Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Visual emphasis'

The research work described in this thesis embodies a number of studies designed to investigate human vision with emphasis on aspects of the pupil response and chromatic mechanisms in relation to the perceived chromatic afterimages. The aim of the first study was to establish the relationship between the perception of chromatic afterimages and the corresponding involuntary pupil responses. We started by designing and developing a new, computer-based, psychophysics program and employed it to measure the strength and duration of perceived chromatic afterimages in normal trichromats and in colour deficient observers. The dynamic luminance noise technique was used to isolate colour signals and to elicit pupil responses to coloured stimuli of known photoreceptor contrast. A model was developed to explain the afterimage results obtained in the normal trichromats and in colour deficient subjects. The model and the pupil colour responses provided an understanding of luminance and colour processing in dichromats that also helped to explain previously reported pupil colour responses. The model also predicts the colour confusion lines and the characteristics of pupil colour responses in dichromats at any given background chromaticity. In the second study, we investigated and compared pupil responses to visual stimuli that isolate photopic luminance and colour in both the sighted and blind region of the visual fields on subjects with either acquired or congenital homonymous hemianopia. The measured pupil responses in the blind hemifield of patients with acquired cortical damage are either absent or of reduced amplitude when compared to those measured in the corresponding regions of the sighted field, whereas the patients with congenital loss of visual field show similar and even enhanced pupil responses when compared to their sighted hemifield. These results suggest that in the absence of normal functioning of the direct geniculostriate projection, other projections to midbrain nuclei or to extrastriate regions can be enhanced and these include the pupillary pathways. These findings suggest that early damage to the brain might be partly compensated for by reorganising the strength of neural projections to the remaining, non-compromised visual areas. The purpose of the last study was to examine whether melanopsin contributes to the dynamic pupil light reflex responses in humans. A light source containing of four primary components was employed to generate pupillary stimuli that isolate luminance, colour or combined rod and melanopsin. Normal trichormats, rod deficient subjects, one subject with retinitis pigmentosa, one rod monochromat, three subjects with Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON) and one subject with Optic Neuritis were investigated using this approach. The results from the LHON subjects suggest not all classes of ganglion cells are affected uniformly in LHON, and that the pupil light reflex responses mediated through rod photoreceptors were affected the least. The characteristics of the pupil responses to the rod/melanopsin stimulus from the rod monochromat and the retinis pigmentosa subjects suggest that melanopsin does not contribute to dynamic pupil light reflex response in humans.

Irregular algorithms such as graph algorithms, sorting, and sparse matrix multiplication, present numerous programming challenges, including scalability, load balancing, and efficient memory utilization. In this age of Big Data we face additional challenges since the data is often streaming at a high velocity and we wish to make near real-time decisions for real-world events. For instance, we may wish to track Twitter for the pandemic spread of a virus. Analyzing such data sets requires combing algorithmic optimizations and utilization of massively multithreaded architectures, accelerator such as GPUs, and distributed systems. My research focuses upon designing new analytics and algorithms for the continuous monitoring of dynamic social networks. Achieving high performance computing for irregular algorithms such as Social Network Analysis (SNA) is challenging as the instruction flow is highly data dependent and requires domain expertise. The rapid changes in the underlying network necessitates understanding real-world graph properties such as the small world property, shrinking network diameter, power law distribution of edges, and the rate at which updates occur. These properties, with respect to a given analytic, can help design load-balancing techniques, avoid wasteful (redundant) computations, and create streaming algorithms. In the course of my research I have considered several parallel programming paradigms for a wide range systems of multithreaded platforms: x86, NVIDIA's CUDA, Cray XMT2, SSE-SIMD, and Plurality's HyperCore. These unique programming models require examination of the parallel programming at multiple levels: algorithmic design, cache efficiency, fine-grain parallelism, memory bandwidths, data management, load balancing, scheduling, control flow models and more. This thesis deals with these issues and more.

The founder of meditational Buddhism according to tradition is the Indian born Bodhidharma, whose legendary figure can often be seen in visual art and popular culture of East Asian countries. In my thesis I focus on the visual representations of Bodhidharma, and for the first time, after summarizing the information about him revealed in primary and secondary textual and pictorial sources, I set down a comprehensive study on the formation of the Bodhidharma-iconography, and discuss Korean Bodhidharma-images in a wider context of East Asian images. This thesis introduces Korean Bodhidharma images for the first time in a Western language, and show them together with the already known Chinese and Japanese images. It raises several problems on the identification of these images and brings new evidence on the formation of the Bodhidharma- iconography. It shows how it derived from representations of Daoist immortals and Buddhist arhats. Earlier studies usually consider texts as primary to visual images, but in my thesis, introducing images from the eleventh and twelfth century, I show that in the case of Bodhidharma- iconography visual images had a considerable influence on written texts. Stressing the importance of visual representations of a religious founder in forming further written and visual legends is a new approach which opens new paths to further studies in religious imagery.

The subjects of film and theatre belong to an extensive hierarchical debate that has remained prominent within the realm of performing arts since the introduction of cinema in the late nineteenth century. A plethora of scholars choose to argue in favor of the former, suggesting that film surpasses theatre as superior in both aesthetics and overall execution of naturalism; however, the argument is purely subjective and cannot be applied to all films and their corresponding plays. As a counterclaim, theatre continues to thrive as a prominent source of artistic entertainment globally, not only offering a contemporary twist to preexisting texts, but also impacting an audience in methods that film will never be able to do so. Maria Friedman’s High Society is a primary example that reaffirms how theatre can triumph the continual debate when compared to its preceding film – The Philadelphia Story – directed by George Cukor, both artistically and through its overall execution of the profound topics represented within the original text. This thesis will primarily juxtapose Cukor’s iconic film with Friedman’s revival of the former that was performed in 2015 at London’s Old Vic theatre, offering an innovative rebuttal to the preexisting debate as well as to affirm the argument of how theatre compellingly transforms the mundane.

This investigation explores the potential effect on perception of speech visual cues associated with Arabic gutturals (AGs) and Arabic emphatics (AEs); AEs are pharyngealized phonemes characterized by a visually salient primary articulation but a rather invisible secondary articulation produced deep in the pharynx. The corpus consisted of 72 minimal pairs each containing two contrasting consonants of interest (COIs), an emphatic versus a non-emphatic, or a guttural paired with another guttural. In order to assess the potential effect that visual speech information in the lips, chin, cheeks, and neck has on the perception of the COIs, production data elicited from 4 native Lebanese speakers was captured on videos that were edited to allow perceivers to see only certain regions of the face. Fifty three Lebanese perceivers watched the muted movies each presented with a minimal pair containing the word uttered in the video, and selected in a forced identification task the word they thought they saw the speaker say.

The speakers’ speech was analyzed to help explore what in their production informed correct identification of the COIs. Perceivers were above chance at correctly identifying AEs and AGs, though AEs were better perceived than AGs. In the emphatic category, the effect on perception of measurement differences between a word and its pair was submitted to automatic speech recognition. The machine learning models were generally successful at correctly classifying COIs as emphatic or non-emphatics across vowel contexts; the models were able to predict the probability of perceivers’ accuracy in identifying certain COIs produced by certain speakers; also, an overlap between the measurements selected by the computer and those selected by human perceivers was found. No difference in perception of AEs according to the part of the face that was visible was observed, suggesting that the lips, present in all of the videos, were most important for perception of emphasis. Conversely, in the perception of AGs, lips were not as informative and perceivers relied more on cheeks and chin. The presence of visible cues associated with the AEs, particularly in the lips, suggests that such visual cues might be informative for non-native learners as well, if they were trained to attend to them.

Master of Arts
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work
Lisa Melander
The media has a substantial role in providing knowledge about criminality to the public. Previous research has demonstrated that many media representations of crime and criminality perpetuate racial stereotypes and myths. The current study examines photographs in newspapers to investigate if a person of color has a higher chance of being presented by their mugshot over White individuals in crime stories. In addition the analysis examines how female offenders are presented in newspaper crime stories compared to men. To date, there has been no published research on the influence gender and race has on mugshot portrayals in newspaper media. The current study addresses this gap through an ethnographic content analysis of newspaper crime stories from widely circulated newspapers published between August 1, 2014 and October 31, 2014. The analyses are also informed by social constructionism and labeling theory.

碩士
國立臺灣科技大學
設計研究所
95
Along with the changes of corporations’ operating styles, which make chain-store operating approaches as the major trend already of current marketing routes in Taiwan, “convenient stores” is the blooming industry under the fashion, and at the same time the markets are transferred into customer-oriented buyers’ positions that customers are the most important assets of the company. Therefore, according to consumers’ spending behaviors and psychology, our study is categorized consumers into four types: “Regular shopper”, “Convenient shopper”, “Pricing shopper”, and “Indifference shopper”, to proceed the questionnaire interviews between the considering factors of consumers’ shopping and the emphasis degree on the visual constructions of the stores, in order to understand the needs of consumers and the future directions of the industry. The results of our data analysis indicate: (1) the number of consumers that their spending frequency in the convenient stores at “3 to 4 times each week” is the majority, and (2) for singular spending amount is common run of the range at “NT$51 to 100 dollars”. (3) Moreover, spending groups are getting popular and no distinctions between age groups, and (4) their work characteristics are mainly as office groups that by taking a look on sexuality, it is shown “regular buyers” are concentrated in females while the rate of “indifference buyer” is higher in males. According to the investigations of 5 major shopping brands choices of convenient stores, indicate that more than the rate of 75% choose “7-Eleven Convenient Store “ and its advantage categories and vote counts of the store brand are much higher than other kinds, thus to suppose brand advantage and the shopping choices of consumers are in a positive correlation. For “the consideration factors of convenient store choices”, “the convenience of locations” is the most concerned factor of the consumers, then factors come second such as “diversified services”, “good quality products”, and etc. For the aspect of emphasis degree on the visual constructions of convenient stores from different types of consumers, conclude the following differences: (1) more than 50% of consumers are belong to “convenient shoppers” that are with the highest rate group in the nowadays society; the group is emphasizing more on “ the clarity and beauty of store signboards”, “products in good arrangements with clean outlook”, “planning and aesthetics of store websites”, “ the comfortableness of lighting”, and “ the designs of package and handbags”; (2) second on the rank is “pricing shoppers” who value product pricings as well not to dismiss on quality, and are more respectful of “attractions of advertisings”, “delicacy and practicality of giveaways”, and “the designs of store instructing sign and layouts”; (3) third on the rank is “regular shoppers” who are the major customer of convenient stores and with substantial influence as well, and the group is emphasizing more on “outer package of specialized products”; (4) final one is the “indifference shoppers” who value the most on “the importance of overall visual planning of store space”, the group pays attention to “the matching and planning between store outlooks and surrounding city sights”, “aesthetics of logo designs”, “the coordination of store colors matching”, “the comfortableness of store inside space designs”, and “beauty of clerk’s uniforms”. For the respectful factors of shopping environments of convenient stores, “clean sale space” is most concerned by the publics, then comes respectively as “products are in good arrangements”, “more time-saving in the shopping process”, “the easy flow of shopping directions and planning” and etc. Moreover, to investigate on the styles of convenient stores, the first three on the lists respectively are “cleanliness”, “brightness”, and “spatiality”, among the lists worth companies to develop business opportunities are the fourth on the rank, the topic type of store style that can attract consumers’ attentions more through all-around marketing strategies of real stores and virtual ones, and is also called situation or experience marketing.

We present a post-processing technique that selectively reduces the salience of distracting regions in an image. Computational models of attention predict that texture variation influences bottom-up attention mechanisms. Our method reduces the spatial variation of texture using power maps, high-order features describing local frequency content in an image. Modification of power maps results in effective regional de-emphasis. We validate our results quantitatively via a human subject search experiment and qualitatively with eye tracking data.
Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2001.
Title from title page screen. Document formatted into manuscript-like pagination: xi, 136 leaves : ill. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-112).

Yes
There is an evolution in the demands of modern ophthalmology from descriptive findings to assessment of cellular level changes by using in vivo confocal microscopy. Confocal microscopy, by producing grey-scale images, enables a microstructural insight into the in vivo cornea in both health and disease, including epithelial changes, stromal degenerative or dystrophic diseases, endothelial pathologies, and corneal deposits and infections. Ophthalmologists use acquired confocal corneal images to identify health and disease states and then to diagnose which type of disease is affecting the cornea. This paper presents the main features of the healthy confocal corneal layers, and reviews the most common corneal diseases. It identifies the visual signature of each disease in the affected layer and extracts the main features of this disease in terms of intensity, certain regular shapes with both their size and diffusion, and some specific region of interest. These features will lead towards the development of a complete automatic corneal diagnostic system which predicts abnormalities in the confocal corneal data sets.

碩士
國立臺南大學
特殊教育學系碩士在職專班
103
This study aims to explore consumer expectation and consumer satisfaction in visually-impaired massage in the Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, hoping to provide visually-impaired massage places and visually-impaired massage masseurs or masseuses with reference resources to improve their service quality. A structured questionnaire was developed, purposive sampling was applied, data were collected from March 1st to 30th, 2015, and 124 useable copies were returned. Importance-performance analysis (IPA) was used to analyze consumer expectation and satisfaction degree on service items. Descriptive statistics, t-test, One-way ANOVA, Multiple Response Analysis and Paired-Sample t-test was performed to identify differences between consumer expectation and perception of services in five dimensions, which are tangibles, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, and empathy.The results are summarized as follows. First, when receiving visually-impaired massage service, consumers expected most in two aspects: the cleanness and comfort of the environment and furnishing of the massage room, and the professional expertise and massage skills of the masseur or masseuse. They cared least on whether the masseur or masseuse expressed birthday or holiday greetings. Second, consumers showed greatest satisfaction when they could feel relieved and at ease while receiving a massage. They showed least satisfaction with the birthday or holiday greetings from the masseur or masseuse. Third, the overall average satisfaction is above “average” but below “satisfaction,” which means there is still some room for improvement. Fourth, the IPA analysis reveals that to improve service quality, considerable efforts are required to be made by both visually-impaired massage room managers and masseurs and masseuses in the following ways: Massage rooms should be improved both exteriorly and interiorly by making them bright, attractive, refreshing and comfortable. Besides, more consideration should be shown for consumers, for example, by offering consumers a temporary storage shelf or tissue paper. As for the masseur or masseuse, he or she should take more care of his or her personal hygiene and wear clean and neat working clothes. Besides, he or she had better elaborate on the service items offered to help the consumer decide which service to take.