Machine Learning in Computer Vision
The goal of this book is to address the use of several important machine learning techniques into computer vision applications. An innovative combination of computer vision and machine learning techniques has the promise of advancing the field of computer vision, which contributes to better understanding of complex real-world applications. The effective usage of machine learning technology in real-world computer vision problems requires understanding the domain of application, abstraction of a learning problem from a given computer vision task, and the selection of appropriate representations for the learnable (input) and learned (internal) entities of the system. In this book, we address all these important aspects from a new perspective: that the key element in the current computer revolution is the use of machine learning to capture the variations in visual appearance, rather than having the designer of the model accomplish this. As a bonus, models learned from large datasets are likely to be more robust and more realistic than the brittle all-design models.
Machine Learning for Multimedia Content Analysis
Challenges in complexity and variability of multimedia data have led to revolutions in machine learning techniques. Multimedia data, such as digital images, audio streams and motion video programs, exhibit richer structures than simple, isolated data items. A number of pixels in a digital image collectively conveys certain visual content to viewers. A TV video program consists of both audio and image streams that unfold the underlying story. To recognize the visual content of a digital image, or to understand the underlying story of a video program, we may need to label sets of pixels or groups of image and audio frames jointly.
Machine Ethics : From Machine Morals to the Machinery of Morality
Offers the first systematic guide to machine ethics, bridging between computer science, social sciences and philosophy. Based on a dialogue between an AI scientist and a novelist philosopher, the book discusses important findings on which moral values machines can be taught and how. In turn, it investigates what kind of artificial intelligence (AI) people do actually want.
Long-Run Growth Forecasting
Explores how to set up an empirical model that helps with forecasting long-term economic growth in a large number of countries. It offers a systematic approach to models of potential GDP that can also be used for forecasts of more than a decade. It is an attempt to fill the wide gap between the high demand for such models by commercial banks, international organizations, central banks and governments on the one hand and the limited supply on the other hand. Frequent forecast failures in the past (e.g. Japan 1990, Asia 1997) and the heavy economic losses they produced motivated the work. The book assesses the large number of different theories of economic growth, the drivers of economic growth, the available datasets and the empirical methods on offer. A preference is shown for evolutionary models and an augmented Kaldor model. The book uses non-stationary panel techniques to find pair-wise cointegration among GDP per capita and its main correlates such as physical capital, human capital and openness.
Lonely Minds in the Universe
Probes the subject of extraterrestrial intelligent life, offering scientific and technological implications, discussing the philosophical and religious connotations and rebuffing pseudo-scientific assertions such as 'rare earth'.
Logos of phenomenology and phenomenology of the logos ; Book Two : The Human Condition in-the-Unity-of-Everything-there-is-alive Individuation, Self, Person, Self-determination, Freedom, Necessity
The Human Condition-in-the-unity-of-everything-there-is-alive, under whose aegis the present selection of essays falls, offers the urgently needed new approach to reinvestigating humanness. While recent advances in the neurosciences, genetics and bio-engineering challenge the traditional abstract conception of "human nature", indicating its transformability, thus putting in question the main tenets of traditional philosophical anthropology, in the new perspective of the Human Creative Condition the human individual is seen in its emergence and unfolding within the dynamic networks of the logos of life, and within the evolution of living types.
Location, Transport and Land-Use : Modelling Spatial-Temporal Information
Shows the use of statistical tools for forecasting and analyzing implications of land-use decisions. The idea is that la- use on a map is necessarily a consequence of individual, and often conflicting, siting decisions over time.
Local Pattern Detection ; International Seminar Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, April 12-16, 2004, Revised Selected Papers
Introduction The dramatic increase in available computer storage capacity over the last 10 years has led to the creation of very large databases of scienti?c and commercial information. The need to analyze these masses of data has led to the evolution of the new field knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) at the intersection of machine learning, statistics and database technology. Being interdisciplinary by nature, the field offers the opportunity to combine the expertise of different fields into a common objective. Moreover, within each field diverse methods have been developed and justified with respect to different quality criteria. We have to investigate how these methods can contributet o solving the problem of KDD. Traditionally, KDD was seeking to end global models for the data that - plain most of the instances of the database and describe the general structure of the data. Examples are statistical time series models, cluster models, logic programs with high coverageor classi?cation models like decision trees or linear decision functions. In practice, though, the use of these models often is very l- ited, because global models tend to end only the obvious patterns in the data, 1 which domain experts already are aware of . What is really of interest to the users are the local patterns that deviate from the already-known background knowledge. David Hand, who organized a workshop in 2002, proposed the new field of local patterns.
Links between geological processes, microbial activities & evolution of life : Microbes and geology
Microbial activities influence water-rock interaction processes and chemical transport between the major geochemical reservoirs and the formation/transformation of minerals and rocks, whereas geological processes and geochemical controls influence the microbial ecology in extreme environments. How biological activity influences geological processes and what role these processes played in the geological evolution of the Earth are fundamental questions.
Linkage in Evolutionary Computation
The whole volume consisting of 19 chapters is divided into 3 parts: Models and Theories; Operators and Frameworks; Applications. This edited volume will serve as a useful guide and reference for researchers who are currently working in the area of linkage. For postgraduate research students, this volume will serve as a good source of reference. It is also suitable as a text for a graduate level course focusing on linkage issues.
Linear Genetic Programming
Linear Genetic Programming examines the evolution of imperative computer programs written as linear sequences of instructions. In contrast to functional expressions or syntax trees used in traditional Genetic Programming (GP), Linear Genetic Programming (LGP) employs a linear program structure as genetic material whose primary characteristics are exploited to achieve acceleration of both execution time and evolutionary progress.
Light Sensing in Plants
Presents overviews of and the latest findings in many of the interconnected aspects of plant photomorphogenesis, including photoreceptors (phytochromes, cryptochromes, and phototropins), signal transduction, photoperiodism, and circadian rhythms, in 42 chapters. Also included, is a prologue by Prof. Masaki Furuya that gives an overview of the historical background.
Life in Extreme Environments
Investigating life processes under extreme conditions can also bring clues for understanding and predicting ecosystems' responses to global changes. Furthermore, this area of research has a wide application potential in the fields of (bio)technoloty, chemical industry, pharmaceutics, biomedicine or cosmetics.
Life as We Know It
Life As we Know It ["LAKI"] covers several aspects of Life, ranging from the prebiotic level, origin of life, evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes and finally to various affairs of human beings. Although it is hard to define Life, one can, however, characterize it and describe its features. Topics treated are categories of bacteria, algae and fungi, conscience, philosophy, theology, aesthetics, appearance of sport and life destiny, life after clinical death, and thoughts of the world to come ("Olam Haba"). The various chapters have been written so that they are accessible to all - from the avid lay reader to the specialist – and make available multidisciplinary sources of information about Life. This volume will interest open minded scholars, students at all levels of general sciences, natural and Life science, researchers of philosophy, theology, history of Life, astrobiology, and those who wish to widen their knowledge about "who are we in the universe".
Life : An Introduction to Complex Systems Biology
What is life? Has molecular biology given us a satisfactory answer to this question? And if not, why, and how to carry on from there? This book examines life not from the reductionist point of view, but rather asks the question: what are the universal properties of living systems and how can one construct from there a phenomenological theory of life that leads naturally to complex processes such as reproductive cellular systems, evolution and differentiation? The presentation has been deliberately kept fairly non-technical so as to address a broad spectrum of students and researchers from the natural sciences and informatics.
Level Crossing Methods in Stochastic Models
Since its inception in 1974, the level crossing approach for analyzing a large class of stochastic models has become increasingly popular among researchers. This volume traces the evolution of level crossing theory for obtaining probability distributions of state variables and demonstrates solution methods in a variety of stochastic models including: queues, inventories, dams, renewal models, counter models, pharmacokinetics, and the natural sciences. Results for both steady-state and transient distributions are given, and numerous examples help the reader apply the method to solve problems faster, more easily, and more intuitively.
Les techniques de monitorage hémodynamique en réanimation = Hemodynamic monitoring techniques in intensive care
The hemodynamic monitoring of intensive care patients is undergoing major changes. Technological advances such as computerization and miniaturization have made it possible to considerably expand the range of assessment tools available at the bedside. Thus, the approach to cardiovascular monitoring - which was once readily "invasive" and global - is gradually becoming non-invasive and locoregional or even tissue. At the same time, the combined evolution of technology and physiological and pathophysiological concepts now provides the clinician with access to a variety of "functional hemodynamic monitoring". The aim of this book is to provide a better understanding of the interest and the limits of the hemodynamic parameters accessible by current hemodynamic monitoring techniques. It thus aims to ensure that the use of these techniques is perfectly mastered by resuscitators and anesthetists-resuscitators so that patient care is ultimately optimal.
Lenses and Waves : Christiaan Huygens and the Mathematical Science of Optics in the Seventeenth Century
this book offers the first account of the development of Huygens’ mathematical analysis of lenses and telescopes and its significance for the origin of the wave theory of light. As Huygens applied his mathematical proficiency to practical issues pertaining to telescopes – including trying to design a perfect telescope by means of mathematical theory – his dioptrics is significant for our understanding of seventeenth-century relations between theory and practice. With this full account of Huygens’ optics, this book sheds new light on the history of seventeenth-century optics and the rise of the new mathematical sciences, as well as Huygens’ oeuvre as a whole. Students of the history of optics, of early mathematical physics, and the Scientific Revolution, will find this book enlightening.
Lemurs : Ecology and Adaptation
In this comprehensive volume, written by experts in the field, information gathered on lemur ecology and adaptation over the past 15 years is presented by both seasoned and newer lemur researchers, and provides us with further knowledge concerning both well-studied and rarely studied extant species, as well as insights into the ecology and adaptation of some of the recently extinct lemurs.
Lectures in Astrobiology ; Vol. II
Based on material delivered at several summer schools, this book is the first comprehensive textbook at the graduate level encompassing all aspects associated with the emerging field of astrobiology. Volume II gathers another set of extensive lectures covering topics so diverse as the formation and the distribution of elements in the Universe, the concept of habitability from both the planetologists' and the biologists' point of view and artificial life. The contributions are held together by the common goal to understand better the origin of life, its evolution and possible existence outside the Earth's realm.



















