Research report on Bengla OCR training and testing methods

Includes bibliographical references (page 6-7).In this paper we present the training and recognition mechanism of a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based multi-font Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system for Bengali character. In our approach, the central idea is to separate the HMM model for each segmented character or word. The system uses HTK toolkit for data preparation, model training and recognition. The Features of each trained character are calculated by applying the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to each pixel value of the character image where the image is divided into several frames according to its size. The extracted features of each frame are used as discrete probability distributions which will be given as input parameters to each HMM model. In the case of recognition, a model for each separated character or word is built up using the same approach. This model is given to the HTK toolkit to perform the recognition using the Viterbi Decoding method. The experimental results show significant performance over models using neural network based training and recognition systems.Md. Abul Hasna

Granger Causality of Interest Rate and Exchange Rate on Stock Volatility at Chicago Options Market

This paper investigates the Granger Causality test to determine the correlation between interest rates and exchange rates with the composite stock volatility measurement of different companies under the Chicago Board Options and Exchange. Using the daily sector data for all observed variables from the St. Louis Fed over the period of 2007-2012, as well as introducing the technique of autoregressive lag model, I have examined whether the current and the previous values of a particular volatility index, interest rate, and exchange rate could have significant Granger Causality effects to the return behavior of those other indices, interest rates, andexchange rates. A two-way Granger Causality test was performed within the R studio, and the estimated result makes it essential to understand how the stock volatility indices behave over the contemplated time, especially with the following changes in interest rate and exchange rate, thus forecasting one another. The result further indicates, in most cases, interest rates positively Granger cause the stock market volatility indices more than in comparison with the exchange rates within the time period, although both of them are identified as major determinants of stockprice volatility

Does parliamentary development assistance matter? : an examination of the aid effectiveness in parliamentary oversight

As the central institution of democracy, parliaments embody the will of the people in government, and carry all their expectations that democracy will be truly responsive to their needs and help solve the most pressing problems that confront them in their daily lives. With more countries preferring democracy over other systems of government, parliaments and other legislative assemblies have become increasingly pertinent. In broad terms, everybody agrees on what the functions of a parliament are. These bodies make laws, hold the executive branch accountable, and represent citizen interests. Achieving democratic governance, therefore, requires the existence of a strong, effective and efficient parliament or legislative body.The thesis highlights the specific challenges parliaments face in performing such crucial role, particularly fulfilling its oversight mandate. This becomes more daunting where parliaments and legislative bodies are not considered credible or trustworthy institutions, or do not enjoy the support from executives. Many parliaments and the likes are chronically under-staffed and ill-informed. More often than not, they are sorely under-resourced and vital research, legislative drafting, and other capacities are often in short supply. That is why parliaments in most emerging democracies look to the international community for support, as do civil society organisations. Support to ‘parliaments and parliamentarians’ is a relatively new, but rapidly growing area of cooperation provided by different donors and international organisations to representative institutions.The thesis attempts to do primarily three things: firstly, it offers a framework that links a set of specific democratic and aid effectiveness principles to the institutional means by which democratic and parliamentary institutions are supported. As part of this, it provides a compilation of practices whereby parliaments seek to put these principles into effect with international assistance, known as Parliamentary Development Assistance (PDA). In fact, a clear and consistent set of lessons and recommendations about how international development and parliamentary actors can improve their assistance has emerged over the past two decades [‘Lessons learned’ and ‘Good practices’]. Secondly, it explores whether this results into any distinct approach to parliamentary oversight. It examines whether the PDA demonstrated capacity to promote substantial changes to the parliamentary oversight mechanisms in order to address the challenges of corruption better. Thirdly, the thesis sheds light on the nexus between technical support and political environment – often expressed through political will - and, political economy analysis, ignored too long in the name of ‘neutral technical support’. The thesis reinforces that political behaviour and culture cannot be changed quickly. This requires long term engagements, and, calls for enduring commitment and collaboration.The thesis identifies distinct gaps in the literature of studies of the impact of parliamentary development assistance (PDA). It seeks to consider the work of international organisations, research institutions, and donors with the parliaments of different countries and developmental situations in terms of their capacity to make a difference to the strengthening of parliamentary development and oversight work. Donors - development partners and international actors will need to make a durable commitment to programmes based on robust local and political analysis, and reduce the number of short-term interventions, quick fixes, and small-scale projects

Joint Color-Spatial-Directional clustering and Region Merging (JCSD-RM) for unsupervised RGB-D image segmentation

International audienceRecent advances in depth imaging sensors provide easy access to the synchronized depth with color, called RGB-D image. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised method for indoor RGB-D image segmentation and analysis. We consider a statistical image generation model based on the color and geometry of the scene. Our method consists of a joint color-spatial-directional clustering method followed by a statistical planar region merging method. We evaluate our method on the NYU depth database and compare it with existing unsupervised RGB-D segmentation methods. Results show that, it is comparable with the state of the art methods and it needs less computation time. Moreover, it opens interesting perspectives to fuse color and geometry in an unsupervised manner