The focus of this thesis is the definition of a complete framework for texture-based annotation and retrieval. This framework is centred on the concept of "texture codes", so called because they encode the relative energy levels of Gabor filter responses. These codes are pixel-based, robust descriptors with respect to illumination variations, can be generated efficiently, and included in a fast retrieval process. They can act as local or global descriptors, and can be used in the representations of regions or objects. Our framework is therefore capable of supporting a wide range of queries and applications. During our research, we have been able to utilise results of psychological studies on the perception of similarity and have explored non-metric similarity scores. As a result, we have found that similarity can be evaluated with simple measures predominantly relying on the information extracted from the query, without a drastic loss in retrieval performance. We have been able to show that the most simple measure possible, counting the number of common codes between the query and a stored image, can for some algorithmic parameters outperform well-proven benchmarks. Importantly also, our measures can all support partial comparisons, so that region-based queries can be answered without the need for segmentation. We have investigated refinements of the framework which endow it with the ability to localise queries in candidate images, and to deal with user relevance feedback. The final framework can generate good and fast retrieval results as demonstrated with a databases of 3723 images, and can therefore be useful as a stand-alone system. The framework has also been applied to the problem of high-level annotation. In particular, it has been used as a cue detector, where a cue is a visual example of a particular concept such as a type of sport. The detection results show that the system can predict the correct cue among a small set of cues, and can therefore provide useful information to an engine fusing the outputs of several cue detectors. So an important aspect of this framework is that it is expected to be an asset within a multi-cue annotation and/or retrieval system.

The work deals with the current burning issue of cultural differences. These issues relate to the expression of culture and one's home country within the mediums of the Internet and online communication. Based on the research of previous studies, this work aims to demonstrate the influence of cultural dimensions in web design and content. In a sample of the largest beer producers in the Czech Republic, Japan and Great Britain supplemented with the largest international brewing companies are analyzed components which characterize cultural differences. The main scope of this study is based on assumptions and theories according to G. Hofstede and E. T. Hall. It thus demonstrates the influence of culture and dimensions -- Collectivism/Individualism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, High/Low Context, Masculinity/Femininity, Time Orientation and Colour symbolism. It is recommended that companies pay more attention to the cultural adaption of web communication, which can bring more clarity and attractiveness, and also a higher added value to the customer himself.

Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2010. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed Dec. 23, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-83).

This thesis examines the possible benefits of adapting a biologically-inspired model of human auditory processing as part of a machine-hearing system. Features were generated by an auditory model, and used as input to machine learning systems to determine the content of the sound. Features were generated using the auditory image model (AIM) and were used for speech recognition and audio search. AIM comprises processing to simulate the human cochlea, and a 'strobed temporal integration' process which generates a stabilised auditory image (SAI) from the input sound. The communication sounds which are produced by humans, other animals, and many musical instruments take the form of a pulse-resonance signal: pulses excite resonances in the body, and the resonance following each pulse contains information both about the type of object producing the sound and its size. In the case of humans, vocal tract length (VTL) determines the size properties of the resonance. In the speech recognition experiments, an auditory filterbank was combined with a Gaussian fitting procedure to produce features which are invariant to changes in speaker VTL. These features were compared against standard mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) in a size-invariant syllable recognition task. The VTL-invariant representation was found to produce better results than MFCCs when the system was trained on syllables from simulated talkers of one range of VTLs and tested on those from simulated talkers with a different range of VTLs. The image stabilisation process of strobed temporal integration was analysed. Based on the properties of the auditory filterbank being used, theoretical constraints were placed on the properties of the dynamic thresholding function used to perform strobe detection. These constraints were used to specify a simple, yet robust, strobe detection algorithm. The syllable recognition system described above was then extended to produce features from profiles of the SAI and tested with the same syllable database as before. For clean speech, performance of the features was comparable to that of those generated from the filterbank output. However when pink noise was added to the stimuli, performance dropped more slowly as a function of signal-to-noise ratio when using the SAI-based AIM features, than when using either the filterbank-based features or the MFCCs, demonstrating the noise-robustness properties of the SAI representation. The properties of the auditory filterbank in AIM were also analysed. Three models of the cochlea were considered: the static gammatone filterbank, dynamic compressive gammachirp (dcGC) and the pole-zero filter cascade (PZFC). The dcGC and gammatone are standard filterbank models, whereas the PZFC is a filter cascade, which more accurately models signal propagation in the cochlea. However, while the architecture of the filterbanks is different, they have all been successfully fitted to psychophysical masking data from humans. The abilities of the filterbanks to measure pitch strength were assessed, using stimuli which evoke a weak pitch percept in humans, in order to ascertain whether there is any benefit in the use of the more computationally efficient PZFC.Finally, a complete sound effects search system using auditory features was constructed in collaboration with Google research. Features were computed from the SAI by sampling the SAI space with boxes of different scales. Vector quantization (VQ) was used to convert this multi-scale representation to a sparse code. The 'passive-aggressive model for image retrieval' (PAMIR) was used to learn the relationships between dictionary words and these auditory codewords. These auditory sparse codes were compared against sparse codes generated from MFCCs, and the best performance was found when using the auditory features.

This thesis presents content-related and construct-related validity evidence for science sub-tests within Student Selection Test (SST) in Turkey via underlying the content, cognitive processes, item characteristics, factorial structure, and group differences based on high school type. A total number of 126,245 students were present in the research from six type of school in the data of SST 2006. Reliability Analysis, Item Analysis, Principle Component Analysis (PCA) and one-way ANOVA have been carried out to evaluate the content-related and construct-related evidence of validity of SST. SPSS and ITEMAN programs were used to conduct the above-mentioned analyses. According to the results of content analysis, science items in the SST 2006 found to be measuring various cognitive processes under knowledge, understanding and problem solving cognitive domains. Those items loaded under three factors according to PCA findings which were measuring very close dimensions. Moreover, a threat to validity was detected via one-way ANOVA due to significant mean difference across high school types.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T16:15:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Valeria Nunes.pdf: 4080156 bytes, checksum: 04fd5ddd242d31cee40a00393159e805 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-09-12 / Este estudo traz resultados de uma pesquisa em abordagem qualitativa sobre o Sistema de Avaliação de Rendimento Escolar do Estado de São Paulo, o SARESP. O objetivo foi efetuar uma leitura dos resultados do SARESP em busca de uma informação especifica: a Aula de Trabalho Pedagógico Coletivo (ATPC). Toma-se por problemática, a análise oficial para os resultados apresentados em 2011 pelos alunos do 3° ano do ensino fundamental na prova de Língua Portuguesa: Esse desempenho positivo parece refletir os muitos esforços [...] em relação ao fomento de atividades de formação e de orientações pedagógicas aos professores . Considerando que a ATPC é o principal contexto para formar e orientar o professor, questionou-se: O que informa o SARESP a respeito da ATPC? Para minimizar essa incerteza fez-se uma leitura do Relatório dos Estudos do SARESP (2010 e 2011) um documento elaborado a partir das informações coletadas pelos questionários aplicados a alunos, pais e equipe escolar. Essa pesquisa centrou-se nas perguntas, respostas e análises do SARESP sobre a ATPC. A recolha dos dados foi instrumentalizada por uma pesquisa documental com uso da técnica documentação (SEVERINO, 2012 e LAKATOS; MARCONI, 1991). A análise dos dados foi organizada em dois momentos: Análise documental (CELLARD, 2012) e Análise de Conteúdo (BARDIN, 2012 e FRANCO, 2012). O estudo apresenta alguns aspectos da avaliação nacional e avaliações subnacionais (BONAMINO; SOUSA, 2012; BONAMINO; FRANCO, 1999; PESTANA, 1997 e BROOKE, 2006 e 2008), e algumas considerações sobre os questionários e os relatórios como instrumentos utilizados por sistemas de avaliação (MINAYO, 2005; ELLIOT; HILDEBRAND; BERENGER, 2012). Os resultados foram organizados em dois eixos: a coleta e, a análise dos documentos. Em relação a coleta, a pesquisa mostrou que houve dificuldade em localizar os documentos do SARESP podendo indicar que a memória da rede estadual paulista em relação a essa política pública possa estar se perdendo. Em relação a análise dos documentos, os resultados apontaram que a ATPC é um dado coletado pelos questionários contextuais da equipe escolar e analisado pelo SARESP, os resultados dessa análise são apresentados no documento Relatório dos Estudos do SARESP e trazem informações especificas sobre a sua organização, assuntos tratados e principais responsáveis. A leitura e a análise dessas informações apontam que: a formação do professor em ATPC pautada nas orientações da SEE-SP não foi uma opção de resposta oferecida ao professor; essas reuniões fazem uso restrito da Proposta Curricular e a participação do diretor nessas reuniões foi apresentada no relatório de 2011 como um fator associado ao desempenho positivo dos alunos do 3° ano do ensino fundamental.

The aim of the diploma thesis is the analysis of set inbound marketing components and suggestion of a strategical concept with the option of real processing of this web within the bounds of possibility of the set marketing components. In the theoretical part of the thesis, the whole strategy of inbound marketing and its general inbound marketing components are presented. In the practical part of the thesis, the analysis of the website magazine in connection with user behaviour is presented, including visit rate specification towards the specific content, setting up partial SEO factors and organic marketing on social media. In the end of the diploma thesis, the analysed metrics and specific recommendations of the plan are described.

The diploma thesis deals with the relationship between humans and animals in contemporary society. Formerly animals were a part of everyday human life but with the advent of modern society, the relationship between man and animal weakens. Today the situation is such that people increasingly form the relationship with animals only through the media. Therefore, the aim of practical research was to determine how and in what context animals are represented in the Czech media, specifically in two selected newspapers - Blesk and MF Dnes. To achieve a comprehensive view on the subject, the work combined two basic approaches to research - qualitative and quantitative. Main method is a qualitative frame analysis during which frames of representing animals that occur in these two newspapers were formulated, described and interpreted. To complement and quantify the information gathered in qualitative analysis, quantitative content analysis was also made. Among others, the results offer us a reflection how we currently think about animals and what role they play in our lives and in life of the whole society.

Student selection test in Turkey compose of two parts. The purpose of the first part is to assess students&rsquo / higher order thinking skills like analytical thinking, interpretation and reasoning about elementary school curriculum and 9th grade curricula objectives. On the other hand, second part of the test aims to assess students&rsquo / higher order thinking skills given in the high school curriculum. The main aim of this thesis is to analyze to what extend 2006, 2007 and 2008 student selection tests biology items assess higher order cognitive skills. In accordance with this purpose, elementary and high school curriculum and the appropriateness of the questions in the student selection test with the educational objectives of the curriculum are examined. In addition, dimensions of 2006, 2007, and 2008 SST biology items are examined by Exploratory Component Analysis and Confirmatory Component Analysis techniques. The result of those analysis revealed that SST biology items mostly focus on remembering skill and fail to assess higher order thinking skills. Additionally, there is not any consistency among 2006, 2007, and 2008 SSTs biology items in terms of dimensions which means there is not any construct in biology subtests of SSTs. The other aim of the present study is to identify how much academic and non-academic factors explain the biology achievement. While for academic factors reading comprehension, mathematics, physics, and chemistry achievements of students are used, age, gender, and school type are used for non-academic factors. Findings of the research revealed that academic factors, especially chemistry achievement, have significant affect on biology achievement. In terms of non-academic factors, graduating from selecting high school has important role for biology achievement. Additionally, older students and girls tend to have higher grades in biology.

The main target of this work is to monitor the current status and advancement of Internet marketing at pre-arranged trading company. From analysis to draw conclusions, submit them to the guidance, recommend next steps, let it them approve and begin implementing the newly proposed solutions. The author discusses how detailed survey of the current marketing market and customer analysis of the company due to the best possible choice of appropriate marketing techniques. The aim is to streamline the work, save costs, increase conversion rates, and increase the competitive advantage of the customer company. Practical steps are based on theoretical knowledge acquired before and during the creation of this work. The result already is deployed Internet marketing strategies. All the practical work is carried out in the customer enterprise on real data with real Budge on a real goods. The practical part includes evaluation of new marketing techniques, comparison with the prior and subsequent recommendations for the future.