Bionanomaterials from plant viruses

Plant virus capsids have emerged as useful biotemplates for material synthesis. All plant virus capsids are assembled with high-precision, three-dimensional structures providing nanoscale architectures that are highly monodisperse, can be produced in large quantities and that cannot replicate in mammalian cells (so are safe). Such exceptional characteristics make plant viruses strong candidates for application as biotemplates for novel and new material synthesis

Design a system for an approved video copyright over cloud based on biometric iris and random walk generator using watermark technique

Copyright is a tool for preventing anyone forged to copy an electronic work from another person and claim that electronic work is referred to him. Since the identity of the person is always determined by his name and biometrics, there is a concern to handle this information, to preserve the copyright. In this paper, a new idea for copyright technology is used to prove video copyright, by using blind watermarking technique, the ownership information is hidden inside video frames using linear congruential generator (LCG) for adapted the locations of vector features extracted from the name and biometric image of the owner instead of hidden the watermark in the Pseudo Noise sequences or any other feature extraction technique. When providing the watermarked vector, a statistical operation is used to increase randomization state for the amplifier factors of LCG function. LCG provides random positions where the owner's information is stored inside the video. The proposed method is not difficult to execute and can present an adaptable imperceptibility and robustness performance. The output results show the robustness of this approach based on the average PSNR of frames for the embedded in 50 frames is around 47.5 dB while the watermark remains undetectable. MSSIM values with range (0.83 to 0.99)

What’s On the Surface Does Matter: The Conservation of Applied Surface Decoration of Historic Stained Glass Windows

A stained glass window is both an architectural building element and an individual work of art. Like architecture, a stained glass window is composed of a variety of materials, mainly glass, lead, and surface decoration, each of which has its own conservation issues. Surface decoration, which includes vitreous glass paint, silver stain, and enamels, is the component of a stained glass window that is sometimes underappreciated. While it may not pose a major threat to the physical stability of the window or the safety of the window’s environment, it is the decoration that defines the windows as works of art, with imagery that holds the window’s history, including a direct view into the traditions, ideals, and beliefs of the people of their time. The conservation of the surface decoration of stained glass windows has never been fully analyzed, and both glazing and conservation professionals are constantly seeking information regarding the history of the materials and techniques used in order to create or restore a stained glass window. With conservation, the methods and techniques used to maintain and conserve the decoration will vary depending on a number of circumstances, including the location of the window, the history and traditions of the people involved, and the tools available to the conservators. As with all conservation fields, there are also ethical considerations to address in order to be sure that the authenticity of each work is maintained. For this history, it is also important to note the past restoration techniques used on these types of decoration, as well as what is being used today. This includes successes and failures, both of which bring essential information to the conservator. Each window brings with it an entirely new history and set of decoration conservation problems so there are no universal solutions for this field. Stained glass is a fascinating field because it combines the worlds of art and architecture with a single object and the surface decoration plays an important role in this. By analyzing the history and techniques of these three surface decorations, it is possible to not only preserve an underappreciated element inherent to these historic stained glass windows, but also the overall aesthetic of true works of art that serve to enhance the buildings in which they reside

Segmentation-guided privacy preservation in visual surveillance monitoring

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Informàtica, Facultat de Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2022, Director: Sergio Escalera Guerrero, Zenjie Li i Kamal Nasrollahi[en] Video surveillance has become a necessity to ensure safety and security. Today, with the advancement of technology, video surveillance has become more accessible and widely available. Furthermore, it can be useful in an enormous amount of applications and situations. For instance, it can be useful in ensuring public safety by preventing vandalism, robbery, and shoplifting. The same applies to more intimate situations, like home monitoring to detect unusual behavior of residents or in similar situations like hospitals and assisted living facilities. Thus, cameras are installed in public places like malls, metro stations, and on-roads for traffic control, as well as in sensitive settings like hospitals, embassies, and private homes. Video surveillance has always been as- sociated with the loss of privacy. Therefore, we developed a real-time visualization of privacy-protected video surveillance data by applying a segmentation mask to protect privacy while still being able to identify existing risk behaviors. This replaces existing privacy safeguards such as blanking, masking, pixelation, blurring, and scrambling. As we want to protect human personal data that are visual such as appearance, physical information, clothing, skin, eye and hair color, and facial gestures. Our main aim of this work is to analyze and compare the most successful deep-learning-based state-of-the-art approaches for semantic segmentation. In this study, we perform an efficiency-accuracy comparison to determine which segmentation methods yield accurate segmentation results while performing at the speed and execution required for real-life application scenarios. Furthermore, we also provide a modified dataset made from a combination of three existing datasets, COCO_stuff164K, PASCAL VOC 2012, and ADE20K, to make our comparison fair and generate privacyprotecting human segmentation masks

Wavelet Based Image Transmission Analysis For Wireless VOIP

The major focus of present work is to study the performance of data communication; mainly image over wireless VOIP by means of wavelet decomposition. QOS (Quality of Service) is a significant concern in networking, but it is also major problem for providing QOS after considering wireless and mobile networks complexities. In this work, Wavelet based Data (Image) communication model is presented where different wavelet decomposition levels are used and performance analysis of each wavelet based on decomposition level is analyzed on the basis of SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio), RMSE (Root Mean Square Error), PRSE (Percentage of Retained Signal Energy) and CR (Compression Ratio). For transmission Capabilities, Packet Loss and Delay are also calculated in the present work. From the simulation results, it is clear that the presented model for image transmission by utilizing wavelet decomposition over a wireless VOIP performs superior when using wavelets as compared to without using wavelets. Further, there results no echo in all the cases as the round trip delay is less than 50ms (ITU Recommendations) .The packet loss and Throughput is also within the range as recommended by ITU. In addition, ANOVA statistical tool has been applied to test the effectiveness of recorded data on 4 groups i.e. SNR, PRSE, CR and delay

SOW: Digitization and longterm preservation of weather maps at ZAMG

The targets of this concept are: delivering a catalog of requirements; the evaluation of tools; possible file formats (e.g. FITS) necessary for digitization and longtime preservation of the historical weather maps at ZAMG (Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Austria's national weather and geophysical service

1994 Science Information Management and Data Compression Workshop

This document is the proceedings from the 'Science Information Management and Data Compression Workshop,' which was held on September 26-27, 1994, at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. The Workshop explored promising computational approaches for handling the collection, ingestion, archival and retrieval of large quantities of data in future Earth and space science missions. It consisted of eleven presentations covering a range of information management and data compression approaches that are being or have been integrated into actual or prototypical Earth or space science data information systems, or that hold promise for such an application. The workshop was organized by James C. Tilton and Robert F. Cromp of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Picture coding in viewdata systems

Viewdata systems in commercial use at present offer the facility for transmitting alphanumeric text and graphic displays via the public switched telephone network. An enhancement to the system would be to transmit true video images instead of graphics. Such a system, under development in Britain at present uses Differential Pulse Code Modulation (DPCM) and a transmission rate of 1200 bits/sec. Error protection is achieved by the use of error protection codes, which increases the channel requirement. In this thesis, error detection and correction of DPCM coded video signals without the use of channel error protection is studied. The scheme operates entirely at the receiver by examining the local statistics of the received data to determine the presence of errors. Error correction is then undertaken by interpolation from adjacent correct or previousiy corrected data. DPCM coding of pictures has the inherent disadvantage of a slow build-up of the displayed picture at the receiver and difficulties with image size manipulation. In order to fit the pictorial information into a viewdata page, its size has to be reduced. Unitary transforms, typically the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the Hadamard transform (HT) enable lowpass filtering and decimation to be carried out in a single operation in the transform domain. Size reductions of different orders are considered and the merits of the DFT, DCT and HT are investigated. With limited channel capacity, it is desirable to remove the redundancy present in the source picture in order to reduce the bit rate. Orthogonal transformation decorrelates the spatial sample distribution and packs most of the image energy in the low order coefficients. This property is exploited in bit-reduction schemes which are adaptive to the local statistics of the different source pictures used. In some cases, bit rates of less than 1.0 bit/pel are achieved with satisfactory received picture quality. Unlike DPCM systems, transform coding has the advantage of being able to display rapidly a picture of low resolution by initial inverse transformation of the low order coefficients only. Picture resolution is then progressively built up as more coefficients are received and decoded. Different sequences of picture update are investigated to find that which achieves the best subjective quality with the fewest possible coefficients transmitted

Mixed Reality for Historic Preservation

Digital technologies are becoming widely available to experts in the field of historic preservation. These tools equip experts with the capability to obtain high resolution and accurate information about cultural heritage, which can be accurately reproduced and rematerialized without coming into contact with the physical object itself. This preservation approach is described as non-contact, meaning that it is not invasive to the material integrity of an artifact. Since the turn of the century, stakeholders in the field have increasingly focused their attention on digital technologies for advancing the field. The motivation for experts to preserve cultural heritage with digital technologies starts with the idea of merging the two, and in recent years, innovations in high-resolution digital imaging, recording, processing, modeling and reproduction capabilities have fostered the integration of a virtual environment. Mixed Reality (MR), which the merging of digital and physical worlds, not only allows experts to expand possibilities for preservation interventions once all physical range of actions have been exhausted, but it also makes it possible for experts to intervene digitally before carrying out a preservation treatment. MR can be used as a tool to create hybrid environments for experts and researchers to better manage and understand cultural heritage, which in turn allows them to provide the public with a deeper understanding about cultural heritage. The traditionally object-centric nature of the historic preservation field favors MR over Virtual Reality, since the former engages with the physical site or artifact themselves. By allowing field experts and visitors to visualize scenes in situ from viewpoints that are impossible due to size, content or accessibility issues, the installation of MR’s formless aesthetics engages viewers of cultural heritage through new and innovative ways. The application of MR offers countless strategies for approaching conservation and interpretation projects in historic preservation. But, despite its capacity to enhance the practice of historic preservation, MR poses new technological and methodological questions for the field. As a burgeoning tool and constantly changing field, there have been very few studies conducted on the application of MR to the field of historic preservation. This thesis argues that, on the one hand, MR provides innovative strategies for approaching preservation problems; but on the other hand, the absence of standards, guidelines, and techniques make it difficult to evaluate and propose new projects in the field. As a response to this deficiency, I propose a framework to evaluate and use MR for the preservation of cultural heritage. This framework is first tested to evaluate three case studies, and next, to propose a unique MR strategy for the complex preservation case of the San Baudelio de Berlanga Hermitage in the province of Soria, Spain. This thesis aims to contribute a MR framework and methodology that provides a consistent conceptual approach to MR projects in the field

Geospatial Technology/Traditional Ecological Knowledge-Derived Information Tools for the Enhancement of Coastal Restoration Decision Support Processes

This research investigated the feasibility and benefits of integrating geospatial technology with traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of an indigenous Louisiana coastal population in order to assess the impacts of current and historical ecosystem change to community viability. The primary goal was to provide resource managers with a comprehensive method of assessing localized ecological change in the Gulf Coast region that can benefit community sustainability. Using Remote Sensing (RS), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and other geospatial technologies integrated with a coastal community\u27s TEK to achieve this goal, the objectives were (1) to determine a method for producing vulnerability/sustainability mapping products for an ecosystem-dependent livelihood base of a coastal population that results from physical information derived from RS imagery and supported, refined, and prioritized with TEK, and (2) to demonstrate how such an approach can engage affected community residents who are interested in understanding better marsh health and ways that marsh health can be recognized, and the causes of declining marsh determined and addressed. TEK relevant to the project objectives collected included: changes in the flora and fauna over time; changes in environmental conditions observed over time such as land loss; a history of man-made structures and impacts to the area; as well as priority areas of particular community significance or concern. Scientific field data collection measured marsh vegetation health characteristics. These data were analyzed for correlation with satellite image data acquired concurrently with field data collection. Resulting regression equations were applied to the image data to produce estimated marsh health maps. Historical image datasets of the study area were acquired to understand evolution of land change to current conditions and project future vulnerability. Image processing procedures were developed and applied to produce maps that detail land change in the study area at time intervals from 1968 to 2009. This information was combined with the TEK and scientific datasets in a GIS to produce mapping products that provide new information to the coastal restoration decision making process. This information includes: 1) what marsh areas are most vulnerable; and 2) what areas are most significant to the sustainability of the community