Wavelet Based Image Coding Schemes : A Recent Survey

A variety of new and powerful algorithms have been developed for image compression over the years. Among them the wavelet-based image compression schemes have gained much popularity due to their overlapping nature which reduces the blocking artifacts that are common phenomena in JPEG compression and multiresolution character which leads to superior energy compaction with high quality reconstructed images. This paper provides a detailed survey on some of the popular wavelet coding techniques such as the Embedded Zerotree Wavelet (EZW) coding, Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Tree (SPIHT) coding, the Set Partitioned Embedded Block (SPECK) Coder, and the Embedded Block Coding with Optimized Truncation (EBCOT) algorithm. Other wavelet-based coding techniques like the Wavelet Difference Reduction (WDR) and the Adaptive Scanned Wavelet Difference Reduction (ASWDR) algorithms, the Space Frequency Quantization (SFQ) algorithm, the Embedded Predictive Wavelet Image Coder (EPWIC), Compression with Reversible Embedded Wavelet (CREW), the Stack-Run (SR) coding and the recent Geometric Wavelet (GW) coding are also discussed. Based on the review, recommendations and discussions are presented for algorithm development and implementation.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, journa

New approaches for compression of XML documents

Orientador: Leonardo de Souza MendesDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de ComputaçãoResumo: Atualmente, alguns dos fatores que determinam o sucesso ou fracasso das corporações estão ligados a velocidade e a eficiência da tomada de suas decisões. Para que estes quesitos sejam alcançados, a integração dos sistemas computacionais legados aos novos sistemas computacionais é de fundamental importância, criando assim a necessidade de que velhas e novas tecnologias interoperem. Como solução a este problema surge a linguagem XML, uma linguagem auto-descritiva, independente de tecnologia e plataforma, que vem se tornando um padrão de comunicação entre sistemas heterogêneos. Por ser auto-descritiva, a XML se torna redundante, o que gera mais informações a ser transferida e armazenada, exigindo mais recursos dos sistemas computacionais. Este trabalho consiste em apresentar novas abordagens de compressão específicas para a linguagem XML, com o objetivo de reduzir o tamanho de seus documentos, diminuindo os impactos sobre os recursos de rede, armazenamento e processamento. São apresentadas 2 novas abordagens, assim como os casos de testes que as avaliam, considerando os quesitos: taxa de compressão, tempo de compressão e tolerância dos métodos a baixas disponibilidades de memória. Os resultados obtidos são comparados aos métodos de compressão de XML que se destacam na literatura. Os resultados demonstram que a utilização de compressores de documentos XML pode reduzir consideravelmente os impactos de desempenho criados pela linguagemAbstract: Actually, some of the factors that determine success or failure of a corporation are on the speed and efficiency of making their decisions. For these requirements are achieved, the integration of legacy computational systems to new computational systems is of fundamental importance, thus creating the need for old and new technologies interoperate. As a solution to this problem comes to XML, a language self-descriptive and platform-independent technology, and it is becoming a standard for communication between heterogeneous systems. Being self-descriptive, the XML becomes redundant, which generates more information to be transferred and stored, requiring more resources of computational systems. This work presents new approaches to specific compression for XML, in order to reduce the size of your documents, reducing the impacts on the reducing the impact on network, storage and processing resources. Are presented two new approaches as well as test cases that evaluate, considering the questions: compression ratio, compression time and tolerance of the methods to low memory availability. The results are compared to the XML compression methods that stand out in the literature. The results demonstrate that the use of compressors XML documents can significantly reduce the performance impacts created by the languageMestradoTelecomunicações e TelemáticaMestre em Engenharia Elétric

The work of art in the age of artificial intelligibility

The emergence of complex deep-learning models capable of producing novel images on a practically innumerable number of subjects and in an equally wide variety of artistic styles is beginning to highlight serious inadequacies in the ethical, aesthetic, epistemological and legal frameworks we have so far used to categorise art. To begin tackling these issues and identifying a role for AI in the production and protection of human artwork, it is necessary to take a multidisciplinary approach which considers current legal precedents, the practice of software engineering, historical attitudes towards technological innovation and a sustained technical analysis of the models themselves. This paper queries the location and nature of substantive artistic work in the developmental stages of an AI-generated image, offering critiques of existing assumptions and posing questions for future research. The emergence of convincing AI creative output, artistic or literary, has significant long-term implications for the humanities, including the need for re-appraisal of foundational ideas about authorship and creativity in general. The effects of artificial intelligence, whether generalised or task-specific, cannot be ignored or displaced now that easy-access, scalable image and text production is a reality

Subsidence and thermal history of an inverted Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous extensional basin (Cameros, North-central Spain) affected by very low- to low-grade metamorphism.

The Cameros Basin (North Spain) is a Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous extensional basin, which was inverted during the Cenozoic. It underwent a remarkable thermal evolution, as indicated by the record of anomalous high temperatures in its deposits. In this work the subsidence and thermal history of the basin is reconstructed, using subsidence analysis and 2D thermal modeling. Tectonic subsidence curves provide evidence of the occurrence of two rapid subsidence phases during the syn-extensional stage. In the first phase (Tithonian-Early Berriasian), the largest accommodation space was formed in the central sector of the basin, whereas in the second (Early Barremian-Early Albian), it was formed in the northern sector. These rapid subsidence phases could correspond to relevant tectonic events affecting the Iberian Plate at that time. By distinguishing between the initial and thermal subsidence and defining their relative magnitudes, Royden's (1986) method was used to estimate the heat flow at the end of the extensional stage. A maximum heat flow of 60-65 mW/m2 is estimated, implying only a minor thermal disturbance associated with extension. In contrast with these data, very high vitrinite reflectance, anomalously distributed in some case with respect to the typical depth-vitrinite reflectance relation, was measured in the central-northern sector of the basin. Burial and thermal data are used to construct a 2D thermal basin model, to elucidate the role of the processes involved in sediment heating. Calibration of the thermal model with the vitrinite reflectance (%Ro) and fluid inclusion (FI) data indicates that in the central and northern sectors of the basin, an extra heat source, other than a typical rift, is required to explain the observed thermal anomalies. The distribution of the %Ro and FI values in these sectors suggests that the high temperatures and their distribution are related to the circulation of hot fluids. Hot fluids were attributed to the hydrothermal metamorphic events affecting the area during the early post-extensional and inversion stages of the basin

Patents as Credentials

The conventional explanation for why people seek patents draws on a simple economic rationale. Patents, the usual story goes, provide a financial reward: the ability to engage in supracompetitive pricing by excluding others from practicing the claimed technology. People are drawn to file for patents because that is how these economic rewards are secured. While scholars have proposed variations on the basic exclusionary mechanism, and there is a general acknowledgement that patents can affect a firm’s reputation, the actual mechanisms of patents’ effect on individuals — human beings — remains relatively uncharted. In this Article we offer a concrete theory and framework for understanding the relationship between patents and individuals in terms other than the lure of supracompetitive pricing. Our framework focuses on the idea of patents as credentials: formal abstractions of a person’s inventive nature. By acting as boundaries and identifiable indicators, patents serve purposes beyond the strictly exclusionary. One purpose is to satisfy social or self-worth needs. The formalization of invention through a patent allows those human beings who want to be recognized by society as inventors to be so recognized, thus fulfilling an innate human desire. A second purpose is economic—but not because of the power to exclude. Instead, as the literature has recognized on the firm level, viewing patents as credentials acknowledges their role as economic signals, indicating particular characteristics possessed by the recipient. Considered in these terms, patents serving as credentials are all around us, from resumes and curriculum vitae to framed patents in offices. But these examples only scratch the surface of the role of patents as credentials in our society. By using the formal lens of patents as credentials, we demonstrate that there are reasons why individuals seek patents beyond the lure of supracompetitive pricing

Automatic music genre classification

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. 2014.No abstract provided

Virtual Nature: A practice-led enquiry into the relationship between painting and vernacular photography through the process of the painted monotype

My practice-led research explores the relationship between painting and vernacular photography through the process of painted monotypes. This project has developed from an ongoing fascination with the visual qualities of photography and what happens when you translate photographs into other material forms, such as painting. The aim of this project is to develop images that interrogate how painted monotypes provide a distinctive interpretation of embodied experience through their visual, material and sensory qualities. Today, like no other time in history, photography is embedded in our daily lives through hand-held devices and the interface of the digital screen. My research examines how this embedded experience of the photographic relates to the processes and visual qualities of the painted monotype. The project is focused on three primary locations as subject matter: the aquarium, the botanical glasshouse and the habitat diorama. Through my research I explore how these sites function in optically and conceptually similar ways to the world of images, through shared notions of virtuality and indexicality. This research is informed by the work of Édouard Vuillard, Mamma Andersson, Peter Doig, David Hockney and the landscapes of Gustav Klimt. These painters interrogate the territory between painting and lens-based images in very specific ways, relating to visual perception, embodied vision, figure and ground relationships, and visual textures. In a theoretical context, my examination of the relationship between painting and photography has been motivated by the writings of Elizabeth Wynne Easton, Aaron Scharf, John Berger and Russell Ferguson; while Anne Friedberg, Rob Shields, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Geoffrey Batchen, Kris Paulsen and Johanna Love have been instrumental in determining a connection to the virtual and the index in my research

Sistema baseado em técnicas de compressão para o reconhecimento de dígitos manuscritos

Mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e TelecomunicaçõesO reconhecimento de dígitos manuscritos é uma habilidade humana adquirida. Com pouco esforço, um humano pode reconhecer adequadamente em milissegundos uma sequência de dígitos manuscritos. Com o auxílio de um computador, esta tarefa de reconhecimento pode ser facilmente automatizada, melhorando um número significativo de processos. A separação do correio postal, a verificação de cheques bancários e operações que têm como entrada de dados dígitos manuscritos estão incluídas num amplo conjunto de aplicações que podem ser realizadas de forma mais eficaz e automatizada. Nos últimos anos, várias técnicas e métodos foram propostos para automatizar o mecanismo de reconhecimento de dígitos manuscritos. No entanto, para resolver esta desafiante questão de reconhecimento de imagem são utilizadas técnicas complexas e computacionalmente muito exigentes de machine learning, como é o caso do deep learning. Nesta dissertação é introduzida uma nova solução para o problema do reconhecimento de dígitos manuscritos, usando métricas de similaridade entre imagens de dígitos. As métricas de similaridade são calculadas com base na compressão de dados, nomeadamente pelo uso de Modelos de Contexto Finito.The Recognition of Handwritten Digits is a human-acquired ability. With little e ort, a human can properly recognize, in milliseconds, a sequence of handwritten digits. With the help of a computer, the task of handwriting recognition can be easily automated, improving and making a signi cant number of processes faster. The postal mail sorting, bank check veri cation and handwritten digit data entry operations are in a wide group of applications that can be performed in a more e ective and automated way. In the recent past years, a number of techniques and methods have been proposed to automate the handwritten digit recognition mechanism. However, to solve this challenging question of image recognition, there are used complex and computationally demanding machine learning techniques, as it is the case of deep learning. In this dissertation is introduced a novel solution to the problem of handwritten digit recognition, using metrics of similarity between digit images. The metrics are computed based on data compression, namely by the use of Finite Context Models

The experience of flow and learning by designing interactive multimedia software

As computer technology is increasingly adopted in education, some students continue to have little context for its use. This is particularly true of tertiary drama education students, of whom many still remain computer illiterate. Constructivist pedagogy proposes that a learner constructs knowledge through active participation in their learning. An approach that is gaining currency which applies this principle is learning by designing. This approach was adopted for this study, with the premise that the process of designing multimedia software for their peers would not only motivate these students to use computers but could also lead to a deepening of their understanding of the subject matter. Questions that arise in response to this hypothesis include: what do students learn from designing multimedia software; and what motivates their engagement in this task? These questions where addressed by a project which spanned a two week period at a university. Five university drama education students participated in designing multimedia software which aimed to elucidate the process of devising plays for their peers. The data this activity generated provided the foundation for five case studies which document the students\u27 engagement and learning processes. The findings indicate that the learning by design approach paved an effective learning approach. Also, the use of flow theory as a theoretical framework was helpful in developing an understanding of each person\u27s individual process of engagement. The thesis comments on this theoretical framework and suggests a number of hypotheses for further testing by education professionals