Semantic multimedia modelling & interpretation for annotation

The emergence of multimedia enabled devices, particularly the incorporation of cameras in mobile phones, and the accelerated revolutions in the low cost storage devices, boosts the multimedia data production rate drastically. Witnessing such an iniquitousness of digital images and videos, the research community has been projecting the issue of its significant utilization and management. Stored in monumental multimedia corpora, digital data need to be retrieved and organized in an intelligent way, leaning on the rich semantics involved. The utilization of these image and video collections demands proficient image and video annotation and retrieval techniques. Recently, the multimedia research community is progressively veering its emphasis to the personalization of these media. The main impediment in the image and video analysis is the semantic gap, which is the discrepancy among a user’s high-level interpretation of an image and the video and the low level computational interpretation of it. Content-based image and video annotation systems are remarkably susceptible to the semantic gap due to their reliance on low-level visual features for delineating semantically rich image and video contents. However, the fact is that the visual similarity is not semantic similarity, so there is a demand to break through this dilemma through an alternative way. The semantic gap can be narrowed by counting high-level and user-generated information in the annotation. High-level descriptions of images and or videos are more proficient of capturing the semantic meaning of multimedia content, but it is not always applicable to collect this information. It is commonly agreed that the problem of high level semantic annotation of multimedia is still far from being answered. This dissertation puts forward approaches for intelligent multimedia semantic extraction for high level annotation. This dissertation intends to bridge the gap between the visual features and semantics. It proposes a framework for annotation enhancement and refinement for the object/concept annotated images and videos datasets. The entire theme is to first purify the datasets from noisy keyword and then expand the concepts lexically and commonsensical to fill the vocabulary and lexical gap to achieve high level semantics for the corpus. This dissertation also explored a novel approach for high level semantic (HLS) propagation through the images corpora. The HLS propagation takes the advantages of the semantic intensity (SI), which is the concept dominancy factor in the image and annotation based semantic similarity of the images. As we are aware of the fact that the image is the combination of various concepts and among the list of concepts some of them are more dominant then the other, while semantic similarity of the images are based on the SI and concept semantic similarity among the pair of images. Moreover, the HLS exploits the clustering techniques to group similar images, where a single effort of the human experts to assign high level semantic to a randomly selected image and propagate to other images through clustering. The investigation has been made on the LabelMe image and LabelMe video dataset. Experiments exhibit that the proposed approaches perform a noticeable improvement towards bridging the semantic gap and reveal that our proposed system outperforms the traditional systems

Soret and Dufour effects on unsteady mixed convection slip flow of Casson fluid over a nonlinearly stretching sheet with convective boundary condition

Unsteady mixed convection flow of Casson fluid towards a nonlinearly stretching sheet with the slip and convective boundary conditions is analyzed in this work. The effects of Soret Dufour, viscous dissipation and heat generation/absorption are also investigated. After using some suitable transformations, the unsteady nonlinear problem is solved by using Keller-box method. Numerical solutions for wall shear stress and high temperature transfer rate are calculated and compared with previously published work, an excellent arrangement is followed. It is noticed that fluid velocity reduces for both local unsteadiness and Casson parameters. It is likewise noticed that the influence of a Dufour number of dimensionless temperature is more prominent as compared to species concentration. Furthermore, the temperature was found to be increased in the case of nonlinear thermal radiation

Multi Layered Multi Task Marker Based Interaction in Information Rich Virtual Environments

Simple and cheap interaction has a key role in the operation and exploration of any Virtual Environment (VE). In this paper, we propose an interaction technique that provides two different ways of interaction (information and control) on complex objects in a simple and computationally cheap way. The interaction is based on the use of multiple embedded markers in a specialized manner. The proposed marker like an interaction peripheral works just like a touch paid which can perform any type of interaction in a 3D VE. The proposed marker is not only used for interaction with Augmented Reality (AR), but also with Mixed Reality. A biological virtual learning application is developed which is used for evaluation and experimentation. We conducted our experiments in two phases. First, we compared a simple VE with the proposed layered VE. Second, a comparative study is conducted between the proposed marker, a simple layered marker, and multiple single markers. We found the proposed marker with improved learning, easiness in interaction, and comparatively less task execution time. The results gave improved learning for layered VE as compared to simple VE

Two Hand Gesture Based 3D Navigation in Virtual Environments

Natural interaction is gaining popularity due to its simple, attractive, and realistic nature, which realizes direct Human Computer Interaction (HCI). In this paper, we presented a novel two hand gesture based interaction technique for 3 dimensional (3D) navigation in Virtual Environments (VEs). The system used computer vision techniques for the detection of hand gestures (colored thumbs) from real scene and performed different navigation (forward, backward, up, down, left, and right) tasks in the VE. The proposed technique also allow users to efficiently control speed during navigation. The proposed technique is implemented via a VE for experimental purposes. Forty (40) participants performed the experimental study. Experiments revealed that the proposed technique is feasible, easy to learn and use, having less cognitive load on users. Finally gesture recognition engines were used to assess the accuracy and performance of the proposed gestures. kNN achieved high accuracy rates (95.7%) as compared to SVM (95.3%). kNN also has high performance rates in terms of training time (3.16 secs) and prediction speed (6600 obs/sec) as compared to SVM with 6.40 secs and 2900 obs/sec

The endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica protects wheat from Fusarium crown rot disease in simulated UK autumn conditions

The root endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica (Sebacinacea) forms mutualistic symbioses with a broad range of host plants, increasing their biomass production and resistance to fungal pathogens. We evaluated the effect of P. indica on Fusarium crown rot disease of wheat, under in vitro and glasshouse conditions. Interaction of P. indica and Fusarium isolates under axenic culture conditions indicated no direct antagonistic activity of P. indica against Fusarium isolates. Seedlings of wheat were inoculated with P. indica and pathogenic Fusarium culmorum or F. graminearum and grown in sterilised soil-free medium or in a non-sterilised mix of soil and sand. Fusarium alone reduced emergence and led to visible browning and reduced root growth. Roots of seedlings in pots inoculated with both Fusarium isolates and P. indica were free of visible symptoms; seed emergence and root biomass were equivalent to the uninoculated. DNA was quantified by real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). The ratio of Fusarium DNA to wheat DNA rose rapidly in the plants inoculated with Fusarium alone; isolates and species were not significantly different. P. indica inoculation reduced the ratio of Fusarium to host DNA in the root systems. The reduction increased with time. The ratio of P. indica to wheat DNA initially rose but then declined in root systems without Fusarium. With Fusarium, the ratio rose throughout the experiment. The absolute amount of Fusarium DNA in root systems increased in the absence of P. indica but was static in plants co-inoculated with P. indica

A novel Multi-permittivity Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna for Wideband Applications

In this paper, a novel multi-permittivity cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna for wideband application is presented. The multi-permittivity cylinder is formed by combining two different permittivity material sectors in such a way that each sector (with constant permittivity) is 90 degree apart. A direct microstrip line coupling terminated with T-stub at the open end is used to excite the multi-permittivity cylindrical dielectric resonator. The angular position of the multi sector dielectric resonator with respect to the longitudinal axis of the microstrip line and length of the additional strip at the open end of the feeding circuit is key parameters for wideband operation of the antenna. By optimizing all parameters of the proposed antenna, wideband impedance bandwidth of 56% (12.1 GHz - 21.65 GHz) is achieved. The average gain of the antenna throughout the bandwidth is 5.9 dB with good radiation properties in both E-plane and H-plane. A well matched simulation and experimental results show that the antenna is suitable for wideband applications

EFFECT OF PIGEON ORIGIN NEWCASTLE DISEASE VIRUS ON VARIOUS LIVER ENZYMES AND ASSOCIATED PATHOLOGICAL CHANGES IN EXPERIMENTALLY INFECTED PIGEONS

Newcastle disease virus (NDV) was isolated from a field outbreak in pigeons. The virus was characterized by haemagglutination test (HA) and confirmed by haemagglutination inhibition test (HAI). The pathotyping was done by mean death time (MDT), intracerebral pathogenicity index (ICPI) and intravenous pathogenicity index (IVPI). The ELD50 of the velogenic strain was 10-4.66/0.1 ml. Thirty-nine pigeons were randomly divided into three equal groups. Pigeons of one group were vaccinated with ND vaccine (LaSota strain) intraocularly after 14 days of procurement, while the other two groups served as vaccinated and non-vaccinated controls. Birds of these two groups were challenged with velogenic strain of field isolate of NDV 7 days post-vaccination. Birds were kept under observation for 15 days post-challenge. Haemorrhages and congestion were observed in trachea, lungs, liver, proventriculus and intestine of pigeons infected with NDV. Concentrations of AST, ALT and ALP did not differ among pigeons of the three groups

Anxiolytic effect of midazolam premedication assessed by clinical and platelet aggregation profiles

BACKGROUND: It is well documented that surgery is associated with increased anxiety, which has an adverse impact on patient\u27s outcome. This study was designed to assess the anxiolytic effect of midazolam in pre-anaesthetic medication by using clinical and platelet aggregation profiles.METHODS: Sixty ASA I and II female patients aged between 35 and 60 years undergoing elective abdominal hysterectomy were randomly divided into two equal groups. Group I received placebo as pre-medication while group II received 0.15 mg/kg midazolam as pre-medication 1 hour preoperatively. They were monitored for visual analogue scale (VAS) for anxiety, observer\u27s anxiety criteria, sedation score, blood pressure, heart rate and platelet aggregation profile immediately before and 1 hour after pre-medication.RESULTS: There was statistically significant difference with respect to VAS of anxiety, observer\u27s anxiety criteria, sedation scores, systolic and diastolic blood pressure (