224— Analysis of Foraging Bat Species on the SUNY Geneseo Campus

Bats are often an overlooked or vilified taxon, but they perform numerous important ecosystem services including pest control, pollination, as well as nutrient cycling. Their nocturnal behavior, quick movements, and small size make them difficult to study. Audio recording is among the most effective ways to study bat populations, as the echolocation they use to find and capture prey can be recorded using high-frequency recording devices without the need to capture individuals.This study analyzed the patterns of bat foraging populations around the SUNY Geneseo campus from early June until late September with high-frequency audio recording to estimate the number of bats in different areas around campus. These recordings were analyzed with respect to environmental conditions, namely temperature, humidity, as well as time of year. As identified in a previous study, the most prevalent species on campus are the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus), the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), and the silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans). Our analysis suggests, seasonal variation had a much greater effect on foraging behavior than other environmental factors such as temperature and humidity

Morphological filter mean-absolute-error representation theorems and their application to optimal morphological filter design

The present thesis derives error representations and develops design methodologies for optimal mean-absolute-error (MAE) morphological-based filters. Four related morphological-based filter-types are treated. Three are translation-invariant, monotonically increasing operators, and our analysis is based on the Matheron (1975) representation. In this class we analyze conventional binary, conventional gray-scale, and computational morphological filters. The fourth filter class examined is that of binary translation invariant operators. Our analysis is based on the Banon and Barrera (1991) representation and hit-or-miss operator of Serra (1982). A starting point will be the optimal morphological filter paradigm of Dougherty (1992a,b) whose analysis de scribes the optimal filter by a system of nonlinear inequalities with no known method of solution, and thus reduces filter design to minimal search strategies. Although the search analysis is definitive, practical filter design remained elu sive because the search space can be prohibitively large if it not mitigated in some way. The present thesis extends from Dougherty\u27s starting point in several ways. Central to the thesis is the MAE analysis for the various filter settings, where in each case, a theorem is derived that expresses overall filter MAE as a sum of MAE values of individual structuring-element filters and MAE of combinations of unions (maxima) of those elements. Recursive forms of the theorems can be employed in a computer algorithm to rapidly evaluate combinations of structuring elements and search for an optimal filter basis. Although the MAE theorems provide a rapid means for examining the filter design space, the combinatoric nature of this space is, in general, too large for a exhaustive search. Another key contribution of this thesis concerns mitigation of the computational burden via design constraints. The resulting constrained filter will be suboptimal, but, if the constraints are imposed in a suitable man ner, there is little loss of filter performance in return for design tractability. Three constraint approaches developed here are (1) limiting the number of terms in the filter expansion, (2) constraining the observation window, and (3) employing structuring element libraries from which to search for an optimal basis. Another contribution of this thesis concerns the application of optimal morphological filters to image restoration. Statistical and deterministic image and degradation models for binary and low-level gray images were developed here that relate to actual problems in the optical character recognition and electronic printing fields. In the filter design process, these models are employed to generate realizations, from which we extract single-erosion and single-hit-or-miss MAE statistics. These realization-based statistics are utilized in the search for the optimal combination of structuring elements

Il tempo di parlare e segnare

Disability is a profoundly relational category, always already created as a distinction from cultural ideas of normality, shaped by social conditions that exclude full participation in society of those considered atypical Faye Ginsburg, Rayna Rapp, Disability worlds, 2013. This article explores how the temporal needs of intervention for deaf people defines therapies inside the clinical spaces, and appears as an essential and political element inside the controversy between associations and institutions deafness related. Inside the clinical/therapeutic process of enabling language for deaf, the “time” – divided by the contradiction “fast”/“slow” – appears as characteristic element as well as useful tool to investigate health system linked to deafness. In a biomedical fieldwork defined by the balance of power between social actors – associations, family, deaf people, audiologists, otorhinolaryngologists, speech therapists – the “time” and “mandate” practical-operational of clinical professionals tend to manage the production of health and disease. From this context, my contribution refers to an ethnographic case that I followed with health and education professionals to structuring an Italian Sign Language educational path, after the “failure” of biomedical approach based on multiple operations for inserting a Cochlear Implant

Deaf Sociality e Medical Intervention

Michele, Friedner. Valuing the Deaf World in Urban India, Pag. 196, New Brunswick – New Jersey – London, Rutgers University Press, 2015 Laura, Mauldin. Made to Hear. Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children, Pag. 215, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2016

The right to certify? A grassroot response to standardization

Le recenti politiche della standardizzazione messe in atto in campo agroalimentare incidono in maniera profonda su come si definiscono agricoltori, su che cosa è considerato alimento “sicuro” e su come è gestito il paesaggio agrario. Spesso percepite dai soggetti in questione, come strati di complicazioni kafkiane, esse nascondono tuttavia interessi politici specifici. Il Peasant Activism Project indaga queste politiche della trasparenza, intese come un modo di ristrutturazione del controllo sociale attraverso pratiche, come certificazioni e standardizzazioni, incentrate intorno all’imperativo morale della trasparenza. Improntato da una prospettiva di antropologia politica, l’obiettivo del progetto è quello di mettere in luce gli effetti sulle relazioni sociali che si nascondono dietro l’apparenza oggettiva del paradigma di trasparenza, e di comprendere in che modo si rimodellano le relazioni di potere. In questo senso, il progetto mira a ridefinire le prospettive classiche dell’antropologia alimentare rimasta prevalentemente incasellata in una prospettiva culturalista. In questo report di ricerca presentiamo una conversazione circolare e collaborativa, incentrata sulle garanzie partecipative, viste come una riscoperta di forme orizzontali e neo-umanistiche di fronte alle politiche della standardizzazione, e che fanno parte di una più ampia tendenza di rivitalizzazione delle pratiche alternative di certificazione

Representations for Morphological Image Operators and Analogies with Linear Operators

1.1 Why a representation theory?...............................

Mathematical morphology in electronic printing

Image processing in the field of electronic printing is inherently shape-based. Objects such as text, graphics, and photo vignettes often require modification of edge location, stroke width, and corner shape, due to a need to compensate for marking process characteristics or for observer preference. This presentation will begin by describing applications of binary operations, such as conditional erosions and dilations, used to enable printing of fine black or white lines, serifs, and corners. Appearance tuning and appearance matching algorithms will be discussed. The image class will include specialized pixel types, such as high addressable pixels, half bits, and anti-aliased pixels. Loose-fitting gray-scale morphological operators for adjusting anti-aliased line art will be presented. A considerable portion of the presentation will describe "trapping," which is one of the most commonly applied morphological operations in digital image processing, although it is not typically described as morphological. Trapping is a form of conditional dilation and erosion, where the conditioning is across multiple dimensions (color planes) and gray level