313 research outputs found
Hybrid Joint-Separable Multibody Tracking
No full textStatistical models for tracking different moving bodies must be able to reason about occlusions in order to be effective. Representing the joint statistics across different bodies is computationally hard, since the size of the representation grows exponentially with the number of bodies being tracked. Separable tracking, with one tracker per body, cannot deal with occlusions effectively. We propose a new model, dubbed Hybrid Joint-Separable (HJS), that uses a representation size that grows linearly with the number of bodies, and a computational complexity that grows quadratically. This model can reason explicitly about occlusions. We describe a particle filter implementation of this model, and present promising experimental results
Otherness and the other sex within the frame story of the thousand and one nights: texts and criticism
No full textThe Arabian Nights is the most famous Medieval Arabic collection of tales that brings together stories from different literary traditions, mainly Indian and Persian. It is a masterpiece of world literature, and there is an extensive body of scholarly work on it. Following its “rediscovery” by the French orientalist A. Galland in the 1700s and the publication of the printed Arabic editions in the 1800s, the collection became subject to prolific criticism. The best-known narrative of the Arabian Nights is the frame story of the collection, and since the late 1970s, a new line of critical scholarship has emerged, providing multiple interpretations of this element of the text. Perhaps inspired by the rewritings of the frame story in modern and contemporary fiction, this new criticism has proposed topical readings which have been inspired by feminist and gender approaches (Grossman, 1980; Malti-Douglas, 1991; Sallis, 1990), psychoanalytic theories (Beaumont, 2002; Clinton, 1985), and sociocultural and postcolonial perspectives (Mernissi, 2001; Shamma 2017). The main subject of these readings falls within the realm of otherness, and specifically of “sexual and gendered otherness”, i.e., the representation of the other and the relationship with the other sex. This research project identifies in the question of otherness the starting point from which to undertake the scrutiny of the academic literature on the frame story and offer a documented and critical overview of the main trends in modern and contemporary scholarship. In order to achieve this goal, this study proposes an innovative methodology which first compares the various versions and translations of the opening narrative of the Arabian Nights, and then investigates the critical readings, comparing them with the version(s) and/or translation(s) of the frame story they have taken into consideration. This preliminary phase of research sees its continuation in a more substantial discussion about how the readings have presented the question of the relationship with the other sex in the opening narrative of the AN. This study is also the first attempt to offer an annotated outline of the modern and contemporary criticism of the frame story concentrating on both English (i.e., written in English) and Arabic (i.e., written in Arabic) scholarship
An Ultra-Low-Power Contrast-Based Camera Node and its Application as a People Counter
No full textWe describe the implementation in a self-standing system
of a novel contrast-based binary CMOS imaging sensor.
This sensor is characterized by very low power consumption
and wide dynamic range, which makes it attractive for
wireless camera network applications. In our implementation,
the sensor is interfaced with a Flash-based FPGA processor,
which handles data readout and image processing.
This self-standing camera node is configured as a system for
counting persons walking through a corridor. Simple features
are extracted from each image in a video stream at 30
fps. A classifier is designed based on the temporal evolution
of these features, which is modeled as a Markov chain. The
video stream is then segmented into intervals corresponding
to individual persons crossing through the field of view. Experimental
results are shown in cross-validated tests over
real sequences acquired by the camera
Gramsci e o encontro com o mundo árabe
No full textL'articolo è il risultato di una ricerca, in prospettiva gramsciana, sulla storia dei paesi
islamici e sulle attività del Laboratorio di Studi Internazionali Gramsci dell'Università di
Cagliari (Gramsci Lab), che ricostruiscono le tappe e gli sviluppi di un processo che, nel
corso degli anni, ha reso possibile la penetrazione del pensiero dell'autore dei Quaderni
del carcere nel mondo arabo. Realtà in cui il tema della traducibilità filosofica è di indubbio interesse politico, per l'incidenza di contraddizioni, conflitti e processi
rivoluzionari innescati dalla dialettica tra l'eredità coloniale e il presente di questi Paesi e
le lotte dei popoli di questa parte del mondo per l'emancipazione dai paradigmi della
civiltà occidentale, imposti con la forza nel corso dei secoli.The article is the result of research, from a Gramscian perspective, into the history of
Islamic countries and the activities of the Gramsci International Studies Laboratory at the
University of Cagliari (Gramsci Lab), which reconstruct the stages and developments of
a process which, over the years, has made it possible for the thought of the author of
Prison Notebooks to penetrate the Arab world. Realities in which the theme of
philosophical translatability assumes an undoubted political interest, due to the incidence of contradictions, conflicts and revolutionary processes triggered by the dialectic between the colonial legacy and the present of these countries and the struggles of the peoples of this part of the world, for emancipation from the paradigms of Western civilization, imposed by force over the centuries
Some notes on the Relationship between Intellectuals and Power in the Arab Word: a Gramscian Reading
No full textThe Gramscian perspective by which Massimo Campanini has addressed some issues linked to the dynamics of the Arab political debate and, more generally, concerning the thought in a Muslim context, provides us the opportunity to deepen the subject of the applicability of the Gramscian categories to read the contemporary Arab world.
A topic that in recent years, especially following the so-called "Arab springs", has involved many Arab and non-Arab scholars, in search of new interpretations of the political and social processes in Mena (Middle East and North Africa) countries.
Starting from a personal conviction that Gramscian paradigms proved to be very useful both in the past and today for understanding the dynamics of the construction and evolution of the political system in Islamic countries, especially after the so-called "Arab springs", I will mainly use Gramscian concepts of intellectual (muthaqqaf); hegemony (haymana); civil society (al-mujtama' al-madanī); modern prince (al-amīr al-hadīth), to analyze the potential (but also the substantial inability) of Islamist movements and parties to conquer a truly hegemonic power
An Ultralow-Power Wireless Camera Node: Development and Performance Analysis
No full textThis paper presents the design principles underlying the video nodes of long-lifetime wireless networks. The hardware and firmware architectures of the system are described in detail, along with the system-power-consumption model. A prototype is introduced to validate the proposed approach. The system mounts a Flash-based field-programmable gate array and a high-dynamic-range complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor custom vision sensor. Accurate power measurements show that the overall consumption is 4.2 mW at 3.3 V in the worst case, thus achieving an improvement of two orders of magnitude with respect to video nodes for similar applications recently proposed in the literature. Powered with a 2200-mAh 3.3-V battery, the system will exhibit a typical lifetime of about three months
Mind your crossings : Mining GIS imagery for crosswalk localization
No full textFor blind travelers, finding crosswalks and remaining within their borders while traversing them is a crucial part of any trip involving street crossings. While standard Orientation & Mobility (O&M) techniques allow blind travelers to safely negotiate street crossings, additional information about crosswalks and other important features at intersections would be helpful in many situations, resulting in greater safety and/or comfort during independent travel. For instance, in planning a trip a blind pedestrian may wish to be informed of the presence of all marked crossings near a desired route. We have conducted a survey of several O&M experts from the United States and Italy to determine the role that crosswalks play in travel by blind pedestrians. The results show stark differences between survey respondents from the U.S. compared with Italy: the former group emphasized the importance of following standard O&M techniques at all legal crossings (marked or unmarked), while the latter group strongly recommended crossing at marked crossings whenever possible. These contrasting opinions reflect differences in the traffic regulations of the two countries and highlight the diversity of needs that travelers in different regions may have. To address the challenges faced by blind pedestrians in negotiating street crossings, we devised a computer vision-based technique that mines existing spatial image databases for discovery of zebra crosswalks in urban settings. Our algorithm first searches for zebra crosswalks in satellite images; all candidates thus found are validated against spatially registered Google Street View images. This cascaded approach enables fast and reliable discovery and localization of zebra crosswalks in large image datasets.While fully automatic, our algorithm can be improved by a final crowdsourcing validation. To this end, we developed a Pedestrian Crossing Human Validation web service, which supports crowdsourcing, to rule out false positives and identify false negatives
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