Object Matching in Distributed Video Surveillance Systems by LDA-Based Appearance Descriptors

Establishing correspondences among object instances is still challenging in multi-camera surveillance systems, especially when the cameras’ fields of view are non-overlapping. Spatiotemporal constraints can help in solving the correspondence problem but still leave a wide margin of uncertainty. One way to reduce this uncertainty is to use appearance information about the moving objects in the site. In this paper we present the preliminary results of a new method that can capture salient appearance characteristics at each camera node in the network. A Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model is created and maintained at each node in the camera network. Each object is encoded in terms of the LDA bag-of-words model for appearance. The encoded appearance is then used to establish probable matching across cameras. Preliminary experiments are conducted on a dataset of 20 individuals and comparison against Madden’s I-MCHR is reported

Infrared studies of the rutile surface

The thesis describes infrared spectra recorded during the adsorption of water, acetone, acetic acid and hexifluaroacetone onto oxidized and reduced rutile, and the development of a technique for recording the infrared spectrum of a solid immersed in a liquid. Bands observed on the hydroxylated rutile surface have been assigned to hydroxyl groups on the (110) plane and water IrDlecules adsorbed onto strong and weak Lewis sites on all exposed planes. The hydroxyl groups exist as isolated or hydrogen bonded groups on surface titanium ions or as hydrogen ions on bridging oxygen ions. Reduction of the rutile surface considerably decreased the amount of rmlecular water adsorbed on the hydroxylated surface. The adsorption of acetone onto the hydroxylated surface took place in three consecutive stages, the first involved acetone molecules Lewis bonding to weak sites, the second resulted in the formation of mesityl oxide on strong surface sites and occurred with stage one in the absence of surface water molecules. In the third stage acetate molecules were formed as a result of the decomposition of mesityl oxide. Adsorption of acetic acid onto rutile resulted in the formation of water and arpeaxeme of bands due to acetate groups and Lewis-bonded co lexes on the weak sites. Hexafluoroacetone reacted with surface hydroxyls to produce a salt of the gem-diol hexifluoropropane-2,2-dio1, which decomposed on the removal of water to form trifluoroacetate species. An infrared cell has been developed enabling solid discs to be treated and inmiersed in a solution under inert conditions. The cell, of path length 0.7cm, has been used to study the adsorption of ether, from a solution in carbon tetrachloride, onto silica. Designs of variable path length cells for use Hexafluoroacetone reacted with surface hydroxyls to produce a salt of the gem-diol hexifluoropropane-2,2-dio1, which decomposed on the removal of water to form trifluoroacetate species. An infrared cell has been developed enabling solid discs to be treated and inmiersed in a solution under inert conditions. The cell, of path length 0.7cm, has been used to study the adsorption of ether, from a solution in carbon tetrachloride, onto silica. Designs of variable path length cells for use unier vacuum are included

Infrared studies of the rutile surface

The thesis describes infrared spectra recorded during the adsorption of water, acetone, acetic acid and hexifluaroacetone onto oxidized and reduced rutile, and the development of a technique for recording the infrared spectrum of a solid immersed in a liquid. Bands observed on the hydroxylated rutile surface have been assigned to hydroxyl groups on the (110) plane and water IrDlecules adsorbed onto strong and weak Lewis sites on all exposed planes. The hydroxyl groups exist as isolated or hydrogen bonded groups on surface titanium ions or as hydrogen ions on bridging oxygen ions. Reduction of the rutile surface considerably decreased the amount of rmlecular water adsorbed on the hydroxylated surface. The adsorption of acetone onto the hydroxylated surface took place in three consecutive stages, the first involved acetone molecules Lewis bonding to weak sites, the second resulted in the formation of mesityl oxide on strong surface sites and occurred with stage one in the absence of surface water molecules. In the third stage acetate molecules were formed as a result of the decomposition of mesityl oxide. Adsorption of acetic acid onto rutile resulted in the formation of water and arpeaxeme of bands due to acetate groups and Lewis-bonded co lexes on the weak sites. Hexafluoroacetone reacted with surface hydroxyls to produce a salt of the gem-diol hexifluoropropane-2,2-dio1, which decomposed on the removal of water to form trifluoroacetate species. An infrared cell has been developed enabling solid discs to be treated and inmiersed in a solution under inert conditions. The cell, of path length 0.7cm, has been used to study the adsorption of ether, from a solution in carbon tetrachloride, onto silica. Designs of variable path length cells for use Hexafluoroacetone reacted with surface hydroxyls to produce a salt of the gem-diol hexifluoropropane-2,2-dio1, which decomposed on the removal of water to form trifluoroacetate species. An infrared cell has been developed enabling solid discs to be treated and inmiersed in a solution under inert conditions. The cell, of path length 0.7cm, has been used to study the adsorption of ether, from a solution in carbon tetrachloride, onto silica. Designs of variable path length cells for use unier vacuum are included

The social and economic history of The Standard and Fleet Street 1653-1900

This dissertation examines the political, social and economic development of Fleet Street 1653-1900, using The Standard (1827-1900) as its model. The opening chapter traces the early fortunes of the Baldwin Family, the founders of The Standard and the struggle which the Baldwins and their colleagues waged for the establishment of a free press. Chapter Two deals with the launch of The Standard by Charles Baldwin in May 1827 in response to the urging of The Duke of Wellington and other High Tories. Under the editorship of Dr. Stanley Lees Giffard, the paper opposed Parliamentary Reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws and was strongly anti-Papist in outlook. The diverse personalities of two key figures in the paper's early days, Dr. William Maginn and Alaric Alexander Watts, are also discussed. Chapter Three is concerned with the involvement of governments and politicians with newspapers, with special emphasis on the relationship of Thomas Hamber and Disraeli and the estrangement of William Mudford and Robert Cecil, the Third Marquess of Salisbury. Economic structure and labour relations and the establishment of The St. James's Chronicle are covered in the ensuing chapter. Chapter Five is concerned with the costs and methods of producing a "national" newspaper and the problem of labour from the early chapels to the highly-organized unions of the 20th Century. The final chapters discuss the role of the reporter and "The New Journalism". The early struggle for a free press -- with reference to John Wilkes and "Junius" is -- reviewed followed by a discussion on Edward Baldwin, proprietor of The Standard, and his conflict with The Times. The role of the Special Correspondent, using The Standard as a model, is also discussed. The leaders of the "New Journalism" are examined with particular reference to W. T. Stead and The Pall Mall Gazette; T. P. O'Connor's Star; and the rivalry between Alfred Harmsworth's Daily Mail and Arthur Pearson's Daily Express. Throughout this dissertation, the history of The Standard is linked with the growth of Fleet Street. The study ends with the purchase of The Standard by Pearson, resulting from the inability of its editor/manager, Mudford, to adapt to the changes in the press during the 19th Century and especially to the "New Journalism"

Quantum Locality

It is argued that while quantum mechanics contains nonlocal or entangled states, the instantaneous or nonlocal influences sometimes thought to be present due to violations of Bell inequalities in fact arise from mistaken attempts to apply classical concepts and introduce probabilities in a manner inconsistent with the Hilbert space structure of standard quantum mechanics. Instead, Einstein locality is a valid quantum principle: objective properties of individual quantum systems do not change when something is done to another noninteracting system. There is no reason to suspect any conflict between quantum theory and special relativity.Comment: Introduction has been revised, references added, minor corrections elsewhere. To appear in Foundations of Physic

Long Cycles in a Perturbed Mean Field Model of a Boson Gas

In this paper we give a precise mathematical formulation of the relation between Bose condensation and long cycles and prove its validity for the perturbed mean field model of a Bose gas. We decompose the total density $\rho=\rho_{{\rm short}}+\rho_{{\rm long}}$ into the number density of particles belonging to cycles of finite length ($\rho_{{\rm short}}$) and to infinitely long cycles ($\rho_{{\rm long}}$) in the thermodynamic limit. For this model we prove that when there is Bose condensation, $\rho_{{\rm long}}$ is different from zero and identical to the condensate density. This is achieved through an application of the theory of large deviations. We discuss the possible equivalence of $\rho_{{\rm long}}\neq 0$ with off-diagonal long range order and winding paths that occur in the path integral representation of the Bose gas.Comment: 10 page

Bell inequalities as constraints on unmeasurable correlations

The interpretation of the violation of Bell-Clauser-Horne inequalities is revisited, in relation with the notion of extension of QM predictions to unmeasurable correlations. Such extensions are compatible with QM predictions in many cases, in particular for observables with compatibility relations described by tree graphs. This implies classical representability of any set of correlations , , , and the equivalence of the Bell-Clauser-Horne inequalities to a non void intersection between the ranges of values for the unmeasurable correlation associated to different choices for B. The same analysis applies to the Hardy model and to the "perfect correlations" discussed by Greenberger, Horne, Shimony and Zeilinger. In all the cases, the dependence of an unmeasurable correlation on a set of variables allowing for a classical representation is the only basis for arguments about violations of locality and causality.Comment: Some modifications have been done in order to improve clarity of presentation and comparison with other approache

Sentiment analysis and the impact of employee satisfaction on firm earnings

Prior text mining studies of corporate reputational sentiment based on newswires, blogs and Twitter feeds have mostly captured reputation from the perspective of two groups of stakeholders – the media and consumers. In this study we examine the sentiment of a potentially overlooked stakeholder group, namely, the firm’s employees. First, we present a novel dataset that uses online employee reviews to capture employee satisfaction. We employ LDA to identify salient aspects in employees’ reviews, and manually infer one latent topic that appears to be associated with the firm’s outlook. Second, we create a composite document by aggregating employee reviews for each firm and measure employee sentiment as the polarity of the composite document using the General Inquirer dictionary to count positive and negative terms. Finally, we define employee satisfaction as a weighted combination of the firm outlook topic cluster and employee sentiment. The results of our joint aspect-polarity model suggest that it may be beneficial for investors to incorporate a measure of employee satisfaction into their method for forecasting firm earnings

Giant Magnons and Singular Curves

We obtain the giant magnon of Hofman-Maldacena and its dyonic generalisation on R x S^3 < AdS_5 x S^5 from the general elliptic finite-gap solution by degenerating its elliptic spectral curve into a singular curve. This alternate description of giant magnons as finite-gap solutions associated to singular curves is related through a symplectic transformation to their already established description in terms of condensate cuts developed in hep-th/0606145.Comment: 34 pages, 17 figures, minor change in abstrac

The fully entangled fraction as an inclusive measure of entanglement applications

Characterizing entanglement in all but the simplest case of a two qubit pure state is a hard problem, even understanding the relevant experimental quantities that are related to entanglement is difficult. It may not be necessary, however, to quantify the entanglement of a state in order to quantify the quantum information processing significance of a state. It is known that the fully entangled fraction has a direct relationship to the fidelity of teleportation maximized under the actions of local unitary operations. In the case of two qubits we point out that the fully entangled fraction can also be related to the fidelities, maximized under the actions of local unitary operations, of other important quantum information tasks such as dense coding, entanglement swapping and quantum cryptography in such a way as to provide an inclusive measure of these entanglement applications. For two qubit systems the fully entangled fraction has a simple known closed-form expression and we establish lower and upper bounds of this quantity with the concurrence. This approach is readily extendable to more complicated systems.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, accepted in Physics Letters