Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, N.Y., 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-66).

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En passant en revue les idées essentielles de cette recherche et les principaux résultats auxquels elle a abouti, nous nous sentons dans l’obligation de proposer quelques repères susceptibles de sortir les masses populaires du carcan de l’enfermement idéologique et dogmatique de ces ER :La sortie de cet enfermement, comme nous l’avions évoqué plus haut, passe par l’usage de la raison et de l’analyse adéquate des phénomènes religieux qui se développent dans une proportion incontrôlée dans un contexte de crise socio-politique. C’est ici qu’il convient de rappeler aux intellectuels, aux chercheurs ou même aux décideurs politiques de la nécessité d’une philosophie de religion qui impose une réflexion critique face à tout le problème auquel l’homme, la société peut faire face. Il s’agit concrètement d’une analyse approfondie sans complaisance, sans idéologie permettant de guider les actions humaines vers une meilleure responsabilité.- Les responsables des Eglises, les décideurs politiques doivent renoncer à s’auto-focaliser, c’est-à-dire à travailler pour leurs intérêts personnels égoïstes pour amorcer le processus d’étéro-focalisation ;ils doivent donc prendre en compte le problème des autres (misère, besoins) pour favoriser le vivre-ensemble et par-delà, promouvoir le bien-être de tous et de chacun.- Lorsqu’on considère la prolifération de ces Eglises en RD Congo, on ne peut s’empêcher de constater l’absence d’un cadre légal raisonnable définissant « création et fonctionnement de ces Eglises ». En effet, pour mettre un terme à ce phénomène de plus en plus dérangeant, nous pensons qu’il est plus qu’utile que les gouvernements respectifs en Afrique prennent leur responsabilité avec un souci inlassable de leur population pour définir des règles précises et claires en matière de création des Eglises.- Considérant les délits innombrables commis par ces Eglises, les politiques doivent avoir le courage pour instruire ces affaires et punir le cas échéant, les auteurs de ces crimes.- Considérant enfin que la prolifération de ces Eglises freine le processus de la démocratie, de la liberté d’expression, nous souhaitons de tous nos vœux la création d’un espace de discussion, d’échange pour favoriser ou mieux promouvoir cette liberté d’expression qui est freiné par ces idées à caractère dogmatique. Cette plate-forme pourrait favoriser l’ouverture vers l’autre, l’inclusion sociale, l’intégration des peuples et éviterait par-delà, des affrontements stérile entre les Eglises.Somme toute, l’originalité ou la contribution majeure de cette recherche réside surtout dans les efforts consentis pour expliquer la nature de ces ER, les causes de naissance et les mobiles déterminants de leurs proliférations.Cette contribution réside aussi dans les efforts conjugués pour montrer les liens entre cette prolifération et le processus de développement, surtout sur l’impact largement négatif qu’on a pu déceler sur la promotion du bien-être social des adeptes. Mais, on ne peut pas se leurrer le débat sur les Eglises, les Religions est loin de dire son dernier mot. Au contraire, dans cette société en mutation, ce débat est toujours ouvert en raison de la complexité et de l’inhérence du phénomène à la nature humaine, elle aussi sujette aux vicissitudes de l’espace et du temps. / Doctorat en Philosophie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral--Universität zu Köln, 1990). / Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-188).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Although current augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR) systems are facing advanced and immersive experience in the entertainment industry with countless media forms. Theses systems suffer a lack of correct direct and indirect illumination modeling where the virtual objects render with the same lighting condition as the real environment. Some systems are using baked GI, pre-recorded textures, and light probes that are mostly accomplished offline to compensate for precomputed real-time global illumination (GI). Thus, illumination information can be extracted from the physical scene for interactively rendering the virtual objects into the real world which produces a more realistic final scene in real-time. This work approaches the problem of visual coherence in AR by proposing a system that detects the real-world lighting conditions in dynamic scenes, then uses the extracted illumination information to render the objects added to the scene. The system covers several major components to achieve a more realistic augmented reality outcome. First, the detection of the incident light (direct illumination) from the physical scene with the use of computer vision techniques based on the topological structural analysis of 2D images using a live-feed 360-degree camera instrumented on an AR device that captures the entire radiance map. Also, the physics-based light polarization eliminates or reduces false-positive lights such as white surfaces, reflections, or glare which negatively affect the light detection process. Second, the simulation of the reflected light (indirect illumination) that bounce between the real-world surfaces to be rendered into the virtual objects and reflect their existence in the virtual world. Third, defining the shading characteristic/properties of the virtual object to depict the correct lighting assets with a suitable shadow casting. Fourth, the geometric properties of real-scene including plane detection, 3D surface reconstruction, and simple meshing are incorporated with the virtual scene for more realistic depth interactions between the real and virtual objects. These components are developed methods which assumed to be working simultaneously in real-time for photo-realistic AR. The system is tested with several lighting conditions to evaluate the accuracy of the results based on the error incurred between the real/virtual objects casting shadow and interactions. For system efficiency, the rendering time is compared with previous works and research. Further evaluation of human perception is conducted through a user study. The overall performance of the system is investigated to reduce the cost to a minimum.

This research investigation studied the effects of galvanization on the fatigue life of high mast illumination poles. Reports that galvanization of high masts caused initial cracks to form at the toe of the weld connecting the base plate to the shaft of the pole were first validated. The effects of these initial cracks on fatigue strength were then checked through experimental testing. A variety of variables were tested for both their effects on the occurrences of the initial cracks and effects on fatigue life. These variables included testing galvanized against ungalvanized specimens, testing of varying fabricators and galvanizers, and testing of various types of connection details. These test results were compared against inspection results provided by Texas Department of Transportation inspectors. Also, methods of mitigating the effects of toe cracks on the fatigue life of poles were investigated. A method for repairing specimens both in the fabrication shop and in the field were developed and tested. Both methods showed strong improvement in fatigue life of the specimens providing a possible repair solution. / text

本論文的主要目的是建立一套人臉辨識系統，即使在光源不足或甚至是完全黑暗的環境下也能夠正確地進行身分辨識。在完全黑暗的情形下，我們可以利用具有夜視功能(近紅外線)的攝影機來擷取影像，然而，近紅外線影像通常呈現亮度非常不均勻的情形，導致我們無法直接利用現有的人臉辨識系統來作辨識。因此，我們首先觀察近紅外線影像的特性，然後依據此特性提出一個影像成像的模型；接著，利用同構增晰的原理來減低因成像過程所造成的不均勻現象；經由實驗的結果，我們得知現有的全域式人臉辨識系統無法有效地處理近紅外線影像，因此，我們提出了一個新的區域式的人臉辨識演算法，針對光線不足的情況作特殊考量，以得到較佳的辨識結果。本論文實作的系統是以最近點分類法來作身份辨識，在現有的32個人臉影像資料集中，正確的辨識率達75%。 / The main objective of this thesis is to develop a face recognition system that could recognize human faces even when the surrounding environment is totally dark. The images of objects in total darkness can be captured using a relatively low-cost camcorder with the NightShot® function. By overcoming the illumination factor, a face recognition system would continue to function independent of the surrounding lighting condition. However, images acquired exhibit non-uniformity due to irregular illumination and current face recognition systems may not be put in use directly. In this thesis, we first investigate the characteristics of NIR images and propose an image formation model. A homomorphic processing technique built upon the image model is then developed to reduce the artifact of the captured images. After that, we conduct experiments to show that existing holistic face recognition systems perform poorly with NIR images. Finally, a more robust feature-based method is proposed to achieve better recognition rate under low illumination. A nearest neighbor classifier using Euclidean distance function is employed to recognize familiar faces from a database. The feature-based recognition method we developed achieves a recognition rate of 75% on a database of 32 people, with one sample image for each subject.

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Two optical design scenarios—imaging and illumination—were investigated for their use of Cartesian- and polar-based functions to generate freeform optical surfaces. The imaging scenario investigated a single-element, refracting freeform surface that converts an on-axis object field to an off-axis image point. XY polynomials (Cartesian but not orthogonal) and Zernike polynomials (Polar and orthogonal) were the two different function sets used to manipulate the surfaces to achieve the freeform imaging scenarios. The investigation discovered that the results between both function sets did not differ enough to single out a more effective surface type. However, the results did indicate that the Zernike function set typically required fewer coefficients to converge on an optimal imaging solution. The illumination scenario utilized an architectural lighting situation surrounding the Rothko exhibit for Green on Blue at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. The source location was fixed to the light track in the exhibit space and pointed in many different orientations towards the painting. For each orientation, a point cloud of a freeform optical surface was generated such that the painting surface was illuminated with uniform and low-level light. For each of these generated point clouds, a Legendre (Cartesian and orthogonal) and a Zernike (polar and orthogonal) fitting function was applied, and the convergence results were compared. In general, it was found that, after the 20th included fit term, the Legendre function resulted in a smaller RMS fit error than the Zernike function. However, if the light source was pointed near the center of the painting, the Zernike function converged on a solution with fewer fit terms than Legendre. Amidst the imaging scenario, a definition for the extent to which a surface was freeform, or the "freeformity", was given. This definition proved to be an effective solution when the image size was compared for an F/3.33, F/4, F/5, and F/6.67 system for a range of different image focusing heights: the image size trends for each F-number overlapped, indicating a universal freeform term. In addition, a recursive formula for Cartesian Zernike polynomials was defined, which was used to generate an infinite number of Zernike terms using one single recursive expression.

"Global illumination (GI) rendering simulates the propagation of light through a 3D volume and its interaction with surfaces, dramatically increasing the fidelity of computer generated images. While off-line GI algorithms such as ray tracing and radiosity can generate physically accurate images, their rendering speeds are too slow for real-time applications. The many-light method is one of many novel emerging real-time global illumination algorithms. However, it requires many shadow maps to be generated for Virtual Point Light (VPL) visibility tests, which reduces its efficiency. Prior solutions restrict either the number or accuracy of shadow map updates, which may lower the accuracy of indirect illumination or prevent the rendering of fully dynamic scenes. In this thesis, we propose a hybrid real-time GI algorithm that utilizes an efficient Sparse Voxel Octree (SVO) ray marching algorithm for visibility tests instead of the shadow map generation step of the many-light algorithm. Our technique achieves high rendering fidelity at about 50 FPS, is highly scalable and can support thousands of VPLs generated on the fly. A survey of current real-time GI techniques as well as details of our implementation using OpenGL and Shader Model 5 are also presented."