PS-ARM: An End-to-End Attention-aware Relation Mixer Network for Person Search

Person search is a challenging problem with various real-world applications, that aims at joint person detection and re-identification of a query person from uncropped gallery images. Although, the previous study focuses on rich feature information learning, it is still hard to retrieve the query person due to the occurrence of appearance deformations and background distractors. In this paper, we propose a novel attention-aware relation mixer (ARM) module for person search, which exploits the global relation between different local regions within RoI of a person and make it robust against various appearance deformations and occlusion. The proposed ARM is composed of a relation mixer block and a spatio-channel attention layer. The relation mixer block introduces a spatially attended spatial mixing and a channel-wise attended channel mixing for effectively capturing discriminative relation features within an RoI. These discriminative relation features are further enriched by introducing a spatio-channel attention where the foreground and background discriminability is empowered in a joint spatio-channel space. Our ARM module is generic and it does not rely on fine-grained supervision or topological assumptions, hence being easily integrated into any Faster R-CNN based person search methods. Comprehensive experiments are performed on two challenging benchmark datasets: CUHKSYSU and PRW. Our PS-ARM achieves state-of-the-art performance on both datasets. On the challenging PRW dataset, our PS-ARM achieves an absolute gain of 5 in the mAP score over SeqNet, while operating at a comparable speed.Comment: Paper accepted in ACCV 202

Equality and Non-discrimination (EQND) in Sanitation Programmes at Scale (Part 1)

A well-facilitated Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme that pro-actively considers and involves people who might be disadvantaged has been shown to have many benefits. A lack of this can and will often have negative impacts and make programmes and ODF unsustainable.This issue of Frontiers of CLTS looks at who should be considered potentially disadvantaged, how they can effectively participate and what may be needed to address diverse needs in order to make processes and outcomes sustainable and inclusive. Using a range of examples from GSF programmes that were part of a recent study on Equality and Non-Discrimination, it explores the challenges that may occur and concludes with suggested good practices that will strengthen the processes to the benefit of all

Meetings and Meeting Modeling in Smart Environments

In this paper we survey our research on smart meeting rooms and its relevance for augmented reality meeting support and virtual reality generation of meetings in real time or off-line. The research reported here forms part of the European 5th and 6th framework programme projects multi-modal meeting manager (M4) and augmented multi-party interaction (AMI). Both projects aim at building a smart meeting environment that is able to collect multimodal captures of the activities and discussions in a meeting room, with the aim to use this information as input to tools that allow real-time support, browsing, retrieval and summarization of meetings. Our aim is to research (semantic) representations of what takes place during meetings in order to allow generation, e.g. in virtual reality, of meeting activities (discussions, presentations, voting, etc.). Being able to do so also allows us to look at tools that provide support during a meeting and at tools that allow those not able to be physically present during a meeting to take part in a virtual way. This may lead to situations where the differences between real meeting participants, human-controlled virtual participants and (semi-) autonomous virtual participants disappear

Citizens of nowhere? asymmetrical displacements in Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, Florianópolis, 2010Este estudo discute os deslocamentos assimétricos de uma mulher branca ocidental e de um homem negro oriental no romance O Engate de Nadine Gordimer. Os personagens são analisados em relação ao processo de cruzamento de fronteiras entre Ocidente e Oriente dentro da perspectiva da globalização. Os resultados demonstram que a mulher branca ocidental é uma turista em conflito com seus próprios privilégios enquanto o homem negro oriental luta para se libertar de seu enquadramento histórico - esses resultados confirmam minhas hipóteses de que o deslocamento está relacionado à mobilidade social e que produz assimetrias sócias entre os dois personagens do romance.This study discusses the asymmetrical displacements of a white Western woman and a black Eastern man in Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup. The characters are analyzed in their process of border crossing between West and East taking into consideration the perspective of globalization. The findings demonstrate that the white Western woman is a tourist in conflict with her own privileges whereas the black Eastern man is the exiled who struggles in order to release himself from his historical framing - which confirms my hypotheses that displacement is related to social mobility and that it produces social asymmetries between the two main characters

Compassion - Toward an Ethics of Mindfulness

This work is guided by two hypotheses with one overall objective of establishing an ethics of mindfulness . The first hypothesis is the concept of moral motivator or in- tentional moral. Both Western philosophy and mindfulness operate with an intention influenced by their moral beliefs. The second hypothesis is the relationship between moral reasoning and wisdom. That is, our reasoning is affected by our moral belief . To combine those two theses, I introduce the concept compassion from mindfulness and the ethics based on the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Hereby, I suggest that by practicing mindfulness, one can develop his or her capacity for compassion, but also – this practice – is a «way of life» that can help protect the planet: an ethical practice