Visual Information Retrieval in Endoscopic Video Archives

In endoscopic procedures, surgeons work with live video streams from the inside of their subjects. A main source for documentation of procedures are still frames from the video, identified and taken during the surgery. However, with growing demands and technical means, the streams are saved to storage servers and the surgeons need to retrieve parts of the videos on demand. In this submission we present a demo application allowing for video retrieval based on visual features and late fusion, which allows surgeons to re-find shots taken during the procedure.Comment: Paper accepted at the IEEE/ACM 13th International Workshop on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI) in Prague (Czech Republic) between 10 and 12 June 201

Learning and Interpreting Multi-Multi-Instance Learning Networks

We introduce an extension of the multi-instance learning problem where examples are organized as nested bags of instances (e.g., a document could be represented as a bag of sentences, which in turn are bags of words). This framework can be useful in various scenarios, such as text and image classification, but also supervised learning over graphs. As a further advantage, multi-multi instance learning enables a particular way of interpreting predictions and the decision function. Our approach is based on a special neural network layer, called bag-layer, whose units aggregate bags of inputs of arbitrary size. We prove theoretically that the associated class of functions contains all Boolean functions over sets of sets of instances and we provide empirical evidence that functions of this kind can be actually learned on semi-synthetic datasets. We finally present experiments on text classification, on citation graphs, and social graph data, which show that our model obtains competitive results with respect to accuracy when compared to other approaches such as convolutional networks on graphs, while at the same time it supports a general approach to interpret the learnt model, as well as explain individual predictions.Comment: JML

Conflicts and Instability in the Contemporary Security Environment

While current doctrines try to separate conflicts within two distinct categories – conventional versus irregular, there are, however, a series of contemporary conflicts that challenge this western view on war showing that the disjunctive manner of classification in ‘big and conventional’ versus ‘small and irregular’ is limited and simplistic. The military strategists as well as the academics used a series of concepts in order to describe the main shifts in the character of war – from the Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) and ‘new wars’ to hybrid wars. This article aims to identify these mutations in war evolution in the new, post-Cold War international context. The traditional image we have on this well-known ‘labor division’ within the military field no longer reflects reality

DEMOGRAPHIC, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND GEOGRAPHIC FEATURES – SHAPING FACTORS OF THE TOURIST MARKET

One of the major themes which have more and more importance at a European level, but also at a national level, is the demographic evolution and its effects in the different fields of the social and economic life. The demographic trends which affect Romania, emphasized in the demographic prognoses, require a more complex approach, from the perspective of the development projects which the local authorities are initiating, within the operational programs, based especially on the objectives of the Regional Operational Program – REGIO. In order to clarify the connection between demography and development, between demography and tourism, we must underline the analysis of the demographic situation and the demographic prognoses on a medium and long term, which serve to the correct foundation of the plans and development strategies, regardless of the field of life and social activity, so exposed to the current metamorphoses.demography, tourism, tourist market, development, strategy

The decade of galaxy formation: pitfalls in the path ahead

At the turn of the decade we arguably move from the era of precision cosmology to the era of galaxy formation. One approach to this problem will be via the construction of comprehensive galaxy samples. In this review I take the opportunity to highlight a number of challenges which must be overcome before we can use such data to construct a robust empirical blueprint of galaxy evolution. The issues briefly highlighted here are: the Hubble tuning fork versus galaxy components, the hierarchy of structure, the accuracy of structural decompositions, galaxy photometry, incompleteness, cosmic variance, photometric versus spectroscopic redshifts, wavelength bias, dust attenuation, and the disconnect with theory. These concerns essentially form one of the key motivations of the GAMA survey which, as one of its goals, will establish a complete comprehensive kpc-resolution 3D multi-wavelength (UV-Opt-IR-Radio) database of 250k galaxy systems to z <0.5.Comment: Review paper (12 pages, 11 figures) in "Hunting for the Dark: The Hidden Side of Galaxy Formation", Malta, 19-23 Oct. 2009, eds. V.P.Debattista & C.C.Popescu, AIP Conf. Ser., in pres

För att göra en lång historia kort-to make a long story short: The translation into English of Swedish idioms in Monika Fagerholm’s novel Underbara kvinnor vid vatten

Avhandlingen undersöker hur idiomen i Monika Fagerholms roman Underbara kvinnor vid vatten har blivit översatta i den engelska översättningen Wonderful women by the water av Joan Tate. Har de blivit anpassade till den engelskspråkiga läsaren och hans kultur eller har de bevarats i sin form och t.ex. blivit översatta ord för ord? Baserat på L. Venutis utsaga att de flesta översättningar till engelska har blivit anpassade till den engelska målgruppen och den engelska kulturen är min hypotes att idiomen i Underbara kvinnor vid vatten också har blivit anpassade till målgruppen. Idiomen har blivit översatta på det sätt att läsarna av översättningen kan relatera till idiomen, känna igen dem eller så har de översatts med ett normaluttryck i engelskan. M. Tymoczkos teori om metonymi har också använts i analysen av idiomen i avhandlingen. Metonymi är ett slags bildligt uttryck där en del står för en helhet, eller en helhet står för en del. T.ex. ordet England står inte bara för landet utan också för Englands nationella fotbollslag. Tymoczko har anpassat metonymi till översättning så att metonymi innebär att vissa av översättaren utvalda element i översättningen representerar en hel kultur eller ett helt språk. I denna avhandling har metonymin använts genom att undersöka vilka idiom som har valts ut att representera Finland, finlandssvenskan och den finlandssvenska kulturen. Förutom att metonymi används genom att vissa koncept representerar en hel kultur, är också alla skrivna verk enligt Tymoczko metonymiska, i det att de bygger på tidigare verk. Översättningar bygger på originaltexter och originaltexter i sin tur bygger på verk som blivit skrivna tidigare och/eller vid samma tid som originalet. Resultaten visade att de flesta idiom hade översatts med sådana översättnings strategier som anpassade dem till målgruppen. Hypotesen visade sig alltså vara korrekt. Det fanns ett antal idiom i materialet som ansågs vara metonymiska element. Vissa av dem representerar Finland på det sätt att de anknyter till havet och stranden. Finland är ett kustland och dessa idiom har kan ha bibehållits i sin form och översatts ord för ord av symboliska skäl. De representerar de tusen sjöarnas land och finlandssvenskan. Andra metonymiska idiom är representanter av finlandssvenskan.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format