Groupwise non-rigid image alignment is a difficult non-linear optimization problem involving many parameters and often large datasets. Previous methods have explored various metrics and optimization strategies. Good results have been previously achieved with simple metrics, requiring complex optimization, often with many unintuitive parameters that require careful tuning for each dataset. In this chapter, the problem is restructured to use a simpler, iterative optimization algorithm, with very few free parameters. The warps are refined using an iterative Levenberg-Marquardt minimization to the mean, based on updating the locations of a small number of points and incorporating a stiffness constraint. This optimization approach is eff

"Watermarking" is one method in which digital information is buried in a carrier signal;
the hidden information should be related to the carrier signal. There are many different types of
digital watermarking, including traditional watermarking that uses visible media (such as snaps,
images, or video), and a signal may be carrying many watermarks. Any signal that can tolerate
noise, such as audio, video, or picture data, can have a digital watermark implanted in it. A digital
watermark must be able to withstand changes that can be made to the carrier signal in order to
protect copyright information in media files. The goal of digital watermarking is to ensure the
integrity of data, whereas stegano

Experienced economic environmentRadical changes at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present century, resulting in new concepts and expectations in all aspects of economic, political, social and even behavioral.Each of these concepts is the result of rapid developments in the intangible space. Competition is no longer limited to the mere possession of tangible material resources, but because of its link to knowledge and technology content and to the comprehensive quality standards and efficient and effective policies of States. With the increasing pace of growth and interdependence among the global economies, this resulted in the birth of a new economic system led by technological development and financial liberalizati

Objective(s): The study aims to evaluating the quality of nursing care provided to children under five years to compare between quality related to type of health sectors; to determine the quality of nursing care and to compare between such care in Baquba Health Care Sector I and II.

Methodology: A descriptive study is carried out for the period from December 15^th 2019 to May 1^st 2020. A purposive "non- probability" sample, of (60) staff nurse and (60) children is selected. An adopted questionnaire has been selected for the study which consists of three parts. The first part is nurses’ socio-demographic characteristic; the second part is ch

In this paper, we derive and prove the stability bounds of the momentum coefficient µ and the learning rate ? of the back propagation updating rule in Artificial Neural Networks .The theoretical upper bound of learning rate ? is derived and its practical approximation is obtained

Nowadays, information systems constitute a crucial part of organizations; by losing security, these organizations will lose plenty of competitive advantages as well. The core point of information security (InfoSecu) is risk management. There are a great deal of research works and standards in security risk management (ISRM) including NIST 800-30 and ISO/IEC 27005. However, only few works of research focus on InfoSecu risk reduction, while the standards explain general principles and guidelines. They do not provide any implementation details regarding ISRM; as such reducing the InfoSecu risks in uncertain environments is painstaking. Thus, this paper applied a genetic algorithm (GA) for InfoSecu risk reduction in uncertainty. Finally, the ef

In this study, the harvest of maize silage with the cross double row sowing method were tested with a single row disc silage machine in two different PTO applications (540 and 540E min-1) and at two different working speeds v1, v2 (1.8 and 2.5 km h-1). The possibilities of harvesting with a single row machine were revealed, and performance characteristics such as hourly fuel consumption, field-product fuel consumption and PTO power consumption were determined in the trials. The best results in terms of hourly fuel consumption and PTO power consumption were determined in the 540E PTO application and V1 working speed. When the fuel consumption of the field-product is evaluated, it is obtained with V2 working speed and 540E PTO application. As