Signals and Images in Sea Technologies

Life below water is the 14th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) envisaged by the United Nations and is aimed at conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development. It is not difficult to argue that signals and image technologies may play an essential role in achieving the foreseen targets linked to SDG 14. Besides increasing the general knowledge of ocean health by means of data analysis, methodologies based on signal and image processing can be helpful in environmental monitoring, in protecting and restoring ecosystems, in finding new sensor technologies for green routing and eco-friendly ships, in providing tools for implementing best practices for sustainable fishing, as well as in defining frameworks and intelligent systems for enforcing sea law and making the sea a safer and more secure place. Imaging is also a key element for the exploration of the underwater world for various scopes, ranging from the predictive maintenance of sub-sea pipelines and other infrastructure projects, to the discovery, documentation, and protection of sunken cultural heritage. The scope of this Special Issue encompasses investigations into techniques and ICT approaches and, in particular, the study and application of signal- and image-based methods and, in turn, exploration of the advantages of their application in the previously mentioned areas

Convex Optimization, Stochastic Approximation, and Optimal Contract Management in Real-time Bidding

This thesis studies problems at the intersection of monotone and convex optimization, auction theory, and electronic commerce. Convex optimization and the theory of stochastic approximation serve as the basic practical and theoretical tools we have drawn upon. We solve important problems facing Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) and other demand aggregators (to be defined in the main body) in the e-commerce space, particularly in the field of real-time bidding (RTB). RTB is a real-time auction market, the primary application of which is the selling advertising space. Our main contribution to this field, at its most basic, is to recognize that certain optimal bidding problems can be re-cast as convex optimization problems. Particular focus will be placed upon the second price auction mechanism due to the strikingly simple structural results that hold in this case; but many results generalize to the first price auction mechanism under additional assumptions. We will also touch upon formal connections between these auction problems and two important problems in finance, namely the dark pool problem, and optimal portfolio construction

Crisis and Masculinity on Contemporary Cable Television: Tracing the Western Hero in "Breaking Bad", "The Walking Dead" and "Hell on Wheels"

Both the “crisis of masculinity” and “quality TV” have been popular discourses in academia in recent years. Many of these contemporary quality TV series feature male anti-heroes at the center of their narratives. This dissertation argues that the constructions of masculinity in series such as "Breaking Bad" and "The Walking Dead" are informed by the Western hero. Furthermore, the dissertation links this recourse to an arguably outmoded model of masculinity to recent crisis tendencies in the USA, most notably the recent economic downturn and the aftermath of September 11 2001. Moreover, the return of the Western hero can be understood as a process of remasculinization in light of the crisis of masculinity