No description available.

Visual tracking is one of the fundamental problems in computer vision. This topic has been a widely explored area attracting a great amount of research efforts. Over the decades, hundreds of visual tracking algorithms, or trackers in short, have been developed and a great packs of public datasets are available alongside. As the number of trackers grow, it then becomes a common problem how to evaluate who is a better tracker. Many metrics have been proposed together with tons of evaluation datasets. In my research work, we first make an application practice of tracking multiple objects in a restricted scene with very low frame rate. It has a unique challenge that the image quality is low and we cannot assume images are close together in a temporal space. We design a framework that utilize background subtraction and object detection, then we apply template matching algorithms to achieve the tracking by detection. While we are exploring the applications of tracking algorithm, we realize the problem when authors compare their proposed tracker with others, there is unavoidable subjective biases: it is non-trivial for the authors to optimize other trackers, while they can reasonably tune their own tracker to the best. Our assumption is based on that the authors will give a default setting to other trackers, hence the performances of other trackers are less biased. So we apply a leave-their-own-tracker-out strategy to weigh the performances of other different trackers. we derive four metrics to justify the results. Besides the biases in evaluation, the datasets we use as ground truth may not be perfect either. Because all of them are labeled by human annotators, they are prone to label errors, especially due to partial visibility and deformation. we demonstrate some human errors from existing datasets and propose smoothing technologies to detect and correct them. we use a two-step adaptive image alignment algorithm to find the canonical view of the video sequence. then use different techniques to smooth the trajectories at certain degrees. The results show it can slightly improve the trained model, but would overt if overcorrected. Once we have a clear understanding and reasonable approaches towards the visual tracking scenario, we apply the principles in multi-target tracking cases. To solve the problem, we formulate it into a multi-dimensional assignment problem, and build the motion information in a high-order tensor framework. We propose to solve it using rank-1 tensor approximation and use a tensor power iteration algorithm to efficiently obtain the solution. It can apply in pedestrian tracking, aerial video tracking, as well as curvalinear structure tracking in medical video. Furthermore, this proposed framework can also fit into the affinity measurement of multiple objects simultaneously. We propose the Multiway Histogram Intersection to obtain the similarities between histograms of more than two targets. With the solution of using tensor power iteration algorithm, we show it can be applied in a few multi-target tracking applications. / Computer and Information Science

A qualidade dos relacionamentos interpessoais tem grande influência nos diversos contextos da vida de qualquer indivíduo, aqui se incluindo o contexto conjugal, fonte potencial de prazer e realização ou frustração e transtornos psicológicos. Pesquisas têm mostrado a importância de habilidades sociais específicas para a maximização da qualidade do relacionamento conjugal, como sua estabilidade e duração, sugerindo seu impacto possível também sobre a satisfação conjugal, embora não se disponha, ainda, de estudos empíricos suficientes para sustentar esta última relação. Essa lacuna está, em parte, relacionada à falta de instrumentos para a avaliação das habilidades sociais conjugais e sua possível especificidade em relação às habilidades gerais dos cônjuges. Este estudo propôs-se verificar a relação entre a satisfação conjugal dos cônjuges e habilidades sociais gerais e conjugais e, concomitantemente, aperfeiçoar um instrumento de avaliação destas últimas. Participaram 406 respondentes de ambos os sexos (a maioria casais), com nível mínimo de escolaridade de segundo grau e idades entre 20 e 73 anos , que responderam ao Inventário de Habilidades Sociais (IHS-Del-Prette), Inventário de Habilidades Sociais Conjugais (IHSC) e à Escala de Satisfação Conjugal (ESC). Foram obtidos escores individuais para cada instrumento, procedendo-se a análises descritivas de cada um e a comparações entre eles, especialmente entre maridos e esposas, além de análise da influência de variáveis sócio-demográficas. Os resultados apontaram correlação significativa entre escores do IHS-Del-Prette, IHSC e escore da ESC, sugerindo que quanto mais elaborado o repertório de habilidades sociais (conjugais e gerais) do respondente, maior é sua satisfação com o casamento, confirmando a hipótese inicial do estudo. Correlações entre fatores do IHSC, IHS-Del-Prette e da ESC apontaram classes de comportamentos do respondente e de seu cônjuge especificamente associadas à satisfação conjugal. O IHSC apresentou boa consistência interna (Alfa de Cronbach = 0,81) e uma estrutura de seis fatores que explicaram 45,407 da variância total obtida. São discutidas a aplicabilidade do instrumento a novos estudos e ao contexto prático de atuação do psicólogo, bem como as implicações dos resultados obtidos para novas pesquisas. / The quality of interpersonal relations has a great influence on many life contexts, including here the marital context, a potential source of pleasure and accomplishment or of frustration and psychological disorders. Researches have shown the importance of specific social skills for the maximization of the marital relation quality as well as upon its stability and duration, suggesting a possible impact also upon the marital satisfaction. Nevertheless, these relations don\'t have enough supportive empirical studies. This gap is partially related to the lack of instruments to access the social marital skills and to its possible specificity in relation to the spouses\' global skills. This study was aimed to verify the relation between the spouses\' marital satisfaction and global and marital social skills and simultaneously to improve an instrument to evaluate social skills. 406 participants from both sexes (most couples, with high school educational level, age between 20 and 73 years) completed the Social Skills Inventory (SSI-Del-Prette), the Marital Social Skills Inventory (MSSI) and the Marital Satisfaction Scale (MSS). It was computed individual scores for each instrument, then proceeding to descriptive and statistical analyses, especially comparing husbands and wives and social-demographic variables influence. The results showed a significant correlation between the SSI-Del-Prette, MSSI and MSS scores, suggesting that the more elaborated was the respondent\'s social skills repertoire (marital and global), greater was his/her marital satisfaction, confirming the initial hypothesis. Correlations between the SSI, MSSI and MSS factorial scores showed which respondents social skills classes was specifically associated to the marital satisfaction. The MSSI presented a good internal consistency (Alpha of Cronbach = 0,81) and a six factors structure that explained 45,407 of the obtained total variance. It has been discussed the instrument applicability to new studies and to practical context of psychologist professional work as well as these results\' implications to further researches.

RESUMO Proposta de um método prático para avaliação do poder de neutralização existente na cavidade oral.A prevenção da doença cárie ainda é uma das principais metas da Odontologia. Considerando a multifatoriedade de sua etiologia, torna-se necessário o conhecimento do maior número de informações possíveis a respeito do paciente para que o cirurgião-dentista possa estabelecer um plano de tratamento preventivo individualizado a seus pacientes. A saliva, devido a suas várias funções, apresenta grande importância no combate a patogênese da doença. A análise da capacidade tampão é de extrema importância para que se possa prever o risco do paciente ao desenvolvimento da doença cárie. Vários testes têm sido utilizados para a determinação da capacidade tampão salivar, sendo que alguns exigem equipamentos laboratoriais e outros, mais simplificados, que permitem a utilização no consultório odontológico. A proposta do presente trabalho foi desenvolver um método prático para determinação do poder neutralizante existente na cavidade oral. O método proposto consiste na realização de bochecho com 10 ml de Coca-cola® durante 30 segundos, por parte dos 50 participantes (crianças, adolescentes e adultos) e determinação da variação do pH entre a mistura saliva + Coca-cola® e o pH inicial do refrigerante. Foram realizados dois métodos de determinação da capacidade tampão salivar – titulação com ácido lático e o método simplificado Dentobuff Strip® -e, após teste de correlação entre o método de neutralização proposto e os dois testes descritos acima foi encontrada correlação estatisticamente significante entre o método proposto e a titulometria com ácido lático (Pearson=0,304;p=0,032). Porém em relação ao Dentobuff Strip® não foi verificada correlação estatisticamente significante. De acordo com a proposta da metodologia apresentada nesta pesquisa, foi encontrada uma média de neutralização da saliva após o bochecho com o refrigerante, de 23,8% (dp=16,5) até o pH crítico do esmalte (5,5) e considerando o pH fisiológico da saliva em torno de 7,0, a neutralização até este valor foi de 17% (dp=12,4). Diante dos resultados foi possível concluir que o método desenvolvido apresentou-se prático e satisfatório para avaliação da capacidade de neutralização existente na cavidade oral e pode ser utilizado como mais um recurso para predição do risco de cárie do paciente. / SUMMARY Caries prevention remains one of the main goals in dentistry. Since caries is a multifactorial disease, it becomes necessary to obtain all possible information about the patient during anamnesis. Hence, the professional is able to establish an individual preventive treatment for each patient. Saliva bears several functions in the oral cavity; consequently, it is an important host factor that modifies the caries process. Saliva buffering capacity is one of the important factors usually taken into account to predict the individual caries risk. Several tests have been applied to identify this saliva function. Some of them require laboratorial features, whereas others are easy to handle, and can be applied at dental offices. The purpose of the present study was to develop a practical method to assess the neutralizing power inherent of the oral cavity. The methodology was based on a rinse of Coke Ô for 30 seconds, performed by 50 subjects (including children, teenagers and adults), followed by the assessment of pH variation between the initial sample of soft drink and the final mixture (saliva + Coke Ô). Along with this method, two other well known buffer capacity tests were performed – titration with lactic acid and Dentobuff Strip®. We found statistically significant correlation between the proposed method and the titration with lactic acid (Pearson=0.304;p=0.032). On the other hand, there was no significant correlation between the proposed method and the test using Dentobuff Strip®. According to our results, the mean saliva neutralizing power after soft drink rinse, considering the cases of the critical enamel pH (5.5) and physiological saliva pH (7.0), were 23.8% (sd=16.5) and 17.0% (sd=12.4), respectively. The proposed method was practical and reliable to assess the neutralizing power of oral cavity and may be an additional technique to predict caries risk.

Visual tracking, a building block for many applications, has challenges such as occlusions,illumination changes, background clutter and variable motion dynamics that may degrade the tracking performance and are likely to cause failures. In this thesis, we propose Track-Evaluate-Correct framework (self-correlation) for existing trackers in order to achieve a robust tracking. For a tracker in the framework, we embed an evaluation block to check the status of tracking quality and a correction block to avoid upcoming failures or to recover from failures. We present a generic representation and formulation of the self-correcting tracking for Bayesian trackers using a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). The self-correcting tracking is done similarly to a selfaware system where parameters are tuned in the model or different models are fused or selected in a piece-wise way in order to deal with tracking challenges and failures. In the DBN model representation, the parameter tuning, fusion and model selection are done based on evaluation and correction variables that correspond to the evaluation and correction, respectively. The inferences of variables in the DBN model are used to explain the operation of self-correcting tracking. The specific contributions under the generic self-correcting framework are correlation-based selfcorrecting tracking for an extended object with model points and tracker-level fusion as described below. For improving the probabilistic tracking of extended object with a set of model points, we use Track-Evaluate-Correct framework in order to achieve self-correcting tracking. The framework combines the tracker with an on-line performance measure and a correction technique. We correlate model point trajectories to improve on-line the accuracy of a failed or an uncertain tracker. A model point tracker gets assistance from neighbouring trackers whenever degradation in its performance is detected using the on-line performance measure. The correction of the model point state is based on the correlation information from the states of other trackers. Partial Least Square regression is used to model the correlation of point tracker states from short windowed trajectories adaptively. Experimental results on data obtained from optical motion capture systems show the improvement in tracking performance of the proposed framework compared to the baseline tracker and other state-of-the-art trackers. The proposed framework allows appropriate re-initialisation of local trackers to recover from failures that are caused by clutter and missed detections in the motion capture data. Finally, we propose a tracker-level fusion framework to obtain self-correcting tracking. The fusion framework combines trackers addressing different tracking challenges to improve the overall performance. As a novelty of the proposed framework, we include an online performance measure to identify the track quality level of each tracker to guide the fusion. The trackers in the framework assist each other based on appropriate mixing of the prior states. Moreover, the track quality level is used to update the target appearance model. We demonstrate the framework with two Bayesian trackers on video sequences with various challenges and show its robustness compared to the independent use of the trackers used in the framework, and also compared to other state-of-the-art trackers. The appropriate online performance measure based appearance model update and prior mixing on trackers allows the proposed framework to deal with tracking challenges.

RESUMO Proposta de um método prático para avaliação do poder de neutralização existente na cavidade oral.A prevenção da doença cárie ainda é uma das principais metas da Odontologia. Considerando a multifatoriedade de sua etiologia, torna-se necessário o conhecimento do maior número de informações possíveis a respeito do paciente para que o cirurgião-dentista possa estabelecer um plano de tratamento preventivo individualizado a seus pacientes. A saliva, devido a suas várias funções, apresenta grande importância no combate a patogênese da doença. A análise da capacidade tampão é de extrema importância para que se possa prever o risco do paciente ao desenvolvimento da doença cárie. Vários testes têm sido utilizados para a determinação da capacidade tampão salivar, sendo que alguns exigem equipamentos laboratoriais e outros, mais simplificados, que permitem a utilização no consultório odontológico. A proposta do presente trabalho foi desenvolver um método prático para determinação do poder neutralizante existente na cavidade oral. O método proposto consiste na realização de bochecho com 10 ml de Coca-cola® durante 30 segundos, por parte dos 50 participantes (crianças, adolescentes e adultos) e determinação da variação do pH entre a mistura saliva + Coca-cola® e o pH inicial do refrigerante. Foram realizados dois métodos de determinação da capacidade tampão salivar – titulação com ácido lático e o método simplificado Dentobuff Strip® -e, após teste de correlação entre o método de neutralização proposto e os dois testes descritos acima foi encontrada correlação estatisticamente significante entre o método proposto e a titulometria com ácido lático (Pearson=0,304;p=0,032). Porém em relação ao Dentobuff Strip® não foi verificada correlação estatisticamente significante. De acordo com a proposta da metodologia apresentada nesta pesquisa, foi encontrada uma média de neutralização da saliva após o bochecho com o refrigerante, de 23,8% (dp=16,5) até o pH crítico do esmalte (5,5) e considerando o pH fisiológico da saliva em torno de 7,0, a neutralização até este valor foi de 17% (dp=12,4). Diante dos resultados foi possível concluir que o método desenvolvido apresentou-se prático e satisfatório para avaliação da capacidade de neutralização existente na cavidade oral e pode ser utilizado como mais um recurso para predição do risco de cárie do paciente. / SUMMARY Caries prevention remains one of the main goals in dentistry. Since caries is a multifactorial disease, it becomes necessary to obtain all possible information about the patient during anamnesis. Hence, the professional is able to establish an individual preventive treatment for each patient. Saliva bears several functions in the oral cavity; consequently, it is an important host factor that modifies the caries process. Saliva buffering capacity is one of the important factors usually taken into account to predict the individual caries risk. Several tests have been applied to identify this saliva function. Some of them require laboratorial features, whereas others are easy to handle, and can be applied at dental offices. The purpose of the present study was to develop a practical method to assess the neutralizing power inherent of the oral cavity. The methodology was based on a rinse of Coke Ô for 30 seconds, performed by 50 subjects (including children, teenagers and adults), followed by the assessment of pH variation between the initial sample of soft drink and the final mixture (saliva + Coke Ô). Along with this method, two other well known buffer capacity tests were performed – titration with lactic acid and Dentobuff Strip®. We found statistically significant correlation between the proposed method and the titration with lactic acid (Pearson=0.304;p=0.032). On the other hand, there was no significant correlation between the proposed method and the test using Dentobuff Strip®. According to our results, the mean saliva neutralizing power after soft drink rinse, considering the cases of the critical enamel pH (5.5) and physiological saliva pH (7.0), were 23.8% (sd=16.5) and 17.0% (sd=12.4), respectively. The proposed method was practical and reliable to assess the neutralizing power of oral cavity and may be an additional technique to predict caries risk.

Teachers in Lebanese schools are still using outdated traditional strategies for instructing students with learning disabilities (LD). The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to understand Lebanese elementary teachers' perceived barriers to providing effective metacognition skills instruction and increase the understanding of how teachers are supporting students with LD to use metacognitive strategies to enhance their own learning. The conceptual framework used to ground the study was Flavell's metacognitive theory. The purposeful sample included 12 elementary special and regular education teachers selected from 6 different Lebanese schools in 5 areas in Lebanon. Each teacher participated in a semistructed interview and was observed while teaching in the classroom. Coding and thematic inductive approaches based on elements of the conceptual framework were used to analyze the data. Peer debriefing, member checking, and triangulation by region were used to ensure credibility and trustworthiness. The findings revealed that teachers were knowledgeable about how to teach metacognitive skills, but they were not explicitly instructing those skills to students with LD. Among the reported barriers to teaching these skills included lack of time, perceived nature of the LD students' disability, and cultural expectations. The findings were used to provide recommendations for Lebanese teachers to implement in day-to-day instruction for students with LD and for school leaders to build teachers' capacity to engage LD students in constructing their own learning. This study may affect positive social change by promoting instruction of metacognitive strategies for students with LD to help them build lifelong 21st century skills.

Thesis (M.Ing. (Development and Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Disposition Titel: Sponsring- en kvalitativ kartläggning av hur företag mäter, bedömer och utvärderar sina investeringar Ämne/kurs: Ämnesfördjupande arbete - Controllerfördjupning Författare: Johan Andersson, Philip Olofsson, Johan Svärd Handledare:Anders Jerreling Examinator: Fredrik Karlsson Syfte: Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka hur företag mäter, bedömer och utvärderar sina sponsringsinvesteringar, i ekonomiska termer. Uppsatsen syftar även till att återge sponsormarknadens olika aktörers syn för att beskriva utvärderingsarbetet ur ett bredare perspektiv. Metod:I metodavsnittet fastställs vilket tillvägagångssätt som används vid genomförandet av studien. Inledningsvis behandlas studiens design, där redogörelse för vald metod och angreppssätt ingår. Vidare diskuterasurvalet till undersökningens empiridel och avslutningsvis behandlas sanningskriterier. Referensram: Inledningsvis i referensramen definieras sponsring och dess delar. Vidare behandlas sponsringens motiv, användningsområden och hur dess effekter kan mätas. I avsnittets avslutande delar behandlas teori angående kalkylering, bedömning, planering samt risktagande vid investeringar. Empiri: I empirikapitlet läggs empirin fram genom en kort presentation av intervjuobjektet följt av en sammanfattning av genomförda intervjuer. Analys: I detta avsnitt ställs referensramen och framtagen empiri mot varandra och analyseras. Data som framkommit under arbetets gång sammanfattas och diskuteras, därefter presenteras mönster och samband. Slutsats: I detta avsnitt sammanställs och diskuteras studiens resultat. Vidare framför forskarna sina synpunkter på ämnet och avslutningsvis ges förslag till fortsatt forskning.

Our aim in this work has been to redesign ModernFamilies and make a user-friendly interface for people with aphasia. The focus has been to identify general issues they might face while using different technology and applications, in order to find better alternative design for ModernFamilies, with a focus on usability. To approach this issue, we used a qualitative method. Our study includes several interviews and observations preformed in conjunction with the AGNES project (AGeing in a NEtworked Society) and speech therapists. Aphasia requires simple design that in the same time gives them support to understand and use technology and different applications. This paper can be used as a guide for designers who develop applications for people with aphasia and the results can also be applied to improve general user friendliness.