La seconde moitié du 20e siècle a été marquée par le développement accéléré des agences privées de sécurité, principales organisatrices d’un marché très florissant, qualifié à tort ou à raison de «marché de la peur». Partant de ce constat d’une part, et celui d’une élévation sans précédent des dépenses et des moyens privés mobilisés par les activités de protection et surveillance d’autre part, cette recherche se propose d’en interroger les raisons et d’en décrire les formes en se situant dans une perspective ancrée dans la sociologie du travail. Le terrain de recherche privilégié ici est le centre commercial. En s’inspirant des travaux de Michel Foucault, cette thèse déconstruit les présupposés traits distinctifs entre la sécurité publique et la sécurité privée qui ont longtemps nourri les recherches dans ce domaine en montrant au contraire ce que les deux formes de sécurité ont en commun. L’hypothèse ainsi retenue est que l’activité de surveillance apparaît comme une nouvelle manière de gérer la distance entre classes sociales, dans un contexte où les barrières géographiques entre classes sont de moins en moins visibles. De ce fait, les surveillants se construisent, sur le tas, des catégories de personnes et d’attitudes suspectes  à partir de leur stock d’expériences personnelles. Par ailleurs, la thèse analyse l’identité professionnelle des surveillants, inséparable du fait que la plupart d’entre- eux sont immigrés. Pour expliquer cette "ethnicisation", l’hypothèse retenue est celle du «compromis silencieux»  entre des immigrés que leur situation sociale, économique ou administrative dispose à accepter des conditions de travail et de rémunération peu attrayantes et des entrepreneurs privés disposés à tirer parti de cette main d’œuvre et de l’esprit docile qu’ils comptent trouver chez elle. / In the second half of the twentieth century, the development of agencies of private security has significantly increased. These organizations have become the main part of a flourishing market qualified rightly or wrongly as ‘’market of fear’’. From that fact but also for the significant increase in expenditure and equipment involved in the private security activities, the research aims at questioning the reasons and describing the forms from the labour sociology’s perspective. The main fieldwork of the research is the supermarket. Based on the work of Michel Foucault, this PhD thesis deconstructs the presupposed features between public and private security that was in fashion during the past decades, showing the similarities of these two types of security. The hypothesis is that surveillance activity seems to be a new way for the management of the distance between social classes in a context where geographic barriers are becoming less visible. From then on, the staff is trained on the job, referring to a spectrum of suspicious persons and attitudes, based on their personal experiences. Moreover, the thesis reviews the professional identity of these security workers, who are mostly immigrants. This ‘’ethnicization’’ finds its roots in a silent compromise between the immigrants who are aware of their social, economic and administrative situation and the (private) employers who want to take profit from this ‘’docile’’ manpower.

A learning-based approach to detect abnormal audio information is presented, which can be applied to audio surveillance systems that work alone or as supplements to video surveillance systems. / An automatic surveillance system is also presented that can generate a density map with multi-resolution cells and calculate the density distribution of the image by using texture analysis technique. Hosed on the estimated density distribution, the SVM method is used to solve the classification problem of detecting abnormal situations caused by changes in density distribution. / Anti-terrorism has become a global issue, and surveillance has become increasingly popular in public places such as elevators, banks, airports, and casinos. With traditional surveillance systems, human observers inspect the monitor arrays. However, with screen arrays becoming larger as the number of cameras increases, human observers may feel burdened, lose concentration, and make mistakes, which may be significant in such crucial positions as security posts. To solve this problem, I have developed an intelligent surveillance system that can understand human actions in real-time. / I have built a low-cost PC-based real-time video surveillance system that can model and analyze human real-time actions based on learning by demonstration. By teaching the system the difference between normal and abnormal human actions, the computational action models built inside the trained machines can automatically identify whether newly observed behavior requires security interference. The video surveillance system can detect the following abnormal behavior in a crowded environment using learning algorithms: (1) running people in a crowded environment; (2) falling down movements when most people are walking or standing; and (3) a person carrying an abnormally long bar in a square. Even a person running and waving a hand in a very crowded environment can be detected using an optical flow algorithm. / I have developed a real-time face detection and classification system in which the classification problem is defined as differentiating and is used to classify the front of a face as Asian or non-Asian. I combine the selected principal component analysis (PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA) features into a support vector machine (SVM) classifier to achieved a good classification rate. The system can also be used for other binary classifications of face images, such as gender and age classification without much modification. / This thesis establishes a framework for video, audio, and crowd surveillance, and successfully implements it on a mobile surveillance robot. The work is of significance in understanding human behavior and the detection of abnormal events, and has potential applications in areas such as security monitoring in household and public spaces. / To test my algorithms, the video and audio surveillance technology are implemented on a mobile platform to develop a household surveillance robot. The robot can detect a moving target and track it across a large field of vision using a pan/tilt camera platform, and can detect abnormal behavior in a cluttered environment; such as a person suddenly running or falling down on the floor. When abnormal audio information is detected, a camera on the robot is triggered to further confirm the occurrence of the abnormal event. / Wu, Xinyu. / "May 2008." / Adviser: Yangsheng Xu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: B, page: 1915. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-109). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Chez les eucaryotes, la transcription de l’information génétique en ARN messager (ARNm) est un processus complexe nécessitant de multiples modifications de la molécule d’ARN précurseur. D’après le modèle actuel, l’ARN naissant est recouvert de protéines pour former une particule ribonucléoprotéique (mRNP). Ces étapes de maturation et d’assemblage du transcrit, connues sous le nom de biogénèse des mRNPs, sont physiquement et fonctionnellement couplées à la transcription. Elles assurent l’intégrité ainsi que l’export du transcrit vers le cytoplasme pour y être traduit en protéine. La production du transcrit mature est interconnectée à une étape de contrôle qualité afin d’éviter l’export de transcrits aberrants. Pour identifier de nouveaux facteurs de la biogénèse des mRNPs et comprendre le mode de signalisation des transcrits aberrants, nous avons élaboré un crible innovant. Il repose sur la perturbation de l’expression des gènes de Saccharomyces cerevisiae par le facteur bactérien Rho, capable de dissocier des protéines liées à une molécule d’ARN in vitro. L’expression de Rho chez la levure perturbe l’assemblage nucléoprotéique co-transcriptionnel et génère des transcrits aberrants qui sont dégradés par le système de surveillance nucléaire. Cette étude révèle les interactions dynamiques des facteurs avec le complexe transcriptionnel et leurs implications dans le mécanisme de reconnaissance des transcrits aberrants par la machinerie de dégradation. Notre méthodologie ouvre des perspectives intéressantes pour détecter de nouveaux facteurs de la biogénèse des mRNPs et évaluer leurs rôles dans la régulation de l’expression des gènes. / In eukaryotes, the transcription of genetic information into messenger RNA is a complex process which requires multiple modifications of precursor RNA molecule, termed mRNA processing. Current view is that the nascent RNA is sequentially coated with a large set of proteins to generate messenger ribonucleoprotein particles (mRNPs). Various mRNA processing and assembly events, known as mRNP biogenesis, are coupled physically and functionally to transcription. They confer integrity and promote export of transcript to the cytoplasm for translation. The production of mature export-competent transcripts is interconnected with a quality control step in order to avoid the export of improperly processed transcript. To identify new factors of mRNP biogenesis and understand the signalisation mode of aberrant transcripts, we have implemented an innovative screen. This screen is based on the perturbation of gene expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by bacterial Rho factor which is able to disrupt proteins interacting with RNA molecule in vitro. Rho expression in yeast interferes with co-transcriptional nucleoprotein assembly and generates aberrant transcripts which are degraded by the nuclear surveillance system. This study reveals dynamic interactions of protein factors with transcriptional complex and their implications in recognition of aberrant transcripts by the degradation machinery. Our methodology opens interesting prospects to detect new mRNP biogenesis factors and value their role in regulation of genes expression.

Digital surveillance system is indispensable for household protection, community security and traffic monitoring. With the instant awareness of unusual events, timely measures can be taken to efficiently curb the happening of crimes. The surveillance video can be subjected to further analysis to pin down the relevant figures, timing and process of a specific event. With the growing number of surveillance cameras set up and the expanse of surveillance area, the traditional split-screen display approach cannot provide intuitive correspondence between the images acquired and the areas under surveillance. This might further lead to failure of timely response to an event requiring immediate attention. Therefore, a mapping between the images acquired and the 3D surveillance area is needed to establish intuitively visual correspondence. Also, the traditional monitoring system usually equipped with a plurality of wide-angle lenses with stationary bases or single wide-angle lens travel periodically on a chassis. The cost for setting up a system with multiple surveillance cameras are higher. After displaying the images captured in a split-screen monitor, the images are usually too small to be useful in identifying the contents of a scene. On the other hand, a single-lens configuration cannot continuously monitor the same area of a scene. The periodic scanning pattern unavoidably leaves some portions unattended. Even though wide-angle lenses provide wider coverage of surveillance area, yet the lower resolution of images captured cannot provide effective identification of figures or articles in the scene. The system configuration and functionality of the traditional surveillance system leave much to be desired. In the Event-Trigged Virtual Surveillance Environment proposed, the satellite picture will be employed to provide 2D surveillance area information. Users then enter relevant site information, such as the number of floors, floor map, camera setup location and types, etc. This information is combined to construct 3D surveillance scene, and the images acquired by surveillance cameras are pasted into the constructed 3D model to provide intuitively visual presentation. The status of different types of surveillance devices, such as infrared, circuit breaker, etc., can also be displayed visually in the 3D scene constructed. The images captured through a plural number of cameras are integrated. Intrusion path is analyzed and predicted. With the coordination between different lenses, suspected objects can be detected and tracked. In one embodiment, Both wide-angle and telephoto lenses are used to improve the pitfalls of the aforementioned system. A wide-angle lens is responsible for the wide-area surveillance. When an unusual event is detected, one or several telephoto lenses, mounted on movable chassis, are directed to lock and track targets. Images with much higher resolution than those of wide-angle one can be acquired through the telephoto lenses. With the proposed system setup, a wide area of coverage and an improved resolution of target images can be simultaneously satisfied. Face detection and face recognition paradigms can be further applied to the images acquired to determine whether the target contains human faces and recognize the identities of the subjects. Depending on the results of face recognition, no warning is given for persons registered, or instant warning is dispatched for illegal intrusion. Combined with the analysis of target size and pattern of movement, and dynamic background updating, the false alarms due to changes attributable to environmental lighting condition, fallen leaves, water ripples, etc., can be significantly reduced. On detecting of security threat, the surveillance video and warning message are transmitted through internet and wireless channels to pre-selected network terminals or personal mobile devices to facilitate timely process. The settings of message warning can be modified by the network terminals or personal mobile devices. The focuses of this paper include 3D surveillance scene construction and mapping of surveillance images to the constructed scene, detect objects and virtual patrol. In the first phase, 2D information extracted from satellite pictures and site data entered manually are combined to construct 3D surveillance scene. The images received from cameras are pasted into the corresponding areas in the 3D scene constructed. The mapping between the surveillance images and scene can provide more intuitive presentation in a wide-range area equipped with massive number of cameras. In the next phase, incorporated with the dynamic background updating, the analysis of target size and movement pattern, the false alarm rate can be improved in the face of environmental lighting condition change, fallen leaves, etc. Users can also real-time inspect the surveillance scene or change the setting of the remote surveillance system.

Radiofrequency identification (RIFD) is a significant player in the spread of computation out of the box and into the environment and is becoming a key component in what some have titled the “digital era”. In its capacity to identify and classify material objects often associated with human beings, RFID should also be considered as a mechanism of surveillance. Rather than focusing on the often inflated claims of the transformative power of RFID (from both its boosters and its critics), current applications of RFID are analyzed firstly, through the lens of the digital sublime as employed by Vincent Mosco (2004), and secondly, from the risk society thesis as coined by Ulrich Beck (1992) and explored in light of Bauman’s analysis of the production of fear and its associated capacities (2007). From the viewpoint of the digital sublime, RFID promises revolutionary potential in communication, distribution and efficiency and belief in these properties seems to override actual evidence of the more limited impacts of RFID. In the risk society thesis, RFID is implemented for its perceived contribution to greater security, understood at several levels but is simultaneously feared for its grandeur of capabilities. This critical analysis of RF technologies explores the current understanding of RFID: what the perception is, how the perception was built, and what sustains it, while pointing both to the propensity of RFID to alter time-space patterns and extend surveillance but also to the ways in which both proponents and opponents of RFID may exaggerate this contribution. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2011-10-31 13:39:15.157

Thesis (Ph.D.) Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Adelaide, 1981. / Typescript (photocopy).

No description available.

Early detection of a new outbreak or new information about a public health issue could prevent morbidity and mortality and reduce healthcare expenditures for the economy. Syndromic surveillance is a subset of public health surveillance practice that uses pre-diagnostic data to monitor public health threats. The syndromic surveillance approach posits that patients first interface with the healthcare system in non-traditional ways (e.g., buying over-the-counter medications, calling healthcare hotlines) before seeking traditional healthcare avenues such as emergency rooms and outpatient clinics. Thus detection of public health issues may be more timely using syndromic surveillance data sources compared to diagnosis-based surveillance systems. One source of information not yet fully integrated in syndromic surveillance is calls to poison centers. United States poison centers offer free, confidential medical advice through a national help line to assist in poison exposures. Call data are transmitted and stored in an electronic database within minutes to the National Poison Data System (NPDS), which can be used for near-real-time surveillance for disease conditions or exposures. The studies presented in the dissertation explore new ways for poison center records to be used for early identification of public health threats and for evaluating policy and program impact by identifying changing trends in poison center records. The approach and findings from these three studies expand upon current knowledge of how poison center records can be used for syndromic surveillance and provide evidence that justifies expansion of poison center surveillance into avenues not yet explored by local, state, and federal public health.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Edith Cowan University, 2003. / Submitted to the Faculty of Computing, Health and Science. Includes bibliographical references.