Smartphone picture organization: a hierarchical approach

We live in a society where the large majority of the population has a camera-equipped smartphone. In addition, hard drives and cloud storage are getting cheaper and cheaper, leading to a tremendous growth in stored personal photos. Unlike photo collections captured by a digital camera, which typically are pre-processed by the user who organizes them into event-related folders, smartphone pictures are automatically stored in the cloud. As a consequence, photo collections captured by a smartphone are highly unstructured and because smartphones are ubiquitous, they present a larger variability compared to pictures captured by a digital camera. To solve the need of organizing large smartphone photo collections automatically, we propose here a new methodology for hierarchical photo organization into topics and topic-related categories. Our approach successfully estimates latent topics in the pictures by applying probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis, and automatically assigns a name to each topic by relying on a lexical database. Topic-related categories are then estimated by using a set of topic-specific Convolutional Neuronal Networks. To validate our approach, we ensemble and make public a large dataset of more than 8,000 smartphone pictures from 40 persons. Experimental results demonstrate major user satisfaction with respect to state of the art solutions in terms of organization.Peer ReviewedPreprin

Petrology of the Late Proterozoic(?)-Early Cambrian Arumbera Sandstone, Western MacDonnell Ranges, North-Central Amadeus Basin, Central Australia

The Arumbera Sandstone consists of mappable informal units which are repeated in a vertical, cyclic succession. Sandstones of fluvial origin form resistant strike ridges separated by strike valleys, which consist of recessive sandstones and mudrocks of marine origin. Lithofacies 1a, 2b, and 3a are probably of marine origin in intertidal environments. Trace fossil assemblages in lithofacies 3a suggest Skolithos and Cruziana inchnofacies were present. Lithofacies 1e, 2a, 2c, 3b, and 4a are probably of fluvial origin, as the result of coalescing braided stream deposits. The Arumbera Sandstone probably was deposited in a deltaic environment characterized by low wave energy, a micro tidal range, and high input of sand-sized sediment br braided streams. In the western MacDonnell Ranges, the Arumbera overlies the Julie or Pertatataka formations along a sharp but conformable contact. The present upper contact is a low-angle regional unconformity which contains paleotopographic elements that resemble pediments, stripped structural plains, and steep erosional scarps. These paleotopographic surfaces are overlain from east to west by the Chandler, hugh River, and Cleland formations in an onlap relationship. The Arumbera Sandstone is considered part of a molasse sequence associated with the Late Proterozoic and Early Cambrian Petermann Ranges orogeny, which occurred along the present southern and southwestern margin of the Amadeus Basin. The uplifted Petermann Ranges shed detritus from metamorphic, sedimentary, and minor amounts of plutonic rocks. Paleocurrents suggest most terrigenous material was derived from the southwestern margin of the basin. The composition of detrital grains and lack of weathering features in labile detrital grains suggest a hot, semiarid to arid climate in the source area and in the basin of deposition. Sandstone samples examined petrographically primarily are subphyllarenites, subarkoses, arkoses, feldspathic litharenites, and lithic arkoses. The inferred paragenetic sequence is: Eogenetic: (1) mechanical compaction, (2) dust rims of hematite, illite, and chlorite, and (3) hematite cement; Mesogenetic: (4) syntaxial feldspar overgrowths, (5) syntaxial quartz overgrowths, (6) hematite cement, (7) carbonate cement, (8) kaolinite replacement, (9) formation of secondary porosity; Telogenetic: (10) chert cement and (11) gibbsite or hematite cement

Using Learning Management Systems to Support Students' Collaborative Learning in Higher Education

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are web-based systems for the distribution, management and retrieval of course materials, and to support communication between students and instructors. A LMS can also support peer collaboration by providing students with the capacity to create their own project sites. In this paper we present data from system logs, surveys, and interviews to investigate how one such system, CTools, is used by students at a large public university to facilitate peer learning.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108483/1/CSCL_2007_Project_Sites.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108483/2/CSCL_2007_Project_Sites_Poster.pdfDescription of CSCL_2007_Project_Sites.pdf : Main articleDescription of CSCL_2007_Project_Sites_Poster.pdf : Poster Fil

License to Kill: Theoretical Critique of “Stand Your Ground” Policies

This paper extends themes from sociologist Austin Turk’s theory of normative-legal conflict to the Martin tragedy and Florida’s “Stand Your Ground Law” as a point of entry for examining more general theoretical notions about how legal and social statuses can combine in counterintuitive ways. His theory is premised on deference and the impact that different ways of structuring social interaction will have on the probabilities that conflict will become overt. In some contexts, the relationship between legal status and social status allow the potential for conflict to de-escalate. In others, the relationship aggravates the prospect for overt conflict. Because laws like “Stand Your Ground” designate legal statuses and role expectations, it erects a kind of authority structure between people who interact with each other. Turk maintains that overt conflict is more likely to occur when the official legal norms and corresponding behavioral expectations are congruent with individuals’ social norms and behaviors. The social norms include norms of deference that have been linked to race. We consider how displacing the “retreat” rule in threatening interactions outside the home with the “Stand Your Ground” legal norm authorizes confrontation rather than de-escalation and invites social norms regarding the racialization of crime and race-based norms of deference to enter the interaction and aggravate the probability of overt conflict