Off-line Arabic Handwriting Recognition System Using Fast Wavelet Transform

In this research, off-line handwriting recognition system for Arabic alphabet is introduced. The system contains three main stages: preprocessing, segmentation and recognition stage. In the preprocessing stage, Radon transform was used in the design of algorithms for page, line and word skew correction as well as for word slant correction. In the segmentation stage, Hough transform approach was used for line extraction. For line to words and word to characters segmentation, a statistical method using mathematic representation of the lines and words binary image was used. Unlike most of current handwriting recognition system, our system simulates the human mechanism for image recognition, where images are encoded and saved in memory as groups according to their similarity to each other. Characters are decomposed into a coefficient vectors, using fast wavelet transform, then, vectors, that represent a character in different possible shapes, are saved as groups with one representative for each group. The recognition is achieved by comparing a vector of the character to be recognized with group representatives. Experiments showed that the proposed system is able to achieve the recognition task with 90.26% of accuracy. The system needs only 3.41 seconds a most to recognize a single character in a text of 15 lines where each line has 10 words on average

Off-line Arabic Handwriting Recognition System Using Fast Wavelet Transform

In this research, off-line handwriting recognition system for Arabic alphabet is introduced. The system contains three main stages: preprocessing, segmentation and recognition stage. In the preprocessing stage, Radon transform was used in the design of algorithms for page, line and word skew correction as well as for word slant correction. In the segmentation stage, Hough transform approach was used for line extraction. For line to words and word to characters segmentation, a statistical method using mathematic representation of the lines and words binary image was used. Unlike most of current handwriting recognition system, our system simulates the human mechanism for image recognition, where images are encoded and saved in memory as groups according to their similarity to each other. Characters are decomposed into a coefficient vectors, using fast wavelet transform, then, vectors, that represent a character in different possible shapes, are saved as groups with one representative for each group. The recognition is achieved by comparing a vector of the character to be recognized with group representatives. Experiments showed that the proposed system is able to achieve the recognition task with 90.26% of accuracy. The system needs only 3.41 seconds a most to recognize a single character in a text of 15 lines where each line has 10 words on average

Cosmopolitan Encounters: Sanskrit and Persian at the Mughal Court

In this dissertation, I analyze interactions between Sanskrit and Persian literary cultures at the Mughal court during the years 1570-1650 C.E. During this period, the Mughals rose to prominence as one of the most powerful dynasties of the early modern world and patronized Persian as a language of both literature and empire. Simultaneously, the imperial court supported Sanskrit textual production, participated in Sanskrit cultural life, and produced Persian translations of Sanskrit literature. For their part, Sanskrit intellectuals became influential members of the Mughal court, developed a linguistic interest in Persian, and wrote extensively about their imperial experiences. Yet the role of Sanskrit at the Mughal court remains a largely untold story in modern scholarship, as do the resulting engagements across cultural lines. To the extent that scholars have thought about Sanskrit and Persian in tandem, they have generally been blinded by their own language barriers and mistakenly asserted that there was no serious interaction between the two. I challenge this uncritical view through a systematic reading of texts in both languages and provide the first detailed account of exchanges between these traditions at the Mughal court. I further argue that these cross-cultural events are central to understanding the construction of power in the Mughal Empire and the cultural and literary dynamics of early modern India

Marginal Freedoms: Journalism, Participation and Moral Multiplicity in Odisha, India.

This dissertation is an ethnography of the moral worlds of journalists and newspaper workers in Odisha, India. It portrays the ethical dilemmas that media producers confront in daily life as marginalized citizens of the world’s largest democracy. Located on India’s eastern coast, Odisha is an infamously poor state now experiencing rapid but uneven economic growth, out of which have arisen violent conflicts over religious conversion and mining in indigenous territories. The dissertation is based on fourteen months of qualitative research in Odisha’s capital, Bhubaneswar, including newsroom participant-observation, long-form interviews, and the analysis of local newspapers and internet-based news. I argue that Odisha’s journalists live with moral multiplicity, or the coexistence of diverse, often incommensurable evaluations of what counts as ethical action, and that such multiplicity produces double binds in Odisha's civic participation. For example, publications in the local language, Odia, are accessible to the growing literate class and can serve as potent metonyms of “the people,” yet local understandings of language devalue Odia journalism as corrupt in comparison with journalism in English. Such moral conflicts arise from frictions between liberal ideals like free speech and local modes of activism and patronage that have origins in the nineteenth century. This dissertation uses micro-level analyses of how journalists manage moral multiplicity in writing techniques, legal complaints, employee interactions, and social networking to illustrate how Indian media producers live with the macro-level historical transformations of globalization. This research reinvigorates the study of South Asian public life outside of major metropolises and contributes to the descriptive study of communication ethics cross-culturally.PhDAnthropologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110352/1/kbmartin_1.pd