BilVideo: Design and implementation of a video database management system

With the advances in information technology, the amount of multimedia data captured, produced, and stored is increasing rapidly. As a consequence, multimedia content is widely used for many applications in today's world, and hence, a need for organizing this data, and accessing it from repositories with vast amount of information has been a driving stimulus both commercially and academically. In compliance with this inevitable trend, first image and especially later video database management systems have attracted a great deal of attention, since traditional database systems are designed to deal with alphanumeric information only, thereby not being suitable for multimedia data. In this paper, a prototype video database management system, which we call BilVideo, is introduced. The system architecture of BilVideo is original in that it provides full support for spatio-temporal queries that contain any combination of spatial, temporal, object-appearance, external-predicate, trajectory-projection, and similarity-based object-trajectory conditions by a rule-based system built on a knowledge-base, while utilizing an object-relational database to respond to semantic (keyword, event/activity, and category-based), color, shape, and texture queries. The parts of BilVideo (Fact-Extractor, Video-Annotator, its Web-based visual query interface, and its SQL-like textual query language) are presented, as well. Moreover, our query processing strategy is also briefly explained. © 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc

Semantic multimedia modelling & interpretation for annotation

The emergence of multimedia enabled devices, particularly the incorporation of cameras in mobile phones, and the accelerated revolutions in the low cost storage devices, boosts the multimedia data production rate drastically. Witnessing such an iniquitousness of digital images and videos, the research community has been projecting the issue of its significant utilization and management. Stored in monumental multimedia corpora, digital data need to be retrieved and organized in an intelligent way, leaning on the rich semantics involved. The utilization of these image and video collections demands proficient image and video annotation and retrieval techniques. Recently, the multimedia research community is progressively veering its emphasis to the personalization of these media. The main impediment in the image and video analysis is the semantic gap, which is the discrepancy among a user’s high-level interpretation of an image and the video and the low level computational interpretation of it. Content-based image and video annotation systems are remarkably susceptible to the semantic gap due to their reliance on low-level visual features for delineating semantically rich image and video contents. However, the fact is that the visual similarity is not semantic similarity, so there is a demand to break through this dilemma through an alternative way. The semantic gap can be narrowed by counting high-level and user-generated information in the annotation. High-level descriptions of images and or videos are more proficient of capturing the semantic meaning of multimedia content, but it is not always applicable to collect this information. It is commonly agreed that the problem of high level semantic annotation of multimedia is still far from being answered. This dissertation puts forward approaches for intelligent multimedia semantic extraction for high level annotation. This dissertation intends to bridge the gap between the visual features and semantics. It proposes a framework for annotation enhancement and refinement for the object/concept annotated images and videos datasets. The entire theme is to first purify the datasets from noisy keyword and then expand the concepts lexically and commonsensical to fill the vocabulary and lexical gap to achieve high level semantics for the corpus. This dissertation also explored a novel approach for high level semantic (HLS) propagation through the images corpora. The HLS propagation takes the advantages of the semantic intensity (SI), which is the concept dominancy factor in the image and annotation based semantic similarity of the images. As we are aware of the fact that the image is the combination of various concepts and among the list of concepts some of them are more dominant then the other, while semantic similarity of the images are based on the SI and concept semantic similarity among the pair of images. Moreover, the HLS exploits the clustering techniques to group similar images, where a single effort of the human experts to assign high level semantic to a randomly selected image and propagate to other images through clustering. The investigation has been made on the LabelMe image and LabelMe video dataset. Experiments exhibit that the proposed approaches perform a noticeable improvement towards bridging the semantic gap and reveal that our proposed system outperforms the traditional systems

A full-scale semantic content-based model for interactive multimedia information systems.

Issues of syntax have dominated research in multimedia information systems (MMISs), with video developing as a technology of images and audio as one of signals. But when we use video and audio, we do so for their content. This is a semantic issue. Current research in multimedia on semantic content-based models has adopted a structure-oriented approach, where video and audio content is described on a frame-by-frame or segment-by-segment basis (where a segment is an arbitrary set of contiguous frames). This approach has failed to cater for semantic aspects, and thus has not been fully effective when used within an MMIS. The research undertaken for this thesis reveals seven semantic aspects of video and audio: (1) explicit media structure; (2) objects; (3) spatial relationships between objects; (4) events and actions involving objects; (5) temporal relationships between events and actions; (6) integration of syntactic and semantic information; and (7) direct user-media interaction. This thesis develops a full-scale semantic content-based model that caters for the above seven semantic aspects of video and audio. To achieve this, it uses an entities of interest approach, instead of a structure-oriented one, where the MMIS integrates relevant semantic content-based information about video and audio with information about the entities of interest to the system, e.g. mountains, vehicles, employees. A method for developing an interactive MMIS that encompasses the model is also described. Both the method and the model are used in the development of ARISTOTLE, an interactive instructional MMIS for teaching young children about zoology, in order to demonstrate their operation

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching ICTMT 12

Innovation, inclusion, sharing and diversity are some of the words that briefly and suitably characterize the ICTMT series of biennial international conferences – the International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching. Being the twelfth of a series which began in Birmingham, UK, in 1993, under the influential enterprise of Professor Bert Waits from Ohio State University, this conference was held in Portugal for the first time. The 12th International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching was hosted by the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Algarve, in the city of Faro, from 24 to 27 June 2015, and was guided by the original spirit of its foundation. The integration of digital technologies in mathematics education across school levels and countries, from primary to tertiary education, together with the understanding of the phenomena involved in the teaching and learning of mathematics in technological environments have always been driving forces in the transformation of pedagogical practices. The possibility of joining at an international conference a wide diversity of participants, including school mathematics teachers, lecturers, mathematicians, mathematics educators and researchers, software designers, and curriculum developers, is one facet that makes this conference rather unique. At the same time, it seeks to foster the sharing of ideas, experiences, projects and studies while providing opportunities to try-out and assess tools or didactical proposals during times of hands-on work. The ICTMT 12 had this same ambition, when embracing and welcoming just over 120 delegates who actively and enthusiastically contributed to a very packed program of scientific proposals and sessions on various topics

Multisensory learning in adaptive interactive systems

The main purpose of my work is to investigate multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration in the design and development of adaptive user interfaces for educational purposes. To this aim, starting from renewed understanding from neuroscience and cognitive science on multisensory perceptual learning and sensory integration, I developed a theoretical computational model for designing multimodal learning technologies that take into account these results. Main theoretical foundations of my research are multisensory perceptual learning theories and the research on sensory processing and integration, embodied cognition theories, computational models of non-verbal and emotion communication in full-body movement, and human-computer interaction models. Finally, a computational model was applied in two case studies, based on two EU ICT-H2020 Projects, "weDRAW" and "TELMI", on which I worked during the PhD

24th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases

In the last three decades information modelling and knowledge bases have become essentially important subjects not only in academic communities related to information systems and computer science but also in the business area where information technology is applied. The series of European – Japanese Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC) originally started as a co-operation initiative between Japan and Finland in 1982. The practical operations were then organised by professor Ohsuga in Japan and professors Hannu Kangassalo and Hannu Jaakkola in Finland (Nordic countries). Geographical scope has expanded to cover Europe and also other countries. Workshop characteristic - discussion, enough time for presentations and limited number of participants (50) / papers (30) - is typical for the conference. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to: 1. Conceptual modelling: Modelling and specification languages; Domain-specific conceptual modelling; Concepts, concept theories and ontologies; Conceptual modelling of large and heterogeneous systems; Conceptual modelling of spatial, temporal and biological data; Methods for developing, validating and communicating conceptual models. 2. Knowledge and information modelling and discovery: Knowledge discovery, knowledge representation and knowledge management; Advanced data mining and analysis methods; Conceptions of knowledge and information; Modelling information requirements; Intelligent information systems; Information recognition and information modelling. 3. Linguistic modelling: Models of HCI; Information delivery to users; Intelligent informal querying; Linguistic foundation of information and knowledge; Fuzzy linguistic models; Philosophical and linguistic foundations of conceptual models. 4. Cross-cultural communication and social computing: Cross-cultural support systems; Integration, evolution and migration of systems; Collaborative societies; Multicultural web-based software systems; Intercultural collaboration and support systems; Social computing, behavioral modeling and prediction. 5. Environmental modelling and engineering: Environmental information systems (architecture); Spatial, temporal and observational information systems; Large-scale environmental systems; Collaborative knowledge base systems; Agent concepts and conceptualisation; Hazard prediction, prevention and steering systems. 6. Multimedia data modelling and systems: Modelling multimedia information and knowledge; Contentbased multimedia data management; Content-based multimedia retrieval; Privacy and context enhancing technologies; Semantics and pragmatics of multimedia data; Metadata for multimedia information systems. Overall we received 56 submissions. After careful evaluation, 16 papers have been selected as long paper, 17 papers as short papers, 5 papers as position papers, and 3 papers for presentation of perspective challenges. We thank all colleagues for their support of this issue of the EJC conference, especially the program committee, the organising committee, and the programme coordination team. The long and the short papers presented in the conference are revised after the conference and published in the Series of “Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence” by IOS Press (Amsterdam). The books “Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases” are edited by the Editing Committee of the conference. We believe that the conference will be productive and fruitful in the advance of research and application of information modelling and knowledge bases. Bernhard Thalheim Hannu Jaakkola Yasushi Kiyok

Gesture and Speech in Interaction - 4th edition (GESPIN 4)

International audienceThe fourth edition of Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN) was held in Nantes, France. With more than 40 papers, these proceedings show just what a flourishing field of enquiry gesture studies continues to be. The keynote speeches of the conference addressed three different aspects of multimodal interaction:gesture and grammar, gesture acquisition, and gesture and social interaction. In a talk entitled Qualitiesof event construal in speech and gesture: Aspect and tense, Alan Cienki presented an ongoing researchproject on narratives in French, German and Russian, a project that focuses especially on the verbal andgestural expression of grammatical tense and aspect in narratives in the three languages. Jean-MarcColletta's talk, entitled Gesture and Language Development: towards a unified theoretical framework,described the joint acquisition and development of speech and early conventional and representationalgestures. In Grammar, deixis, and multimodality between code-manifestation and code-integration or whyKendon's Continuum should be transformed into a gestural circle, Ellen Fricke proposed a revisitedgrammar of noun phrases that integrates gestures as part of the semiotic and typological codes of individuallanguages. From a pragmatic and cognitive perspective, Judith Holler explored the use ofgaze and hand gestures as means of organizing turns at talk as well as establishing common ground in apresentation entitled On the pragmatics of multi-modal face-to-face communication: Gesture, speech andgaze in the coordination of mental states and social interaction.Among the talks and posters presented at the conference, the vast majority of topics related, quitenaturally, to gesture and speech in interaction - understood both in terms of mapping of units in differentsemiotic modes and of the use of gesture and speech in social interaction. Several presentations explored the effects of impairments(such as diseases or the natural ageing process) on gesture and speech. The communicative relevance ofgesture and speech and audience-design in natural interactions, as well as in more controlled settings liketelevision debates and reports, was another topic addressed during the conference. Some participantsalso presented research on first and second language learning, while others discussed the relationshipbetween gesture and intonation. While most participants presented research on gesture and speech froman observer's perspective, be it in semiotics or pragmatics, some nevertheless focused on another importantaspect: the cognitive processes involved in language production and perception. Last but not least,participants also presented talks and posters on the computational analysis of gestures, whether involvingexternal devices (e.g. mocap, kinect) or concerning the use of specially-designed computer software forthe post-treatment of gestural data. Importantly, new links were made between semiotics and mocap data