Detecting shadows and low-lying objects in indoor and outdoor scenes using homographies

Many computer vision applications apply background suppression techniques for the detection and segmentation of moving objects in a scene. While these algorithms tend to work well in controlled conditions they often fail when applied to unconstrained real-world environments. This paper describes a system that detects and removes erroneously segmented foreground regions that are close to a ground plane. These regions include shadows, changing background objects and other low-lying objects such as leaves and rubbish. The system uses a set-up of two or more cameras and requires no 3D reconstruction or depth analysis of the regions. Therefore, a strong camera calibration of the set-up is not necessary. A geometric constraint called a homography is exploited to determine if foreground points are on or above the ground plane. The system takes advantage of the fact that regions in images off the homography plane will not correspond after a homography transformation. Experimental results using real world scenes from a pedestrian tracking application illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

What’s my target? Analyst forecast dispersion and earnings management through effective tax rates

Kirk, Reppenhagen, and Tucker (2014) report that, consistent with the existence of private information, investors use individual analyst forecasts as additional benchmarks to evaluate reported earnings. Following this logic, we investigate whether managers consider the private information in a subset of analyst forecasts when managing earnings. Specifically, we test whether changes in year-end tax accruals are associated with analyst forecast dispersion, our measure of private information. We find that when pre-managed earnings would have beat the consensus and analyst private information is low (i.e., dispersion is low), managers increase tax expense and create cookie jar reserves. When analyst forecasts reflect increased levels of private information (i.e., dispersion is high), we find that firms use tax expense to further increase earnings even when pre-managed earnings would have beat the consensus. Additional analyses reveal that the effect of dispersion is conditional on the proximity of pre-managed earnings to the consensus forecast. Our results highlight how managers consider individual analyst forecasts to calibrate earnings management and contribute to our understanding of earnings management activity around consensus estimates

Stereoscopic Cinema

International audienceStereoscopic cinema has seen a surge of activity in recent years, and for the first time all of the major Hollywood studios released 3-D movies in 2009. This is happening alongside the adoption of 3-D technology for sports broadcasting, and the arrival of 3-D TVs for the home. Two previous attempts to introduce 3-D cinema in the 1950s and the 1980s failed because the contemporary technology was immature and resulted in viewer discomfort. But current technologies – such as accurately-adjustable 3-D camera rigs with onboard computers to automatically inform a camera operator of inappropriate stereoscopic shots, digital processing for post-shooting rectification of the 3-D imagery, digital projectors for accurate positioning of the two stereo projections on the cinema screen, and polarized silver screens to reduce cross-talk between the viewers left- and right-eyes – mean that the viewer experience is at a much higher level of quality than in the past. Even so, creation of stereoscopic cinema is an open, active research area, and there are many challenges from acquisition to post-production to automatic adaptation for different-sized display. This chapter describes the current state-of-the-art in stereoscopic cinema, and directions of future work

Rapid Evolution of an Invasive Plant

Exotic plants often face different conditions from those experienced where they are native. The general issue of how exotics respond to unfamiliar environments within their new range is not well understood. Phenotypic plasticity has historically been seen as the primary mechanism enabling exotics to colonize large, environmentally diverse areas. However, new work indicates that exotics can evolve quickly, suggesting that contemporary evolution may be more important in invasion ecology than previously appreciated. To determine the influence of contemporary evolution, phenotypic plasticity, and founder effects in affecting phenotypic variation among introduced plants, we compared the size, fecundity, and leaf area of St. John\u27s wort (Hypericum perforatum) collected from native European and introduced western and central North American populations in common gardens in Washington, California, Spain, and Sweden. We also determined genetic relationships among these plants by examining variation in amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. There was substantial genetic variation among introduced populations and evidence for multiple introductions of H. perforatum into North America. Across common gardens introduced plants were neither universally larger nor more fecund than natives. However, within common gardens, both introduced and native populations exhibited significant latitudinally based clines in size and fecundity. Clines among introduced populations broadly converged with those among native populations. Introduced and native plants originating from northern latitudes generally outperformed those originating from southern latitudes when grown in northern latitude gardens of Washington and Sweden. Conversely, plants from southern latitudes performed best in southern gardens in Spain and California. Clinal patterns in leaf area, however, did not change between gardens; European and central North American plants from northern latitudes had larger leaves than plants from southern latitudes within these regions in both Washington and California, the two gardens where this trait was measured. Introduced plants did not always occur at similar latitudes as their most closely related native progenitor, indicating that pre-adaptation (i.e., climate matching) is unlikely to be the sole explanation for clinal patterns among introduced populations. Instead, results suggest that introduced plants are evolving adaptations to broad-scale environmental conditions in their introduced range

Image-Based 3D Photography Using Opacity Hulls

We have built a system for acquiring and displaying high quality graphical models of objects that are impossible to scan with traditional scanners. Our system can acquire highly specular and fuzzy materials, such as fur and feathers. The hardware set-up consists of a turntable, two plasma displays, an array of cameras, and a rotating array of directional lights. We use multi-background matting techniques to acquire alpha mattes of the object from multiple viewpoints. The alpha mattes are used to construct an opacity hull. The opacity hull is a new shape representation, defined as the visual hull of the object with view-dependent opacity. It enables visualization of complex object silhouettes and seamless blending of objects into new environments. Our system also supports relighting of objects with arbitrary appearance using surface reflectance fields, a purely image-based appearance representation. Our system is the first to acquire and render surface reflectance fields under varying illumination from arbitrary viewpoints. We have built three generations of digitizers with increasing sophistication. In this paper, we present our results from digitizing hundreds of models.Engineering and Applied Science

U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank long-term moored program : part 1 - mooring configuration

As part of the U.S. GLOBEC Northwest Atlantic/Georges Bank program, moorings were deployed on Georges Bank as part of the broad-scale survey component to help measure the temporal variability of both physical and biological characteristics on the Bank. The array consisted of a primary mooring site on the Southern Flank which was maintained for the full 5-year duration of the field program, plus secondary moorings, with fewer sensors and of shorter duration, in the well-mixed water on the Crest and in the cod/haddock spawning region on the Northeast Peak. Temperature and conductivity (salinity) were measured at 5-m intervals, ADCP velocity profiles were obtained with 1-m vertical resolution, and bio-optical packages (measuring fluorescence, optical transmission and photosynthetically active radiation) were deployed at 10-m and 40-m depths. Bottom pressure was measured at the Southern Flank site. The buoy design, sensors and mooring configuration is presented and discussed below, and the data obtained is presented and discussed in an accompanying reports “U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Long-Term Moored Program: Part 2 – Yearly Data Summary and Report,” and “U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Long-Term Moored Program: Part 3 – Data Summary.”Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers OCE-93-13670, OCE-96-32348, OCE98-06379, OCE-98-06445 and OCE-02-27679

Otomatisasi Instalasi Pengolah Air Limbah (Ipal) Sistem Mobile Di Baristand Industri Surabaya

Berdasarkan UU RI No.32 Tahun 2009 Tentang Perlindungan dan Pengelolaan Lingkungan Hidup, maka setiap industri maupun instansi harus bertanggung jawab terhadap pengelolaan limbah yang dihasilkan dari kegiatannya. Sehubungan dengan adanya permasalahan keterbatasan lahan yang permanen, maka Baristand berupaya membantu dalam pemecahan terhadap permasalahan yang dihadapi industri dengan perekayasaan Mobil IPAL.Permasalahan yang ada di Mobil IPAL adalah adanya fluktuasi Karakteristik & volume Air limbah yg akan diproses, tergantung sumber limbahnya, hal tersebut menimbulkan kesulitan pada pengaturan pH serta Penambahan pereaksi. Sehingga dengan Otomatisasi diharapkan kinerja IPAL Mobil lebih effisien.Sistem otomatisasi di IPAL Mobil meliputi penetapan pH 7 dengan pH display dan pengaturan pemberian reagen secara manual. Pengaturan pH : 7 dengan proses air limbah secara sinambung yang dilengkapi dengan dozing pump menggunakan larutan H2SO4 10 %, pengontrolan pH dengan waktu respon dalam 30 detik