Visual Traces Research Articles

Frame-rate conversion detection based on periodicity of motion artifact

With the advances in digital video technology, it is becoming easier to forge the digital video without introducing any artificial visual trace. The temporal domain of the digital videos is one of the main targets of video tampering, and video frame-rate conversion is one of the common operations for temporal video tampering such as temporal splicing and video speed adjustment. This operation necessarily accommodates temporal interpolation that introduces the periodic motion artifact on the motion trajectories. In this paper, the frame-rate converted video detection method is proposed based on the motion artifact. The experimental results demonstrated the performance of the proposed method through the extensive experiments on 1300 original videos and 18,000 frame-rate converted videos in uncompressed and H.264/AVC formats. Especially, for the nearest neighbor and motion-based interpolation, the proposed method could detect over than 93.35% of the frame-rate up-converted videos while exhibiting 0.01 false positive rate.

Determination of tin isotope ratios in cassiterite by femtosecond laser ablation multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

In comparison to isotope analysis of dissolved samples femtosecond laser ablation multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (fs-LA-MC-ICP-MS) enables precise isotope ratio analyses consuming much less sample material and with a minimum effort in sample preparation. This is especially important for the investigation of valuable historical objects for which visual traces of sampling are unwanted. The present study provides a basis for tin isotope ratio measurements using LA-MC-ICP-MS technique. For this, in house isotope standards had to be defined. Investigations on interferences and matrix effects illustrate that beside Sb only high Te contents (with values above those to be expected in cassiterite) result in a significant shift of the measured tin isotope ratios. This effect can partly be corrected for using natural isotope abundances. However, a natural isotope fractionation of Te cannot be excluded.Tin beads reduced from cassiterite were analysed by laser ablation and after dissolution. It was shown that tin isotope ratios can be determined accurately by using fs-LA-MC-ICP-MS. Furthermore the homogeneity of tin isotope ratios in cassiterite was proven.

“Soetwyn”: Visuality, Cultural Tourism, Desire Paths and the ≠Khomani

Witdraai is home to a few hundred ≠Khomani who resettled there after the successful land claim of 1999. In all, the first phase of their claim granted them ownership of six farms totaling about 40,000 hectares of land. Before this restitution, the Bushmen had been an “Other-diaspora” dispersed by the forces of apartheid and colonialism. Being a small settlement in the vast Kalahari in Northern Cape Province, close to the Botswana border, Witdraai is rarely a cartographic highlight where the province’s main towns, cities and localities are concerned. For over a decade the ≠Khomani have been involved in trying to find solutions to the problem of appropriate development of the six farms for sustainable communal benefit. Alcohol abuse among many of the residents, however, seems to be complicating the search for lasting solutions. This article uses visual stills, collected during the 2011 trip to the Kalahari by University of KwaZulu–Natal researchers from the Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS), to investigate alcohol use/abuse amongst some of the people living at or near Witdraai. The article applies “cultural mapping” of a different sort, focusing selectively on visual traces of the corporeal existence of “alcohol” in the sand-dune landscape of Witdraai against a backdrop of commercial tourist branding of the landscape.

Texture as Substance: Reading Homi K. Bhabha Re-membering Frantz Fanon

[T]he idea of Man as his alienated image, not Self and Other but the “Otherness” of the self inscribed in the perverse palimpsest of colonial identity. (116)According to Isaac Julien, the director of Black Skin, White Mask, a film imagining the life of Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha is presented in a nonspeaking role as a colored, racialized “colonial subject” to lend “texture” to the cinematography (Interview). Unlike the eloquent postcolonial critics Stuart Hall and Françoise Vergès, who are interviewed extensively in the ilm, the mute Bhabha is a cipher, a visual trace of diference in the philosophical, cinematic, and audio montage that composes Julien's meditation on decolonization (Frantz Fanon [Director's cut]). In many ways, Julien's Fanon seems indebted to Bhabha's strong reading, against the grain of Fanon's oeuvre, in “Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition,” a foreword Bhabha wrote for a new British edition of Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, published in 1986. Julien's Fanon is an interstitial igure, stitched together through multiple viewpoints and physically composed of cinematic elements juxtaposed in striking contrast to one another. He emerges from scraps of discourse cast of and reassembled, much as Bhabha's Fanon is captured in Fanon's ungrammatical utterance that betrays by ellipsis the nature of identity, which is that identity is “not”: “The Negro is not. Any more than the white man” (113). The revelation that the nature of identity is spatially split and temporally deferred-the deinition of Derridean diférance-is most truly represented in the colonial situation, where white mythologies of wholeness and authenticity are actualized as performances of power. When these mythologies are accompanied by paranoid fantasies of blackness that reveal the contradictory duplicity of white representations of the other-the simian Negro, the inscrutable Chinaman-this racial discrimination and its neurotic imagery reveal the nature of the white self and its pretense of universality: that the human is not whole and that the Enlightenment dream of self-presence is an illusion thrown up by the anxious exercise of mastery over those lesser humans, the Negroes.

Psychicones: Visual Traces of the Soul in Late Nineteenth-Century Fluidic Photography.

The article discusses attempts to visualise the soul on photographic plates at the end of the nineteenth century, as conducted by the French physician Hippolyte Baraduc in Paris. Although Baraduc refers to earlier experiments on fluidic photography in his book on The Human Soul (1896) and is usually mentioned as a precursor to parapsychological thought photography of the twentieth century, his work is presented as a genuine attempt at photographic soul-catching. Rather than producing mimetic representations of thoughts and imaginations, Baraduc claims to present the vital radiation of the psyche itself and therefore calls the images he produces psychicones.The article first discusses the difference between this method of soul photography and other kinds of occult media technologies of the time, emphasising the significance of its non-mimetic, abstract character: since the soul itself was considered an abstract entity, abstract traces seemed all the more convincing to the contemporary audience. Secondly, the article shows how the technological agency of photography allowed Baraduc’s psychicones to be tied into related discourses in medicine and psychology. Insofar as the photographic plates displayed actual visual traces, Baraduc and his followers no longer considered hallucinations illusionary and pathological but emphasised the physical reality and normality of imagination. Yet, the greatest influence of soul photography was not on science but on art. As the third part of the paper argues, the abstract shapes on Baraduc’s plates provided inspiration for contemporary avant-garde aesthetics, for example, Kandinsky’s abstract paintings and the random streams of consciousness in surrealistic literature.

Research of Logistics Visualization Tracing Monitoring System Based on Internet of Things

Research of Logistics Visualization Tracing Monitoring System Based on Internet of Things

Augmented Reality Navigation System on Android

With the advent of the Android system, smart phones are rapidly developing and through the conveniency of accessing internet on the smart phones, a user’s location information can be accessed anywhere and anytime easily. Augmented Reality Based Technology enables the provision of variety information such as pictures and location of buildings in the navigation field. Most of the augmented reality program used to Visual Trace Method (Marker method and Markerless Method). For the Visual Trace Method, the marker installation and digital information should be assigned while the Non-visual Trace Method requires the use of hardware (G.P.S, sensors etc). Most navigation systems can only show the path from a user’s current location to their destination. In this paper, the design and implementation of an augmented reality program is discussed. It will use the smart phone’s inbuilt camera and GPS to display a user’s surround information in real time on the smart phone. The proposed system will combine the G.P.S location-based technology and virtual trace technology to provide the user with basic information about a building they are looking for or one in their immediate surrounding.

Augmented Reality Navigation System on Android

With the advent of the Android system, smart phones are rapidly developing and through the conveniency of accessing internet on the smart phones, a user’s location information can be accessed anywhere and anytime easily. Augmented Reality Based Technology enables the provision of variety information such as pictures and location of buildings in the navigation field. Most of the augmented reality program used to Visual Trace Method (Marker method and Markerless Method). For the Visual Trace Method, the marker installation and digital information should be assigned while the Non-visual Trace Method requires the use of hardware (G.P.S, sensors etc). Most navigation systems can only show the path from a user’s current location to their destination. In this paper, the design and implementation of an augmented reality program is discussed. It will use the smart phone’s inbuilt camera and GPS to display a user’s surround information in real time on the smart phone. The proposed system will combine the G.P.S location-based technology and virtual trace technology to provide the user with basic information about a building they are looking for or one in their immediate surrounding.

Children (and adults) benefit from visual feedback during gesture interaction on mobile touchscreen devices

Surface-gesture interaction styles used on mobile touchscreen devices often depend on the platform and application. Some applications show a visual trace of gesture input being made by the user, whereas others do not. Little work has been done examining the usability of visual feedback for surface-gestures, especially for children. In this paper, we extend our previous work on an empirical study conducted with children, teens, and adults to explore characteristics of gesture interaction with and without visual feedback. We analyze 9 simple and 7 complex gesture features to determine whether differences exist between users of different age groups when completing surface-gestures with and without visual feedback. We find that the gestures generated diverge significantly in ways that make them difficult to interpret by some recognizers. For example, users tend to make gestures with fewer strokes in the absence of visual feedback, and tend to make shorter, more compact gestures using straighter lines in the presence of visual feedback. In addition, users prefer to see visual feedback. Based on these findings, we present design recommendations for surface-gesture interfaces for children, teens, and adults on mobile touchscreen devices. We recommend providing visual feedback, especially for children, wherever possible.

Cognitive profile of children with newly onset benign epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes before treatment:a study of computerized cognitive testing in epilepsy

Benign epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes (BECTs) is a common idiopathic partial epileptic syndrome in childhood, which often affect the pre-school and school-age children and a considerable proportion have comorbidity including lower academic achievement and cognitive impairment. Few studies involved the psychocognitive assessment in such a drug-treatable epileptic syndrome especially in the newly diagnosed and medications-naive group. This study aimed to investigate the cognitive characteristics of children with newly onset BECTs before treatment. Forty-one outpatients with newly diagnosed BECTs who visited the Clinic during the periods from October 2012 to May 2014 before the medications against epilepsy and 41 healthy controls recruited from regular school in Beijing during the period from July 2013 to March 2014, who matched in age and gender underwent battery testing by computerized cognitive testing in epilepsy (CCTE). The BECTs group included 41 children, 20 boys and 21 girls, mean age (8.2 ± 1.7) years, the age of onset of epilepsy 4.5-11.5 years (the age of onset <8 years in 25 cases, ≥ 8 years in 16 cases). The cognitive characteristics and associated factors were analyzed. The primary data including correct answer numbers and reaction times were analyzed by independent sample t-test between the two groups of children with BECTs and healthy controls based on SPSS 18.0 statistical software. Raw data of 9 tasks' scores collected from BECTs and healthy control children were continuous variables in accordance with normal distribution. BECTs children performed significantly worse than controls in choice reaction time ((618+158) vs. (524+254) ms), three-dimensional mental rotation (11 ± 10 vs. 18 ± 12) and visual tracing (10 ± 6 vs.15 ± 6), t=2.01, 3.03 and 3.47, P<0.05, <0.01 and <0.001, respectively.While other 6 tasks showed no significant difference between the two groups (P>0.05 for all comparisons). BECTs boys performed significantly worse than girls on simple substraction tasks compared with standard nine score ((4.7 ± 1.5) vs. (5.6 ± 1.2), t=-2.24, P<0.05). Other 8 tasks showed no significant difference between boys and girls (P>0.05 for all comparisons). Other 9 tasks showed no significant differences between the two groups of BECTs children whose age of onset was before 8 years and those who started seizure ≥ 8 years (P all >0.05). The standard nine scores of simple substraction from the three BECTs groups of dominance sides of spikes and waves during NREM showed significant difference (P<0.05). BECTs children with bilateral discharges performed significantly worse than the other two groups dominantly right or left discharges (4.7 ± 1.2 vs. 6.0 ± 1.2 vs. 4.9 ± 1.4, P all <0.05). There was no significant difference between the two groups with right and left side dominance discharges (P>0.05). Other 8 tasks showed no significant differences among the three groups (P>0.05 for all comparisons). Although EEG discharges index below 50% during NREM period, while newly diagnosed BECTs children before treatment with medications against epilepsy performed poorer on tasks of choice reaction time, three-dimensional mental rotation, and visual tracing. The two factors of male and bilateral discharges during NREM period correlate with dysfunction of simple subtraction, the mechanism needs further study and the cognitive function of epilepsy children should be evaluated and followed up, in order to provide psychologic baseline data for persistent cognitive disturbance.

Visual perception can account for the close relation between numerosity processing and computational fluency.

Studies have shown that numerosity processing (e.g., comparison of numbers of dots in two dot arrays) is significantly correlated with arithmetic performance. Researchers have attributed this association to the fact that both tasks share magnitude processing. The current investigation tested an alternative hypothesis, which states that visual perceptual ability (as measured by a figure-matching task) can account for the close relation between numerosity processing and arithmetic performance (computational fluency). Four hundred and twenty four third- to fifth-grade children (220 boys and 204 girls, 8.0–11.0 years old; 120 third graders, 146 fourth graders, and 158 fifth graders) were recruited from two schools (one urban and one suburban) in Beijing, China. Six classes were randomly selected from each school, and all students in each selected class participated in the study. All children were given a series of cognitive and mathematical tests, including numerosity comparison, figure matching, forward verbal working memory, visual tracing, non-verbal matrices reasoning, mental rotation, choice reaction time, arithmetic tests and curriculum-based mathematical achievement test. Results showed that figure-matching ability had higher correlations with numerosity processing and computational fluency than did other cognitive factors (e.g., forward verbal working memory, visual tracing, non-verbal matrix reasoning, mental rotation, and choice reaction time). More important, hierarchical multiple regression showed that figure matching ability accounted for the well-established association between numerosity processing and computational fluency. In support of the visual perception hypothesis, the results suggest that visual perceptual ability, rather than magnitude processing, may be the shared component of numerosity processing and arithmetic performance.

From Raw Project Data to Business Intelligence

VTML (Visual Trace Modeling Language) empowers project stakeholders to issue useful queries. The Web extra at https://youtu.be/RH4rvFgj8lQ is an audio podcast in which author Jane Cleland-Huang provides an audio recording of the Requirements column, in which she discusses how VTML (Visual Trace Modeling Language) empowers project stakeholders to issue useful queries.

Comparison of Diagonal Shoulder Exercises With and Without Visual Trace

Objectives:The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of visual trace on shoulder muscle activation during diagonal pattern of exercises. Sixteen healthy male participants volunteered to participate.Design:Repeated-measure design.Setting:Laboratory setting.Participants:Sixteen physically active male participants volunteered to participate.Intervention:Five muscles of the shoulder were investigated during standing performance of diagonal shoulder exercises with and without visual trace. Two patterns of the diagonal exercises were used: diagonal 1 flexion (D1F) and diagonal 2 fexion (D2F). Two-way repeated measures analysis of variance was used, with factors being the presence of visual trace and exercise variations.Main Outcome Measure:Electromyography (EMG).Results:The average muscle activity values of the lower trapezius and anterior deltoid were higher with the D2F compared with the D1F (P &lt; .05). The visual trace effect was observed within the serratus anterior, with values significantly greater in exercise with visual trace (P &lt; .05). There was a significant increase of the lower trapezius during the exercise with the visual trace condition compared with the exercise without visual trace, which was only observed during D2F (P &lt; .05).Conclusions:Present results suggest that the D2F exercise pattern is effective for activating lower trapezius and anterior deltoid muscles. The visual trace condition has the additional advantage of activating the scapulothoracic muscle activities depending on the specific pattern of diagonal shoulder exercise.

Visual, Aural, and Temporal Traces in Lorna Simpson’s Phototexts and Installations

Drawing on visual and linguistic theories, this article examines the interplay of time and trace in contemporary artist Lorna Simpson’s handling of the portrait genre in her phototexts and video installations. I examine first the concept of trace in relation to the photographic medium and to the artist’s conceptual approach and study the way text and image interact in a contrapuntal and often dissonant way. Then I focus on two video installations to highlight the fragmentary, repetitive, and elliptical quality of Simpson’s multimedia practices and to put forward the fluctuating status of the concept of trace understood as transient, unstable, and indeterminate.

A forensic science perspective on the role of images in crime investigation and reconstruction.

This article presents a global vision of images in forensic science. The proliferation of perspectives on the use of images throughout criminal investigations and the increasing demand for research on this topic seem to demand a forensic science-based analysis. In this study, the definitions of and concepts related to material traces are revisited and applied to images, and a structured approach is used to persuade the scientific community to extend and improve the use of images as traces in criminal investigations. Current research efforts focus on technical issues and evidence assessment. This article provides a sound foundation for rationalising and explaining the processes involved in the production of clues from trace images. For example, the mechanisms through which these visual traces become clues of presence or action are described. An extensive literature review of forensic image analysis emphasises the existing guidelines and knowledge available for answering investigative questions (who, what, where, when and how). However, complementary developments are still necessary to demystify many aspects of image analysis in forensic science, including how to review and select images or use them to reconstruct an event or assist intelligence efforts. The hypothetico-deductive reasoning pathway used to discover unknown elements of an event or crime can also help scientists understand the underlying processes involved in their decision making. An analysis of a single image in an investigative or probative context is used to demonstrate the highly informative potential of images as traces and/or clues. Research efforts should be directed toward formalising the extraction and combination of clues from images. An appropriate methodology is key to expanding the use of images in forensic science.

Rapid screening and visual tracing of melamine in soybean meal by NIR microscopy imaging

Near infrared microscopy imaging offers the opportunity to explore not only what kinds of chemical species are present at micro-scale level but also where the chemical species would be present. By revealing the spectral and spatial information, the technique can identify and localize any interested component. This study investigates the feasibility of using Near infrared microscopy imaging to detect melamine in soybean meal. The results showed that 6805 cm-1is very sensitive for melamine but not for soybean meal, so can be used for univariate analysis. Single wavelength image and peak integration image at 6805 cm-1are simple and effective methods to detect the melamine in soybean meal. Furthermore, Principal Component Analysis is applied to detect the melamine in soybean meal.

Forensic detection of noise addition in digital images

We proposed a technique to detect the global addition of noise to a digital image. As an anti-forensics tool, noise addition is typically used to disguise the visual traces of image tampering or to remove the statistical artifacts left behind by other operations. As such, the blind detection of noise addition has become imperative as well as beneficial to authenticate the image content and recover the image processing history, which is the goal of general forensics techniques. Specifically, the special image blocks, including constant and strip ones, are used to construct the features for identifying noise addition manipulation. The influence of noising on blockwise pixel value distribution is formulated and analyzed formally. The methodology of detectability recognition followed by binary decision is proposed to ensure the applicability and reliability of noising detection. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed noising detector. © 2014 SPIE and IS&T (DOI: 10.1117/ 1.JEI.23.2.023004)

Cinema as Testimony and Discourse for History: Film Cityscapes in Autobiographical Documentaries

Film images testify to the real appearance of the past, or at least its aesthetic, through old films or archival footage. However, the meaning of an image is never transparent but part of a cultural discourse to be interpreted. Therefore, cinema offers two possible historical readings: firstly as repository of authentic visual traces of the past, and secondly as representation that reveals the zeitgeist of a period. Classic documentaries tried to deal with historical issues in an objective way, but the evolution of the genre placed subjectivity at the centre of discourse. This paradigm shift explains why memory and identity are two of the main topics of post-modern documentaries, such as some “urban autobiographies” that recall the emotional experience of missing cityscapes: Roger and Me (Michael Moore, USA, 1989), My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada, 2007) and Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, UK, 2008). These films share a similar subjective approach to portraying the decline of industrial towns through personal memories, despite their belonging to three different subgenres: the performative political documentary, the essay film and the self-fiction. The analysis of their formal devices can be very useful to reflect on our contemporary systems of historical representation.

Going for distance and going for speed: Effort and optical variables shape information for distance perception from observation to response

Visually guided distance perception reflects a relationship of geometrical optical variables with the effort required when traversing the distance. We probed how the representations encoding optical variables might define this relationship. Participants visually judged distances on sloped surfaces and reproduced these distances over flat terrain by walking while blindfolded. We examined the responses for the effects of optical variables (i.e., angular declinations from eye height) and tested whether four measures of trial-by-trial effort moderated the use of the represented optical variables. We predicted that observation time and response speed relative to the observed distance would accentuate the effects of encoded optical variables, and that response time and response speed relative to the traversed distance would reduce the effects of those variables. The results confirmed all of the effects except those of observation time. Given the benefits of longer study for strengthening a memory trace, the failure of observation time to predict the use of optical variables raises questions about the representational encoding of visual traces for distance perception. Relationships among optical variables and other effort measures implicate the interaction of processes across multiple time scales, as in cascade dynamics. Cascade dynamics may provide new directions for accounts of visually guided distance perception.

The BIUTEE Research Platform for Transformation-based Textual Entailment Recognition

Recent progress in research of the Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE) task shows a constantly-increasing level of complexity in this research field. A way to avoid having this complexity becoming a barrier for researchers, especially for new-comers in the field, is to provide a freely available RTE system with a high level of flexibility and extensibility. In this paper, we introduce our RTE system, BiuTee2, and suggest it as an effective research framework for RTE. In particular, BiuTee follows the prominent transformation-based paradigm for RTE, and offers an accessible platform for research within this approach. We describe each of BiuTee’s components and point out the mechanisms and properties which directly support adaptations and integration of new components. In addition, we describe BiuTee’s visual tracing tool, which provides notable assistance for researchers in refining and “debugging” their knowledge resources and inference components.