Books by "Michael J. Pfeifer"
4 books found
Computer Vision in the Infrared Spectrum
by Michael Teutsch, Angel D. Sappa, Riad I. Hammoud
2021 · Morgan & Claypool Publishers
Human visual perception is limited to the visual-optical spectrum. Machine vision is not. Cameras sensitive to the different infrared spectra can enhance the abilities of autonomous systems and visually perceive the environment in a holistic way. Relevant scene content can be made visible especially in situations, where sensors of other modalities face issues like a visual-optical camera that needs a source of illumination. As a consequence, not only human mistakes can be avoided by increasing the level of automation, but also machine-induced errors can be reduced that, for example, could make a self-driving car crash into a pedestrian under difficult illumination conditions. Furthermore, multi-spectral sensor systems with infrared imagery as one modality are a rich source of information and can provably increase the robustness of many autonomous systems. Applications that can benefit from utilizing infrared imagery range from robotics to automotive and from biometrics to surveillance. In this book, we provide a brief yet concise introduction to the current state-of-the-art of computer vision and machine learning in the infrared spectrum. Based on various popular computer vision tasks such as image enhancement, object detection, or object tracking, we first motivate each task starting from established literature in the visual-optical spectrum. Then, we discuss the differences between processing images and videos in the visual-optical spectrum and the various infrared spectra. An overview of the current literature is provided together with an outlook for each task. Furthermore, available and annotated public datasets and common evaluation methods and metrics are presented. In a separate chapter, popular applications that can greatly benefit from the use of infrared imagery as a data source are presented and discussed. Among them are automatic target recognition, video surveillance, or biometrics including face recognition. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for well-fitting sensor setups and data processing algorithms for certain computer vision tasks. We address this book to prospective researchers and engineers new to the field but also to anyone who wants to get introduced to the challenges and the approaches of computer vision using infrared images or videos. Readers will be able to start their work directly after reading the book supported by a highly comprehensive backlog of recent and relevant literature as well as related infrared datasets including existing evaluation frameworks. Together with consistently decreasing costs for infrared cameras, new fields of application appear and make computer vision in the infrared spectrum a great opportunity to face nowadays scientific and engineering challenges.
“All power to the people!” So goes the familiar slogan of 1960s racial justice politics. The message is clear: the fight against racism is a fight for greater democracy—for the rule of “the people.” And yet, across American history, movements of racial backlash have also framed themselves as aiming to deliver greater democracy and redeem the rule of “the people.” Examples abound, ranging from the Southern Redeemers who overthrew Reconstruction, to the “populist” backlash to the civil rights movement, and the white revanchism of our own time. How is it that we find claims to greater democracy on both sides of these struggles? What does this reveal about modern democracy, popular sovereignty, and the peculiar politics of race in America? The Counterrevolutionary Shadow: Race, Democracy, and the Making of the American People provides a novel account of the relationship between race and democratic politics in the United States. Across five chapters, Michael Gorup turns to the life and work of key figures in the history of American political thought—including Thomas Jefferson, Hosea Easton, David Walker, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Huey P. Newton—to argue that racial politics in the United States has always been a politics of peoplehood. Racism is what Gorup calls a politics of “popular enclosure”: it limits the scope of democratic power by circumscribing who is said to belong to “the people.” In so doing, it contains democratization from within. Neither strictly antidemocratic, nor a necessary entailment of modern democracy as such, Gorup argues that racism is best understood as a political construct developed to manage, if never fully reconcile, the contradictions that beset settler democracy. Racism is, in short, American democracy’s “counterrevolutionary shadow”—a technology for rendering despotic practices like enslavement, exploitation, and dispossession tolerable within a society where the people are said to rule.
A Practical Manual of Diabetic Foot Care
by Michael E. Edmonds, Alethea V. M. Foster, Lee Sanders
2008 · John Wiley & Sons
A practical clinical manual for the diagnosis, treatment - both medical and surgical - and the long-term care of foot problems in people with diabetes. The authors are world-renowned experts in this subject and they present the internationally recognised best practice. The clinical chapters are presented in a structured, colour-coded format to allow easy reference. The text also includes highlighted best clinical practice tips. Each chapter is accompanied by high-quality, full-colour photographs that provide excellent examples of the earliest presenting signs as well as illustrating the step-by-step guidance on treatment. This book is an essential manual for every healthcare professional involved in the care of patients with diabetes.
This fully updated and expanded second edition of a highly popular text book focuses on the structure and mechanism in carbohydrate chemistry and biochemistry. Carbohydrates play important roles in biological systems as energy sources, as structural materials, and as informational structures (when they are often attached to proteins or lipids). Their chemical reactivity and conformational behaviour is governed by mechanistic and stereochemical rules, which apply as much to enzymic as to non-enzymic reactivity. The same principles of reactivity and conformation govern changes brought about in the process industries, such as pulp, paper and food. Extensively referenced with citations and a detailed index, the book contains everything the reader needs to know to start a carbohydrate research project with one of the real strengths being the treatment and integration of the important physical-chemical principles and methods (though lead references only are given to the finer points of carbohydrate synthesis). The book is suitable for both researchers who are new to the subject and those more established as well as a readership from diverse backgrounds and interests, including chemists, biochemists, food scientists and technologists involved with the processing of polysaccharides in the paper, textile, cosmetics, biofuels and other industries.