A visualization tool for violent scenes detection

We present a browser-based visualization tool that allows users to explore movies and online videos based on the violence level of these videos. The system offers visualizations of annotations and results of the MediaEval 2012 Affect Task and can interactively download and analyze content from video hosting sites like YouTube

Detect the unexpected: a science for surveillance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline a strategy for research development focused on addressing the neglected role of visual perception in real life tasks such as policing surveillance and command and control settings. Approach – The scale of surveillance task in modern control room is expanding as technology increases input capacity at an accelerating rate. The authors review recent literature highlighting the difficulties that apply to modern surveillance and give examples of how poor detection of the unexpected can be, and how surprising this deficit can be. Perceptual phenomena such as change blindness are linked to the perceptual processes undertaken by law-enforcement personnel. Findings – A scientific programme is outlined for how detection deficits can best be addressed in the context of a multidisciplinary collaborative agenda between researchers and practitioners. The development of a cognitive research field specifically examining the occurrence of perceptual “failures” provides an opportunity for policing agencies to relate laboratory findings in psychology to their own fields of day-to-day enquiry. Originality/value – The paper shows, with examples, where interdisciplinary research may best be focussed on evaluating practical solutions and on generating useable guidelines on procedure and practice. It also argues that these processes should be investigated in real and simulated context-specific studies to confirm the validity of the findings in these new applied scenarios

Interactive Search and Exploration in Online Discussion Forums Using Multimodal Embeddings

In this paper we present a novel interactive multimodal learning system, which facilitates search and exploration in large networks of social multimedia users. It allows the analyst to identify and select users of interest, and to find similar users in an interactive learning setting. Our approach is based on novel multimodal representations of users, words and concepts, which we simultaneously learn by deploying a general-purpose neural embedding model. We show these representations to be useful not only for categorizing users, but also for automatically generating user and community profiles. Inspired by traditional summarization approaches, we create the profiles by selecting diverse and representative content from all available modalities, i.e. the text, image and user modality. The usefulness of the approach is evaluated using artificial actors, which simulate user behavior in a relevance feedback scenario. Multiple experiments were conducted in order to evaluate the quality of our multimodal representations, to compare different embedding strategies, and to determine the importance of different modalities. We demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach on two different multimedia collections originating from the violent online extremism forum Stormfront and the microblogging platform Twitter, which are particularly interesting due to the high semantic level of the discussions they feature

CENTRIST3D : um descritor espaço-temporal para detecção de anomalias em vídeos de multidões

Orientador: Hélio PedriniDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: O campo de estudo da detecção de anomalias em multidões possui uma vasta gama de aplicações, podendo-se destacar o monitoramento e vigilância de áreas de interesse, tais como aeroportos, bancos, parques, estádios e estações de trens, como uma das mais importantes. Em geral, sistemas de vigilância requerem prossionais qualicados para assistir longas gravações à procura de alguma anomalia, o que demanda alta concentração e dedicação. Essa abordagem tende a ser ineciente, pois os seres humanos estão sujeitos a falhas sob condições de fadiga e repetição devido aos seus próprios limites quanto à capacidade de observação e seu desempenho está diretamente ligado a fatores físicos e psicológicos, os quais podem impactar negativamente na qualidade de reconhecimento. Multidões tendem a se comportar de maneira complexa, possivelmente mudando de orientação e velocidade rapidamente, bem como devido à oclusão parcial ou total. Consequentemente, técnicas baseadas em rastreamento de pedestres ou que dependam de segmentação de fundo geralmente apresentam maiores taxas de erros. O conceito de anomalia é subjetivo e está sujeito a diferentes interpretações, dependendo do contexto da aplicação. Neste trabalho, duas contribuições são apresentadas. Inicialmente, avaliamos a ecácia do descritor CENsus TRansform hISTogram (CENTRIST), originalmente utilizado para categorização de cenas, no contexto de detecção de anomalias em multidões. Em seguida, propusemos o CENTRIST3D, uma versão modicada do CENTRIST que se utiliza de informações espaço-temporais para melhorar a discriminação dos eventos anômalos. Nosso método cria histogramas de características espaço-temporais de quadros de vídeos sucessivos, os quais foram divididos hierarquicamente utilizando um algoritmo modicado da correspondência em pirâmide espacial. Os resultados foram validados em três bases de dados públicas: University of California San Diego (UCSD) Anomaly Detection Dataset, Violent Flows Dataset e University of Minesota (UMN) Dataset. Comparado com outros trabalhos da literatura, CENTRIST3D obteve resultados satisfatórios nas bases Violent Flows e UMN, mas um desempenho abaixo do esperado na base UCSD, indicando que nosso método é mais adequado para cenas com mudanças abruptas em movimento e textura. Por m, mostramos que há evidências de que o CENTRIST3D é um descritor eciente de ser computado, sendo facilmente paralelizável e obtendo uma taxa de quadros por segundo suciente para ser utilizado em aplicações de tempo realAbstract: Crowd abnormality detection is a eld of study with a wide range of applications, where surveillance of interest areas, such as airports, banks, parks, stadiums and subways, is one of the most important purposes. In general, surveillance systems require well-trained personnel to watch video footages in order to search for abnormal events. Moreover, they usually are dependent on human operators, who are susceptible to failure under stressful and repetitive conditions. This tends to be an ineective approach since humans have their own natural limits of observation and their performance is tightly related to their physical and mental state, which might aect the quality of surveillance. Crowds tend to be complex, subject to subtle changes in motion and to partial or total occlusion. Consequently, approaches based on individual pedestrian tracking and background segmentation may suer in quality due to the aforementioned problems. Anomaly itself is a subjective concept, since it depends on the context of the application. Two main contributions are presented in this work. We rst evaluate the eectiveness of the CENsus TRansform hISTogram (CENTRIST) descriptor, initially designed for scene categorization, in crowd abnormality detection. Then, we propose the CENTRIST3D descriptor, a spatio-temporal variation of CENTRIST. Our method creates a histogram of spatiotemporal features from successive frames by extracting histograms of Volumetric Census Transform from a spatial representation using a modied Spatial Pyramid Matching algorithm. Additionally, we test both descriptors in three public data collections: UCSD Anomaly Detection Dataset, Violent Flows Dataset, and UMN Datasets. Compared to other works of the literature, CENTRIST3D achieved satisfactory accuracy rates on both Violent Flows and UMN Datasets, but poor performance on the UCSD Dataset, indicating that our method is more suitable to scenes with fast changes in motion and texture. Finally, we provide evidence that CENTRIST3D is an ecient descriptor to be computed, since it requires little computational time, is easily parallelizable and achieves suitable frame-per-second rates to be used in real-time applicationsMestradoCiência da ComputaçãoMestre em Ciência da Computação1406874159166/2015-2CAPESCNP

Photo-Poetics: Photographic Narratives in the New Journalism

Americans today have come to remember the unrest of the 1960s through the many shocking photographic images that emerged during that time. Images of assassinations, war, murders, and social upheaval have come to characterize this decade as particularly (perhaps perversely) photogenic. Further, these images have revealed the photographic medium as uniquely suited for confirming a violent reality that, at the time, seemed incomprehensible to an increasingly disillusioned public. In this discussion I seek to develop an understanding of photography as a theoretical process that can illuminate how we represent violent subject matter. In doing so, I apply these concepts to the New Journalism of the 1960s, which can be viewed as texts that grapple with the same types of social turbulence depicted in the many indelible images that have come to characterize this time period

The Neurocognitive Process of Digital Radicalization: A Theoretical Model and Analytical Framework

Recent studies suggest that empathy induced by narrative messages can effectively facilitate persuasion and reduce psychological reactance. Although limited, emerging research on the etiology of radical political behavior has begun to explore the role of narratives in shaping an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and intentions that culminate in radicalization. The existing studies focus exclusively on the influence of narrative persuasion on an individual, but they overlook the necessity of empathy and that in the absence of empathy, persuasion is not salient. We argue that terrorist organizations are strategic in cultivating empathetic-persuasive messages using audiovisual materials, and disseminating their message within the digital medium. Therefore, in this paper we propose a theoretical model and analytical framework capable of helping us better understand the neurocognitive process of digital radicalization

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for the forensic analysis of vaginal fluid

Vaginal fluid is most often found at crime scenes where a sexual assault has taken place or on clothing or other items collected from sexual assault victims or perpetrators. Because the victim is generally known in these cases, detection of vaginal fluid is not a matter of individual identification, as it might be for semen identification. Instead, linkages can be made between victim and suspect if the sexual assault was carried out digitally or with a foreign object (e.g., bottle, pool cue, cigarette, handle of a hammer or other tool, etc.). If such an object is only analyzed for DNA and the victim is identified, the suspect may claim that the victim’s DNA is present because she handled and/or is the owner of the object and not because it was used to sexually assault her; identification of vaginal fluid residue would alleviate such uncertainty. Most of the research conducted thus far regarding methods for the identification of vaginal fluid involves mRNA biomarkers and identification of various bacterial strains.1-3 However, these approaches require extensive sample preparation and laboratory analysis and have not fully explored the genomic differences among all body fluid RNAs. No existing methods of vaginal fluid identification incorporate both high specificity and rapid analysis.4 Therefore, a new rapid detection method is required. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an emerging technique with high sensitivity for the forensic analysis of various body fluids. This technique has the potential to improve current vaginal fluid identification techniques due to its ease-of-use, rapid analysis time, portability, and non-destructive nature. For this experiment, all vaginal fluid samples were collected from anonymous donors by saturation of a cotton swab via vaginal insertion. Samples were analyzed on gold nanoparticle chips.4 This nanostructured metal substrate is essential for the large signal-enhancement effect of SERS and also quenches any background fluorescence that sometimes interferes with normal Raman spectroscopy measurements.5 Vaginal fluid SERS signal variation of a single sample over a six-month period was evaluated under both ambient and frozen storage conditions. Vaginal fluid samples were also taken from 10 individuals over the course of a single menstrual cycle. Four samples collected at one-week intervals were obtained from each individual and analyzed using SERS. The SERS vaginal fluid signals showed very little variation as a function of time and storage conditions, indicating that the spectral pattern of vaginal fluid is not likely to change over time. The samples analyzed over the span of one menstrual cycle showed slight intra-donor differences, however, the overall spectral patterns remained consistent and reproducible. When cycle spectra were compared between individuals, very little donor-to-donor variation was observed indicating the potential for a universal vaginal fluid signature spectrum. A cross-validated, partial least squares – discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) model was built to classify all body fluids, where vaginal fluid was identified with 95.0% sensitivity and 96.6% specificity, which indicates that the spectral pattern of vaginal fluid was successfully distinguished from semen and blood. Thus, SERS has a high potential for application in the field of forensic science for vaginal fluid analysis

Automatic video censoring system using deep learning

Due to the extensive use of video-sharing platforms and services, the amount of such all kinds of content on the web has become massive. This abundance of information is a problem controlling the kind of content that may be present in such a video. More than telling if the content is suitable for children and sensitive people or not, figuring it out is also important what parts of it contains such content, for preserving parts that would be discarded in a simple broad analysis. To tackle this problem, a comparison was done for popular image deep learning models: MobileNetV2, Xception model, InceptionV3, VGG16, VGG19, ResNet101 and ResNet50 to seek the one that is most suitable for the required application. Also, a system is developed that would automatically censor inappropriate content such as violent scenes with the help of deep learning. The system uses a transfer learning mechanism using the VGG16 model. The experiments suggested that the model showed excellent performance for the automatic censoring application that could also be used in other similar applications