Semantic multimedia modelling & interpretation for search & retrieval

With the axiomatic revolutionary in the multimedia equip devices, culminated in the proverbial proliferation of the image and video data. Owing to this omnipresence and progression, these data become the part of our daily life. This devastating data production rate accompanies with a predicament of surpassing our potentials for acquiring this data. Perhaps one of the utmost prevailing problems of this digital era is an information plethora. Until now, progressions in image and video retrieval research reached restrained success owed to its interpretation of an image and video in terms of primitive features. Humans generally access multimedia assets in terms of semantic concepts. The retrieval of digital images and videos is impeded by the semantic gap. The semantic gap is the discrepancy between a user’s high-level interpretation of an image and the information that can be extracted from an image’s physical properties. Content- based image and video retrieval systems are explicitly assailable to the semantic gap due to their dependence on low-level visual features for describing image and content. The semantic gap can be narrowed by including high-level features. High-level descriptions of images and videos are more proficient of apprehending the semantic meaning of image and video content. It is generally understood that the problem of image and video retrieval is still far from being solved. This thesis proposes an approach for intelligent multimedia semantic extraction for search and retrieval. This thesis intends to bridge the gap between the visual features and semantics. This thesis proposes a Semantic query Interpreter for the images and the videos. The proposed Semantic Query Interpreter will select the pertinent terms from the user query and analyse it lexically and semantically. The proposed SQI reduces the semantic as well as the vocabulary gap between the users and the machine. This thesis also explored a novel ranking strategy for image search and retrieval. SemRank is the novel system that will incorporate the Semantic Intensity (SI) in exploring the semantic relevancy between the user query and the available data. The novel Semantic Intensity captures the concept dominancy factor of an image. 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. The SemRank will rank the retrieved images on the basis of Semantic Intensity. The investigations are made on the LabelMe image and LabelMe video dataset. Experiments show that the proposed approach is successful in bridging the semantic gap. The experiments reveal that our proposed system outperforms the traditional image retrieval systems

Ethanologenic potential of the bacterium Bacillus cereus NB-19 in media comprising of sugar mill and dairy industrial wastes

Ethanologenic bacterium was cultivated in a suspension of sugarcane bagasse and processed yogurt whey under the predetermined growth optimized conditions. It was found that blending of processeddefatted yogurt whey with 2% sugarcane bagasse (MNCH-9 medium) caused significantly higher growth of the bacterium after 24 h of incubation as compared to the values obtained when the Bacillus cereus-NB-19 was cultivated in MNCH-2 (2% bagasse in distilled water) and MNCH-10 (only processed whey). Saccharification potential of the bacterium increased significantly when the bagasse was supplemented with whey. Glucose contents of the cultured MNCH-9 turned out significantly higher as compared to the corresponding values of MNCH-2 at various sampling periods. Provision of whey caused significant increase in xylose content, so that the media MNCH-9 and MNCH-10 attained 3.77 and 4.74 folds of thepentose sugar, respectively, as compared to the value obtained for the MNCH-2. Likewise, much elevated levels of proteins and lipids were found in the culture fluids of MNCH-9 and MNCH-10 as compared to the corresponding figures for the MNCH-2. Cellulase activities of cultivated MNCH-9 and MNCH-10 turned out to be 5.75 folds higher at first sampling period as compared to the value obtained for MNCH-2 culture. At 12th day of the fermentation, MNCH-9 culture fluid showed more than 30% higherethanol content as compared to the yield obtained in case of MNCH-2. The MNCH-10 expressed ethanol even less than the value found for the MNCH-2. Conclusively, blending of processed whey to sugarcanebagasse is very useful for obtaining yields of the different products including cell mass and ethanol as compared to the cultivation of the B. cereus NB-19 in media containing only bagasse or whey. Theseresults dictate the importance of blending agro-industrial wastes of varying nature for their efficient and economical upgradation tied up with the selection of suitable microorganism(s). Such trends are likely to gain more attention of the scientists in related areas

Bayesian Estimation of the Parameters of Two-Component Mixture of Rayleigh Distribution under Doubly Censoring

Recently, the Bayesian analysis of the two-component mixture of lifetime models under singly type I censored samples was discussed. The Bayes estimation of the parameters of mixture of two Rayleigh distributions (MTRD) is developed under doubly censoring. Different informative priors, under squared error loss function and k-loss function, have been assumed for the posterior estimation. The performance of different estimators has been compared in terms of posterior risks by analyzing the simulated and real life data sets

Direct access to potential research participants for a cohort study using a confidentiality waiver included in UK National Health Service legal statutes

OBJECTIVES: To describe our experience of using a confidentiality waiver (Section 251) in the National Health Service (NHS) Act to identify and recruit potential research participants to a cohort study and consider its use in a wider research context. DESIGN: Methodological discussion. SETTING: NHS Trusts in England. METHODS: We established a research recruitment process with quality health (QH), administrators of the National Cancer Patient Experience Survey, after an amendment to a Section 251 approval (reference number ECC-8-05d-2011). NHS Trusts agreeing to implement the process were requested to send the details of 16-24-year-olds, identified by a relevant ICD-10 code indicating a cancer diagnosis within a specified time period to QH. QH sent study information and a consent-to-be-contacted form which allowed QH to send details to BRIGHTLIGHT, for BRIGHTLIGHT to contact the treating team confirming eligibility and for an interviewer from Ipsos MORI to contact them. Written consent was to be obtained at interview. RESULTS: The method was implemented in 98 trusts; 75 supplied patient details. QH sent information to 441 young people, of whom 64 (15%) responded. Of these, 23 had already consented to participate. Adverse events were reported by 6 (1%) invitees: 4 were distressed because they did not have cancer, their details being submitted to QH due to incorrect hospital coding, and 1 young person was distressed about their diagnosis and requested no further contact and 1 young person found out they had cancer from the invitation. CONCLUSIONS: Application of Section 251 of the NHS Act (2006) to directly approach participants can facilitate recruitment to research projects where routinely collected NHS data are available to select eligible patients. The benefits of this method are that it requires fewer resources to recruit across multiple sites, and is quicker. Further information on the impact on bias and adverse event profile are required

Experience of Anti-VEGF Treatment and Clinical Levels of Depression and Anxiety in Patients With Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration

PURPOSE: To investigate detailed patient experiences specific to receiving vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitors (anti-VEGF) for wet age-related macular degeneration (wAMD), and to acquire a snapshot of the frequency of clinically significant levels of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress among patients and levels of burden in patients’ carers. DESIGN: Observational cross-sectional mixed-methods study. METHODS: Three hundred patients with wAMD receiving anti-VEGF treatment and 100 patient carers were recruited. Qualitative data on patients’ experience of treatment were collected using a structured survey. Standardized validated questionnaires were used to quantify clinically significant levels of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress, as well as cognitive function and carers’ burden. RESULTS: Qualitative data showed that 56% of patients (n =132) reported anxiety related to antiVEGF treatment. The main sources of anxiety were fear of going blind owing to intravitreal injections and concerns about treatment effectiveness, rather than around pain. From validated questionnaires, 17% of patients (n= 52) showed clinical levels of anxiety and 12% (n =36) showed clinical levels of depression. Depression levels, but not anxiety, were significantly higher in patients who received up to 3 injections compared with patients who received from 4 to 12 injections (analysis of variance [ANOVA] P = .027) and compared with patients who received more than 12 injections (ANOVA P = .001). CONCLUSIONS: Anti-VEGF treatment is often experienced with some anxiety related to treatment, regardless of the number of injections received. Clinical levels of depression seem to be more frequent in patients at early stages of anti-VEGF treatment. Strategies to improve patient experience of treatment and minimize morbidity are suggested

On the Parameter of the Burr Type X under Bayesian Principles

A comprehensive Bayesian analysis has been carried out in the context of informative and non-informative priors for the shape parameter of the Burr type X distribution under different symmetric and asymmetric loss functions. Elicitation of hyperparameter through prior predictive approach is also discussed. Also we derive the expression for posterior predictive distributions, predictive intervals and the credible Intervals. As an illustration, comparisons of these estimators are made through simulation study

Photo induced ionization dynamics of the nitrogen vacancy defect in diamond investigated by single shot charge state detection

The nitrogen-vacancy centre (NV) has drawn much attention for over a decade, yet detailed knowledge of the photophysics needs to be established. Under typical conditions, the NV can have two stable charge states, negative (NV-) or neutral (NV0), with photo induced interconversion of these two states. Here, we present detailed studies of the ionization dynamics of single NV centres in bulk diamond at room temperature during illumination in dependence of the excitation wavelength and power. We apply a recent method which allows us to directly measure the charge state of a single NV centre, and observe its temporal evolution. Results of this work are the steady state NV- population, which was found to be always < 75% for 450 to 610 nm excitation wavelength, the relative absorption cross-section of NV- for 540 to 610 nm, and the energy of the NV- ground state of 2.6 eV below the conduction band. These results will help to further understand the photo-physics of the NV centre.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure