309 research outputs found
Shaping the vision, the identity and the cultural image of European places
No full textEuropean regions and cities have been, especially during the last twenty years, characterized by a plurality of efforts to define their vision, to construct their identity and to shape their images, in order to become more attractive and, consequently, competitive, and also to increase their market share in a globalized economy. Following this option, places have been elaborating and implementing particular competitive policies and strategic plans in order to attract the potential target markets (new investments, tourists, new residents etc). Shaping the vision concerns the identification of the sustainable development objectives that each place sets up in a long-term horizon. Furthermore, the vision is the first step of strategic planning implementation that a place has to follow in order to construct its identity and to produce its image as a ‘final provided good’. This paper investigates the relationship between vision, local identity and image, focusing on culture and tourism. The international bibliography shows several cases, mainly of European places, that support their competitiveness through cultural and tourism development. In addition, the majority of the implemented place marketing policies relate with culture and tourism. The primary aim of the paper is to present the ways with which the cultural image of a place as a ‘final provided good’, could be produced, supported and promoted effectively to the external environment. The secondary aim is to show under what conditions the promotion of this image could induce anticipated profits for a place in a long-term base. The data for this paper are provided by the INTERREG IIIc CultMark project (Cultural Heritage, Local Identity and Place Marketing for Sustainable Development, an project) that has been in operation in five European places during the last year: Nea Ionia/Magnesia/Greece, Paphos/Cyprus, Chester/UK, Rostock-Wismar/Germany and Kainuu/Finland – it has to be noted that the last four places relate directly with water. The main aim of the project is to create a final successful image for each place and for the study area as a whole. The paper presents a structural analysis of the project methodology and uses the available data in order to produce the ‘final provided good’ of each place.
CITIES COMPETITION, PLACE MARKETING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH EUROPE: THE BARCELONA CASE AS FDI DESTINATION
No full textThe aim of the article is to focus on the especially interesting area of South Europe and to present and points out the strategic development process, in one of the most representative examples of its successful implementation, which is the city of Barcelona. Barcelona, which in the last 20 years, managed to increase its competitiveness becoming one of the most attractive investment destinations on international level. The city?s economic dynamism, its strategic position in the South of Europe and a clearly-consolidated international projection have turned the economic area of Barcelona into an international platform of economic activities, a driving force behind development in Southern Europe, especially oriented towards new, emergent, competitive and international sectors with an uninterrupted growth of their foreign markets.Cities competition, economic development, strategic planning, Barcelona.
Visualization tools for high angular resolution diffusion imaging
No full textThere is a major effort in medical imaging to develop algorithms to extract information from DTI and HARDI, which provide detailed information on brain integrity and connectivity. As the images have recently advanced to provide extraordinarily high angular resolution and spatial detail, including an entire manifold of information at each point in the 3D images, there has been no readily available means to view the results. This impedes developments in HARDI research, which need some method to check the plausibility and validity of image processing operations on HARDI data or to appreciate data features or invariants that might serve as a basis for new directions in image segmentation, registration, and statistics. We present a set of tools to provide interactive display of HARDI data, including both a local rendering application and an off-screen renderer that works with a web-based viewer. Visualizations are presented after registration and averaging of HARDI data from 90 human subjects, revealing important details for which there would be no direct way to appreciate using conventional display of scalar images. Funding: Grants P41-RR013642, RO1-HD050735, and NHMRC496682 (Australia)
The Best Of Both Worlds: Combining 3d Deformable Models With Active Shape Models
No full textReliable 3D tracking is still a difficult task. Most parametrized 3D deformable models rely on the accurate extraction of image features for updating their parameters, and are prone to failures when the underlying feature distribution assumptions are invalid. Active Shape Models (ASMs), on the other hand, are based on learning, and thus require fewer reliable local image features than parametrized 3D models, but fail easily when they encounter a situation for which they were not trained. In this paper, we develop an integrated framework that combines the strengths of both 3D deformable models and ASMs. The 3D model governs the overall shape, orientation and location, and provides the basis for statistical inference on both the image features and the parameters. The ASMs, in contrast, provide the majority of reliable 2D image features over time, and aid in recovering from drift and total occlusions. The framework dynamically selects among different ASMs to compensate for large viewpoint changes due to head rotations. This integration allows the robust tracking of faces and the estimation of both their rigid and nonrigid motions. We demonstrate the strength of the framework in experiments that include automated 3D model fitting and facial expression tracking for a variety of applications, including sign language. ©2007 IEEE.Beymer, D., Poggio, T., Image representations for visual learning (1996) Science, 272 (5270), pp. 1905-1909Blake, A., Isard, M., (1998) Active Contours: The Application of Techniques from Graphics, Vision, Control Theory and Statistics to Visual Tracking of Shapes in Motion, , Springer-VerlagBlanz, V., Vetter, T., A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces (1999) SIGGRAPH, pp. 187-194Brand, M., Morphable 3D models from video (2001) CVPRCootes, T., Taylor, C., Active shape models - their training and application (1995) CVIU, 61 (1), pp. 38-59de Carlo, D., Metaxas, D., Optical flow constraints on deformable models with applications to face tracking (2000) IJCV, 38 (2), pp. 99-127. , JulyDimitrijevic, M., Ilic, S., Fua, P., Accurate face models from uncalibrated and ill-lit video sequences (2004) CVPR, pp. 1034-1041Goldenstein, S., Vogler, C., When occlusions are outliers (2006) Workshop on the 25 Years of RANSAC (in conjunction with CVPR)Goldenstein, S., Vogler, C., Metaxas, D., Statistical Cue Integration in DAG Deformable Models (2003) PAMI, 25 (7), pp. 801-813Goldenstein, S., Vogler, C., Metaxas, D., 3D facial tracking from corrupted movie sequences (2004) CVPRGoodall, C., Procrustes methods in the statistical analysis of shape (1991) Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B, 53, pp. 285-339Isard, M., Blake, A., (1998) Condensation: Conditional density propagation for visual tracking, 29 (1), pp. 5-28Jones, M., Poggio, T., Multidimensional morphable models (1998) ICCV, pp. 683-688Lanitis, A., Taylor, C.J., Cootes, T.F., Automatic interpretation and coding of face images using flexible models (1997) PAMI, 19 (7), pp. 743-756Pighin, F., Szeliski, R., Salesin, D., Modeling and animating realistic faces from images (2002) IJCV, 50 (2), pp. 143-169Tao, H., Huang, T., Visual Estimation and Compression of Facial Motion Parameters: Elements of a 3D Model-Based Video Coding System (2002) IJCV, 50 (2), pp. 111-125Cootes, T.F., Edwards, G., Taylor, C.J., Active appearance models (2001) PAMI, 23 (6), pp. 681-685Viola, P., Jones, M., Robust real-time face detection (2004) IJCV, 57 (2), pp. 137-154Vogler, C., Goldenstein, S., Stolfi, J., Pavlovic, V., Metaxas, D., Outlier rejection in high-dimensional deformable models (2007) IVC, 25 (3), pp. 274-284Wang, L., Hu, W., Tan, T., Face tracking using motion-guided dynamic template matching (2002) ACCVXiao, J., Baker, S., Matthews, I., Kanade, T., (2004) Real-time combined 2d+3d active appearance models, , CVP
Is City Marketing Opposed to Urban Planning? The Elaboration of a Pilot City Marketing Plan for the Case of Nea Ionia, Magnesia, Greece
No full textThe role of city marketing has been increasingly important in Europe. Today it has become a necessity with regard to the processes of global competition of cities, tourist attraction, urban management, city branding and urban governance. Many European cities support their competitiveness through cultural and tourism development. In addition, the majority of the implemented city marketing policies relate with culture and tourism. City marketing has faced many criticisms, the main one being that it substitutes for urban planning. However, the work done in cultural planning indicates that, in order for cities to be successful, marketing must be inter-connected with planning. There are even international examples of cities that have elaborated marketing plans in order to attract the potential target markets (new investments, tourists, new residents etc). One recent approach argues that marketing can contribute to the sense of place. The data for this paper are provided by the INTERREG IIIc CultMark project (Cultural Heritage, Local Identity and Place Marketing for Sustainable Development) that has been in operation in five European places since 2004: Nea Ionia/ Magnesia/ Greece (lead partner), Chester/ UK, Kainuu/ Finland, Rostock-TLM/ Germany and Pafos/ Cyprus. The CultMark project is applying a place marketing strategy with a cultural approach. This means that it emphasizes the cultural dimension of marketing and the promotion of the cultural resources of each place. The innovative characteristics of this project are reinforced by the use of the two concepts of ‘creativity’, and ‘branding destination’. The main objective of the CultMark project is the development and implementation of innovative place marketing strategies, based on the elements of local identity and the cultural assets of the partner areas in order to contribute to their sustainable economic and social development. As a case study the elaboration of the marketing plan of Nea Ionia/ Magnesia/ Greece is chosen, and the aim of the paper is to show the interconnection of marketing and planning by trying to answer, among others, the following questions: a) does marketing planning constitute strategic planning?, b) how can marketing contribute to sustainability?, c) can cultural heritage be marketed?
The Interrelationship of Urban Economic and Cultural Development: the Case of Greek Museums
No full textThe purpose of the paper is the pinpointing of the role and importance of museums in the cultural and economic development of cities. The starting point is a critical analysis of the international, mainly European, experience, which, especially in the last decade, demonstrates the weight of the cultural factor in urban development focusing on the economic dimension. In the course of searching the relationship between cultural and economic development, the museums have constituted, and continue to constitute, a particularly interesting research object. Examples of the various concepts and practices that are related with museums are: the construction of the ‘cultural image’ of cities, the quest for cultural identity, the support and promotion of these elements as ‘goods’ in the external environment of cities, and the combination of tourist resources. The examination of the international experience constitutes the basis of the attempt to respond to three fundamental questions: a) in what ways, and with what means, is museum management connected with the effective promotion and support of the ‘cultural image’ of the cities?, b) in what ways is the effective promotion and support of the ‘cultural image’ connected with the creation of a competitive advantage for the particular city and its sustainable economic development, and c) does the ‘selling of cultural identity’ of the cities constitute an imperative need or a necessary evil that the cities cannot avoid in both cases? In order to respond to the above questions strategically planned methodologies, ways and means are described and analysed: strategic planning, management, empirical research, segmentation of potential markets-targets, configuration of ‘cultural tourist packages’, place marketing. Particular attention is paid to the role of museums in the urban tourism development process, since tourism constitutes one of the strongest productivity factors in many European cities. The main hypotheses that are going to be tested are the enforcement by the tools of planning and management of the conditions of sustainability and competitiveness, and the contribution of their use to the increasing role of museums in the cultural and economic development of cities. The paper concludes with proposals referring to the case of Greece. In order to examine the role and the importance of museums in the economic and historic development of Greek cities, a threefold structure is followed: framework analysis (i.e. examination of the main weaknesses in the internal environment of museums, identification of the image and administration of museums etc.), secondary data analysis (regional distribution of number and visitors of museums) and presentation of the main research methodology (combination of questionnaires, interviews and statistical data) of an empirical research. The main contradiction is that, while historicity and cultural heritage constitute factors that traditionally characterize Greece, the ways and means with which this factors can constitute dynamic levers of economic development refer to a new reality and new conditions of development which, till the present, have not been taken into serious consideration.
3d Facial Tracking From Corrupted Movie Sequences
No full textIn this paper we perform 3D face tracking on corrupted video sequences. We use a deformable model, combined with a predictive filter, to recover both the rigid transformations and the values of the parameters that describe the evolution of the facial expressions over time. To be robust, predictive filters need a good observation of the system's state. We describe a new method to measure, at each moment in time, the correct distribution of an observation of the parameters of a high-dimensional deformable model. This method is based on bounding the confidence regions of the 2D image displacements with affine forms, and propagating them into parameter space. Using Lindeberg's theorem, we measure a good Gaussian approximation of the parameters in a manner that avoids many of the traditional assumptions about the observations' distributions. We demonstrate in experiments on sequences with compression artifacts, and poor-quality video sequences of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart from the 1950s, that, without any learning involved, our method is sufficiently robust to extract information from degraded image sequences. In addition, we provide ground truth validation.1I880I885Bishop, G., Welch, G., An introduction to the kalman filter (2001) SIGGRAPH 2001 Course NotesBlake, A., Isard, M., (1998) Active Contours: the Application of Techniques from Graphics, Vision, Control Theory and Statistics to Visual Tracking of Shapes in Motion, , Springer-VerlagBlanz, V., Vetter, T., A morphable model for the synthesis of 3d faces (1999) SIGGRAPH, pp. 187-194. , AugustBrand, M., Bhotika, R., Flexible flow for 3d nonrigid tracking and shape recovery (2001) CVPR, pp. 315-322Bregler, C., Hertzmann, A., Biermann, H., Recovering Non-Rigid 3D Shape from Image Streams (2000) CVPRBrown, L., 3d head tracking using motion adaptive texture-mapping (2001) CVPR, pp. 998-1005Cascia, M., Sclaroff, S., Athitsos, V., Fast, reliable head tracking under varying illumination: An approach based on registration of texture-mapped 3d models (2000) IEEE Trans. PAMI, 22 (4), pp. 322-336Chung, K., (1974) A Course in Probability Theory, , Academic Press, Inc., 2nd editionCootes, T., Taylor, C., Active shape models - Their training and application (1995) CVIU, 61 (1), pp. 38-59De Carlo, D., Metaxas, D., Optical flow constraints on deformable models with applications to face tracking (2000) IJCV, 38 (2), pp. 99-127. , JulyDellaert, F., Burgard, W., Fox, D., Thrun, S., Using the condensation algorithm for robust, vision-based mobile robot localization (1999) CVPRGoldenstein, S., Vogler, C., Metaxas, D., Statistical cue integration in DAG deformable models (2003) IEEE Trans. PAMI, 25 (7), pp. 801-813Gordon, N., Salmon, D., Smith, A., A novel approach to nonlinear/nongaussian bayesian state estimation (1993) IEEE Proc. Radar Signal Processing, (140), pp. 107-113Isard, M., Blake, A., CONDENSATION: Conditional density propagation for visual tracking (1998) IJVC, 29 (1), pp. 5-28King, O., Forsyth, D., How does CONDENSATION behave with a finite number of samples? (2000) ECCV, pp. 695-709Maybeck, P., (1979) Stochastic Models, Estimation, and Control, , Academic PressMeer, P., Stewart, C.V., Tyler, D.E., Robust computer vision: An interdisciplinary challenge (2000) CVIU, (78), pp. 1-7Metaxas, D., (1996) Physics-based Deformable Models: Applications to Computer Vision, Graphics and Medical Imaging, , Kluwer Academic PublishersPighin, F., Szeliski, R., Salesin, D., Resynthesizing facial animation through 3d model-based tracking (1999) ICCV, pp. 143-150Pighin, F., Szeliski, R., Salesin, D., Modeling and animating realistic faces from images (2002) IJVC, 50 (2), pp. 143-169Stolfi, J., Figueiredo, L., (1997) Self-validated Numerical Methods and Applications, , 21° Colóquio Brasileiro de Matemática, IMPATao, H., Huang, T., Visual estimation and compression of facial motion parameters: Elements of a 3D model-based video coding system (2002) IJVC, 50 (2), pp. 111-125Wan, E.A., Van Der Merwe, R., (2001) Kalman Filtering and Neural Networks, p. 50. , chapter Chapter 7: The Unscented Kalman Filter, Wiley PublishingWang, L., Hu, W., Tan, T., Face tracking using motion-guided dynamic template matching (2002) ACCVWen, Z., Huang, T., Capturing subtle facial motions in 3d face tracking (2003) ICCV, pp. 1343-1350Shan, Z.Z.Y., Liu, Z., Model-based bundle adjustment with application to face modeling (2001) ICCV, pp. 644-65
Optimal acquisition schemes in high angular resolution diffusion weighted imaging
No full textThe recent challenge in diffusion imaging is to find acquisition schemes and analysis approaches that call represent non-gaussian diffusion profiles in a clinically feasible measurement time. In this work we investigate the effect of b-value and the number of gradient vector directions oil Q-ball imaging and the Diffusion Orientation Transform (DOT) in a structured away using computational simulations, hardware crossing-fiber diffusion phantoms, and in-vivo brain scans. We observe that DOT is more robust to noise and independent of the b-value and number of gradients, whereas Q-ball dramatically improves the results for higher b-values and number of gradients and at recovering larger angles of crossing. We also show that Laplace-Beltrami regularization has wide applicability and generally improves the properties of DOT. Knowledge, of optimal acquisition schemes for HARDI can improve the utility, of diffusion weighted MR, imaging in the clinical setting for the diagnosis of white matter diseases and presurgical planning
Connected Components in O(log 3/2 n) Parallel Time for the CREW PRAM
No full textFinding the connected components of an undirected graph G = (V; E) on n = jV j vertices and m = jEj edges is a fundamental computational problem. The best known parallel algorithm for the CREW PRAM model runs in O(log 2 n) time using n 2 = log 2 n processors [6, 15]. For the CRCW PRAM model, in which concurrent writing is permitted, the best known algorithm runs in O(log n) time using slightly more than (n +m)= log n processors [26, 9, 5]. Simulating this algorithm on the weaker CREW model increases its running time to O(log 2 n) [10, 19, 29]. We present here a simple algorithm that runs in O(log 3=2 n) time using n +m CREW processors. Finding an o(log 2 n) parallel connectivity algorithm for this model was an open problem for many years. 1 Introduction Let G = (V; E) be an undirected graph on n = jV j vertices and m = jEj edges. A path p of length k is a sequence of edges (e 1 ; \Delta \Delta \Delta ; e i ; \Delta \Delta \Delta ; e k ) such that e i 2 E for i = 1; \..
A Parallel Algorithm for Computing Minimum Spanning Trees
No full textWe present a simple and implementable algorithm that computes a minimum spanning tree of an undirected weighted graph G = (V, E) of n = |V| vertices and m = |E| edges on an EREW PRAM in O(log 3=2 n) time using n+m processors. This represents a substantial improvement in the running time over the previous results for this problem using at the same time the weakest of the PRAM models. It also implies the existence of algorithms having the same complexity bounds for the EREW PRAM, for connectivity, ear decomposition, biconnectivity, strong orientation, st-numbering and Euler tours problems
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