International Business Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

International Business Management - Essay Example 182). At the same time, it is also interesting to see that the global ICT network does not share many common features but has distinctive features (Shin & Park, 2007, p. 263). Due to the unique characteristics of high technologies and particular characteristics of ICT sector, development in this sector has become complicated (Chlivickas et al., 2009, p.324). In the following parts of this paper, the Internet history has been incorporated. The history of the Internet describes the role of the United States and its adversaries in the pre and post Cold War era situations. Subsequent to that, the definition of the Internet has been provided. It is followed by the information communication technology segment, in which the concept of information communication technology has been discussed. But before the description of some of the major aspects relating to the concept, the basic and comprehensive definition of information communication technology has been provided. This definition encompas ses not only the intangible aspects of ICT but also the tangible ones. Before the summary part, global trends and the effects of the Internet on the ICT have been included. History of the Internet The internet has continued to evolve, meeting the needs of all kinds of users (Kozierok, 2005, p.122). â€Å"The Internet’s roots can be traced back to 1957 when the United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defence† (Gallo & Hancock, 2002, p.56). The formation of ARPA was mainly caused by the US response to the former Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, which was a unique innovation of artificial earth satellite. As the hostility continued between the two countries, the ARPA’s ultimate objective was to counter the measures taken by the former Soviet Union. In order to achieve this objective, ARPA’s mission was to make efforts and establish the United States as the world’s leading country in military a nd defence applicable science and technology applications (Gallo & Hancock, 202, p.56). Subsequent to that, the establishment of DARPA enabled the team of the ARPA to develop and run internetwork named ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, in the year of 1969. Originally, the ARPANET was built to serve defence and military objectives, but with the passage of time it underwent numerous changes and modifications that increased its use among other people. The formal innovation and development of a comprehensive system of internetworking protocols started in 1973 (Kozierok, 2005, p.122). In the initial phase of this technology, only one protocol was used for the purpose of internetworking. However, with the passage of time improvements were introduced in the internetworking protocols and better versions of this technology began to show their importance for the current and potential users. Definition of the Internet It is hard to give a precise and exact definition elab orating all uses and characteristics of the Internet. However, Schneider et al. (2009) quote the definition provided by the Federal Networking Council (FNC), which states that â€Å"Internet† is â€Å"the global information system that: (i) Is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions; (ii) Is able to support communications using the Transmission

Environmental economics Essay Example for Free

Environmental economics Essay The market forces of demand and supply lead to equilibrium price and quantity that can be used to allocate sources effectively in many of the markets. At times they fail to deliver the best level of output for society. The government intervenes using various methods to correct market failure. This report details the six different types of market failure which can occur in the UK in addition to critically detailing how the government attempts to correct market failure. 2. Externalities According to Samuelson (1954) ‘Externalities create a divergence between the private and social costs of production’. Social costs are the production cost of a product or service including third party costs; in the event of a negative externality the social costs are much greater than private costs i. e. pollution. Externalities are external costs and benefits which arise during economic activity but which are not considered by the buyers and sellers involved as they effect third parties only. Ignoring external costs and benefits can lead to the wrong level of output in the market. Negative externalities, occasionally referred to as external costs, are the costs that separate social and private costs. They are the costs paid for by third parties, which is usually society as a whole. If negative externalities are left to the market mechanism it could lead to over production. Chivian and Bernstein (2008) concluded, ‘soft drinks in large quantities are unhealthy and could lead to medical problems’. This would increase the medical costs for the government, to tackle this issue they could tax soft drinks to discourage use in addition to elevating such charges from healthy drinks consequently providing a cheaper and healthier alternative. Consumers can create externalities by consuming certain goods or services. †¢Pollution from privately owned cars or taxis †¢Public damage caused by alcohol abuse †¢Litter on streets The UK government address these negative externalities through two primary functions; legislations and taxations. Pressure from environmentalist along with studies confirming the existence of global warming forced the UK government to introduce ‘Green taxation’. This includes an increase in petrol prices to discourage use of fuel reliant cars, increase in excise duty on alcohol as well as fines for perpetrators caught in the act of littering. Indirect taxes are used as a means of deterrence on products which could lead to market failure. They differ to specific taxes such as excise duty on tobacco as they are not fixed sum per unit. VAT is an indirect tax which raises cost of production. A pecuniary externality is a type of negative externality which relates to the economic activities rather than physical resources. Apple increased its market share from 25% to 36% in the mobile phone market while others have lost theirs; those suffering losses have incurred a pecuniary externality (Apple iphone market share, 2011). The key difference between pecuniary and real externality is while real externality ought to require compensation pecuniary should not. Positive externalities, if left to market mechanism, could under produce and would not reach level of output which is socially efficient. †¢Education system, government provides student finance to encourage higher education †¢Health service, government provides free health service By investing in human capital via promoting education and providing incentives to stay in education i. e. EMA, the government is assisting corporations through nurturing more educated individuals. This is essential in sustaining the country’s development. Positive externalities can also have negative effects; UK boasts one of the largest fast food market in the world, Britons spend average of ? 7 million a day on junk food, which contributed to UK being crowned as ‘the fattest country in Europe’ (Britain is Europes fattest nation, 2011). 3. Missing markets Missing markets transpires when there is a failure in the market to produce certain goods or offer services in spite of the level of demand. If conditions are not satisfied markets can struggle to exist and since it is unlikely they will ever form they are called ‘missing markets’. An example of this occurrence is the ‘pure public goods’ which provides to the population non-excludable and non-rival benefits. The free rider problem can be one of the causes which lead to missing markets; the term originates from the example of someone who doesn’t pay fares when using public transport. Everyone would want to use the product but would wait till someone else has paid for it which could lead to under-production or even non-production. For example, if an individual does not pay tax he can still use the roads or call the emergency services. Pure public goods and other markets with similar characteristics are unlikely to ever be considered as business opportunities by individuals or corporations given the impossibility of charging consumers at the point of consumption. Pure public good includes: street lights, national defence, police, fireworks display etc. All pure public goods have the following characteristics: †¢Non-rivalry: The consumption of the good by one person does not reduce the quantity available for others. The amount of usage does not correlate with the availability for example; a lighthouse’s light can be seen by more than one ship at any given time. †¢Non-excludable: If the good is provided for one anyone can use it, and they cannot be stopped from using it. Once a streetlight is erected it benefits all passers-by and there is no possible way of excluding someone. †¢Non-rejectable: The public cannot refuse the benefits or consequences of a pure public product. An individual cannot reject being defended by the armed forced of a country, nor can they reject the benefit of street lighting. To tackle the missing market failure the government may seize control of all operations relating to pure public goods and would then be responsible for meeting the demands of the people. In order to fund projects such as road building the government would raise taxes rather than charge individuals. The government introduces money making schemes such as congestion charges to raise funds for the transport system or charge private airlines landing fees at airports. In 2008, as a bid to attain ? 3 billion, an idea was proposed which would introduce congestion charge in Greater Manchester. 4. Information asymmetry Information asymmetry occurs when there is a lack of symmetry, or balance, between the knowledge of the buyer compared to that of the seller furthermore, the imbalance gets exploited which leads to a misallocation of resources. For instance, an unscrupulous dentist might tell his patient he needs lots of dental work done, when in reality not so much is required, just to create business. This can also be seen in lawyers, car mechanics, doctors etc. In the UK there are several laws which help the consumers and warrant them rights if a product is purchased or a service is used. The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 was introduced to prevent manufactures and retailers from misleading consumers by stating all products ‘must be sold as described, of satisfactory quality, and fit for purpose’(OFT, 2011). This prevents businesses from deceiving individuals by allowing them rights to know exactly what the product is. To inform consumers of their rights the government has setup websites and institutions which can be used to attain information readily. The OFT (Office of Fair Trading) was set up in 1973 to ‘enforce both consumer protection and competition law, acting as the UK’s economic regulator’. They can be contacted by consumers who would be given guidance about their matter and legal advice. The OFT carry out investigations into alleged unfair practices if consumers feel wronged for example, in June 2010 an investigation into credit score websites was opened after consumers complained about being charged monthly subscriptions fees. Verdict was reached and the accused companies agreed to not mislead consumers by making these charges known (Investigation into unfair practices, 2011). 5. Lack of competition in the market According to O’Connor (2012) a monopoly occurs if at least of the two conditions are satisfied: †¢The only organization in the industry †¢Substantial barriers of entry The UK government and many other agencies, informally, refer to any company with more than 25% market share as a monopoly. This includes companies on a national, regional or local scale. Monopolist businesses act as price maker, due to lack of competition, therefore can create artificially high prices if demand exists to earn abnormal profits. This is very different to the situation which occurs when competition exists in the market where businesses are constantly trying to reduce prices to undercut competitors. A restrictive trade practice is a strategy used to reduce competition and raise prices of products. Cartels are formed when businesses agree to set prices high, they are also illegal in UK. Competitors are forbidden to collude in restricting the flow of goods to a particular person or business. The UK government has various legislations to prevent abuse of power. Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Act (1948) In 1948 the Monopolies Commission was created to investigate industries where businesses are acting in collusion to limit competition. A report will be published after the investigation is concluded and will be given to the government to take necessary action. Monopolies and Mergers Act (1965) This act was created to investigate or prevent business that control at least 25% of the market from merging together. The Monopolies Commission would investigate the case then allow the merge to take place or disallow it if it does not act in the interest of the public. Restrictive Trade Practices Act (1956) Restrictive Trade Practices Act made it illegal for manufactures to act in collusion and control the prices at which their product is sold at in retail stores. The Registrar of Restrictive Practices acts as a database, businesses have to register any restrictive agreements between the manufactures. Fair Trading Act (1973) This act established the Office of Fair Trading with the aim of enforcing the act. Consumer protection and Competition law were the main agenda. The goal is to ensure markets work well for consumers, ensure strong competition and prohibit unlawful practices. Consumer protection was enhanced as businesses would be given warning at first but will be taken to court if problems persist. Competition Acts (1980 and 1998) Large businesses may limit competition and increase profits by predatory pricing, excessive prices, refusal to supply and price discrimination. This act was created to ensure businesses do not abuse their dominant market position and to deal with restrictive business practices. The EU influenced this act as the UK had to comply with EU competition policy. This act will be enforced by the Director General of Fair Trading and business if found at fault will be liable to financial penalties. Enterprise Act (2002) This act establishes new competition authorities, reformulates the law regarding mergers and markets, changed the law governing insolvency bankruptcy and criminalises anti-competitive behaviour. It also enhanced the Office of Fair Trading powers allowing it to carry out searches under warrant on the suspected mergers. Businesses can now appeal against the decisions made by the Competition Commission. The Minister of Trade and Industry used to play a major role but due to inconsistencies he no longer has the final say regarding mergers. 6. Unstable prices Unstable prices apply particularly to commodities, any naturally accruing substances, such as fossil fuels, coffee, wheat etc. If left to the market mechanism they tend to suffer from fluctuations in prices much more frequently than manufactured goods, which create problems for the suppliers of these commodities as they cannot plan with any certainty on what revenue they are going to receive. Lipsey and Harbury (1993) discussed the two strategies the government tries to control the price with: Price ceiling The government imposes a maximum price limit that can be charged for a particular item in order to protect consumers from environments that would make commodities inaccessible. A binding price ceiling is when the government decides to set the price ceiling below that of the free market price for example, if bread costs ? 2. 00 on the free market a price ceiling of ? 1. 00 would be considered a binding price ceiling. However, this can also have undesired results as some suppliers may slump out of the market as they cannot deal with the deficit, causing supplies to reduce and demand to increase as consumers bulk buy cheap items. A non-binding price ceiling is when the price ceiling is set above the free market price giving the suppliers/manufactures a buffer zone which is unlikely to have any practical effect. Price floor A price floor is the minimum price that can be charged for a product or service. If the mandatory price is set below the free market equilibrium price then it will have no practical effect but if the minimum price is set higher than the free market price it would mean consumers will have to pay more for the product. This could lead to demand falling which would result in manufactures seeing revenue decrease. An example of a minimum floor price is the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 which dictates the lowest amount employees can be paid. 7. Labour market failure Labour market should, according to Gregg and Wadsworth (2011), reach a certain equilibrium wage and quantity but in practice this rarely happens. Listed below are some potential causes of market failure: †¢Labour and skills immobility: Labour cannot always be where the jobs are, this is called geographical immobility. Skills immobility is when labour does not possess the right skills to fulfil the job. For example, coal miners lost their jobs when new industries were formed and because of the mismatch in skill they are left unemployed. †¢Discrimination: Race, gender, height, weight and age are some examples of discrimination which can take place and could lead to market failure. The government intervenes by creating legislations such as the National Minimum Wage Act and Equal Pay Act to help protect people’s rights at work. They also offer incentives for students to continue into further education. Gangmasters are the main employers in a town and will use their buying power to force wages below the national minimum wage rate. The government set up the GLA (Gangmasters Licensing Authority) to help control this problem and protect workers (Labour markets, 2009). 8. Conclusion The UK government acts admirable in the event of market failure to prevent further damage being inflicted onto the economy. However, the monopolistic business control acts are not in my estimation deterring businesses from unhealthy practices enough. The green initiative is laughable at best considering most households generally are in possession of two cars compared to just a single vehicle few years ago. Clearly more needs to be done to protect the environment. Although high petrol prices and an increase in insurance act as a deterrent to some the lack of alternatives is detrimental to the efforts. A higher tax should be implemented on tobacco as it is causes negative externalities which not only affect the individual but also the government, NHS spend on average five billion a year on treating diseases directly caused by smoking (Buckley,2003). 9. Bibliography Samuelson, P. A. , 1954, the pure theory of public expenditure, harvard university press. Chivian,E. C. and Bernstein, A. B. , 2008, sustaining life, oxford university press. O’Connor, A. C. , 2012, monopoly: the cause of evil, Lightning source uk ltd. Gregg, P. G. and Wadsworth, J. W. , 2011, The labour market in winter: the state of working britian, OUP oxford. Lipsey,R. G. L and Harbury,C. D. H. ,1993, first principles of economics, Weidenfield and Nicolson. Buckley,C. B. , 2003, thank you for smoking, Allison and busby. reuters. 2011. Apple iPhone market share. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www. reuters. com/article/2011/12/22/smartphones-europe-idUSL6E7NM0PI20111222. [Accessed 25 January 12]. metro. 2011. Britain is Europes fattest nation. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www. metro. co. uk/news/38242-britain-is-europes-fattest-nation. [Accessed 25 January 12]. office of fair trading. 2011. Investigation into alleged unfair practices. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www. oft. gov. uk/OFTwork/consumer-enforcement/consumer-enforcement-completed/adaptive-affinity/. [Accessed 25 January 12]. labour market failure. 2009. labour markets. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www. tutor2u. net/economics/presentations/labour_market_failure/player. html. [Accessed 25 January 12].

Limitations Of Text Based Image Retrieval Psychology Essay

Limitations Of Text Based Image Retrieval Psychology Essay Sometimes a relevant image might be left out owed to the absence of specific keywords. While often there might be no relevant text surrounding the images or videos, but they are relevant. In fact, there might exist images or videos where the surrounding text has nothing to do with them. In these cases, these returned results might be irrelevant and have nothing in common with the required images and videos. The other approach uses the annotation of the images and vides and is often a manual task. The text-based technique first annotates with text, and then uses text-based retrieval techniques to perform image and video retrieval. Annotation of images and videos lets the user to annotate the image with the text (metadata) that is considered relevant. The text can be time, event, location, participants or whatever the user finds relevant. 2.6.1.1. Limitations of Text based Image Retrieval: Nevertheless, there exist two major difficulties, especially when the volume of image collections is large with hundreds of thousands samples. One is the huge amount of human labor required in manual image/video annotation and is very time-consuming. Textual based retrieval cannot append the perceptual significant visual features like color, shape, texture [Bimbo. 1999]. The other difficulty comes from the rich content in the images and the subjectivity of human perception which is more essential. The annotation of the image and videos completely depends on the annotation interpretation [Enser et al 1993] i.e. different people may perceive the same image differently as shown in the figure 3 . The perception subjectivity and annotation impreciseness may cause unrecoverable mismatches in later retrieval processes. And to retrieve the required data the user constructs a query consisting of the keywords that describes the desired image and video. Although the text based retrieval system has gained benefits of traditionally successful information retrieval algorithms and techniques. Figure 3: Multiple interpretation of same images Park like Tree, Sky, Horse, People, Ridding, Sunny Day, Outdoor Critics of text-based approach dispute that for accurate image annotation it must be automated. The automatic annotation is limited due to its deficiency of extracting semantic information from the images and videos. Only automatic annotation of images and videos in integration with pure text-based image retrieval will be inadequate. The available metadata is mostly restricted to the technical information surrounding the image or video, such as time, resolution of the image or video and name of the image or video. The users may find it difficult to use text to perform a query for some portion of the content of an image or video. Text-based retrieval techniques are absolutely limited to search the metadata that is tagged to the image or video. If the text queried is not annotated with the same tag as attached with the image or video, the data is not returned. This means that if a particular piece of the image or video is interesting this must be explicit included in the metadata. If the desired object is not a main part of the image or video, sometimes it may happen that is not described in the metadata and hence cannot be a retrieve as a result from a query describing such portions of the image or video. One of the disadvantages of text-based image retrieval is that a word can have different meanings. This problem is best illustrated with an example, searching for the images or videos of jaguar or Apple. The system cant differentiate either the user is looking for the jaguar car or jaguar animal as shown in the figure 4. The two concepts have the same name but contain an entirely different semantic idea. The retrieval systems dont have reliable ways to separate the concepts. These problems are present even in systems with automatic synonym lists or thesaurus capabilities [Schank et al. 2004]. There exist several text-based image retrieval services today, Google is a large player. Google is the largest player but still faces the same problem. Figure 4: Same name different Semantics Attempts have been made to make the tags attached to the image or videos more flexible by attaching vast number of descriptive words. The thesaurus based annotation or knowledge based annotation has gained much of the researchers attention [Tring et al. 2000]. Recent development in video retrieval has focused on models that combine several modalities for joint indexing and retrieval. Consideration to the demands, researchers concluded that visual features play a crucial role in the effective retrieval of digital data. This initiates to the development of the content based image and video retrieval [Venters et al. 2000]. 2.6.2. Content based Image Retrieval: The need to manage these images and locate target images in response to user queries has become a significant problem. One way to solve this problem would be describing the image by keywords. The keyword based approach has a bottleneck of manually annotating and classifying the images and videos, which is impractical for the overwhelm corpuses. The human perception subjectivity problem may affect the performance of the retrieval system. Current commercial image and video search engines retrieve the data mainly based on their keyword annotations or by other data attach with it, such as the file-name and surrounding text. This relinquishes the actual image and video more or less ignored and has been following limitations. First, the manual annotation of images requires significant effort and thus may not be practical for large image collections. Second, as the complexity of the images increases, capturing image content by text alone becomes increasingly more difficult. In seeking to overcome these limitations, content-based retrieval (CBR) was proposed in the early 1990s [Baeza-Yates et al. 1999]. Content-based means that the technology makes direct use of content of the image and video rather than relying on human annotation of metadata with keywords. Content-based retrieval (CBR) research endeavors to devise a retrieval system that exploits digital content in the retrieval process in a manner that is eventually independent of manual work. CBR is an umbrella term for content-based multimedia retrieval (CBMR), content based visual information retrieval (CBVIR), content-based image retrieval (CBIR), content-based video retrieval (CBVR) and content-based audio retrieval (CBAR). CBR may also be termed as multimedia information retrieval (MIR). Content based retrieval extract the feature of the image or video themselves and use it for retrieval rather than the user generated meat data. CBR uses the primitive features of the image and video like the color, shape, texture, motion etc. [Sharmin et al. 2002]. Content based system index the images and videos automatically by using different techniques for their visual contents. For the computer, a video is merely a group of frames with a temporal feature, where each frame is basically an image. The computer take each image as a combination of pixels characterize by the low-level color, shape and texture. CBR represents these features in the form of vectors called the descriptors of the image or video. CBR extract these primitive features by using automated techniques and then further use it for searching and retrieval. Thus, these low-level visual features extraction from images and videos has initiated to the many research in the CBR [Veltkamp et al 2000]. A typical CBIR system should be able to interpret the content of the images in a query and a collection, compare the similarity between them, and rank the images in the collection according to their degree of relevance to the users query [Tamura at al. 1984]. The figure 5 shows the typical content based retrieval system. Retrieval deals with the problem of finding the relevant data from the collection of images or videos according to the user request. The user request may be in the form of the textual data or in the form of query by example. Its relatively easy to extract the low level features from the images and videos in the query as well as in the collection and then compare it. Figure 5: Typical Architecture of Content Based Retrieval The paramount objective of CBR is efficiency during image and video search and retrieval, thereby reducing the need for human intervention. Computer can retrieve the images and videos by using CBR techniques from the large corpus without the human assumption. These low level extracted features then represent the image or video and these features are used later on for performing the similarity comparison between the other images or videos in the corpus. These extracted features serve like a signature for images and videos. Images and videos are compared by using different similarity comparison techniques. They are compared by calculating the dissimilarity of its characteristic components to other image or video descriptors. CBR approach shows substantial results with the queries like show me the images or videos of the red color, Show me the image with blue color is above the green color etc. The available automated CBR techniques deal such a type of queries elegantly but flunk to cope with the high level semantic queries like Show me the images or videos of the people in the park, people on the beach, car on the road etc. Such type of queries cannot be tackled successfully by the CBR systems. These queries require more sophisticated techniques to extract the actual semantics abstracted inside it. Related work in CBR from the perspective of images can be found from the overview studies of [Rui et al. 1999], [Smeulders et al. 2000], [Vasconcelos et al. 2001], [Eakins 2002], [Kherfi et al. 2004], [Datta et al. 2005] , [Chen et al. 2004], [Dunckley 2003], [Santini. 2001] [ Santini et al.2001], [Lew et al. 2001], and [Bimbo et al. 1999]. CBIR has received considerable research interest in the last decade [Vasconcelos et al. 2001] and has evolved and matured into a distinct research field. The CBIR mainly comprises of two main steps feature extraction and the similarity measurement. These key technical components of the CBIR system will be introduced in the following sections. 2.6.2.1. Feature Extraction: Images are described by visual words just like text is defined by textual words In fact, an image or a video frame is merely a rectangular grid of colored pixels for a computer. And to a computer an image doesnt mean anything, unless it is told how to interpret it. Image and video descriptors are intended for the motive of image or video retrieval. Descriptors seek to apprehend the image or video characteristics in such a way that it is facile for the retrieval system to identify how similar two images or videos are according to the users interest. CBR system index images or videos by using the low-level features of the image and videos itself, such as colour [Pass et al. 1998, Smith et al. 1996a, Swain et al. 1991], texture [Manjunath et al.1996, Sheikholeslami et al. 1994, Smith et al. 1996b], shape [Safar. M et al. 2000, Shahabi et al. 1999, Tao et al. 1999] , and structure features [Pickering et al. 2003, Howarth et al. 2005]. The color, shape and texture are the principal features of the images. The visual contents of images and videos are then symbolized a s a feature vector of floating numbers. For example, the colour, texture and shape features extracted from an image form an N-dimensional feature vector, and can be written as Where is a vector of its own, and is the colour, is texture and n3 is the shape. While for the video there is an additional vector, where is the motion. In the following section, we introduce the visual features to give an impression of how images and video framesncan be converted into a representation that the retrieval system can work with. 2.6.2.1.1. Color: A very common way to see at images is by analyzing the colors they contain. Colour is the most prominent visual feature in CBIR since it is well correlated with human visual perceptions of objects in an image. A digital colour image is represented as an array of pixels, where each pixel contains three or four tuples of colour components represented in a numerical form. The abstract mathematical representation of colours that computers are able to use is known as the colour model. The similarity between the images and the videos is calculated by using the color histogram value. The histogram depicts the specific values of the pixels inside the image or video frame. The current color based retrieval techniques divides the image into regions by using color proportion. The color based technique doesnt depend on the size and orientation of an image. Since 1980s various color based retrieval algorithms have been proposed [Smith et al. 1996 c]. A most basic form of color retrieval involves specifying color values that can be further used for retrieval. Indeed, Googles image and Picasa 3.0, can also provide the facility to the user to search the images that contain homogenous color composition. The most common representation of color information is in the form of color histogram and color moment. Color anglogram [Zhou X.S. et al. 2002], correlogram [Huang J. et al 1997], color co-occurrence matrix (CCM) [Shim S. et al. 2003] are some of the other feature representations for color. Figure 6: Color based image interpretation 2.6.2.1.1.1. Color Spaces: There are many color spaces designed for different systems and standards, but most of them can be converted by a simple transformation. i. RGB (Red-Green-Blue): Digital images are normally represented in RGB color space; it is the most commonly use color space in computers. It is a device dependent color space, which used in CRT monitors. ii. CMY (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow), CMYK (CMY-Black): It is a subtractive color space for printing, it models the effect of color ink on white paper. Black component is use for enhancing the effect of black color. iii. HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) or HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value): It was used to model the properties of human perception. It is an additive color model. However it is inconvenient to calculate color distance due to its discontinuity of hue at 360. iv. YIQ, YCbCr, YUV: Used in television broadcast standards. Y is the luminance component for backward compatibility to monochrome signal and other components are for chrominance. It is also used in some image compression standards (e.g. JPEG) that process luminance and chrominance separately. Figure 7: The additive colour model HSV 2.6.2.1.1.2. Color Models: A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components. When this model is associated with a precise description of how the components are to be interpreted (viewing conditions, etc.), the resulting set of colors is called color space  [1]  . A color model is a formularized system for composing different of colors from a set of primary colors. There are two types of color models, subtractive and additive. An additive color model uses light emitted directly from a source. The additive color model typically uses primary color i.e. red, green and blue light to produce the other colors. Combination of any two of these additive primary colors in equal amounts produces the additive secondary colors or primary subtractive model colors i.e. cyan, magenta, and yellow. Integration of all these three colors RGB in equal intensities constitute white as shown in the Figurea8 a. Figure 8 (a): RGB: Additive Color for light-emitting computer monitors. Each colored light add to the previous colored lights. A subtractive color model illustrates the blending of paints, dyes,   and natural colorants to produce a full series of colors, each generated by subtracting (absorbing) some wavelengths of light and reflecting the others. Colors observed in subtractive models are the due to reflected light. Different wavelength lights constitute different colors. The CMYK model (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-blacK) model is the subtractive model. The combination of any two of these primary subtractive model color i.e.(Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) results in the primary additive model or secondary subtractive model color i.e. red, blue, green and the convergence of it constitute black color as shown in the figure 8 b. Figure 8 (b): CMYK: Subtractive colors for Printer. Each color added to the first color blocks the reflection of color, thus subtracts color. For some of the concepts the color scheme helps in achieving suitable results like forest, sky, tree, grass, sea etc. The color descriptor will help in retrieving the accurate results. But for the categories like the car, house, street etc. Color descriptors cant play a vital role. The color descriptor will fail in a situation of the same car with different colors as shown in the figure 9. For the retrieval based on the color two most frequently used representative are color histogram and color moment. These representatives are represented in the section below. Figure 9: Same Car with different color composition a. Color Histogram: A histogram provides a summary of the distribution of a set of data. A color histogram provides a comprehensive overview of the image or video frame in terms of color. A colour histogram for a coloured image describes the different intensity value distributions for colours found in the image. The histogram intent to define the number of times each color appears in an image/video frame. Statistically, it utilizes a property that images having similar contents should have a similar color distribution. One simple approach is to count the number of pixels of each color and plot into a histogram. The histogram h of an image I is represented as: H(I)= Where pi is the percentage of i-th color in the color space, N is the number of colors in the color space. To enable scaling invariant property, the histogram sum is normalized to 1. The percentage is proportional to the number of pixels in the image. Figure 10: Shows the Color Histogram Mostly commercial CBR systems like Query-By-Image-Content uses color histogram as one of the feature for the retrieval. Colors are normally grouped in bins, so that every occurrence of a color contributes to the overall score of the bin it belongs to. The bin explains the intensities of different primary color i.e. quantity of red, blue or green for a particular pixel. It doesnt define individual color of the pixels. Histograms are usually normalized, so that images of different sizes can be fairly compared. The colour histogram is the most commonly and effectively used colour feature in CBIR [Swain et al. 1991, Faloutsos et al. 1994, Stricker et al. 1995, Deselaers et al. 2008, Chakravarti et al. 2009 and Smeulders et al. 2000]. Retrieving an images based on the colors technique is widely used because it does not depend on image size or orientation. The most common method to create a colour histogram is by splitting the range of the RGB intensity values into equal-sized bins. For example, a 24-bit RGB colour space contains 224 possible (RGB) values. Since this gives us approximately 16.8 million bins, it will be too large to be dealt with efficiently. Therefore, we need to quantize the feature space to a smaller number in order to reduce memory size and processing time; as examples [Stricker et al. 1995, Swain et al. 1991] have proposed techniques for colour space quantization. After having defined the bins, the numbers of pixels from the image that fall into each bin are counted. A colour histogram can be used to define the different distributions of RGB intensity values for a whole image, known as a global colour histogram, and for specific regions of an image, known as a local colour histogram. For a local colour histogram, the image is divided into several regions and a colour histogram is created for each region. A histogram refinement strategy has been proposed by Pass for comparing the images [Pass et al.1996]. Histogram refinement splits the pixels in a given bucket into several classes, based upon some local property. Within a given bucket, only pixels in the same class are compared. They describe a split histogram called a color coherence vector (CCV), which partitions each histogram bucket based on spatial coherence. [Han et al. 2002] proposed a new color histogram representation, called fuzzy color histogram (FCH), by considering the color similarity of each pixels color associated to all the histogram bins through fuzzy-set membership function. This approach is proves very fast and is further exploited in the application of image indexing and retrieval. The paradigm of the color histogram works on the assumption that all the images or videos frames with the similar color composition are similar [Jain et al. 1995]. It will retrieve all the data whose color composition is similar to the given query. This will be true in some cases. Color composition cant be the identity of the image or object inside the image. Color Moment: Color moment approach was proposed by [Stricker et al. 1995]. It is a very compact representation of color feature. The mathematical meaning of this approach is that any color distribution can be characterized by its moments. Moreover, most of the information is concentrated on the low-order moments, only the first moment, second and third central moments (mean, variance and skewness) were extracted as the color feature representation. Color similarity can be measured by Weighted Euclidean distance. Due to the ease and sound performance of color histogram technique it is widely used in color based retrieval systems. Color is the human visual perceptual property. Human discriminate an images or objects initially on the basis of colors. Color can be extracted from the digital data easily and automated and effective functions are available for calculating the similarity between the query and the data corpus. Color feature are effectively used for indexing and searching of color images in corpus. The existing CBIR techniques can typically be categorized on the basis of the feature it used for the retrieval i.e. color, shape, texture or combination of them. Color is an extensively utilized visual attribute that plays a vital role in retrieving the similar images [Low et al. 1998]. It has been observed that even though color plays a crucial role in image retrieval, when combined with other visual attributes it would yield much better results [Hsu et al. 1995]. This is because, two images with entirely similar color compositions, may have different color composition and sometimes two images have same color composition but they are not similar as shown in the figure. Hence something that looks similar is not semantically similar. The color composition of both the images in figure 11 is same but they depict the entirely different semantic idea. By analyzing both the images using the color based retrieval techniques both the images are similar

Franz Joseph Haydn Essay -- essays research papers

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Dear President Schneider : On behalf of the great Franz Joseph Haydn, I write this letter of recommendation to support the admission of a great composer into the International Enlightenment Society. In order for a musician to be eligible for your society, I understand that he must embody the characteristics of the Enlightenment and more specifically, as a composer, his music must possess the characteristics of the Classical period. I assure you that what you will find in this letter of recommendation will not be disappointing. Franz Joseph Haydn was a great composer of the Classical era. Known as the Father of Symphony and the inventor of string quartets, the examples and styles that Haydn set forth were relied upon by Mozart and Beethoven in creating their own respective masterpieces.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Born in a small town just inside Austrian borders, Haydn did not have much of a chance to be anything other than a wheelwright like his father. However, his father was a man who loved to sing and when Haydn was a boy, he memorized almost every song his father sang. This was his beginning in music. Later on, he received an education from his uncle where he gained more of an interest in music. Participation in a choir gave him the opportunity to go to Vienna and there, he studied the piano sonatas of Emanuel Bach and was given the chance to finally get a chance to compose; something he had always wanted to do. This is when the first string quartet was developed. Later on, he was employed by the Esterhazy family and was given the chance to conduct an orchestra and write symphonies. It was at this time and place that Haydn was “completely isolated from the world…he could experiment…improve, alter, add, or cut as boldly as he pleased.'; This was the s tart of a magnificent career.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To understand why Haydn was a great classical composer, it is important to understand the certain characteristics and themes of the Classical Period. Unlike baroque music, classical was secular; it was non-religious and it resided more in the homes of nobles or in public works rather than in the church. There was the creation of symphonies, string quartets, and piano sonatas using a method called the sonata form. Unlike the complicated baroque counterpoint ... ..., and prancing horses down to the wrigglings of the humble earthworm.'; Despite being of a Baroque genre, it was simple and logically thematic making it more Classical than it was baroque. As you can quite see Mrs. President, Franz Joseph Haydn, definitely belongs in the International Enlightenment society. He was the inventor of the string quartets and the father of symphony, two important genres of the Classical period. He created the sonata form which has been echoed by other great composers including Mozart and Beethoven. His wide variety of music from happy dancing to somber funeral music was greatly appreciated by the public and the nobles earning him a honorary degree from Oxford as Doctor of Music. Unlike Mozart or Beethoven, when Haydn died he was not forgotten. Two weeks after his death, “the whole art-loving world of Vienna';, went to a great memorial service at the city center in honor of the greatest composer of the Classical period. If substance, restraint, simplicity, and balance of music are important characteristics of the Classical style, then it is not difficult to see why through his music, that Haydn was the greatest composer of Classical his tory.

Nature of Dreaming

The dreaming is the centre of the Aboriginal culture which everything relates back to, the creation of people, animals, water and land. The Dreaming for Aboriginals is, ‘the past, the present and the future’. 1. Outline the nature of the Dreaming- its stories, symbolism and art. Outline means to sketch in general terms, indicate the main features of. Aboriginal people tell the stories of the land and how it came to be with all its living creatures through expression of song, dance, painting and storytelling. The Aboriginal Dreaming is set into multiple layers from the simplest first layer which anyone can access and understand to the second layer onward where the concepts are more complicated and a person must have a relationship to the Aboriginal people or culture to understand. The last couples of layers are only for initiated Aboriginals and Aboriginal elders and are very sacred and secret from anyone and everyone else. Aboriginal Dreaming stories are depicted in the numerous artworks done using various techniques and coloured natural paints. Behind every painting there is hidden symbolism and every little shape, line and colour relates to some form of the Aboriginal life. The painting Sugarleaf at Ngarlu is an excellent example of hidden symbolism using shapes to create meaning such as camp sites, women dancing, footprints, ceremonial poles and women gathering socially. The stories of the dreaming are important as it is passed from generation to generation by the elders about the different experiences, lessons and Gods and spirits. Painting was the main way of expressing stories from ancestors specifically on rocks, utensils, weapons and as body art. Rock art has given evidence of human presence in Australia for over 30000 years. In the present day and in the past, body paintings have been used to show social position, relationship to their family, ancestors and to a person’s totem. Reference http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/art/art.php

10 Interviewing Tips and Techniques

10 Interviewing Tips and Techniques 10 Interviewing Tips and Techniques 10 Interviewing Tips and Techniques By Mark Nichol Whether you are conducting a journalistic QA session or preparing an oral history, it’s important to prepare carefully for an interview. Here are some guidelines to help you succeed with the interview session. 1. Be Straightforward When you contact an interview subject, state your objective clearly and honestly. The nature of the interview you conduct should be the nature of the interview you described to the subject. Diversions from the stated agenda may upset the subject and undermine the interview. However, do not provide your questions to the subject in advance; tell him or her that any questions you prepare ahead of time are only part of the interview. 2. Choose an Interview-Friendly Location The interview subject’s home or office is generally better than a public location such as a coffee shop, with fewer unfamiliar distractions. A subject in the comfort of his or her own environment will provide you with better material, and you can make light conversation about a photograph, a memento, or some other object or feature to start the interview off on a relaxed footing. 3. Research the Subject Thoroughly Find out as much as you can about the person before the interview. Be well prepared, and distinguish between facts and opinions so you can query the subject appropriately about what you’ve learned. 4. Determine a Theme Avoid treating an interview as simply a series of general questions and answers. After conducting research, decide what the tone of the interview will be, and what you expect to get out of it. Develop a narrative flow based on the questions you wish to ask. The resulting content probably won’t follow that scheme, but your interview should have structure, and the questions should be organized logically by topic. 5. Prepare Questions Write down every question you can think of, whether you think you’ll have time to have them answered or not, in the order in which you would like the interview to progress, and then winnow the list to a manageable number of questions (but more than you think you’ll have time for). Craft simple questions consisting of a single query, and ask the most important ones first, in case the interview is interrupted or halted. Be prepared to jettison some questions, and be flexible enough to digress when the subject goes in an unexpected direction. Continue to follow that lead until it’s no longer productive and you are able to resume your line of questioning, preferably with a smooth transition. 6. Record the Interview If possible, use a recording device, but take notes in writing as well to help you shape the interview and in case the device malfunctions. Before you begin the interview, inform the subject that you are recording it to enhance the accuracy of the final product. Tell him or her that after you begin recording but before the interview begins, you will ask for his or her consent so that you have a record of it, and then do so. 7. Ask Questions Only the Subject Can Answer Do not waste the subject’s time by asking questions that can be answered through research. Do, however, use quantitative information such as age as a starting point. Instead of asking how old someone is, for example, ask someone who is old enough to have lived through a certain period in the past about his or her experiences during that time. 8. Engage with the Subject Demonstrate that you are interested and that what the subject is saying is important. Maintain eye contact as much as possible, but be objective and use neutral body language and avoid nodding, which may actually inhibit a substantive response. 9. Be Polite But Persistent If some of your questions are provocative or sensitive, word them carefully and ask them diplomatically. If the subject doesn’t answer or provides an inadequate response, ask again in other words. If a response still isn’t forthcoming, return to the topic again later in the interview, explaining why it’s important that the subject respond. 10. Be Patient When the subject seems to complete a response to a question, do not immediately move on to the next question, whether scripted or thought up at the time. Continue to be attentive, and patiently await more information. Sometimes, the postscript to a response is the best part. Likewise, when the interview is over, and the subject is more relaxed, take advantage of an opportunity to ask a casual question or two or to comment about something he or she said earlier. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Business Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Incorrect Pronunciations That You Should AvoidOn Behalf Of vs. In Behalf OfCareful with Words Used as Noun and Verb

Definition and Usage of the French Word Enchanté

Definition and Usage of the French Word Enchantà © French has long had an influence on the English language. The two languages  share the same  alphabet  and a number of  true cognates. But, the biggest influence of French on the English language may be the number of words- such  as  enchantà ©- that have been passed from the former to the latter tongue. The French word enchantà © is an adjective, but you are likely to use the term to express delight when meeting someone new. Definitions: Enchantà ©Ã‚  vs. Enchant The word  enchantà © in French means enchanted, delighted, overjoyed, smitten, or bewitched. In English, the word enchant means to influence by charms and incantation, to  bewitch, attract, move deeply, or rouse to ecstatic admiration. The similarities in the French and English terms are clear. The spellings are quite similar, but the pronunciations are a bit different. The word enchantà © is pronounced [a(n) sha(n) tay] in French. Not surprisingly, the English word enchant has an origin dating back centuries, having derived from its sister word  enchantà ©Ã‚  in French. Origin of Enchantà ©Ã‚  and Enchant The  Oxford Living Dictionaries  notes that the modern English term enchant actually comes from  Middle English, the language spoken in England from about 1100 to 1500. Enchant is derived from the late Middle English term meaning to put under a spell and delude. The term was originally spelled incant in Middle English, as in an incantation.​ Before that, the English word derived from the French term, enchanter, which in turn originated from the Latin incantare, meaning in   cantere,  to sing.  The French term  enchanter  is the infinitive form of the word, meaning to enchant, to delight, to be overjoyed, or to bewitch. Examples of  Enchantà © To gain a fuller understanding of  enchantà ©, it may be helpful to see how the term is used in French and translated into English. French Sentence(s) English Translation Je suis enchantà © de cette pià ¨ce. I'm delighted by this play. "Voici mon frà ¨re David.""Enchantà ©." "This is my brother David.""Nice to meet you." Cette forà ªt est enchantà ©e. This forest is enchanted. Note how, in the first two examples,  enchantà ©Ã‚  is translated as delighted or nice (as in delighted to meet you). The word, nice by itself translates as  agrà ©able  in French. The word nice only translates as  enchantà ©Ã‚  in the context of expressing delight or enchantment upon meeting someone. Enchantà © in French Literature The notion of enchantment has a firm grounding in French literature.  Ã‚  William C. Carter,  in his book, Marcel Proust: A Life, said that the famous French novelist always sought to enchant his readers: His intently seductive voice is similar to Walt Whitmans, whose sounds and words constantly seem to urge the reader to lie with him and exchange caresses. This brings you back, then, to the original meaning of the term  enchantà ©, meaning to bewitch or cast a spell on, which certainly makes it an alluring term. So, the next time you are searching for just the right word when you meet someone new, use the term  enchantà ©Ã‚  to show your delight at meeting that person or to cast a spell as you draw in your reader or listener.