Search results for: image narrative
2068 Learning And Teaching Conditions For Students With Special Needs: Asset-Oriented Perspectives And Approaches
Authors: Dr. Luigi Iannacci
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This research critically explores the current educational landscape with respect to special education and dominant deficit/medical model discourses that continue to forward unresponsive problematic approaches to teaching students with disabilities. Asset-oriented perspectives and social/critical models of disability are defined and explicated in order to offer alternatives to these dominant discourses. To that end, a framework that draws on Brian Camborne’s conditions of learning and applications of his work in relation to instruction conceptualize learning conditions and their significance to students with special needs. Methodologically, the research is designed as Critical Narrative Inquiry (CNI). Critical incidents, interviews, documents, artefacts etc. are drawn on and narratively constructed to explore how disability is presently configured in language, discourses, pedagogies and interactions with students deemed disabled. This data was collected using ethnographic methods and as such, through participant-observer field work that occurred directly in classrooms. This narrative approach aims to make sense of complex classroom interactions and ways of reconceptualizing approaches to students with special needs. CNI is situated in the critical paradigm and primarily concerned with culture, language and participation as issues of power in need of critique with the intent of change in the direction of social justice. Research findings highlight the ways in which Cambourne’s learning conditions, such as demonstration, approximation, engagement, responsibility, immersion, expectation, employment (transfer, use), provide a clear understanding of what is central to and constitutes a responsive and inclusive this instructional frame. Examples of what each of these conditions look like in practice are therefore offered in order to concretely demonstrate the ways in which various pedagogical choices and questions can enable classroom spaces to be responsive to the assets and challenges students with special needs have and experience. These particular approaches are also illustrated through an exploration of multiliteracies theory and pedagogy and what this research and approach allows educators to draw on, facilitate and foster in terms of the ways in which students with special needs can make sense of and demonstrate their understanding of skills, content and knowledge. The contextual information, theory, research and instructional frame focused on throughout this inquiry ultimately demonstrate what inclusive classroom spaces and practice can look like. These perspectives and conceptualizations are in stark contrast to dominant deficit driven approaches that ensure current pedagogically impoverished teaching focused on narrow, limited and limiting understandings of special needs learners and their ways of knowing and acquiring/demonstrating knowledge.Keywords: asset-oriented approach, social/critical model of disability, conditions for learning and teaching, students with special needs
Procedia PDF Downloads 672067 The Role of Media Relations in the Brand Image: Case Study in Three Brands of the Automobile Industry
Authors: Rosa Sobreira, Paula Arriscado
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Marketers are aware that media relations is an important touch point, which is also cheaper, to bring their products and their brands to the consumer. They recognize the role of journalists as moderators and transformers of public opinion, and they realize their influence on brand image. And also, they know that readers, listeners, viewers and internet users "believe" more what they read, hear and see in the news than in an advertisement. The study is focused on the automotive industry and analyses the news published about three brands that share industrial facilities and components. We wanted to understand the role of the information created by the brand`s media team in the journalists’ work, and the impact on management, activation and differentiation of brands and their products` attributes and benefits. Based on a qualitative methodology, the analysis focused on press news, making comparison between media coverage and their “narratives” about the three cars from different brands. The results point to the fact that journalists easily integrate speech from the marks on their products. In the case of this study, we found that apart from the description of the many similarities between the three cars, the average speech also "struggled" for revealing the attributes that differentiate them. This interpretation of the results helps us to understand the "marriage" between branding and media. We believe also this paper let us to understand how journalists, through news, join the speech of the brands.Keywords: brand management, media relations, differentiation, positioning
Procedia PDF Downloads 2252066 Multimodal Rhetoric in the Wildlife Documentary, “My Octopus Teacher”
Authors: Visvaganthie Moodley
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While rhetoric goes back as far as Aristotle who focalised its meaning as the “art of persuasion”, most scholars have focused on elocutio and dispositio canons, neglecting the rhetorical impact of multimodal texts, such as documentaries. Film documentaries are being increasingly rhetoric, often used by wildlife conservationists for influencing people to become more mindful about humanity’s connection with nature. This paper examines the award-winning film documentary, “My Octopus Teacher”, which depicts naturalist, Craig Foster’s unique discovery and relationship with a female octopus in the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Storms in South Africa. It is anchored in Leech and Short’s (2007) framework of linguistic and stylistic categories – comprising lexical items, grammatical features, figures of speech and other rhetoric features, and cohesiveness – with particular foci on diction, anthropomorphic language, metaphors and symbolism. It also draws on Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) multimodal analysis to show how verbal cues (the narrator’s commentary), visual images in motion, visual images as metaphors and symbolism, and aural sensory images such as music and sound synergise for rhetoric effect. In addition, the analysis of “My Octopus Teacher” is guided by Nichol’s (2010) narrative theory; features of a documentary which foregrounds the credibility of the narrative as a text that represents real events with real people; and its modes of construction, viz., the poetic mode, the expository mode, observational mode and participatory mode, and their integration – forging documentaries as multimodal texts. This paper presents a multimodal rhetoric discussion on the sequence of salient episodes captured in the slow moving one-and-a-half-hour documentary. These are: (i) The prologue: on the brink of something extraordinary; (ii) The day it all started; (iii) The narrator’s turmoil: getting back into the ocean; (iv) The incredible encounter with the octopus; (v) Establishing a relationship; (vi) Outwitting the predatory pyjama shark; (vii) The cycle of life; and (viii) The conclusion: lessons from an octopus. The paper argues that wildlife documentaries, characterized by plausibility and which provide researchers the lens to examine the ideologies about animals and humans, offer an assimilation of the various senses – vocal, visual and audial – for engaging viewers in stylized compelling way; they have the ability to persuade people to think and act in particular ways. As multimodal texts, with its use of lexical items; diction; anthropomorphic language; linguistic, visual and aural metaphors and symbolism; and depictions of anthropocentrism, wildlife documentaries are powerful resources for promoting wildlife conservation and conscientizing people of the need for establishing a harmonious relationship with nature and humans alike.Keywords: documentaries, multimodality, rhetoric, style, wildlife, conservation
Procedia PDF Downloads 942065 Transcription Skills and Written Composition in Chinese
Authors: Pui-sze Yeung, Connie Suk-han Ho, David Wai-ock Chan, Kevin Kien-hoa Chung
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Background: Recent findings have shown that transcription skills play a unique and significant role in Chinese word reading and spelling (i.e. word dictation), and written composition development. The interrelationships among component skills of transcription, word reading, word spelling, and written composition in Chinese have rarely been examined in the literature. Is the contribution of component skills of transcription to Chinese written composition mediated by word level skills (i.e., word reading and spelling)? Methods: The participants in the study were 249 Chinese children in Grade 1, Grade 3, and Grade 5 in Hong Kong. They were administered measures of general reasoning ability, orthographic knowledge, stroke sequence knowledge, word spelling, handwriting fluency, word reading, and Chinese narrative writing. Orthographic knowledge- orthographic knowledge was assessed by a task modeled after the lexical decision subtest of the Hong Kong Test of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing (HKT-SpLD). Stroke sequence knowledge: The participants’ performance in producing legitimate stroke sequences was measured by a stroke sequence knowledge task. Handwriting fluency- Handwriting fluency was assessed by a task modeled after the Chinese Handwriting Speed Test. Word spelling: The stimuli of the word spelling task consist of fourteen two-character Chinese words. Word reading: The stimuli of the word reading task consist of 120 two-character Chinese words. Written composition: A narrative writing task was used to assess the participants’ text writing skills. Results: Analysis of covariance results showed that there were significant between-grade differences in the performance of word reading, word spelling, handwriting fluency, and written composition. Preliminary hierarchical multiple regression analysis results showed that orthographic knowledge, word spelling, and handwriting fluency were unique predictors of Chinese written composition even after controlling for age, IQ, and word reading. The interaction effects between grade and each of these three skills (orthographic knowledge, word spelling, and handwriting fluency) were not significant. Path analysis results showed that orthographic knowledge contributed to written composition both directly and indirectly through word spelling, while handwriting fluency contributed to written composition directly and indirectly through both word reading and spelling. Stroke sequence knowledge only contributed to written composition indirectly through word spelling. Conclusions: Preliminary hierarchical regression results were consistent with previous findings about the significant role of transcription skills in Chinese word reading, spelling and written composition development. The fact that orthographic knowledge contributed both directly and indirectly to written composition through word reading and spelling may reflect the impact of the script-sound-meaning convergence of Chinese characters on the composing process. The significant contribution of word spelling and handwriting fluency to Chinese written composition across elementary grades highlighted the difficulty in attaining automaticity of transcription skills in Chinese, which limits the working memory resources available for other composing processes.Keywords: orthographic knowledge, transcription skills, word reading, writing
Procedia PDF Downloads 4242064 Vision-Based Collision Avoidance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by Recurrent Neural Networks
Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai
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Due to the sensor technology, video surveillance has become the main way for security control in every big city in the world. Surveillance is usually used by governments for intelligence gathering, the prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. Many surveillance systems based on computer vision technology have been developed in recent years. Moving target tracking is the most common task for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to find and track objects of interest in mobile aerial surveillance for civilian applications. The paper is focused on vision-based collision avoidance for UAVs by recurrent neural networks. First, images from cameras on UAV were fused based on deep convolutional neural network. Then, a recurrent neural network was constructed to obtain high-level image features for object tracking and extracting low-level image features for noise reducing. The system distributed the calculation of the whole system to local and cloud platform to efficiently perform object detection, tracking and collision avoidance based on multiple UAVs. The experiments on several challenging datasets showed that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.Keywords: unmanned aerial vehicle, object tracking, deep learning, collision avoidance
Procedia PDF Downloads 1602063 Image Multi-Feature Analysis by Principal Component Analysis for Visual Surface Roughness Measurement
Authors: Wei Zhang, Yan He, Yan Wang, Yufeng Li, Chuanpeng Hao
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Surface roughness is an important index for evaluating surface quality, needs to be accurately measured to ensure the performance of the workpiece. The roughness measurement based on machine vision involves various image features, some of which are redundant. These redundant features affect the accuracy and speed of the visual approach. Previous research used correlation analysis methods to select the appropriate features. However, this feature analysis is independent and cannot fully utilize the information of data. Besides, blindly reducing features lose a lot of useful information, resulting in unreliable results. Therefore, the focus of this paper is on providing a redundant feature removal approach for visual roughness measurement. In this paper, the statistical methods and gray-level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM) are employed to extract the texture features of machined images effectively. Then, the principal component analysis(PCA) is used to fuse all extracted features into a new one, which reduces the feature dimension and maintains the integrity of the original information. Finally, the relationship between new features and roughness is established by the support vector machine(SVM). The experimental results show that the approach can effectively solve multi-feature information redundancy of machined surface images and provides a new idea for the visual evaluation of surface roughness.Keywords: feature analysis, machine vision, PCA, surface roughness, SVM
Procedia PDF Downloads 2122062 Flexural Behaviour of Normal Strength and High Strength Fibre Concrete Beams
Authors: Mostefa Hamrat, Bensaid Boulekbache, Mohamed Chemrouk, Sofiane Amziane
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The paper presents the results of an experimental work on the flexural behaviour of two types of concrete in terms of the progressive cracking process until failure and the crack opening, and beam deflection, using Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique. At serviceability limit states, comparisons of the building code equations and the equations developed by some researchers for the short-term deflections and crack widths have been made using the reinforced concrete test beams. The experimental results show that the addition of steel fibers increases the first cracking load and amplify the number of cracks that conducts to a remarkable decreasing in the crack width with an increasing in ductility. This study also shows that there is a good agreement between the deflection values for RC beams predicted by the major codes (Eurocode2, ACI 318, and the CAN/CSA-S806) and the experimental results for beams with steel fibers at service load. The most important added benefit of the DIC technique is that it allows detecting the first crack with a high precision easily measures the crack opening and follows the progressive cracking process until failure of reinforced concrete members.Keywords: beams, digital image correlation (DIC), deflection, crack width, serviceability, codes provisions
Procedia PDF Downloads 3352061 Skull Extraction for Quantification of Brain Volume in Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Multiple Sclerosis Patients
Authors: Marcela De Oliveira, Marina P. Da Silva, Fernando C. G. Da Rocha, Jorge M. Santos, Jaime S. Cardoso, Paulo N. Lisboa-Filho
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Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system characterized by neurodegeneration, inflammation, demyelination, and axonal loss. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), due to the richness in the information details provided, is the gold standard exam for diagnosis and follow-up of neurodegenerative diseases, such as MS. Brain atrophy, the gradual loss of brain volume, is quite extensive in multiple sclerosis, nearly 0.5-1.35% per year, far off the limits of normal aging. Thus, the brain volume quantification becomes an essential task for future analysis of the occurrence atrophy. The analysis of MRI has become a tedious and complex task for clinicians, who have to manually extract important information. This manual analysis is prone to errors and is time consuming due to various intra- and inter-operator variability. Nowadays, computerized methods for MRI segmentation have been extensively used to assist doctors in quantitative analyzes for disease diagnosis and monitoring. Thus, the purpose of this work was to evaluate the brain volume in MRI of MS patients. We used MRI scans with 30 slices of the five patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis according to the McDonald criteria. The computational methods for the analysis of images were carried out in two steps: segmentation of the brain and brain volume quantification. The first image processing step was to perform brain extraction by skull stripping from the original image. In the skull stripper for MRI images of the brain, the algorithm registers a grayscale atlas image to the grayscale patient image. The associated brain mask is propagated using the registration transformation. Then this mask is eroded and used for a refined brain extraction based on level-sets (edge of the brain-skull border with dedicated expansion, curvature, and advection terms). In the second step, the brain volume quantification was performed by counting the voxels belonging to the segmentation mask and converted in cc. We observed an average brain volume of 1469.5 cc. We concluded that the automatic method applied in this work can be used for the brain extraction process and brain volume quantification in MRI. The development and use of computer programs can contribute to assist health professionals in the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. In future works, we expect to implement more automated methods for the assessment of cerebral atrophy and brain lesions quantification, including machine-learning approaches. Acknowledgements: This work was supported by a grant from Brazilian agency Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (number 2019/16362-5).Keywords: brain volume, magnetic resonance imaging, multiple sclerosis, skull stripper
Procedia PDF Downloads 1462060 Ischemic Stroke Detection in Computed Tomography Examinations
Authors: Allan F. F. Alves, Fernando A. Bacchim Neto, Guilherme Giacomini, Marcela de Oliveira, Ana L. M. Pavan, Maria E. D. Rosa, Diana R. Pina
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Stroke is a worldwide concern, only in Brazil it accounts for 10% of all registered deaths. There are 2 stroke types, ischemic (87%) and hemorrhagic (13%). Early diagnosis is essential to avoid irreversible cerebral damage. Non-enhanced computed tomography (NECT) is one of the main diagnostic techniques used due to its wide availability and rapid diagnosis. Detection depends on the size and severity of lesions and the time spent between the first symptoms and examination. The Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS) is a subjective method that increases the detection rate. The aim of this work was to implement an image segmentation system to enhance ischemic stroke and to quantify the area of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke lesions in CT scans. We evaluated 10 patients with NECT examinations diagnosed with ischemic stroke. Analyzes were performed in two axial slices, one at the level of the thalamus and basal ganglion and one adjacent to the top edge of the ganglionic structures with window width between 80 and 100 Hounsfield Units. We used different image processing techniques such as morphological filters, discrete wavelet transform and Fuzzy C-means clustering. Subjective analyzes were performed by a neuroradiologist according to the ASPECTS scale to quantify ischemic areas in the middle cerebral artery region. These subjective analysis results were compared with objective analyzes performed by the computational algorithm. Preliminary results indicate that the morphological filters actually improve the ischemic areas for subjective evaluations. The comparison in area of the ischemic region contoured by the neuroradiologist and the defined area by computational algorithm showed no deviations greater than 12% in any of the 10 examination tests. Although there is a tendency that the areas contoured by the neuroradiologist are smaller than those obtained by the algorithm. These results show the importance of a computer aided diagnosis software to assist neuroradiology decisions, especially in critical situations as the choice of treatment for ischemic stroke.Keywords: ischemic stroke, image processing, CT scans, Fuzzy C-means
Procedia PDF Downloads 3662059 Investigation of Cavitation in a Centrifugal Pump Using Synchronized Pump Head Measurements, Vibration Measurements and High-Speed Image Recording
Authors: Simon Caba, Raja Abou Ackl, Svend Rasmussen, Nicholas E. Pedersen
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It is a challenge to directly monitor cavitation in a pump application during operation because of a lack of visual access to validate the presence of cavitation and its form of appearance. In this work, experimental investigations are carried out in an inline single-stage centrifugal pump with optical access. Hence, it gives the opportunity to enhance the value of CFD tools and standard cavitation measurements. Experiments are conducted using two impellers running in the same volute at 3000 rpm and the same flow rate. One of the impellers used is optimized for lower NPSH₃% by its blade design, whereas the other one is manufactured using a standard casting method. The cavitation is detected by pump performance measurements, vibration measurements and high-speed image recordings. The head drop and the pump casing vibration caused by cavitation are correlated with the visual appearance of the cavitation. The vibration data is recorded in an axial direction of the impeller using accelerometers recording at a sample rate of 131 kHz. The vibration frequency domain data (up to 20 kHz) and the time domain data are analyzed as well as the root mean square values. The high-speed recordings, focusing on the impeller suction side, are taken at 10,240 fps to provide insight into the flow patterns and the cavitation behavior in the rotating impeller. The videos are synchronized with the vibration time signals by a trigger signal. A clear correlation between cloud collapses and abrupt peaks in the vibration signal can be observed. The vibration peaks clearly indicate cavitation, especially at higher NPSHA values where the hydraulic performance is not affected. It is also observed that below a certain NPSHA value, the cavitation started in the inlet bend of the pump. Above this value, cavitation occurs exclusively on the impeller blades. The impeller optimized for NPSH₃% does show a lower NPSH₃% than the standard impeller, but the head drop starts at a higher NPSHA value and is more gradual. Instabilities in the head drop curve of the optimized impeller were observed in addition to a higher vibration level. Furthermore, the cavitation clouds on the suction side appear more unsteady when using the optimized impeller. The shape and location of the cavitation are compared to 3D fluid flow simulations. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental investigations. In conclusion, these investigations attempt to give a more holistic view on the appearance of cavitation by comparing the head drop, vibration spectral data, vibration time signals, image recordings and simulation results. Data indicates that a criterion for cavitation detection could be derived from the vibration time-domain measurements, which requires further investigation. Usually, spectral data is used to analyze cavitation, but these investigations indicate that the time domain could be more appropriate for some applications.Keywords: cavitation, centrifugal pump, head drop, high-speed image recordings, pump vibration
Procedia PDF Downloads 1792058 Fast and Non-Invasive Patient-Specific Optimization of Left Ventricle Assist Device Implantation
Authors: Huidan Yu, Anurag Deb, Rou Chen, I-Wen Wang
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The use of left ventricle assist devices (LVADs) in patients with heart failure has been a proven and effective therapy for patients with severe end-stage heart failure. Due to the limited availability of suitable donor hearts, LVADs will probably become the alternative solution for patient with heart failure in the near future. While the LVAD is being continuously improved toward enhanced performance, increased device durability, reduced size, a better understanding of implantation management becomes critical in order to achieve better long-term blood supplies and less post-surgical complications such as thrombi generation. Important issues related to the LVAD implantation include the location of outflow grafting (OG), the angle of the OG, the combination between LVAD and native heart pumping, uniform or pulsatile flow at OG, etc. We have hypothesized that an optimal implantation of LVAD is patient specific. To test this hypothesis, we employ a novel in-house computational modeling technique, named InVascular, to conduct a systematic evaluation of cardiac output at aortic arch together with other pertinent hemodynamic quantities for each patient under various implantation scenarios aiming to get an optimal implantation strategy. InVacular is a powerful computational modeling technique that integrates unified mesoscale modeling for both image segmentation and fluid dynamics with the cutting-edge GPU parallel computing. It first segments the aortic artery from patient’s CT image, then seamlessly feeds extracted morphology, together with the velocity wave from Echo Ultrasound image of the same patient, to the computation model to quantify 4-D (time+space) velocity and pressure fields. Using one NVIDIA Tesla K40 GPU card, InVascular completes a computation from CT image to 4-D hemodynamics within 30 minutes. Thus it has the great potential to conduct massive numerical simulation and analysis. The systematic evaluation for one patient includes three OG anastomosis (ascending aorta, descending thoracic aorta, and subclavian artery), three combinations of LVAD and native heart pumping (1:1, 1:2, and 1:3), three angles of OG anastomosis (inclined upward, perpendicular, and inclined downward), and two LVAD inflow conditions (uniform and pulsatile). The optimal LVAD implantation is suggested through a comprehensive analysis of the cardiac output and related hemodynamics from the simulations over the fifty-four scenarios. To confirm the hypothesis, 5 random patient cases will be evaluated.Keywords: graphic processing unit (GPU) parallel computing, left ventricle assist device (LVAD), lumped-parameter model, patient-specific computational hemodynamics
Procedia PDF Downloads 1332057 Existential Affordances and Psychopathology: A Gibsonian Analysis of Dissociative Identity Disorder
Authors: S. Alina Wang
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A Gibsonian approach is used to understand the existential dimensions of the human ecological niche. Then, this existential-Gibsonian framework is applied to rethinking Hacking’s historical analysis of multiple personality disorder. This research culminates in a generalized account of psychiatric illness from an enactivist lens. In conclusion, reflections on the implications of this account on approaches to psychiatric treatment are mentioned. J.J. Gibson’s theory of affordances centered on affordances of sensorimotor varieties, which guide basic behaviors relative to organisms’ vital needs and physiological capacities (1979). Later theorists, notably Neisser (1988) and Rietveld (2014), expanded on the theory of affordances to account for uniquely human activities relative to the emotional, intersubjective, cultural, and narrative aspects of the human ecological niche. This research shows that these affordances are structured by what Haugeland (1998) calls existential commitments, which draws on Heidegger’s notion of dasein (1927) and Merleau-Ponty’s account of existential freedom (1945). These commitments organize the existential affordances that fill an individual’s environment and guide their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This system of a priori existential commitments and a posteriori affordances is called existential enactivism. For humans, affordances do not only elicit motor responses and appear as objects with instrumental significance. Affordances also, and possibly primarily, determine so-called affective and cognitive activities and structure the wide range of kinds (e.g., instrumental, aesthetic, ethical) of significances of objects found in the world. Then existential enactivism is applied to understanding the psychiatric phenomenon of multiple personality disorder (precursor of the current diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder). A reinterpretation of Hacking’s (1998) insights into the history of this particular disorder and his generalizations on the constructed nature of most psychiatric illness is taken on. Enactivist approaches sensitive to existential phenomenology can provide a deeper understanding of these matters. Conceptualizing psychiatric illness as strictly a disorder in the head (whether parsed as a disorder of brain chemicals or meaning-making capacities encoded in psychological modules) is incomplete. Rather, psychiatric illness must also be understood as a disorder in the world, or in the interconnected networks of existential affordances that regulate one’s emotional, intersubjective, and narrative capacities. All of this suggests that an adequate account of psychiatric illness must involve (1) the affordances that are the sources of existential hindrance, (2) the existential commitments structuring these affordances, and (3) the conditions of these existential commitments. Approaches to treatment of psychiatric illness would be more effective by centering on the interruption of normalized behaviors corresponding to affordances targeted as sources of hindrance, the development of new existential commitments, and the practice of new behaviors that erect affordances relative to these reformed commitments.Keywords: affordance, enaction, phenomenology, psychiatry, psychopathology
Procedia PDF Downloads 1372056 Globalization and English Literature: Explaining How Globalization Has Affected the Themes and Style of Modern English Literature
Authors: Irfan Mehmood, Tahir Mehmood
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This article considers the far-reaching influence of globalization on the themes, styles, and influences that shape modern English literature. With globalization, the world is getting smaller and smaller through interdependent connections and cross-cultural sharing. In today's world, taking a walk and exploring nature is important. This paper reveals how globalization affected the narratives of English literature, where authors are allowed to write about universal topics while still honoring diversity and multiculturalism. English literature has a rich history, transcends borders, and encompasses various traditions. This research examines the history surrounding the various literary styles and how modern writers adapt and innovate in a fast-moving society. This study also examines how literature reflects on the interdependent world and becomes a testimony that English literature is flexible.Keywords: globalization, contemporary literature, multiculturalism, narrative evolution, interconnectedness
Procedia PDF Downloads 762055 Blue Eyes and Blonde Hair in Mass Media: A News Discourse Analysis of Western Media on the News Coverage of Ukraine
Authors: Zahra Mehrabbeygi
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This research is opted to analyze and survey discourse variety and news image-making in western media regarding the news coverage of the Russian army intrusion into Ukraine. This research will be done on the news coverage of Ukraine in a period from February 2022 to May 2022 in five western media, "BBC, CBS, NBC, Al Jazeera, and Telegraph." This research attempts to discover some facts about the news policies of the five western news agencies during the circumstances of the Ukraine-Russia war. Critical theories in the news, such as Framing, Media Imperialism of News, Image Making, Discourse, and Ideology, were applied to achieve this goal. The research methodology uses Van Dijk's discourse exploration method based on discourse analysis. The research's statistical population is related to all the news about racial discrimination during the mentioned period. After a statistical population survey with Targeted Sampling, the researcher randomly selected ten news cases for exploration. The research findings show that the western media have similarities in their texts via lexical items, polarization, citations, persons, and institutions. The research findings also imply pre-suppositions, connotations, and components of consensus agreement and underlying predicates in the outset, middle, and end events. The reaction of some western media not only shows their bewilderment but also exposes their prejudices rooted in racism.Keywords: news discourse analysis, western media, racial discrimination, Ukraine-Russia war
Procedia PDF Downloads 972054 Diagnosis and Analysis of Automated Liver and Tumor Segmentation on CT
Authors: R. R. Ramsheeja, R. Sreeraj
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For view the internal structures of the human body such as liver, brain, kidney etc have a wide range of different modalities for medical images are provided nowadays. Computer Tomography is one of the most significant medical image modalities. In this paper use CT liver images for study the use of automatic computer aided techniques to calculate the volume of the liver tumor. Segmentation method is used for the detection of tumor from the CT scan is proposed. Gaussian filter is used for denoising the liver image and Adaptive Thresholding algorithm is used for segmentation. Multiple Region Of Interest(ROI) based method that may help to characteristic the feature different. It provides a significant impact on classification performance. Due to the characteristic of liver tumor lesion, inherent difficulties appear selective. For a better performance, a novel proposed system is introduced. Multiple ROI based feature selection and classification are performed. In order to obtain of relevant features for Support Vector Machine(SVM) classifier is important for better generalization performance. The proposed system helps to improve the better classification performance, reason in which we can see a significant reduction of features is used. The diagnosis of liver cancer from the computer tomography images is very difficult in nature. Early detection of liver tumor is very helpful to save the human life.Keywords: computed tomography (CT), multiple region of interest(ROI), feature values, segmentation, SVM classification
Procedia PDF Downloads 5092053 The Popularity and the Fantasy in Tiny Times
Authors: Shu Hui
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From 2013 to 2015, Tiny Times series gained huge commercial success. However, compared with the successful box office, these films received severe public criticism. Some scholars refer to these films as trash (lan pian) because of the fragment narrative, the non-professional photographing, and advocating money warship. Differing from other popular films, the popularity of Tiny Times series is actually generated from the fantasy that presented on screen instead of good stories or photographs. The fantasy is desired by the public and then formulates its popularity. Based on Jacques Lacan’s fantasy theory, the paper aims to explain what kind of fantast the films present. Then, according to hegemony theory, the paper will illustrate why the public desires such a fantasy and how the fantasy causes the criticism as well. The dominant ideology (patriarchy) conspires with or manipulates consumerism, which brings about the female's fantasy in Tiny Times. Because consumerism interrogates Confucianism, the film received public criticism for highlighting the former.Keywords: fantasy, desire, ideology, popularity
Procedia PDF Downloads 1542052 Path Planning for Orchard Robot Using Occupancy Grid Map in 2D Environment
Authors: Satyam Raikwar, Thomas Herlitzius, Jens Fehrmann
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In recent years, the autonomous navigation of orchard and field robots is an emerging technology of the mobile robotics in agriculture. One of the core aspects of autonomous navigation builds upon path planning, which is still a crucial issue. Generally, for simple representation, the path planning for a mobile robot is performed in a two-dimensional space, which creates a path between the start and goal point. This paper presents the automatic path planning approach for robots used in orchards and vineyards using occupancy grid maps with field consideration. The orchards and vineyards are usually structured environment and their topology is assumed to be constant over time; therefore, in this approach, an RGB image of a field is used as a working environment. These images undergone different image processing operations and then discretized into two-dimensional grid matrices. The individual grid or cell of these grid matrices represents the occupancy of the space, whether it is free or occupied. The grid matrix represents the robot workspace for motion and path planning. After the grid matrix is described, a probabilistic roadmap (PRM) path algorithm is used to create the obstacle-free path over these occupancy grids. The path created by this method was successfully verified in the test area. Furthermore, this approach is used in the navigation of the orchard robot.Keywords: orchard robots, automatic path planning, occupancy grid, probabilistic roadmap
Procedia PDF Downloads 1552051 A Book Review of Inside the Battle of Algiers, by Zohra Drif: A Thematic Analysis on Women’s Agency
Authors: W. Zekri
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This paper explores Zohra Drif’s memoir, Inside the Battle of Algiers, which narrates her desires as a student to become a revolutionary activist. She exemplified, in her narrative, the different roles, she and her fellows performed as combatants in the Casbah during the Algerian Revolution 1954-1962. This book review aims to evaluate the concept of women’s agency through education and language learning, and its impact on empowering women’s desires. Close-reading method and thematic analysis are used to explore the text. The analysis identified themes that refine the meaning of agency which are social and cultural supports, education, and language proficiency. These themes aim to contribute to the representation in Inside the Battle of Algiers of a woman guerrilla who engaged herself to perform national acts of resistance.Keywords: agency, education, learning, women
Procedia PDF Downloads 1762050 Behavior of Foreign Tourists Visited Wat Phrachetuponwimolmangkalaram
Authors: Pranee Pathomchaiwat
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This research aims to study tourism data and behavior of foreign tourists visited Wat Phrachetuponwimolmangkalaram (Wat Po) Sample groups are tourists who visited inside the temple, during February, March, April and May 2013. Tools used in the research are questionnaires constructed by the researcher, and samples are dawn by Convenience sampling. There are 207 foreign tourists who are willing to be respondents. Statistics used are percentage, average mean and standard deviation. The results of the research reveal that: A. General Data of Respondents: The foreign tourists who visited the temple are mostly female (57.5 %), most respondents are aged between 20-29 years (37.2%). Most respondents live in Europe (62.3%), most of them got the Bachelor’s degree (40.1%), British are mostly found (16.4%), respondents who are students are also found (23.2%), and Christian are mostly found (60.9%). B. Tourists’ Behavior While Visiting the Temple Compound: The result shows that the respondents came with family (46.4%), have never visited the temples (40.6%), and visited once (42 %). It is found that the foreign tourists’ inappropriate behavior are wearing revealing attires (58.9%), touching or getting closed to the monks (55.1%), and speaking loudly (46.9%) respectively. The respondents’ outstanding objectives are to visit inside the temple (57.5%), to pay respect to the Reclining Buddha Image in the Viharn (44.4%) and to worship the Buddha image in the Phra Ubosod (37.7%) respectively. C. The Respondents’ Self-evaluation of Performance: It is found that over all tourists evaluated themselves in the highest level averaged 4.40. When focusing on each item, it is shown that they evaluated themselves in the highest level on obeying the temple staff averaged 4.57, and cleanness concern of the temple averaged 4.52, well-behaved performance during the temple visit averaged 4.47 respectively.Keywords: deportment, traveler, foreign tourists, temple
Procedia PDF Downloads 3072049 Make Populism Great Again: Identity Crisis in Western World with a Narrative Analysis of Donald Trump's Presidential Campaign Announcement Speech
Authors: Soumi Banerjee
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In this research paper we will go deep into understanding Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as an imagined community and we will analyze why and how national identities were created through long and complex processes, and how there can exist strong emotional bonds between people within an imagined community, given the fact that these people have never known each other personally, but will still feel some form of imagined unity. Such identity construction on the part of an individual or within societies are always in some sense in a state of flux as imagined communities are ever changing, which provides us with the ontological foundation for reaching on this paper. This sort of identity crisis among individuals living in the Western world, who are in search for psychological comfort and security, illustrates a possible need for spatially dislocated, ontologically insecure and vulnerable individuals to have a secure identity. To create such an identity there has to be something to build upon, which could be achieved through what may be termed as ‘homesteading’. This could in short, and in my interpretation of Kinnvall and Nesbitt’s concept, be described as a search for security that involves a search for ‘home’, where home acts as a secure place, which one can build an identity around. The next half of the paper will then look into how populism and identity have played an increasingly important role in the political elections in the so-called western democracies of the world, using the U.S. as an example. Notions of ‘us and them’, the people and the elites will be looked into and analyzed through a social constructivist theoretical lens. Here we will analyze how such narratives about identity and the nation state affects people, their personality development and identity in different ways by studying the U.S. President Donald Trump’s speeches and analyze if and how he used different identity creating narratives for gaining political and popular support. The reason to choose narrative analysis as a method in this research paper is to use the narratives as a device to understand how the perceived notions of 'us and them' can initiate huge identity crisis with a community or a nation-state. This is a relevant subject as results and developments such as rising populist rightwing movements are being felt in a number of European states, with the so-called Brexit vote in the U.K. and the election of Donald Trump as president are two of the prime examples. This paper will then attempt to argue that these mechanisms are strengthened and gaining significance in situations when humans in an economic, social or ontologically vulnerable position, imagined or otherwise, in a general and broad meaning perceive themselves to be under pressure, and a sense of insecurity is rising. These insecurities and sense of being under threat have been on the rise in many of the Western states that are otherwise usually perceived to be some of the safest, democratically stable and prosperous states in the world, which makes it of interest to study what has changed, and help provide some part of the explanation as to how creating a ‘them’ in the discourse of national identity can cause massive security crisis.Keywords: identity crisis, migration, ontological security(in), nation-states
Procedia PDF Downloads 2552048 Riding the Crest of the Wave: Inclusive Education in New Zealand
Authors: Barbara A. Perry
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In 1996, the New Zealand government and the Ministry of Education announced that they were setting up a "world class system of inclusive education". As a parent of a son with high and complex needs, a teacher, school Principal and Disability studies Lecturer, this author will track the changes in the journey towards inclusive education over the last 20 years. Strategies for partnering with families to ensure educational success along with insights from one of those on the crest of the wave will be presented. Using a narrative methodology the author will illuminate how far New Zealand has come towards this world class system of inclusion promised and share from personal experience some of the highlights and risks in the system. This author has challenged the old structures and been part of the setting up of new structures particularly for providing parent voice and insight; this paper provides a unique view from an insider’s voice as well as a professional in the system.Keywords: disability studies, inclusive education, special education, working with families with children with disability
Procedia PDF Downloads 2512047 Automatic Target Recognition in SAR Images Based on Sparse Representation Technique
Authors: Ahmet Karagoz, Irfan Karagoz
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Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a radar mechanism that can be integrated into manned and unmanned aerial vehicles to create high-resolution images in all weather conditions, regardless of day and night. In this study, SAR images of military vehicles with different azimuth and descent angles are pre-processed at the first stage. The main purpose here is to reduce the high speckle noise found in SAR images. For this, the Wiener adaptive filter, the mean filter, and the median filters are used to reduce the amount of speckle noise in the images without causing loss of data. During the image segmentation phase, pixel values are ordered so that the target vehicle region is separated from other regions containing unnecessary information. The target image is parsed with the brightest 20% pixel value of 255 and the other pixel values of 0. In addition, by using appropriate parameters of statistical region merging algorithm, segmentation comparison is performed. In the step of feature extraction, the feature vectors belonging to the vehicles are obtained by using Gabor filters with different orientation, frequency and angle values. A number of Gabor filters are created by changing the orientation, frequency and angle parameters of the Gabor filters to extract important features of the images that form the distinctive parts. Finally, images are classified by sparse representation method. In the study, l₁ norm analysis of sparse representation is used. A joint database of the feature vectors generated by the target images of military vehicle types is obtained side by side and this database is transformed into the matrix form. In order to classify the vehicles in a similar way, the test images of each vehicle is converted to the vector form and l₁ norm analysis of the sparse representation method is applied through the existing database matrix form. As a result, correct recognition has been performed by matching the target images of military vehicles with the test images by means of the sparse representation method. 97% classification success of SAR images of different military vehicle types is obtained.Keywords: automatic target recognition, sparse representation, image classification, SAR images
Procedia PDF Downloads 3662046 Classification of Land Cover Usage from Satellite Images Using Deep Learning Algorithms
Authors: Shaik Ayesha Fathima, Shaik Noor Jahan, Duvvada Rajeswara Rao
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Earth's environment and its evolution can be seen through satellite images in near real-time. Through satellite imagery, remote sensing data provide crucial information that can be used for a variety of applications, including image fusion, change detection, land cover classification, agriculture, mining, disaster mitigation, and monitoring climate change. The objective of this project is to propose a method for classifying satellite images according to multiple predefined land cover classes. The proposed approach involves collecting data in image format. The data is then pre-processed using data pre-processing techniques. The processed data is fed into the proposed algorithm and the obtained result is analyzed. Some of the algorithms used in satellite imagery classification are U-Net, Random Forest, Deep Labv3, CNN, ANN, Resnet etc. In this project, we are using the DeepLabv3 (Atrous convolution) algorithm for land cover classification. The dataset used is the deep globe land cover classification dataset. DeepLabv3 is a semantic segmentation system that uses atrous convolution to capture multi-scale context by adopting multiple atrous rates in cascade or in parallel to determine the scale of segments.Keywords: area calculation, atrous convolution, deep globe land cover classification, deepLabv3, land cover classification, resnet 50
Procedia PDF Downloads 1392045 Spiritual Causes of Unusual Happenings in Life: An Analytical Study in Religious Perspective
Authors: Muhammad Samiullah
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Unquestionably, Human life has been complex from the beginning. In the modern era, with all advancements in science and technology, this complexity is increasing day by day, and human life is becoming more and more difficult its survive. The world has become more mysterious than before. Human beings are facing unusual happenings and blockages in their lives in the form of illnesses, diseases, relationship problems, and hurdles in the economy with all their advanced knowledge, information, and exposure to the universe and themselves as well. This paper will discuss and analyze the underlying spiritual causes and their effects on human life and also suggests their remedies from an Islamic perspective, i.e., in the light of Theology and Islamic literature. Hermeneutics, narrative, and case study approach are adopted within the qualitative methodology in our findings throughout the research. In our outcomes, we will see that Islam eloquently and adequately describes the spiritual causes and factors regarding the unusual foundations and their effects on human life and also provides the remedies and cures to overcome these blockages.Keywords: religious psychology, spiritual theology, Islam and spirituality, unusual happenings
Procedia PDF Downloads 962044 Optical-Based Lane-Assist System for Rowing Boats
Authors: Stephen Tullis, M. David DiDonato, Hong Sung Park
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Rowing boats (shells) are often steered by a small rudder operated by one of the backward-facing rowers; the attention required of that athlete then slightly decreases the power that that athlete can provide. Reducing the steering distraction would then increase the overall boat speed. Races are straight 2000 m courses with each boat in a 13.5 m wide lane marked by small (~15 cm) widely-spaced (~10 m) buoys, and the boat trajectory is affected by both cross-currents and winds. An optical buoy recognition and tracking system has been developed that provides the boat’s location and orientation with respect to the lane edges. This information is provided to the steering athlete as either: a simple overlay on a video display, or fed to a simplified autopilot system giving steering directions to the athlete or directly controlling the rudder. The system is then effectively a “lane-assist” device but with small, widely-spaced lane markers viewed from a very shallow angle due to constraints on camera height. The image is captured with a lightweight 1080p webcam, and most of the image analysis is done in OpenCV. The colour RGB-image is converted to a grayscale using the difference of the red and blue channels, which provides good contrast between the red/yellow buoys and the water, sky, land background and white reflections and noise. Buoy detection is done with thresholding within a tight mask applied to the image. Robust linear regression using Tukey’s biweight estimator of the previously detected buoy locations is used to develop the mask; this avoids the false detection of noise such as waves (reflections) and, in particular, buoys in other lanes. The robust regression also provides the current lane edges in the camera frame that are used to calculate the displacement of the boat from the lane centre (lane location), and its yaw angle. The interception of the detected lane edges provides a lane vanishing point, and yaw angle can be calculated simply based on the displacement of this vanishing point from the camera axis and the image plane distance. Lane location is simply based on the lateral displacement of the vanishing point from any horizontal cut through the lane edges. The boat lane position and yaw are currently fed what is essentially a stripped down marine auto-pilot system. Currently, only the lane location is used in a PID controller of a rudder actuator with integrator anti-windup to deal with saturation of the rudder angle. Low Kp and Kd values decrease unnecessarily fast return to lane centrelines and response to noise, and limiters can be used to avoid lane departure and disqualification. Yaw is not used as a control input, as cross-winds and currents can cause a straight course with considerable yaw or crab angle. Mapping of the controller with rudder angle “overall effectiveness” has not been finalized - very large rudder angles stall and have decreased turning moments, but at less extreme angles the increased rudder drag slows the boat and upsets boat balance. The full system has many features similar to automotive lane-assist systems, but with the added constraints of the lane markers, camera positioning, control response and noise increasing the challenge.Keywords: auto-pilot, lane-assist, marine, optical, rowing
Procedia PDF Downloads 1322043 Segmentation of Liver Using Random Forest Classifier
Authors: Gajendra Kumar Mourya, Dinesh Bhatia, Akash Handique, Sunita Warjri, Syed Achaab Amir
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Nowadays, Medical imaging has become an integral part of modern healthcare. Abdominal CT images are an invaluable mean for abdominal organ investigation and have been widely studied in the recent years. Diagnosis of liver pathologies is one of the major areas of current interests in the field of medical image processing and is still an open problem. To deeply study and diagnose the liver, segmentation of liver is done to identify which part of the liver is mostly affected. Manual segmentation of the liver in CT images is time-consuming and suffers from inter- and intra-observer differences. However, automatic or semi-automatic computer aided segmentation of the Liver is a challenging task due to inter-patient Liver shape and size variability. In this paper, we present a technique for automatic segmenting the liver from CT images using Random Forest Classifier. Random forests or random decision forests are an ensemble learning method for classification that operate by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time and outputting the class that is the mode of the classes of the individual trees. After comparing with various other techniques, it was found that Random Forest Classifier provide a better segmentation results with respect to accuracy and speed. We have done the validation of our results using various techniques and it shows above 89% accuracy in all the cases.Keywords: CT images, image validation, random forest, segmentation
Procedia PDF Downloads 3132042 Introduction of Integrated Image Deep Learning Solution and How It Brought Laboratorial Level Heart Rate and Blood Oxygen Results to Everyone
Authors: Zhuang Hou, Xiaolei Cao
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The general public and medical professionals recognized the importance of accurately measuring and storing blood oxygen levels and heart rate during the COVID-19 pandemic. The demand for accurate contactless devices was motivated by the need for cross-infection reduction and the shortage of conventional oximeters, partially due to the global supply chain issue. This paper evaluated a contactless mini program HealthyPai’s heart rate (HR) and oxygen saturation (SpO2) measurements compared with other wearable devices. In the HR study of 185 samples (81 in the laboratory environment, 104 in the real-life environment), the mean absolute error (MAE) ± standard deviation was 1.4827 ± 1.7452 in the lab, 6.9231 ± 5.6426 in the real-life setting. In the SpO2 study of 24 samples, the MAE ± standard deviation of the measurement was 1.0375 ± 0.7745. Our results validated that HealthyPai utilizing the Integrated Image Deep Learning Solution (IIDLS) framework, can accurately measure HR and SpO2, providing the test quality at least comparable to other FDA-approved wearable devices in the market and surpassing the consumer-grade and research-grade wearable standards.Keywords: remote photoplethysmography, heart rate, oxygen saturation, contactless measurement, mini program
Procedia PDF Downloads 1342041 Feasibility Study of Particle Image Velocimetry in the Muzzle Flow Fields during the Intermediate Ballistic Phase
Authors: Moumen Abdelhafidh, Stribu Bogdan, Laboureur Delphine, Gallant Johan, Hendrick Patrick
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This study is part of an ongoing effort to improve the understanding of phenomena occurring during the intermediate ballistic phase, such as muzzle flows. A thorough comprehension of muzzle flow fields is essential for optimizing muzzle device and projectile design. This flow characterization has heretofore been almost entirely limited to local and intrusive measurement techniques such as pressure measurements using pencil probes. Consequently, the body of quantitative experimental data is limited, so is the number of numerical codes validated in this field. The objective of the work presented here is to demonstrate the applicability of the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique in the challenging environment of the propellant flow of a .300 blackout weapon to provide accurate velocity measurements. The key points of a successful PIV measurement are the selection of the particle tracer, their seeding technique, and their tracking characteristics. We have experimentally investigated the aforementioned points by evaluating the resistance, gas dispersion, laser light reflection as well as the response to a step change across the Mach disk for five different solid tracers using two seeding methods. To this end, an experimental setup has been performed and consisted of a PIV system, the combustion chamber pressure measurement, classical high-speed schlieren visualization, and an aerosol spectrometer. The latter is used to determine the particle size distribution in the muzzle flow. The experimental results demonstrated the ability of PIV to accurately resolve the salient features of the propellant flow, such as the under the expanded jet and vortex rings, as well as the instantaneous velocity field with maximum centreline velocities of more than 1000 m/s. Besides, naturally present unburned particles in the gas and solid ZrO₂ particles with a nominal size of 100 nm, when coated on the propellant powder, are suitable as tracers. However, the TiO₂ particles intended to act as a tracer, surprisingly not only melted but also functioned as a combustion accelerator and decreased the number of particles in the propellant gas.Keywords: intermediate ballistic, muzzle flow fields, particle image velocimetry, propellant gas, particle size distribution, under expanded jet, solid particle tracers
Procedia PDF Downloads 1612040 Best-Performing Color Space for Land-Sea Segmentation Using Wavelet Transform Color-Texture Features and Fusion of over Segmentation
Authors: Seynabou Toure, Oumar Diop, Kidiyo Kpalma, Amadou S. Maiga
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Color and texture are the two most determinant elements for perception and recognition of the objects in an image. For this reason, color and texture analysis find a large field of application, for example in image classification and segmentation. But, the pioneering work in texture analysis was conducted on grayscale images, thus discarding color information. Many grey-level texture descriptors have been proposed and successfully used in numerous domains for image classification: face recognition, industrial inspections, food science medical imaging among others. Taking into account color in the definition of these descriptors makes it possible to better characterize images. Color texture is thus the subject of recent work, and the analysis of color texture images is increasingly attracting interest in the scientific community. In optical remote sensing systems, sensors measure separately different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum; the visible ones and even those that are invisible to the human eye. The amounts of light reflected by the earth in spectral bands are then transformed into grayscale images. The primary natural colors Red (R) Green (G) and Blue (B) are then used in mixtures of different spectral bands in order to produce RGB images. Thus, good color texture discrimination can be achieved using RGB under controlled illumination conditions. Some previous works investigate the effect of using different color space for color texture classification. However, the selection of the best performing color space in land-sea segmentation is an open question. Its resolution may bring considerable improvements in certain applications like coastline detection, where the detection result is strongly dependent on the performance of the land-sea segmentation. The aim of this paper is to present the results of a study conducted on different color spaces in order to show the best-performing color space for land-sea segmentation. In this sense, an experimental analysis is carried out using five different color spaces (RGB, XYZ, Lab, HSV, YCbCr). For each color space, the Haar wavelet decomposition is used to extract different color texture features. These color texture features are then used for Fusion of Over Segmentation (FOOS) based classification; this allows segmentation of the land part from the sea one. By analyzing the different results of this study, the HSV color space is found as the best classification performance while using color and texture features; which is perfectly coherent with the results presented in the literature.Keywords: classification, coastline, color, sea-land segmentation
Procedia PDF Downloads 2472039 Killing for the Great Peace: An Internal Perspective on the Anti-Manchu Theme in the Taiping Movement
Authors: Zihao He
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The majority of existing studies on the Taiping Movement (1851-1864) viewed their anti-Manchu attitudes as nationalist agendas: Taiping was aimed at revolting against the Manchu government and establishing a new political regime. To explain these aggressive and violent attitudes towards Manchu, these studies mainly found socio-economic factors and stressed the status of “being deprived”. Even the ‘demon-slaying’ narrative of the Taiping to dehumanize the Manchu tends to be viewed as a “religious tool” to achieve their political, nationalist aim. This paper argues that these studies on Taiping’s anti-Manchu attitudes and behaviors are analyzed from an external angle and have two major problems. Firstly, they distinguished “religion” from “nationalist” or “political”, focusing on the “political” nature of the movement. “Religion” and the religious experience within Taiping were largely ignored. This paper argues that there was no separable and independent “religion” in the Taiping Movement, as opposed to secular, nationalist politics. Secondly, these analyses held an external perspective on Taiping’s anti-Manchu agenda. Demonizing and killing Manchu were viewed as purely political actions. On the contrary, this paper focuses on the internal perspective of anti-Manchu narratives in the Taiping Movement. The method of this paper is mainly textual analysis, focusing on the official documents, edicts, and proclamations of the Taiping movement. It views the writing of the Taiping as a coherent narrative and rhetoric, which was attractive and convincing for its followers. In terms of the main findings, firstly, internal and external perspectives on anti-Manchu violence are different. Externally, violence was viewed as a tool and necessary process to achieve the political goal. However, internally speaking, in Taiping’s writing, violence was a result of Godlessness, which would be solved as far as the faith in God is restored in China. Having a framework of universal love among human beings as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father and killing was forbidden, the Taiping excluded Manchus from the family of human beings and demonized them. “Demon-slaying” was not violence. It was constructed as a necessary process to achieve the Great Peace. Moreover, Taiping’s anti-Manchu violence was not merely “political.” Rather, the category “religion” and its binary opposition, “secular,” is not suitable for Taiping. A key point related to this argument is the revolutionary violence against the Manchu government, which inherited the traditional “Heavenly Mandate” model. From an internal, theological perspective, anti-Manchu was ordained and commanded by the Heavenly Father. Manchu, as a regime, was standing as a hindrance in the path toward God. Besides, Manchu was not only viewed as a regime, but they were also “demons.” Therefore, the paper examines how Manchus were dehumanized in Taiping’s writings and were situated outside of the consideration of nonviolent and love. Manchu as a regime and Manchu as demons are in a dynamic relationship. As a regime, the Manchu government was preventing Chinese people from worshipping the Heavenly Father, so they were demonized. As they were demons, killing Manchus during the revolt was justified and not viewed as being contradicted the universal love among human beings.Keywords: anti-manchu, demon-slaying, heavenly mandate, religion and violence, the taiping movement.
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