34 research outputs found
Text and the nation: mediating South Asian decolonization through postcolonial literature and posthuman knowledge
No full textThis work was accepted to the annual Graduate Research and Creative Works Symposium while the author was a graduate student at Rutgers University-Camden
Localization of Synthetic Manipulations in Western Blot Images
No full textRecent breakthroughs in deep learning and generative systems have significantly fostered the creation of synthetic media, as well as the local alteration of real content via the insertion of highly realistic synthetic manipulations. Local image manipulation, in particular, poses serious challenges to the integrity of digital content and societal trust. This problem is not only confined to multimedia data, but also extends to biological images included in scientific publications, like images depicting Western blots. In this work, we address the task of localizing synthetic manipulations in Western blot images. To discriminate between pristine and synthetic pixels of an analyzed image, we propose a synthetic detector that operates on small patches extracted from the image. We aggregate patch contributions to estimate a tampering heatmap, highlighting synthetic pixels out of pristine ones. Our methodology proves effective when tested over two manipulated Western blot image datasets, one altered automatically and the other manually by exploiting advanced AI-based image manipulation tools that are unknown at our training stage. We also explore the robustness of our method over an external dataset of other scientific images depicting different semantics, manipulated through unseen generation techniques. We release our experimental code and the manipulated datasets at https://github.com/polimiispl/western-blot-synthetic-manipulation-localization
Detection and Localization of Synthetic Manipulations in Scientific Images
No full textLAUREA MAGISTRALELa manipolazione delle immagini è diventata sempre più diffusa grazie alla recente accessibilità di tecnologie avanzate per la generazione di contenuti sintetici.
Le immagini alterate con intenti malevoli rappresentano una grave minaccia in quanto diffondono disinformazione, mettono in dubbio l'affidabilità e sollevano problemi di integrità dei dati.
Soprattutto nel campo delle immagini scientifiche, tali manipolazioni compromettono la veridicità e l’affidabilità dei risultati delle ricerce, che sono tradizionalmente considerati una fonte veritiera di informazioni.
Di conseguenza, c'è urgente bisogno di metodologie nel campo della forensica multimediale per far fronte a queste preoccupazioni.
Nel nostro lavoro presentiamo una soluzione basata su reti neruali convolutive (CNN) per rilevare e localizzare la presenza di contenuto sintetico nelle immagini scientifiche.
Il rilevatore proposto opera su piccole porzioni di immagini per poter distinguere tra contenuto reale e sintetico.
Le stime del rilevatore relative alle singole porzioni vengono quindi aggregate e utilizzate per generare una mappa termica che localizza efficacemente le regioni manipolate sinteticamente all'interno dell'immagine.
Il metodo proposto viene valutato su un set di dati di immagini scientifiche relative ai Western Blots. In particolare, abbiamo creato due set di dati basati su Western Blot utilizzando tecniche all'avanguardia per generare contenuti sintetici ed eseguire manipolazioni. Un dataset contiene manipolazioni generate automaticamente e l'altro replica scenari di falsificazione del mondo reale.
Valutiamo la robustezza del nostro approccio testandolo su immagini mai viste in fase di training e manipolate con metodi di generazione sintetica sconosciuti. La nostra soluzione mostra prestazioni notevoli nelle attività di rilevamento e localizzazione sia sui set di dati manomessi automaticamente che realisticamente e funziona abbastanza bene anche su immagini scientifiche diverse dai Western Blots.
Il nostro lavoro indaga anche l'uso delle caratteristiche dell'immagine per distinguere meglio tra immagini manipolate e reali.Image manipulation has become increasingly prevalent with the widespread accessibility of advanced technologies for generating synthetic content. Images altered with malicious intent pose a grave threat in spreading misinformation, questioning trustworthiness, and raising integrity issues. Particularly within the realm of scientific images, such manipulation compromises the veracity and reliability of research findings, which are traditionally regarded as the source of truth. Consequently, there is a pressing need for methodologies within the field of forensics to quell these concerns.
In our work, we present a solution based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for detecting and localizing the presence of synthetic content in scientific images. The proposed detector operates on image patches to distinguish between real and synthetic pixels. The predicted estimates from the detector are then aggregated to generate a heatmap that effectively localizes the synthetic regions within the image.
The proposed method is evaluated on scientific image datasets pertaining to Western Blots. In particular, we create two datasets based on Western Blots using state-of-the-art techniques to generate synthetic content and perform manipulations. One dataset contains automatically generated manipulations and the other replicates real-world forgery scenarios.
We assess the robustness of our approach by testing it on images unknown at training time and manipulated with unknown synthetic generation methods. Our proposed solution exhibits remarkable performance in the detection and localization tasks on both the automatically and realistically tampered datasets and also performs fairly well on scientific images different from Western Blots.
Our work also investigates the use of image features to better distinguish between manipulated and real images
Gender and Public Spending on Education in Pakistan: A Case Study of Disaggregated Benefit Incidence
No full textIt is generally believed that education is one of the basic rights of every human being, irrespective of sex, age, creed, religion, etc. Moreover, the target of universal primary education cannot be achieved without female access to educational opportunities, which contains several external benefits. In addition, access to educational opportunities assumes prime importance for empowerment of women. However, inequalities in access to education between males and females can be found in many countries across the world including Pakistan. According to conventional wisdom, a combination of cultural, social, and economic factors are responsible for placing young girls and women at a serious disadvantage vis-a-vis access to school and the prospect of completing their education. This disadvantage can be altered through public policies including gender sensitive public spending on education. The above assertion about the role of public policy is based on the theory of public finance1, which demonstrates that public expenditure on education can affect the population in a number of ways, which has significant gender dimensions. For example, government spending on primary education is likely to generate more income for women than spending on universities, for the simple reason that there are relatively more women primary school teachers than women university lecturers. Moreover, these expenditures provide subsidized educational services, which is a form of “in kind transfers”. These “in-kind transfers” improve the current well-being of the recipients, and enhance their longer-run income-earning potential. They can be considered as both current and capital transfers to the recipients, and therefore can be termed as the “benefit incidence” of public spending. The main concern of this paper is to assess the gender dimension of the benefitincidence”. The tudy has two basic objectives. First and foremost, it aims to investigate which income group actually benefits from the government’s subsidized.
Stylization of shadows in ski-panorama maps: A case study on Atelier Novat
No full textPanorama maps can be defined as aerial-view paintings of geologically complex landscapes that are represented in a convenient manner to non-expert viewers. This thesis focuses on a specific variant of panorama maps known as "ski-panorama maps" or "piste-maps" drawn by the french landscape and panorama artist, Pierre Novat. These maps usually contain a multitude of visual cues that are specifically emphasized upon by the artist in order to improve viewer perception. Among these visual cues, cast-shadows play an important role in recognizing the shape, depth and height of the terrain. Therefore, the main goal of this thesis is to understand the use of shading based on the underlying rule-sets created by the artist, Pierre Novat. Through these rule-sets, we propose two contributions : a brief study of the artistic style of Atelier Novat along with a rendering framework for shadow stylization. This framework is mainly based on image-space filters, that takes a set of DEM (Digital Elevated Model) files as input and produces an image that resembles a ski-panorama map. The pipeline deals with the following components : a novel method for stylized shading - a set of methods for modifying structural properties of cast-shadows (according to artist-driven rulesets) and a hue transfer-function. As a final step, validation of the rendered images is empirically done by cross-referencing it with the specific panorama art-work and by taking feedback from the artist, Arthur Novat.Computer Scienc
Lattice Modelling of Moisture Transport in Uncracked and Cracked Concrete
No full textThe service life of concrete structures depend largely on the durability of concrete. The durability of concrete is influenced by mass transport mechanisms that can have severe deteriorating effects. Transport of water in concrete is of paramount importance as water can act as a carrier of ions such as chlorides which can corrode the reinforcement and reduce the service life of concrete structures. The main objective of this thesis is to study moisture transport through capillary absorption in concrete. Numerical simulation of moisture transport is performed through lattice elements with an irregular mesh configuration. New computational tools are developed and compared with the existing tools in terms of effectiveness to simulate moisture transport in homogeneous uncracked concrete. The existing numerical model uses approximate volume of transport elements to determine the volumetric capacity of elements. During discretization of the governing equation, the variation of diffusivity of the elements is approximated as a uniform mean distribution and an explicit time stepping scheme is implemented which has consequences on the flow equilibrium at each time step. In the proposed numerical model, exact volume of transport elements is considered and during the discretization of governing equations, exponential variation of diffusivity is considered along with an implicit time stepping scheme. Moisture transport is accurately simulated in uncracked homogeneous concrete even by using the existing model as validated through experimental results. Both the models are compared through error analysis by varying mesh size and time step. Moisture flow through different diffusivity coefficients is simulated using both the models and it is observed that the existing model suffers from oscillations in the saturation level during initial stages of flow due to inability of the existing model to maintain flow equilibrium at each time step. The proposed model on the other hand shows no such oscillations due to the flow equilibrium being maintained at each time step. Mesh size, magnitude of time step and diffusivity coefficient are shown to be the parameters limiting the effectiveness of either of the models. A single discrete crack is considered within the domain and its influence on moisture transport is observed. The nature of the crack is considered through two approaches. In the first approach, crack is considered as an additional porous phase in cement matrix and the entire volume occupied by the crack is considered to be a void. In the second approach, in addition to considering the porous nature of crack, moisture surface interaction between the water surface and crack walls is also considered. Horizontal moisture distribution around a planar crack is simulated using both the approaches which show similar results as in the experiment. The vertical moisture distribution is simulated within a wedge shaped crack and the results are compared with experimental observations. The first approach shows a slower rate of saturation of the crack as compared to the experiment. The second approach shows the vertical saturation of the crack similar to the experiment. A comparison between the Delaunay and Voronoi modelling techniques of moisture simulation in cracked domain is discussed. It is shown that the presence of a crack accelerates the moisture transport in concrete as it exposes additional surface of concrete from where water can penetrate in the material and also increases the diffusivity of the concrete material lying in the vicinity of the crack. Moisture transport is simulated in concrete considering its multi-phase nature. Concrete is considered to be composed of three phases i.e. cement paste, aggregates and ITZ around aggregates. Aggregates are considered to be impervious which do not allow the flow of moisture through them which slows down the flow in concrete. The ITZ around the aggregates have higher transport properties and accelerate the flow. A numerical framework is formulated in which spherical aggregates are projected on lattice elements which are assigned transport properties pertaining to the phase of concrete they represent. Moisture transport is simulated and compared with experimental results where an increase of volume fraction of aggregates leads to a decrease of cumulative saturation level. The influence of ITZ is observed on a local and global scale by varying the ITZ diffusivity coefficient. The moisture simulation is also modelled on a finer mesh to see the effect of mesh refinement. Finally, moisture transport is simulated in a numerical model that combines a planar crack along with heterogeneities and flow is observed at different time stages
Exploring demand response opportunities in energy communities: An agent-based modeling approach for attaining self-sufficiency in mixed energy communities in the Netherlands
No full textAmidst the discourse regarding the decentralization of urban energy systems, energy community has emerged as a solution for optimizing the electricity demand and distributed generation. Community energy projects also facilitate collaboration amongst local prosumers. An energy community is a collective of residential electricity consumers (or prosumers) and non-energy small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) formulating a social network involved in decentralized energy production. This study is focused on exploring demand response opportunities in community energy projects located in the Netherlands to reduce their dependence on the grid. Existing studies on community energy projects are primarily focused on residential members, and have little to no inclusion of nonresidential community members. However, recent studies regarding demand response in the energy community highlight the benefits of having a mixed configuration of residential and non-residential members. Introducing non-residential community members such as SMEs, offices, and schools with a complementary demand profile can help the community in attaining self-sufficiency through demand response. Formulating energy communities with a mixed configuration (i.e. including residential and non-residential community members) optimizes local electricity generation and consumption thus avoiding congestion in the distribution network....Engineering and Policy Analysi
Necropolitical Kashmir: mediating decolonization through postcolonial literature and posthuman knowledge
No full text“Necropolitical Kashmir” examines how new Anglophone literature (post-2000), emerging from Kashmir— the epicenter of an armed separatist movement in India—mediate decolonization. The thesis focuses on two literary texts: The Collaborator (Penguin 2011) by Mirza Waheed and the graphic novel Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir (Fourth Estate 2015) by Malik Sajad. My aim in this thesis is to expand the gamut of postcolonial scholarship by studying texts that portray civil strife, militarization, insurgency, trauma, human rights violations, and death in the conflict zone of Kashmir. My literary analysis of the works is informed by two main inquiries. How do postcolonial writers blend ethics, aesthetics, and politics in dissenting to necropolitics and neocolonialism? How does contemporary postcolonial literature and theory interface with posthumanism and posthuman knowledge? In a broader sense, my thesis intends to foreground new English literature from Kashmir about state oppression within the English literary canon. Herein, my polemic against neocolonialism is twofold: (a) against state violence and necropolitics such as the militarized siege of Kashmir by the Indian state; (b) against canonization's epistemic violence that leaves pertinent postcolonial works like Munnu stranded on the periphery of the English canon. This thesis is a humble attempt to redress these issues by elucidating that writers like Mirza Waheed and Malik Sajad from Kashmir are heralding a new generation of Anglophone Indian writers by expanding the oeuvre of postcolonial writing as exemplified by the works of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy. The novelty of such contemporary works as The Collaborator and Munnu is their blend of bold political voice that tackles postcolonial issues like border disputes and state-sponsored violence, alongside subtly depicting the vicissitudes of post-independence India.M.A.Includes bibliographical reference
Timing-driven optimization problems in VLSI CAD
No full textWe study several optimization problems that arise in the design of VLSI circuits, with the satisfaction of timing constraints as the primary objective. We focus on problems where the underlying architecture is regular. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), identical standard cell based architectures and WSI arrays of blocks having a regular structure are the major architectures that are regular. The regularity of these architectures allows us to use powerful graph theoretic techniques that would not be possible otherwise.In this thesis we study problems at several different steps in the FPGA design flow. We address the problems of timing driven technology mapping and placement. We also study the problem of reconfiguring the placement of a circuit on an FPGA in order to tolerate faults in the logic blocks of the FPGA without significant degradation in the circuit delay. This problem is referred to as the timing driven reconfiguration problem. Timing driven reconfiguration can be used for off-line reconfiguration for yield enhancement and for on-line reconfiguration for fault tolerance. In a typical design flow, the design may be altered several times after the initial design cycle according to minor changes in the design specification either as a result of design debugging or as a result of changes in engineering requirements. In order to speed up the entire design process it is important to efficiently handle these engineering changes. We study the problem of incorporating engineering changes into a design in the presence of timing constraints. We propose a unified approach to solving the timing driven placement, reconfiguration and re-engineering problems using the concept of slack neighborhood graph.Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T14:12:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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