Finger vein identification based on transfer learning of AlexNet

Nowadays finger vein-based validation systems are getting extra attraction among other authentication systems due to high security in terms of ensuring data confidentiality. This system works by recognizing patterns from finger vein images and these images are captured using a camera based on near-infrared technology. In this research, we focused finger vein identification system by using our own finger vein dataset, we trained it with transfer learning of AlexNet model and verified by test images. We have done three different experiments with the same dataset but different sizes of data. Therefore, we obtained varied predictability with 95% accuracy from the second experiment

Finger Vein Recognition Using Principle Component Analysis and Adaptive k-Nearest Centroid Neighbor Classifier

The k-nearest centroid neighbor kNCN classifier is one of the non-parametric classifiers which provide a powerful decision based on the geometrical surrounding neighborhood. Essentially, the main challenge in the kNCN is due to slow classification time that utilizing all training samples to find each nearest centroid neighbor. In this work, an adaptive k-nearest centroid neighbor (akNCN) is proposed as an improvement to the kNCN classifier. Two new rules are introduced to adaptively select the neighborhood size of the test sample. The neighborhood size for the test sample is changed through the following ways: 1) The neighborhood size, k will be adapted to j if the centroid distance of j-th nearest centroid neighbor is greater than the predefined boundary. 2) There is no need to look for further nearest centroid neighbors if the maximum number of samples of the same class is found among jth nearest centroid neighbor. Thus, the size of neighborhood is adaptively changed to j. Experimental results on theFinger Vein USM (FV-USM) image database demonstrate the promising results in which the classification time of the akNCN classifier is significantly reduced to 51.56% in comparison to the closest competitors, kNCN and limited-kNCN. It also outperforms its competitors by achieving the best reduction ratio of 12.92% whilemaintaining the classification accuracy

Improved methods for finger vein identification using composite median-wiener filter and hierarchical centroid features extraction

Finger vein identification is a potential new area in biometric systems. Finger vein patterns contain highly discriminative characteristics, which are difficult to be forged because they reside underneath the skin of the finger and require a specific device to capture them. Research have been carried out in this field but there is still an unresolved issue related to low-quality data due to data capturing and processing. Low-quality data have caused errors in the feature extraction process and reduced identification performance rate in finger vein identification. To address this issue, a new image enhancement and feature extraction methods were developed to improve finger vein identification. The image enhancement, Composite Median-Wiener (CMW) filter would improve image quality and preserve the edges of the finger vein image. Next, the feature extraction method, Hierarchical Centroid Feature Method (HCM) was fused with statistical pixel-based distribution feature method at the feature-level fusion to improve the performance of finger vein identification. These methods were evaluated on public SDUMLA-HMT and FV-USM finger vein databases. Each database was divided into training and testing sets. The average result of the experiments conducted was taken to ensure the accuracy of the measurements. The k-Nearest Neighbor classifier with city block distance to match the features was implemented. Both these methods produced accuracy as high as 97.64% for identification rate and 1.11% of equal error rate (EER) for measures verification rate. These showed that the accuracy of the proposed finger vein identification method is higher than the one reported in the literature. As a conclusion, the results have proven that the CMW filter and HCM have significantly improved the accuracy of finger vein identification

Transnational Modernisms: The United States, Mexico, and the Idea of America

This dissertation offers a bilingual analysis of the transnational co-formation of U.S. and Mexican cultural nationalisms in the 1920s and 1930s, and investigates the intra-hemispheric networks of modernist practice and exchange in the Americas. Drawing on a wide variety of materials (culturalist essays, poems, paintings, journals, etc.) from such diverse writers and artists such as Waldo Frank, Stuart Chase, John Dos Passos, Thomas Hart Benton, Alfonso Reyes, José Enrique Rodó, Diego Rivera, and Salvador Novo (among others), this project reconstructs the polydirectional process of cultural collaboration through which the gendered and racialized vocabulary of U.S. and Mexican nationality was produced, transacted, and sometimes contested. On the one hand, my focus on the circulation of goods, people and ideas investigates how the transnational movement of culture contributed to the reification of the language of cultural and/or national difference in the Americas. On the other hand, I argue that the traveling of culture generated forms of expression and identification that challenged the nationalist discourse of U.S. and Mexican sovereignty. Finally, this dissertation explores the unexamined relationship between Americanism and modernism, and considers the distinctive traits and shapes of modernist art in the Western Hemisphere

Dizziness

"The feelings of dizziness and vibrations are closely related. Most people experience vibrations at one point or another, and some even frequently. The unmistakable feeling of the body vibrating can be overwhelming. More often, though, the feeling is less distinct, and the vibrations are ignored or brushed aside as being caused by something else, like a truck passing, the floor rocking, a sudden spell of wobbliness. In dance and ritual, vibrations are made visible through the shaking of the performers. This shaking, as well as the vibrations that are sensed but unseen, can be understood as the first step in a transformation: a signal from phantom bodies, lost memories, and new identities trying to wriggle their way out. Joachim Koester (artist) This book gets your head spinning. While being bombarded by daily reports of crises (both real and fictional), while destabilization has become normal and feelings of disorientation, fear, and dizziness have started to prevail in our everyday lives, the contributors to this book reverse this perspective by emphasizing that dizziness is a valuable resource. Dizziness—A Resource is the result of the cross-disciplinary research project initiated in 2014 by artistic duo Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond. What can we gain when balance is lost? How can anarchy and dizziness empower us? How can a cognitive vertigo fuel our cognition? Artists, scientists, philosophers, and art critics attempt to answer these questions and to show us how to navigate a world marked by unpredictable change. Małgorzata Ludwisiak (director, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw) With contributions by Ruth Anderwald, Mathias Benedek, Oliver A. I. Botar, Katrin Bucher Trantow, Davide Deriu, Karoline Feyertag, Leonhard Grond, Sarah Kolb, François Jullien, Rebekka Ladewig, Jarosław Lubiak, Alice Pechriggl, Oliver Ressler, Maya M. Shmailov, Maria Spindler, Marcus Steinweg

A critical evaluation of the development of Rumanyo as a national language in Namibia

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Linguistics, Language and Communication)Among others, the current study had been conceived due to the fact that, although Namibia is endowed with multiple languages, their development throughout the long colonial history, had been unequal. That is, some languages received more attention than others and some were hardly developed at all. After independence, Namibians had legitimate expectations that all their (different) languages would be developed equitably throughout all the regions, and among all ethnic groups or speech communities. In the post-apartheid era, however, Namibians have been subjected to a limited and unequal language and literacy development which encouraged me to conduct a research to critically evaluate the development of Rumanyo or lack of thereof. The focus of this study is on understanding the disparities in language and literacy development in Namibia with particular emphasis on ethno-regional disparities and what precipitates these inequalities. The reason for the emphasis on region and ethnicity in researching language and literacy development was due to Namibia's multi-ethnicity and the over-lapping of regions and ethnic groups