text:
Category: Stock Graphic, Objects
Stock Graphic >> Object - Gold Toys 299452 by Kaazuclip @ CreativeMarket
File Size: 124.78 MB; DPI: 300 DPI.
Gold Toys - 17 pieces
17 piece clipart set for personal and commercial use includes all colors seen, perfect for scrapbooking, greeting cards, digital scrapbooks, web graphics and many more uses!
Each PNG image is 3000px X 3000px with 300dpi
What you get: ? Graphics as shown ? Sent as PNGs (transparent background) at high resolution ? Watermarks will not be in supplied files
What you should know: ? Please do not share these graphics with anyone else ? Please do not claim these designs as your own ? You are responsible for having the required software to open files sent
*For commercial usage,no additional licence is needed
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Gold Toys
by Kaazuclip
Keywords: gold toys, gold kids toys, gold children toys, gold childrens toys, gold ball, gold base ball, gold soccer ball, gold motorcycle, goldcar, gold car, gold ice cream truck, gold blocks, gold air plane, gold rocket, gold train, gold engine, gold scooter, gold toddler toys.


text:
Homeland Security 'fusion' centers spy on citizens, produce 'shoddy' work, report says
The Department of Homeland Security has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a network of 77 so-called "fusion" intelligence centers that have collected personal information on some U.S. citizens — including detailing the "reading habits" of American Muslims — while producing "shoddy" reports and making no contribution to thwarting any terrorist plots, a new Senate report states.
The " fusion centers," created under President George W. Bush and expanded under President Barack Obama, consist of special teams of federal , state and local officials collecting and analyzing intelligence on suspicious activities throughout the country. They have been hailed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as "one of the centerpieces" of the nation's counterterrorism efforts.
com/_news/2012/10/02/14187433- homeland-security-fusion- centers-spy-on-citizens- produce-shoddy-work-report- says?lite&ocid=msnhp
Right-Wingers Would Be Shocked to Learn That Islam Has Been Part of American History Since Its Founding
The Muslim faith is inextricably woven into the fabric of American history.
Islamophobia is back with a vengeance. Geller, a self-appointed hate czar, catapulted herself to racist celebrity back in 2010 with shrill denouncements of an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan near the site of the World Trade Center. Since then, her repeat warnings of Islam's foreign threat to America have resonated powerfully in a post-9/11 world where violent protests in the Middle East over a crude anti-Muslim film have triggered a fresh wave of anxiety.
It would undoubtedly shock Geller and her Islamophobic buddies to know that Muslims have been in America for so long they could almost have formed a welcoming committee to the Daughters of the Revolution.
belief/right-wingers-would-be- shocked-learn-islam-has-been- part-american-history-its- founding?akid=9507.85420. TyuYCr&rd=1&src= newsletter723791&t=5&paging= off
It's Not About Religion: A Conversation With Author and Middle East Expert Gregory Harms
This conversation about Harms' new book places responsibility for US foreign policy on the US population - even as it undresses the propaganda that distorts Americans' perception of the people in the Middle East and turns them against Muslims at home.
Now, Harms is back with a timely, challenging and important book, It's Not About Religion (Perceval Press). Harms' new book effectively undresses the insipid and insidious propaganda that distorts America's perception of the people in the Middle East and often turns them against Muslims at home. In a succinct 90 pages, Harms educates readers on the history of the Middle East, how the West has prevented democracy from taking shape throughout the region, and how America has continually invaded its countries, interfered with its elections, and simultaneously managed to convince many Americans that all the aggression and intervention is innocently committed in defense of American lives. Harms shows how our perceptions of Islam are dangerously wrong and how our beliefs about US foreign policy are often naive.
item/11967-its-not-about- religion-a-conversation-with- author-and-middle-east-expert- gregory-harms
Agent Orange on Okinawa: The Smoking Gun
Now, for the first time, a recently uncovered U.S. army report reveals that, during the Vietnam War, the United States stockpiled 25,000 barrels of Agent Orange on the Pacific island. The barrels, containing over 1.4 million gallons of the toxic defoliant, were brought to Okinawa from Vietnam before being taken to Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, where the U.S. military incinerated its stocks of the compound in 1977.
Contradicting decades of denial by Washington, the report is the first direct admission by the U.S. military that it stored these poisons on Okinawa. A series of photographs was also uncovered, apparently showing the 25,000 barrels in storage on Okinawa's Camp Kinser, near the prefectural capital of Naha.

subset: commoncrawl


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|Publication number
|Publication type
|Application number
|Publication date
|Sep 30, 1980
|Filing date
|Feb 13, 1978
|Priority date
|Feb 12, 1977
|Also published as
|Publication number
|Peter Lux, J/rgen Petzold
|Original Assignee
|U.S. Philips Corporation
|Export Citation
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Patent Citations (7), Non-Patent Citations (1), Referenced by (26), Classifications (14)
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet
The invention relates to a method and apparatus for adaptive transform picture coding wherein quantizing coefficients are obtained by means of unitary orthogonal transformation of a two-dimensional subpicture signal and indicate the picture energy for a series of subpictures. A quantization level is assigned each time to the coefficients of the subpicture in one value range, which, after a series expansion to basis coefficients, are arranged into the associated sequence or sequence classes respectively. The size and/or the number of the value ranges depends on data from the transformed picture.
Methods of transform picture coding by means of unitary orthogonal transformation are known from, for example, IEEE Transactions on Communication, Vol. Com. 19, No., 1, February 1971, pages 50-62. The Fourier, the Hadamard and the Karhunen-Loeve transformations are mentioned as examples. For these unitary orthogonal transformations the number of coefficients obtained corresponds to the number of picture elements.
For transmission or storage, it is desirable to represent pictures as accurately as possible with the least possible data, that is to say: to eliminate the redundancy, and possibly also irrelevancy, present in a picture. Such a data compression is achieved by quantizing the coefficients in a quantizer having a non-linear characteristic. The quantization of values is known in principle, for example in analog-to-digital conversion in which a given digital value is assigned to each analog value range taken as the smallest unit. A non-linear quantization is, for example, disclosed in "Proceedings of the IEEE", July 1972, pages 809-820, in which, if a given probability distribution of the values is assumed, distributions of the value ranges are given for obtaining an extremely small distortion with a different number of quantization levels. In the relevant case, during transmission or storage of pictures, the procedure is such that the basis coefficients which are found low in the sequence and whose energy furnishes a considerable contribution to the picture reconstruction, are transmitted or stored with a larger number of bits and, consequently, more accurately, whereas the basis coefficients, which are higher in the sequence are represented by a correspondingly smaller number of bits and their contribution to the picture reconstruction is, in general, smaller. If however, in certain pictures considerable energy is present high in the sequence, a visible error will result.
A method, in which the quantizing characteristic (namely the number of value ranges of the coefficients to which a different codeword is assigned during quatizing) is controlled by the picture contents is described in IEEE Transactions on Communication, July 1975, pages 785 and 786. The basis coefficients of a subpicture are multiplied by the sequence-dependent weighting factors and the products are added, resulting in a so-called activity index. Different quantizing characteristics are chosen for the relevant subpicture depending on this activity index so that fewer bits are used for transmitting and storing subpictures having a small number of details and more bits are used for subpictures having many fine details. This prior art method has, however, two main drawbacks: (1) computing the activity index for weighting factors other than one requires a multiplication and an addition for each picture element, so that computation time becomes long; and (2) the activity index always furnishes an integral information via the subpicture because the number of weighting factors is identical for all subpictures.
It is an object of the invention to provide an adaptive method enabling an optimum coding of the pictures with little cost and difficulty. Thus during quantization the size and/or the number of the value ranges in the individual sequences or sequence classes depend on the combinations of the number of coefficients in the different sequence classes which exceed a fixed threshold value associated with a sequence.
By comparing the coefficient values to a fixed threshold value and by counting the comparison results for each sequence class, it is possible to ascertain in which sequence class (or alternately in which combination of various sequence classes) there is a high activity. The sequence classes in which there is a high activity are quantized with a correspondingly higher number of bits. As a consequence, pictures having different activity can be encoded by a different total number of bits. This is necessary for the least possible redundancy. Here, and in what follows hereafter, the expression sequence class may refer to both an individual sequence and a group of consecutive sequences, the groups generally having an increasing number of basis coefficients in the higher sequences.
In a method wherein the coefficients are obtained from the successive transformation of all subpictures of a picture, an advantageous embodiment of the invention provides that, for each subpicture, the value ranges for the quantization are determined separately. Owing to the separate determination of the size and/or the number of value ranges (that is of the quantizing characteristic) for each subpicture, the areas of the overall picture having fine details are accurately transmitted yet the total number of information bits for the entire picture nevertheless remains small.
The threshold values associated with the sequences are, efficiently, the standard deviations of the coefficients of these sequences from a number of pictures. If in particular, only pictures of a given type need be transmitted or stored (such as, for example, X-ray pictures) it appears that the standard deviations are very similar for different pictures, so that fixed, equal threshold values can be chosen for all pictures without deteriorating the redundancy reduction.
It is also possible to use correspondingly different quantizing characteristics for different numbers of basis coefficients, the value of which exceeds the fixed threshold value. For the majority of practical needs it is, however, sufficient to convert the size and/or the number of the value ranges for each sequence class during quantization, if the number of coefficients exceeding the associated threshold value is greater than half the number of all coefficients of this sequence class. In this way the sequence ranges in which a picture is particularly active (that is to say: contains details with high contrast) are greatly taken into account, and the accurate transmission and reconstruction of a picture can be done with a smallest possible redundancy.
The values of the coefficients in the various sequence classes are normally of different orders of magnitude so that the entire processing must also be carried out with a corresponding large number of bits. To avoid this, it is efficient to standardize the values of the coefficients obtained during transformation before quantization. Therefore it suffices to check all coefficients to determine if they exceed the fixed value 1. This considerably simplifies the implementation.
Apparatus for performing the method according to the invention comprises a comparator which receives consecutive coefficient signals from a transformation device at one input and value signals associated with the associated sequence from a first store at a second input and supplies a reference signal when a coefficient exceeds the associated value. A first counter counts the reference signals for each sequence class and supplies an activity signal for each sequence class when a predetermined counter position is exceeded. A second store stores the activity signals for each sequence class. A processing circuit generates quantizing control signals from the output signals of the second store at the end of a picture or subpicture and enters these signals in a third store. A fourth store stores all the coefficients for a picture or subpicture and, after storing the last coefficient, applies these coefficients successively to a quantizer. The control signals stored in that third store control the quantizer during processing of the coefficients stored in the fourth store.
When standardized coefficients are used the first store can be dispensed with and the comparator then continuously receives the signals representing the fixed value 1 at the second input.
Embodiments of the invention will be further explained with reference to the drawings in which:
FIG. 1 illustrates the principle of the quantizing characteristic,
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a quantizing arrangement, and
FIGS. 3a and 3b illustrate two embodiments of a processing circuit.
FIG. 1 shows two quantization characteristics a and b. These characteristics indicate output values y obtained for input values x. For low values of x the starting value y is equal to 0. From a given value x1 onwards the starting value y1 is obtained for the quantization characteristic a. Put in a general way, the output value yi is obtained for all values in the range xi ≦x<xi+1. The size of the separate value ranges increases as the value of x increases. For the quantization characteristic a the drawing shows six different levels which continue in the same manner in the negative range.
The division of an entire picture into subpictures and their transformation into sequentially arranged basis coefficient is described in the above mentioned article in "Proceedings of the IEEE", July 1972, to pages 811 and 812 which is incorporated herein by reference and to FIG. 4 thereof in particular.
If, on checking the coefficients, it is ascertained that the scanned subpicture contains few details in a given sequence range and, consequently, that the associated coefficients have only slight deviations, the exact values thereof are not very essential for the reconstruction of the picture and they may be quantized with a fairly large inaccuracy (for example with only four quantization levels in the positive and the negative directions). However, at the same time it is in general efficient to also shift the individual quantization ranges so that, for example, the quantization characteristic b is obtained. Alternatively, it is possible to choose a set of coefficients having fairly large deviations so that the individual value ranges are increased, the number of quantization levels remaining the same. This depends on the practical circumstances. In the following discussion if a change in the quantization characteristic (in the sense of a fairly large number of quantization levels) is mentioned, a possible shift of the value ranges is then also meant.
To enable a better description of the operation of the method according to the invention it is assumed, by way of example, that the sequences of the basis coefficients are fixedly arranged in three sequence classes K1, K2 and K3, so that the sequence class K1 comprises the lower sequences, K2 the center sequences and K3 the high sequences. Reference is made to Table I which is associated with a subpicture of 16�16 picture elements whose 256 basis coefficients, obtained after transformation, are arranged sequentially. The number of coefficients in the three sequence classes K1, K2 and K3 is fixed: the number of coefficients in each sequence class being different (7, 24 and 225 respectively), that is to say the lower sequence class contains the smallest number of coefficients. Furthermore it is assumed that the coefficients are standardized at a standard deviation corresponding to 1, because this is normally also necessary for the quantization with non-adaptive block encoding. In this way it is namely possible to compare all coefficients having the same threshold to the standard deviation 1.
TABLE I______________________________________Sequence Sequence Number of bitsnumber class I II III IV______________________________________1 10 10 10 102-3 K.sub.1 8 7 8 74-7 7 5 7 5 8-15 6 6 3 316-31 K.sub.2 5 5 2 232-63 4 4 1 1 64-127 K.sub.3 2 2 -- --128-256 1 1 -- --______________________________________
The number of coefficients in a sequence which exceed the threshold are counted. If this number exceeds half the total number of coefficients in the sequence class a corresponding activity signal is stored and the sequence class is considered to be active. If the number does not exceed half the total number of coefficients the sequence class is considered to be quiescent.
With the different combinations of active (A) or quiescent (Q) in the individual sequence classes, four different activity classes I, II, III and IV are formed in the example described in accordance with the following conditions:
if K1 is active and either K2 or K3 is active, class I must be used
if K1 is quiescent and either K2 or K3 is active, class II must be used
if K1 is active and K2 and K3 are both quiescent, class III must be used
if K1, and K2, and K3 are all quiescent, class IV must be used.
If a sequence class is active, more than half of all the coefficients in that sequence class exceed the threshold and, consequently, have generated an activity signal. If this is not the case the sequence class is quiescent.
It is easy to see that it is possible to form additional, different activity classes from the two different states of the three sequence classes if this should be necessary for better data compression. This, however, entails additional cost and trouble.
In the example described the activity class I represents a subpicture having high total activity, class II represents a subpicture having a high activity in the range of the high sequences and few variations in the lower sequences, the definition of class III is the reverse, class IV represents a subpicture which is quiescent in its totality and which has small coefficients for all sequences. The activity classes thus obtained control the characteristic of a quantizer so that in sequence ranges having a high activity the coefficients are quantized with a higher number of bits.
Identification of the quantization characteristics used is necessary so that the sequences of the code words from the quantizer, which are generally transmitted or stored without an indication of the word limits, can be assigned in the proper manner. This information can be easily inserted with a small number of bits (in the case of the four activity classes by means of two bits, at the beginning of the code word for a subpicture).
The block diagram of FIG. 2 is an apparatus for adaptively controlling the quantizer which comprises a transformation device 1 in which the subpictures of a picture are sequentially transformed and at the output of which the basis coefficients of the individual sequences of the subpictures appear sequentially in a fixed pattern, as multi-digit binary data. These data words are applied via a plurality of parallel leads (which are shown in FIG. 2 in a simplified form as a double line) to a comparator 2 and to a memory 9 which stores the coefficients of a subpicture. For each new data word the device 1 also supplies a clock signal on the lead CP which controls the transfer of the data word in the memory 9 and which advances a counter 11 by one position. Counter 11 is a cyclic counter having a number of positions which is equal to the number of picture elements, and consequently to the number of coefficients associated with a subpicture. A decoder 12 is connected to counter 11 and decodes those counting positions at which a new sequence class of the coefficients supplied by the device 1 starts. It is assumed, for simplicity, that the coefficients are generated sequentially. If this is not the case the decoder 12 must decode each counting position at which a change in sequence class is effected, efficiently at a separate output for each sequence class. For the arrangement shown in FIG. 2, it is, however, assumed that the decoder 12 generates a signal at an output 13 between each complete sequence class.
The decoder 12 also decodes all those counter positions at which a new sequence in which the standard value of the coefficients differs from that of the preceding sequence starts and supplies a sequence-change signal SC at an output 14 for each such counter position. This signal switches the address of a standard value memory 3 one position further. Standard value memory 3 contains the standard values of the coefficients of the individual sequences; that is to say, the average values of the coefficients, from a fairly large number of similar pictures such as, for example, X-ray images, and these standard values are applied sequentially to one input of the comparator 2, while simultaneously the coefficients of the corresponding sequence of the scanned subpicture are applied to the other input. This is repeated in a cyclic manner for each subpicture. Consequently, the standard value memory 3 may be a circular shift register filled once at the start, or, alternatively, a read-only memory which is addressed by a cyclic counter.
Instead of connecting the output of the standard-value memory 3 to one input of the comparator 2 this output can alternatively be connected, as indicated by the two dashed lines, to a standardization device 15 consisting of a divider which divides the coefficients, from the device 1 by the standard value and consequently normalizes these coefficients to 1 before they are applied to the comparator 2 as well as to the subpicture memory 9. The comparator 2 then receives a fixed value 1 at said one input.
The comparator 2 compares the coefficients to the standard deviation (or the standardized coefficients to the value). If the value of a coefficient exceeds the reference value the comparator 2 supplies a signal which advances a counter 4 one position.
A decoder 5 is connected to the counter 4 and supplies a signal to a memory 6 if the position of the counter 4 corresponds to half the number of coefficients in the sequence class. If the number of coefficients in the individual sequence classes differs, the decoder 5 must be switched by the signal from decoder 12 after each sequence class to the corresponding counter position to be decoded. In addition, at the end of each sequence class, the counter 4 must be reset to the starting position and the memory 6 must be switched to the next storage position. If memory 6 is a simple shift register, a shift clock pulse is applied to it at each change of sequence class.
At the end of a subpicture, when all coefficients of this subpicture have been compared, memory 6 contains information on the activity of sequence classes in a subpicture. From the combination of the activity signals in store 6 a logic circuit 7 produces the control signals indicating one of the four activity classes (indicated above) and controls a quantizer 10. At the end of a subpicture, decoder 12 passes a "picture end" signal PE to the logic circuit 7 or to a memory 8, as a result of which the control signals are transferred to memory 8 and are available during the next subpicture for controlling the quantizer 10.
The coefficients (or the standardized coefficients) are not only applied to the comparator 2 but also to the subpicture memory 9 which has a capacity equal to all coefficients of a subpicture. Efficiently this memory 9 is a shift register for a plurality of parallel bits corresponding to the number of positions of the coefficients. At the end of a subpicture, after processing circuit 7 has transferred the control signals for the quantizer 10 to memory 8, the transfer of the coefficients from memory 9 to the quantizer 10 starts as does the transfer of the coefficients of the next subpicture from the transformer 1 (or from memory 3) to the comparator 2 and to the memory 9. Consequently, the coded words appear at the output of the quantizer 10, delayed each time by one subpicture.
Memory 8 is supplied with the signals, indicating the change in sequence, either from decoder 12 or, alternatively, from clock signal CP, as described above. Consequently memory 8 controls quantizer 10, depending on the control signals from the processing circuit 7, in such a way that the coefficients are consecutively quantized with a lower number of positions. The implementation of the quantizer 10 itself is known.
FIG. 3a shows an example of the implementation of the logic circuit 7. It is assumed that memory 6 has stored the activity signals for three different sequence classes in three storage positions K1, K2 and K3 which are connected individually to the processing circuit 7. This number of sequence classes as well as the number of four activity classes I to IV formed therefrom, corresponds to the example described above in Table I. The activity signals K2 and K3 for the sequence class of the center and high sequences are combined in an OR-gate 20. An AND-gate 21 produces an output signal if a signal is present in the sequence class K1 for the lower sequences as well as at least in one of the two sequence classes K2 or K3. In a similar manner an AND-gate 22 produces an output signal indicating the activity class II if no activity signal is present in the sequence class K1 for the lower sequence classes. AND-gate 23 produces an output signal and consequently indicates the activity class III, if an activity signal is present in the sequence class K1 for the lower sequence, this signal, however, not being present in the sequence class K2 nor in the sequence class K3, the signal for the last condition being formed by an inverter 25. In a similar manner an AND-gate 24 supplies an output signal if no activity signal is present in any of the sequence classes. At the "picture end" signal PE, the signal from one of the AND-gates 21 to 24 is transferred to an associated D-flipflop 26 to 29 in memory 8 which control the quantizer 10.
FIG. 3b shows another possibility. At the "picture end" signal PE, the activity signal K1 of the sequence class with the lower sequence is directly transferred to a D-flipflop 31 and the activity signals K2 and K3 of the other sequence classes are transferred to a further D-flipflop 32 via an OR-gate 30. The sequence-change signals are applied to a counter 33 which advances one position each time a new sequence is received. The outputs of the D-flipflops 31 and 32 as well as the counter 33 control the address input of a memory 34 in which the signals determining the quantizing characteristic are stored. Depending on the activity signals K1, K2 and K3 in the three sequence classes and, consequently, on the output signal of the D-flipflops 31 and 32, one of four different address groups are cycled through the counter 33 which drives in a corresponding manner, one of four groups of storage cells in which corresponding control signals for the quantizer 10 are stored.
The processing and computing unit and the memories can be implemented partly or wholly by means of a correspondingly programmed universal digital computer, a microprocessor in particular, whose program memory is programmed in a fixed manner, which results in a very simple and, as regards cost, advantageous mode of implementation.
|Cited Patent
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|U.S. Classification
|International Classification
|Cooperative Classification
|European Classification


text:
Chicago White Sox vs. Minnesota Twins - 9/12/15 MLB Pick, Odds, and Prediction
Minnesota Twins (72-67) at Chicago White Sox (66-72)
MLB Baseball: Saturday, September 12, 2015 at 7:10 pm (U.S. Cellular Field)
T Milone (8-4) (3.54) vs. J Quintana (8-10) (3.60)
The Line: Chicago White Sox -133 / Minnesota Twins +123 --- Over/Under: 8 See the Latest Odds
TV: FS-North, WGN
The Minnesota Twins butt heads with the Chicago White Sox in AL Central action.
The Minnesota Twins are looking to stay in the Wild Card race which means winning games. The Twins continued to play well with Friday's 6-2 win being their 5th in seven contests. Starter Ervin Santana gave up both runs on six hits to pick up the win with some strong support. The offense did damage on a ten hit, eight walk attack that features a pair of homers and three RBI's from Trevor Plouffe while Eduardo Escobar went solo. Lefty Tommy Milone draws the game two start at the White Sox on Saturday. Milone has won consecutive contests with a combined two runs scored on nine hits over 14 innings.
USA TODAY Sports
The Chicago White Sox will be spending the remainder of the season trying to shatter the postseason hopes of others. The White Sox bullpen struggled and the offense followed suit in Friday's defeat. Starter Erik Johnson surrendered a solo homer through five frames with three relievers allowing five runs. The White Sox managed six hits and a pair of bases on balls with Adam Eaton smacking a two run homer that scored Mike Olt. Left hander Jose Quintana is shooting for back to back wins when he opposes Minnesota on Saturday. Quintana defeated Kansas City 6-1 last time out with seven scoreless frames.
Minnesota are 9-4 in their last 13 road games and are 11-5 in their last 16 games on grass while going 13-6 in the last 19 overall. The over is 7-1-1 in Chicago's last 9 Saturday games and is 30-12 in their last 42 overall while going 30-12 in their last 42 on grass. Minnesota are 10-3 in the last 13 meetings and the over is 11-4 in the last 15 meetings in Chicago. This looks like a coin flip so perhaps the playoff hopeful Twins…


text:
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text:
Issue No. 10 - October (2004 vol. 26)
pp: 1307-1319
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TPAMI.2004.93
Kenichi Kanatani , IEEE
We first investigate the meaning of "statistical methods" for geometric inference based on image feature points. Tracing back the origin of feature uncertainty to image processing operations, we discuss the implications of asymptotic analysis in reference to "geometric fitting" and "geometric model selection" and point out that a correspondence exists between the standard statistical analysis and the geometric inference problem. Then, we derive the "geometric AIC" and the "geometric MDL" as counterparts of Akaike's AIC and Rissanen's MDL. We show by experiments that the two criteria have contrasting characteristics in detecting degeneracy.
Statistical method, feature point extraction, asymptotic evaluation, geometric AIC, geometric MDL.
Kenichi Kanatani, "Uncertainty Modeling and Model Selection for Geometric Inference", IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence, vol. 26, no. , pp. 1307-1319, October 2004, doi:10.1109/TPAMI.2004.93


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|By PR Newswire
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|March 14, 2017 09:00 AM EDT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- QuickBase Inc., a leading low-code application development platform provider, today launched its new centralized Customer Success Program to help customers drive even more value from the QuickBase platform. Led by the company's new Vice President of Customer Success Mark Daoust, the program will expand upon the existing success experience to deliver personalized and self-service offerings throughout customers' QuickBase journey.
"As organizations rely more heavily on apps to drive better insights, productivity and business agility, empowering employees closest to the work to build apps has become critical to success," said Rick Willett, CEO, QuickBase. "Our new customer success program, led by Mark Daoust, will arm customers with the resources and skills they need to rapidly build app ecosystems that deliver the most value for their businesses."
Over the last year, no-code development has gone from a grassroots movement to an integral part of organizations' strategies. According to QuickBase's 2016 State of Citizen Development Report, no- and low-code tools are becoming more strategic and increasingly customer facing: in 2016 more than one-third (35 percent) of QuickBase app builders reported creating customer-facing apps, up from 27 percent in 2015.
The new program will include a team of customer success managers focused on helping customers speed desired outcomes and gain greater value from QuickBase, as well as a new integrated portfolio of paid and free customer success offerings, encompassing:
- Enhanced Onboarding Support, with individualized success plans to get customers up and running on QuickBase even faster;
- Expanded Customer Training Offerings, including live in-person and online classes as well as on-demand self-guided courses to help educate customers throughout their QuickBase journey;
- Partner Services, for customers who require more hands-on support and want a third-party resource to help build, integrate and extend apps on their behalf;
- Customer Support, live support to help customers whenever technical issues arrive; and,
- QuickBase Community, an active, user-driven community forum where customers can ask and answer questions, share best practices, and more.
"With an unparalleled focus on customers, QuickBase is uniquely positioned to help organizations of all sizes build valuable apps faster and easier than ever before," said Mark Daoust, new VP of Customer Success. "In this new role, I'm thrilled to help the team scale its success offerings as QuickBase further empowers customers to improve the way they work."
Daoust has more than 20 years of enterprise technology experience with a track record of leading high-performing, customer-focused organizations. Prior to joining QuickBase, he spent 14 years at HPE, most recently as a Vice President of Operations and Services. In this role he led a 350-person team focused on enablement, implementation, delivery and support for seven software-as-a-service products. Before HP, Daoust served as a General Manager of Sapient Corporation in Cambridge.
About QuickBase
Launched in 1999 and headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., QuickBase Inc., formerly a division of Intuit, is a newly independent company focused on helping businesses of all sizes drive productivity and digitally transform their organizations. The platform's unique low-code interface enables users to create custom applications faster and easier without learning code. Today, QuickBase is used by more than 6,000 customers, including half of the Fortune 100, across a variety industries and use cases. The company was divested from Intuit in March 2016 and is backed by Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. For more information, please visit: www.quickbase.com.
Media Contacts:
Angela Maglione
Will Gluckin
Bateman Group for QuickBase
(617) 250-2241
(347) 382-9734
To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/quickbase-increases-investment-in-customer-success-to-support-next-era-of-application-development-300422979.html
SOURCE QuickBase Inc.
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text:
At Caffe Vivaldi in New York's Greenwich Village, Peter Muller bangs out a repertoire full of Carole King riffs on the piano along with his own soft-rock compositions that draw on the likes of Van Morrison and Cat Stevens.
"It's not the same anymore," he croons. "I'm still looking for my home."
In the audience, couples sip house cabernet and applaud politely. Some drop $10 tips into a metal bucket.
About 40 blocks uptown, in a 42-story skyscraper overlooking Duffy Square, the straw-haired Muller, 47, performs for a tougher crowd — as the multimillionaire math whiz behind one of Wall Street's most secretive trading machines.
Muller is the founder of Morgan Stanley's Process Driven Trading group, or PDT, a 70-person band of PhDs and computer jockeys. They use algorithm-rich programs to bet Morgan Stanley's money on pricing discrepancies in global markets.
With no outside investors to please, Muller has kept the strategies and performance of PDT under wraps, stoking the curiosity and envy of rivals.
"They say: 'I know him. He made a boatload of money for Morgan Stanley,' " says Arjun Divecha, chairman of Boston-based GMO, who manages about $18 billion using quantitative techniques. "They don't know how he's done it."
Muller makes no apologies for his obsessive secrecy.
"I want my competitors to know absolutely nothing about what we do," Muller says in his corner office, which is decorated with pictures of his wife, Jillian, and their two children as well as a pair of battered snowboards.
A troubadour, yoga enthusiast and math geek, Muller makes an unlikely Morgan Stanley executive. The 5-foot-10-inch, 160-pound manager practices ashtanga yoga, a style that incorporates synchronized breathing. He's also a champion Texas Hold 'Em poker player and writes New York Times crossword puzzles several times a year.
Since he started PDT in 1993, its investments have returned an estimated annual average of more than 20 percent through 2010, according to a person close to the group. As a proprietary-trading desk, PDT uses different accounting rules than hedge funds. Its return figure has been adjusted to approximate its performance as if it were a hedge fund.
Hedge funds on average gained 10.4 percent annualized, net of fees, from July 1, 1993, through 2010, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research.
After almost two decades at Morgan Stanley, Muller is about to go out on his own, a move precipitated by the biggest regulatory overhaul of Wall Street since the Great Depression. Banks are jettisoning or closing groups like PDT as a result of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2010.
The law's Volcker rule, named for former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, bars banks from maintaining prop-trading operations and restricts the amount they can invest in hedge and private equity funds to 3 percent of their tier 1 capital. They can also own no more than 3 percent of such funds.
In its 2010 annual report, Goldman Sachs disclosed it had liquidated most of its long-short prop desk positions and was doing the same with its global macro group. Morgan Stanley in March completed the spinning off of FrontPoint Partners, a hedge fund it acquired in 2006. Bank of America disclosed in April a plan to sell its main private-equity business to management.
Now, it's PDT's turn. In January, Morgan Stanley said it would spin off the group at the end of 2012 as a separate firm. Morgan Stanley retained an option to buy a preferred stock position in the new company for undisclosed terms.
For decades, prop desks have played a crucial role in the transformation of investment banks such as Morgan Stanley from advisory and underwriting businesses to trading powerhouses that bet huge amounts of their own firms' money. Once the closely held Wall Street partnerships began tapping the public markets for capital, prop desks could wager with shareholders' money.
By the mid-2000s, prop traders were at the center of the exploding markets for collateralized debt obligations, or pools of bonds, and derivatives, which are instruments that derive their value from an underlying asset. These products were high-octane fuel for the credit bubble that ultimately blew up Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG.
As the curtain falls on prop trading at banks, their profits may suffer. Morgan Stanley in 2008 began to pull back on risk, partly by reducing leverage. Since then, its fixed-income trading revenue has been sluggish. Morgan Stanley's net income fell 45 percent in the first quarter of 2011 from $1.78 billion a year earlier. While firms don't generally disclose profits from prop trading, Goldman characterized it in 2010 as constituting about 10 percent of revenue in most years.
The loss of this profit engine, along with other Dodd-Frank restrictions on products such as derivatives and debit cards, will hurt Wall Street banks' returns in coming years, says Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners.
"It's the cumulative effect of Dodd-Frank that will lower expected returns," Peabody says. "Just about every business is facing some kind of crackdown."
Prop traders aren't going away; they're just changing addresses. Dodd-Frank only sought to end the practice in banks to reduce risk. Traders have been relocating to hedge funds and nonbank Wall Street firms such as KKR.
PDT makes most of its money using statistical arbitrage, or stat-arb, former Morgan Stanley employees say. When PDT's research suggests that a stock is temporarily overpriced, based on its trading history, the group bets against it while piling into corresponding underpriced securities.
In a group of a dozen oil services stocks, six might be rising on a given day and six falling. At some point, the trend reverts: The gainers begin to fall, and vice versa. For PDT, figuring out the precise time to place its bets is the tricky part.
PDT has lost money in only two quarters since its inception and never in a calendar year, according to sources.
Muller skippered PDT through the August 2007 quant meltdown, when overleveraged hedge funds and other investors lost billions of dollars during a four-day period. PDT, along with other Morgan Stanley prop desks, lost $390 million in a single day, according to Morgan Stanley filings. Yet PDT powered back to finish the year in the black, people close to the operation say. The group also lost heavily in the fourth quarter of 2008 amid the global credit crash but still made money for the year.
"I think Peter is brilliant," says Clifford Asness, co-founder of AQR Capital Management, a $39 billion quantitative investment firm in Greenwich, Conn.
With PDT off to a strong start in the mid-1990s, Vikram Pandit, then Morgan Stanley's head of institutional equity, wanted to know more about the secretive trading group, says Graham Giller, a researcher who worked with Muller. Giller says Pandit told him to find out details about PDT's strategies.
"He felt it was the intellectual property of Morgan Stanley," says Giller, who now runs Giller Investments. Giller says Pandit never set up a meeting at which Giller could inform him of what he had discovered. Pandit, Citigroup's CEO since 2007, declined to comment.
In going solo, Muller will have to drum up capital from investors who have grown wary of quants, whose returns have lagged those of other types of traditional managers in recent years.
Equity managers using quantitative strategies generated a cumulative return of 37 percent from the start of 2005 through April 2011 compared with 49 percent for equity managers deploying traditional or combined approaches, according to EVestment Alliance, an Atlanta research firm.
As of December, the assets of quant funds were down 10 percent from their peak of $157.5 billion in 2007, as tracked by the research firm Lipper. And new fund launches in 2010 were less than half of the 2005 peak of 189.
"Quantitative managers have been losing market share, and it's fairly significant," says Mark Thurston, head of global equity research at Russell Investments.
The underperformance may be due to cyclical forces, as beaten-down value stocks that many quant funds invest in have tended to lag behind their more-expensive growth counterparts in recent years. The decline may also stem from an abundance of quant-managed money pursuing similar strategies.
"Everything goes in cycles," Muller says. "Success creates more competition."
PDT keeps a low profile within Morgan Stanley's headquarters. In the elevator vestibule at its ninth-floor offices, a plain, 7-inch-by-7-inch plastic sign reads "Process Driven Trading."
Muller has created a distinctive corporate culture at PDT, rejecting the eat-what-you-kill ethos practiced at some hedge funds. He cites a childhood book, "Watership Down," as informing PDT's environment.
The fantasy novel by Richard Adams tells the story of a nest of rabbits on an odyssey to find a safer home in the English countryside. Each of the principal rabbits excels in an area: intelligence, physical strength, intuition. After tribulations, they make it to their abode.
What does this tale have to do with PDT? "It's a community coming together with each individual contributing their unique skills," Muller says. "It's the whole that benefits."
PDT has operated as a quasi-independent group within Morgan Stanley for almost 20 years, Muller says. Dede Welles, 41, is the legal head; Amy Wong, 43, serves as operating chief; and Eunice Baek, 41, runs human resources.
"I had grown disillusioned with academia," says Denis Dancanet, 43, PDT's head of futures trading, who has a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "Maybe three people care what you do."
Eli Ofek, a New York University professor, also left academia for PDT.
In Manhattan, researchers gather for free-roaming discussions at lunch.
"The range is broad, from the technology to solve Rubik's Cube to sports to politics to the rate at which flesh-eating bacteria can eat your arm," says Tushar Shah, 40, PDT's chief scientist, who has a PhD in physics from MIT.
Muller pays for weeklong vacations for the group to spots such as Grenada and Jamaica to celebrate good years. PDT off-site retreats have included white-water rafting in Maine and paint ball in upstate New York.
Researchers work in teams on PDT's strategies, with Muller and Shah meeting independently with each group.
Muller and his closest cohorts use a program called an optimizer to allocate assets among the different strategies to generate the most profit with the least risk. Nobody else knows its details.
In the 1990s, Shakil Ahmed, a Yale computer science PhD, worked on U.S. equity stat-arb strategies. Wong, who has an master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT, oversaw investments based on fundamentals, such as earnings. Giller built a statistical method using interest-rate forecasts. All contributed to PDT's reputation as a cauldron of white-hot quantitative talent.
Muller says his group will expand after it's spun off and rechristened PDT Partners. Ownership will be spread among 11 partners. They will pursue strategies that may be less predictable than what Morgan Stanley is comfortable with.
"We have strategies that can take large amounts of capital," Muller says. "But they are not as consistent. They'll make money almost every year but not almost every quarter."
A native of Philadelphia, Muller says he was born hard-wired for math. His Austrian-born father, Kurt, was a chemical engineer with Essex Chemical. His mother, Eva, a native of Brazil, was one of the first women to practice medicine there and later became a psychiatrist.
After graduating from Princeton, Muller took a job as a researcher and programmer at Barra. The pioneering quant firm in Berkeley, Calif., used complex mathematics to help active fund managers measure and control risk.
By 1992, Muller cooked up an idea of using Barra's quantitative techniques to forecast returns rather than just model risk; Barra could manage money itself. Management turned down Muller's proposal, and he moved on.
A headhunter put Muller in touch with Morgan Stanley, which was then looking for a quant strategist to drum up business. Muller had bigger aspirations and cut a deal with Derek Bandeen, a prop-trading executive. Muller had two years to get a profitable trading system running. If he failed, he would perform the strategist's job. PDT was born.
In 1993, as Muller began building a team at Morgan Stanley's Sixth Avenue headquarters, his business model and ethos mimicked Barra's, not Wall Street's.
By 1996, PDT was sizzling. "It was like an express train," marvels Giller, the former analyst. "It was generating millions of dollars a day. It would just appear on the screen. It was surreal."
In August 2007, Muller confronted the greatest financial storm of his lifetime. Tightening credit markets triggered a panic as leveraged quant funds tried to exit many of the same positions.
"We were all trying to figure out how much selling pressure there was and when it was going to abate," Muller says.
The PDT founder says he wanted to hold on to his money- losing positions, betting on a reversion. But ultimately Muller agreed with then-CEO John Mack that PDT should reduce its leverage and increase cash. "If we had traded the model without cutting risk, we would have had our best year ever," Muller says.
The bank and PDT made a similar mistake the very next year, as the subprime contagion morphed into a global rout in the fourth quarter of 2008. Morgan Stanley cut back capital, and the group lost money for the quarter.
In late 2009, Muller says, he approached Gorman, then co-president, to ask for three changes at PDT: Employees should be allowed to directly invest in its funds, PDT should be permitted to employ new strategies to attract outside capital, and employees should own the group in whole or in part.
Gorman, 52, said he could work on addressing the first two requests but resisted the third, sources said.
Today, as regulators write rules for the Dodd-Frank Act, Muller is poised to see his third wish fulfilled. Regulators are set to release a final proposal in October for implementing the ban on prop trading at banks. The Federal Reserve said in February that banks would generally have two years to comply once the rule takes effect.
Quants are laying odds that PDT will prosper on its own. "It's an incredible opportunity to be spun out," GMO's Divecha says. "They have this wonderful machine that prints money. Now, they'll be using it to print money for themselves rather than Morgan Stanley."
As investors still bruised from past losses steer clear of quant funds, Muller is confident that PDT's reputation will lure money his way. People close to PDT say institutions looking to make investments have already approached Muller.
He will need to contend with critical matters unrelated to trading — accounting, legal, compliance — and build a marketing department.
"Any time a manager goes from a proprietary-trading desk in a large investment bank to an independent business, it can be difficult," says Robert Frey, who left Morgan Stanley in 1988 to start Kepler Financial Management, a fund he later merged into Renaissance Technologies. "It can be like taking a beautiful hothouse flower and planting it outside."
Muller co-wrote a song that could be the anthem for his new firm. It's about the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, who torched most of his fleet upon arrival in Mexico in 1519 to prevent his crew from deserting him on his odyssey of epic plunder.
"The men knew they had to go forward," Muller sings. "No looking shoreward, forward to glory and gold."
The full article appears in the August issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine.


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Rapidly Aging Population Heralds A "Gray Dawn"
January 7, 1999
Sharply lower birth rates coupled with breakthroughs in medical science are leading to a dramatic rise in the proportion of the global population over age 65, says Peter G. Peterson, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In a current Foreign Affairs article, Peterson calls this the "gray dawn," and says it will have several predictable consequences for national economies, especially in affluent industrialized countries: worker shortages, immigration pressures and governments facing a choice between bankruptcy and radical reforms of national pension schemes.
Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, people over 65 never comprised more than two to three percent of the population.
- Today, they make up 14 percent of the population in the developed world.
- In the U.S. during 1998, those over 65 amounted to 12.7 percent of all Americans -- a proportion which is predicted to grow to 16.5 percent by 2020.
- The over-65 group in Germany now comprises 15.9 percent of the population -- with the figure predicted to rise to 23.2 percent by 2020.
- In Japan, 16 percent are now over 65 and 26.3 percent will be in 2020.
Sources: Peter G. Peterson, "Gray Dawn: The Global Aging Crisis, " Foreign Affairs, January/February 1999; Jon Omicinski, "Aging Population Gives All Gray Hairs," USA Today, January 7, 1999.
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Great-looking abs are more than just a way to support the mirror industry. In fact, strong abs and flat stomachs are the ultimate indicator of overall health for both men and women. Great abs will help you live longer, sleep better, prevent back pain, and significantly improve your sex life! (And, hey, they don't look half-bad in the mirror, either.) Unfortunately, you could spend years on starvation diets and extreme exercise programs that never unearth those elusive stomach muscles.
Or you could spend just six weeks with David Zinczenko, Editor-in-Chief of Men's Health magazine, on The Abs Diet, an easy and effective program for everyone that is helping thousands of people lose weight, flatten their guts, banish post-pregnancy bellies, and become healthier than they ever thought possible.
What's more, once on this revolutionary new diet you'll look and feel better than ever without deprivation dieting, counting calories, measuring foods, worrying about confusing phases, or ever feeling hungry!
Sound impossible? Let David Zinczenko prove it to you. As Editor-in-Chief of the world's most important men's magazine, Zinczenko has devoted his career to helping people improve their lives through the latest and most well-researched health, nutrition, and exercise information available.
Now, in his national best seller, Zinczenko reveals his infallible formula that works for both men and women.
The Abs Diet is the best, last, and only diet and nutrition plan that you will ever need.
"Rational recommendations for a realistic diet plan....Best of all, this book tells readers why it works: increase your body's metabolism, gain some muscle, and fat burns away. The authors make this seem like a fresh and very attainable ideal." (Publishers Weekly)
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Not really within six weeks
- Christian
A lifestyle you can live with
- Rob S