Pre-processing Techniques to Improve the Efficiency of Video Identification for the Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard

Copyright 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.). Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisherIn the study of the endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard, non-invasive photographic identification is preferred to the current invasive methods which can be unreliable and cruel. As the lizard is an endangered species, there are restrictions on its handling. The lizard is also in constant motion and it is therefore difficult to capture a good still image for identification purposes. Hence video capture is preferred as a number of images of the lizard at various positions and qualities can be collected in just a few seconds from which the best image can be selected for identification. With a large number of individual lizards in the database, matching a video sequence of images against each database image for identification will render the process very computationally inefficient. Moreover, a large portion of those images are non-identifiable due to motion and optical blur and different body curvature to the reference database image. In this paper, we propose a number of pre-processing techniques for pre-selecting the best image out of the video image sequence for identification. Using our proposed pre-selection techniques, it has been shown that the computational efficiency can be significantly improved

Image Asymmetry Measurement for the Study of Endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard

Author version made available in accordance with the publisher's policyAbstract—There are applications for the measurement of body asymmetry as some studies have shown a correlation between asymmetry and fitness for some species. In our study of the endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard, the asymmetry of its head is being investigated to see whether this has a correlation with its health and chance of survival in the wild. As there are restrictions on handling the endangered lizards, their digital photos must be taken in the field and therefore it is difficult to impose restrictions on the conditions under which the digital images are acquired. In this paper, we propose a novel automatic technique that is invariant to rotation, size, illumination and tilt, for the measurement of lizard symmetry based on its digital imagery and the resulting symmetry index is used to infer the lizard’s asymmetry. The conventional manual methods being used by biologists for fluctuating asymmetry measurement have a number of disadvantages including human errors, and their methods of measurement are based on counting the number of scales and length measurement that do not often agree well with visual assessment. Our proposed image processing technique is non-invasive, robust in a way that will give a similar symmetric index for different images of the same lizard, and more importantly based on the actual image scale pattern of the lizards. Hence our proposed method will also give a better agreement with visual assessment

Impacts of Lack of Resources for BPOC Students with Disabilities

[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] This project is about how Black and People of Color (BPOC) are disproportionately left behind from learning disability resources and services available to them and how to implement changes for them to receive them. The focus is on the San Fernando Valley, but the research used was gathered from the State of California and federal regulations of funding towards special education for BPOC families. BPOC students face many barriers to entry with disabilities that prevent them from getting the support and resources they need: barriers in the academic system (lack of funding, schools refusing students), barriers in the medical system (doctors not listening/implicit bias), and stigmatization in families. The lack of funding of programs makes it hard for families to seek out accessible services for them, and when there is a lack of funding within schools, schools are not able to accept as many students requesting their support. However, through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal government is required to provide states with necessary funds to school districts to support students with disabilities. BPOC families also have a difficult time with the medical field and acquiring diagnosis and treatments. When these families go to doctors and report their concerns, they are often met with doctors reporting the child is fine when the doctor is not listening and going off on their own implicit bias. As a result, these children are not being treated properly. When doctors have a bias on these families, it further develops a gap in treatment and care for marginalized communities. Last, BPOC families, especially elders, have a certain stigmatization towards disabilities. This could include the idea that disabilities are caused by poor parenting and that accommodations can be handled by the family within societal supports as there is a lack of trust in institutional organizations. However, this leads to the child not receiving the best care and support as the child doesn't receive the resources they need to excel. This project discusses the ways in which the legal system can be leveraged to shift policy and hold the federal government accountable to secure the proper funding for school districts. Additionally, this project discusses the ideal allocation of these additional funds to best provide resources and support to BPOC youth with learning disabilities. The results provide examples of how funding can be secured and how resources for the BPOC community can be attained in a more accessible manner. The data collection and recording procedures included searching for articles related to diagnosis, researching articles from CSUN Library's OneSearch search bar and Google Scholar, and conducting expert interviews. Data from this research was then copied and pasted into a coding table to analyze. The expert interviews were conducted and recorded through Zoom or through a phone call if the interviewee was unable to meet through Zoom

Contrast enhancement by multi-level histogram shape segmentation with adaptive detail enhancement for noise suppression

This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This author accepted manuscript is made available following 24 month embargo from date of publication (November 2018) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyThe usual problems associated with image enhancement include over- and under-enhancement, halo effects at edges and the degradation of the signal-to-noise ratio as the enhancement of details increases. Some of those problems manifest in the background and some in the details of the enhanced image. Our proposed method is to apply different techniques to enhance the background and details separately. For enhancement of the image background, a novel multi-level histogram shape segmentation method which will detect abrupt changes in the histogram is proposed so that regions of intensity values with a similar frequency of occurrence are segmented for individual equalization to avoid over-enhancement. For detail enhancement, a novel adaptive median based enhancement method is applied to the details to avoid over- and under-enhancement while suppressing noise by limiting the degree of enhancement in homogeneous regions. Halo effects due to the over-enhancement of edges are avoided in our proposed method by using an edge preserving filter for the separation of the background and details so that edges are excluded from detail enhancement. It has been shown that our proposed method is able to avoid the usual adverse problems of image enhancement while producing adequate overall enhancement

FLAME RETARDED, REINFORCED POLYPROPYLENE TECHNICAL FIBRES

A new simple method has been elaborated for increasing the strength of oriented polypropylene fibres by additives. The principle of the process is the incorporation of inorganic fillers (such as talc or CaCO3 ) into polypropylene matrix material in a manner that allows maintaining the stretch ability of the fibre formed in this way. A new halogen free additive system has been developed which contains reactive P, N, Si and Zn derivatives that react with each other in the production line forming a flame retarded polypropylene fibre by reactive extrusion. The influence of the additive system under combustion is based on the formation of a closed intumescent surface layer, that hinders the heat and flammable material transport

A Note on Twisted Linear Actions on a Sphere

Let G be a Lie group. A TC-pair (ρ,M) of G gives a twisted linear action on a sphere. Assume that G/ker ρ is non-compact. Then the TC-pairs are equivalent, if the corresponding twisted linear actions are coincides with each other. Hence also so, if the corresponding twisted linear actions are transitive and equivariantly diffeomorphic

European copyright law in Internet

Przedmiotem publikacji jest unijny system prawa autorskiego w Internecie, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem zagadnienia piractwa internetowego.W pierwszym rozdziale autor skupia się na przedstawieniu podstawowych pojęć związanych ze specyfiką Internetu i samego piractwa. W drugiej części dokonana zostaje analiza międzynarodowych, unijnych i krajowych aktów prawnych, dotyczących prawa autorskiego w Internecie uzupełnionych komentarzami doktryny oraz aktualnym orzecznictwem Trybunału Sprawiedliwości. W ostatnim rozdziale dokonana została prognoza przyszłości prawa unijnego w zakresie regulacji praw wyłacznych w Internecie, z uwzględnieniem aktualnych trendów w nim panujących oraz alterantywnych środków ochrony. Głównym założeniem publikacji jest problem niedostosowania unijnego prawa autorskiego do specyfiki cyberprzestrzeni i braku wyważenia interesów podmiotów praw wyłącznych i użytkowników przejawiajacy sie w restrykcyjnym modelu ochrony prawa autorskiego w Internecie. Skutkiem z tego wynikającym jest brak poszanowania prawa i niemal powszechna skala naruszeń.The subject of this publication is European's Union copyright law system in Internet, with particular accent on issue of internet piracy. In first chapter author is focusing on matter of basic concepts connected with Internet and piracy itself. In second part there is an analysis of international, European and domestic regulations concerning the matter of copyright law in Internet, filled with doctrine commentaries and current Court of Justice judicature. In last chapter author make a prognosis of future European's Union law in scope of exclusive rights regulation in Internet, with consideration of present trends in copyright law and alternative protection measures. Main thesis of this publication is lack of harmonization between European's Union copyright law and Internet specifics and lack of balance between interests of users and subjects of exclusive rights, what manifests itself in restrictive model of copyright law in Internet. The effect of that is lack of respect to law regulation and nearly common scope of copyright law infringement