Ames vision group research overview

A major goal of the reseach group is to develop mathematical and computational models of early human vision. These models are valuable in the prediction of human performance, in the design of visual coding schemes and displays, and in robotic vision. To date researchers have models of retinal sampling, spatial processing in visual cortex, contrast sensitivity, and motion processing. Based on their models of early human vision, researchers developed several schemes for efficient coding and compression of monochrome and color images. These are pyramid schemes that decompose the image into features that vary in location, size, orientation, and phase. To determine the perceptual fidelity of these codes, researchers developed novel human testing methods that have received considerable attention in the research community. Researchers constructed models of human visual motion processing based on physiological and psychophysical data, and have tested these models through simulation and human experiments. They also explored the application of these biological algorithms to applications in automated guidance of rotorcraft and autonomous landing of spacecraft. Researchers developed networks for inhomogeneous image sampling, for pyramid coding of images, for automatic geometrical correction of disordered samples, and for removal of motion artifacts from unstable cameras

An orthogonal oriented quadrature hexagonal image pyramid

An image pyramid has been developed with basis functions that are orthogonal, self-similar, and localized in space, spatial frequency, orientation, and phase. The pyramid operates on a hexagonal sample lattice. The set of seven basis functions consist of three even high-pass kernels, three odd high-pass kernels, and one low-pass kernel. The three even kernels are identified when rotated by 60 or 120 deg, and likewise for the odd. The seven basis functions occupy a point and a hexagon of six nearest neighbors on a hexagonal sample lattice. At the lowest level of the pyramid, the input lattice is the image sample lattice. At each higher level, the input lattice is provided by the low-pass coefficients computed at the previous level. At each level, the output is subsampled in such a way as to yield a new hexagonal lattice with a spacing sq rt 7 larger than the previous level, so that the number of coefficients is reduced by a factor of 7 at each level. The relationship between this image code and the processing architecture of the primate visual cortex is discussed

The Silent Revolution in Methods of Advocacy in English Courts

George Keeton wrote, in 1943, about “a silent revolution in methods of advocacy as practiced by the English Bar over the last fifty years” . Changed standards of etiquette, professional rules and greater control exerted by judges over these years led to a vast increase in courtesy in interactions with judges and between counsel. The conduct of prosecutions had also improved. They were generally no longer carried out in a sneering hectoring manner with witnesses mercilessly browbeaten or bullied. Dramatic types of 19th Century advocacy, in which counsel was prepared to use mannerisms, tricks of speech and gestures to heighten the effects of their pleas to juries, was replaced by a conversational and matter of fact tone. The idea that to cross-examine meant to examine crossly had almost vanished. Appeals to juries were now to reason combined with a controlled, subtle and focused appeal to emotion. Jury trials in civil cases had continued to decline. Advocacy before judges was concerned with facts and the law, not oratorical flourishes. Fewer criminal trials before juries took place as the jurisdiction of the magistrates had widened further. The more restrained and conversational style of advocacy before criminal juries may have been to some extent influenced by that of the civil courts, where the leaders of the bar appeared more often and increasingly without juries. Two dominant members of the bar during the first half of the 20th Century were Patrick Hastings and Norman Birkett. Their styles, because of triumphs linked with them, were influential on those of other barristers. Hastings was a master of direct forcible speech without any embellishments or ornamentation and prized brevity. Unlike Hastings, Norman Birkett believed that the advocate ought to use the full range of English speech. Other factors lay behind the mainly conversational and matter of fact advocacy that had become established. These include a widely held suspicion of rhetoric and, very importantly, better informed and greater educated juries. Jurors were less susceptible than their predecessors to theatrical gestures and melodrama, which had largely been replaced in literature and on the stage by introspection and realism, references to God and the Bible, elegant and flowery, but empty, speech and appeals to strong emotion and prejudice. In a more scientific age jurors expected more of an appeal to reason. The success of barristers such as Hardinge Giffard, John Holker, Charles Russell and Edward Clarke, during the closing decades of the previous century, may have been because they appreciated early on the changes that were occurring to juries. Attempting to catch the eye of the press to help create a reputation, useful to generate work, was an important factor behind the emotive, vividly worded and aggressive advocacy of the early Victorian period and afterwards. The later decline of court reporting in the newspapers, removing much of the gallery from the stage, may well have contributed to the more subdued form of speech

Image management research

Two types of research issues are involved in image management systems with space station applications: image processing research and image perception research. The image processing issues are the traditional ones of digitizing, coding, compressing, storing, analyzing, and displaying, but with a new emphasis on the constraints imposed by the human perceiver. Two image coding algorithms have been developed that may increase the efficiency of image management systems (IMS). Image perception research involves a study of the theoretical and practical aspects of visual perception of electronically displayed images. Issues include how rapidly a user can search through a library of images, how to make this search more efficient, and how to present images in terms of resolution and split screens. Other issues include optimal interface to an IMS and how to code images in a way that is optimal for the human perceiver. A test-bed within which such issues can be addressed has been designed

Development of Jury Service in Japan. A square block in a round hole. Anna Dobrovolskaia . Routledge, London / New York 2017, 283 pp., £ 95; ISBN: 978‑1‑4724‑8255‑6

Book review

Changes in Japanese Legal Education

This article seeks: to explain features of the previous system of legal education in Japan; to present criticisms made of it; to describe, in the context of wider social and economic reform, the origins of the Judicial Reform Council and its key recommendations including the creation of law schools, the most important development in Japanese legal education for sixty years; to recount their opening and the preparation beforehand; to give an account of the factors that have obstructed achievement of their goals; to set out how law schools, students and commentators responded; to list the very real achievements of law schools and finally to offer some concluding thoughts about their future and attempt to put them in an international context. At the beginning of the last decade the Japanese government saw a reformed legal system as key to social ordering and resolving disputes, which were expected to rise as the country moved away from organisation by central administrative planning and guidance towards the free market, individualism, personal autonomy, and fuller participation in globalisation. Vital to this was the creation of graduate law schools intended to increase both the size and capabilities of the legal profession. The most striking – and much commented upon – characteristic of the old system, that of tens of thousands of candidates sitting the National Legal Examination, and on average two per cent passing, vanished as a result of the inception of law schools in 2004. However, although capable of teaching a deeper intellectual, critical and more reflective understanding of law and many useful lawyers’ skills, law schools have been hindered in their ability to do so by a decision taken in 2003 which permitted many more to be created than was originally anticipated and subsequently by government refusal to allow the number of their graduates who pass the new National Legal Examination to rise to that initially projected because, contrary to predictions, demand for legal services did not increase. These factors combined to produce an annually decreasing pass rate. Understandable preoccupation by students, and their teachers, with success in the National Legal Examination led to concentration at many law schools only on examinable subjects and marginalisation of those not but nonetheless beneficial. Also features from the previous system appeared, including students attending cram schools for exam techniques and even absenting themselves from classes in order to do so. Because of considerable anxiety about passing the National Legal Examination, substantial expense and uncertain job and salary prospects, uniting to form what one professor described “as a process of suffering,” student enrolment at many schools, especially those whose graduates perform badly in the NLE, sharply decreased. Most law schools have suffered reductions in the amount of subsidy they receive for their courses from the government. At the time of writing, 23 out of the 74 law schools had stopped accepting new students, more were anticipated to follow, and many of these were expected to close when existing students completed their courses. Substantial reductions in places available and in students to occupy them – many law schools now report they are undersubscribed – may well lead to fewer taking the National Legal Examination and hence a rise in the success rate, notwithstanding the capping of the number who may pass to 1,500. Freed from intense competition with each other and from the enormous exam anxiety of their students, the remaining law schools may be able to deliver the deeper and broader legal education recommended over a decade ago by the Judicial Reform Council: Certainly this is the optimistic prediction of some law school professors. Law schools are much exercised with the Preliminary Examination, introduced in 2011, successful candidates in which are allowed to take the National Legal Examination without attending law school. Critics say this exam, intended for people unable to afford law school but wanting to become lawyers, or those who had practical legal experience, has become a shortcut used by undergraduate law students and law school students to take the National Legal Examination. If numbers passing this examination continue to rise, it is feared it will become a grave threat to the existence of law schools

Pyramid image codes

All vision systems, both human and machine, transform the spatial image into a coded representation. Particular codes may be optimized for efficiency or to extract useful image features. Researchers explored image codes based on primary visual cortex in man and other primates. Understanding these codes will advance the art in image coding, autonomous vision, and computational human factors. In cortex, imagery is coded by features that vary in size, orientation, and position. Researchers have devised a mathematical model of this transformation, called the Hexagonal oriented Orthogonal quadrature Pyramid (HOP). In a pyramid code, features are segregated by size into layers, with fewer features in the layers devoted to large features. Pyramid schemes provide scale invariance, and are useful for coarse-to-fine searching and for progressive transmission of images. The HOP Pyramid is novel in three respects: (1) it uses a hexagonal pixel lattice, (2) it uses oriented features, and (3) it accurately models most of the prominent aspects of primary visual cortex. The transform uses seven basic features (kernels), which may be regarded as three oriented edges, three oriented bars, and one non-oriented blob. Application of these kernels to non-overlapping seven-pixel neighborhoods yields six oriented, high-pass pyramid layers, and one low-pass (blob) layer