Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research
Distinguished Computational Science Lecture Series

Image Registration for Multisource Remote Sensing

Dr. Jacqueline Le Moigne
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Software Engineering Division – Code 580

3:00pm Thursday, 3 April 2014, ITE 456, UMBC

Satellite remote sensing systems provide large amounts of global coverage and repetitive measurements representing simultaneous or multi-temporal observations of the same features by different sensors; for example over the last 40 years, Landsat satellites have been acquiring more than three million images representing about one petabyte of data. Furthermore, most sensors are carried on separate platforms, resulting in a tremendous amount of data that must be combined. In meeting some of the Earth System Science objectives, the combination of all these data at various resolutions — spatial, radiometric and temporal — will facilitate a better understanding of Earth and space science phenomena, and image registration enables the first step towards this integration.

In this talk, we will describe the image registration challenge in the context of Earth and space remote sensing. Then, we will review a subset of the methods that are being utilized to tackle this challenge, and finally we will describe some of our work that utilizes multiscale representations, in particular wavelets and over-complete representations, as well as more recent work dealing with the registration of Martian data based on crater extraction and matching.

Dr. Le Moigne is the Assistant Chief for Technology in the Software Engineering Division at NASA Goddard, and was Goddard Center Associate for ESTO/Advanced Information Systems Technology Program, from 2009 to 2012. Dr. Le Moigne received a B.S. and a M.S. in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, France. While her Ph.D. thesis dealt with biomedical imagery, her post-doctoral work at the UMD Computer Vision Lab focused on the development of a visual navigation system for the first DARPA Autonomous Land Vehicle project. At NASA Goddard since 1990, Dr. Le Moigne has performed extensive work in the processing and the analysis of remote sensing data. Her work particularly focuses on image registration, utilizing multiscale representations as well as high-performance and on-board processing. More recent work dealt with creating web-based access to benchmark data for Image Processing education and research (imageseer.nasa.gov). Currently, Dr. Le Moigne is the PI of a Goddard Internal project focused on Distributed Spacecraft Missions. She has published over 120 publications, including 23 journal papers, holds one patent, and has co-edited a book on “Image Registration for Remote Sensing” published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. She is a NASA Goddard Senior Fellow, an IEEE Senior Member and an ABET Program Evaluator. She was a NATO Science for Peace and Security Committee Panel Member from 2008 to 2011. In 2012, she received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the Goddard Information Science and Technology Award.

Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research
Distinguished Computational Science Lecture Series

Image Registration for Multisource Remote Sensing

Dr. Jacqueline Le Moigne
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Software Engineering Division – Code 580

3:00pm Thursday, 3 April 2014, ITE 456, UMBC

Satellite remote sensing systems provide large amounts of global coverage and repetitive measurements representing simultaneous or multi-temporal observations of the same features by different sensors; for example over the last 40 years, Landsat satellites have been acquiring more than three million images representing about one petabyte of data. Furthermore, most sensors are carried on separate platforms, resulting in a tremendous amount of data that must be combined. In meeting some of the Earth System Science objectives, the combination of all these data at various resolutions — spatial, radiometric and temporal — will facilitate a better understanding of Earth and space science phenomena, and image registration enables the first step towards this integration.

In this talk, we will describe the image registration challenge in the context of Earth and space remote sensing. Then, we will review a subset of the methods that are being utilized to tackle this challenge, and finally we will describe some of our work that utilizes multiscale representations, in particular wavelets and over-complete representations, as well as more recent work dealing with the registration of Martian data based on crater extraction and matching.

Dr. Le Moigne is the Assistant Chief for Technology in the Software Engineering Division at NASA Goddard, and was Goddard Center Associate for ESTO/Advanced Information Systems Technology Program, from 2009 to 2012. Dr. Le Moigne received a B.S. and a M.S. in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, France. While her Ph.D. thesis dealt with biomedical imagery, her post-doctoral work at the UMD Computer Vision Lab focused on the development of a visual navigation system for the first DARPA Autonomous Land Vehicle project. At NASA Goddard since 1990, Dr. Le Moigne has performed extensive work in the processing and the analysis of remote sensing data. Her work particularly focuses on image registration, utilizing multiscale representations as well as high-performance and on-board processing. More recent work dealt with creating web-based access to benchmark data for Image Processing education and research (imageseer.nasa.gov). Currently, Dr. Le Moigne is the PI of a Goddard Internal project focused on Distributed Spacecraft Missions. She has published over 120 publications, including 23 journal papers, holds one patent, and has co-edited a book on “Image Registration for Remote Sensing” published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. She is a NASA Goddard Senior Fellow, an IEEE Senior Member and an ABET Program Evaluator. She was a NATO Science for Peace and Security Committee Panel Member from 2008 to 2011. In 2012, she received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the Goddard Information Science and Technology Award.

"Much of the fun in life is getting stuck in things -- parties, dating, working out, work itself, shopping, brunch, online research, social media... the list is endless. Sometimes these things are extremely useful, valuable and satisfying. Our spirit knows when this is the case, as we feel refreshed, content and rewarded. It makes us happy -- like the time we have coffee with the friend we have a soul connection with, the barre class we take where we love the music and really stretch ourselves, or the day we take a staycation somewhere new and find a fantastic book store or restaurant.

Then there's the rest of the crap we do. This "stuff" often isn't useful or valuable, and instead of feeling satisfied, we're left feeling neutral, indifferent, even hollow.

Picture an awesome day you had in your life. I bet it included people you love, an activity you love, or both. Sometimes, in the day-to-day of doing "stuff," we lose sight of the valuable and confuse it with the non-valuable. We say yes to things that don't necessarily serve us, connect with people who take our energy rather than energize us, and spend hours of our precious time doing things out of habit or to please others."

Read more...

At the end of last week ICANN, the body responsible for the allocation of domain names online, announced it will be adopting changes to domain name structure first proposed at the Paris conference in October. Those changes center around increased localization of existing domain names.

Localization of domains will involve cancelling all existing top level domains and reissuing a geographically local alternative. Whilst the changes won’t actually come into full effect until January 1st 2018, the first email notifications to pre-existing domain registrants will be sent out as early as the second quarter of 2016.

New suffix structure

The new suffix structure will apply to .com, .org and .net domains; decisions regarding other suffixes will not be made until the 2015 conference in Bern. The new domains, when they come into force, will consist of the existing top level domain, followed by a regional, national and continental suffix.

Existing .com domains will be reassigned based on the address of the registrant. So for example, WebdesignerDepot’s new domain name (indicating ‘British Columbia’, ‘Canada’, ‘North America’) will be:

webdesignerdepot.com.bc.ca.nam

There are two further suffixes which also included in ICANN’s specification, although they are likely to remain silent for now: .ear will be used to represent Earth, and .sol will be used to represent the Solar system—these suffixes are being added for future-proofing and aren’t expected to be in practical use for the foreseeable future. This means that our full domain will actually be:

webdesignerdepot.com.bc.ca.nam.ear.sol

ICANN’s strategy director Oscar Binnie believes that localising domains in this way will create the opportunity for small firms to grow and expand naturally on the Web:

What we see now, is a small firm in Tallahassee, registering a domain that blocks a similar business in Phuket from operating under the same identity…what will result [once these changes come into effect] is both firms effectively using the same domain name to reach their customers via localized suffixes.

Domain name owners will have first option on securing domains they already have registered, with a six month registration window to open in June 2017. Any domain options not taken up during this primary period will then be made available on a first-come first-serve basis.

Redundant shortcoding

ICANN have promised to introduce redundant shortcoding for domains. The system advocated by the Internet regulator, and reportedly favoured by several tech giants including Google, Microsoft and the W3C, is based on the shortcoding model used by the New York Stock Exchange’s redundancy system. It means that to remove one level of suffix, at least 51% of conflicting domains must resolve to the same IP address.

There are ten provinces in Canada, which means that our potential domains for Canada are:

• webdesignerdepot.com.on.ca.nam (Ontario)
• webdesignerdepot.com.qc.ca.nam (Quebec)
• webdesignerdepot.com.ns.ca.nam (Nova Scotia)
• webdesignerdepot.com.nb.ca.nam (New Brunswick)
• webdesignerdepot.com.mb.ca.nam (Manitoba)
• webdesignerdepot.com.bc.ca.nam (British Columbia)
• webdesignerdepot.com.pe.ca.nam (Prince Edward Island)
• webdesignerdepot.com.sk.ca.nam (Saskatchewan)
• webdesignerdepot.com.ab.ca.nam (Alberta)
• webdesignerdepot.com.nl.ca.nam (Newfoundland and Labrador)

If we register at least 51% of these domains our domain will be automatically shortcoded to:

webdesignerdepot.com.ca.nam

We also have the option to remove the national portion of the extension by registering 51% of provincial domains in 51% of North American countries. There are 22 countries that make up North America, meaning that we’d need to hold a 51% share of at least 12 countries.

The best value domains are: Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, each with 6 administrative regions. The worst value is the USA with 50 regions, followed by the Bahamas with 32 and the Dominican Republic with 31.

To shortcode our domain for the whole of North America, we’ll need to register at least: 4 domains from Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and Costa Rica; 6 domains from Canada, Dominica, Haiti, Barbados, and Saint Lucia; and 8 from El Salvador, and Jamaica; a total of 66 domains, which would shortcode us to:

webdesignerdepot.com.nam

It’s worth noting that under this system, someone in Durango, Mexico would be able to register webdesignerdepot.com.du.mx.nam, and even be able to shortcode it down to webdesignerdepot.com.mx.nam, but they wouldn’t be able to shortcode it further if we have already registered for the whole of North America.

If we want to remove all of the new suffixes we need to shortcode down to a global domain. To do that we need to register 51% of regional domains in 51% of countries in 51% of continents.

The new continental domains—.afr (Africa), .asi (Asia), .eur (Europe), .nam (North America), .oce (Oceana), and .sam (South America)— are joined by .pol, the domain for the South Pole. Importantly, ICANN has determined that no political entities exist on the southern polar continent, meaning that .pol is a premium domain for anyone looking to secure global exclusivity of any domain name.

There are 14 countries in South America, 22 in North America, 31 in Oceana, 42 in Asia, 49 in Europe, 58 in Africa. The cheapest route to a global shortcoded domain would therefore be to take control of the .pol domain and 51% of countries in South America, North America, and Oceana. That would mean registering approximately 217 domains, leaving us with:

webdesignerdepot.com

The cost of registering a single .com for the maximum 10 year period will therefore rise to around $32,484.00

Managing the change

Over $32,000 for a single domain is excessive for the majority of small businesses, even if the anticipated subscription models allow staggered payment over the full duration of the registration. Freelance consultant Paul Dennehy suspects that’s exactly what ICANN is trying to achieve:

Over the last decade we’ve seen tens of thousands of businesses effectively domain squatting on a global domain presence, whilst only trading locally. ICANN’s move is intended to extend the number of domains available and prevent early Web adopters from trading off that initial investment.

It is unlikely that domain name registrars will be offering the full number of domains available to you. Instead, they’ll offer you the regional domain appropriate to your location, then offer you the option to upgrade to national, continental or global, depending on your budget and the current availability.

It’s unclear at this stage what actual costs will be imposed, it’s highly unlikely the market will bear such large costs, and domain name providers are likely to offer substantial discounts. But domain registrars will be taking on a lot of extra admin work, so they will naturally pass the additional cost on to their customers. Whilst $32,000 may be a worst-case scenario, it is unlikely to be too far from of the mark.

The implications

What is of significant concern is the lack of equality produced by the new system: someone in Canada will be able to claim the national domain subset by registering 6 regional domains; in the USA you’ll need to register 27 regional domains to be the owner of the national suffix; in the UK you’ll have to register 98 regions.

What is of greater concern is the opportunity for greater domain hijacking. On the 1st January 2018, all domains will automatically be converted to their regional equivalents based on registrant location, if the registrants fail to upgrade then anyone will be able to register the domains necessary to resolve the subset down to the global level; should, for example, Google fail to register enough regional domains, the global google.com domain name would be available to register; this means that companies have to pay up, or lose their most valuable marketing tool to a competitor.

This change is likely to infuriate domain owners who thought they’d staked a claim on their corner of the Web, only to find it being resold from under them. However, it will go someway to combatting the domain squatting that plagues new business owners.

One thing is for sure, if we don’t buy into this change, from 1st January 2018 our full domain name will be webdesignerdepot.com.bc.ca.nam.ear.sol

[ Update: thanks for all the great feedback, in case it wasn't clear, this article is an April Fools' Day prank. ]

Featured image/thumbnail, uses Earth image via DonkeyHotey.

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This coming weekend, the UMBC chess team will play for the President’s Cup in the Final Four of College Chess. UMBC will compete with chess teams from Webster University, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and Texas Tech University.

The match has been held each year since 2001 between the top four US schools from the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship and the winner is considered the top chess team among U.S. colleges and universities.  UMBC has placed first at the Final Four a record six times.

CSEE Professor Alan Sherman, who is the director of the UMBC chess program, will accompany the team to the match, which will be held at the New York Athletic Club in New York City on Friday through Sunday, April 4-6, 2014. Games will be broadcast live on Monroi.

The UMBC team will consist of:

• Board 1: GM Niclas “The Dark Knight” Huschenbeth (USCF rating 2610)
• Board 2: GM Akshayraj “The Indian Knight” Kore (2519)
• Board 3: M Levan “The Georgian Gangster” Bregadze (2469)
• Board 4: IM and WGM Nazi “The Black Widow” Paikidze (2378)
• Alternate: WGM Sabina “Sunshine” Foisor (2315)

This coming weekend, the UMBC chess team will play for the President’s Cup in the Final Four of College Chess. UMBC will compete with chess teams from Webster University, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and Texas Tech University.

The match has been held each year since 2001 between the top four US schools from the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship and the winner is considered the top chess team among U.S. colleges and universities.  UMBC has placed first at the Final Four a record six times.

CSEE Professor Alan Sherman, who is the director of the UMBC chess program, will accompany the team to the match, which will be held at the New York Athletic Club in New York City on Friday through Sunday, April 4-6, 2014. Games will be broadcast live on Monroi.

The UMBC team will consist of:

• Board 1: GM Niclas “The Dark Knight” Huschenbeth (USCF rating 2610)
• Board 2: GM Akshayraj “The Indian Knight” Kore (2519)
• Board 3: M Levan “The Georgian Gangster” Bregadze (2469)
• Board 4: IM and WGM Nazi “The Black Widow” Paikidze (2378)
• Alternate: WGM Sabina “Sunshine” Foisor (2315)

A good online presence is key to the success of modern businesses.

Or is it?

There’s a new movement brewing up in the business world: Companies no longer want to have websites, mobile apps, social media accounts, or any sort of presence on the Internet.

Businesses are shutting off their websites, powering down their servers, pulling out their apps from app stores, terminating their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, and firing their web developers.

I managed to talk to and interview one such entrepreneur in the front lines of this latest trend.

His name is Buck Cooter — one of the many successful CEOs on a mission to usher their companies back offline.

Here’s my Q&A sesh with Buck.

So You Took Your Website Down?

Buck: Yes, we deleted that thing a while back.

Our developer, web designer, UX/UI designer, usability analyst, information architect, server engineer, and IT staff — a guy named Larry — has unfortunately been made redundant.

No more sites. Or mobile apps. And tweets are for twits.

Seriously: Your Business is Completely Offline? On Purpose?

Buck: Yeah. The Internet — we decided we’re not doing that anymore.

What is the Reason for Going Offline?

Buck: As a business, you have to continue to innovate and iterate on your unique value proposition (UVP). You have to apply the Agile method to your business model.

Our company is now on stealth mode and we’ve brought it back to a minimum viable product. Our innovation here is that usually tech startups do these two things in the beginning, but we’re pivoting in the late-stage and disrupting the startup template (with support from our VCs) because we believe it’s really going to get us some good traction and a great termsheet if we ever get aquahired by Facebook (which did wonders for Oculus Rift, their early adopters love them even more because of the recent acquisition.)

What Are the Benefits of Taking Your Business Off the Web?

Buck: As the leader of a company, you have to promote that passion for innovation and you have to mix things up.

One of the key advantages of taking down our site and social media accounts is we’re able to focus on exploring new ways to communicate our brand and getting our message across to our target demographic.

For instance, sending them our message via mail through the postal service, telegraph, fax, the like.

Or cutting a hole at the bottom of two tin cans and attaching them together with a string and then giving one can to our customer and then our PR manager and marketers are speaking on the other end of this device. This is really fun.

How Has This Changed Things at The Office?

Buck: Not sure I understand the question. Has my office changed? No, not really.

Here’s a photo of my office:

I still have my custom-built PC (it’s by the window) and my ergo chair.

No. This is What I Meant: How Has This Changed Your Company’s Culture?

Buck: Our employees are spending less time on Facebook. In fact, they spend no time on Facebook because I got our ISP to shut off our office’s Internet connectivity.

If you’re going to do something, you gotta go all out son.

Any Parting Words?

Buck: You can’t end a business interview without somehow mentioning Steve Jobs or Apple.

So I’ll end with a Steve Jobs quote, but just pretend in your head I’m the one saying it to you:

"We have an environment where excellence is really expected. What’s really great is to be open when [the work] is not great. My best contribution is not settling for anything but really good stuff, in all the details. That’s my job — to make sure everything is great. "

The Buck stops here. I’m out.

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About the Author

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end web developer by profession. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page or follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

The post Businesses Don’t Want Websites Anymore appeared first on Six Revisions.

It was seen as the future of the Web and mobile devices. Google Glass was the thing we all saw in movies about the near future. It was a TV, phone, computer and all in a very personal device. It opened the door to a virtual world of augmented reality, instant information, facial recognition; but is, according to rumours leaking onto the internet, a device with serious unforeseen drawbacks.

Google planned on making a huge splash with its latest and greatest life-changing product but a competitor jumped in, shipping over 50,000 units of the VuzixM100 headset in November of last year. Figures for sales from both manufacturers are placed at close to 1,000,000 units shipped or in the process of shipping at this date.

As early as December of 2013, just weeks after the products were in use among the consumer public, there were some tragic incidents leading to the discovery of a single thread linking fatalities and serious injuries; all victims were Google Glass users.

Product problems arise

It wasn’t until there were survivors of some odd and heinous accidents, such as walking into open holes, off cliffs, into traffic and other situations caused by the glass distraction that officials started drawing a corollary betwen the tech-glasses and the incidents.

“The number of fatalities is what’s so disturbing,” commented Dick Roundtree, the New York City Safety Commissioner. “People are just walking out into traffic and getting run down at full speed. The drivers can’t stop in time and it’s not just at cross walks. People are appearing from between parked cars and even just walking down the middle of busy streets, oblivious to what’s going on around them.” 

“I was searching out local restaurants while walking down 3rd Avenue,” explains a male victim who asked not to be identified. “The view was blocked by all the responses posted by my glass and I walked toward an augmented reality panda, who was waving me toward the restaurant, when I realized I had just been hit by something big and I was flying through the air. It turned out the field of flowers and rainbows the augmented reality panda was standing on was actually 3rd Avenue and the flying unicorn that hit me was actually the express bus. If I hadn’t been able to tweet that I’d been knocked down, I don’t know if the emergency services would have reached me in time.”

Changing the ability to focus 

Other survivors, as well as users that have not been injured, report that using the glass device for more than a couple of hours a day has affected their depth perception. 

“I thought the truck was just getting bigger, not closer, and then it hit me,” said one emergency room patient. “The other day I went to open the front door of a little cafe in front of me and put my hand into a fire instead. The front door was 20 yards away!” 

There is a lesser fatal side effect that has users and opticians alike very concerned. According to a recent statement by the president of the Opticians Association of America (OAA)), there are more and more cases of Giant Cell Arteritis (Oculous Gigantis) being reported by Google Glass users. 

“It was common in scientists and lab workers before electronic microscopes,” commented Dr. Shirley Earley, HFOAA. “People who would sit at a microscope for hours every day would create an eye that was dominant to the other and after time, the lesser used eye would shrink a few millimeters in diameter, while the most used eye swelled from arterial strain. It can be serious but it’s also disturbing to look at!” 

Accurate figures on the ratio of users getting injured are limited, however, as many users have not emerged from their apartments and homes since receiving the products, leading to what may be further disaster caused by rotting corpses of people who forgot to eat, bathe or couldn’t stop indulging in augmented reality porn. 

At the center of many of these problems is the new app, Nude World™ (Briefly released under the name, “T & A Parade”). As with facial recognition software, Nude World™ relies on algorithms of body parts being assigned to certain scans through the Google Glass camera, and then it assembles a library of nude body parts that match the scanned subject’s height, approximate weight, measurements of the chest, waist and hips so the subject whom you are viewing appears to be truly naked—including body jiggles and bouncing. The app for nude males uses the same algorithms except it assigns one of four set penis sizes depending on skin tone. 

There are reports that another app firm is about to launch eHance™, a blocking app that allows you to program in selected body parts from the library so you will appear slimmer, taller or more endowed in all the right places when others are viewing you through Nude World™. AnimalHance™ is another hacker app that allows one to program in animal feet, tails and even genitalia from certain “gifted” species.

Overcoming the stigma 

One of the primary problems with Google Glass is the stigma users are under for wearing the device in public. In a recent article by Becky Worley, Why Google Glass Will Never Be Okay, people share some of their uncomfortable experiences from being ticketed while driving, having to take them off before entering a public restroom and being suspected of recording conversations. At SxSW, a vote was held as to what panel discussion should be presented. Google Glass Makes Me Want To Punch Your Face lost out to Glassholes: The Cultural Dissonance of Technology. Two equally bad choices for Google Glass aficionados.

Expect legislation 

Although legislation on the use of Google Glass and other similar models is expected, most lawmakers have cited that they believe, almost in unison, that “these big-eyed cyber freaks SHOULD walk into traffic, open pits, open fires, off cliffs. That will solve the problem as fast as it arose.” 

“Augmented reality and these demon tools belong to the DEVIL!” commented a usually quiet, former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin.

Google has not responded to calls and emails, requesting further information. Neither has Sarah Palin.

[ Update: thanks for all the great feedback, in case it wasn't clear, this article is an April Fools' Day prank. ]

Featured image/thumbnail, Google Glass image via Héctor García.

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