Search

In an increasingly multilingual and multicultural world, understanding the interactions between language and mathematics is critical, especially when individuals must acquire and exercise their mathematical competencies in multiple languages. Indeed, research shows that, overall, L2 language learners are at an academic disadvantage compared to their L1 peers. The current article briefly overviews how multilingualism influences basic and advanced mathematical skills and interacts with mathematical learning difficulties. We first outline the traditional cognitive models of number learning and language processing. We then discuss the particularities of multilingualism and how it impacts numerical skills such as counting and building lexical-semantic associations, transcoding and arithmetic, mathematical word problems and mathematical performance tests, and dyscalculia diagnosis. We end this review by outlining challenges, recommendations, and solutions for multilingual educational settings. The article is intended as a guide for numerical cognition researchers who work with diverse populations and for mathematics educators and educational policy-makers facing the challenges of a multilingual classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Internet traffic patterns have been changing. Most of the traffic demand by end users is multimedia, in particular, video streaming accounts for over 53%. This demand has led to improved network infrastructures and computing architectures to meet the challenges of delivering these multimedia services while maintaining an adequate quality of experience. Focusing on the preparation and adequacy of multimedia content for broadcasting, Cloud and Edge Computing infrastructures have been and will be crucial to offer high and ultra-high definition multimedia content in live, real-time, or video-on-demand scenarios. For these reasons, this review paper presents a detailed study of research papers related to encoding and transcoding techniques in cloud computing environments. It begins by discussing the evolution of streaming and the importance of the encoding process, with a focus on the latest streaming methods and codecs. Then, it examines the role of cloud systems in multimedia environments and provides details on the cloud infrastructure for media scenarios. After doing a systematic literature review, we have been able to find 49 valid papers that meet the requirements specified in the research questions. Each paper has been analyzed and classified according to several criteria, besides to inspect their relevance. To conclude this review, we have identified and elaborated on several challenges and open research issues associated with the development of video codecs optimized for diverse factors within both cloud and edge architectures. Additionally, we have discussed emerging challenges in designing new cloud/edge architectures aimed at more efficient delivery of media traffic. This involves investigating ways to improve the overall performance, reliability, and resource utilization of architectures that support the transmission of multimedia content over both cloud and edge computing environments ensuring a good quality of experience for the final user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the evidence for the conceptual association between arithmetic and space and quantify the effect size in meta-analyses. We focus on three effects: (a) the operational momentum effect (OME), which has been defined as participants' tendency to overestimate results of addition problems and underestimate results of subtraction problems; (b) the arithmetic cueing effect, in which arithmetic problems serve as spatial cues in target detection or temporal order judgment tasks; and (c) the associations between arithmetic and space observed with eye- and hand-tracking studies. The OME was consistently found in paradigms that provided the participants with numerical response alternatives. The OME shows a large effect size, driven by an underestimation during subtraction while addition was unbiased. In contrast, paradigms in which participants indicated their estimate by transcoding their final estimate to a spatial reference frame revealed no consistent OME. Arithmetic cueing studies show a reliable small to medium effect size, driven by a rightward bias for addition. Finally, eye- and hand-tracking studies point to replicable associations between arithmetic and eye or hand movements. To account for the complexity of the observed pattern, we introduce the Adaptive Pathways in Mental Arithmetic (APiMA) framework. The model accommodates central notions of numerical and arithmetic processing and helps identifying which pathway a given paradigm operates on. It proposes that the divergence between OME and arithmetic cueing studies comes from the predominant use of non-symbolic versus symbolic stimuli, respectively. Overall, our review and findings clearly support an association between arithmetic and spatial processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the acquisition of infrared images in substations, low-quality images with poor contrast, blurred details, and missing texture information frequently appear, which adversely affects subsequent advanced visual tasks. To address this issue, this paper proposes an infrared image enhancement algorithm for substation equipment based on a self-attention cycle generative adversarial network (SA-CycleGAN). The proposed algorithm incorporates a self-attention mechanism into the CycleGAN model's transcoding network to improve the mapping ability of infrared image information, enhance image contrast, and reducing the number of model parameters. The addition of an efficient local attention mechanism (EAL) and a feature pyramid structure within the encoding network enhances the generator's ability to extract features and texture information from small targets in infrared substation equipment images, effectively improving image details. In the discriminator part, the model's performance is further enhanced by constructing a two-channel feature network. To accelerate the model's convergence, the loss function of the original CycleGAN is optimized. Compared to several mainstream image enhancement algorithms, the proposed algorithm improves the quality of low-quality infrared images by an average of 10.91% in color degree, 18.89% in saturation, and 29.82% in feature similarity indices. Additionally, the number of parameters in the proposed algorithm is reduced by 37.89% compared to the original model. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving recognition accuracy is validated by the Centernet target recognition algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the end of the 20th century and the new millennium, while the critical debate on Giovanni Verga seemed to weaken and at the same time his influence on contemporary literature diminished, numerous artists in the musical world drew from the experimentalism inherent to the Catanian writer's verist oeuvre. Through performances that combined theatre, dance, and music, often involving contaminations among different styles, the works of verist Verga transcended the geographical boundaries of Sicily to reach the 'Big Apple' and even reverberated in expressive pop-culture forms, including pop music, combining more traditional pieces in Sicilian dialect with rap sounds. Although the choice of musical works presented in this paper is limited to those based on the novel I Malavoglia and a few short stories, within this corpus containing various reinterpretations by contemporary artists one can find stylistic and thematic inspirations that reflect the cornerstones of Verga's expressive innovation. This is, therefore, a tangible sign that the Etnean author, through the experimentation of his verist workshop, remains relevant in contemporary times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's early accuracy on place value (PV) tasks longitudinally predicts their later multidigit calculation skills. However, another window into children's emerging base-ten concepts is the pattern of errors – "smart errors" – they exhibit on these measures. Past research has speculated that these smart errors – similar to invented spelling – might reflect children's initial PV understanding that might be important for later learning of multidigit numbers and calculation. The current study examines the development of smart errors on Base-Ten Counting (invented counting errors) and Transcoding (expanded errors) in 279 U.S. kindergartners (Mage = 5.76 years) and investigated whether the presence of smart errors is associated with 1) higher concurrent levels of PV task accuracy, 2) greater growth in PV understanding over one year, 3) higher levels of multidigit calculation in second grade. Results indicate that the two errors emerged in an overlapping waves pattern, with expanded errors appearing first and waning earlier than invented counting errors. Kindergartners who made invented counting errors but not expanded errors demonstrated the highest overall concurrent PV understanding. Second, kindergartners who made Transcoding expanded errors showed the greatest growth in PV understanding compared to those who exhibited only invented-counting errors. Third, kindergartners who made invented counting errors alone showed stronger multidigit calculation skills in second grade compared to those who made neither error. Thus, these smart errors reflect partial structural knowledge of place value that is a potentially important developmental contributor to learning multidigit number meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the articulations of generations whose parents and/or grandparents immigrated to Austria and Germany and who have been termed postmigrants. After setting out the theoretical background, it explores three concepts: firstly, the interpretations of migration, integration, Islam and Muslims in German-speaking countries and the role these discourses play in current debates; secondly, the postmigrant perspective, which is central to the present research question; and thirdly, Rancière’s reflections on politics and whether the articulations of postmigrants constitute dissent or counter-hegemony. Next, it presents and analyses specific articulations by postmigrants against the background of the theory. As the results of the study show, members of the postmuslim generation face discrimination, racism and socially produced non-belonging in various areas of society. However, they do not, I contend, allow themselves to be forced into a victim role, instead taking varied and proactive approaches to their experiences, and taking a stand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the linguistic and communication changes taking place in poetic dis­course under the influence of new media. The digital interface (blogs, social networks, applica­tions) affects the transformation of all the parameters of communication, due to the dominance of information channels and codes. The interaction of poetic language with colloquial speech and the influence of digital technologies lead to the creation of new strategies of subjectivation and addressing in contemporary poetry, as well as to an increase in the role of poetic pragmat­ics. In addition, the process of meaning formation in contemporary poetry involves the mech­anism of transcoding, i. e. the transfer of a message from one format to another, which can take place during the conversion from a paper (or analogue) format to a digital one. Transcoding involves a change in the form and content of the message, as well as other communication parameters. The paper classifies and explores in detail the pragmatic parameters that undergo transcoding under the influence of digital technologies, acting as new pragmatic techniques of poetic utterance.

The flexibility to listen to the contents is critical for an improved understanding of web information. The Speech Synthesizer Markup Language (SSML) provides a link between the speech engine and HTML-formatted online content; nevertheless, it introduces the risks of inconsistent content between SSML and HTML5 content and incorrect file linking between them. Because HTML5 is the container, annotating the SSML elements into the HTML5 is the logical solution to these challenges. Thus, in this paper, we propose a methodology called Position-based Markup Language Annotation Process (PMLAP) that aims to (1) streamline the annotation process of applying SSML elements at a specific position in the HTML5 elements through the custom data attribute called the data-* attribute and (2) offers a flat learning curve for the web developers to grasp the annotation process. The methodology consists of four distinct steps which produce an annotated HTML5. This output can then be used as the input of PMLAP transcoder to extract the relevant information and generate the respective SSML document automatically. Thus, we also present the design of the transcoder which has been implemented using Javascript. We then illustrate the applicability of PMLAP using a running example followed by validating the generated SSML produced by the transcoder using the available tools, namely, ExtendClass Text Compare, a text comparison tool to check the string well-formedness and AWS Polly TTS, a text-to-speech web service for checking the correctness of the generated speech. The validation results indicate the viability of the transcoder to achieve the research goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do forensic examiners know if they have altered an image stream when converting a digital image from one codec or file container to another for analysis? Forensic standards and best practices recommend avoiding alteration or degradation of multimedia data during transcoding. An image stream hashing method was recently introduced to the forensic science community to answer the question above. This paper offers an initial validation study of image stream hashing method that may answer the question above. The first half of the study's experiments tested the image stream hashing method to measure fitness for use in forensic science while identifying errors and limitations. The study's second phase analyzed the systematic errors detected in initial tests to discover error causation. Causation analysis identified four method limitations subsequently used to develop proposed standard controls of method operations. The final study phase repeated the initial experiments used in the first phase while implementing the proposed standard controls of method operations. Initial test results indicated the method had significant error rates, limiting the effectiveness of the method to only three of the five file types used in the study. The final testing phase revealed that implementing proposed standard controls of method operations reduced the potential systematic errors to a negligible level when using the image stream hashing method for content verification. The validation study concluded that examiners could use the image stream hashing method for forensic science only by implementing error mitigation techniques that utilize the proposed standard controls of method operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transcoding is the process of translating between spoken and written numbers, and it is correlated with other mathematical skills. In the present study, we investigated the link between French number writing of 49 students in the third grade (aged 7–9 years) and their language skills. Transcoding in French is of particular interest because the spoken number language system does not completely correspond to that of the written digits (e.g., quatre-vingt-dix [four-twenty-ten] and 90). We hypothesised that the complex linguistic structure of spoken numbers in French would be challenging for students who are learning to transcode. First and second French-language learners' accuracy and errors were recorded during a writing task of 3- to 7-digit numbers. Children also completed linguistic tests (e.g., receptive vocabulary, receptive syntax). Results showed that first- and second-language learners did not differ in their transcoding accuracy. Number size, decade complexity of stimulus number words in French (i.e., numbers containing a complex decade, operationalized as a number between soixante-dix, 70, and quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, 99), and receptive vocabulary predicted children's French transcoding skills. Students were more likely to produce errors (e.g., 68 or 6018 for 78) when they transcoded complex decade numbers compared with simple decade numbers. When an error was made on the complex decade portion of a number, it was likely a lexical error. In conclusion, third graders, both first- and second-language learners, found complex decade numbers challenging and their performance was related to their general vocabulary skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Investigaciones Historicas is the property of Universidad de Valladolid, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper studies the transfictionalization devices involved in adapting the novel Aparição (1959), by Vergílio Ferreira, to cinema, directed by Fernando Vendrell (Aparição, 2018) and scripted by Fátima Ribeiro and João Milagre. The interest is on the process of transcoding from one communicative system to another, and its consequent potential for (re)interpretation and (re)creation (HUTCHEON, 2011) of the novel. Recognizing the difficulty of transporting a worldview of a reflective, metaphysical, existentialist nature like Ferreira’s to cinema, I start from the analysis of filmic semiotics, focusing on the way in which history, time, space, characters are transfigured in the sense of refocus some axes themes of the “original” work. Among the aspects that receive new critical-thematic vigor in the film is the representation of women in a conservative, patriarchal society, in the context of the Salazar dictatorship. This representation is highlighted, greatly, in the gender performances (BUTLER, 1998) that give survival (REIS, 2018) to the characters Sofia and Ana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the didactics of languages and cultures, mediation often enters into a relationship with translation. After the publication of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in 2001, mediation was mainly associated with linguistic transcoding and equated with translation. In the CEFR - Companion volume (2020), the understanding of mediation has been considerably broadened, taking into account the multilingual and multicultural perspective of language use and the conditions for interaction between people with different lifestyles and views. The aim of the paper is to reflect in depth on the nature of the concepts of 'mediation' and 'translation'. Both are interdisciplinary in nature and their main vehicle is language. But there are also many differences between them which do not allow the terms to be used interchangeably. In an analysis of a comparative nature, we will try to show the most important determinants of the mediation and translation process, referring to their use in the context of language learning and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Forma y Funcion is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We study the representation of real numbers by Perron series (P-representation) given by 0 ; 1 ∋ x = ∑ n = 0 ∞ r 0 r 1 ⋯ r n p 1 - 1 p 1 ⋯ p n - 1 p n p n + 1 = Δ p 1 p 2 ⋯ P , where rn, pn ∈ ℕ, pn+1 ≥ rn + 1, and its transcoding ( P ¯ -representation) x = Δ g 1 g 2 ⋯ P ¯ , where gn = pn − rn−1. We establish the properties of P ¯ -representations typical of almost all numbers with respect to the Lebesgue measure (normal properties of the representations of numbers). We also examine the conditions of existence of the frequency of a digit i in the P ¯ -representation of a number x = Δ g 1 g 2 ⋯ g 2 ⋯ P ¯ defined by the equality ν i P ¯ x = lim k → ∞ N i P ¯ x , k k , where N i P ¯ x , k denotes the amount of numbers n such that gn = i and n ≤ k. In particular, we establish conditions under which the frequency ν i P ¯ x exists and is constant for almost all x ∈ (0; 1]. In addition, we also determine the conditions under which the digits in P ¯ -representations are encountered finitely or infinitely many times for almost all numbers from (0; 1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study experimentally tested how well Setswana native speakers know numbers in their language, and whether they can articulate numbers of varying complexities in Setswana. To this end, we present results from a computerbased number transcoding task on how Setswana speakers identify and articulate number digits in Setswana. We measured participants' (N = 104, 48 males and 55 females, 18-35 years old) response times and accuracy scores to four different types of stimuli: single, double, triple, and quadruple digits. Results confirm the study hypothesis that simple numbers are easier to identify and name in Setswana than more complex digits. Both reaction times and accuracy scores show that less complex numbers have shorter reaction times and high accuracy scores, while more complex quadruple numbers take longer to identify and name in Setswana, and attract low correctness scores. Results have various implications and reflect how numeracy skills are taught, and how Setswana speakers generally use numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monster-as-queer trope in horror cinema historically implemented the binary of self-versus-other as heterosexual heroine versus queer monster/villain. With the rise of queer creators and spectators within horror, this trope was questioned so that the queer(ed) monster became multifaceted. From its birth, the horror anthology series American Horror Story has questioned this binary thinking, and the 2018 season Apocalypse exemplifies this best. Using camp, the show creates a queer basis that overthrows normative depictions of sexuality and queer bodies in television. In Apocalypse—in which the "normative" is represented as inherently queer—a subversive reimagining of typically "Othered" bodies overturns the regime of representation in horror cinema. By analyzing how the villain of Apocalypse, the Antichrist, is (re)presented with an ambiguously gendered body and sexuality, I argue that the toppling of heteropatriarchy challenges the position of the Othered villain/monster so that their "evil" is made ambiguous in contextualization with queer futurism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intel includes in its recent processors a powerful set of instructions capable of processing 512‐bit registers with a single instruction (AVX‐512). Some of these instructions have no equivalent in earlier instruction sets. We leverage these instructions to efficiently transcode strings between the most common formats: UTF‐8 and UTF‐16. With our novel algorithms, we are often twice as fast as the previous best solutions. For example, we transcode Chinese text from UTF‐8 to UTF‐16 at more than 5 GiB s−1$$ {\mathrm{s}}^{-1} $$ using fewer than 2 CPU instructions per character. To ensure reproducibility, we make our software freely available as an open‐source library. Our library is part of the popular Node.js JavaScript runtime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manoel Bispo Corrêa (1945-) is a visual artist, teacher, and poet from Pará. He has been living in Amapá since 1954. Bispo wrote Cristais das horas (1978), Mental real (1986), Canto dos meu cantares (1990), Intátil (2002), Amostra grátis (2004), and Palavras de festim (2007). For this research, we are interested in his last work, which explores what we call Amazonian Concretism, characterized by the manipulation of the form and content of words, with the aim of developing an aesthetic linked to local aspects, using images of water and forests. Based on various formalizations (Flusser, 2010) provided by new media (Manovich, 2005a) and understanding the prehistoric influence that Funkhouser (2007) establishes between concrete poetry and digital poetry, we seek to present a product, carrying out Palavras de festim's transcoding. We were inspired by the transcoding observed upon Artéria 8 website, released in 2003 by Omar Khouri and Fabio Fon. This volume of the experimental magazine appropriated poems by Arnaldo Antunes, Décio Pignatari, Erthos Albino de Souza, Julio Plaza, among others. In this artistic research exercise (Coessens, 2014), we will archive Bispo's work on a website (whose domain is still in the testing phase), using three different programming languages (HTML, Javascript, and CSS), in partnership with the technical staff of Lilas research group from the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Amapá (Ifap). Three cyberpoems are ready so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies language specific errors made with transcoding tasks to inform possible future pedagogic decisions regarding the language used when teaching early number. We compared children aged 5–7 years from Kuwait and England. The spoken Arabic language of Kuwait gave the opportunity to compare not only languages where the tens and units digits are said in a different order, but also where the direction of writing is different. We asked 396 children from Kuwait and 256 children from England to write down 2-, and 3-digit numbers which were spoken to them. We found that the direction of the language did not affect the nature of errors made, but that other aspects of the two languages could account for some of the differences we found. As well as supporting previous studies regarding the significance of the order in which the tens and units are said, we found significance in the role the word and can play in marking the number of digits involved. We also noted that the way the numbers 20, 100 and 200 are said in Arabic can set up particular symbolic associations which could account for other differences we found. Having identified language-specific errors, we discuss possible pedagogic decisions to temporarily use more regular language for the number names in each of the languages and propose the order in which number names are taught might be different to their mathematical order of magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current longitudinal study measured 279 kindergartners' (Mage=5.76 years; SD = 0.55; 135 females) place value understanding using both approximate and syntactic measures based on previous evidence that early variation in performance on approximate measures was associated with subsequent syntactic place value understanding. In the present study, we used the same dataset but traced kindergarten variation on both approximate and syntactic measures to children's multidigit calculation skill in second grade. Path analyses indicated that latent approximate place value knowledge predicted later multidigit calculation performance but more precise understanding of counts and base-ten units did not. However, among the individual task predictors, Base-Ten Counting was the strongest predictor followed by a task asking for specific count of units (e.g. 'Which number has [two tens]?') and reading and writing number names (Transcoding). Thus, multidigit calculation skills appear to develop from an emerging, but imprecise understanding of count + unit syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of Juri Lotman’s birth. On this occasion, I propose to return to one of Lotman’s concepts, namely that of frame. The term was proposed in The structure of the artistic text (1970/1977), in the traditional understanding of a limit that separates a text produced in any kind of medium from extra-textual structures (other texts) or non-text (real-life contexts). This notion of frame comes close to its understanding in literary studies, as well as the theory and philosophy of art and should not be confused with a well-known concept of frame propagated in AI Studies (Minsky 1975; Petöfi 1976) and which refers to a global cognitive pattern of storing common-sense knowledge about particular concepts and situations in memory. Lotman returned to the discussion of the textual frame in Universe of the mind (1990), mainly in application to the fine arts. He also elaborated there a more inclusive concept of boundary (proposed in Lotman 1984/2005) as a demarcation of the semiosphere and of its internal subsystems, which necessitates constant translations between particular codes and languages. Lotman dubbed transgressions of textual borders transcoding, which in contemporary parlance is a clear manifestation of transmediality. Therefore, I propose to analyse the concept of frame in relation to Intermedial Studies (cf. Elleström, 2014). Such crossings of boundaries between different media/modes/modalities are simultaneously creative and potentially confusing, in that they display a semiotic collision of artistic codes and require a heightened processing effort on the part of the addressee. My vantage point is basically semiotic, with the focus of interest going less to verbal texts and more to the issues of frame in the visual arts. Semiotic considerations on the problem of boundaries are complemented with brief phenomenologically-oriented ponderings on aesthetic and cognitive import of framing devices (Crowther, 2009) that emphasize their antithetical function as: a) devices with their own artistic value, even complementing the text vs. b) “defences against the exterior” and hindrances to creative liberty. First, I turn to two areas of interest of Lotman himself: 1) the extension of artistic media in Baroque art and 2) collages, which I treat as transmediality through surface. Lotman perceived collages as a collision of the fictitious with the real, referring to their doubly figurative nature (metonymical and metaphorical). Next, I complement this discussion with examples taken from 20th-century painting and sculpture, e.g. Spatialism, Minimalism, and Hyperrealism. Of particular interest is the situation in which the frame becomes a text commenting on its content or plays a metatextual function. Another game worthy of attention is embedding of frames. The discussion closes with the case of transmedial effects between painting and theatre, illustrated by Polish painter and stage-director Tadeusz Kantor’s theatrical experiments in Cracovian Cricot 2 Theatre: a) Velázquez’s Infanta Margarita entering Kantor’s self-portraits and a photo-portrait frame in the performance Today is my birthday (1990); b) Kantor stepping out of the frame of his own self-portrait on the illusory boundary between real life, painting and theatre. The article posits to treat frame and multiple ways of transgressing it as an integrational phenomenon that opens a path for further interdisciplinary studies across the borders of artistic semiotics, Intermedial Studies, literary theorizing and the theory and philosophy of art.

Video data received for analysis often come in a variety of file formats and compression schemes. These data are often transcoded to a consistent file format for forensic examination and/or ingesting into a video analytic system. The file format often requested is an MP4 file format. The MP4 file format is a very common and a universally accepted file format. The practical application of this transcoding process, across the analytical community, has generated differences in video quality. This study sought to explore possible origins of the differences and assist the practitioner by defining minimum recommendations to ensure that quality of the video data is maintained through the transcoding process. This study sought to generate real world data by asking participants to transcode provided video files to an MP4 file format using programs they would typically utilize to perform this task. The transcoded results were evaluated based on measurable metrics of quality. As the results were analyzed, determining why these differences might have occurred became less about a particular software application and more about the settings employed by the practitioner or of the capabilities of the program. This study supports the need for any video examiner who is transcoding video data to be cognizant of the settings utilized by the programs employed for transcoding video data, as loss of video quality can affect analytics as well as further analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Avances en PsicologÍa Latinoamericana is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the context of global environmental change, radical policy change is often called for. Experts are frequently involved and can act as policy entrepreneurs to make such change happen. This paper presents an analysis of a historical case where radical policy change took place at large scale, namely the development of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). In this endeavor, experts were deeply embedded in the designing of radical new policies. First, we demonstrate for the first time how experts can act as policy entrepreneurs alongside the EU Commission, and insist on the importance of not neglecting the agency of experts in EU radical policy change. Second, we elaborate on the complexity of the interactions between the policy and politics streams of Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework. In his framework, Kingdon describes the policy process as three parallel streams (a problem, a policy and politics) where policy entrepreneurs are the ones ''making the coupling of the streams" (Kingdon, 1984, p188). However, we argue that there is more to understand from the actual processes that make the streams entangled and allow for policy change to become a reality. We propose the concept of transcoding from the STS literature to illustrate the action of policy entrepreneurs in bridging the policy and politics streams. With this concept, we intend to show the processes that translate scientifically endorsed approaches and understandings into policy decisions, and to open new research possibilities in complement to the Multiple Stream Framework. • The European Commission is not the only policy entrepreneur in environmental change. • Experts have an active role in both EU policy and politics as policy entrepreneurs. • The concept of ''transcoding" can complement Kingdon's Multiple Stream Framework. • Transcoding shows how policy entrepreneurs can bridge policy and politics streams. • The Water Framework Directive had a window of opportunity in radical policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuropsychological case-studies suggested that dates and encyclopedic numbers may be processed differently than unknown numbers. However, this issue was seldom investigated in healthy participants. Therefore, it is unclear whether known dates are read like words (as lexical items), or like numbers (each position strictly defines digits’ values in a base-10 system). Here, we compared dates to unknown numbers in an experiment using a paradigm from the word recognition literature. We assessed the word-superiority effect by testing experts (students/ teachers in History) with dates. A 4-characters stimulus (xxxx; letters or numbers, half known/unknown) was presented centrally, masked, and followed by 2 characters above and below the mask, at position 2 (xXxx) or 3 (xxXx) in an alternative-forced-choice recognition task. Both accuracy and reaction times were better for dates than unknown numbers, similarly to the results obtained with words by comparison to non-words. However, this effect was modulated by position in the string. These results show a “date-superiority effect” revealing that dates are processed differently than unknown numbers, and suggest that similar orthographical mechanisms might be used to process dates and words.

Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The developments in smartphones, high data rates, and substantial video data traffic have increased the burden on cellular networks. Consequently, this burden significantly affects the Quality of Experience of the cellular users leading to an increased network delay for the diverse video content requests. To accommodate the requests from different users with varying requirements, one of the promising solutions is to cache videos in the near vicinity of users and transcode them online. The online transcoding is performed at the edge level of the cellular network to minimize the network delay and use the bandwidth efficiently. However, the feasibility of online transcoding is significantly affected by various factors, such as the codecs, configurations of virtual machines, the cost incurred, and estimated time to complete the transcoding task, among other parameters. Although online transcoding is discussed in the literature adequately, few studies discuss the feasibility of online transcoding while considering all the aforementioned critical parameters. This study examined the effects of a diverse range of critical parameters on the feasibility of online transcoding. We performed extensive simulations on the local machine environment to study various possible factors affecting online transcoding in detail. We then transcoded the same videos on Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) Virtual Machines (VMs) to further study realistic cloud settings with fine-tuned configurations. Our experiments show the superior performance of some codecs and the effects of machine configurations on transcoding tasks duration. We aim to provide a benchmark for practitioners and researchers considering online transcoding in real-time multimedia applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the fundamental challenges faced in deploying multimedia systems is delivering smooth and uninterrupted audio-visual information anywhere and anytime. In such systems, multimedia content is compressed within a certain format, this requires format conversion for various devices. Thus, a transcoding mechanism is required to make the content adaptive for various devices in the network. Video transcoding converts one digitally encoded format into another, this involves translating any file format containing video and audio at the same time. This is an essential feature for devices that do not support a specific format of media or have limited storage that requires a reduced file size. Through this paper, we provide a novel way of transcoding the block-based video coding schemes using cloud architecture by establishing a video pipelining architecture. The solution discussed in this paper would enable the end users to extract videos in any format and resolution seamlessly, combined with the scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of the cloud. The proposed idea would be lucrative for all the video streaming applications that are currently relying on their legacy infrastructure for video transcoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forensic examination of digital audio, video, and images frequently requires transforming multimedia data from one format to another. The transformative activity may cause changes to the administrative elements of the file but leave the multimedia streams unchanged and intact. However, the forensic science community has a method knowledge gap in accurately determining if the multimedia streams changed or remained the same in the transformative processes. This paper illustrates the practical use of multimedia stream hashing as a forensic method for verifying multimedia content. A universal stream hashing tool decodes the multimedia stream data at rest in a file container. Subsequently, it calculates the data stream hash using reference video, audio, and image codecs. This paper illustrates that the multimedia stream hashing method can accurately confirm the integrity of digital images, videos, and audio following transmission, transcoding, or re‐containerization. Our findings confirmed that stream hashing could accurately detect changes in multimedia streams during transcoding. Furthermore, the stream hashing method can also accurately detect matching multimedia streams. In addition, this paper verified the forensic use of the multimedia stream hash method while establishing the error rate for its use. The hash algorithms used in stream hashing have zero false negative rates by design. However, the false positive (error rate) is extremely low and depends on hashing algorithm. Finally, we recommend the forensic science community adopt the multimedia stream hashing method as an initial testing method. The method can verify a multimedia stream's conversion (transcoding) from one codec to another using FFmpeg. Highlights: Re‐encoding of multimedia streams must be transparent for forensic examinations.Multimedia stream hashing is a stream integrity verification method used in forensic science.Multimedia stream hashing has an extremely low potential for a false positive (error rate). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro is the property of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The flourishing progress of social networks and short video platforms has sparked concerns about the copyright protection of rapidly disseminating videos. Video watermarking has emerged as an effective means to embed copyright information into host videos to protect intellectual property. However, existing methods have limitations on countering social platform transcoding and hybrid attacks. To this end, we propose an adaptive video watermarking scheme. In our approach, we propose a novel adaptive high-frequency quantization (AHFQ) strategy based on intra/inter-frame distortion drift and texture joint features, which mitigates the effects of distortion drift and bolsters the resilience against social platform transcoding and hybrid attacks while maintaining good imperceptibility. We also put forward a novel quadruple synchronization verification (QSV) mechanism to tackle the issue of watermark extraction amidst synchronization attacks, specifically asymmetric cropping. Moreover, we devise a loss function to reconstruct the intricate video operation mechanism, facilitating a deeper comprehension of social platform transcoding and significantly fortifying the robustness of our algorithm in the face of social platform transcoding. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method achieves improved visual quality and exhibits resilience against social platform transcoding, strong recompression, and hybrid attacks, including synchronization attacks (e.g., cropping, frame dropping) accompanied by strong compression. • Develop an adaptive video watermarking based on distortion drift and texture features. • A quadruple synchronization mechanism was adopted to counter synchronous attacks. • The video manipulation mechanism of social platforms was analyzed and reconstructed. • Experiments confirmed its resistance to social platform transcoding and hybrid attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fake audio detection is a growing concern and some relevant datasets have been designed for research. However, there is no standard public Chinese dataset under complex conditions. In this paper, we aim to fill in the gap and design a Chinese fake audio detection dataset (CFAD) for studying more generalized detection methods. Twelve mainstream speech-generation techniques are used to generate fake audio. To simulate the real-life scenarios, three noise datasets are selected for noise adding at five different signal-to-noise ratios, and six codecs are considered for audio transcoding (format conversion). CFAD dataset can be used not only for fake audio detection but also for detecting the algorithms of fake utterances for audio forensics. Baseline results are presented with analysis. The results that show fake audio detection methods with generalization remain challenging. The CFAD dataset is publicly available. 1 1 https://zenodo.org/record/8122764. • We construct a standard public Chinese dataset CFAD for fake audio detection studies under complex conditions. • CFAD dataset considers 12 types of fake audio under noisy conditions and transcoding (format conversion) conditions. • Detailed and sufficient baselines of fake audio detection and fake algorithm recognition are provided. • CFAD is publicly available (https://zenodo.org/record/8122764). • Generalization studies across unseen types, mismatched background noise and media codecs are supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract the complex dynamics engendered by distributive asymmetry, climate change, and the effects of mass movement of people and cultures, in the context of transformations informed by processes of shifting and permanency, pose a question of a political and social but also cultural and epistemological nature. The promotion of learning processes focusing on these problems and on pertinent solutions emerges as a central aspect for the construction of a plural and inclusive city and it implies the cognizance of what can be referred to as citizenship. The article discusses a different approach to the crucial concepts of learning, intersubjectivity, and the relationship between our body and the environment of which it is part. The objective is the formulation of a definition of the concept of mind different from those still dominant, which can support new mindfulness of the range of problems affecting urban territories and the type of solution that needs to be adopted.

In the design of action recognition models, the quality of videos is an important issue; however, the trade-off between the quality and performance is often ignored. In general, action recognition models are trained on high-quality videos, hence it is not known how the model performance degrades when tested on low-quality videos, and how much the quality of training videos affects the performance. The issue of video quality is important, however, it has not been studied so far. The goal of this study is to show the trade-off between the performance and the quality of training and test videos by quantitative performance evaluation of several action recognition models for transcoded videos in different qualities. First, we show how the video quality affects the performance of pre-trained models. We transcode the original validation videos of Kinetics400 by changing quality control parameters of JPEG (compression strength) and H.264/AVC (CRF). Then we use the transcoded videos to validate the pre-trained models. Second, we show how the models perform when trained on transcoded videos. We transcode the original training videos of Kinetics400 by changing the quality parameters of JPEG and H.264/AVC. Then we train the models on the transcoded training videos and validate them with the original and transcoded validation videos. Experimental results with JPEG transcoding show that there is no severe performance degradation (up to −1.5%) for compression strength smaller than 70 where no quality degradation is visually observed, and for larger than 80 the performance degrades linearly with respect to the quality index. Experiments with H.264/AVC transcoding show that there is no significant performance loss (up to −1%) with CRF30 while the total size of video files is reduced to 30%. In summary, the video quality doesn’t have a large impact on the performance of action recognition models unless the quality degradation is severe and visible. This enables us to transcode the training and validation videos and reduce the file sizes to one-third of the original videos.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are one of the devices used to collect big data as part of the artificial intelligence of things (AIoT). To reduce total energy consumption, most researchers focus on optimizing the number and the location of UAVs, but ignore the distribution of UAVs in relation to the AIoT devices. Therefore, this paper proposes a memetic algorithm based on isomorphic transcoding space (MA-IT) to optimize the deployment of UAVs, solving, in particular, the distribution of UAVs in energy-efficient AIoT data collection. First, a simplified encoding method is designed to reduce the search space. This method only uses the distribution to represent a solution, and the number and the location of UAVs can be greedily deduced through the distribution. Afterwards, a pseudo-random initialization is proposed to initialize a population randomly and greedily. Then, an isomorphic transcoding (isoTcode) method is proposed to identify solutions with the isomorphic relations and to represent these solutions in a practical way in the UAV deployment problem. Finally, a crossover and a local search based on the isoTcode method are proposed to increase the solution diversity and improve the solution quality. Comparative experiments are conducted in the randomly generated instances with three problem scales. The results show that MA-IT performs better than other algorithms for solving the deployment optimization of UAVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distributed lossless coding system based on cloud computing is proposed to increase the video transcoding capacity of the new media interactive broadcasting project in the research department. Distributed transcoding is carried out by using the programming ideas of two Hadoop cores: HDFS (Hadoop distributed file system) and map reduce. At the same time, the specific process of distributed transcoding is introduced and designed in detail. The experimental results show that the efficiency of the distributed transcoding scheme is greatly improved. The results show that this experiment selects the 32 m with the best segment size as the benchmark, and calculates that the distributed transcoding time is 60.3% higher than the traditional single machine transcoding. This improvement significantly improves the transcoding efficiency, improves the experience effect of video service, and adapts to the trend of the rapid development of new media in the current era. The design of the system architecture not only greatly improves the transcoding efficiency, but also saves the transcoding time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the low-power video communication with low latency at resource-constrained terminals in the Internet of Things, a machine learning-based fast transcoding from distributed video coding (DVC) to high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) is put forward. In order to accelerate the transcoding, the DVC decoding information is efficiently exploited to reduce HEVC encoding complexity at both levels of coding unit (CU) and prediction unit (PU). First of all, the predictions of CU partition and PU modes are regarded as two binary classification tasks. Subsequently, the initial features are extracted from the DVC decoding information and the support vector machine (SVM)-recursive feature elimination algorithm is adopted to select feature vectors to construct the training data which is used to train the SVM classifiers for CU and PU, respectively. By means of the top-down division prediction method, the CU partition is first determined by the trained SVM classifier. For the CUs which are not further split, the PU modes will be predicted to terminate the quad-tree coding process of HEVC in advance, so that HEVC encoding complexity is reduced. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can reduce 57.64% computational complexity on average with Bjøntegaard delta bit-rate 2.43%. In terms of transcoding time efficiency, the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art fast DVC to HEVC transcoding algorithms based on machine learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research discusses the documentary analysis of comics in a semiotics framework in order to guarantee library retrieval by users. Comic cataloging presents difficulties due to their being a resource that integrates both verbal and non-verbal language. The objective of this exploratory, qualitative and applied research is to look into the relationships that can be established between cataloging and semiotics of culture, in order to contribute to the theoretical and epistemological grounds of the organization and representation of information in comics. Through bibliographic procedures, the results are traced by means of the content analysis method. The concepts developed by the semiotics of culture can contribute to cataloging, mainly in the processes of document reading, subject analysis, and subject cataloging. The results demonstrate that the concepts of cultural semiotics allow defining aspects of the semiosphere of the author and the cataloguer, since both permeate the construction of the bibliographic record of comics. In conclusion, the cataloger, as a mediator, is in charge of understanding the cultural codes that make up the semiosphere of comics, thus assuring the user the conditions to satisfy their informational needs, through translation and transcoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video watermarking technology has attracted increasing attention in the past few years, and a great deal of traditional and deep learning-based methods have been proposed. However, these existing methods usually suffer from the following two challenges: First, most algorithms cannot resist camcorder recording attack, which limits their practical application. Second, watermark embedding may cause substantial degradation of video quality. Through analyzing the unique distortions presented in the camcorder recording process, including geometric distortion, temporal sampling distortion, sensor distortion and processing distortion, this paper proposes a novel spatio-temporal context based adaptive camcorder recording watermarking scheme STACR. In STACR, considering the geometric distortion and video visual quality, we embed the watermark by constructing a spatio-temporal histogram and incorporate a content features based adaptive locating algorithm to select embedding blocks and embedding strengths. As for the temporal sampling attack, we put forward a watermark correlation-based synchronization algorithm and combine it with cross-validation. Moreover, to resist the sensor distortion, we design a local matching-based algorithm to improve the extraction accuracy. In addition, grouped and repeated embedding strategies are combined to cope with the processing distortion. Experimental results compared with the state-of-the-art show that the proposed scheme achieves high video quality and is robust to geometric attacks, compression, scaling, transcoding, recoding, frame rate changes and especially for camcorder recording. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I will develop a reflection on the intersemiotic reconfiguration that the Mozart Choir, under my artistic direction, carried out on Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables — a reconfiguration that took into account the dialogic engagement with some versions of the cinema and musical theatre (essentially in the scope of the scenic and choreographic architecture, the vocal demand, the mimodramatic formulas and the educational purposes).