1,457 research outputs found
A MAP approach to landmarking
Get PDFLandmarking can be seen as calculating the maximum a posteriori probability of a certain set of landmarks given a certain image (texture) which contains a face. The MLLL plus BILBO algorithm by Beumer et al [1] is one method. An improvement to this existing landmarking algorithm, MLLL in combination with BILBO, is presented. MLLL uses a likelihood ratio based similarity score to mark candidate landmark locations. BILBO uses a statistical method on the shape to correct outliers. A theoretical analysis of this intuitive approach shows new insight. In order to verify this theory we performed a simple experiment. The results show that using the new method performs significantly better than when only using the similarity score method (MLLL) in combination with outlier removal (BILBO)
The synthesis of monodisperse alkanes with long chains
Get PDFThis thesis discusses reasons for the interest in monodisperse long chain alkanes and describes attempts, past and present, to synthesise such molecules. Chapter 1 discusses why the synthesis of such molecules are important and the objectives of this project. Chapter 2 reviews the methods previous groups have devised to prepare pure samples of long chain alkanes. In particular, work carried out by Whiting et al. at Bristol, whose scheme formed the basis of the early work in Durham. Chapter 3 describes the work in Durham and improvements which were made to Whiting's method, allowing the synthesis of longer chain lengths and greater quantities of materials to be achieved. Chapter 4 provides a summary of the practical work carried out by the author. Chapter 5 gives experimental details of the work described in Chapter 4
Towards the Theatre: Opasnyi Povorot (Dangerous Corner). The 1939 Production by G.M. Kozintsev at the Leningrad Comedy Theater
Get PDFThe subject of this research is the first production in a series of theatrical works by G.M. Kozintsev (1905–1973) of the late 1930s — early 1950s, which are fundamentally important both in his creative biography and in the history of Soviet theatre of that era. The author suggests that the entry of the famous film director into theatre was caused by the desire to find a way out of a creative impasse.
The director’s appeal to the play of the modern English novelist and playwright J.B. Priestley and its controversial interpretation were driven by the dramatic atmosphere of the late 1930s. The eccentric grotesque of the play and its pamphlet character, which was insisted on by the director, are considered as a parody of tragedy by the author of the research. This reveals a fundamental connection between the production under consideration and the subsequent successful experiments of G.M. Kozintsev in the field of theatrical Shakespeareana. The article draws attention to the fundamental connection between the style of the production and the general style of the Leningrad State Comedy Theatre developed by its director — the outstanding theatre director and set designer, G.M. Kozintsev and E.L. Schwartz’s friend and associate, N.P. Akimov. The research is based on the performance reviews, testimonies of the participants of the performance, contemporaries close to the director (especially the playwright and screenwriter E.L. Schwartz and the long-term G.M. Kozintsev’s co-author L.Z. Trauberg), as well as the surviving radio version of the play
Face recognition, a landmarks tale
Get PDFFace recognition is a technology that appeals to the imagination of many people. This is particularly reflected in the popularity of science-fiction films and forensic detective series such as CSI, CSI New York, CSI Miami, Bones and NCIS. Although these series tend to be set in the present, their application of face recognition should be considered science-fiction. The successes are not, or at least not yet, realistic. This does, however, not mean that it does not, or will never, work. To the contrary, face recognition is used in places where the user does not need or want to cooperate, for example entry to stadiums or stations, or the detection of double entries into databases. Another important reason to use face recognition is that it can be a user-friendly biometric security. Face recognition works reliably and robustly when there is little variance in pose in the images used. In order to eliminate variance, the faces are aligned to a reference. For this we will use a set of landmarks. Landmarks are points which are easy recognisable locations on the face such as the eyes, nose and mouth. A probabilistic, maximum a posteriori approach to finding landmarks in a facial image is proposed, which provides a theoretical framework for template based landmarkers. One such landmarker, based on a likelihood ratio detector, is discussed in detail. Special attention is paid to training and implementation issues, in order to minimize storage and processing requirements. In particular, a fast approximate singular value decomposition method is proposed to speed up the training process and an implementation of the landmarker in the Fourier domain is presented that will speed up the search process. A subspace method for outlier correction and an alternative implementation of the landmarker are shown to improve its accuracy. The impact of carefully tuning the many parameters of the method is shown. The method is extensively tested and compared with alternatives. Although state of the art face recognition still has a giant leap to make, before it is as good as on television, small steps are made by men all the time
Stevin Outlet Sluices: Wave impact under a beam
Get PDFThe Dutch department of Public Works had a problem regarding wave impacts on a beam in the Stevin outlet sluices, located in the Afsluitdijk. Wave impacts on this beam could also cause a peak pressure on the barrier gate, just behind the beam. The numerical program ComFLOW and physical scale experiments were used to predict the wave impacts for different hydraulic conditions (i.e. wave height, wave period and water level). The research questions were: 1. How is the wave load on the northern gates depending on the presence of the military beam? 2. How large is a wave impact load on the bottom of the military beam in the Stevin outlet sluices? 3. How well can the numerical model ComFLOW and physical modelling be used to determine the wave impact on the bottom of the military beam in the Stevin outlet sluices? 2D scaled experiments were performed making use of a model with the (simplified) geometry of the Stevin outlet sluices and regular waves. It was found that the largest wave impacts occurred for water levels equal to the bottom plane of the beam or slightly under it. This happened for the shortest waves in the test domain. The largest pressure measured on the beam was approximately 50 kPa or 35H, with H representing the incident wave height in front of the model. It was also found that the spread in the peak pressures for one single experiment was large. The results of the measured impulse per peak showed far less spread. The effect of wave impacts under the beam was also found on the vertical wall under the beam. The actual pressures however were less and they were decreasing with increasing depth. Besides physical wave impact testing, a few experiments were performed with the beam removed from the model. This resulted in wave simply running up the vertical wall of the model. They did not cause a wave impact. The measurements of both type of experiments, with and without a beam, were compared. This revealed that the total wave impulse on the gate was not affected by the presence of the beam. However the distribution of the pressure within a single wave period was significantly different. In case of a beam, a large impact peak was observed, whereas the other wave only showed a small hump caused by the deflected flow against the vertical wall. When the calculated and measured wave impact results were compared it became clear that ComFLOW underestimated the peak pressures by a factor 2 to 20 for the pressures on the impact plane. The same was done for the peak impulse. This showed that the impulse of the peak on the impact plane were underestimated by a factor 2 at most. These results confirmed that the used grid was too coarse for the program to model the physics correctly. The main conclusions to the research questions were: 1. The presence of the military beam causes a different distribution of the force on the gate within a wave period. The total amount of impulse is more or less the same as for the situation without a beam. With the military beam, a wave impact results in a peak force on the gate. Without the beam, there will be no peak force. 2. The largest measured wave impact pressure is 35H. 3. Both ComFLOW and physical modelling can be used to predict wave impacts for the geometry of Stevin outlet sluices. Much care should be taken when modelling and much attention should go to the input parameters of the program.Hydraulic StructuresHydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience
A Professional Author-How G.M. Glaskin Earned a Living
No full textWestern Australian author Gerald Marcus Glaskin (GMG; 16 December 1923-11 March 2000) wrote from life, using his experiences to continually expand his creative repertoire. In one sense, this was to be his downfall, as his life was unconventional for his time. Because he mined own experiences so much in his creative writing, his works eventually moved out of mainstream markets. However, this paper focuses on his financial success as a writer, details of which can be documented through study of the meticulous records kept by both GMG and his publisher, Barrie & Rockliff of London. Other scholarly analysis of the income received by authors is limited. Katherine Bode (2012) does not deal with the subject in her otherwise comprehensive quantitative analysis of Australian publishing. What little is known about the income of professional authors from this or other periods, and whether they were able to survive on the proceeds of their writing, is incidental to other research
A more comprehensive and commanding delineation: Mary Shelley's narrative strategy in Frankenstein
Get PDFThis thesis argues that the first edition of Frankenstein challenges conventional reading by employing what Simpson in Irony and Authority in Romantic Poetry calls Romantic irony, where the absence of a stable 'metacomment' precludes an authoritative reading. The novel hints at such readings but prevents them. The insights offered by Tropp's Mary Shelley's Monster, Baldick's In Frankenstein's Shadow, Poovey's The Proper Lady and the woman writer and Swingle's, 'Frankenstein's Monster and its Relatives: Problems of Knowledge in English Romanticism' are considered, but none recognises the full implications of the instability deriving from multiple first- person narratives. Clemit's The Godwinian Navel acknowledges the novel's indeterminacy, but reads a specific ideological purpose in it. Paradise Last provides a language to describe the relationship between the monster and Frankenstein, but proves too unstable to fix identity or establish moral value. Similarly, Necessity ultimately fails to provide a stable explanation in terms of cause and effect. The status of nature shifts between foreground and background, never allowing final definition. These uncertainties destabilise knowledge which is compromised by its provisional nature: no authoritative reading is possible, yet the novel has narrative coherence. The reader is encouraged to try to develop a reading the structure prevents. The radical nature of the first edition is highlighted by comparison with the 1831 edition, which removes much of the ambivalence and gives the novel a clearer morality. The novel challenges conventional methods of deriving authority by disturbing the reader's orthodox orientation in the world around him' (Simpson) in order to afford 'a point of view to the imagination for the delineation of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield' (Mary Shelley)
Efficacy and Safety of the Extreme Lateral Interbody Fusion (XLIF) Technique in Spine Surgery: Meta-Analysis of 1409 Patients
Get PDFG.M. is the corresponding author for this article. Contributor roles: concep-
tualization: P.P., I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.; methodology: P.P., I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.;
software: P.P., I.P. and G.M.; validation: P.P., I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.; formal analysis: P.P.,
I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.; investigation: P.P., I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.; data curation P.P.,
I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L. supervision: P.P.; visualization: P.P., I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.;
writing original draft: P.P., I.P., A.P., J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.; writing—review and editing: P.P., I.P., A.P.,
J.C.G., G.M. and A.L.; project administration: P.P. and G.M. All authors have read and agreed to the
published version of the manuscript.The objective of this study was to quantify the exact clinical-radiological
efficacy and safety of the extreme lateral interbody fusion (XLIF) technique in spinal surgery.Medicin
Extra- cellular Pectinase Activity of Post-harvest Fungi from Papaya Fruits in Presence of Different Influencing Factors
Get PDFThe present paper deals with the study of pectinase enzyme activity of post-harvest fungi of papaya fruits under the influence of nutritional factors, antibiotics, vitamins and fungicides. It was found that carboxy methyl cellulose (CMC), sodium sulphate; ferrous sulphate, barium chloride, sodium chloride, magnesium chloride, zinc, ferrous, manganese, copper, barium, fungicides and ampicillin inhibits the pectinase action of all tested post-harvest fungi while other factors induces the same. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1Dept. of Botany, Shrikrishna Mahavidyalaya, Gunjoti, Dist Osmanabad, Aurangabad; 2Seed pathology and Fungal Biotechnology Laboratory, Dept. of Botany, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad- 431 004. (M.S.) India.* Corresponding Author, Email: [email protected] Please Cite This Article As: G.M. Rathod and Ashok M. Chavan. 2010. Extra- cellular Pectinase Activity of Post-harvest Fungi from Papaya Fruits in Presence of Different Influencing Factors. J. Exp. Sci. 1(2): 07-11
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