3,297 research outputs found
The Greece of the Greeks: By G.A. Perdicaris, A.M. Late Consul of the United Stats at Athens, in two volumes. New-York: Paine and Burgess, 1845.
No full textIntroduction: (introductory) by the authorDedication: by the author to those who are interested in the Fate of GreecePagination: PP21+293P, PP8+300P+1PPVolumes: 2Edition:1stText Genre:Prose / Journa
Automatic sign language recognition inspired by human sign perception
No full textAutomatic sign language recognition is a relatively new field of research (since ca. 1990). Its objectives are to automatically analyze sign language utterances. There are several issues within the research area that merit investigation: how to capture the utterances (cameras, magnetic sensors, instrumented gloves), how to extract interesting information from the captured data, and how to classify signs or sentences automatically using the extracted information. These issues are of an immediate and basic nature, and must be solved before any automatic recognition of sign language can be achieved. But other issues, pertaining to the nature of sign language and human recognition, are no less interesting: which elements of a sign are important for the meaning of an utterance? How do consecutive signs influence one another? Why are certain types of variation unimportant while others change the meaning of the sign? Automatic sign language recognition has, until recently, mostly focused on the first set of issues. In this thesis, we attempt to integrate knowledge about sign languages and human sign recognition into the automatic sign recognition process. Research on the (psycho)linguistics of sign languages is itself quite young (since ca. 1960), and many questions as yet unanswered. For this reason, we conduct our own studies of human sign language recognition. The knowledge gained from these experiments is applied in an existing automatic sign language recognition system. The thesis is divided into two parts: the first part describes the experiments conducted with human signers, the second part describes experiments investigating the possibilities of integrating such knowledge in the automatic recognizer. This recognizer is meant to be used in an interactive environment for young children to practice sign language vocabulary. For this reason, it is vision-based (which is unobtrusive), and only handles isolated signs. The experiments in part I of the thesis investigate the information content of various sign elements: fragments of a sign in time (chapter 2), and the sign aspects handshape and hand orientation (chapter 3). In time, the central phase of a sign is the most informative one, equally informative to the entire sign. Recognition based on other phases is also possible to a certain extent, and the transition from the preparation phase to the central phase appears to be a salient moment. As for the aspects, the aspect handshape proves more useful for recognition than hand orientation. Chapter 4 gives an overview of the human recognition research and discusses possibilities for application. In part II, the possibilities of utilizing the results of part I in the recognition system are investigated. Chapter 5 describes the addition of the handshape feature to the system (which chapter 3 showed to be the most interesting feature to add). Adding handshape gives a small improvement in the recognition performance. In chapter 6, the salience of the sign fragments used in chapter 2 for the automatic recognizer is investigated. The central phase proves to be the most informative one, as it was for human signers. Chapter 7 describes experiments in which a small set of frames is used to represent a sign. The results show a deterioration in recognition performance. Strict demands on the correctness of the remaining frames are probably partly responsible for the performance decrease. In conclusion, we can say that applying human knowledge in automatic sign language recognition is a complex task. Conclusions about human sign recognition do not necessarily hold for the automatic recognizer as well. The most important obstacles for utilizing information successfully seem to be: 1) data acquisition: computer vision is not as accomplished as human observers in capturing the complex, dynamic hand and face motions that form sign language. This means that information that is present in a sign movement for a human being may not be (correctly) observed by an automatic vision analysis system. Thus, the data that humans work with is not necessarily identical to the data the recognizer works with, and this may cause techniques that are successful for human signers to fail in the automatic system. And 2) differences in basic system architecture. Research into human sign recognition is still ongoing, there is no clear model of human sign recognition yet. This makes it more difficult to translate observations from human sign recognition to the automatic recognizer: human signers may use techniques that are not compatible with the current architecture of the recognizer. For example: human signers may process aspects independently. If the recognition system processes all data as a single stream, then such a technique cannot be implemented. A more thorough understanding of human sign recognition, more sophisticated computer vision techniques, and a close co-operation between the fields of automatic sign language recognition and human sign perception, seems the best way to overcome these obstacles.MediamaticsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Agoraphobia is a disease: A tribute to Sir Martin Roth.
No full textThe evidence which has accumulated on the course of agoraphobia challenges the DSM view that phobic avoidance is secondary to panic attacks. In particular, a longitudinal study by Wittchen et al. indicates that agoraphobia, as a diagnostic category, is frequently independent of panic disorder and panic attacks, is unlikely to remit spontaneously and entails compromised quality of life. A staging system of agoraphobia is presented. Panic may ensue in the longitudinal development of agoraphobia, as well as of other anxiety disorders, and be conceptualized as a potential outcome in the course of anxiety, phobias and hypochondriasis as more than a specific disease entity. These recent research findings confirm the clinical observations and phenomenological research of Sir Martin Roth (1917-2006) and call for a reassessment of the concept of neurosis
The Value(s) of Trust and Risk: The Impact of the Blockchain on the Governance of Global Food Supply Chains
No full textIm Rahmen der Konferenz werden primär Ergebnisse der Dissertation von Bianca Roth vorgestellt. Dabei geht es um die Ergebnisse der Elite-Interviews sowie erste Erkenntnisse der Fokusgruppendiskussionen zum Thema „Der Einfluss von digitalen Technologien auf Vertrauen
Alle origini delle discipline aziendali: l’opera di G.A. Tagliente
No full textThe Contribution of G.A. Tagliente to the birth of business disciplines
The paper presents the work of a XVI century Italian Accounting author, G.A. Tagliente, giving a historiographic interpretation under a business economics point of view. The research is placed in a wider project of mapping Early Mod- ern Era contributions on Accounting, where contents, distinctly analyzed, are linked to their respective social and economic contexts. In the paper biograph- ical notes are placed in the Early XVI Century Venice and the whole literary production of the Author is presented before the proper accounting one. He was the second writer on double entry method, after Pacioli’s work. He pub- lished also books on mathematics for business, but his fortune is due mainly to the unique treatise on “simple entry book”, at those times very spread through the small and medium enterprises. Even if “minor” respect to the Great Pacioli, with him a cultural path began that would lead, finally, to the establish- ment of a new stream of thought: Accounting as we recognise it nowadays. In certain respects, furthermore, he underscored not still explored concern as- pects like family’s administration, extraordinary events, fixed assets and other peculiar issues
Reliable methods for predicting the sound from clustered rocket engines
No full textHigh area ratio rocket engines generate strong vibro-acoustic loads primarily during transient operations, like start-up and shut-down of the engine. These loads can adversely affect the launch vehicle and its payload. Thus, an accurate prediction of the loads produced during engine start-up is pertinent to the safety and reliability of the launch vehicle. The present work focuses on developing a robust framework for predicting these loads using laboratory scale rocket nozzles tested in the fully anechoic chamber at The Uni- versity of Texas at Austin. This encompasses corrections for the observer position relative to the prominent source region, as well as scaling factors to correct for geometric factors. The test campaign encompasses single, two, three and four nozzle clusters, as well as differences in nozzle geometry and operating conditions (nozzle pressure ratio)
Coming home to mother
No full textGift of Dr. Mary Jane Esplen.Piano vocal [instrumentation]We love to think of years ago [first line]We are coming home to Mother [first line of chorus]A flat [key]Piano [tempo]House, families, birds, photograph of M.E. Mollins [illustration]Popular song [form/genre]Publisher's advertisement on inside front [note]Mediatoon by G.A. Boyton [note
Working in soviet aircraft industry. Extract from G.A. Cheremukhin memories
No full textPublished by N.G. Georguiyeva
This is a publication of an excerpt from the G.A. Cheremukhin's memoirs «The work in the aircraft industry» (1921-2009). He was a famous aircraft designer noted both in Russia and abroad. This fragment contains the previously little known information on the beginning of the creation of a strategic bomber TU-4 in 1945-1947. N.G. Georgieva prepared this publication on the basis of the manuscript of his memoirs. The preface and footnotes contain biographic data on people who were mentioned in the memoirs and who were working together with the author of the memoirs
The Annals of Montecassino, 1189-1195 (translation)
No full textThis unpublished translation relates to the Conquest of Southern Italy by Henry VI.
The Annales Casinenses survive in several different versions, the last of which finishes in 1212. The section from 1183-95 seems to be written by a single author, more or less contemporaneously with the events described, and originally came in the format
translated below in two manuscripts, the first (now lost) used by Erasmo Gattula, the Cassinese archivist and historian of the early eighteenth-century, who believed it to have been copied c. 1270, the other (Berlin 296), was written in 1314.
The section here has been translated by G.A. Loud from Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, Scriptores xix.314-18
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