Photographic Image Restoration

Deblurring capabilities would significantly improve the Flight Science Support Office's ability to monitor the effects of lift-off on the shuttle and landing on the orbiter. A deblurring program was written and implemented to extract information from blurred images containing a straight line or edge and to use that information to deblur the image. The program was successfully applied to an image blurred by improper focussing and two blurred by different amounts of blurring. In all cases, the reconstructed modulation transfer function not only had the same zero contours as the Fourier transform of the blurred image but the associated point spread function also had structure not easily described by simple parameterizations. The difficulties posed by the presence of noise in the blurred image necessitated special consideration. An amplitude modification technique was developed for the zero contours of the modulation transfer function at low to moderate frequencies and a smooth filter was used to suppress high frequency noise

Featural and configurational processes in the recognition of faces of different familiarity

Previous research suggests that face recognition may involve both configurational and piecemeal (featural) processing. To explore the relationship between these processing modes, we examined the patterns of recognition impairment produced by blurring, inversion, and scrambling, both singly and in various combinations. Two tasks were used: recognition of unfamiliar faces (seen once before) and recognition of highly familiar faces (celebrities). The results provide further support for a configurational - featural distinction. Recognition performance remained well above chance if faces were blurred, scrambled, inverted, or simultaneously inverted and scrambled: each of these manipulations disrupts either configurational or piecemeal processing, leaving the other mode available as a route to recognition. However, blurred/scrambled and blurred/inverted faces were recognised at or near chance levels, presumably because both configurational processing and featural processing were disrupted. Similar patterns of effects were found for both familiar and unfamiliar faces, suggesting that the relationship between configurational and featural processing is qualitatively similar in both cases

Interactive Vegetation Rendering with Slicing and Blending

Detailed and interactive 3D rendering of vegetation is one of the challenges of traditional polygon-oriented computer graphics, due to large geometric complexity even of simple plants. In this paper we introduce a simplified image-based rendering approach based solely on alpha-blended textured polygons. The simplification is based on the limitations of human perception of complex geometry. Our approach renders dozens of detailed trees in real-time with off-the-shelf hardware, while providing significantly improved image quality over existing real-time techniques. The method is based on using ordinary mesh-based rendering for the solid parts of a tree, its trunk and limbs. The sparse parts of a tree, its twigs and leaves, are instead represented with a set of slices, an image-based representation. A slice is a planar layer, represented with an ordinary alpha or color-keyed texture; a set of parallel slices is a slicing. Rendering from an arbitrary viewpoint in a 360 degree circle around the center of a tree is achieved by blending between the nearest two slicings. In our implementation, only 6 slicings with 5 slices each are sufficient to visualize a tree for a moving or stationary observer with the perceptually similar quality as the original model

The role of E-portfolios in higher education: their perceived value and potential to assist undergraduate computing students

Whilst not a new concept, ePortfolios embrace the interactive nature of Web 2.0 technology and are beginning to show signs of bringing about a new pedagogy in education. The wide range of commercial and open source ePortfolio and associated tools currently available allows students to maintain an online repository of digital artefacts. These tools can facilitate reflective, collaborative and lifelong learning, and allow students to showcase skills, knowledge and understanding. A key benefit identified in the literature is the ability to create a personalised and reflective learning experience. Previous research has shown that the lack of competent and effective use of ePortfolios and the inability of students fully to recognise the benefits to them as learners, are hindering their widespread use. This paper focuses on a small pilot research project, which seeks to identify the Web 2.0 tools that students following undergraduate awards in technology subjects across various levels at the authors’ institution are currently using. It investigates the extent to which students keep a digital record of their learning and how they perceive ePortfolios as a learning tool. The students were surveyed by questionnaire providing quantitative data. Qualitative information was also gained by interviewing a smaller group of those students individually to ascertain whether they were able to identify the value of an ePortfolio and how they might envisage using one in their learning. The outcome of this initial study has helped to determine whether an ePortfolio application was worthy of further development and trialling as a subsequent project

Sensitivity to fine-grained and coarse visual information: The effect of blurring on anticipation skill

Copyright @ 2009 Edizione l PozziWe examined skilled tennis players’ ability to perceive fine and coarse information by assessing their ability to predict serve direction under three levels of visual blur. A temporal occlusion design was used in which skilled players viewed serves struck by two players that were occluded at one of four points relative to ball-racquet impact (-320ms, -160ms, 0ms, +160ms) and shown with one of three levels of blur (no blur, 20% blur, 40% blur). Using a within-task criterion to establish good and poor anticipators, the results revealed a significant interaction between anticipation skill and level of blur. Anticipation skill was significantly disrupted in the ‘20% blur’ condition; however, judgment accuracy of both groups then improved in the ‘40% blur’ condition while confidence in judgments declined. We conclude that there is evidence for processing of coarse configural information but that anticipation skill in this task was primarily driven by perception of fine-grained information.This research was supported by a University of Hong Kong Seed Funding for Basic Research grant awarded to the second author

Ant Tribe

Ant Tribe describes the post-80s generation university graduates who live together in poor conditions without Social security in communities around China\u27s major metropolises. They dream of a better life in big cities but struggle with low-paying jobs. These struggling elites have become the fourth weak Social group, after peasants, migrant workers and unemployed people. The reason why these college graduates are compared to ants is that they are like ants: clever, hardworking, politically weak and living in groups. The real world is always different from the ideal world of the Ant Tribe in China. They often lose their purposes in a complex society. It is more important for them to recognize the distance between the real and imaginary in order to rethink whether it is a right choice to stay in a big city and try to realize their dreams. The intention of the Ant Tribe installation is to explore the process and concept of changing between the real and fantasy. In the installation, I hope to portray the Ant Tribe phenomenon widely and deeply from an artist\u27s perspective. The most important thing for me is using my artistic practice to investigate the power of the media over the contemporary subject in order to activate the viewers to question some Social issues regarding humanity consciousness. My artwork should be thought - provoking for them. I would like to use my visual language to convey specific Social issues to inquire how far the viewers are from their dreams. I hope they think about themselves in their complex society physically and psychologically when they go through my work

Multilevel analysis of nuclear dynamics in lamin perturbed fibroblasts

The nuclear lamina provides structural support to the nucleus and has a central role in defining nuclear organization. Defects in its filamentous constituents, the lamins, lead to a class of diseases collectively referred to as laminopathies. On the cellular level, lamin mutations affect the physical integrity of nuclei and nucleo-cytoskeletal interactions, resulting in increased susceptibility to mechanical stress and altered gene expression [1]. Most studies regarding the mechanical properties of the nucleus in laminopathic conditions are based on the induction of extracellular stress, such as strain or compression, and focus on nuclear integrity and/or nucleo-cytoskeletal interaction [2]. Far less is known about the role of nuclear organization and mobility under basal steady-state conditions. In this study, we quantitatively compared nuclear organization, nuclear deformation and chromatin mobility of fibroblasts from a Hutchinson-Gilford progeria patient with cells from a lamin A/C-deficient patient and wild-type dermal fibroblasts. To this end, we created a toolbox in imageJ for automatically analyzing both nuclear as well as subnuclear dynamics in living cells. Simultaneously, we developed a workflow for comparing cellular morphology and subcellular protein distribution in a high content fashion. We found that the absence of functional lamin A/C leads to increased nuclear plasticity on the hour and minute time scale but also to increased intranuclear mobility down to the seconds time scale. In contrast, progeria cells showed overall reduced nuclear dynamics. In addition, high content analysis revealed marked morphological and topological differences between different culture passages within a cell type and between different pathological variants of culture-age matched laminopathic cell types