The diploma thesis tries to do a critical evaluation of potential benefits and risks and limits of Internet psychological counseling. The theoretical part of the thesis describes the the issue of online help from general definition of counselling, through various approaches to definitions of Internet counselling. This part also deals with the history of the online form of help, including the context of development abroad and any differences or specifics in the Czech Republic. Attention is also given to various forms of online psychological help with emphasis on application in our environment. Finally the text introduces potential opportunities and risks of this form of counselling. Empirical part of the diploma thesis focuses on issues of online psychological counseling by a combined research design. The research part of the thesis tries to map the possibilities and limits of web psychological counselling from the perspective of the client. The focus of qualitative research is the analysis of interviews with online counseling clients, supplemented with analysis of chat conversations and case studies. Qualitative results are enriched by quantitatively conceived research. Keywords: counselling, intervention, phone intervention, face to face counselling, online counselling, communication in the cyber...

Facial appearance has a strong effect on leadership selection. Ratings of perceived leadership ability from facial images have a pronounced influence on leadership selection in politics, from low-level municipal elections to the federal elections of the most powerful countries in the world. Furthermore, ratings of leadership ability from facial images of business leaders correlate with leadership performance as measured by profits earned. Two elements of facial appearance that have reliable effects of perceived leadership ability are perceived dominance and attractiveness. These cues have been predictive of leadership choices, both experimentally and in the real-world. Chapters 1 and 2 review research on face components that affect perceived dominance and attractiveness. Chapter 3 discusses how perceived dominance and attractiveness influence perception of leadership ability. Two characteristics that affect both perceived dominance and attractiveness are height and weight. Chapters 4-9 present empirical studies on two recently-discovered facial parameters: perceived height (how tall someone appears from their face) and facial adiposity (a reliable proxy of body mass index that influences perceived weight). Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate that these facial parameters alter facial attractiveness. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 examine how perceived height and facial adiposity influence perceived leadership ability. Chapter 9 examines how perceived height alters leadership perception in war and peace contexts. Chapter 10 summarises the empirical research reported in the thesis and draws conclusions from the findings. Chapter 10 also lists proposals for future research that could further enhance our knowledge of how facial cues to perceived body size influence democratic leadership selection.

In his Essay "On Face-Work" Erving Goffman identifies the rules for a number of face-to-face interaction rituals. Among these rituals are two ways of correcting participants within an interaction. The first correction ritual, the interchange, allows offending interactants a chance to save face. The second ritual, the points making game, is a way for interactants to cause other participants to lose face. This thesis analyzes the content of a random sample of blogs to see if the rituals described above are employed in online interaction, specifically looking at blogs and how the context of the rituals is modified, including whether and how they are modified. It was found that the ritual of the interchange was modified. The ritual of the points making game though left unmodified occurred with greater frequency.

The focus of this project was to construct a humanoid animatronic head that had sufficient degrees of freedom to mimic human facial expression as well as human head movement and could be animated using face-tracking software to eliminate the amount of time spent on trial-and-error programming intrinsic in animatronics. As such, eight degrees of freedom were assigned to the robot: five in the face and three in the neck. From these degrees of freedom, the mechanics of the animatronic head were designed such that the neck and facial features could move with the same range and speed of a human being. Once the head was realized, various face-tracking software were utilized to analyze a pre-recorded video of a human actor and map the actors eye motion, eyebrow motion, mouth motion, and neck motion to the corresponding degrees of freedom on the robot. The corresponding values from the face-tracking software were then converted into required servomotor angles using MATLAB, which were then fed into Visual Show Automation to create a performance script that controls the motion and audio of the animatronic head during its performance.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, 2015. / The face is a fundamental tool to assist in interpersonal communication and interaction between people. Humans use facial expressions to consciously or subconsciously express their emotional states, such as anger or surprise. As humans, we are able to easily identify changes in facial expressions even in complicated scenarios, but the task of facial expression recognition and analysis is complex and challenging to a computer. The automatic analysis of facial expressions by computers has applications in several scientific subjects such as psychology, neurology, pain assessment, lie detection, intelligent environments, psychiatry, and emotion and paralinguistic communication. We look at methods of facial expression recognition, and in particular, the recognition of Facial Action Coding System’s (FACS) Action Units (AUs). Movements of individual muscles on the face are encoded by FACS from slightly different, instant changes in facial appearance. Contractions of specific facial muscles are related to a set of units called AUs. We make use of Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) to extract keypoints from the face and use the SURF descriptors to create feature vectors. SURF provides smaller sized feature vectors than other commonly used feature extraction techniques. SURF is comparable to or outperforms other methods with respect to distinctiveness, robustness, and repeatability. It is also much faster than other feature detectors and descriptors. The SURF descriptor is scale and rotation invariant and is unaffected by small viewpoint changes or illumination changes. We use the SURF feature vectors to train a recurrent neural network (RNN) to recognize AUs from the Cohn-Kanade database. An RNN is able to handle temporal data received from image sequences in which an AU or combination of AUs are shown to develop from a neutral face. We are recognizing AUs as they provide a more fine-grained means of measurement that is independent of age, ethnicity, gender and different expression appearance. In addition to recognizing FACS AUs from the Cohn-Kanade database, we use our trained RNNs to recognize the development of pain in human subjects. We make use of the UNBC-McMaster pain database which contains image sequences of people experiencing pain. In some cases, the pain results in their face moving out-of-plane or some degree of in-plane movement. The temporal processing ability of RNNs can assist in classifying AUs where the face is occluded and not facing frontally for some part of the sequence. Results are promising when tested on the Cohn-Kanade database. We see higher overall recognition rates for upper face AUs than lower face AUs. Since keypoints are globally extracted from the face in our system, local feature extraction could provide improved recognition results in future work. We also see satisfactory recognition results when tested on samples with out-of-plane head movement, showing the temporal processing ability of RNNs.

In traversing the diverse field of biometric security and face recognition techniques, this investigation explores a rather rare comparative study of three of the most popular Appearance-based Face Recognition projection classes, these being the methodologies of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). Both the linear and kernel alternatives are investigated along with the four most widely accepted similarity measures of City Block (L1), Euclidean (L2), Cosine and the Mahalanobis metrics. Although comparisons between these classes can become fairly complex given the different task natures, the algorithm architectures and the distance metrics that must be taken into account, an important aspect of this study is the completely equal working conditions that are provided in order to facilitate fair and proper comparative levels of evaluation. In doing so, one is able to realise an independent study that significantly contributes to prior literary findings, either by verifying previous results, offering further insight into why certain conclusions were made or by providing a better understanding as to why certain claims should be disputed and under which conditions they may hold true. The experimental procedure examines ten algorithms in the categories of expression, illumination, occlusion and temporal delay; the results are then evaluated based on a sequential combination of assessment tools that facilitate both intuitive and statistical decisiveness among the intra and inter-class comparisons. In a bid to boost the overall efficiency and accuracy levels of the identification system, the ‘best’ categorical algorithms are then incorporated into a hybrid methodology, where the advantageous effects of fusion strategies are considered. This investigation explores the weighted-sum approach, which by fusion at a matching score level, effectively harnesses the complimentary strengths of the component algorithms and in doing so highlights the improved performance levels that can be provided by hybrid implementations. In the process, by firstly exploring previous literature with respect to each other and secondly by relating the important findings of this paper to previous works one is also able to meet the primary objective in providing an amateur with a very insightful understanding of publicly available subspace techniques and their comparable application status within the environment of face recognition.

Investeringsmötet mellan analytiker och fondförvaltare har tidigare fått alldeles för lite ögon på sig. Att analytiker medverkar på investeringsmöten med fondförvaltare kan ses som paradoxalt eftersom det finns mängder av information att erhålla från andra håll. Denna information kan med en första anblick ses som mer lättillgänglig, detaljerad och omfattande. Således syftar denna studie på att skapa förståelse för varför analytiker väljer att medverka i investeringsmöten med fondförvaltare och hur deras medverkan kan påverka investeringsunderlaget. Det empiriska underlaget bestod av kvalitativa intervjuer med sju analytiker från finansiella institutioner samt en deltagande observation av ett investeringsmöte. Utifrån studien kan tre slutsatser dras i form av anledningar till varför en analytiker väljer att medverka och dess betydelse för investeringsunderlaget. Den första slutsatsen är att träffas face-to-face innebär att analytikerna erhåller mer information jämfört med andra informationskällor.Den andra slutsatsen är att analytikerna erhåller mer beslutsavgörande information som de inte kan erhålla till lika stor grad från andra håll. Den sista slutsatsen är att analytikerna kan säkerställa tidigare erhållen information och även sammanväva information från flera olika källor när de skapar sitt investeringsunderlag. / The investment meeting between analysts and fund managers has previouslyreceived too little attention. That analysts participate in investment meetings with fund managers can be seen as paradoxical as there are lots of information to be obtained elsewhere. At first this information can be seen as more accessible, detailed and comprehensive. Thus, this study aims to create an understanding of why analysts choose to participate in investment meetings with fund managers and how their participation can affect their investment base. The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews with seven analysts from financial institutions and a participatory observation of an investment meeting. Based on this study, three conclusions can be drawn in the form of reasons why analysts chooseto participate and its consequencefor the investment base. The first conclusion is that meeting face-to-face means that the analystsreceive more information compared to other information sources. The second conclusion is that analysts receive more decision-making information that they cannot obtain to the same extent from other sources. The last conclusion is that analysts can ensure that previously obtained information is correct and also interweave information from several different sources when they create their investment base.

A maioria das más oclusões apresenta alterações tanto no sentido vertical quanto no sentido ântero-posterior. O estudo do equilíbrio vertical da face é extremamente útil para o bom diagnóstico e correto planejamento do tratamento ortodôntico. Conhecer a morfologia craniofacial, como as proporções faciais, é fundamental para a compreensão das tendências de crescimento futuras e para a obtenção da harmonia das alturas e das linhas faciais. Este estudo cefalométrico longitudinal visou avaliar, comparativamente, as alterações das alturas faciais, provenientes do tratamento da má oclusão de Classe II, 1a divisão de Angle, pela Técnica de “Edgewise" (Mecânica do Arco de Canto Simplificada), associado à ancoragem extrabucal cervical, com e sem extração de quatro primeiros pré-molares. A amostra constituiu-se de 116 telerradiografias em norma lateral obtidas de 56 jovens. Destes jovens, 22 (10 do gênero feminino e 12 do masculino) foram tratados ortodonticamente com extração de quatro primeiros pré-molares e apresentavam idade média inicial de 12,30 e final de 14,87 anos. Outros 22 (13 do gênero feminino e 9 do masculino) foram tratados ortodonticamente sem extração e apresentavam idade média inicial de 12,53 e idade média final de 14,73 anos. Os demais 14 jovens (6 do gênero feminino e 8 do masculino) com idade média inicial de 11,50 e final de 13,63 anos, não foram submetidos a nenhuma intervenção ortodôntica, formando assim o grupo controle. Com o auxílio da cefalometria computadorizada, as telerradiografias iniciais e finais foram digitalizadas e os resultados submetidos ao teste estatístico. Com base na metodologia empregada, a análise dos resultados revelou que não houve influência significante da terapia ortodôntica sobre as alterações das alturas faciais, denotando um comportamento similar, com aumento de sete grandezas, em todos os três grupos. Apenas a proporção entre a altura facial posterior total e a altura facial anterior total exibiu um aumento nos grupos I e III. O movimento vertical dos primeiros molares tanto superiores quanto inferiores modificou-se de modo semelhante nos três grupos, demonstrando uma extrusão com relevância estatística desses dentes, com maior extrusão do molar inferior nos grupos tratados. As alterações horizontais dentoalveolares evidenciaram uma mesialização dos primeiros molares superiores e inferiores em todos os grupos, contudo o maior deslocamento para mesial ocorreu no grupo tratado com extração de quatro primeiros pré-molares e no grupo controle. Em relação aos primeiros molares inferiores, empregando a análise de variância a um critério fixo, observamos uma maior mesialização no grupo I. / The cephalometric changes of anterior and posterior facial heights, in the Class II, Division 1 treatment, were compared among three different groups of patients: 4-premolar extraction, non-extraction and control. Each test sample consisted of 22 patients from whom lateral headfilms were obtained, either at the beginning or in the end of the treatment. Fourteen compatible subjects, comprising the control group, had their radiographs taken accordingly, at this same time interval. The one-way ANOVA was used to identify differences among the groups regarding the observed variables. As a result, significant differences for the anterior and posterior facial heights were not statistically detected among the groups. Based upon this methodology, no significant influence of the orthodontic treatment therapy was revealed over the facial heights, but rather similar behavior, in all groups, toward increasing the LAFH, UAFH, TAFH, PFH, AFH, TPFH and CF-Go’. The rate between the TPFH and the TAFH exhibited an increase in groups I and III. In all three groups, the vertical drift of upper and lower first molars were similarly modified, producing a significant extrusion of these teeth, mainly in the lower arch of the treated sample. Sagital dentoalveolar changes, regardless of the group, consisted of mesial movement of all first molars. The largest mesial movements, however, were found to occur in the 4-premolar extraction and in the control groups.

Estruturas de dados volumétricas são de extrema utilidade em várias aplicações, e em particular na área de Visualização Científica. Essas estruturas são úteis em duas etapas do processo de visualização. A primeira é na representação de dados, isto é, de informações associadas aos valores, medidos ou simulados, os quais se deseja visualizar. A outra fase que necessita de uma estrutura de dados é a fase de exploração, ou seja, o modelo criado é usado tanto para exploração interativa quanto para a realização de simulações sobre o mesmo, por exemplo, numa cirurgia virtual. Está em desenvolvimento no ICMC, uma estrutura de dados volumétrica, chamada Singular Half-Face, que tem como característica a modelagem explícita das singularidades presentes no modelo, além de outros elementos topológicos. Este trabalho de mestrado visa testar a viabilidade da estrutura num contexto de visualização em fluxo de dados, incorporando-a à biblioteca gráfica de visualização Visualization ToolKit (VTK), que possui definição extremamente pobre da topologia dos objetos que representa. Adicionando essa nova classe e realizando sobre ela técnicas convencionais de visualização e exploração de dados, é estudada sua capacidade de apoiar todas as fases do processo de visualização. / Volumetric data structures are of extreme utility in various applications, and particularly in the area of Scientific Visualization. These structures are useful in two stages of the visualization process. The first one is in data representation, that is, in the organization of information associated with the values, measured or simulated, to be visualized. The other phase of the visualization data flow that needs a data structure is the exploration phase. It would be useful to have a model designed to be used both for interactive exploration and for simulation in a number of application, for example, in virtual surgery. A volumetric data structure, named Singular Half-Face (SHF) is being developed at the ICMC, that has as its main characteristic the explicit modeling of singularities present in the model, besides other essential topological elements. This dissertation aims at testing the viability of this structure in a context of visualization in data flow, by incorporating it in the Visualization ToolKit (VTK) class library, whose data structures are extremely poor in definition of the topology of the objects that they represent. By adding SHF to this library and carrying out conventional visualization and data exploration on it, we wish to study its support to all the phases of the visualization process.

The cross-race identification effect is a phenomenon anecdotally experienced by many people in viewing, perceiving, and recalling human faces when the perceiver and target individual are not of the same race. In popular vernacular, the idea that ‘they all look alike’ when referring to people from other racial groups has been studied extensively with results providing evidence that “people of other races appear more similar to each other than people of [ones] own race” (Maclin & Malpass, 2001, p. 99). While the cross-race identification effect (or the greater ability to accurately recall same-race than other-race faces and the poorer ability to correctly recall other-race compared to same-race faces) has been found across all racial groups with Whites or Caucasians exhibiting the strongest effect, scholars continue to be challenged with understanding what factors contribute to the effect. An aspect of the cross-race effect that has received minimal attention is the notion of race as a construct in and of itself. Utilization of White racial identity (Helms, 1990) as a psychological variable in social science research is posited to provide a more precise evaluation of White individuals’ social attitudes with respect to race and racial group membership, as compared to the racial socio-demographic categories commonly used in research studies. Based on this contention, the current study sought to empirically explore whether White perceiver’s racial identity status attitudes were associated with Black (or other-race) facial recognition. The sample included 269 White adults from across the U.S. Through an online survey platform, participants viewed a series of White and Black facial images. After completing an intermediary task, they were shown the old in addition to new White and Black facial images and were asked to determine which faces they had and had not seen before in the study. Respondents also completed the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale (Helms & Carter, 1990) and a demographic questionnaire. Results indicated that the cross-race identification effect was present in the current study, with White participants demonstrating greater overall accuracy, fewer inaccurate identifications, and a more cautious decision strategy (that generally leads for fewer false identifications) when responding to White (same-race) faces as compared to Black faces. Additionally, Black (cross-racial) facial recognition was significantly related to White racial identity with participants who endorsed an absence of racist views and internal conflict in reaction to race-salient information displaying high rates of correct Black identifications. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.