often underlines the aliasing issues. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for modelling, animation, illumination and rendering of the ocean, in real‐time, at all scales and for all viewing distances. Our algorithm is based on a hierarchical representation, combining geometry, normals and BRDF. For each viewing distance, we compute a simplified version of the geometry, and encode the missing details into the normal and the BRDF, depending on the level of detail required. We then use this hierarchical representation for illumination and rendering. Our algorithm runs in real‐time, and produces highly realistic pictures and animations.

Do Young Children Know What Makes A Picture Useful To Other People?

Abstract Even babies have an implicit appreciation of the relationship between realistic pictures and the objects that they depict, but a mature understanding of pictures involves an explicit appreciation of how pictures work. Adults appreciate that pictures are public representations that can communicate information to other people, and that some pictures are better at doing this than others. We explore the foundations of this understanding in young children. In three experiments, using yes/no and forced-choice questions, we find that 3- and 4-year olds understand that other people benefit from pictures that contain greater perceptual detail and that the more realistic the picture, the better it is as a symbolic vehicle.

Health promotion resources for Aboriginal people: lessons learned from consultation and evaluation of diabetes foot care resources

Despite the startling age specific rate ratio for amputations in 25-49 year olds of, 41.25 for knee amputations and 27.5 for toe/foot amputations for Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal people, there are no diabetes foot care education brochures or health promotion media available free of charge for Aboriginal people. This study consulted Aboriginal people about existing and potential resources for education on foot care. An Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal interviewer conducted six focus group discussions with a total of 60 Aboriginal people including Elders, community members, health workers, students and nurses. Focus groups discussed which materials, media and foot care messages worked best to communicate diabetes foot care messages. Participants were unequivocal in their preference for real pictures of foot problems rather than cartoons, clearly identifying a superior existing educational resource from the Indigenous Diabetic Foot Program. There was minimal support for many existing media and foot care messages. Participants preferred to develop their own messages and selected utilitarian media that would be used by all members of the Aboriginal community. We recommend the delivery of the Indigenous Diabetic Foot Program in Western Australia. Consultation and involvement of Aboriginal people was consistent with Aboriginal peoples' preferred style of conversation and inclusion and allowed the target audience to determine the end product for use in education and health promotion.

New Project and New Underwater Robot for New Missions

Autonomous underwater vehicles have been used for relatively simple tasks such as underwater sampling, surveying and characterization of resources. One reason could be that underwater is very difficult environment to implement complex mission, but considering ground robots, underwater robot intelligence is not enough to achieve given missions. Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute (KORDI) just started a five-year project named "Development of technologies for an underwater robot based on artificial intelligence for highly sophisticated missions" from 2010 to study robotic intelligence for underwater robot systematically. This project will make a big step for 3D underwater SLAM (Simultaneous localization and mapping) under some reasonable constraints through AI based underwater environment cognition and mission based common platform technologies of hardware and software for commercialization. As the first year of the project, we are currently developing an underwater robot. This paper briefly explains the purpose of new project and addresses specifications and main features of new underwater robot as well as expected results. By the time of the conference, real pictures of the robot and experimental results could be ready to be shown.

The development of abstract letter representations for reading: Evidence for the role of context

We review evidence that in the course of reading, the visual system computes abstract letter identities (ALIs): a representation of letters that encodes their identity but that abstracts away from their visual appearance. How could the visual system learn such a seemingly nonvisual representation? We propose that different forms of the same letter tend to appear in similar distributions of contexts (in the same words written in different ways) and that this environmental correlation interacts with correlation-based learning mechanisms in the brain to lead to the formation of ALIs. We review a neural network model that demonstrates the feasibility of this common contexts hypothesis and present two experiments confirming some novel predictions: (a) repeatedly presenting arbitrary visual stimuli in common contexts leads those stimuli to be confusable with each other, and (b) different forms of the same letter are more confusable with each other in word-like contexts than in nonword-like contexts. We then extend the model to use real pictures of letters as input and simulate some of the novel empirical findings from the experiments.

Acoustic data fusion devoted to underwater vegetation mapping

This paper presents research tasks conducted by SEMANTIC TS, in collaboration with GESMA, aimed to develop a mapping method for underwater vegetation lying on seabed. First stage is to develop a method for detecting and characterizing vegetation on the seabed using the acoustic response from a conventional single beam echo sounder. This new method is then operated simultaneously with multibeam sonar producing micro-relief information and side scan sonar providing gray scale levels associated with bottom reflectivity. Then fusion of these three data is processed. We show efficiency of these multisensor data fusion concept to get very precise seabed vegetation mapping in a way reducing truth control (video and diving investigations). Sensors and method accuracy allow obtaining, like in biomedical field, real 3D scan pictures of seabed vegetation. This study is first applied to posidonia and cymodocea, which play a key role in Mediterranean's echosystem. Then, extension of the method is investigated to address laminaria which may significantly affect the performance of acoustic and optical sensors used for sea-mines detection and this paper presents results of data fusion mapping on an Atlantic sea area covered by luminaria, studied and well known by the CEVA.

Ridala ikoonikast sümbolismi esteetika taustal. On Ridala’s Iconics in the context of Symbolist Aesthetics

This article examines those aspects of Ridala’s poetics that have not received in-depth analysis to date, particularly his iconics: his graphic-imagistic diagrammatism on the one hand; durativity – the lasting and progressive quality of its soundpictures, on the other. The point of departure is the French sound symbolism (particularly that of Verlaine) in texts from Ridala’s early (to some extent also middle) period; the influences of Italian late romanticism and new classicism (particularly Carducci), and the melding of these with the search for qualities that are archaically or authentically Estonian. Juxtaposed with modern influences is Ridala’s application of anti-metrics when representing Estonian landscapes. These observations permit the hypothesis that Ridala was attempting a radical renewal of Estonian poetry, and in this respect the author of this article arrives at a rather different conclusion from that of Semper. The analytical section of the article draws upon M. K. Hiraga’s cognitive-semiotic model (2006) based on Peirce and the cognitivists, which considers metaphor to be a blending into a new concept, subsequent to a visual-iconic source-target relation and its representation by means of an iconic diagram or imagescheme. On this basis a new, blended concept is formed. As shown by the analysis, there are several texts in Ridala’s early and middle creative periods in which the iconic-diagrammatic level dominates, never truly arriving at the third step of conceptualization (never finding a definite common denominator). This allows us to regard Ridala’s iconics in the key of symbolist allegory, even in several examples that appear to be realistic natural landscape pictures of the homeland.

SELECTION OF THE NUMBER OF NEIGHBOURS OF EACH DATA POINT FOR THE LOCALLY LINEAR EMBEDDING ALGORITHM

This paper deals with a method, called locally linear embedding. It is a nonlinear dimensionality reduc- tion technique that computes low-dimensional, neighbourhood preserving embeddings of high dimensional data and attempts to discover nonlinear structure in high dimensional data. The implementation of the algorithm is fairly straightforward, as the algorithm has only two control parameters: the number of neighbours of each data point and the regularisation parameter. The mapping quality is quite sensitive to these parameters. In this paper, we propose a new way for selecting the number of the nearest neighbours of each data point. Our approach is experimentally verified on two data sets: artificial data and real world pictures.

Theoretical Studies on Structures of Neptunyl Carbonates: NpO2(CO3)m(H2O)nq (m = 1−3, n = 0−3) in Aqueous Solution

Extensive ab inito computations have been carried out to study the equilibrium structure, infrared spectra, and bonding characteristics of a variety of hydrated NpO2(CO3)m(q-) complexes by considering the solvent as a polarizable dielectric continuum as well as the corresponding anhydrate complexes in the gas phase. The computed structural parameters and vibrational results at the MP2 level in aqueous solution are in good agreement with Clark et al.'s experiments and provide realistic pictures of the neptunyl complexes in an aqueous environment. Our computed hydration energies reveal that the complex with water molecules directly bound to it yields the best results. Our analysis of the nature of the bonding of neptunyl complexes provides insight into the nature of 6d and 5f bonding in actinide complexes.

Charles Burnett

Charles Burnett, award-winning filmmaker and scriptwriter, creates images on film that reflect African American culture. Burnett's films celebrate the Black familiar and confirm that African American life is symbolically rich with tradition, yet unique and colorful. His films, Killer of Sheep (1977), My Brother's Wedding (1983), To Sleep With Anger (1990), and The Glass Shield (1994), were critically analyzed to determine how his use of creative plots, verbal imagery, and African American cultural traditions serve to depict realistic pictures of African American life on screen. It is clear the images he creates emanate from his experiences, not those created and supported by the Hollywood studio system. He is a gifted narratist and remains true to the tenets of the independent film movement, “The L.A. Rebellion.”

Study and Realization of the Basic Methods of the Calibration in Stereopsis For Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (RA) is aimed at ameliorating our perception of the real world by addition of elements which are not a priori observable by the human eye. RA is define as a system able of combining real and virtual pictures, in 3D and real-time. The virtual objects must be cast in a consistent manner in real pictures. In practice, objects are positioned in a landmark linked to the scene, and objective is to determine the point of view of the camera (position and orientation) in this landmark, which we are going to see in the next scene of calibration of camera. Camera calibration is a fundamental problem in computer vision. In this paper, we developed a semi automatic calibration method for our augmented reality system, which uses corner detection to extract pixel coordinates of projection points and uses homography to build the correspondence. So my method allows reconstruction 3D of the scene. To find resolution they use projections instead of the Euclidean methods which allow acquiring a good result with average error between the re-projected points and pixel points is round 2 pixels. Potential applications of this method are: applications real-time in the domains of medicine, service of fabricated objects, industry.

Zwischen Empathie und Grenzsetzungen - Überlegungen zur Psychodynamik und Behandlungstechnik bei psychoanalytischen Therapien von hyperkinetischen Störungen

The rise in "hyperkinetic disorder" diagnoses is not based on better but rather on less precise diagnoses. As a rule the co-morbidities as mentioned in ICD-10 like emotional disorders, commitment disorders and social behaviour disorders, are the real clinical pictures accompanied by such symptoms as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. These are disorder pictures based possibly on unconscious areas of conflict which can be managed by psychoanalytic treatment. However, this involves considerable treatment challenges taking into account that there are some major difficulties: Children showing said disorder pictures have not only symbolizing disorders but mostly also playing disorders. They experience playing not symbolically, no longer mainly "as if" and taking place in a space between imagination and reality. Their play may easily turn into concreteness or reality and get out of control all of a sudden. In addition, children and young people with externalizing disorders constantly attack basic conditions and seek to destroy them. Verbal intervention frequently does not reach the patients. Counter transferences are very difficult to bear and to control, and the tendency of psychotherapists to join in is strong. It is therefore of great importance to work on the ability of symbolization and mentalization, on relationship and transference, simultaneously however on frame and structure, with reliability and regularity of the settings. Analytic therapies as well as therapies founded on depth psychology may be indicated, possibly supplemented by parallel medication; at the beginning a particularly careful diagnosis should be made.

Pictorial realism

I propose a number of criteria for the adequacy of an account of pictorial realism. Such an account must: explain the epistemic significance of realistic pictures; explain why accuracy and detail are salient to realism; be consistent with an accurate account of depiction; and explain the features of pictorial realism. I identify six features of pictorial realism. I then propose an account of realism as a measure of the information pictures provide about how their objects would look, were one to see them. This account meets the criteria I have identified and is superior to alternative accounts of realism.

How video cases should be used as authentic stimuli in problem-based medical education

To examine problem-based learning (PBL) students' views on the added value of video cases compared to text-based cases in the pre-clinical phase of undergraduate medical education and on the conditions for productive use of video in tutorial group discussions. Participants were 2nd-year students who had completed a PBL programme featuring video cases. Three groups of 6-8 randomly selected students participated in focus-group interviews guided by a moderator using a 'questioning route'. The interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and analysed. The summary reports were approved by the students. According to the students, the video cases enabled them to create realistic mental pictures of disorders, provided integrated pictures of patients as people, which challenged them to elaborate the cases seriously and were more memorable than text-based cases. Cases that students perceived as fostering the productive use of video were neither too directive nor too complete, tailored to students' prior knowledge, short, varied in design and complementary to other materials. The cases should be viewed in a structured, purposeful manner, with cues, instructions and prompts to focus attention on essential issues. The video cases were generally perceived as a valuable stimulus for group discussions in PBL. However, productive use depended on specific conditions. Many of the advantages and conditions mentioned are supported by earlier non-empirical claims in the literature or can be explained by theory and empirical studies on symbol systems. Future observational studies should address the effects of specific attributes of video as a medium.

Performance evaluation of change detection

This paper studies five different methods proposed for change detection thresholding. Methods were tested on synthetic and real pictures and results are quantitatively and qualitatively presented. Quantitative analysis is performed at pixel level and the following measures were used: the percentage of correct classification, the Jaccard coefficient and the Yule coefficient. We test the performance of thesholding methods in four experiments and Kapur was the best performing method both quantitatively and qualitatively.

ミニチュライズ:実写動画のミニチュア化

Using a shift-tilt lens, we can convert real scene pictures and make them appear as if they were miniature. We can also get same additional effect by using image processing (blur effect). For still images, this miniature effect can be obtained. However for movies, we need another image processing technique. These actual techniques are described in this paper

Simulation of atmospheric phenomena

This paper presents a physically based simulation of atmospheric phenomena. It takes into account the physics of non-homogeneous media in which the index of refraction varies continuously, creating curved light paths. As opposed to previous research on this area, we solve the physically based differential equation that describes the trajectory of light. We develop an accurate expression of the index of refraction in the atmosphere as a function of wavelength, based on real measured data. We also describe our atmosphere profile manager, which lets us mimic the initial conditions of real-world scenes for our simulations. The method is validated both visually (by comparing the images with the real pictures) and numerically (with the extensive literature from other areas of research such as optics or meteorology). The phenomena simulated include the inferior and superior mirages, the Fata Morgana, the Novaya–Zemlya, the Viking's end of the world, the distortions caused by heat waves and the green flash.

Enhancing 2-D Tactile Picture Design from Knowledge of 3-D Haptic Object Recognition

Research into haptic object recognition suggests that matching stimulus input to a system of geon-like structural descriptions may play an important role in this perceptual modality, as it does in vision. The recognition of objects from tactile pictures or diagrams is an important skill for blind people, yet relatively little research has been conducted in attempts to optimize tactile picture design. This paper explains a novel, theoretically-motivated design for constructing tactile pictures (the TexyForm system). In a single experiment contrasting blindfolded sighted, early blind, and late blind participants, we demonstrate that TexyForm pictures were identified significantly more frequently than standard, visually realistic, tactile pictures. In particular, early blind participants improved their identification from 12.5% with visually realistic pictures to 50% with TexyForm pictures. All participants rated the TexyForm pictures as preferable to visually realistic pictures. We argue that using current theoretical knowledge and experimental data to drive tactile picture design is likely to lead to improvements in the usability of materials for blind people.