Search Results

Event modeling systems provide a semantic interpretation of sequences of pixels that are captured by a video camera. The design of a practical system has to take into account the following three main factors: low-level preprocessing limitations, computational and storage complexity of the event model, and user interaction. The hidden Markov model (HMM) and its variants have been widely used to model both speech and video signals. Computational efficiency of the Baum-Welch and the Viterbi algorithms has been a leading reason for the popularity of the HMM. Since the objective is to detect events in video sequences that are meaningful to humans, one might want to provide space in the design loop for a user who can specify events of interest. This chapter explores this using semantic approaches that not only use features extracted from raw video streams but also incorporate metadata and ontologies of activities. It presents three approaches for applications such as event recognition: anomaly detection, temporal segmentation, and ontology evaluation. The three approaches discussed are statistical methods based on HMMs, formal grammars, and ontologies. The effectiveness of these approaches is illustrated using video sequences captured both indoors and outdoors: the indoor UCF human action dataset, the TSA airport tarmac surveillance dataset, and the bank monitoring dataset.

This chapter considers the basic properties of hidden Markov processes (HMPs) or hidden Markov models (HMMs), a special type of stochastic process. It begins with a discussion of three distinct types of HMMs and shows that they are all equivalent from the standpoint of their expressive power or modeling ability: Type 1 hidden Markov model, or a HMM of the deterministic function of a Markov chain type; hidden Markov model of Type 2, or a HMM of the random function of a Markov chain type; and hidden Markov model of Type 3, or a HMM of the joint Markov process type. The chapter also examines various issues related to the computation of likelihoods in a HMM before concluding with an overview of the Viterbi algorithm and the Baum–Welch algorithm.

This chapter examines how Hugo Bettauer’s 1923 novel The City Without Jews explicitly addresses the way in which the presence of Jews in interwar Vienna was in fact conditional upon their accepting an abstract form of their own “absence.” By omitting Jewish women from the text, the book also reveals how Jewish men predicated the possibility of their own presence upon the effacement of Jewish women. The implications of this gendered absence are explored via examples from the publishing industry. Publishers provided opportunities for Jewish women to earn a living as writers, translators, and literary agents, but only at the price of strictly limiting their content. Vicki Baum was more successful in the German market, but the rigidity with which she was marketed as a New Woman by her Jewish publishers in Berlin indicates the strict limits placed upon her visibility in the public sphere. Ironically, those same limits allowed Austrian writers like Mela Hartwig to experiment with less mainstream writing styles and content, albeit at the cost of Jewish visibility. The lives of these writers underscore the various ways in which Austrian literature—and its accompanying rules of consumption—framed the condition of Jewish “absence.”

This chapter discusses how a neophyte Hollywood filmmaker (Anthony Mann) directing a veteran Hollywood filmmaker (Erich von Stroheim) led to tensions during production on the low-budget film noir, The Great Flamarion. Given another cursory assignment from Republic Pictures, Mann was able to elevate the exaggerated melodramatic topic of a calculating young female (Mary Beth Hughes) ruining a gullible older man (Stroheim) to fascinating artistic and thematic levels. Although based on a short story by Austrian author Vicki Baum (Grand Hotel), virtually nothing of the original material remains aside from the central figure being a professional sharpshooter. While The Great Flamarion is not as famous as Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street of the same year, the chapter suggests that the Mann picture may have had influences on the more expensive Lang film not only in the choice of subject matter (younger woman exploiting older man) but also in a climactic dialogue scene.

With a focus on the Amazon diaries of Roger Casement and the testimony of West Indian labourers in the Putumayo, this chapter examines literature from the Rubber Boom. In particular, it considers the intersection between fact and fiction in representations of extreme violence in this period, including in The Weeping Wood by the German Jewish émigré writer, Vicki Baum and El sueño del celta by Mario Vargas Llosa. The question of tropical degeneration, and the extent to which it was seen as responsible for the atrocities of the Rubber Boom, is discussed in the second half of the chapter.

This chapter traces the interdependence of three modes of cultural production—pantomime, dance, and silent film—that eschew spoken and written language in favor of body language. What began as a response to a perceived crisis of language in the 1890s was increasingly seen as a way to address pressing social problems by the 1930s. Initially, authors and directors revived the folk tradition of pantomime, turning to gesture as an idealized mode of communication. The development of free dance in Vienna after 1900 merged with this trend. Viennese cultural producers, moreover, used pantomime and dance to negotiate questions of Jewish identity. By the 1920s, Viennese dancers had begun critiquing the social implications of urban industrial modernization in their choreographies. The gestural principles and performative presence underlying pantomime and dance were important templates for silent film and, later, film theory. In Viennese modernist dance, pantomime, and film, gesture was viewed as a kind of urlanguage, a seemingly more truthful, immediate, and universal form of communication than written language. That notion operated on the premise, informed by Vienna’s nineteenth-century anatomical and physiological traditions, that bodies are not only fundamentally legible but also sources of initially hidden knowledge.

This chapter addresses the early stage adaptations of several of Baum’s books. The first musical comedy in 1902–1903 generated huge excitement, and inspired Baum to continue with his second novel in 1904. The following two decades were full of interchange between novels, stage productions, and films, with each iteration fueling interest in the world of Oz and its fantastic characters. The chapter examines several of these productions, including basic information about their contributions, but the focus is on the relationship between the stars chosen for the roles and the talents (dancing, singing, comedy, drama) they brought to the version they starred in. For example, Montgomery and Stone, a comedy duo popular in vaudeville and on Broadway, were the stars of the first show. Thus, it was the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow who were the focus. Other performers, such as Charles Ruggles and Charlotte Greenwood, were the main attractions to their specific productions, too. In the end, the most successful Oz productions found clever ways to allow star players to shine and showcase their talents while maintaining some element of the narrative. It is this formula that would, in part, lead directly to the powerful impact of the 1939 film musical.

This chapter discusses the pivotal Battle of Bennington and its impact on the Saratoga campaign. Once Burgoyne moved from Fort Edward to Fort Miller, he ordered a large detachment of predominately German soldiers under Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum to march to Bennington to capture cattle and other urgently needed supplies. Baum’s force was caught and destroyed by Americans led by Brigadier General John Stark. A relief force led by Heinrich Breymann was unsuccessful and escaped with heavy casualties. With this disaster, Burgoyne lost over 10% of his army, and most of his Indians left after the battle, which severely hurt his ability to gather intelligence. At this point, Burgoyne was faced with perhaps the most momentous decision of the campaign: continue to march to Albany or fall back to Ticonderoga. Despite the loss at Bennington and St. Leger’s failure at Stanwix, Burgoyne decided to push on.

Where marriage, and babies, and friendship are at issue, the capacity to wait turns out to be very important. It appears to be the case, for marriage, for looking to babies, and for friendship, that you won’t stay with them—wait for them this is to say—unless you’ve had a lot of practice at affiliative interaction. In this chapter the author will attempt to illustrate how affiliative interaction becomes so important in the lives of some primates, vervet monkeys in this case, but also the endearing Hall Porter Senf from Vicki Baum’s novel, Grand Hotel. They demonstrate well that, if you haven’t stayed—waited—you won’t have managed any affiliative interaction.

Chapter 5 continues to unpack Congar’s theory of doctrinal development, but this time, highlighting the role that history plays. Consequently, Chapter 5 treats the third and fourth motors of doctrinal development: heresy and history. Examples are given of history’s influence on Church teaching and it is shown that history affects what the Church teaches, that that Church teaches it (at all), and why the Church teaches it this way (rather than another way). Examples are given of how history challenges the Church’s doctrinal tradition (e.g. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus), and how the world assists the Church’s doctrinal tradition (e.g. transubstantiation and philosophical-linguistic influences on doctrine). The second half of the chapter seeks to categorize Congar’s theory of doctrinal development. It compares Congar’s theory to those of other figures (e.g. Jossua, Baum, Journet). It is argued that Congar’s theory can be termed “episodic” but also “homogeneous.”

This essay analyzes the influence of John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dust on recent works of fiction such as Noah Van Sciver's 2015 graphic novel Fante Bukowski. It also explores the influence of such Fante's predecessors as James Branch Cabell, author of Jurgen, on Fante's own fiction, focusing particularly on Fante’s early short story “To Be a Monstrous Fellow.” Key authors of Los Angeles fiction, from L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz) to Steve Erickson (Days Between Stations), are juxtaposed with Fante and his unique literary interpretation of southern California as presented in Ask the Dust.