Recent Application in Biometrics

In the recent years, a number of recognition and authentication systems based on biometric measurements have been proposed. Algorithms and sensors have been developed to acquire and process many different biometric traits. Moreover, the biometric technology is being used in novel ways, with potential commercial and practical implications to our daily activities. The key objective of the book is to provide a collection of comprehensive references on some recent theoretical development as well as novel applications in biometrics. The topics covered in this book reflect well both aspects of development. They include biometric sample quality, privacy preserving and cancellable biometrics, contactless biometrics, novel and unconventional biometrics, and the technical challenges in implementing the technology in portable devices. The book consists of 15 chapters. It is divided into four sections, namely, biometric applications on mobile platforms, cancelable biometrics, biometric encryption, and other applications. The book was reviewed by editors Dr. Jucheng Yang and Dr. Norman Poh. We deeply appreciate the efforts of our guest editors: Dr. Girija Chetty, Dr. Loris Nanni, Dr. Jianjiang Feng, Dr. Dongsun Park and Dr. Sook Yoon, as well as a number of anonymous reviewers

The Anthem Companion to Pierre Bourdieu

The Anthem Companion to Pierre Bourdieu' provides an introduction to the French sociologist’s thought and an evaluation of the international significance of his work from a range of national perspectives. The contributions in the companion investigate the applicability of Bourdieu’s theories and concepts in diverse sociopolitical contexts and consider the ways they can be said to possess universal validity. In examining Bourdieu on his own philosophical terms, this companion contributes to the general debate about the effects of the transnational and transcultural transfer of concepts generated in the West

Cities Made of Boundaries: Mapping Social Life in Urban Form

Cities Made of Boundaries presents the theoretical foundation and concepts for a new social scientific urban morphological mapping method, Boundary Line Type (BLT) Mapping. Its vantage is a plea to establish a frame of reference for radically comparative urban studies positioned between geography and archaeology. Based in multidisciplinary social and spatial theory, a critical realist understanding of the boundaries that compose built space is operationalised by a mapping practice utilising Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Benjamin N. Vis gives a precise account of how BLT Mapping can be applied to detailed historical, reconstructed, contemporary, and archaeological urban plans, exemplified by sixteenth to twenty-first century Winchester (UK) and Classic Maya Chunchucmil (Mexico). This account demonstrates how the functional and experiential difference between compact western and tropical dispersed cities can be explored. The methodological development of Cities Made of Boundaries will appeal to readers interested in the comparative social analysis of built environments, and those seeking to expand the evidence-base of design options to structure urban life and development

Cities Made of Boundaries

Cities Made of Boundaries presents the theoretical foundation and concepts for a new social scientific urban morphological mapping method, Boundary Line Type (BLT) Mapping. Its vantage is a plea to establish a frame of reference for radically comparative urban studies positioned between geography and archaeology. Based in multidisciplinary social and spatial theory, a critical realist understanding of the boundaries that compose built space is operationalised by a mapping practice utilising Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Benjamin N. Vis gives a precise account of how BLT Mapping can be applied to detailed historical, reconstructed, contemporary, and archaeological urban plans, exemplified by sixteenth- to twenty-first century Winchester (UK) and Classic Maya Chunchucmil (Mexico). This account demonstrates how the functional and experiential difference between compact western and tropical dispersed cities can be explored. The methodological development of Cities Made of Boundaries will appeal to readers interested in the comparative social analysis of built environments, and those seeking to expand the evidence-base of design options to structure urban life and development

Faculty Publications and Creative Works 2003

Faculty Publications & Creative Works is an annual compendium of scholarly and creative activities of University of New Mexico faculty during the noted calendar year. It serves to illustrate the robust and active intellectual pursuits conducted by the faculty in support of teaching and research at UNM

The fuzzy theory and women writers in the late eighteenth century

'Fuzzy Theory and Women Writers in the Late Eighteenth Century' contends that women writers require more careful critical treatment, and suggests that critics are still bound by the outdated logic of the Law of the Excluded Middle. This law, first formulated by Aristotle, and developed by Gottfried Leibniz in the early eighteenth century, indicates that where there are two contradictory prepositions, one must be true and the other false; a female writer must, therefore, either be feminine or masculine, conservative or radical. The twentieth century concept of Fuzzy logic, however, helped mathematicians and engineers to manage reasoning that was only approximate, rather than exact. Borrowing from this, the thesis will employ the Fuzzy Set Theory, which permits the gradual assessment of elements in a set, rather than relying on elements that are assessed in binaric terms (the principle of bivalence, or, contradiction). Put simply, the Fuzzy Set Theory does away with binaries, the Law of the Excluded Middle, and the Law of Contradiction, allowing subjects to be imprecise, and changeable. Thus, each chapter will construct a Fuzzy Set by which a variety of eighteenth century debates, with which women writers engaged, can be examined. The thesis will show that all such concepts are subjective and unstable— changeable and open to personal interpretation, and will discuss such writers as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Macaulay, Charlotte Smith, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Mary Hays, Lucy Aikin, Hannah More and Joanna Southcott

Financial Littorals: The Architecture of Profit Margins and Ambiguous Lands

On the 4 April 2006, a municipal council was dissolved for the first time in the democratic history of Spain, making the housing crisis financially and politically apparent. In the Mediterranean town of Marbella politicians had been adapting the boundary between building land and the coastal commons to their own interests. The power to quantify and reclassify buildable space was at the core of an architectural struggle, as urban planning and the provision of housing had been designed upon the ambiguity of the highest tide in history. Since the 1988 Coastal Law, the Spanish shoreline has not been demarcated in its entirety yet: evictions and eminent domain have trapped the littoral commons in Court. Every twist of the shoreline reveals not where tides are active, but rather where landscape margins are entangled with real estate profit margins. This research investigates speculation and the housing crisis by using the materiality of the shoreline to understand dwelling struggles. The calculated construction of ambiguity in the demarcation of the littoral is analysed as a form of control and a form of resistance. Structured in three chapters, the practice-based research departs from the invention of the coastline in Spain to unpack the financialisation of space and the appropriation of the common good within the housing crisis. It investigates how the provision of ‘affordable’ homes as financial instruments relies on the global circulation of natural capital, coastal wetlands and offsetting operations. Through case studies in Europe and the US, it investigates the engineering of the shoreline by insurance companies after ‘natural disasters’ and the circumvention of mortgage debt offshore. Embedded in an analysis of housing from a critical finance perspective, this thesis demonstrates how rather than territorial boundaries being a circulation of capital, it is capital what needs to be read as a constant circulation of zoning laws and ambiguous borderlines, in order to anticipate alternative futures to housing inequality

Information Application for Multicriterial Optimum

The management activity does not only include the techniques and methods of programming, organizing and allocation of resources, starting and control of operations, interventions but it also implies a great number of decisions regarding the launching, carrying on, modifying and carrying out of activities or choosing one of the possible variants so as to ensure that the goals should be reached. The activity of choosing one variant from several possible ones is often met with in maintenance management, such as: the selection of an optimum equipment, the choice of a firm for after/sale service, for supplying materials or spare parts which implies taking into account a large number of factors. The choice based on fundamental mathematic methods becomes feasible by using the current automatic data processing devices and this paper presents the “Xomc” application of establishing the multicriterial optimum.maintenance management, multicriterial optimum, fundamental mathematic methods