Non-linear coupled CNN models for multiscale image analysis

A CNN model of partial differential equations (PDEs) for image multiscale analysis is proposed. The model is based on a polynomial representation of the diffusivity function and defines a paradigm of polynomial CNNs,for approximating a large class of nonlinear isotropic and/or anisotropic PDEs. The global dynamics of spacediscrete polynomial CNN models is analyzed and compared with the dynamic behavior of the corresponding space-continuous PDE models. It is shown that in the isotropic case the two models are not topologically equivalent: in particular discrete CNN models allow one to obtain the output image without stopping the image evolution after a given time (scale). This property represents an advantage with respect to continuous PDE models and could simplify some image preprocessing algorithm

New results on periodic symbolic sequences of second order digital filters with two’s complement arithmetic

In this article, the second order digital filter with two’s complement arithmetic in [1] is considered. Necessary conditions for the symbolic sequences to be periodic after a number of iterations are given when the filter parameters are at b=a+1 and b=-a+1. Furthermore, for some particular values of a, even when one of the eigenvalues is outside the unit circle, the system may behave as a linear system after a number of iterations and the state vector may toggle between two states or converge to a fixed point at the steady state. The necessary and sufficient conditions for these phenomena are given in this article

Chaotic behaviors of stable second-order digital filters with two’s complement arithmetic

In this paper, the behaviors of stable second-order digital filters with two’s complement arithmetic are investigated. It is found that even though the poles are inside the unit circle and the trajectory converges to a fixed point on the phase plane, that fixed point is not necessarily the origin. That fixed point is found and the set of initial conditions corresponding to such trajectories is determined. This set of initial conditions is a set of polygons inside the unit square, whereas it is an ellipse for the marginally stable case. Also, it is found that the occurrence of limit cycles and chaotic fractal pattern on the phase plane can be characterized by the periodic and aperiodic behaviors of the symbolic sequences, respectively. The fractal pattern is polygonal, whereas it is elliptical for the marginally stable case

To know or not to know? Practices of knowledge and ignorance among Bidayuhs in an “impurely” Christian world

© Royal Anthropological Institute 2009. This is the accepted version of the following article: Chua, L. (2009), To know or not to know? Practices of knowledge and ignorance among Bidayuhs in an ‘impurely’ Christian world. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15: 332–348, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2009.01556.x/abstract.This article seeks to render ignorance analytically and ethnographically productive by exploring practices and tropes of knowing and not-knowing among young Christian Bidayuhs in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. It argues that these Bidayuhs' professed ignorance of the old ‘religion’, adat gawai, cannot be dismissed as a simple lack of knowledge or reflection of sheer indifference. Instead, their invocations of ignorance could be understood as a productive, empowering device for dealing with the dangers of living in a world in which religious conversion remains an ongoing, incomplete process. Through this ethnographic analysis, the article also offers a reflexive critique of the knowledge-centred impulses that often shape anthropology's epistemological and methodological projects

Everyday religiosity and the ambiguation of development in East Malaysia: Reflections on a dam-construction and resettlement project

In December 2008, I had breakfast with an elderly Bidayuh man and his daughter in their upland village—one of four due to be resettled to make way for a new dam and reservoir. With an official land compensation ceremony a few days away, the conversation meandered, as it often did, towards the project. My elderly interlocutor—a follower of the old rituals, adat gawai—had been reminiscing about life in the 1950s, ‘before [Sarawak became part of] Malaysia’. Back then, he said, the bus fare to Kuching was under a dollar; food in the city came in generous portions for just ten cents, and trousers cost a few dollars. These days, however, everything was expensive because those Malays who ruled the country didn’t know how to run the ‘economy’ (English). But being Malay was difficult, added his Anglican daughter, since they were Muslim and had to live according to strict observances. Ruminating further, they began to contrast the lives of Muslims with those of Christians, who today form the bulk of the Bidayuh population

Horizontal and vertical relations: Interrogating "in/dividualism" among Christian Bidayuhs

This article addresses aspects of the dividual/individualist debate by thinking through an analogous set of ideas and practices among the Bidayuh, an indigenous group of Malaysian Borneo. When Bidayuhs began converting to Christianity in the 1950s, some missionaries contrasted their communal way of life with the “individualism” of the new religion. Drawing on contemporaneous ethnography and my own research, I sketch a more complex picture, showing how both pre-Christian and Christian sociality have been shaped by the shifting intersection of “in/dividual” impulses that derive from the “horizontal” and “vertical” relations in which persons are enmeshed. Tracing the trajectories of these impulses and relations from life to death and beyond, this article attempts to detach questions of in/dividualism from personhood, while arguing for the need to take seriously the variegations and affinities between different strains of Christianity and Western and non-Western socialities.Fieldwork was supported by the William Wyse, Evans, Smuts Memorial, and the Bartle Frere Memorial Funds at the University of Cambridge and a Royal Anthropological Institute Horniman/Sutasoma Award

Everything You Wish to Know About Memristors But Are Afraid to Ask

This paper classifies all memristors into three classes called Ideal, Generic, or Extended memristors. A subclass of Generic memristors is related to Ideal memristors via a one-to-one mathematical transformation, and is hence called Ideal Generic memristors. The concept of non-volatile memories is defined and clarified with illustrations. Several fundamental new concepts, including Continuum-memory memristor, POP (acronym for Power-Off Plot), DC V-I Plot, and Quasi DC V-I Plot, are rigorously defined and clarified with colorful illustrations. Among many colorful pictures the shoelace DC V-I Plot stands out as both stunning and illustrative. Even more impressive is that this bizarre shoelace plot has an exact analytical representation via 2 explicit functions of the state variable, derived by a novel parametric approach invented by the author

Anxious states : culture and politics in Singapore and Hong Kong

Since Singapore and Hong Kong are the two most economically successful, ethnic Chinese dominant city-states in Asia, comparisons have always been made between these locations. Fundamental to the Singaporean collective social life is a realization that ‘the world does not need Singapore but Singapore needs the world’. The demand for immigrants to supplement the small local workforce is constant, adding complexity to the domestic multi-ethnic population and geopolitical situation, and confounding the processes of individual and national identity formation. The constant demand of physical space threatens to erase heritage, social memories and individual biographies, yet simultaneously encourages a progressive future-mindedness. The prevalent social anxieties undergird a wide political consensus that emphasizes stability, cohesion and political order. This has engendered a ‘politics of the middle ground’, favoured by the long governing single-party dominant parliament, that marginalizes liberal individual rights and individuals who falls out of the ‘middle’. Are such anxieties broadly shared by Hong Kong and its people? And, if they are, how might some of these anxieties be culturally and politically expressed, and in what institutional structural configurations