A vision system for symbolic interpretation of dynamic scenes using arsom

We describe an artificial high-level vision system for the symbolic interpretation of data coming from a video camera that acquires the image sequences of moving scenes. The system is based on ARSOM neural networks that learn to generate the perception-grounded predicates obtained by image sequences. The ARSOM neural networks also provide a three-dimensional estimation of the movements of the relevant objects in the scene. The vision system has been employed in two scenarios: the monitoring of a robotic arm suitable for space operations, and the surveillance of an electronic data processing (EDP) center

Conversations In The Rainforest: Culture, Values, And The Environment In Central Africa

This book examines the environmental perceptions, values, and practices of inhabitants of Central Africa’s rainforests in order to help build a more firm foundation for ecological and social sustainability at the local level, while also making contributions to global environmental ethics from underrepresented African cultural traditions. It focuses on two case studies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one an integrated health and sustainable development project in the Ubangi region, and the other a large wildlife reserve in the Ituri Forest. Through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and participant observation conducted with local farmers and foragers, project staff, and local academics, the author records cultural and practical resources for the promotion of ecological sustainability both locally and globally. This revised and updated edition includes a new Preface and Afterword highlighting some of the key transformations that have taken place in the DRC, and relating those changes to the enduring themes discussed in the original work. In addition to several new color figures, new color photographs provide alluring images of the places and people with whom the author worked.https://dune.une.edu/env_facbooks/1000/thumbnail.jp

Unfinished Histories

Colonial memory and interdisciplinary memorialization across Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Belgium Belgian colonialism was short-lived but left significant traces that are still felt in the twenty-first century. This book explores how the imperial past has lived on in Belgium, but also in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The contributing authors approach colonial legacies from an interdisciplinary perspective and examine how literature, politics, the arts, the press, cinema, museal practices, architecture, and language policies – but also justice and ethics – have been used to critically revisit this period of African and European history. Whilst engaging with significant figures such as Sammy Baloji, Chokri Ben Chikha, Gaël Faye, François Kabasele, Alexis Kagame, Edmond Leplae, VY Mudimbe, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Joseph Ndwaniye, and Sony Labou Tansi, this book also analyses the role of places such as the AfricaMuseum, Bujumbura, Colwyn Bay, Kongolo, and the Virunga Park to appraise the links between memory and the development of a postcolonial present. Contributors: Sarah Arens (University of Liverpool), Robert Burroughs (Leeds Beckett), Bambi Ceuppens (AfricaMuseum), Matthias De Groof (University of Antwerp), Catherine Gilbert (University of Newcastle), Chantal Gishoma (University of Bayreuth), Hannah Grayson (University of Stirling), Dónal Hassett (University of Cork), Sky Herington (University of Warwick), Nicki Hitchcott (University of St Andrews), Yvette Hutchison (University of Warwick), Albert Kasanda (Charles University, Prague), Maëline Le Lay (CNRS/ THALIM, Sorbonne nouvelle), Reuben Loffman (Queen Mary University of London), Caroline Williamson Sinalo (University of Cork) Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content)

Unfinished Histories

Colonial memory and interdisciplinary memorialization across Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Belgium Belgian colonialism was short-lived but left significant traces that are still felt in the twenty-first century. This book explores how the imperial past has lived on in Belgium, but also in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The contributing authors approach colonial legacies from an interdisciplinary perspective and examine how literature, politics, the arts, the press, cinema, museal practices, architecture, and language policies – but also justice and ethics – have been used to critically revisit this period of African and European history. Whilst engaging with significant figures such as Sammy Baloji, Chokri Ben Chikha, Gaël Faye, François Kabasele, Alexis Kagame, Edmond Leplae, VY Mudimbe, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Joseph Ndwaniye, and Sony Labou Tansi, this book also analyses the role of places such as the AfricaMuseum, Bujumbura, Colwyn Bay, Kongolo, and the Virunga Park to appraise the links between memory and the development of a postcolonial present. Contributors: Sarah Arens (University of Liverpool), Robert Burroughs (Leeds Beckett), Bambi Ceuppens (AfricaMuseum), Matthias De Groof (University of Antwerp), Catherine Gilbert (University of Newcastle), Chantal Gishoma (University of Bayreuth), Hannah Grayson (University of Stirling), Dónal Hassett (University of Cork), Sky Herington (University of Warwick), Nicki Hitchcott (University of St Andrews), Yvette Hutchison (University of Warwick), Albert Kasanda (Charles University, Prague), Maëline Le Lay (CNRS/ THALIM, Sorbonne nouvelle), Reuben Loffman (Queen Mary University of London), Caroline Williamson Sinalo (University of Cork) Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content)

Oral Literature in Africa

Ruth Finneganâ s Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finneganâ s ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. Oral Literature in Africa has been accessed by hundreds of readers in over 60 different countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and numerous other African countries. The digital editions of this book are free to download thanks to the generous support of interested readers and organisations, who made donations using the crowd-funding website Unglue.it. Oral Literature in Africa is part of our World Oral Literature Series in conjunction with the World Oral Literature Project

Medical histories of Belgium

This edited volume offers the first comprehensive historical overview of the Belgian medical field in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its chapters develop narratives that go beyond traditional representations of medicine in national overviews, which have focused mostly on stateprofession interactions. Instead, the chapters bring more complex histories of health, care and citizenship. These new histories explore the relation between medicine and a variety of sociopolitical and cultural views and realities, treating themes such as gender, religion, disability, media, colonialism, education and social activism. The novelty of the book lies in its thorough attention to the (too often little studied) second half of the twentieth century and to the multiplicity of actors, places and media involved in the medical field. In assembling a variety of new scholarship, the book also makes a contribution to ‘decentring’ the European historiography of medicine by adding the perspective of a particular country Belgium to the literature

Medical histories of Belgium

This edited volume offers the first comprehensive historical overview of the Belgian medical field in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its chapters develop narratives that go beyond traditional representations of medicine in national overviews, which have focused mostly on stateprofession interactions. Instead, the chapters bring more complex histories of health, care and citizenship. These new histories explore the relation between medicine and a variety of sociopolitical and cultural views and realities, treating themes such as gender, religion, disability, media, colonialism, education and social activism. The novelty of the book lies in its thorough attention to the (too often little studied) second half of the twentieth century and to the multiplicity of actors, places and media involved in the medical field. In assembling a variety of new scholarship, the book also makes a contribution to ‘decentring’ the European historiography of medicine by adding the perspective of a particular country Belgium to the literature

Ancestral Paradigms and modern lives. Relational living in Mozambique and DR Congo

The starting point for this comparative study is that HIV-AIDS programs in Mozambique and DR Congo are often ineffective because they use approaches based on inadequate concepts and paradigms. The relevant local paradigms concern ancestors and the taboos they instigated. Central is the notion of the strongly interdependent person together with ideas, experiences and practices regarded as so-called “witchcraft.” This comparative study among 13 different Bantu-speaking cultures in Mozambique and DR Congo shows that interventions in health or in law are more effective when they take local paradigms into account. For many Bantu-speakers, the relevant social and cultural issues are not secondary, despite the tendency of urbanized people to wrangle with reciprocity obligations, and Christians with the ambiguities involved. Since colonialism, the systematic negation of African cultures, practices, knowledge, values, morals and ethics has provoked an ambivalent or undervaluing attitude that many members of African “elites” have internalized. This negation is part of the worldwide push for uniformity through Christianity, capitalism and globalization. Chapters one to four describe the central paradigms of (1) ancestorhood, (2) the notion of the strongly relational persons, (3) the value of transmission of life and taboos interfering in the search for health and well-being, and some ‘framings’ dealing with these paradigms, by discussing ritual effectiveness, and (4) ambivalent vuloyi, okhwiri, kindoki and similar notions of so-called ‘witchcraft’ that influence vital strength in a sense-giving concept activated by, e.g., AIDS, misfortunes, death or inequalities. The author discusses main notions and categories used especially in health, education and law in eight Bantu linguistic areas in Mozambique and four other ‘Bantu’ linguistic areas of Southwest DR Congo, showing differences and similarities. The basic common values expressed in these paradigms are deeply anchored and part of life. Chapters five and six describe and discuss the application of the paradigms described in Part I in the areas of health (and education for HIV prevention) and law. The author suggests that social and cultural inclusion allows more effectiveness in interventions that aim to introduce behavioral changes. The health application deals with HIV/AIDS: how to motivate people to get tested for HIV; how to reduce the number of antiretroviral therapy interruptions, how to achieve more effective HIV-prevention education, in including also HIV/AIDS education in youth initiation rites. Chapter six describes and analyses practices in "living right", local palavers and rituals, which are used to treat conflicts in communities. Palavers and rituals help to manage conflicts between people who are perceived in terms of "witchcraft": there are strong similarities involving differences in the way healers and leaders neutralize the harmfulness included in okhwiri, kindoki and similar notions of "witchcraft". These examples testify to the relevance of multicultural practices conveying values, notions of morality and ethics deeply rooted locally. Chapter seven discusses the insistence of healers, leaders, and initiating counsellors that knowledge is involved in updated endogenous paradigms, contrary to the claims of physicians, lawyers, and development workers who in name of "modernity", deny the knowledge involved in "ancestral" practices and paradigms. These are often reduced to retrograde superstitions, either too religious or not religious enough, although they carry values that are relevant to many Bantu speakers in both countries. The author concludes in terms of multiple worlds and modernities, and questions any fundamentalist ontological assignment. The author discusses the ontological theories used in anthropology, which describe the "endogenous" paradigms as fundamentally ontological. Following the ethical critique of Levinas and Derrida towards fundamental ontology for its egocentric reduction to the self-measured similarity of "Being," the author analyses such ontological assignments for the Mozambican and Congolese Bantu context described. Do they establish "what is" in fixing identities? Or does rather a notion of relational life predominate, of becoming in multiple worlds where people combine multiple worlds, different approaches in great multiplicity, in coexisting multiple modernities. The recognition of the multiplicity of African categories and practices is relevant from the "local" point of view to which this study gives a voice, in a contribution to the decolonization of mind, knowledge and practices