This dissertation gives a general model for the estimation of shape (image segmentation), appearance, pose (image registration), and movement (tracking). The model can infer parameters for multiple objects in a dynamically changing scene. There are a number of real-world applications. In particular, in visual tracking, moving the camera to keep objects of interest in the field of view may cause the background to move. The objects can move and deform in three dimensions, but they must be captured in two-dimensional images. Each component of the image is represented by a separate layer: one for the background and a layer for each foreground object. Each layer has three components: a contour that bounds the region of the layer, a smooth function that represents the object's appearance, and a transformation that maps that layer into an image. The segmentation for each layer is a contour (embedded as the zero level set of a distance function) that is the average shape of the object computed from multiple images. The smooth function associated with a layer approximates the image data inside the contour, after the contour has been mapped into the image by a similarity transformation (rigid component) plus a vector field (non-rigid component). A practical application of having this model is that one can fix the size of a layer and then construct priors on both shape and appearance for that layer. These priors are constructed using principal components analysis (PCA), which reduces the dimensionality of the image-approximating smooth function and the vector field (non-rigid registration) and allows for more accurate modeling of an object for that layer.

I will argue that Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus demonstrates that knowledge is never caused by sense perception. While various kinds of qualities appear to the soul or mind as a result of sense perception—as a result of external bodies impacting with the sense organs—the being (einai or ousia) of these qualities is something different from the mere appearance of the qualities that occurs through the senses. While white colors appear to the soul through vision, perception itself does not reveal that these many appearances are all instances of one white quality. However, I will demonstrate that it is impossible to know anything, even something as basic as “the chalk is white,” if the knower does not recognize that “white” is some one thing and not merely a plurality of instances. Since sense perception does not disclose the one being of what appears within it, knowledge always requires the soul or mind to go beyond what is receptively disclosed to it through sense perception. In order to demonstrate this conclusion, Plato uses a reductio ad absurdum argument. He develops a theory that argues for the opposite conclusion. According to this theory, perceiving and knowing are the same. In order to justify this result, the theory posits that qualities have no one being that is distinct from their many appearances. I will show that the theory entails a series of unacceptable consequences. The worst of these consequences is that it makes reality itself is unintelligible—according to the theory, the world cannot be linguistically described because the world does not possess any concrete determinacy to describe as a result of the theory denying the difference between being and appearances. Plato’s Socrates demonstrates that these conclusions are unacceptable on the theory’s own terms. As a result, the theory fails and the postulate that being and appearances are identical must be rejected. It is impossible for the mere appearance of a quality through sense perception to ever be knowledge. It will only be possible for knowledge to come about through an activity of the soul that discovers the being of what appears to it.

Past research has examined body image and eating-related outcomes of exposure to mass media. This research has generally found that such exposure is a significant risk factor for body image disturbance and disordered eating. However, a causal relationship has not yet been firmly established. Several theories, including objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), have attempted to explain this relationship with some success. The current study had two primary goals. First, it was designed to further explore the potential causal relationship between mass media exposure and body image and affect disturbance. Second, it attempted to go beyond individuals' body image and explore how exposure to objectifying media influences people's judgments of others. Briefly, the results revealed that exposure to media that objectify women was related to state body image disturbance, anger, and anxiety. Gender and internalization of cultural appearance ideals frequently played an important role in these relationships. Exposure to objectifying media did not predict participants' judgments of women's competence or attractiveness. However, interesting gender differences were observed.

Syftet med studien var att studera om attraktiviteten hos en person kan påverka graden av hur moraliskt förkastlig en handling som utförs av personen bedöms vara och huruvida det föreligger någon könsskillnad. Med ett experiment undersöktes 151 studenter på ett medelstort universitet i södra Sverige. Deltagarna tilldelades ett fiktivt moraliskt scenario med ett bifogat foto av antingen en oattraktiv eller en attraktiv person. En kontrollgrupp blev tilldelade samma scenario men utan något foto. Därefter fick deltagarna svara på hur moraliskt förkastlig de upplevde handlingen som beskrevs i scenariot och hur attraktiv de upplevde personen på fotot vara. Ingen signifikant skillnad i moralisk förkastlighet framkom mellan attraktiv och oattraktivt foto, ej heller någon könsskillnad. Resultatet influerades sannolikt av ”criminal face effect”, den av Dumas & Testé (2012) beskrivna effekt. Om en moraliskt tvivelaktig handling utförs och gärningsmannen uppfyller en stereotyp bild hos en eventuell bedömare av hur någon som utför den handlingen ser ut kommer gärningsmannen att dömas hårdare än om stereotypen inte uppfylls. / The aim of the study was to determine whether the attractiveness of a person can influence the degree of how morally reprehensible an act performed by the person assessed and whether there is any gender difference. In an experiment, 151 students at a medium-sized university in southern Sweden participated. The participants were assigned a fictitious moral scenario with an attached photo of either an unattractive or attractive person. A control group were assigned the same scenario but with no photo. Subsequently, participants were asked how morally reprehensible they experienced the act described in the scenario and how attractive they thought the person on the photo to be. No significant difference in moral reprehensibility emerged between attractive and unattractive photo nor a gender difference. The result is likely influenced by the "criminal face effect," the effect described by Dumas & Teste (2012). If a morally dubious act is performed and the offender meets a stereotypical image of a possible estimator of how someone performs the action looks offender will be sentenced more severely than if the stereotype is not met.

The aim of this bachelor thesis has been to investigate what affected the body ideals of teenage girls attending the Swedish upper secondary school and thus, the questions for the investigation were: Who/what “gives” teenage girls their body ideals today and what is considered as an influence of these young teenage girls today with regard to their perception of their own body? The theoretical perspective on the thesis were symbolic interactionism, Gidden's theory on "late"-modernity as well as Ziehe's theory on reflexivity. A quantitative survey were conducted where questionnaires were the starting point. For convenience and simplicity , the author chose to perform the survey on a number of high schools in her vicinity. The headmasters in these schools were contacted and she got the contact infomation for the concerned teachers or the school social pedagogue. After gathering the material, the material compiled and analyzed in SPSS. The participants were 58 teenage girls between 16-18 years old. What gives teenage girls their body ideals today were first and foremost the Internet but this were often combined with body ideals that comes from friends and media. Regarding to what influence how teenage girls look at their body, teenage girls mainly listen to comments of their partner, family and friends. About a quarter of the teenage girls claimed that sporting activities influenced their opinion of her body shape, as well as media and the Internet. Regarding to the experience of being influenced by comments or in comparison to pictures of other women, it were mainly the media and friends that seemed to influence. / Syftet med denna kandidatuppsats har varit att undersöka tonårsflickor upplevelse av vad som påverkade deras kroppsideal och frågeställningarna har således varit: Vilka faktorer är det som ”ger” tonårsflickor sina kroppsideal idag samt vad är det som upplevs påverka tonårsflickor idag, när det gäller hur de ser på sin kropp? Kandidatuppsatsens teroretiska perspektiv var symbolisk interaktionism, Giddens teori om senmodernitet samt Ziehes teori om reflexivitet. En kvantitativ undersökning gjordes där enkäter var utgångspunkten. Av bekvämlighet och för enkelhetens skull valde författaren att genomföra enkäten på ett antal gymnasieskolor i dennes närmiljö. Rektorerna i dessa skolor kontaktades och hon fick av dem kontaktuppgifter till berörda lärare alternativt till skolans socialpedagog. Efter insamling av material sammanställdes och analyserades detta i SPSS. Deltagarna var 58 tonårsflickor i åldern 16-18 år. Vid analys ledde dessa till slutsatsen för just denna grupp med tonårsflickor, att det som gett dessa deras kroppsideal idag var främst Internet men detta ofta kombinerat med kroppsideal som kommer från vänner och media. Tonårsflickorna i denna undersökning var mer benägna att ta till sig partners, familjens och vännernas kommentarer. Ungefär en fjärdedel av tonårsflickorna i studien uppgav att sportaktivitet kunde ha inverkan på tanken om hennes kroppsform, detta berörde även media och Internet. När det gällde upplevelsen av hur de påverkas av kommentarer eller jämförelse av bilder var det framförallt media och vänner som tonårsflickorna upplevde påverka. Nyckelord: Tonårsflickor, upplevelse av påverkan, kroppsideal, media, utseende, kvantitativ

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 38-41)

abstract: The current study is a follow up to a previous evaluation of Believe It!, an internet-based career development program for adolescent girls. This study attempted to extend the program's effectiveness by manipulating animated agent appearance based on literature suggesting that agent appearance has implications for human-computer program interface. Participants included 52 Latinas (ages 11 to 14) randomly assigned to view one of two versions of the revised career program. Each version contained identical content but included animated agents designed to represent different ethnicities. Pre and post-treatment scores for three career belief measures and an occupational stereotype measure were analyzed using a MANCOVA. The results were not significant and further analyses revealed that the results were confounded by complications with the perceived ethnicity of the animated agents. Despite a lack of significance the results provide enriching information about Latina adolescent perception of ethnicity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Counseling Psychology 2011

In this conceptual thesis I explore a paradox inherent in sustainability, namely that to 'sustain' something it needs to be allowed to emerge into something different than it currently is. Moreover, it is not always knowable in advance what that ‘something’ will be. I also argue that education is fundamentally about sustainability, as its role is to allow/encourage a human being to emerge into someone different than he/she currently is. I assert, however, that whilst this is education’s role, it currently, and paradoxically, works against itself by defining the human subject in advance (as a particular ‘ideal’ kind of rational autonomous being), hence closing the matter of what a human can grow into before education even starts. I argue that complexity thinking and what Osberg (2015) calls complexity- compatible thinking, posthumanist/posthuman and feminist thinking provide logics to approach the issue of emergence, including the emergence of what it is to be a human subject. It is through engaging with these logics to keep the abundant possibilities of the future radically open that my thesis makes a contribution to the field of education and sustainability. To make such a contribution I first of all identify that Biesta (2006, 2013) and his ‘pedagogy of interruption’ are working within the logic of complexity thinking. In his theory Biesta identifies how fleeting moments can interrupt existing rational autonomous understandings of human subjectivity. Whilst acknowledging that one cannot programme such ‘fleeting moments’ into education, I draw on ideas from Arendt, Mouffe, Rancière and Masschelein and Simons to encourage the possibility of such moments - moments which open up spaces in which, through acting and speaking with others, who one is as an initium, a beginner can emerge. However, emergence of the new raises the important issue of ethics. I argue that in her two-fold concept of forgiveness and mutual promising Arendt provides a way to develop an immanent ethics arising from horizontal relationships between people speaking and acting together. Finally, I focus on the fleeting moment or event of interruption itself. Drawing on Arendt, Loidolt, Keller and Braidotti I argue that this can be understood as a first-person intersubjective encounter under conditions of plurality. I understand plurality as speaking and acting together with unique others open to the stance one expresses and vice versa. In intersubjective encounters one does not reveal an inner essence to others. Instead who one is emerges intersubjectively, in and through the encounter, creating a surplus, something new that was not in the world before. I also argue how such encounters have the potential to be ethical encounters. I then go beyond Arendt and draw on posthumanist and posthuman thinking to consider the possibility of intersubjective first-being ethical encounters with(in) the wider natural world. I argue that allowing some time for school understood as skholé – a safe space, protected from politicisation by the issues of the day, to reflect and explore who one is, and how one can act in the world – has an important role in encouraging, valuing and reflecting on such encounters. I conclude that education which understands sustainability as an emergent process builds a bridge between education as a sustainable and education as a democratic process. In such an education who one is as a subject appears through intersubjective encounters, bringing into the world the possibility of the emergence of new, unexpected ways of knowing, being and acting essential for sustainability.

The three-dimensional digital preservation of real objects comprises two main aspects: the preservation of the shape of the object and the preservation of its appearance. This thesis focuses on the image-based appearance preservation of real objects and provides a set of contributions on the theme. The first contribution consists in two groups of experiments, where each one of them targets one different image-based appearance preservation approach. These experiments are based in fundamental concepts related to the behavior of light and in a compilation of works that aim to preserve the appearance of real objects using different types of images. The first group of experiments attempts to disregard as much as possible the influence of the environment light. The second one goes one step further and considers a single light source. These experiments were the basis and motivation for the development of the main contribution of this thesis, which is a novel image-based appearance preservation method that considers the whole environment as a source of light. It presents as novelty the fact that it estimates the incoming light from the whole environment to each point in an object surface patch. At the best knowledge of this work, none of the current existing methods adopts this approach. Considering the whole environment as source of light allows flexible acquisition setups and, as it reproduces what happens in reality, potentially retrieves more reliable information about the incident lighting. This thesis presents this method and its application on real and synthetic environments. Conclusions about this work are presented and future research directions are discussed._________________________________________________________________________________________ RESUMO: A preservação tridimensional digital de objetos reais compreende dois aspectos: a preservação da forma do objeto e a preservação de sua aparência. Esta tese tem como foco a preservação da aparência de objetos reais baseada em imagens e provê uma série de contribuições sobre o tema. A primeira contribuição consiste em dois grupos de experimentos, onde cada um trabalha uma abordagem diferente na preservação da aparência baseada em imagens. Esses experimentos são baseados em conceitos fundamentais relacionados ao comportamento da luz e em uma compilação de trabalhos que visam preservar a aparência de objetos reais usando diferentes tipos de imagens. O primeiro grupo de experimentos tenta desconsiderar ao máximo a inuência da luz. O segundo vai um passo além e considera uma única fonte de luz. Estes experimentos são a base e motivação para o desenvolvimento da principal contribuição desta tese, que é um novo método de preservação da aparência baseado em imagens que considera todo o ambiente como fonte de luz. Ele apresenta como novidade o fato de estimar a luz vinda de todo o ambiente para cada ponto em uma região na superfície de um objeto. Até onde foi pesquisado neste trabalho, nenhum método existente adota essa abordagem. Considerar todo o ambiente como fonte de luz permite configurações flexíveis durante a aquisição e, já que reproduz o que acontece na realidade, recupera informações potencialmente mais confiáveis sobre a iluminação incidente. Esta tese apresenta este método e sua aplicação em ambientes reais e sintéticos. Conclusões sobre este trabalho são apresentadas e direções futuras de pesquisa são discutidas.

Both theory and research implicate appearance comparison processes in the development of body image disturbance and disordered eating. Although several measures of appearance comparison exist, each has significant limitations. The Physical Appearance Comparison Scale-Revised (PACS-R) and its earlier versions are measures designed to assess the frequency of appearance comparisons among men and women. In the current study, the PACS-R was revised to (a) examine comparisons of weight/shape, muscularity, and overall physical appearance, (b) include items to assess comparisons with distal targets, (c) provide an assessment of upward versus downward comparisons, and (d) provide an assessment of the acute emotional impact of comparisons. The psychometric properties of the newly revised measure, labeled the PACS-3, were then examined in a college sample. The PACS-3 was administered to 1,533 college men and women, along with existing measures of appearance comparison, body satisfaction, eating pathology, and self-esteem. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine the factor structure of the PACS-3. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to verify the resulting factor structure. In addition, the internal consistency, convergent validity, incremental validity, and two-week test-retest reliability of PACS-3 scores were examined. The final PACS-3 is comprised of 27 items and nine subscales: Frequency: Proximal, Frequency: Distal, Frequency: Muscular, Direction: Proximal, Direction: Distal, Direction: Muscular, Effect: Proximal, Effect: Distal, Effect: Muscular. PACS-3 subscale scores demonstrated good reliability and convergent validity. Moreover, PACS-3 subscales improved the prediction of body satisfaction and disordered eating relative to existing measures of appearance comparison, supporting the incremental validity of the scale. Future research may seek to examine the psychometric properties of the scale in more diverse samples, as well as associations between the PACS-3 and additional theoretically related constructs (e.g., drive for muscularity).