BLADE: Filter Learning for General Purpose Computational Photography

The Rapid and Accurate Image Super Resolution (RAISR) method of Romano, Isidoro, and Milanfar is a computationally efficient image upscaling method using a trained set of filters. We describe a generalization of RAISR, which we name Best Linear Adaptive Enhancement (BLADE). This approach is a trainable edge-adaptive filtering framework that is general, simple, computationally efficient, and useful for a wide range of problems in computational photography. We show applications to operations which may appear in a camera pipeline including denoising, demosaicing, and stylization

"From the Depths Of The Earth, We, The Men Underground, Will Start Singing": Globalization and Blue-Collar Workers in Post-Communist Poland and Russia

Thesis advisor: Paul T. ChristensenCompares globalization's impact on blue-collar workers in Poland and Russia, asking two major questions: Is conventional wisdom about globalization's impact on labor accurate in the Polish and Russian contexts? What shape has Poland and Russia's reintegration into the globalized system taken since the collapse of communism? Following the collapse of communism from 1989 to 1991, there was a great international effort to reintegrate Poland and Russia (and the whole of the former Soviet Union more generally) into the global system. Now, more than ten years later, there is some doubt about the success of this mission. Clearly, Poland and Russia are in different positions vis a vis the international system. While Poland is a member of NATO and has just joined the EU, Russia continues to struggle to find its place globally. It is part of the CIS and has obserer status in the WTO, but remains outside NATO and is conflicted about its relationship with its neighbors. The two countries in certain respects, then, represent the extremes on a scale of post-communist global reintegration. Labor, in turn, has been an historically important force for establishing and consolidating democracy. Therefore, it warrents scrutiny.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: International Studies.Discipline: College Honors Program