Advanced content-based semantic scene analysis and information retrieval: the SCHEMA project

The aim of the SCHEMA Network of Excellence is to bring together a critical mass of universities, research centers, industrial partners and end users, in order to design a reference system for content-based semantic scene analysis, interpretation and understanding. Relevant research areas include: content-based multimedia analysis and automatic annotation of semantic multimedia content, combined textual and multimedia information retrieval, semantic -web, MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards, user interfaces and human factors. In this paper, recent advances in content-based analysis, indexing and retrieval of digital media within the SCHEMA Network are presented. These advances will be integrated in the SCHEMA module-based, expandable reference system

Teaching Irish Sign Language in Contact Zones: An Autoethnography

The central purpose of this autoethnographic study is to provide an account of my experiences as a deaf teacher teaching Irish Sign Language (ISL) to hearing students in a higher education institution. My cultural and linguistic background and personal history guided the way I interacted with students who found themselves confronted by a unique culture quite separate from what they had known before. By engaging in autoethnographic journal writing recorded over a period of three months, I reveal the complex social and historical relations manifested in the contact between deaf and hearing cultures in the classroom. More specifically, I consider how language conflict and different communication modes might affect teaching and learning in concrete situations. In particular, I advocate an understanding of Pratt’s (1991) “contact zone” theory to see deaf-hearing contacts not just as challenges but possibilities for new ways of understanding the experience of sign language teaching and learning

Managing Law Firm Mergers

This dissertation explores the phenomenon of mergers and acquisitions specifically, law firm M&As. M&As have been described as one of the most significant and powerful methods by which organizations grow. They can also be an important form of corporate development and strategic renewal. However, despite the long history and importance of M&As, research has yielded mainly equivocal results concerning what makes some succeed and others fail. Further, a number of researchers have called for more research on the managerial processes of M&As recognizing that the process of merging has been largely ignored by researchers. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the managerial processes involved in M&As and the basic research question that drove this research was: What are the critical management tasks associated with effective pre and post merger management? ;The research employed an inductive approach, building knowledge from an iterative combination of empirical evidence and theory, and involved a four phase research design: conceptual development, pilot, theoretical replication, and analysis and explanatory phases. Ten law firm mergers, involving firms from across Canada, were studied in-depth. Mergers were chosen to represent three different levels of integration: preservation, absorption, and symbiosis.;The findings strongly support those researchers who have argued that M&A success and failure has more to do with the processes of merging than with the variables captured in prevailing performance-oriented studies. The results also challenge the treatment of M&As as relatively homogenous economic events. For example, size differences can be important and it was evident that there is quite a difference between two whales mating and a whale swallowing a minnow. Further, living together versus a long distance relationship involves very different merger dynamics. Specific to law firms mergers was the critical importance of the need for good \u27organizational fit\u27 between firms, and the importance of strong leadership throughout the merger process. In particular, seven critical leadership behaviours associated with effective merger management are described. The research also contributes to the literature on professional service firms, and provides some normative prescriptions for practitioners

The Correlation Between Unemployment Rate, GDP Per Capita, and Adult Obesity Prevalence in Developed Economies. Evidence from OECD Member Countries.

Adult obesity continues to be endemic in developed countries; at least 1 in every 5 people in developed economies is obese. In line with the theory of social suffering, socioeconomic factors may be correlated with the increasing prevalence of adult obesity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between socioeconomic factors and adult obesity prevalence rate in developed countries using Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries as a case study. In this study, the correlation between 2 independent variables - unemployment rate and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita - and the dependent variable - adult obesity prevalence rate - were investigated. The variables were retrieved from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) website and tested for association. The type, strength, and significance of the association between the variables were all utilized to draw inferences. The findings of this study reveal that a positive correlation exists between unemployment rate and adult obesity prevalence rate, albeit weak and statistically nonsignificant and that a negative correlation exists between GDP per capita and adult obesity prevalence rate, albeit weak and statistically nonsignificant. This means that a lower unemployment rate, improved GDP per capita and, by extension, a better economy and less suffering in the society can, to an extent, assist in the reduction of the adult obesity prevalence rate in developed countries. The extent to which these factors can assist largely depends on how minimal the significant risk factors of adult obesity are in the population. In other words, while improved economy can act as leverage in the reduction of the adult obesity prevalence rate in developed economies, focus should be on modifying the significant risk factors of adult obesity, such as eating habit and a physical lifestyle

Haiti

One step at a time, Joesph PhillippeGlimmers of hope in the embers of despair, Noel O\u27Mear

Spatio-temporal bivariate statistical models for atmospheric trace-gas inversion

Atmospheric trace-gas inversion refers to any technique used to predict spatial and temporal fluxes using mole-fraction measurements and atmospheric simulations obtained from computer models. Studies to date are most often of a data-assimilation flavour, which implicitly consider univariate statistical models with the flux as the variate of interest. This univariate approach typically assumes that the flux field is either a spatially correlated Gaussian process or a spatially uncorrelated non-Gaussian process with prior expectation fixed using flux inventories (e.g., NAEI or EDGAR in Europe). Here, we extend this approach in three ways. First, we develop a bivariate model for the mole-fraction field and the flux field. The bivariate approach allows optimal prediction of both the flux field and the mole-fraction field, and it leads to significant computational savings over the univariate approach. Second, we employ a lognormal spatial process for the flux field that captures both the lognormal characteristics of the flux field (when appropriate) and its spatial dependence. Third, we propose a new, geostatistical approach to incorporate the flux inventories in our updates, such that the posterior spatial distribution of the flux field is predominantly data-driven. The approach is illustrated on a case study of methane (CH$_4$) emissions in the United Kingdom and Ireland.Comment: 39 pages, 8 figure

Automatic TV advertisement detection from MPEG bitstream

The Centre for Digital Video Processing at Dublin City University conducts concentrated research and development in the area of digital video management. The current stage of development is demonstrated on our Web-based digital video system called Físchlár (Proceedings of the Content based Multimedia Information Access, RIAO 2000, Vol. 2, Paris, France, 12–14 April 2000, p. 1390), which provides for efficient recording, analysing, browsing and viewing of digitally captured television programmes. Advertisement breaks during or between television programmes are typically recognised by a series of ‘black’ video frames simultaneously accompanying a depression in audio volume which separate each advertisement from one another by recurrently occurring before and after each individual advertisement. It is the regular prevalence of these flags that enables automatic differentiation between what is programme and what is a commercial break. This paper reports on the progress made in the development of this idea into an advertisement detector system that automatically detects the commercial breaks from the bitstream of digitally captured television broadcasts

Deaf Interpreters’ Perception of Themselves as Professionals in Ireland: A Phenomenological Study

In the extensive literature on sign language interpreting, very little attention has been given to deaf interpreters’ understanding of themselves as professionals. This gap may be due to the fact that professional sign language interpreting is often seen to be synonymous with hearing people. The research therefore set out to gain an insight into how deaf interpreters’ view themselves as professionals, what their understanding of ‘being a professional’ is, and what issues are of concern to them. The authors present and discuss findings from an analysis, informed by professionalism theory, of data derived from interviews with 5 deaf interpreters in Ireland who agreed to participate in the study. A key finding is that deaf interpreters struggle with the idea of themselves as professionals due to a number of factors: First, the stigma of the sign language interpreting profession being a hearing dominion; Second, the lack of professional interpreting courses and qualifications available for deaf interpreters; and finally, the low number of interpreting assignments given to deaf interpreters. A second key finding is that deaf interpreters see themselves as autonomous professionals based on expert knowledge. These issues have implications for the recruitment and retention of deaf interpreters into the sign language interpreting profession in Ireland. We suggest that sign language interpreting agencies and institutions develop and facilitate professional training courses for deaf interpreters as an addition to existing programs of professional training and qualifications being offered to hearing students