2,893 research outputs found

    CONSEQUENCES OF PUBLIC POLICIES FOR SMALLER FARMS

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    Agricultural and Food Policy,

    Perceptual adaptation to speech in calibrated noise

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    Perceptual adaptation to a talker allows listeners to efficiently resolve inherent ambiguities present in the speech signal introduced by the lack of a one-to-one mapping between acoustic signals and intended phonemic categories across talkers. In ideal listening environments, preceding speech context has been found to enhance perceptual adaptation to a talker. However, little is known regarding how perceptual adaptation to speech occurs in more realistic listening environments with background noise. The current investigation explored how talker variability and preceding speech context affect identification of phonetically-confusable words in adverse listening conditions. Our results showed that listeners were less accurate and slower in identifying mixed-talker speech compared to single-talker speech when target words were presented in multi-talker babble, and that preceding speech context enhanced word identification performance under noise both in single- and mixed talker conditions. These results extend previous findings of perceptual adaptation to talker-specific speech in quiet environments, suggesting that the same underlying mechanisms may serve to perceptually adapt to speech both in quiet and in noise. Both cognitive and attentional mechanisms were proposed to jointly underlie perceptual adaptation to speech, including an active control process that preallocates cognitive resources to processing talker variability and auditory streaming processes that support successful feedforward allocation of attention to salient talker-specific features

    "Human security" and the challenge of automobile and road traffic safety: a cultural historical perspective

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    "The worldwide enhancement of road traffic safety is one aspect of the UN agenda on 'human security'. The article examines the history of road traffic safety and the development of automobile safety technologies since the mid twentieth century with a strong focus on West Germany. From a historical perspective there are two reasons why the UN agenda includes the enhancement of road traffic safety. Firstly the development of road traffic safety is a 'success story' in industrialized countries even though there are still high death rates globally. Secondly, the enhancement of road safety is linked to advanced civil societies with all their stakeholders, and strengthening civil society is a key concern of the UN worldwide. Beyond that, automobility is a symbol of modernity. Discourses about automobile safety inform us about the conceptions and regulation of individual freedom and security in different societies. Moreover, new safety technologies such as the safety belt modify the interactions between human beings and machines and thus the idea of freedom, autonomy and responsibility." (author's abstract)"Die weltweite Verbesserung der Verkehrssicherheit ist Teil der UN-Agenda zur 'menschlichen Sicherheit'. Der Artikel beleuchtet die Geschichte der Verkehrssicherheit und der Einführung neuer Sicherheitstechnologien seit der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts mit einem Schwerpunkt auf Entwicklungen und Debatten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Zwei historische Gründe lassen sich erkennen, warum die Verkehrssicherheit in das UN-Konzept aufgenommen wurde: Erstens ist trotz der heute noch weltweit gravierenden Zahl von Verkehrstoten die Verbesserung der Verkehrssicherheit in den westlichen Industrienationen eine 'Erfolgsgeschichte'. Zweitens steht die Verbesserung der Verkehrssicherheit in einem engen Zusammenhang mit der Ausbildung moderner Zivilgesellschaften. Automobilität ist darüber hinaus ein Symbol der Moderne. Anhand der Diskurse über automobile Sicherheit lassen sich unterschiedliche Gesellschaftskonzeptionen und der Wandel der Regulierung von individueller Freiheit und Sicherheit verfolgen. Neue Sicherheitstechnologien, wie etwa der Sicherheitsgurt, implizieren zudem eine veränderte Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Maschine und geben Aufschluss über den Wandel der Vorstellung von Freiheit, Autonomie und Verantwortung." (Autorenreferat

    Subjective Annotation for a Frame Interpolation Benchmark using Artefact Amplification

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    Current benchmarks for optical flow algorithms evaluate the estimation either directly by comparing the predicted flow fields with the ground truth or indirectly by using the predicted flow fields for frame interpolation and then comparing the interpolated frames with the actual frames. In the latter case, objective quality measures such as the mean squared error are typically employed. However, it is well known that for image quality assessment, the actual quality experienced by the user cannot be fully deduced from such simple measures. Hence, we conducted a subjective quality assessment crowdscouring study for the interpolated frames provided by one of the optical flow benchmarks, the Middlebury benchmark. We collected forced-choice paired comparisons between interpolated images and corresponding ground truth. To increase the sensitivity of observers when judging minute difference in paired comparisons we introduced a new method to the field of full-reference quality assessment, called artefact amplification. From the crowdsourcing data, we reconstructed absolute quality scale values according to Thurstone's model. As a result, we obtained a re-ranking of the 155 participating algorithms w.r.t. the visual quality of the interpolated frames. This re-ranking not only shows the necessity of visual quality assessment as another evaluation metric for optical flow and frame interpolation benchmarks, the results also provide the ground truth for designing novel image quality assessment (IQA) methods dedicated to perceptual quality of interpolated images. As a first step, we proposed such a new full-reference method, called WAE-IQA. By weighing the local differences between an interpolated image and its ground truth WAE-IQA performed slightly better than the currently best FR-IQA approach from the literature.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1901.0536

    Vahemere piirkonna geneetiline kujunemine enne meie ajaarvamist: fookusega Apenniini poolsaarele

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    Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsiooneRohkearvulised ja erisugused uuringud on panustanud meie arusaamisesse inimajaloost. Inimasustuse ajalugu Euroopas sisaldab mitmeid etappe, sealhulgas küttide-korilaste Lääne-Euraasias elamine paleoliitikumis, põlluharimise ja karjakasvatuse kasutuselevõtt läbi kontaktide Levantist ja Anatooliast (Lääne-Aasia) Euroopasse rännanud inimestega ja Ponto-Kaspia stepirahvaste migratsioon. Enamik senistest uuringutest on keskendunud üldistele geneetilistele muutustele Euroopas ja nende seostele arheoloogiliste tõendite ja ajalooliste sündmustega. Sellegi poolest on mõned Euroopa piirkonnad jätkuvalt väheuuritud ja neile keskendumine võib aidata täita lünki inimeste rändeajaloos. See doktoritöö keskendub geneetilise ja sotsiaalse struktuuriga seotud muutustele Apenniini poolsaarel viimase jääaja maksimumi lõpust Rooma vabariigi loomiseni umbes 2000 aastat tagasi. Uuringu tarbeks genereeriti ülegenoomsed andmed inimsäilmetest, mis pärinesid mitmetest arheoloogilistest leiukohtadest. Neid andmeid analüüsiti varem avaldatud Euraasia ülegenoomsete andmete kontekstis, et uurida ammuste populatsioonide geneetilist ülesehitust ja selle muutusi läbi aja. Lõplik andmestik koosneb Euraasia indiviididest, kes pärinevad paleoliitikumist (43–5 tuhat aastat enne meie aega) rauaajani (1100–700 aastat enne meie aega). Tulemused näitavad, et Apenniini poolsaart on mõjutanud järjestikused migratsioonid, mis peegelduvad tänapäeva itaallaste geenitiigis ja on jätnud jälje kultuuri. Täpsemalt saabus eneoliitikumi-pronksiaja üleminekul stepist pärit inimestega uus geneetiline komponent ning matmiskombestikus toimunud muutused viitavad muudatustele ka sotsiaalses struktuuris. Rauaajal võib Apenniini poolsaare kaguosas näha erinevaid päritolumustreid, millest nähtub suur geneetiline varieeruvus.Numerous and varied genetic studies have given a new insight into our understanding of the human past. The human history of Eurasia includes multiple stages of habitation such as hunter-gatherers living in Western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic, the first contact between non-local people from the Levant and Anatolia with the introduction of agriculture and domestication to the local people during the Neolithic, and the arrival of ‘Steppe’ people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. Most of the studies have been focused on the wider spectrum of genetic changes in Eurasia and the connection with archaeological evidence and historical events. However, some areas of Eurasia are still understudied, and their exploration will add more knowledge to the open gaps in the human migration history. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the genetic and social structure-related changes of ancient human individuals from the Italian Peninsula between the last glacial maximum and ~2,000 years ago parallel with the beginning of the Roman Republic For the study, genome-wide data is generated from human remains excavated from several archaeological sites. This data is analysed in the context of previously published genome-wide data of Eurasia to study the genetic compositions and changes thereof of the ancient individuals over time. The final dataset consists of individuals from Eurasia dated between the Palaeolithic (43,000-5,000 BCE) and Iron Age (1,100-700 BCE). The results show that the Italian Peninsula has been shaped by continuous migration events reflected in the gene pool of present-day Italians and leaving their marks on the cultures. In particular, during the Chalcolithic/Bronze Age transition, a new genetic component arrived with the Steppe people suggesting possible social structural changes seen in burial practises. In the Iron Age period, the high genetic heterogeneity is seen in the divergence of the ancestral components presented in the Southeastern Italian Peninsula.https://www.ester.ee/record=b550499

    Recovering Missing Coefficients in DCT-Transformed Images

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    A general method for recovering missing DCT coefficients in DCT-transformed images is presented in this work. We model the DCT coefficients recovery problem as an optimization problem and recover all missing DCT coefficients via linear programming. The visual quality of the recovered image gradually decreases as the number of missing DCT coefficients increases. For some images, the quality is surprisingly good even when more than 10 most significant DCT coefficients are missing. When only the DC coefficient is missing, the proposed algorithm outperforms existing methods according to experimental results conducted on 200 test images. The proposed recovery method can be used for cryptanalysis of DCT based selective encryption schemes and other applications.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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