In many instances, television news is the primary outlet through which people gain knowledge on climate change. Both the perceived threat of climate change and American news media have grown politically divided since the 1980s. I make the argument that American news media influences the partisan divide over climate change. In addition to the political landscape of news media, focus on political events and figures in climate coverage further contributes to a partisan divide. Supporting these claims are research displaying how climate change news is processed in a partisan manner and a selection of three case study periods in which climate change coverage spiked among MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News in the last twenty years (2000-2019). I collected news footage from all three case studies using the online database archive.org. Using this footage, an accompanying documentary short was produced that focused on the Paris Climate Accord Withdrawal in 2017. Presented in the documentary and the three case study periods, Fox News held a consistently hands-off and dismissive tone towards climate change, while MSNBC and CNN implemented climate science into coverage while advocating for collective climate action. I report that media is selected and processed via partisanship among viewers; these case studies illustrate the ways in which news media drives the political divide on climate change. I conclude by offering some future ways climate coverage can be more unifying, such as more emphasis on the economic benefits of “a green economy” in news coverage.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Research work presented within this thesis propose a neoteric variant of deep convolutional neural network architecture, CondenseNeXt, designed specifically for ARM-based embedded computing platforms with constrained computational resources. CondenseNeXt is an improved version of CondenseNet, the baseline architecture whose roots can be traced back to ResNet. CondeseNeXt replaces group convolutions in CondenseNet with depthwise separable convolutions and introduces group-wise pruning, a model compression technique, to prune (remove) redundant and insignificant elements that either are irrelevant or do not affect performance of the network upon disposition. Cardinality, a new dimension to the existing spatial dimensions, and class-balanced focal loss function, a weighting factor inversely proportional to the number of samples, has been incorporated in order to relieve the harsh effects of pruning, into the design of CondenseNeXt’s algorithm. Furthermore, extensive analyses of this novel CNN architecture was performed on three benchmarking image datasets: CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and ImageNet by deploying the trained weight on to an ARM-based embedded computing platform: NXP BlueBox 2.0, for real-time image classification. The outputs are observed in real-time in RTMaps Remote Studio’s console to verify the correctness of classes being predicted. CondenseNeXt achieves state-of-the-art image classification performance on three benchmark datasets including CIFAR-10 (4.79% top-1 error), CIFAR-100 (21.98% top-1 error) and ImageNet (7.91% single model, single crop top-5 error), and up to 59.98% reduction in forward FLOPs compared to CondenseNet. CondenseNeXt can also achieve a final trained model size of 2.9 MB, however at the cost of 2.26% in accuracy loss. Thus, performing image classification on ARM-Based computing platforms without requiring a CUDA enabled GPU support, with outstanding efficiency.

This thesis is concerned with the explanation of the word2vec models. Even though word2vec was introduced recently (2013), many researchers have already tried to extend, understand or at least use the model because it provides surprisingly rich semantic information. This information is encoded in N-dim vector representation and can be recall by performing some operations over the algebra. As an addition, I suggest a model modifications in order to obtain different word representation. To achieve that, I use public picture datasets. This thesis also includes parts dedicated to word2vec extension based on convolution neural network.

Optical character recognition (OCR) has been a topic of interest for many years. It is defined as the process of digitizing a document image into a sequence of characters. Despite decades of intense research, OCR systems with capabilities to that of human still remains an open challenge. In this work there is presented a design and implementation of such system, which is capable of detecting texts in graphical user interfaces.

Optical character recognition (OCR) has been a topic of interest for many years. It is defined as the process of digitizing a document image into a sequence of characters. Despite decades of intense research, OCR systems with capabilities to that of human still remains an open challenge. In this work there is presented a design and implementation of such system, which is capable of detecting texts in graphical user interfaces.

This master thesis deals with the problem of audio-classification of the chainsaw logging sound in natural environment using mainly convolutional neural networks. First, a theory of grafical representation of audio signal is discussed. Following part is devoted to the machine learning area. In third chapter, some of present works dealing with this problematics are given. Within the practical part, used dataset and tested neural networks are presented. Final resultes are compared by achieved accuracy and by ROC curves. The robustness of the presented solutions was tested by proposed detection program and evaluated using objective criteria.

This thesis presents design and development of a gesture recognition system to recognize finger spelling American Sign Language hand gestures. We developed this solution using the latest deep learning technique called convolutional neural networks. This system uses blink detection to initiate the recognition process, Convex Hull-based hand segmentation with adaptive skin color filtering to segment hand region, and a convolutional neural network to perform gesture recognition. An ensemble of four convolutional neural networks are trained with a dataset of 25254 images for gesture recognition and a feedback unit called head pose estimation is implemented to validate the correctness of predicted gestures. This entire system was developed using Python programming language and other supporting libraries like OpenCV, Tensor flow and Dlib to perform various image processing and machine learning tasks. This entire application can be deployed as a web application using Flask to make it operating system independent.

A Neurodegenerative Disease (ND) is progressive damage to brain neurons, which the human body cannot repair or replace. The well-known examples of such conditions are Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), which affect millions of lives each year. Although conducting numerous researches, there are no effective treatments for the mentioned diseases today. However, early diagnosis is crucial in disease management. Diagnosing NDs is challenging for neurologists and requires years of training and experience. So, there has been a trend to harness the power of deep learning, including state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), to assist doctors in diagnosing such conditions using brain scans. The CNN models lead to promising results comparable to experienced neurologists in their diagnosis. But, the advent of transformers in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) domain and their outstanding performance persuaded Computer Vision (CV) researchers to adapt them to solve various CV tasks in multiple areas, including the medical field. This research aims to develop Vision Transformer (ViT) models using Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset to classify NDs. More specifically, the models can classify three categories (Cognitively Normal (CN), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)) using brain Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans. Also, we take advantage of Automated Anatomical Labeling (AAL) brain atlas and attention maps to develop explainable models. We propose three ViTs, the best of which obtains an accuracy of 82% on the test dataset with the help of transfer learning. Also, we encode the AAL brain atlas information into the best performing ViT, so the model outputs the predicted label, the most critical region in its prediction, and overlaid attention map on the input scan with the crucial areas highlighted. Furthermore, we develop two CNN models with 2D and 3D convolutional kernels as baselines to classify NDs, which achieve accuracy of 77% and 73%, respectively, on the test dataset. We also conduct a study to find out the importance of brain regions and their combinations in classifying NDs using ViTs and the AAL brain atlas. / <p>This thesis was awarded a prize of 50,000 SEK by Getinge Sterilization for projects within Health Innovation.</p>

Workplace injuries are common in today's society due to a lack of adequately worn safety equipment. A system that only admits appropriately equipped personnel can be created to improve working conditions and worker safety. The goal is thus to develop a system that will improve construction workers' safety. Building such a system necessitates computer vision, which entails object recognition, facial recognition, and human recognition, among other things. The basic idea is first to detect the human and remove the background to speed up the process and avoid potential interferences. After that, the cropped image is subjected to facial and object recognition. The code is written in Python and includes libraries such as OpenCV, face_recognition, and CVZone. Some of the different algorithms chosen were YOLOv4 and Histogram of Oriented Gradients. The results were measured at three respectively five-meter distances. As a result of the system’s pipeline, algorithms, and software, a mean average precision of 99% and 89% was achieved at the respective distances. At three and five meters, the model achieved a precision rate of 100%. The recall rates were 96% - 100% at 3m and 54% - 100% at 5m. Finally, the fps was measured at 1.2 on a system without GPU. / Skador på arbetsplatsen är vanliga i dagens samhälle på grund av att skyddsutrustning inte används eller används felaktigt. Målet är därför att bygga ett robust system som ska förbättra säkerhet. Ett system som endast ger tillträde till personal med rätt skyddsutrustning kan skapas för att förbättra arbetsförhållandena och arbetarsäkerheten. Att bygga ett sådant system kräver datorseende, vilket bland annat innebär objektigenkänning, ansiktsigenkänning och mänsklig igenkänning. Grundidén är att först upptäcka människan och ta bort bakgrunden för att göra processen mer effektiv och undvika potentiella störningar. Därefter appliceras ansikts- och objektigenkänning på den beskurna bilden. Koden är skriven i Python och inkluderar bland annat bibliotek som: OpenCV, face_recognition och CVZone. Några av de algoritmer som valdes var YOLOv4 och Histogram of Oriented Gradients. Resultatet mättes på tre, respektive fem meters avstånd. Systemets pipeline, algoritmer och mjukvara gav en medelprecision för alla klasser på 99%, och 89% för respektive avstånd. För tre och fem meters avstånd uppnådde modellen en precision på 100%. Recall uppnådde värden mellan 96% - 100% vid 3 meters avstånd och 54% - 100% vid 5 meters avstånd. Avslutningsvis uppmättes antalet bilder per sekund till 1,2 på ett system utan GPU.

Facial expression recognition (FER) is still a challenging concept, and machines struggle to comprehend effectively the dynamic shifts in facial expressions of human emotions. The existing systems, which have proven to be effective, consist of deeper network structures that need powerful and expensive hardware. The deeper the network is, the longer the training and the testing. Many systems use expensive GPUs to make the process faster. To remedy the above challenges while maintaining the main goal of improving the accuracy rate of the recognition, we create a generic hierarchical structure with variable settings. This generic structure has a hierarchy of three convolutional blocks, two dropout blocks and one fully connected block. From this generic structure we derived four different network structures to be investigated according to their performances. From each network structure case, we again derived six network structures in relation to the variable parameters. The variable parameters under analysis are the size of the filters of the convolutional maps and the max-pooling as well as the number of convolutional maps. In total, we have 24 network structures to investigate, and six network structures per case. After simulations, the results achieved after many repeated experiments showed in the group of case 1; case 1a emerged as the top performer of that group, and case 2a, case 3c and case 4c outperformed others in their respective groups. The comparison of the winners of the 4 groups indicates that case 2a is the optimal structure with optimal parameters; case 2a network structure outperformed other group winners. Considerations were done when choosing the best network structure, considerations were; minimum accuracy, average accuracy and maximum accuracy after 15 times of repeated training and analysis of results. All 24 proposed network structures were tested using two of the most used FER datasets, the CK+ and the JAFFE. After repeated simulations the results demonstrate that our inexpensive optimal network architecture achieved 98.11 % accuracy using the CK+ dataset. We also tested our optimal network architecture with the JAFFE dataset, the experimental results show 84.38 % by using just a standard CPU and easier procedures. We also compared the four group winners with other existing FER models performances recorded recently in two studies. These FER models used the same two datasets, the CK+ and the JAFFE. Three of our four group winners (case 1a, case 2a and case 4c) recorded only 1.22 % less than the accuracy of the top performer model when using the CK+ dataset, and two of our network structures, case 2a and case 3c came in third, beating other models when using the JAFFE dataset. / Electrical and Mining Engineering