Computer Vision Metrics provides an extensive survey and analysis of over 100 current and historical feature description and machine vision methods, with a detailed taxonomy for local, regional and global features. This book provides necessary background to develop intuition about why interest point detectors and feature descriptors actually work, how they are designed, with observations about tuning the methods for achieving robustness and invariance targets for specific applications. The survey is broader than it is deep, with over 540 references provided to dig deeper. The taxonomy includes search methods, spectra components, descriptor representation, shape, distance functions, accuracy, efficiency, robustness and invariance attributes, and more. Rather than providing ‘how-to’ source code examples and shortcuts, this book provides a counterpoint discussion to the many fine opencv community source code resources available for hands-on practitioners.
Based on the successful 2014 book published by Apress, this textbook edition is expanded to provide a comprehensive history and state-of-the-art survey for fundamental computer vision methods and deep learning. With over 800 essential references, as well as chapter-by-chapter learning assignments, both students and researchers can dig deeper into core computer vision topics and deep learning architectures. The survey covers everything from feature descriptors, regional and global feature metrics, feature learning architectures, deep learning, neuroscience of vision, neural networks, and detailed example architectures to illustrate computer vision hardware and software optimization methods. To complement the survey, the textbook includes useful analyses which provide insight into the goals of various methods, why they work, and how they may be optimized. The text delivers an essential survey and a valuable taxonomy, thus providing a key learning tool for students, researchers and engineers, to supplement the many effective hands-on resources and open source projects, such as OpenCV and other imaging and deep learning tools.
This second edition provides a comprehensive history and state-of-the-art survey for fundamental computer vision methods. Expanded and updated, this book features over 300 new references, totaling over 800 in all, as well as learning assignments at the end of each chapter to help students and researchers dig deeper into key topics. This survey covers everything from imaging devices, computational imaging, interest point detectors, local feature descriptors, regional and global feature metrics, feature learning architectures, deep learning, neuroscience of vision, neural networks, and detailed example architectures to illustrate computer vision hardware and software optimization methods. To complement the survey, the book includes useful analysis to provide intuition into the goals of various methods, why they work, and how they may be optimized. This is not a how-to book with source code examples, but rather a survey and taxonomy intended as a reference tool for researchers and engineers, complimenting the many fine hand-on resources and open source projects such as OpenCV and other imaging and deep learning tools.
In Synthetic Vision: Using Volume Learning and Visual DNA, a holistic model of the human visual system is developed into a working model in C++, informed by the latest neuroscience, DNN, and computer vision research. The author's synthetic visual pathway model includes the eye, LGN, visual cortex, and the high level PFC learning centers. The corresponding visual genome model (VGM), begun in 2014, is introduced herein as the basis for a visual genome project analogous to the Human Genome Project funded by the US government. The VGM introduces volume learning principles and Visual DNA (VDNA) taking a multivariate approach beyond deep neural networks. Volume learning is modeled as programmable learning and reasoning agents, providing rich methods for structured agent classification networks. Volume learning incorporates a massive volume of multivariate features in various data space projections, collected into strands of Visual DNA, analogous to human DNA genes. VGM lays a foundation for a visual genome project to sequence VDNA as visual genomes in a public database, using collaborative research to move synthetic vision science forward and enable new applications. Bibliographical references are provided to key neuroscience, computer vision, and deep learning research, which form the basis for the biologically plausible VGM model and the synthetic visual pathway. The book also includes graphical illustrations and C++ API reference materials to enable VGM application programming. Open source code licenses are available for engineers and scientists. Scott Krig founded Krig Research to provide some of the world's first vision and imaging systems worldwide for military, industry, government, and academic use. Krig has worked for major corporations and startups in the areas of machine learning, computer vision, imaging, graphics, robotics and automation, computer security and cryptography. He has authored international patents in the areas of computer architecture, communications, computer security, digital imaging, and computer vision, and studied at Stanford. Scott Krig is the author of the English/Chinese Springer book Computer Vision Metrics, Survey, Taxonomy and Analysis of Computer Vision, Visual Neuroscience, and Deep Learning, Textbook Edition, as well as other books, articles, and papers.
In Synthetic Vision: Using Volume Learning and Visual DNA, a holistic model of the human visual system is developed into a working model in C++, informed by the latest neuroscience, DNN, and computer vision research. The author's synthetic visual pathway model includes the eye, LGN, visual cortex, and the high level PFC learning centers. The corresponding visual genome model (VGM), begun in 2014, is introduced herein as the basis for a visual genome project analogous to the Human Genome Project funded by the US government. The VGM introduces volume learning principles and Visual DNA (VDNA) taking a multivariate approach beyond deep neural networks. Volume learning is modeled as programmable learning and reasoning agents, providing rich methods for structured agent classification networks. Volume learning incorporates a massive volume of multivariate features in various data space projections, collected into strands of Visual DNA, analogous to human DNA genes. VGM lays a foundation for a visual genome project to sequence VDNA as visual genomes in a public database, using collaborative research to move synthetic vision science forward and enable new applications. Bibliographical references are provided to key neuroscience, computer vision, and deep learning research, which form the basis for the biologically plausible VGM model and the synthetic visual pathway. The book also includes graphical illustrations and C++ API reference materials to enable VGM application programming. Open source code licenses are available for engineers and scientists. Scott Krig founded Krig Research to provide some of the world's first vision and imaging systems worldwide for military, industry, government, and academic use. Krig has worked for major corporations and startups in the areas of machine learning, computer vision, imaging, graphics, robotics and automation, computer security and cryptography. He has authored international patents in the areas of computer architecture, communications, computer security, digital imaging, and computer vision, and studied at Stanford. Scott Krig is the author of the English/Chinese Springer book Computer Vision Metrics, Survey, Taxonomy and Analysis of Computer Vision, Visual Neuroscience, and Deep Learning, Textbook Edition, as well as other books, articles, and papers.
Computer Vision Metrics provides an extensive survey and analysis of over 100 current and historical feature description and machine vision methods, with a detailed taxonomy for local, regional and global features. This book provides necessary background to develop intuition about why interest point detectors and feature descriptors actually work, how they are designed, with observations about tuning the methods for achieving robustness and invariance targets for specific applications. The survey is broader than it is deep, with over 540 references provided to dig deeper. The taxonomy includes search methods, spectra components, descriptor representation, shape, distance functions, accuracy, efficiency, robustness and invariance attributes, and more. Rather than providing ‘how-to’ source code examples and shortcuts, this book provides a counterpoint discussion to the many fine opencv community source code resources available for hands-on practitioners.
Based on the successful 2014 book published by Apress, this textbook edition is expanded to provide a comprehensive history and state-of-the-art survey for fundamental computer vision methods and deep learning. With over 800 essential references, as well as chapter-by-chapter learning assignments, both students and researchers can dig deeper into core computer vision topics and deep learning architectures. The survey covers everything from feature descriptors, regional and global feature metrics, feature learning architectures, deep learning, neuroscience of vision, neural networks, and detailed example architectures to illustrate computer vision hardware and software optimization methods. To complement the survey, the textbook includes useful analyses which provide insight into the goals of various methods, why they work, and how they may be optimized. The text delivers an essential survey and a valuable taxonomy, thus providing a key learning tool for students, researchers and engineers, to supplement the many effective hands-on resources and open source projects, such as OpenCV and other imaging and deep learning tools.
Ex-Navy SEAL sniper Scott Taylor served his country for eight years. Taylor finally came home after he was injured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Years later, he became outraged when he discovered that the Obama administration was leaking sensitive intelligence information for political gain. Now Scott Taylor is speaking out. Having served as a sniper in the same region of Iraq as American Sniperauthor Chris Kyle, Taylor knows first-hand how high the stakes are. From the bungling of Benghazi to the rise of ISIS, the White House has betrayed the trust of American forces. It's time President Obama and his administration were finally held accountable.
A swashbuckling Texan, a teller of tall tales, a womanizer, and a renegade, Fred Cuny spent his life in countries rent by war, famine, and natural disasters, saving many thousands of lives through his innovative and sometimes controversial methods of relief work. Cuny earned his nickname "Master of Disaster" for his exploits in Kurdistan, Somalia, and Bosnia. But when he arrived in the rogue Russian republic of Chechnya in the spring of 1995, raring to go and eager to put his ample funds from George Soros to good use, he found himself in the midst of an unimaginably savage war of independence, unlike any he had ever before encountered. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared in the war-rocked highlands, never to be seen again. Who was Cuny really working for? Was he a CIA spy? Who killed him, and why? In search of the answers, Scott Anderson traveled to Chechnya on a hazardous journey that started as as a magazine assignment and ended as a personal mission. The result is a galvanizing adventure story, a chilling picture of "the new world order," and a tour de force of literary journalism.
How was anti-communism organised in the West? This book covers the agents, aims, and arguments of various transnational anti-communist activists during the Cold War. Existing narratives often place the United States – and especially the CIA – at the centre of anti-communist activity. The book instead opens up new fields of research transnationally.
Follow America's elite warriors through the military's most grueling training and learn how they survive real special operations. Of the 18 months required to become a Navy SEAL, one week will cause over half of the trainees to quit ("ring the bell"). Only the toughest make it through. In Hell Week and Beyond, Scott McEwen takes the readers to the sands of Coronado Beach in San Diego, where Navy SEALs are put through the most grueling training known to mankind. Grit, commitment, heart, and soul are needed to become a SEAL, because these are the elite forces who go into the toughest battles for America. Many of the most well-known SEAL warriors have been interviewed for this book, providing the stories of what got them through and the humor of those that made it. (Those that make it almost always have one thing in common: humor. Find out why!) Part Top Gun, part Bull Durham, this book delivers that goods for those in the know, as well as general readers who admire the elite forces for all they do.
On April 14, 1994, two U.S. Air Force F-15 fighters accidentally shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopters over Northern Iraq, killing all twenty-six peacekeepers onboard. In response to this disaster the complete array of military and civilian investigative and judicial procedures ran their course. After almost two years of investigation with virtually unlimited resources, no culprit emerged, no bad guy showed himself, no smoking gun was found. This book attempts to make sense of this tragedy--a tragedy that on its surface makes no sense at all. With almost twenty years in uniform and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior, Lieutenant Colonel Snook writes from a unique perspective. A victim of friendly fire himself, he develops individual, group, organizational, and cross-level accounts of the accident and applies a rigorous analysis based on behavioral science theory to account for critical links in the causal chain of events. By explaining separate pieces of the puzzle, and analyzing each at a different level, the author removes much of the mystery surrounding the shootdown. Based on a grounded theory analysis, Snook offers a dynamic, cross-level mechanism he calls "practical drift"--the slow, steady uncoupling of practice from written procedure--to complete his explanation. His conclusion is disturbing. This accident happened because, or perhaps in spite of everyone behaving just the way we would expect them to behave, just the way theory would predict. The shootdown was a normal accident in a highly reliable organization.
The Stories of ONE SHOT Scott" is a compendium of essays describing some of the more interesting events that occurred during a thirty-year career in the U. S. Navy from 1956 to 1985. Each story--some humorous, some more serious-- is a personal account of events that occurred while serving in the various military units identified in each essay.
Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan. National security issues have increasingly faded from the political agenda, due in part to the growth of government secrecy. In lucid and chilling detail, journalist and lawyer Scott Horton shows how secrecy has changed the way America functions. Executive decisions about war and peace are increasingly made by autonomous, self-directing, and unaccountable national security elites. Secrecy is justified as part of a bargain under which the state promises to keep the people safe from its enemies, but in fact allows excesses, mistakes, and crimes to go unchecked. Bureaucracies use secrets to conceal their mistakes and advance their power in government, invariable at the expense of the rights of the people. Never before have the American people had so little information concerning the wars waged in their name, nor has Congress exercised so little oversight over the war effort. American democracy is in deep trouble. Lords of Secrecy explores the most important national security debates of our time, including the legal and moral issues surrounding the turn to private security contractors, the sweeping surveillance methods of intelligence agencies, and the use of robotic weapons such as drones. Horton looks at the legal edifice upon which these decisions are based and discusses approaches to rolling back the flood of secrets that is engulfing America today. Whistleblowers, but also Congress, the public, and the media, play a vital role in this process. As the ancient Greeks recognized, too much secrecy changes the nature of the state itself, transforming a democracy into something else. Horton reminds us that dealing with the country's national security concerns is both a right and a responsibility of a free citizenry, something that has always sat at the heart of any democracy that earns the name.
This is an ambitious, meticulous examination of how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11. Peter Dale Scott, whose previous books have investigated CIA involvement in southeast Asia, the drug wars, and the Kennedy assassination, here probes how the policies of presidents since Nixon have augmented the tangled bases for the 2001 terrorist attack. Scott shows how America's expansion into the world since World War II has led to momentous secret decision making at high levels. He demonstrates how these decisions by small cliques are responsive to the agendas of private wealth at the expense of the public, of the democratic state, and of civil society. He shows how, in implementing these agendas, U.S. intelligence agencies have become involved with terrorist groups they once backed and helped create, including al Qaeda.
Growing pains, adventure, and 20-sided dice abound in this new graphic novel series about a middle school Dungeon & Dragons club from Eisner and Harvey award-winning cartoonist Scott Kurtz. Valeria Winters has an easier time finding trouble than making friends. A fantasy-obsessed nerd with the legendary confidence—and temper—of a Valkyrie, Val promises her mom that things will be different at her new school. “No more fighting!” As if by fate, she meets the Table Titans right away—Alan, Andrew, and Darius, who run the school’s tabletop gaming club. Finally, Val has found her own adventuring party! And even better . . . a place where she belongs. So when the future of the club is threatened, Val makes it her personal quest to save the Table Titans. She’ll have to face the fire-breathing wrestling coach and popular girl Kate, who seems out for revenge. Revenge for what? Val has no clue. As the quest grows more and more complicated, Val wishes she was like her peaceful druid Lulani from the Table Titans' campaign, whose calm voice always prevails. If she loses her cool in real life, Val might lose more than the Table Titans club. She'll have to roll a natural 20 in charisma to keep her new friends together. Set in the same universe as the Eisner Award-winning webcomic PvP, Scott Kurtz’s artwork blends zany, fantastical visuals with slice-of-life humor. For fans of fantasy and coming of age stories alike, Table Titans finds humor, heart, and adventure in a tale of friendship and finding your people.
Objective Troy tells the gripping and unsettling story of Anwar al-Awlaki, the once-celebrated American imam who called for moderation after 9/11, a man who ultimately directed his outsized talents to the mass murder of his fellow citizens. It follows Barack Obama’s campaign against the excesses of the Bush counterterrorism programs and his eventual embrace of the targeted killing of suspected militants. And it recounts how the president directed the mammoth machinery of spy agencies to hunt Awlaki down in a frantic, multi-million-dollar pursuit that would end with the death of Awlaki by a bizarre, robotic technology that is changing warfare—the drone. Scott Shane, who has covered terrorism for The New York Times over the last decade, weaves the clash between president and terrorist into both a riveting narrative and a deeply human account of the defining conflict of our era. Awlaki, who directed a plot that almost derailed Obama’s presidency, and then taunted him from his desert hideouts, will go down in history as the first United States citizen deliberately hunted and assassinated by his own government without trial. But his eloquent calls to jihad, amplified by YouTube, continue to lure young Westerners into terrorism—resulting in tragedies from the Boston marathon bombing to the murder of cartoonists at a Paris weekly. Awlaki’s life and death show how profoundly America has been changed by the threat of terrorism and by our own fears. Illuminating and provocative, and based on years of in depth reporting, Objective Troy is a brilliant reckoning with the moral challenge of terrorism and a masterful chronicle of our times.
Some argued it would save the U.S. after 9/11. Instead, the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program came to be defined as American torture. The Forever Prisoner, a primary source for the recent HBO Max film directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, exposes the full story behind the most divisive CIA operation in living memory. Six months after 9/11, the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah and announced he was number three in Al Qaeda. Frantic to thwart a much-feared second wave of attacks, the U.S. rendered him to a secret black site in Thailand, where he collided with retired Air Force psychologist James Mitchell. Arguing that Abu Zubaydah had been trained to resist interrogation and was withholding vital clues, the CIA authorized Mitchell and others to use brutal “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would have violated U.S. and international laws had not government lawyers rewritten the rulebook. In The Forever Prisoner, Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy recount dramatic scenes inside multiple black sites around the world through the eyes of those who were there, trace the twisted legal justifications, and chart how enhanced interrogation, a key “weapon” in the global “War on Terror,” metastasized over seven years, encompassing dozens of detainees in multiple locations, some of whom died. Ultimately that war has cost 8 trillion dollars, 900,000 lives, and displaced 38 million people—while the U.S. Senate judged enhanced interrogation was torture and had produced zero high-value intelligence. Yet numerous men, including Abu Zubaydah, remain imprisoned in Guantanamo, never charged with any crimes, in contravention of America’s ideals of justice and due process, because their trials would reveal the extreme brutality they experienced. Based on four years of intensive reporting, on interviews with key protagonists who speak candidly for the first time, and on thousands of previously classified documents, The Forever Prisoner is a powerful chronicle of a shocking experiment that remains in the headlines twenty years after its inception, even as US government officials continue to thwart efforts to expose war crimes. Silenced by a CIA pledge to keep him imprisoned and incommunicado forever, Abu Zubaydah speaks loudly through these pages, prompting the question as to whether he and others remain detained not because of what they did to us but because of what we did to them.
Provides a survey of women's writing in Sweden, from the beginnings of the struggle for emancipation in the 1850s to the present day. These writers are seen within the political, cultural and economic context of women's lives. Modern critical currents are also assessed and Swedish feminist criticism is considered alongside the French and American traditions.
The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir of U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, and the source for Clint Eastwood’s blockbuster, Academy-Award nominated movie. “An amazingly detailed account of fighting in Iraq--a humanizing, brave story that’s extremely readable.” — PATRICIA CORNWELL, New York Times Book Review "Jaw-dropping...Undeniably riveting." —RICHARD ROEPER, Chicago Sun-Times From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him “The Legend”; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war—including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates—and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.
The Second World War recollections of Stan Scott present a fascinating view of life during the war. The text chronicles his colourful journey from being a lad with passion for all things military to soldiering in an elite unit.
Told through the eyes of current and former Navy SEALs, EYES ON TARGET is an inside account of some of the most harrowing missions in American history-including the mission to kill Osama bin Laden and the mission that wasn't, the deadly attack on the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi where a retired SEAL sniper with a small team held off one hundred terrorists while his repeated radio calls for help went unheeded. The book contains incredible accounts of major SEAL operations-from the violent birth of SEAL Team Six and the aborted Operation Eagle Claw meant to save the hostages in Iran, to key missions in Iraq and Afganistan where the SEALs suffered their worst losses in their fifty year history-and every chapter illustrates why this elite military special operations unit remains the most feared anti-terrorist force in the world. We hear reports on the record from retired SEAL officers including Lt. Cmdr. Richard Marcinko, the founder of SEAL Team Six, and a former Commander at SEAL team Six, Ryan Zinke, and we come away understanding the deep commitment of these military men who put themselves in danger to protect our country and save American lives. In the face of insurmountable odds and the imminent threat of death, they give all to protect those who cannot protect themselves. No matter the situation, on duty or at ease, SEALs never, ever give up. One powerful chapter in the book tells the story of how one Medal of Honor winner saved another, the only time this has been done in US military history. EYES ON TARGET includes these special features: A detailed timeline of events during the Benghazi attackSample rescue scenarios from a military expert who believes that help could have reached the Benghazi compound in time The US House Republican Conference Interim Progress Report on the events surrounding the September 11, 2012 Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi Through their many interviews and unique access, Scott McEwen and Richard Miniter pull back the veil that has so often concealed the heroism of these patriots. They live by a stringent and demanding code of their own creation, keeping them ready to ignore politics, bureaucracy and-if necessary-direct orders. They share a unique combination of character, intelligence, courage, love of country and what can only be called true grit. They are the Navy SEALs, and they keep their Eyes on Target.
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