Markerless View Independent Gait Analysis with Self-camera Calibration

We present a new method for viewpoint independent markerless gait analysis. The system uses a single camera, does not require camera calibration and works with a wide range of directions of walking. These properties make the proposed method particularly suitable for identification by gait, where the advantages of completely unobtrusiveness, remoteness and covertness of the biometric system preclude the availability of camera information and use of marker based technology. Tests on more than 200 video sequences with subjects walking freely along different walking directions have been performed. The obtained results show that markerless gait analysis can be achieved without any knowledge of internal or external camera parameters and that the obtained data that can be used for gait biometrics purposes. The performance of the proposed method is particularly encouraging for its appliance in surveillance scenarios

Towards an Intelligent Tutor for Mathematical Proofs

Computer-supported learning is an increasingly important form of study since it allows for independent learning and individualized instruction. In this paper, we discuss a novel approach to developing an intelligent tutoring system for teaching textbook-style mathematical proofs. We characterize the particularities of the domain and discuss common ITS design models. Our approach is motivated by phenomena found in a corpus of tutorial dialogs that were collected in a Wizard-of-Oz experiment. We show how an intelligent tutor for textbook-style mathematical proofs can be built on top of an adapted assertion-level proof assistant by reusing representations and proof search strategies originally developed for automated and interactive theorem proving. The resulting prototype was successfully evaluated on a corpus of tutorial dialogs and yields good results.Comment: In Proceedings THedu'11, arXiv:1202.453

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Togo: Thorny transition and misguided aid at the roots of economic misery

The parliamentary elections of October 2007, the first free Togolese elections since decades, were meant to correct at least partially the rigged presidential elections of 2005. Western donors considered it as a litmus test of despotic African regimes’ propensity to change towards democratization and economic prosperity. They took Togo as model to test their approach of political conditionality of aid, which had been emphasised also as corner stone of the joint EU-Africa strategy. Empirical findings on the linkage between democratization and economic performance are challenged in this paper because of its basic data deficiencies. It is open to question, whether Togo’s expected economic consolidation and growth will be due to democratization of its institutions or to the improved external environment, notably the growing competition between global players for African natural resources

On a three-dimensional gait recognition system

The University of Southampton Multi-Biometric Tunnel is a high performance data-capture and recognition system; designed with airports and other busy public areas in mind. It is able to acquire a variety of non-contact biometrics in a non-intrusive manner, requiring minimal subject cooperation. The system uses twelve cameras to record gait and perform three-dimensional reconstruction; the use of volumetric data avoids the problems caused by viewpoint dependence - a serious problem for many gait analysis approaches. The early prototype by Middleton et al. was used as the basis for creating a new and improved system, designed for the collection of a new large dataset, containing gait, face and ear. Extensive modifications were made, including new software for managing the data collection experiment and processing the dataset. Rigorous procedures were implemented to protect the privacy of participants and ensure consistency between capture sessions. Collection of the new multi-biometric dataset spanned almost one year; resulting in over 200 subjects and 2000 samples.Experiments performed on the newly collected dataset resulted in excellent recognition performance, with all samples correctly classified and a 1.58% equal error rate; the matching of subjects against previous samples was also found to be reasonably accurate. The fusion of gait with a simple facial analysis technique found the addition of gait to be beneficial -- especially at a distance. Further experiments investigated the effect of static and dynamic features, camera misalignment, average silhouette resolution, camera layout, and the matching of outdoor video footage against data from the Biometric Tunnel. The results in this thesis prove significant due to the unprecedented size of the new dataset and the excellent recognition performance achieved; providing a significant body of evidence to support the argument that an individual's gait is unique.L. Middleton, D. K. Wagg, A. I. Bazin, J. N. Carter and M. S. Nixon. A smart environment for biometric capture. Automation Science and Engineering, Proceedings of IEEEInternational Conference on, 57-62, 2006

Innovation and Imitation: Corporate Strategies for Global Competition

In open markets where competition is strong, innovation loses its role of ‘ideological hierarchy’ over imitation; both have the common goal of maximising company profitability, with the constraint of optimising performance results in the very short term. With these objectives and result constraints, the success of research and development activities is measured by the real improvement in the competitive supply potential, expressed by indicators such as time-to-market or patent use rate. The capacity to exploit the competition acquires prime importance, while the capacity to accumulate know-how becomes less important (for example with the traditional indicators of the number of patents per year)