Fusing spatial and temporal components for real-time depth data enhancement of dynamic scenes

The depth images from consumer depth cameras (e.g., structured-light/ToF devices) exhibit a substantial amount of artifacts (e.g., holes, flickering, ghosting) that needs to be removed for real-world applications. Existing methods cannot entirely remove them and perform slow. This thesis proposes a new real-time spatio-temporal depth image enhancement filter that completely removes flickering and ghosting, and significantly reduces holes. This thesis also presents a novel depth-data capture setup and two data reduction methods to optimize the performance of the proposed enhancement method

Spatial Boundaries, Abounding Spaces

Colonial expansion and spatial grammar in French-language works from different historical and national contexts Colonialism advanced its project of territorial expansion by changing the very meaning of borders and space. The colonial project scripted a unipolar spatial discourse that saw the colonies as an extension of European borders. In his monograph, Mohit Chandna engages with narrations of spatial conflicts in French and Francophone literature and film from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. In literary works by Jules Verne, Ananda Devi, and Patrick Chamoiseau, and film by Michael Haneke, Chandna analyzes the depiction of ever-changing borders and spatial grammar within the colonial project. In so doing, he also examines the ongoing resistance to the spatial legacies of colonial practices that act as omnipresent enforcers of colonial borders. Literature and film become sites that register colonial spatial paradigms and advance competing narratives that fracture the dominance of these borders. Through its analyses Spatial Boundaries, Abounding Spaces shows that colonialism is not a finished project relegated to our past. Colonialism is present in the here and now, and exercises its power through the borders that define us

Multilingualism, Lingua Franca and Lingua Sacra

The present book comprises a number of studies centered around the topic of how knowledge diffuses from one culture to another, and how knowledge diffusion is connected with the spread of languages and the conceptual systems they carry by translation. This diffusion also takes place also over linguistic borders, in the way that a given receiving language may also absorb systems of knowledge from languages that are linguistically quite unrelated but culturally connected with respect to knowledge transfer. Thus we find that Sumerian concepts with considerable impact were moved into the Akkadian language, along with writing-systems, religion, science and literature, even though linguistically the languages are completely unrelated. Another example is how Chinese culture and writing systems spread throughout East Asia into Korea, Japan and Vietnam, though the languages of these countries were linguistically unrelated to Chinese. The same case can be made for Buddhist ways of thinking when it was clothed in the garb of Chinese or Tibetan, or one of the other languages along the Silk Road. This is also true for the spread of Manicheism, as it was portrayed in a great number of languages, related or unrelated. German and Latin are linguistically related, but when Latin learning was communicated in Old High German, many of its terms were created in Middle German to accommodate the Latin conceptual world, and the German language was lastingly enriched with novisms denoting concepts of the Classical traditions of learning, in a process parallel to the spread of Greek Christianity into the East European cultures and languages. The book describes some cases of such knowledge transfer and what kind of mechanisms are involved in the ensuing language changes in the receiving languages and cultures