Detecting violent excerpts in movies using audio

This thesis addresses the problem of automatically detecting violence in movie excerpts, based on audio and video features. A solution to this problem is relevant for a number of applications, including preventing children from being exposed to violence in the existing media, which may avoid the development of violent behavior. We analyzed and extracted audio and video features directly from the movie excerpt and used them to classify the movie excerpt as violent or non-violent. In order to find the best feature set and to achieve the best performance, our experiments use two different machine learning classifiers: Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Neural Networks (NN). We used a balanced subset of the existing ACCEDE database of movie excerpts containing 880 movie excerpts manually tagged as violent or non-violent. During an early experimental stage, using the features originally included in the ACCEDE database, we tested the use of audio features alone, video features alone and combinations of audio and video features. These results provided our baseline for further experiments using alternate audio features, extracted using available toolkits, and alternate video features, extracted using our own methods. Our most relevant conclusions are as follows: 1) audio features can be easily extracted using existing tools and have a strong impact in the system performance; 2) in terms of video features, features related with motion and shot transitions on a scene seem to have a better impact when compared with features related with color or luminance; 3) the best results are achieved by combining audio and video features. In general, the SVM classifier seems to work better for this problem, despite the performance of both classifiers being similar for the best feature setEsta tese aborda o problema da deteção de violência em excertos de filmes, com base em características extraídas do audio e do video. A resolução deste problema é relevante para um vasto leque de aplicações, incluindo evitar ou monitorizar a exposição de crianças à violência que existe nos vários tipos de média, o que pode evitar que estas desenvolvam comportamentos violentos. Analisámos e extraímos características áudio e vídeo diretamente do excerto de filme e usámo-las para classificar excertos de filme como violentos ou não violentos. De forma a encontrar o melhor conjunto de caracteristicas e atingir a melhor performance, as nossas experiências utilizam dois classificadores, nomeadamente: Support Vector Machines (SVM) e Redes Neuronais(NN). Foi usado um conjunto balanceado de excertos de filmes, retirado da base de dados ACCEDE, conjunto esse, que contém 880 excertos de filme, anotados manualmente como violentos ou não violentos. Durante as primeiras experiências, usando características incluídas na base de dados ACCEDE, testámos caracteristicas áudio e características vídeo, individualmente, e combinações de características áudio e vídeo. Estes resultados estabeleceram o ponto de partida para as experiências que os seguiram, usando outras características áudio, extraídas através de ferramentas disponíveis, e outras características vídeo, extraídas através dos nossos próprios métodos. As conclusões mais relevantes a que chegámos são as seguintes: 1) características áudio podem ser facilmente extraídas usando ferramentas já existentes e têm grande impacto na performance do sistema; 2) em termos de características vídeo, caracteristicas relacionadas com o movimentos e transições entre planos numa cena, parecem ter mais impacto do que características relacionadas com cor e luminância; 3) Os melhores resultados ocorrem quando se combinam características áudio e vídeo, sendo que, em geral, o classificador SVM parece ser mais adequado para o problema, apesar da performance dos dois classificadores ser semelhante para o melhor conjunto de características a que chegámos

Epilepsy

With the vision of including authors from different parts of the world, different educational backgrounds, and offering open-access to their published work, InTech proudly presents the latest edited book in epilepsy research, Epilepsy: Histological, electroencephalographic, and psychological aspects. Here are twelve interesting and inspiring chapters dealing with basic molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying epileptic seizures, electroencephalographic findings, and neuropsychological, psychological, and psychiatric aspects of epileptic seizures, but non-epileptic as well

Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline

Tapestry of Russian Christianity: Studies in History and Culture

Tapestry of Russian Christianity: Studies in History and Culture. Nickolas Lupinin, Donald Ostrowski and Jennifer B. Spock, eds. Columbus, Ohio: Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures and the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, The Ohio State University, 2016.https://encompass.eku.edu/fs_books/1008/thumbnail.jp

Putting Chinese natural knowledge to work in an eighteenth-century Swiss canton: the case of Dr Laurent Garcin

Symposium: S048 - Putting Chinese natural knowledge to work in the long eighteenth centuryThis paper takes as a case study the experience of the eighteenth-century Swiss physician, Laurent Garcin (1683-1752), with Chinese medical and pharmacological knowledge. A Neuchâtel bourgeois of Huguenot origin, who studied in Leiden with Hermann Boerhaave, Garcin spent nine years (1720-1729) in South and Southeast Asia as a surgeon in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Upon his return to Neuchâtel in 1739 he became primus inter pares in the small local community of physician-botanists, introducing them to the artificial sexual system of classification. He practiced medicine, incorporating treatments acquired during his travels. taught botany, collected rare plants for major botanical gardens, and contributed to the Journal Helvetique on a range of topics; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, where two of his papers were read in translation and published in the Philosophical Transactions; one of these concerned the mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), leading Linnaeus to name the genus Garcinia after Garcin. He was likewise consulted as an expert on the East Indies, exotic flora, and medicines, and contributed to important publications on these topics. During his time with the Dutch East India Company Garcin encountered Chinese medical practitioners whose work he evaluated favourably as being on a par with that of the Brahmin physicians, whom he particularly esteemed. Yet Garcin never went to China, basing his entire experience of Chinese medical practice on what he witnessed in the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia (the ‘East Indies’). This case demonstrates that there were myriad routes to Europeans developing an understanding of Chinese natural knowledge; the Chinese diaspora also afforded a valuable opportunity for comparisons of its knowledge and practice with other non-European bodies of medical and natural (e.g. pharmacological) knowledge.postprin

The Tapestry of Russian Christianity: Studies in History and Culture

Published by the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures with the assistance of the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210

The life and work of the Revd. T.H.E.C. Espin perpetual curate of tow law with special reference to his astronomical research

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Maritime expressions:a corpus based exploration of maritime metaphors

This study uses a purpose-built corpus to explore the linguistic legacy of Britain’s maritime history found in the form of hundreds of specialised ‘Maritime Expressions’ (MEs), such as TAKEN ABACK, ANCHOR and ALOOF, that permeate modern English. Selecting just those expressions commencing with ’A’, it analyses 61 MEs in detail and describes the processes by which these technical expressions, from a highly specialised occupational discourse community, have made their way into modern English. The Maritime Text Corpus (MTC) comprises 8.8 million words, encompassing a range of text types and registers, selected to provide a cross-section of ‘maritime’ writing. It is analysed using WordSmith analytical software (Scott, 2010), with the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference corpus. Using the MTC, a list of keywords of specific salience within the maritime discourse has been compiled and, using frequency data, concordances and collocations, these MEs are described in detail and their use and form in the MTC and the BNC is compared. The study examines the transformation from ME to figurative use in the general discourse, in terms of form and metaphoricity. MEs are classified according to their metaphorical strength and their transference from maritime usage into new registers and domains such as those of business, politics, sports and reportage etc. A revised model of metaphoricity is developed and a new category of figurative expression, the ‘resonator’, is proposed. Additionally, developing the work of Lakov and Johnson, Kovesces and others on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), a number of Maritime Conceptual Metaphors are identified and their cultural significance is discussed