This paper reports an information-theoretic analysis of the dependencies that exist between curvelet coefficients. We show that strong dependencies exist in local intra-band micro-neighborhoods, and that the shape of these neighborhoods is highly anisotropic. With this respect, it is found that the two immediately adjacent neighbors that lie in a direction orthogonal to the orientation of the s...

In this paper, we propose a new efficient full reference image quality assessment metric, which is based on human visual system proprieties in order to get the best correspondence with human judgments. The suggested full reference metric is generic (independent of image distortion type). It can be used in different application such as: compression, restoration, etc. The experimental results con...

In this paper, we present a textured point-based rendering scheme that takes into account the masking properties of the human visual system. In our system high quality textures are mapped to point-based models. Given one texture, an importance map is first computed using the visual masking tool included in the JPEG2000 standard. This importance map indicates the masking potential of the texture...

Providing an environment for electronic commerce involves complex, technical questions that need to be addressed and understood by decision making bodies. This paper studies one attempt to support electronic commerce at the national level. It looks at the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill in the UK and focuses on the political actions of those seeking to amend the Bill in Parliament. Afte...

BACKGROUND A safe and effective vaginal microbicide could substantially reduce HIV acquisition for women. Consistent gel use is, however, of great importance to ensure continued protection against HIV infection, even with a safe and effective microbicide. We assessed the long-term correlates of consistent gel use in the MDP 301 clinical trial among HIV-negative women in sero-discordant couples ...

When it comes to image coding, JPEG is the first thing that comes to mind. JPEG is the most widely used compression Standard for true color continuous-tone images. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (http://www.jpeg.org/) around 10 years ago, and although it delivers good quality at lowand medium-compression ratios, it lacks flexibility of use and its quality at high compres...

This paper introduces a new type of intranet – the compliance intranet – and describes its socio-technical shaping. Compliance intranets serve to enforce industry standards, to measure the performance of a company against industry or governmentally established standards, or to establish standards within the organization or within a larger domain. These intranets may be quality management system...

Many image coders map the input image to a transform domain, and encode coefficients in that domain. Usually, encoders use previously transmitted samples to help estimate the probabilities for the next sample to be encoded. This backward probability estimation provides a better PDF estimation, without need to send any side information. In this paper we propose a new method of encoding that goes...

The flurry of regulatory activity by the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush has raised, once again, the specter of midnight regulation. In contrast to the late-term action of the Clinton Administration, much of the Bush Administration‘s late-term action seems to have been more deregulatory than regulatory, but from a political and legal standpoint, that distinction may not make...

In a survey we found that most developers have experienced duplicated bug reports, however, only few considered them as a serious problem. This contradicts popular wisdom that considers bug duplicates as a serious problem for open source projects. In the survey, developers also pointed out that the additional information provided by duplicates helps to resolve bugs quicker. In this paper, we th...