1,721,116 research outputs found
Intergenerational contact and support: the long term effects of marital instability in Italy
No full textThe incidence of marital instability has increased throughout Europe since the mid 1960s. The number of adults who experienced the break-up of their parents' marriage or partnership while growing up has therefore increased. And a growing number of parents have had to learn how to maintain meaningful and lasting contact with their children, notwithstanding that they are no longer co-residing with them. A substantial amount of research has been carried out on parent-child relationships in the years immediately subsequent to parental separation and/or divorce. But very few studies have addressed its long-term consequences for intergenerational relationships. This chapter explores the intensity of intergenerational contacts and support experienced by those (now old) parents who belong to the cohorts that initiated the increase in marital instability in Italy and therefore were the first to face the task if "inventing" new ways of "doing family" as lone or as long-distance parents. Specifically we examine the distinct characteristics of the relationship between elderly divorced parents, their adult children and, when present, their grandchildren. We found that marital break-up affects the three generational relationship between parents, children and grandchildren and is not compensated by stronger horizontal kinship ties. We also found that the impact is most negative in the case of contacts, while in the case of material support it is more neutral
Audio-Visual Processing for Scene Change Detection
No full textThe organization of video data-bases according to semantic content of data, is a key point in multimedia technologies. In fact, this would allow algorithms such as indexing and retrieval to work more efficiently. As an attempt to extract semantic information, efforts have been devoted in segmenting the video in shots and for each shot trying to extract informations such as representative video frame, etc. As a video sequence is constructed from a 2-D projection of a 3-D scene, processing video information only has shown its limitations especially in solving problems such as object identification or object tracking. Further not all information is contained in the video signal and more can be achieved by analyzing the audio signal as well. Information can be obtained from the audio signal either to confirm the results obtained by a video processing unit or to acquire information that cannot be extracted from video (such as presence of music). This paper presents a technique which combines video and audio information for classification and indexing purposes
Identification of Visual Correlations Between Non-Consecutive Shots in Digital Image Sequences
No full textA number of automated methods for indexing audio-visual sequences have been developed. Typically, processing starts with a low level segmentation of a sequence of images so as to identify a series of shots (i.e. continuous camera records). To reach a higher level of description, patterns must be identified in the flow of consecutive shots. In this work, three different techniques for measuring visual correlations among non consecutive shots are proposed and compared. Two methods measure the visual correlation among shots by analysing the respective K-frames. In particular, they compare K-frames based either on a low resolution DC JPEG representation or on color and spatial organisation of the spatial information. The third technique measures the similarity between shots by comparing their associated codebooks, which are obtained using the Learning Vector Quantisation approach. Simulations have shown that the Learning Vector Quantisation approach leads to the best performance
Nihilistic delusions (Cotard Type I) in a patient with paranoid schizophrenia
No full textNihilistic delusions, also known as delires de negation, are specific psychopathological entities characterized by the delusional belief of being dead, decomposed or annihilated, having lost one's own internal organs or even not existing entirely as a human being. The world may be perceived as catastrophic, about to collapse or nonexistent at all. According to Jaspers (1959) "Nihilistic delusions in melancholia give us the prototype. The world does not exist anymore, the patient himself does not exist; he only appears to live and he must live like this forever. He has no feelings and he cares for nothing."(1) In the following report we present the clinical case of a schizophrenic patient with remarkable nihilistic delusions and ideations of immortality, successfully treated with haloperidol 15 mg, promazine 10 mg, valproate 1500 mg, diazepam 20 mg during an involuntary psychiatric treatment in our psychiatric ward
Identification of Story Units in Audio-Visual Sequences by Joint Audio and Video Processing
No full textA novel technique, which uses a joint audio-visual analysis for scene identification and characterization, is proposed. The paper defines four different scene types: dialogues, stories, actions, and generic scenes. It then explains how any audio-visual material can be decomposed into a series of scenes obeying the previous classification, by properly analyzing and then combining the underlying audio and visual information. A rule-based procedure is defined for such purpose. Before such rule-based decision can take place, a series of low-level pre-processing tasks are suggested to adequately measure audio and visual correlations. As far as visual information is concerned, it is proposed to measure the similarities between non-consecutive shots using a learning vector quantization approach. An outlook on a possible implementation strategy for the overall scene identification task is suggested, and validated through a series of experimental simulations on real audio-visual dat
Audio Classification for Scene Change Detection in Video Sequences
No full textThe organization of video databases according to the semantic content of data is a key point in multimedia technologies. In fact, this would allow algorithms such as indexing and retrieval to work more efficiently. The segmentation of a video sequence into scenes and the characterisation of each scene has been suggested as a technique for organising video information. Typically this is performed by analyzing the video signal only. Human beings, on the other hand, use both their visual and auditory systems to perceive the semantics of a film. The associated audio signal can thus be useful to extract information which cannot be simply derived from the sole analysis of the video signal or at least to make the video processing more robust. In this work a technique which uses audio together with video information is proposed in order to improve the performance of existing scene change detection algorithms. Tests are performed on material coming form advertisement and movie sequences
Indexing Audio-Visual databases through a joint audio and video processing.
No full textThis work deals with the representation of audiovisual information, to organize its content for future tasks such as retrieval and information browsing. Some indications are provided to demonstrate that a cross-modal analysis of simple visual and audio information is sufficient to organize an audiovisual sequence into semantically meaningful segments. Each segment defines a scene which is coherent from some semantic point of view. Depending on the sophistication of the cross-modal analysis, the scene may represent either a generic story unit or more complex situations such as dialogues or actions. The results shown in this work indicate that audio classification is key in establishing relationships among consecutive shots, allowing us to reach a scene-level description. A higher abstraction level can be reached when a correlation exists among nonconsecutive shots, defining what is called “video idioms.” Accordingly, a generic audio model is proposed: a linear combination of four classes of audio signals. For semantic purposes, it is meaningful to select the classes so that they can serve any subsequent scene characterization. When several audio sources are combined simultaneously, it is assumed that only one is linked to the semantic of the scene, and that it corresponds to the dominant class of audio (in energy terms). The different classes that identify each type of audio are selected to facilitate any decision related to a semantic characterization of the audiovisual information. The problem therefore lies in a source separation task. The proposed scheme classifies the audio signal into the following four component types: speech, music, silence, and miscellaneous other sounds. Its performance are quite satisfactory (∼90%) and were tested extensively using various types of source material. Considering a generic audiovisual sequence, video shots are merged according to this audio classification. Depending on the type of source material (broadcast news, commercials, documentaries, and movies), different types of scenes can be identified, e.g., a single advertisement in the case of commercials; a dialogue situation in a movie. The article describes some experimental simulations in these different fields
Structural Models for Image Compression: A Comparison
No full textIn this work, the concept of structural encoding will be explained. A classification of different structural coding techniques and a comparison among their performance will be presented
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