The history of images can be described as a history of technology and mediality. The development of images is deeply rooted in the potentials of media technologies and the numerous human inventions in the range of traditional craftsmanship, engineering science, computer science, and art and design. The factual embedding of images in the historical-technological processes constitutes a complex structure of an autonomous "image evolution" that must be highlighted, characterized and analyzed by the interdisciplinary academic discourses that are related to the functions and structures of visuality, pictoriality, and forms of multi-sensoric representations. The chosen term "evolution" is deliberately indicating structural laws that underlie historical events. These laws are intentional and logical processes of a historical and technological interdependency. In this interdependency, technology is evolving out of its inherent structures and additionally embedded in anthropological conditions and sociocultural dynamics. In this context, we should work with the concept of an "image evolution".

In image processing, "motions by curvature" provide an efficient way to smooth curves representing the boundaries of objects. In such a motion, each point of the curve moves, at any instant, with a normal velocity equal to a function of the curvature at this point. This book is a rigorous and self-contained exposition of the techniques of "motion by curvature". The approach is axiomatic and formulated in terms of geometric invariance with respect to the position of the observer. This is translated into mathematical terms, and the author develops the approach of Olver, Sapiro and Tannenbaum, which classifies all curve evolution equations. He then draws a complete parallel with another axiomatic approach using level-set methods: this leads to generalized curvature motions. Finally, novel, and very accurate, numerical schemes are proposed allowing one to compute the solution of highly degenerate evolution equations in a completely invariant way. The convergence of this scheme is also proved.

This volume addresses the evolution of the visual in digital communities, offering a multidisciplinary discussion of the ways in which images are circulated in digital communities, the meanings that are attached to them and the implications they have for notions of identity, memory, gender, cultural belonging and political action. Contributors focus on the political efficacy of the image in digital communities, as well as the representation of the digital self in order to offer a fresh perspective on the role of digital images in the creation and promotion of new forms of resistance, agency and identity within visual cultures.

Image compression, the Navier-Stokes equations, and detection of gravitational waves are three seemingly unrelated scientific problems that, remarkably, can be studied from one perspective. The notion that unifies the three problems is that of ``oscillating patterns'', which are present in many natural images, help to explain nonlinear equations, and are pivotal in studying chirps and frequency-modulated signals. The first chapter of this book considers image processing, moreprecisely algorithms of image compression and denoising. This research is motivated in particular by the new standard for compression of still images known as JPEG-2000. The second chapter has new results on the Navier-Stokes and other nonlinear evolution equations. Frequency-modulated signals and theiruse in the detection of gravitational waves are covered in the final chapter. In the book, the author describes both what the oscillating patterns are and the mathematics necessary for their analysis. It turns out that this mathematics involves new properties of various Besov-type function spaces and leads to many deep results, including new generalizations of famous Gagliardo-Nirenberg and Poincare inequalities. This book is based on the ``Dean Jacqueline B. Lewis Memorial Lectures'' given bythe author at Rutgers University. It can be used either as a textbook in studying applications of wavelets to image processing or as a supplementary resource for studying nonlinear evolution equations or frequency-modulated signals. Most of the material in the book did not appear previously inmonograph literature.

Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world. Leonardo da Vinci Artistic behavior is one of the most valued qualities of the human mind. Although artistic manifestations vary from culture to culture, dedication to artistic tasks is common to all. In other words, artistic behavior is a universal trait of the human species. The current, Western de?nition of art is relatively new. However, a d- ication to artistic endeavors — such as the embellishment of tools, body - namentation, or gathering of unusual, arguably aesthetic, objects — can be traced back to the origins of humanity. That is, art is ever-present in human history and prehistory. Artandsciencesharealongandenduringrelationship.Thebest-known- ample of the explorationof this relationship is probably the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Somewhere in the 19th century art and science grew apart, but the cross-transfer of concepts between the two domains continued to exist. Currently, albeit the need for specialization, there is a growing interest in the exploration of the connections between art and science. Focusingoncomputerscience,itisinterestingtonoticethatearlypioneers of this discipline such as Ada Byron and Alan Turing showed an interest in using computational devices for art-making purposes. Oddly, in spite of this early interest and the ubiquity of art, it has received relatively little attention fromthe computersciencecommunityingeneral,and,moresurprisingly,from the arti?cial intelligence community.

Stunning images to reawaken us to the scientific process that drives the amazing diversity of life on earth Evidence of evolution is everywhere. Through 200 revelatory images, award-winning photographer Robert Clark makes one of the most important foundations of science clear and exciting to everyone. Evolution: A Visual Record transports readers from the near-mystical(human ancestors) to the historic (the famous 'finches' Darwin collected on the Galapagos Islands that spurred his theory); the recently understood (the link between dinosaurs and modern birds) to the simply astonishing.

Emphasizing the changes worked by circulation and copying, interpretation and debate, this book uses the case to explore how pictures succeed and fail, gain acceptance and spark controversy. It reveals how embryonic development was made a process that we can see, compare, and discuss, and how copying - usually dismissed as unoriginal

For more than two centuries, Americans have used words of sentiment and sympathy, passion and power to explain their country's unique democratic mission. Here Andrew Burstein examines the emotional dynamic and the metaphorically rich language which Americans developed to express their guiding principle: that the New World would improve upon the Old. "Feeling," he argues, was a political and cultural phenomenon, and in the impassioned rhetoric of "feeling" we can locate the sources of American patriotism. Using newspapers and magazines, private letters and public speeches, diaries and books, Burstein shows how the eighteenth-century "culture of sensibility" encouraged early Americans to make a heartfelt commitment to the Enlightenment's optimism about a global society; it would succeed, they believed, as much by sublime feeling as by intellectual achievement and political liberty. "Sentimental Democracy" gives us a lively dual portrait of the American psyche and the American dream -- telling us as much about ourselves as about our morally passionate ancestors. -- From publisher's description.

How did life evolve on Earth? The answer to this question can help us understand our past and prepare for our future. Although evolution provides credible and reliable answers, polls show that many people turn away from science, seeking other explanations with which they are more comfortable. In the book Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including "intelligent design." The book explores the many fascinating inquiries being pursued that put the science of evolution to work in preventing and treating human disease, developing new agricultural products, and fostering industrial innovations. The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes. Mindful of school board battles and recent court decisions, Science, Evolution, and Creationism shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. For educators, students, teachers, community leaders, legislators, policy makers, and parents who seek to understand the basis of evolutionary science, this publication will be an essential resource.

This book covers mathematical foundations and methods for the computerized analysis of shapes, providing the requisite background in geometry and functional analysis and introducing various algorithms and approaches to shape modeling, with a special focus on the interesting connections between shapes and their transformations by diffeomorphisms. A direct application is to computational anatomy, for which techniques such as large‒deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping and metamorphosis, among others, are presented. The appendices detail a series of classical topics (Hilbert spaces, differential equations, Riemannian manifolds, optimal control). The intended audience is applied mathematicians and mathematically inclined engineers interested in the topic of shape analysis and its possible applications in computer vision or medical imaging. The first part can be used for an advanced undergraduate course on differential geometry with a focus on applications while the later chapters are suitable for a graduate course on shape analysis through the action of diffeomorphisms. Several significant additions appear in the 2nd edition, most notably a new chapter on shape datasets, and a discussion of optimal control theory in an infinite-dimensional framework, which is then used to enrich the presentation of diffeomorphic matching.