Advances in Stereo Vision

Stereopsis is a vision process whose geometrical foundation has been known for a long time, ever since the experiments by Wheatstone, in the 19th century. Nevertheless, its inner workings in biological organisms, as well as its emulation by computer systems, have proven elusive, and stereo vision remains a very active and challenging area of research nowadays. In this volume we have attempted to present a limited but relevant sample of the work being carried out in stereo vision, covering significant aspects both from the applied and from the theoretical standpoints

Inventing a Capitalist Region: Upper Silesia/Poland - Economic Transformations in Old-Industrial and Post-Socialist Spaces of Central and Eastern Europe

The thesis explores economic, political and social processes in former socialist countries with a case study in one of the biggest conurbations in Europe, Upper Silesia. The ongoing but selective economic processes of global and macro-regional economic integration have been identified as a main issue in geographical research. In particular the nexus between the global and the local seen as a dialectical relationship, composed of multiple and asymmetric interdependencies has stressed the necessity of utilising relational analysis in economic geography. The question emerges in what ways and to what extent increasing economic integration may lead to a socio-economic convergence of places or the development of 'indigenous capacities', spatial peculiarities and legacies to establish themselves in capitalist networks of production. With empirical reference to the Polish conurbation of Upper Silesia and drawing on the analytical framework from Michael Storper's 'Holy Trinity' ("The Regional World", New York, 1997), this thesis analyses post socialist urban and regional transformations from three angles. 1. While Storper analysed mainly 'successful' regions in the West, the research tries to identify the main challenges that face any simple attempt to adapt western (theoretical) approaches within a post-socialist, Central East European context. 2. The thesis then identifies the fabric of political economic actors and the path dependent 'invention' of a region, here Upper Silesia, and analysis locally and regionally embedded and recombined informal institutions and their capacity for restructuring of an old industrial space. 3. While inter- and intra-regional competition is growing in an 'era of globalisation', the thesis finally investigates the scope for action and 'reflexive' interrelations between administrative, political and economic actors in an 'ordinary region' prior to the accession to the European Union

A Critical Evaluation of the Flying Geese Paradigm: the evolving framework of the model and its application to East Asian regional development and beyond

The Flying Geese (FG) began with the original model in the 1930s delineating the catch-up process of a singular late industrializer, namely Japan, from the late 19th century, and has since evolved into a prototype development framework of collective catch-up process of national economies as a regional group (such as East Asia). It has also evolved as an intellectual guideline that early industrializers may deploy in their diplomatic discourse with late industrializers. This Asian model underlines the generally positive nature of Centre-Periphery interplay, which is in clear contrast with critical perspectives of the Latin American structuralist school. This dissertation addresses the FG paradigm by reconstructing its intellectual lineage by undertaking some primary archival research (in Japanese) from the prewar period, together with an extensive literature review of major scholastic works in the postwar period, particularly after the 1960s on the East Asian development performance. The thesis highlights how the evolutionary process has transformed many parts of the model, and critically discusses various conceptual problems associated with different versions of the model. The rise (and fall) of the model’s appeal, particularly as a regional development model for East Asia (and beyond), has been attributable to the varying degrees of intensity and zeal with which its proponents have advocated the model. The model has gone through a “subsided period” twice, first, after Japan’s defeat in World War II (WWII) (until the early 1960s), and second, after the burst of the country’s financial bubble in the early 1990s (until the 2000s). After each hiatus, nonetheless, the model has revived. The first revival (from the 1960s to the early 1990s) may be attributed to Japanese researchers and policy-makers dealing with Japan’s industrial reforms in the context of East Asian development, and the second revival (from the 2000s to the present) to new researchers on China’s industrialization and development diplomacy. The change of the FG proponents has also affected some aspects of the model, while keeping some of its core elements intact. The analysis in this thesis compares and contrasts the Japan-centric model and the China-centric model. It argues that whereas the Japan-centric model dealt with the national (domestic) and regional (East Asian) development processes in a sequential fashion, the China-centric model now deals with two processes in a very compressed fashion. In fact, the contemporary model admits the simultaneous occurrence of the “internal” industrial diffusion within China and the conventional “external” (cross-border) industrial diffusion. Furthermore, China’s overall development trajectory encompasses a much wider area than East Asia, as its need for large external resources and markets for its own development has obliged this emerging economy to widen the scope of its foreign economic policy. The geographical sphere to which the FG paradigm applies under China’s initiative is fluid, and certainly much greater than East Asia. As far as the functional validity of the FG paradigm for East Asia is concerned, the emergence of China in the dynamic context of the region (and beyond) is a mixed blessing. This is because the sustained function of the model depends, most importantly, on the existence of a hierarchy of development achievement – or technology gap – among constituent regional economies. Here, a major fear is “flattening” of the regional hierarchy, either due to the very slow pace of industrial upgrad

KEER2022

Avanttítol: KEER2022. DiversitiesDescripció del recurs: 25 juliol 202

Draftee Division: The 88th Infantry Division in World War II

The involuntary soldiers of an unmilitary people such were the forces that American military planners had to pit against hardened Axis veterans, yet prewar unpreparedness dictated that whole divisions of such men would go to war under the supervision of tiny professional cadres. Much to his surprise and delight, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall found that the 88th Infantry Division, his first draftee division, fought like wildcats and readily outclassed its German adversaries while measuring up to the best Regular Army divisions. Draftee Division is at once a history of the 88th Division, an analysis of American unit mobilization during World War II, and an insight into the savage Italian Campaign. After an introduction placing the division in historical context, separate chapters address personnel, training, logistics, and overseas deployment. Another chapter focuses upon preliminary adjustments to the realities of combat, after which two chapters trace the 88th\u27s climactic drive through the Gustav Line into Rome itself. A final chapter takes the veteran 88th to final victory. Of particular interest are observations concerning differences connected with mobilization between the 88th and less successful divisions and discussions of the contemporary relevance of the 88th\u27s experiences. Draftee Division is especially rich in its sources. John Sloan Brown, with close ties to the division, has secured extensive and candid contributions from veterans. To these he has added a full array of archival and secondary sources. The result is a definitive study of American cadremen creating a division out of raw draftees and leading them on to creditable victories. Its findings will be important for military and social historians and for students of defense policy John Sloan Brown is a major on active duty with the U.S. Army. He has taught at the United States Military Academy and recently was an Honor Graduate at the Command and General Staff College.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_military_history/1010/thumbnail.jp

The World Formula One Championship and North America: The Development of a Globalized Industrial Sports Complex?

This research seeks to recognize the World Formula One Championship as a global industrial sports complex through both its direct and indirect connections with North America. The study analyses the visibly linked and imperceptible separate commercial, cultural, political, and technological inputs from data retrieved from several accepted disciplines that can be prejudiced based on the sport’s respective nationalism. The study examines the entangled but corresponding economic and social engines that constitute the global framework of the World Formula One Championship. It does this by examining those commercial, cultural, political, and technological dimensions that form this autonomous industrial sports complex. This thesis presents research that scrutinizes how the World Formula One Championship cannot be understood as strictly a European enterprise and discovers intricate global relationships, particularly North American contributions, which are often disregarded, despite its historical existence on the continent and the more recent presence of the sport in the United States. These connections include a vast array of shared relationships that reveals how the World Formula One Championship is a globalized and evolving industrial sports complex of its own significance. Competition from other major league sports, lack of media coverage, and a small, isolated audience has caused the World Formula One Championship to be misunderstood in much of North America. The verified associations that materialize in this study demonstrate its importance and influence as an all-encompassing business and worldwide sport, in fact, one of three Mega Sport

Haptics Rendering and Applications

There has been significant progress in haptic technologies but the incorporation of haptics into virtual environments is still in its infancy. A wide range of the new society's human activities including communication, education, art, entertainment, commerce and science would forever change if we learned how to capture, manipulate and reproduce haptic sensory stimuli that are nearly indistinguishable from reality. For the field to move forward, many commercial and technological barriers need to be overcome. By rendering how objects feel through haptic technology, we communicate information that might reflect a desire to speak a physically- based language that has never been explored before. Due to constant improvement in haptics technology and increasing levels of research into and development of haptics-related algorithms, protocols and devices, there is a belief that haptics technology has a promising future

Reserved for the Whole Earth: Forms of Evidence, Ought Anxiety, and the Futures of Geographic Inquiry

This dissertation examines geographic forms of evidence in the practices of landscape architects and geographers. I analyze evidence not only as an epistemic phenomenon, but as an aesthetic one, as well. Convincing an audience that the world is (or should be) one way and not another requires that knowledges be stacked, extended, and stitched together in a manner admissable to an audience. In the first two chapters, I use the case of the landscape architect Ian McHarg to examine how his approach to integrating scientific knowledge---a aesthetic response to what I theorize as \u27ought anxiety\u27---grew alongside the environmental bureaucracy in the 1960s, but fractured and collapsed in the 1980s. I examine his approach using two generative figures: the layer and the globe. In the first chapter, I examine McHarg\u27s attempt to expand the knowledges considered salient to planning practice, represented as vertically arrayed layers. I argue that this form of holism draws a surprising line through the history of GIS that ties geospatial technology---its aspirations if not its actuality---to mid-century conservationism and the early stirrings of bureaucratic environmentalism. In the second chapter, I narrate McHarg\u27s horizontal upscaling of ecological planning\u27s unit areas: from physiographic regions to the globe. In the final empirical chapter, I return to the discipline of geography to argue that a particular epistemic aesthetic---the bridge---and its impracticability played central roles in the elimination of the department of geography at the University of Michigan

Spatial and Temporal Sentiment Analysis of Twitter data

The public have used Twitter world wide for expressing opinions. This study focuses on spatio-temporal variation of georeferenced Tweets’ sentiment polarity, with a view to understanding how opinions evolve on Twitter over space and time and across communities of users. More specifically, the question this study tested is whether sentiment polarity on Twitter exhibits specific time-location patterns. The aim of the study is to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of georeferenced Twitter sentiment polarity within the area of 1 km buffer around the Curtin Bentley campus boundary in Perth, Western Australia. Tweets posted in campus were assigned into six spatial zones and four time zones. A sentiment analysis was then conducted for each zone using the sentiment analyser tool in the Starlight Visual Information System software. The Feature Manipulation Engine was employed to convert non-spatial files into spatial and temporal feature class. The spatial and temporal distribution of Twitter sentiment polarity patterns over space and time was mapped using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Some interesting results were identified. For example, the highest percentage of positive Tweets occurred in the social science area, while science and engineering and dormitory areas had the highest percentage of negative postings. The number of negative Tweets increases in the library and science and engineering areas as the end of the semester approaches, reaching a peak around an exam period, while the percentage of negative Tweets drops at the end of the semester in the entertainment and sport and dormitory area. This study will provide some insights into understanding students and staff ’s sentiment variation on Twitter, which could be useful for university teaching and learning management

European Handbook of Crowdsourced Geographic Information

This book focuses on the study of the remarkable new source of geographic information that has become available in the form of user-generated content accessible over the Internet through mobile and Web applications. The exploitation, integration and application of these sources, termed volunteered geographic information (VGI) or crowdsourced geographic information (CGI), offer scientists an unprecedented opportunity to conduct research on a variety of topics at multiple scales and for diversified objectives. The Handbook is organized in five parts, addressing the fundamental questions: What motivates citizens to provide such information in the public domain, and what factors govern/predict its validity?What methods might be used to validate such information? Can VGI be framed within the larger domain of sensor networks, in which inert and static sensors are replaced or combined by intelligent and mobile humans equipped with sensing devices? What limitations are imposed on VGI by differential access to broadband Internet, mobile phones, and other communication technologies, and by concerns over privacy? How do VGI and crowdsourcing enable innovation applications to benefit human society? Chapters examine how crowdsourcing techniques and methods, and the VGI phenomenon, have motivated a multidisciplinary research community to identify both fields of applications and quality criteria depending on the use of VGI. Besides harvesting tools and storage of these data, research has paid remarkable attention to these information resources, in an age when information and participation is one of the most important drivers of development. The collection opens questions and points to new research directions in addition to the findings that each of the authors demonstrates. Despite rapid progress in VGI research, this Handbook also shows that there are technical, social, political and methodological challenges that require further studies and research