Digital photography is sweeping the country, and it’s easy to see why. You can take pictures of anything, do it quickly, see instantly what you got, save only the stuff you like, and share your pictures as prints, on the Web, as a slideshow, or even on things like mugs and mousepads. A digital camera and the appropriate software let you Take wide-angle or closeup shots, indoors or out Know immediately whether you got what you wanted Delete shots you don’t (...) like and retake them Improve your images on your computer Combine images into a montage Customize your pictures by adding special visual effects Digital photography is fun, but whether you’re an old hand at taking digital pictures or still picking out your first camera, there are plenty of times when you know what you want to do and just want to figure out how to do it, right now. That’s exactly what Digital Photography Just the Steps For Dummies helps you do. It’s designed so you can quickly find the task you want to perform and follow step-by-step instructions to get the job done, right now. Loaded with full-color photos to show you what you can do, Digital Photography Just the Steps For Dummies helps you Choose the camera, lenses, and flash equipment that are best for the type of photography you want to do Compose good pictures regardless of your subject Scan and digitize existing photos so you can enhance or repair them Change the size or format of an image Adjust color, brightness, contrast, sharpness, and other attributes of a digital image Repair tears, creases, or scratches in a scanned photo, remove red-eye, and restore a faded image Use layers to alter an image, add text, or change the background Photograph items you want to sell online to show them at their best Sort and organize photos on your computer Print picture albums, make photo T-shirts, create a slideshow, or burn a video CD When you’re looking for a clear set of instructions so you can get results right away, you want a Just the Steps For Dummies book. With Digital Photography Just the Steps For Dummies, you’ll find everything quickly comes into focus! (shrink)

INTRODUCTION TO ASPECTS OF FACE PROCESSING: TEN QUESTIONS IN NEED OF ANSWERS. HD Ellis 1. INTRODUCTION These proceedings of the first international ...

In this concise book based on his Arne Ryde Lectures in 2002, Young suggests a conceptual framework for studying strategic learning and highlights theoretical developments in the area. He discusses the interactive learning problem; reinforcement and regret; equilibrium; conditional no-regret learning; prediction, postdiction, and calibration; fictitious play and its variants; Bayesian learning; and hypothesis testing. Young's framework emphasizes the amount of information required to implement different types of learning rules, criteria for evaluating their performance, and alternative notions of (...) equilibrium to which they converge. He also stresses the limits of what can be achieved: for a given type of game and a given amount of information, there may exist no learning procedure that satisfies certain reasonable criteria of performance and convergence. In short, Young has provided a valuable primer that delineates what we know, what we would like to know, and the limits of what we can know, when we try to learn about a system that is composed of other learners. (shrink)

Hidden Markov models (HMMs) have been successful for modelling the dynamics of carefully dictated speech, but their performance degrades severely when used to model conversational speech. Since speech is produced by a system of loosely coupled articulators, stochastic models explicitly representing this parallelism may have advantages for automatic speech recognition (ASR), particularly when trying to model the phonological effects inherent in casual spontaneous speech. This paper presents a preliminary feasibility study of one such model class: loosely coupled HMMs. Exact model (...) estimation and decoding is potentially expensive, so possible approximate algorithms are also discussed. Comparison of one particular loosely coupled model on an isolated word task suggests loosely coupled HMMs merit further investigation. An approximate algorithm giving performance which is almost always statistically indistinguishable from the exact algorithm is also identified, making more extensive research computationally feasible. (shrink)

This study assessed the knowledge and perception of human biological materials (HBM) and biorepositories among three study groups in South Korea. The relationship between the knowledge and the perception among different groups was also examined by using factor and regression analyses. In a self-reporting survey of 440 respondents, the expert group was found more likely to be knowledgeable and positively perceived than the others. Four factors emerged: Sale and Consent, Flexible Use, Self-Confidence, and Korean Bioethics and Biosafety Action restriction perception. (...) The results indicate that those who are well aware of the existence of biobanks were more positively inclined to receive the Sale and Consent perception. As a result of the need for high quality HBMs and the use of appropriate sampling procedures for every aspect of the collection and use process, the biorepository community should pay attention to ethical, legal, and policy issues. (shrink)

This study assessed the knowledge and perception of human biological materials (HBM) and biorepositories among three study groups in South Korea. The relationship between the knowledge and the perception among different groups was also examined by using factor and regression analyses. In a self‐reporting survey of 440 respondents, the expert group was found more likely to be knowledgeable and positively perceived than the others. Four factors emerged: Sale and Consent, Flexible Use, Self‐Confidence, and Korean Bioethics and Biosafety Action restriction perception. (...) The results indicate that those who are well aware of the existence of biobanks were more positively inclined to receive the Sale and Consent perception. As a result of the need for high quality HBMs and the use of appropriate sampling procedures for every aspect of the collection and use process, the biorepository community should pay attention to ethical, legal, and policy issues. (shrink)

Meditation is an umbrella term for a number of mental training practices designed to improve the monitoring and regulation of attention and emotion. Some forms of meditation are now being used for clinical intervention. To accompany the increased clinical interest in meditation, research investigating the neural basis of these practices is needed. A central hypothesis of contemplative neuroscience is that meditative states, which are unique on a phenomenological level, differ on a neurophysiological level. To identify the electrophysiological correlates of meditation (...) practice, the electrical brain activity of highly skilled meditators engaging in one of six meditation styles was recorded. A mind-wandering task served as a control. Lempel–Ziv complexity showed differences in nonlinear brain dynamics during meditation compared with mind wandering, suggesting that meditation, regardless of practice, affects neural complexity. In contrast, there were no differences in power spectra at six different frequency bands, likely due to the fact that participants engaged in different meditation practices. Finally, exploratory analyses suggest neurological differences among meditation practices. These findings highlight the importance of studying the electroencephalography correlates of different meditative practices. (shrink)

All-encompassing text examines every aspect of coma from neurochemistry, monitoring, and treatments to prognostic factors.

School connectedness is the leading protective factor against multiple at-risk behaviors for adolescents. Its far-reaching influence, however, is not widely known. This book provides valuable information about school connectedness, including strategies on how to strengthen life-saving ties with students.