User requirements for multimedia indexing and retrieval of unedited audio-visual footage - RUSHES

Multimedia analysis and reuse of raw un-edited audio visual content known as rushes is gaining acceptance by a large number of research labs and companies. A set of research projects are considering multimedia indexing, annotation, search and retrieval in the context of European funded research, but only the FP6 project RUSHES is focusing on automatic semantic annotation, indexing and retrieval of raw and un-edited audio-visual content. Even professional content creators and providers as well as home-users are dealing with this type of content and therefore novel technologies for semantic search and retrieval are required. As a first result of this project, the user requirements and possible user-scenarios are presented in this paper. These results lay down the foundation for the research and development of a multimedia search engine particularly dedicated to the specific needs of the users and the content

“We Are Asking Why You Treat Us This Way. Is It Because We Are Negroes?” A Reparations-Based Approach to Remedying the Trump Administration’s Cancellation of TPS Protections for Haitians

This Article places the Trump Administration’s decision to cancel TPS for Haitians within the longer history of U.S. racism and exclusion against Haiti and Haitians, observes the legal challenges against this decision and their limitations, and imagines a future that repairs the harms caused by past and current racist policies. First, this Article briefly outlines the history of exclusionary, race-based immigration laws in the United States, and specifically how this legal framework, coupled with existing anti-Black ideologies in the United States, directly impacted Haitians and Haitian immigrants arriving in the United States. Next, the Article provides an overview of the TPS decision-making process, the Trump Administration’s openly racist comments against Haitians and other people of color before and during the decision-making process to cancel TPS, and the departure from the established administrative process for TPS cancellation. The Article then reviews the legal challenges against TPS cancellation and the arguments that the decision violated the Equal Protection Clause and how such efforts reveal the limitations of litigation as a tool to achieve social justice. Looking towards the future, this Article discusses reparations and remittances as creative ways to repair some of the damage wrought by the United States’ history of racial discrimination in immigration and foreign policy against Haitians. Specifically, this Article explores three solutions: (1) recognizing the harms caused specifically to Haitians by the United States’ exclusionary foreign affairs and immigration policies; (2) using material and non-material forms of reparations, including extending TPS, offering a pathway for citizenship for TPS holders, or offering Haitian TPS recipients benefits to public programs; and (3) valuing the role remittances play in affirming Haitians’ autonomy and working towards eroding decades of imperialistic treatment of Haitians

A random walker on a ratchet potential: Effect of a non Gaussian noise

We analyze the effect of a colored non Gaussian noise on a model of a random walker moving along a ratchet potential. Such a model was motivated by the transport properties of motor proteins, like kinesin and myosin. Previous studies have been realized assuming white noises. However, for real situations, in general we could expect that those noises be correlated and non Gaussian. Among other aspects, in addition to a maximum in the current as the noise intensity is varied, we have also found another optimal value of the current when departing from Gaussian behavior. We show the relevant effects that arise when departing from Gaussian behavior, particularly related to current's enhancement, and discuss its relevance for both biological and technological situations.Comment: Submitted to Europ.Phys. J. B (LaTex, 16 pgs, 8 figures

Solar Coronal Structures and Stray Light in TRACE

Using the 2004 Venus transit of the Sun to constrain a semi-empirical point-spread function for the TRACE EUV solar telescope, we have measured the effect of stray light in that telescope. We find that 43% of 171A EUV light that enters TRACE is scattered, either through diffraction off the entrance filter grid or through other nonspecular effects. We carry this result forward, via known-PSF deconvolution of TRACE images, to identify its effect on analysis of TRACE data. Known-PSF deconvolution by this derived PSF greatly reduces the effect of visible haze in the TRACE 171A images, enhances bright features, and reveals that the smooth background component of the corona is considerably less bright (and hence much more rarefied) than commonly supposed. Deconvolution reveals that some prior conlclusions about the Sun appear to have been based on stray light in the images. In particular, the diffuse background "quiet corona" becomes consistent with hydrostatic support of the coronal plasma; feature contrast is greatly increased, possibly affecting derived parameters such as the form of the coronal heating function; and essentially all existing differential emission measure studies of small features appear to be affected by contamination from nearby features. We speculate on further implications of stray light for interpretation of EUV images from TRACE and similar instruments, and advocate deconvolution as a standard tool for image analysis with future instruments such as SDO/AIA.Comment: Accepted by APJ; v2 reformatted to single-column format for online readabilit

General formalism of Hamiltonians for realizing a prescribed evolution of a qubit

We investigate the inverse problem concerning the evolution of a qubit system, specifically we consider how one can establish the Hamiltonians that account for the evolution of a qubit along a prescribed path in the projected Hilbert space. For a given path, there are infinite Hamiltonians which can realize the same evolution. A general form of the Hamiltonians is constructed in which one may select the desired one for implementing a prescribed evolution. This scheme can be generalized to higher dimensional systems.Comment: 6 page

The Influence of Algal Exudate on the Hygroscopicity of Sea Spray Particles

We examined the effect of organic matter released by four different algal species on the hygroscopic growth and droplet activation behaviour of laboratory-generated marine aerosol particles. Hygroscopic growth factors and dry diameters for activation were reduced by less than 10%, compared to that of sodium chloride or of artificial seawater that was devoid of marine surfactants. Concentration-dependent nonideal behaviour was observed for the artificial seawater. But within measurement uncertainty, the measured hygroscopic growth and droplet activation behaviour for the samples that contained organic matter were consistent with a hygroscopicity parameter that was constant between the sub- and supersaturated measurement points. Also, the hygroscopic growth measured for hydrated particles after 3 and after 10 seconds was similar, which implies that in this time range no kinetic effects were detected

A single sub-km Kuiper Belt object from a stellar Occultation in archival data

The Kuiper belt is a remnant of the primordial Solar System. Measurements of its size distribution constrain its accretion and collisional history, and the importance of material strength of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). Small, sub-km sized, KBOs elude direct detection, but the signature of their occultations of background stars should be detectable. Observations at both optical and X-ray wavelengths claim to have detected such occultations, but their implied KBO abundances are inconsistent with each other and far exceed theoretical expectations. Here, we report an analysis of archival data that reveals an occultation by a body with a 500 m radius at a distance of 45 AU. The probability of this event to occur due to random statistical fluctuations within our data set is about 2%. Our survey yields a surface density of KBOs with radii larger than 250 m of 2.1^{+4.8}_{-1.7} x 10^7 deg^{-2}, ruling out inferred surface densities from previous claimed detections by more than 5 sigma. The fact that we detected only one event, firmly shows a deficit of sub-km sized KBOs compared to a population extrapolated from objects with r>50 km. This implies that sub-km sized KBOs are undergoing collisional erosion, just like debris disks observed around other stars.Comment: To appear in Nature on December 17, 2009. Under press embargo until 1800 hours London time on 16 December. 19 pages; 7 figure

Leaf litter degradation in highly turbid transitional waters: preliminary results from litter-bag experiments in the Gironde Estuary

The rates of decomposition of oak (Quercus robur) leaves have been examined using litter bags in a very high turbidity macrotidal estuary, the Gironde Estuary (S.W. France). The first experiments show a marked decrease in the decomposition rate of oak leaves at the water-sediment interface (mud-contact: anoxic conditions, reduced physical fragmentation) in comparison to the water column. The results point out the impact of hydrodynamic conditions on leaf litter degradation in such fluvio-estuarine systems. Regarding the aquatic-terrestrial linkage, our observations suggest direct changes in leaf decomposition kinetics and then, a potential delay on the recycling and transport processes of coarse particulate organic matter, especially in a context of modification of the natural water flow, due to global and land use changes

Performance of the reconstruction algorithms of the FIRST experiment pixel sensors vertex detector

Hadrontherapy treatments use charged particles (e.g. protons and carbon ions) to treat tumors. During a therapeutic treatment with carbon ions, the beam undergoes nuclear fragmentation processes giving rise to significant yields of secondary charged particles. An accurate prediction of these production rates is necessary to estimate precisely the dose deposited into the tumours and the surrounding healthy tissues. Nowadays, a limited set of double differential carbon fragmentation cross-section is available. Experimental data are necessary to benchmark Monte Carlo simulations for their use in hadrontherapy. The purpose of the FIRST experiment is to study nuclear fragmentation processes of ions with kinetic energy in the range from 100 to 1000 MeV/u. Tracks are reconstructed using information from a pixel silicon detector based on the CMOS technology. The performances achieved using this device for hadrontherapy purpose are discussed. For each reconstruction step (clustering, tracking and vertexing), different methods are implemented. The algorithm performances and the accuracy on reconstructed observables are evaluated on the basis of simulated and experimental data