title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: Descriptions and portraits of Leonardo combine to create an image of a man who was tall for his time and place, athletic and extremely handsome. He was 5ft 8 inches, based on the length of his purported skeleton. However, the remains, which were attributed to Leonardo due to the unusually large skull and accompanying stone fragments inscribed "EO [...] DUS VINC", have not yet been positively identified. Portraits indicate that as an older man, he wore his hair long, at a time when most men wore it cropped short, or reaching to the shoulders. While most men were shaven or wore close-cropped beards, Leonardo's beard flowed over his chest.


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: His clothing is described as being unusual in his choice of bright colours, and at a time when most mature men wore long garments, Leonardo's preferred outfit was the short tunic and hose generally worn by younger men. This image of Leonardo has been recreated in the statue of him that stands outside the Uffizi Gallery.


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: According to Vasari, Leonardo possessed "great strength and dexterity", being "physically so strong that he could withstand violence and with his right hand he could bend the ring of an iron door knocker or a horseshoe as if they were lead". He was "striking and handsome" and "marvellously endowed by heaven with beauty, grace [and] outstanding physical beauty", and "displayed infinite grace in everything he did".


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: Author Simon Hewitt claims that a figure in the "Sforzida" manuscript depicts a youthful Leonardo and that the figure in the illustration has red hair.


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: A 2018 study published in JAMA Ophthalmology explored Leonardo's uncanny ability to reproduce the three-dimensional world in his paintings, indicating that the capacity may have been facilitated by an eye disorder which granted him vision in both 2-D and 3-D, theorizing that the artist experienced intermittent exotropia (commonly called "walleye"), which is a type of strabismus—an eye misalignment affecting approximately four percent of Americans. Exotropia typically results in the favoring of one eye, leading to vision resembling those seen when painted on a flat canvas. The theory was refuted by new research conducted by Christopher Tyler, director of the Brain Imaging Center at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute at City University of London, which was published by the same journal in 2019.


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: Swiss scientist David Thaler of the University of Basel published two papers exploring Leonardo’s vision and artworks, studying the manner in which superior visual acuity captures "images that 'in real life' only occur for a moment." The artist's ability to perceive minute details of fleeting phenomena could result from a higher flicker fusion frequency, according to Thaler, who promotes a physiological examination of Leonardo, rather than a nature versus nurture study, in analyzing the genesis and breadth of his skills.


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: Leonardo's face is best known from a drawing in red chalk that appears to be a self-portrait. However, there is some controversy over the identity of the subject, because the man represented appears to be of a greater age than the 67 years lived by Leonardo. A solution which has been put forward is that Leonardo deliberately aged himself in the drawing, as a modern forensic artist might do, in order to provide a model for Raphael's painting of him as Plato in "The School of Athens".


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: A profile portrait in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan is generally accepted to be a portrait of Leonardo, and also depicts him with flowing beard and long hair. This image was repeated in the woodcut designed for the first edition of Vasari's "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects".


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: In a 2008 TED talk, artist Siegfried Woldhek, based on Leonardo's features allegedly featured in Andrea del Verrocchio's bronze statue of "David", proposed that Leonardo may have done three self-portraits: "Portrait of a Musician", the "Vitruvian Man", and the aforementioned "Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk".


title: Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

text: It has been written that Leonardo "may be the most universally recognized left-handed artist of all time", a fact documented by numerous Renaissance authors, and manifested conspicuously in his drawing and handwriting. In his notebooks, he wrote in mirror script because of his left handedness (it was easier for him), and he was falsely accused of trying to protect his work. Leonardo also wrote of using a mirror to judge his compositions more objectively. Early Italian connoisseurs were divided as to whether Leonardo also drew with his right hand. More recently, Anglo-American art historians have for the most part discounted suggestions of ambidexterity.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow () is a large suburban district of West London, west-southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hounslow, and is identified in the London Plan as one of the 12 metropolitan centres in Greater London.


title: Hounslow

text: It is bounded by Isleworth to the east, Twickenham to its south, Feltham to its west and Southall to its north.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow includes the districts of Hounslow West, Heston, Cranford and Heathrow. Although most of the district lay within the London Borough of Hounslow, some parts fall within the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and the London Borough of Hillingdon including Heathrow Airport.


title: Hounslow

text: Most of Hounslow, including its Town Centre, the area south of the railway station and the localities of Lampton and Spring Grove, falls under the TW3 postcode. The TW4 postcode is made up of Hounslow West and parts of Cranford, whilst the TW5 postcode includes Heston and Cranford. Heathrow Airport and parts of Hatton comprise the TW6 postcode.


title: Hounslow

text: In old records, Hounslow is spelt 'Hundeslow' which points to the Anglo-Saxon phrase "'Hundes hlāw"', translating to 'the Hound's barrow' or more accurately 'the barrow of a man named or nicknamed Hound'.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow was centred around the Holy Trinity Priory founded in 1211. The priory developed what had been a small village into a town with regular markets and other facilities for travellers heading to and from London. Although the priory was dissolved in 1539, the town remained an important staging post on the Bath Road.


title: Hounslow

text: The construction of the Great Western Railway line from London to Bristol from 1838 reduced long-distance travel along the Bath Road. By 1842, the local paper was reporting that the 'formerly flourishing village' (which used to stable 2000 horses) was suffering a 'general depreciation of property'. The Hounslow Loop Line was constructed in 1850 - which prompted new development. Hounslow Hospital opened in 1876 and closed in 1978. Hanworth Road drill hall (now the Treaty Lodge Hotel) was built for the 2nd Volunteer Battalion, The Middlesex Regiment.


title: Hounslow

text: The construction of the Great West Road (a by-pass for the Bath Road, around Brentford, Isleworth and Hounslow town centres) in the 1920s attracted the building of factories and headquarters of large companies and led to a great deal of housing development. After a decline in the 1970s, offices largely replaced factories and further expansion in hotel and housing stock started to take place.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow Heath has a continuous recorded history dating back to the Norman period, in which it lent its name to the hamlet of Heathrow. It was infamously known for the numbers of highwaymen and footpads in the area, who targeted wealthy individuals and noblemen.


title: Hounslow

text: The Heath once had strategic importance as its routes acted as a throughway from London to the west and southwest of Britain. The present northern boundary of the Heath - Staines Road - was the Roman Road later known as the Devils Highway. There are several historic references to Roman camps surrounding the Heath. Both Oliver Cromwell and James II used the heath as a military encampment.


title: Hounslow

text: In 1784 the first accurate measurements were made on the heath to establish the base line for the Ordnance Survey trigonometrical survey of Great Britain. The event was attended by King George IV and Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society.


title: Hounslow

text: In 1793, the Cavalry Barracks were constructed and were extended with the Beavers Lane Camp. Between 1914 and 1920 the heath became Hounslow Heath Aerodrome.


title: Hounslow

text: The territorial police force is the Metropolitan Police. Hounslow Police Station is located on Montague Road, adjacent to the High Street.


title: Hounslow

text: The statutory fire and rescue service in Hounslow is the London Fire Brigade (LFB), with the nearest fire station in Isleworth on London Road.


title: Hounslow

text: The nearest accident and emergency hospital is West Middlesex University Hospital, in Isleworth, which is part of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and a teaching hospital of the Imperial College School of Medicine. London Ambulance Service provides emergency ambulance services.


title: Hounslow

text: Historically in Middlesex, Hounslow was within the county's hundred of Isleworth in ancient times. Since 1965 Hounslow has been part of the London Borough of Hounslow, with parts in the London Boroughs of Hillingdon and Richmond upon Thames. Prior to this, Hounslow was part of the Municipal Borough of Heston and Isleworth, from 1835 until 1965. The south of Hounslow was part of the Municipal Borough of Twickenham, while Cranford was part of the Hayes and Harlington Urban District and Feltham Urban District.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow is separated from Twickenham by Hanworth Road (A314) Nelson Road, Hounslow Road (B361) and Whitton Dene/ Murray Park.


title: Hounslow

text: Hall Road, Bridge Road, the Hounslow Loop Line, Thornbury Park, Worton Way, the Piccadilly Line, Stucley Road and Osterley Park separate Hounslow and Isleworth.


title: Hounslow

text: The Norwood Green estate and Industrial area in North Hyde, separate Hounslow and Southall whilst the River Crane and Cranford Park form a natural boundary between Hounslow and Hayes


title: Hounslow

text: Historically, Hounslow's traditional western boundary followed the River Crane however it now extends to the Bath Road (A4), Duke of Northumberlands River and Great South-West Road (A30) and back to the river (to include Heathrow Airport).


title: Hounslow

text: The town of Hounslow, including its localities Cranford, Heston, Hounslow West and Lampton, was 103,337 in the 2011 census, whereas the wider borough had a population of 254,000.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow has a high degree of people who ethnically identify as BAME (Black, Asian and minority Ethnic), and it is the borough's most diverse town. In seven of Hounslow's eight electoral wards, the BAME proportion is above 70%. The town has a large British Asian community.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow is an economic hub within the west of the capital city, with it having a large shopping centre which adjoins its high street and many restaurants, cafés and small businesses, many of which are associated with product assembly, marketing, telecommunications and Heathrow Airport, which has many businesses and public sector jobs in and around it to which the local population commute. The settlement is also partially employed in the Commuter Belt with access between 45 and 60 minutes from most of Central London.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow Town Centre is a busy predominantly retail centre, with a small number of commercial offices and civic buildings. There is a large shopping centre called the Treaty Centre which opened in 1987, containing JD, Next, H&M and many large branches of chain stores found in British high streets. It includes a food court along with over 50 shops. There is a large ASDA superstore located within the Blenheim Centre complex (which was completed in 2006) along with B&M, a Barnado's charity shop, a local health centre, a gym run by The Gym Group and Jungle V.I.P (a children's indoor play area).


title: Hounslow

text: A new retail area, the High Street Quarter, will be located near Hounslow High Street and is set to contain a 27-storey residential tower along with many shops, restaurants, and a ten-screen Cineworld cinema multiplex.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow Heath is a large public open space and local nature reserve to the west of Hounslow, a London borough. It now covers about and is only the residue of the historic Hounslow Heath that once covered over .


title: Hounslow

text: Bell Square is an outdoor performance space next to the Bell pub. Hounslow Community Land Project was a community garden and sports area on a derelict piece of land on Hanworth Road.


title: Hounslow

text: The London Borough of Hounslow also has a sister district agreement with Leningradsky District in Krasnodar Krai, Russia.


title: Hounslow

text: One of the earliest surviving houses in the town is The Lawn, in front of the Civic Centre with its public tennis courts, in brown brick with three double-hung sash windows set back in reveals with flat arches, roof with parapet and porch of fluted doric columns, pilasters, entablature and semi-circular traceried fanlight. The similar example of 44–50 Bath Road: also in brown brick and as is sometimes seen, has been painted. Nearby country houses include Osterley House, Syon House, Hanworth Park House and Worton Hall.


title: Hounslow

text: There are three major roads in Hounslow. The east–west roads, the A4 'Great West Road' and the 'Bath Road' that connects Hounslow to Central London and Slough, and the A30 'Great South West Road' that connects it to Staines-upon-Thames, which meet at Henlys Roundabout in Hounslow West. There is also the north–south road, the A312 'The Causeway' and 'The Parkway', which connects Hounslow to Hampton in the south and Harrow to the north.


title: Hounslow

text: Additionally, A and B roads in Hounslow include the A314 'Hanworth Road' that starts in Hounslow and finishes in Hanworth, Feltham. The historic A315 'London Road', 'Hounslow High Street', 'Hanworth Road', 'Grove Road' and 'Staines Road'; which starts in Central London and ends in Bedfont, Feltham. In doing this, it connects Hounslow to towns and districts such as Kensington, Hammersmith, Chiswick, Brentford and Isleworth.


title: Hounslow

text: The A4 Great West Road joins with the A3006 Bath Road (from the A315) before Henlys Roundabout, which is in Hounslow West, from which a WNW route passes Heathrow Airport, terminals 1 to 3 and terminal 5 as the "Bath Road" and a WSW route, the A30, passes terminal 4, bypasses Staines and reaches the M25; the remainder is a mostly-minor route to Land's End, Cornwall.


title: Hounslow

text: The A315 is the historic WSW road out of London, on which Hounslow's High Street is placed. To the east, it bisects Isleworth, Brentford and Chiswick. To the west it bisects North Feltham and Bedfont before joining the A30.


title: Hounslow

text: The north–south A312, "The Parkway", to the west of Hounslow leads south to Hampton or north to Harrow passing Waggoners' Roundabout (WNW of Henlys Roundabout in Hounslow West), Hayes, Yeading and Northolt.


title: Hounslow

text: Three minor roads converge on Heston from the A315 in parts of Hounslow, the A3063, A3005 and B363. The single road re-divides just north in Norwood Green into a northwest road to Southall (the A3005) and into the A4127 that passes by Hanwell, briefly using the A4020 west before bypassing Dormers Wells, passing Greenford to reach Sudbury, the town immediately to the west of Wembley and North Wembley.


title: Hounslow

text: For longer journeys north, the M4, A4 or A30 then M25 provides the best routes. For longer journeys south, Hanworth Road leads to the A316 that becomes the M3 motorway.


title: Hounslow

text: There are three main London Underground stations in the town; Hounslow East, Hounslow Central and Hounslow West, with all the stations being on the Piccadilly line. The District line used to operate services to Hounslow, and the town also has abandoned stations on the old line, such as Hounslow Town.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow railway station, operated by South Western Railway, is on the line to London Waterloo, or westwards to Reading, Weybridge, Woking or Windsor. The line also offers services on the Hounslow Loop Line, opened 1850, further around the loop to Twickenham and Richmond. It is situated a fair distance from the town centre and is used far less than the Underground stations.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow bus garage and an adjoining bus station are close to the High Street. In 1962, as a result of the final stage of the London trolleybus programme of conversion to motor bus operation, when Isleworth garage was closed, the staff from that depot (coded IH) were transferred to Hounslow. The property is owned by the RATP Group, which took it over with the purchase of London United from Transdev. In addition to its frequent and regular daytime services throughout the surrounding areas, Hounslow is served by the N9 night service from Heathrow Airport to Central London.


title: Hounslow

text: Hounslow Heath Aerodrome was a grass airfield and was operational from 1910 to 1920. It was in the London borough of Hounslow, and in 1919 was where the first scheduled daily international commercial air services began.


title: Hounslow

text: St Mark's Catholic School is on Bath Road. Lampton School was previously Spring Grove Grammar School, in the area of Lampton. Kingsley Academy was formerly known as Hounslow Manor School and Hounslow Heath Junior School in Selwyn Close.


title: Hounslow

text: Due to the town's large South Asian community, Hounslow has a large array of religious sites to cater to the large Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities as well as the Christian community.


title: Hounslow

text: Mosques situated in the area include Hounslow Central Mosque, Hounslow Muslim Center, Mosque of Jummah Prayer, Islamic Integration Community Centre, Al-Furqan Education Trust and Madina Islamic Mission.


title: Hounslow

text: Churches include Our Lady Queen of Apostles, Holy Trinity Church, Hounslow Methodist Church, Hounslow Spiritualist Centre, Hounslow Pentecostal Church, Maxwell Park Church, Hounslow URC Church, St Paul's Church, St Stephen's Church, Hounslow United Reformed Church, St Michael & St Martin Church, Christian Community Church, Hounslow Pentecostal Church, Hounslow West Evangelical Church, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Hounslow Spiritualist Church, St John's Mar Thoma Church, Christ Embassy and Heston Methodist Church.


title: Hounslow

text: A printed programme dated 7 July 1935 suggests that there may have been a motorcycle speedway race at a venue in Dockwell Lane, Feltham, branded as the Hounslow Speedway. Information suggests that more than one meeting was staged in conjunction with the Hounslow Motorcycle and Car Club.


title: Hounslow

text: In the late 20th century, Hounslow Hockey Club was successful at a national level but has since merged with Barnes Hockey Club. Hounslow Heath Golf Centre, situated on the western side of the Heath closed in 2016.


title: Image segmentation

text: In digital image processing and computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple image segments, also known as image regions or image objects (sets of pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simplify and/or change the representation of an image into something that is more meaningful and easier to analyze. Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries (lines, curves, etc.) in images. More precisely, image segmentation is the process of assigning a label to every pixel in an image such that pixels with the same label share certain characteristics.


title: Image segmentation

text: The result of image segmentation is a set of segments that collectively cover the entire image, or a set of contours extracted from the image (see edge detection). Each of the pixels in a region are similar with respect to some characteristic or computed property


title: Image segmentation

text: , such as color, intensity, or texture. Adjacent regions are significantly different color respect to the same characteristic(s). When applied to a stack of images, typical in medical imaging, the resulting contours after image segmentation can be used to create 3D reconstructions with the help of interpolation algorithms like marching cubes.


title: Image segmentation

text: Several general-purpose algorithms and techniques have been developed for image segmentation. To be useful, these techniques must typically be combined with a domain's specific knowledge in order to effectively solve the domain's segmentation problems.


title: Image segmentation

text: The simplest method of image segmentation is called the thresholding method. This method is based on a clip-level (or a threshold value) to turn a gray-scale image into a binary image.


title: Image segmentation

text: The key of this method is to select the threshold value (or values when multiple-levels are selected). Several popular methods are used in industry including the maximum entropy method, balanced histogram thresholding, Otsu's method (maximum variance), and k-means clustering.


title: Image segmentation

text: Recently, methods have been developed for thresholding computed tomography (CT) images. The key idea is that, unlike Otsu's method, the thresholds are derived from the radiographs instead of the (reconstructed) image.


title: Image segmentation

text: New methods suggested the usage of multi-dimensional fuzzy rule-based non-linear thresholds. In these works decision over each pixel's membership to a segment is based on multi-dimensional rules derived from fuzzy logic and evolutionary algorithms based on image lighting environment and application.


title: Image segmentation

text: The K-means algorithm is an iterative technique that is used to partition an image into "K" clusters. The basic algorithm is


title: Image segmentation

text: In this case, distance is the squared or absolute difference between a pixel and a cluster center. The difference is typically based on pixel color, intensity, texture, and location, or a weighted combination of these factors. "K" can be selected manually, randomly, or by a heuristic. This algorithm is guaranteed to converge, but it may not return the optimal solution. The quality of the solution depends on the initial set of clusters and the value of "K".


title: Image segmentation

text: The Mean Shift algorithm is a technique that is used to partition an image into an unknown apriori no. of clusters. This has the advantage of not having to start with an initial guess of such parameter which makes it a better general solution for more diverse cases.


title: Image segmentation

text: The idea is simple: look at the differences between a pair of images. Assuming the object of interest is moving, the difference will be exactly that object.


title: Image segmentation

text: Improving on this idea, Kenney et al. proposed interactive segmentation . They use a robot to poke objects in order to generate the motion signal necessary for motion-based segmentation.


title: Image segmentation

text: Interactive segmentation follows the interactive perception framework proposed by Dov Katz and Oliver Brock .


title: Image segmentation

text: Compression based methods postulate that the optimal segmentation is the one that minimizes, over all possible segmentations, the coding length of the data. The connection between these two concepts is that segmentation tries to find patterns in an image and any regularity in the image can be used to compress it. The method describes each segment by its texture and boundary shape. Each of these components is modeled by a probability distribution function and its coding length is computed as follows:


title: Image segmentation

text: For any given segmentation of an image, this scheme yields the number of bits required to encode that image based on the given segmentation. Thus, among all possible segmentations of an image, the goal is to find the segmentation which produces the shortest coding length. This can be achieved by a simple agglomerative clustering method. The distortion in the lossy compression determines the coarseness of the segmentation and its optimal value may differ for each image. This parameter can be estimated heuristically from the contrast of textures in an image. For example, when the textures in an image are similar, such as in camouflage images, stronger sensitivity and thus lower quantization is required.


title: Image segmentation

text: Histogram-based methods are very efficient compared to other image segmentation methods because they typically require only one pass through the pixels. In this technique, a histogram is computed from all of the pixels in the image, and the peaks and valleys in the histogram are used to locate the clusters in the image. Color or intensity can be used as the measure.


title: Image segmentation

text: A refinement of this technique is to recursively apply the histogram-seeking method to clusters in the image in order to divide them into smaller clusters. This operation is repeated with smaller and smaller clusters until no more clusters are formed.


title: Image segmentation

text: One disadvantage of the histogram-seeking method is that it may be difficult to identify significant peaks and valleys in the image.


title: Image segmentation

text: Histogram-based approaches can also be quickly adapted to apply to multiple frames, while maintaining their single pass efficiency. The histogram can be done in multiple fashions when multiple frames are considered. The same approach that is taken with one frame can be applied to multiple, and after the results are merged, peaks and valleys that were previously difficult to identify are more likely to be distinguishable. The histogram can also be applied on a per-pixel basis where the resulting information is used to determine the most frequent color for the pixel location. This approach segments based on active objects and a static environment, resulting in a different type of segmentation useful in video tracking.


title: Image segmentation

text: Edge detection is a well-developed field on its own within image processing. Region boundaries and edges are closely related,


title: Image segmentation

text: since there is often a sharp adjustment in intensity at the region boundaries. Edge detection techniques have therefore been used as the base of another segmentation technique.


title: Image segmentation

text: The edges identified by edge detection are often disconnected. To segment an object from an image however, one needs closed region boundaries. The desired edges are the boundaries between such objects or spatial-taxons.


title: Image segmentation

text: Spatial-taxons are information granules, consisting of a crisp pixel region, stationed at abstraction levels within a hierarchical nested scene architecture. They are similar to the Gestalt psychological designation of figure-ground, but are extended to include foreground, object groups, objects and salient object parts. Edge detection methods can be applied to the spatial-taxon region, in the same manner they would be applied to a silhouette. This method is particularly useful when the disconnected edge is part of an illusory contour


title: Image segmentation

text: Segmentation methods can also be applied to edges obtained from edge detectors. Lindeberg and Li developed an integrated method that segments edges into straight and curved edge segments for parts-based object recognition, based on a minimum description length (M) criterion that was optimized by a split-and-merge-like method with candidate breakpoints obtained from complementary junction cues to obtain more likely points at which to consider partitions into different segments.


title: Image segmentation

text: This method is a combination of three characteristics of the image: partition of the image based on histogram analysis is checked by high compactness of the clusters (objects), and high gradients of their borders. For that purpose two spaces have to be introduced: one space is the one-dimensional histogram of brightness "H" = "H"("B"); the second space is the dual 3-dimensional space of the original image itself "B" = "B"("x", "y"). The first space allows to measure how compactly the brightness of the image is distributed by calculating a minimal clustering kmin. Threshold brightness T corresponding to kmin defines the binary (black-and-white) image – bitmap "b" = "φ"("x", "y"), where "φ"("x", "y") = 0, if "B"("x", "y") < "T", and "φ"("x", "y") = 1, if "B"("x", "y") ≥ "T". The bitmap "b" is an object in dual space. On that bitmap a measure has to be defined reflecting how compact distributed black (or white) pixels are. So, the goal is to find objects with good borders. For all "T" the measure "M" = "G"/("k" × "L") has to be calculated (where "k" is difference in brightness between the object and the background, "L" is length of all borders, and "G" is mean gradient on the borders). Maximum of MDC defines the segmentation.


title: Image segmentation

text: Region-growing methods rely mainly on the assumption that the neighboring pixels within one region have similar values. The common procedure is to compare one pixel with its neighbors. If a similarity criterion is satisfied, the pixel can be set to belong to the same cluster as one or more of its neighbors. The selection of the similarity criterion is significant and the results are influenced by noise in all instances.


title: Image segmentation

text: The method of Statistical Region Merging (SRM) starts by building the graph of pixels using 4-connectedness with edges weighted by the absolute value of the intensity difference. Initially each pixel forms a single pixel region. SRM then sorts those edges in a priority queue and decides whether or not to merge the current regions belonging to the edge pixels using a statistical predicate.


title: Image segmentation

text: One region-growing method is the seeded region growing method. This method takes a set of seeds as input along with the image. The seeds mark each of the objects to be segmented. The regions are iteratively grown by comparison of all unallocated neighboring pixels to the regions. The difference between a pixel's intensity value and the region's mean, formula_1, is used as a measure of similarity. The pixel with the smallest difference measured in this way is assigned to the respective region. This process continues until all pixels are assigned to a region. Because seeded region growing requires seeds as additional input, the segmentation results are dependent on the choice of seeds, and noise in the image can cause the seeds to be poorly placed.


title: Image segmentation

text: Another region-growing method is the unseeded region growing method. It is a modified algorithm that does not require explicit seeds. It starts with a single region formula_2—the pixel chosen here does not markedly influence the final segmentation. At each iteration it considers the neighboring pixels in the same way as seeded region growing. It differs from seeded region growing in that if the minimum formula_1 is less than a predefined threshold formula_4 then it is added to the respective region formula_5. If not, then the pixel is considered different from all current regions formula_6 and a new region formula_7 is created with this pixel.


title: Image segmentation

text: One variant of this technique, proposed by Haralick and Shapiro (1985), is based on pixel intensities. The mean and scatter of the region and the intensity of the candidate pixel are used to compute a test statistic. If the test statistic is sufficiently small, the pixel is added to the region, and the region’s mean and scatter are recomputed. Otherwise, the pixel is rejected, and is used to form a new region.


title: Image segmentation

text: A special region-growing method is called formula_8-connected segmentation (see also lambda-connectedness). It is based on pixel intensities and neighborhood-linking paths. A degree of connectivity (connectedness) is calculated based on a path that is formed by pixels. For a certain value of formula_8, two pixels are called formula_8-connected if there is a path linking those two pixels and the connectedness of this path is at least formula_8. formula_8-connectedness is an equivalence relation.


title: Image segmentation

text: Split-and-merge segmentation is based on a quadtree partition of an image. It is sometimes called quadtree segmentation.


title: Image segmentation

text: This method starts at the root of the tree that represents the whole image. If it is found non-uniform (not homogeneous), then it is split into four child squares (the splitting process), and so on. If, in contrast, four child squares are homogeneous, they are merged as several connected components (the merging process). The node in the tree is a segmented node. This process continues recursively until no further splits or merges are possible. When a special data structure is involved in the implementation of the algorithm of the method, its time complexity can reach formula_13, an optimal algorithm of the method.


title: Image segmentation

text: Using a partial differential equation (PDE)-based method and solving the PDE equation by a numerical scheme, one can segment the image. Curve propagation is a popular technique in this category, with numerous applications to object extraction, object tracking, stereo reconstruction, etc. The central idea is to evolve an initial curve towards the lowest potential of a cost function, where its definition reflects the task to be addressed. As for most inverse problems, the minimization of the cost functional is non-trivial and imposes certain smoothness constraints on the solution, which in the present case can be expressed as geometrical constraints on the evolving curve.


title: Image segmentation

text: Lagrangian techniques are based on parameterizing the contour according to some sampling strategy and then evolving each element according to image and internal terms. Such techniques are fast and efficient, however the original "purely parametric" formulation (due to Kass, Witkin and Terzopoulos in 1987 and known as "snakes"), is generally criticized for its limitations regarding the choice of sampling strategy, the internal geometric properties of the curve, topology changes (curve splitting and merging), addressing problems in higher dimensions, etc.. Nowadays, efficient "discretized" formulations have been developed to address these limitations while maintaining high efficiency. In both cases, energy minimization is generally conducted using a steepest-gradient descent, whereby derivatives are computed using, e.g., finite differences.


title: Image segmentation

text: The level-set method was initially proposed to track moving interfaces by Dervieux and Thomasset in 1979 and 1981 and was later reinvented by Osher and Sethian in 1988. This has spread across various imaging domains in the late 1990s. It can be used to efficiently address the problem of curve/surface/etc. propagation in an implicit manner. The central idea is to represent the evolving contour using a signed function whose zero corresponds to the actual contour. Then, according to the motion equation of the contour, one can easily derive a similar flow for the implicit surface that when applied to the zero level will reflect the propagation of the contour. The level-set method affords numerous advantages: it is implicit, is parameter-free, provides a direct way to estimate the geometric properties of the evolving structure, allows for change of topology, and is intrinsic. It can be used to define an optimization framework, as proposed by Zhao, Merriman and Osher in 1996. One can conclude that it is a very convenient framework for addressing numerous applications of computer vision and medical image analysis. Research into various level-set data structures has led to very efficient implementations of this method.


title: Image segmentation

text: The fast marching method has been used in image segmentation, and this model has been improved (permitting both positive and negative propagation speeds) in an approach called the generalized fast marching method.


title: Image segmentation

text: which is optimal with respect to a specific energy functional. The functionals consist of a data fitting term and a regularizing terms. A classical representative is the Potts model defined for an image formula_14 by


title: Image segmentation

text: A minimizer formula_16 is a piecewise constant image which has an optimal tradeoff between the squared L2 distance to the given image formula_14 and the total length of its jump set. The jump set of formula_16 defines a segmentation. The relative weight of the energies is tuned by the parameter formula_19. The binary variant of the Potts model, i.e., if the range of formula_20 is restricted to two values, is often called Chan-Vese model. An important generalization is the Mumford-Shah model given by


title: Image segmentation

text: The functional value is the sum of the total length of the segmentation curve formula_22, the smoothness of the approximation formula_20, and its distance to the original image formula_14. The weight of the smoothness penalty is adjusted by formula_25. The Potts model is often called piecewise constant Mumford-Shah model as it can be seen as the degenerate case formula_26. The optimization problems are known to be NP-hard in general but near-minimizing strategies work well in practice. Classical algorithms are graduated non-convexity and Ambrosio-Tortorelli approximation.


title: Image segmentation

text: Graph partitioning methods are an effective tools for image segmentation since they model the impact of pixel neighborhoods on a given cluster of pixels or pixel, under the assumption of homogeneity in images. In these methods, the image is modeled as a weighted, undirected graph. Usually a pixel or a group of pixels are associated with nodes and edge weights define the (dis)similarity between the neighborhood pixels. The graph (image) is then partitioned according to a criterion designed to model "good" clusters. Each partition of the nodes (pixels) output from these algorithms are considered an object segment in the image; see Segmentation-based object categorization. Some popular algorithms of this category are normalized cuts, random walker, minimum cut, isoperimetric partitioning, minimum spanning tree-based segmentation, and segmentation-based object categorization.


title: Image segmentation

text: The application of Markov random fields (MRF) for images was suggested in early 1984 by Geman and Geman. Their strong mathematical foundation and ability to provide a global optimum even when defined on local features proved to be the foundation for novel research in the domain of image analysis, de-noising and segmentation. MRFs are completely characterized by their prior probability distributions, marginal probability distributions, cliques, smoothing constraint as well as criterion for updating values. The criterion for image segmentation using MRFs is restated as finding the labelling scheme which has maximum probability for a given set of features. The broad categories of image segmentation using MRFs are supervised and unsupervised segmentation.


title: Image segmentation

text: In terms of image segmentation, the function that MRFs seek to maximize is the probability of identifying a labelling scheme given a particular set of features are detected in the image. This is a restatement of the maximum a posteriori estimation method.


title: Image segmentation

text: Each optimization algorithm is an adaptation of models from a variety of fields and they are set apart by their unique cost functions. The common trait of cost functions is to penalize change in pixel value as well as difference in pixel label when compared to labels of neighboring pixels.


title: Image segmentation

text: The iterated conditional modes (ICM) algorithm tries to reconstruct the ideal labeling scheme by changing the values of each pixel over each iteration and evaluating the energy of the new labeling scheme using the cost function given below,


title: Image segmentation

text: neighboring pixels and chosen pixel. Here formula_28 is neighborhood of pixel i and is the Kronecker delta function. A major issue with ICM is that, similar to gradient descent, it has a tendency to rest over local maxima and thus not obtain a globally optimal labeling scheme.


title: Image segmentation

text: Derived as an analogue of annealing in metallurgy, simulated annealing (SA) uses change in pixel label over iterations and estimates the difference in energy of each newly formed graph to the initial data. If the newly formed graph is more profitable, in terms of low energy cost, given by:


title: Image segmentation

text: the algorithm selects the newly formed graph. Simulated annealing requires the input of temperature schedules which directly affects the speed of convergence of the system, as well as energy threshold for minimization to occur.


title: Image segmentation

text: A range of other methods exist for solving simple as well as higher order MRFs. They include Maximization of Posterior Marginal, Multi-scale MAP estimation, Multiple Resolution segmentation and more. Apart from likelihood estimates, graph-cut using maximum flow and other highly constrained graph based methods exist for solving MRFs.


title: Image segmentation

text: The expectation–maximization algorithm is utilized to iteratively estimate the a posterior probabilities and distributions of labeling when no training data is available and no estimate of segmentation model can be formed. A general approach is to use histograms to represent the features of an image and proceed as outlined briefly in this three-step algorithm:


title: Image segmentation

text: 2. E step: Estimate class statistics based on the random segmentation model defined. Using these, compute the conditional probability of belonging to a label given the feature set is calculated using naive Bayes' theorem.


title: Image segmentation

text: 3. M step: The established relevance of a given feature set to a labeling scheme is now used to compute the a priori estimate of a given label in the second part of the algorithm. Since the actual number of total labels is unknown (from a training data set), a hidden estimate of the number of labels given by the user is utilized in computations.


title: Image segmentation

text: The watershed transformation considers the gradient magnitude of an image as a topographic surface. Pixels having the highest gradient magnitude intensities (GMIs) correspond to watershed lines, which represent the region boundaries. Water placed on any pixel enclosed by a common watershed line flows downhill to a common local intensity minimum (LIM). Pixels draining to a common minimum form a catch basin, which represents a segment.


title: Image segmentation

text: The central assumption of model-based approaches is that the structures of interest have a tendency towards a particular shape. Therefore, one can seek a probabilistic model that characterizes the shape and its variation. When segmenting an image, constraints can be imposed using this model as a prior. Such a task may involve (i) registration of the training examples to a common pose, (ii) probabilistic representation of the variation of the registered samples, and (iii) statistical inference between the model and the image. Other important methods in the literature for model-based segmentation include active shape models and active appearance models.


title: Image segmentation

text: Image segmentations are computed at multiple scales in scale space and sometimes propagated from coarse to fine scales; see scale-space segmentation.


title: Image segmentation

text: Segmentation criteria can be arbitrarily complex and may take into account global as well as local criteria. A common requirement is that each region must be connected in some sense.


title: Image segmentation

text: Witkin's seminal work in scale space included the notion that a one-dimensional signal could be unambiguously segmented into regions, with one scale parameter controlling the scale of segmentation.


title: Image segmentation

text: A key observation is that the zero-crossings of the second derivatives (minima and maxima of the first derivative or slope) of multi-scale-smoothed versions of a signal form a nesting tree, which defines hierarchical relations between segments at different scales. Specifically, slope extrema at coarse scales can be traced back to corresponding features at fine scales. When a slope maximum and slope minimum annihilate each other at a larger scale, the three segments that they separated merge into one segment, thus defining the hierarchy of segments.


title: Image segmentation

text: There have been numerous research works in this area, out of which a few have now reached a state where they can be applied either with interactive manual intervention (usually with application to medical imaging) or fully automatically. The following is a brief overview of some of the main research ideas that current approaches are based upon.


title: Image segmentation

text: The nesting structure that Witkin described is, however, specific for one-dimensional signals and does not trivially transfer to higher-dimensional images. Nevertheless, this general idea has inspired several other authors to investigate coarse-to-fine schemes for image segmentation. Koenderink proposed to study how iso-intensity contours evolve over scales and this approach was investigated in more detail by Lifshitz and Pizer. Unfortunately, however, the intensity of image features changes over scales, which implies that it is hard to trace coarse-scale image features to finer scales using iso-intensity information.


title: Image segmentation

text: Lindeberg studied the problem of linking local extrema and saddle points over scales, and proposed an image representation called the scale-space primal sketch which makes explicit the relations between structures at different scales, and also makes explicit which image features are stable over large ranges of scale including locally appropriate scales for those. Bergholm proposed to detect edges at coarse scales in scale-space and then trace them back to finer scales with manual choice of both the coarse detection scale and the fine localization scale.


title: Image segmentation

text: Gauch and Pizer studied the complementary problem of ridges and valleys at multiple scales and developed a tool for interactive image segmentation based on multi-scale watersheds. The use of multi-scale watershed with application to the gradient map has also been investigated by Olsen and Nielsen and been carried over to clinical use by Dam. Vincken et al. proposed a hyperstack for defining probabilistic relations between image structures at different scales. The use of stable image structures over scales has been furthered by Ahuja and his co-workers into a fully automated system. A fully automatic brain segmentation algorithm based on closely related ideas of multi-scale watersheds has been presented by Undeman and Lindeberg and been extensively tested in brain databases.


title: Image segmentation

text: These ideas for multi-scale image segmentation by linking image structures over scales have also been picked up by Florack and Kuijper. Bijaoui and Rué associate structures detected in scale-space above a minimum noise threshold into an object tree which spans multiple scales and corresponds to a kind of feature in the original signal. Extracted features are accurately reconstructed using an iterative conjugate gradient matrix method.


title: Image segmentation

text: In one kind of segmentation, the user outlines the region of interest with the mouse clicks and algorithms are applied so that the path that best fits the edge of the image is shown.


title: Image segmentation

text: Techniques like SIOX, Livewire, Intelligent Scissors or IT-SNAPS are used in this kind of segmentation. In an alternative kind of semi-automatic segmentation, the algorithms return a spatial-taxon (i.e. foreground, object-group, object or object-part) selected by the user or designated via prior probabilities.


title: Image segmentation

text: Most of the aforementioned segmentation methods are based only on color information of pixels in the image. Humans use much more knowledge when performing image segmentation, but implementing this knowledge would cost considerable human engineering and computational time, and would require a huge domain knowledge database which does not currently exist. Trainable segmentation methods, such as neural network segmentation, overcome these issues by modeling the domain knowledge from a dataset of labeled pixels.


title: Image segmentation

text: An image segmentation neural network can process small areas of an image to extract simple features such as edges. Another neural network, or any decision-making mechanism, can then combine these features to label the areas of an image accordingly. A type of network designed this way is the Kohonen map.


title: Image segmentation

text: Pulse-coupled neural networks (PCNNs) are neural models proposed by modeling a cat’s visual cortex and developed for high-performance biomimetic image processing. In 1989, Reinhard Eckhorn introduced a neural model to emulate the mechanism of a cat’s visual cortex. The Eckhorn model provided a simple and effective tool for studying the visual cortex of small mammals, and was soon recognized as having significant application potential in image processing. In 1994, the Eckhorn model was adapted to be an image processing algorithm by John L. Johnson, who termed this algorithm Pulse-Coupled Neural Network. Over the past decade, PCNNs have been utilized for a variety of image processing applications, including: image segmentation, feature generation, face extraction, motion detection, region growing, noise reduction, and so on. A PCNN is a two-dimensional neural network. Each neuron in the network corresponds to one pixel in an input image, receiving its corresponding pixel’s color information (e.g. intensity) as an external stimulus. Each neuron also connects with its neighboring neurons, receiving local stimuli from them. The external and local stimuli are combined in an internal activation system, which accumulates the stimuli until it exceeds a dynamic threshold, resulting in a pulse output. Through iterative computation, PCNN neurons produce temporal series of pulse outputs. The temporal series of pulse outputs contain information of input images and can be utilized for various image processing applications, such as image segmentation and feature generation. Compared with conventional image processing means, PCNNs have several significant merits, including robustness against noise, independence of geometric variations in input patterns, capability of bridging minor intensity variations in input patterns, etc.


title: Image segmentation

text: U-Net is a convolutional neural network which takes as input an image and outputs a label for each pixel. U-Net initially was developed to detect cell boundaries in biomedical images. U-Net follows classical autoencoder architecture, as such it contains two sub-structures. The encoder structure follows the traditional stack of convolutional and max pooling layers to increase the receptive field as it goes through the layers. It is used to capture the context in the image. The decoder structure utilizes transposed convolution layers for upsampling so that the end dimensions are close to that of the input image. Skip connections are placed between convolution and transposed convolution layers of the same shape in order to preserve details that would have been lost otherwise.


title: Image segmentation

text: In addition to pixel-level semantic segmentation tasks which assign a given category to each pixel, modern segmentation applications include instance-level semantic segmentation tasks in which each individual in a given category must be uniquely identified, as well as panoptic segmentation tasks which combines these two tasks to provide a more complete scene segmentation.


title: Image segmentation

text: Related images such as a photo album or a sequence of video frames often contain semantically similar objects and scenes, therefore it is often beneficial to exploit such correlations. The task of simultaneously segmenting scenes from related images or video frames is termed co-segmentation, which is typically used in human action localization. Unlike conventional bounding box-based object detection, human action localization methods provide finer-grained results, typically per-image segmentation masks delineating the human object of interest and its action category (e.g., "Segment-Tube"). Techniques such as dynamic Markov Networks, CNN and LSTM are often employed to exploit the inter-frame correlations.


title: Image segmentation

text: There are many other methods of segmentation like multispectral segmentation or connectivity-based segmentation based on DTI images.


title: All caps

text: In typography, all caps (short for "all capitals") refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, for example: "THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS". All caps may be used for emphasis (for a word or phrase). They are commonly seen in legal documents, the titles on book covers, in advertisements and in newspaper headlines. Short strings of words in capital letters appear bolder and "louder" than mixed case, and this is sometimes referred to as "screaming" or "shouting". All caps can also be used to indicate that a given word is an acronym.


title: All caps

text: Studies have been conducted on the readability and legibility of all caps text. Scientific testing from the 20th century onward has generally indicated that all caps text is less legible and readable than lower-case text. In addition, switching to all caps may make text appear hectoring and obnoxious for cultural reasons, since all-capitals is often used in transcribed speech to indicate that the speaker is shouting. All-caps text is common in comic books, as well as on older teleprinter and radio transmission systems, which often do not indicate letter case at all.


title: All caps

text: In professional documents, a commonly preferred alternative to all caps text is the use of small caps to emphasise key names or acronyms (for example, ), or the use of italics or (more rarely) bold. In addition, if all caps must be used it is customary to slightly widen the spacing between the letters, by around 10 per cent of the point height. This practice is known as tracking or letterspacing. Some digital fonts contain alternative spacing metrics for this purpose.


title: All caps

text: Messages typed completely in capital letters are often equated on social media to shouting and other impolite or argumentative behaviors. This became a mainstream interpretation with the advent of networked computers, from the 1980s onward. However, a similar interpretation was already evidenced by written sources that predated the computing era, in some cases by at least a century, and the textual display of shouting or emphasis was still not a settled matter by 1984. The following sources may be relevant to the history of all caps:


title: All caps

text: Before the development of lower-case letters in the 8th century, texts in the Latin alphabet were written in a single case, which is now considered to be capital letters. Text in all caps is not widely used in body copy. The major exception to this is the so-called fine print in legal documents.


title: All caps

text: Capital letters have been widely used in printed headlines from the early days of newspapers until the 1950s. In the 1990s, more than three-quarters of newspapers in the western world used lower-case letters in headline text. Discussion regarding the use of all caps for headlines centers on the greater emphasis offered by all caps versus the greater legibility offered by lower-case letters. Colin Wheildon conducted a scientific study with 224 readers who analyzed various headline styles and concluded that "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legible than those set in lower case."


title: All caps

text: All caps typography was common on teletype machines, such as those used by police departments, news, and the United States' then-called Weather Bureau, as well as early computers, such as certain early Apple II models and the ZX81, which had a limited support for lower-case text. This changed as full support of ASCII became standard, allowing lower-case characters.


title: All caps

text: Some Soviet computers, such as Radio-86RK, Vector-06C, Agat-7, use 7-bit encoding called KOI-7N2, where capital Cyrillic letters are kept in a place of lower-case Latin letters in ASCII. They can display both alphabets, but all caps only. Mikrosha is switchable to KOI-7N1, in this mode, it can display both caps and lower-case, but in Cyrillic only. Other Soviet computers, such as BK0010, MK 85, Corvette and Agat-9, use 8-bit encoding called KOI-8R, they can display both Cyrillic and Latin in caps and lower-case.


title: All caps

text: Many, but not all NES games use all caps because of tile graphics, where charset and tiles share the same ROM. Game designers often choose to have less characters in favor of more tiles.


title: All caps

text: With the advent of the bulletin board system, or BBS, and later the Internet, typing messages in all caps commonly became closely identified with "shouting" or attention-seeking behavior, and may be considered rude. Its equivalence to shouting traces back to at least 1984 and before the Internet, back to printed typography usage of all capitals to mean shouting.


title: All caps

text: For this reason, etiquette generally discourages the use of all caps when posting messages online. While all caps can be used as an alternative to rich-text "bolding" for a single word or phrase, to express emphasis, repeated use of all caps can be considered "shouting" or irritating.


title: All caps

text: Some aspects of Microsoft's Metro design language involves the use of all caps headings and titles. This has received particular attention when menu and ribbon titles appeared in all caps in Visual Studio 2012 and Office 2013, respectively. Critics have compared this to a computer program shouting at its user. Information technology journalist Lee Hutchinson described Microsoft's using the practice as "LITERALLY TERRIBLE ... [it] doesn't so much violate OS X's design conventions as it does take them out behind the shed, pour gasoline on them, and set them on fire."


title: All caps

text: In programming, writing in all caps (possibly with underscores replacing spaces) is an identifier naming convention in many programming languages that symbolizes that the given identifier represents a constant.


title: All caps

text: A practice exists (most commonly in Francophone countries) of distinguishing the surname from the rest of a personal name by stylizing the surname only in all caps. This practice is also common among Japanese, when names are spelled using Roman letters.


title: All caps

text: In April 2013, the U.S. Navy moved away from an all caps-based messaging system, which was begun with 1850s-era teleprinters that had only uppercase letters. The switch to mixed-case communications was estimated to save the Navy $20 million a year and is compliant with current Internet protocol.


title: All caps

text: An antiquated practice that still remains in use, especially by older American lawyers who grew up before the arrival of computers, is to use all caps text for text that is legally required to be emphasised and clearly readable. The practice dates to the period of typewriters, which generally did not offer bold text, small capitals, or the opportunity to add marginal notes emphasising key points.


title: All caps

text: Legal writing expert Bryan A. Garner has described the practice as "ghastly". A 2020 study found that all-caps in legal texts is ineffective and is, in fact, harmful to older readers. In 2002, a US court spoke out against the practice, ruling that simply making text all-capitals has no bearing on whether it is clear and easily readable:


title: All caps

text: Lawyers who think their caps lock keys are instant "make conspicuous" buttons are deluded. In determining whether a term is conspicuous, we look at more than formatting. A term that appears in capitals can still be inconspicuous if it is hidden on the back of a contract in small type. Terms that are in capitals but also appear in hard-to-read type may flunk the conspicuousness test. A sentence in capitals, buried deep within a long paragraph in capitals will probably not be deemed conspicuous...it is entirely possible for text to be conspicuous without being in capitals.


title: All caps

text: Miles Tinker, renowned for his landmark work, "Legibility of Print", performed scientific studies on the legibility and readability of all-capital print. His findings were as follows:


title: All caps

text: According to Tinker, "As early as 1914, Starch reported that material set in Roman lower case was read somewhat faster than similar material printed in all capitals." Another study in 1928 showed that "all-capital text was read 11.8 percent slower than lower case, or approximately 38 words per minute slower", and that "nine-tenths of adult readers consider lower case more legible than all capitals".


title: All caps

text: A 1955 study by Miles Tinker showed that "all-capital text retarded speed of reading from 9.5 to 19.0 percent for the 5 and 10-minute time limits, and 13.9 percent for the whole 20-minute period". Tinker concluded that, "Obviously, all-capital printing slows reading to a marked degree in comparison with Roman lower case."


title: All caps

text: Tinker provides the following explanations for why all capital printing is more difficult to read: Text in all capitals covers about 35 percent more printing surface than the same material set in lower case. This would tend to increase the reading time. When this is combined with the difficulty in reading words in all-capital letters as units, the hindrance to rapid reading becomes marked. In the eye-movement study by Tinker and Patterson, the principal difference in oculomotor patterns between lower case and all capitals was the very large increase in number of fixation pauses for reading the all-capital print.


title: All caps

text: Colin Wheildon stated that there is an "apparent consensus" that lower-case text is more legible, but that some editors continue to use all caps in text regardless. In his studies of all caps in headlines, he states that, "Editors who favor capitals claim that they give greater emphasis. Those who prefer lower case claim their preferences gives greater legibility." Wheildon, who informs us that "When a person reads a line of type, the eye recognizes letters by the shapes of their upper halves", asserts that recognizing words in all caps "becomes a task instead of a natural process". His conclusions, based on scientific testing in 1982–1990, are: "Headlines set in capital letters are significantly less legible than those set in lower case."


title: All caps

text: John Ryder, in the "Case for Legibility", stated that "Printing with capital letters can be done sufficiently well to arouse interest and, with short lines, reading at a slowed speed is possible – but in principle too many factors of low legibility are involved."


title: All caps

text: Other critics are of the opinion that all caps letters in text are often "too tightly packed against each other".


title: All caps

text: Besides the aforementioned speed of reading, all caps is constitutionally prone to character-based ambiguities.


title: All caps

text: Namely, the upper-case letters are globally simpler than their lower-case counterpart. For example, they lack ascenders and descenders.


title: All caps

text: Since they are built from fewer positional and building elements (e.g. a smaller grid pertaining to minimalist digital fonts), they are more fragile to small changes.


title: All caps

text: These variations, generally involuntary but sometimes induced on purpose, are caused by a misinterpretation (the information is transferred) or by a deterioration (the data is lost, in the analysis wording). They can occur horizontally and/or vertically, while misreading (without this extra effort or time), or during a delicate scanning of characters (from a damaged image that needs further contextual text correction).


title: All caps

text: Depending on the typeface, these similarities accidentally create various duplicates (even quite briefly and without realizing it when reading).


title: All caps

text: E.g. H/A, F/E or I/T by adding a bar; P/R, O/Q, even C/G from similar errors; V/U, D/O, even B/S while rounding the shape; and more deformations implying mixings.


title: All caps

text: Adding digits in all caps styled texts may multiply these confusions, which is one aim of Leet (intentional pseudo duplicates) and can provide simple means of concealing messages (often numbers).


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Soumitra Chatterjee (also spelt as Chattopadhyay; 16 June 193515 November 2020) was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian Cinema. He is best known for his collaborations with director Satyajit Ray, with whom he worked in fourteen films.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Starting with his debut film, "Apur Sansar" (The Family of Apu, 1959), the third part of "The Apu Trilogy", as adult Apu, he went on to work in several films with Ray, including "Abhijan" (The Expedition, 1962), "Charulata" (1964), "Kapurush" (1965), "Aranyer Din Ratri" (Days and Nights in the Forest, 1969), "Ashani Sanket" (Distant Thunder, 1973), "Sonar Kella" (The Fortress of Gold, 1974) and "Joi Baba Felunath" (The Elephant God, 1978) as Feluda, "Hirak Rajar Deshe" (1980), "Ghare Baire" (The Home and The World, 1984), Shakha Proshakha (1990) and "Ganashatru" (Enemy of the People, 1989).


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: He also worked with other noted directors of Bengali cinema, such as Mrinal Sen in "Akash Kusum" (Up in the Clouds, 1965); Tapan Sinha in Kshudhita Pashan (Hungry Stones, 1960), "Jhinder Bandi" (1961); Asit Sen in "Swaralipi" (1961), Ajoy Kar in "Parineeta" (1969), and Tarun Mazumdar in "Ganadevata" (1978). He acted in more than 210 films in his career. He also received critical acclaim for his directorial debut "Stree Ki Patra" (1986) which was based on the Bengali short story "Streer Patra" by Rabindranath


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Soumitra was the recipient of multiple honours and awards. Soumitra was the first Indian film personality who was conferred with France's highest award for artists '"Commandeur"' of, "Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" (1999). He was also awarded the Padma Bhushan (2004) and France's highest civilian award Commandeur de la Légion d' Honneur (Commander of Legion of Honour) (2017). He received two National Film Awards as an actor and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for his work in theatre. In 2012, he received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest award in cinema given by the government of India for lifetime achievement. In 2013, IBN Live named him as one of "The men who changed the face of the Indian Cinema".


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Soumitra Chatterjee was born in Mirjapur Street (now Surya Sen Street) near Sealdah railway station, in Calcutta in 1935. The first ten years of his early life were spent in Krishnanagar in West Bengal. The town under the influence of playwright Dwijendralal Ray, also from Krishnanagar, had a flourishing theatre culture, with numerous small theatre groups. His grandfather was the president of one such group while his father, though lawyer by profession and later a government worker, also worked as an amateur actor. Encouraged by the praise he received for his acting in school plays, gradually his interest in theatre grew with passing years. He was a very close friend of famous theatre personality, Mrityunjay Sil who is often regarded as a key influence on his career.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Soumitra and his family moved to Howrah where he studied at the Howrah Zilla School and Calcutta during his early years. Soumitra graduated from the City College, Kolkata with honours in Bengali literature, as a graduating student of the University of Calcutta. He lived for a few years in Calcutta in Satyajit Ray's old apartment at 3-lake temple road. He studied for his M.A. in Bengali from the University of Calcutta. While still a student, he learnt acting under noted actor-director of Bengali theatre Ahindra Choudhury. However a turning point came when in the final year of college he saw a play by Sisir Bhaduri, theatre director and the doyen of Bengali theatre. The play not only set a standard for acting for him, but also helped make up his mind to become an actor. He managed to meet Bhaduri, through his friend's mother, actress Shefalika Putul. Though, he met Bhaduri, towards the end of his career, when his theatre had closed, nevertheless over the next three years, till Bhaduri's death in 1959, Chatterjee made him a mentor, and learnt the craft of acting through their regular interactions. He even appeared in a small role in one of Bhaduri's productions.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Subsequently, he started his career working in All India Radio as an announcer, While he was there he started pursuing a career in films. He came in touch with Ray during the casting for "Aparajito" (1956), who was looking for new faces. Ray thought he had the right look, however found him, age 20, and just out of college, too old for the role of adolescent Apu. Ray remembered him and offered him the role of adult Apu two years later. Meanwhile, he was rejected in his screen test for Bengali film, "Nilachale Mahaprabhu" (1957) directed by Kartik Chattopadhyay.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Chatterjee had gone on the sets of Ray's fourth film, "Jalsaghar" (1958) to watch the shoot. He was unaware that he had already been selected for the title role in the Apu trilogy. That day, while he was leaving the sets, Ray called him over and introduced him to actor Chhabi Biswas as "This is Soumitra Chattopadhyay; he's playing Apu in my next film "Apur Sansar"" leaving him much surprised. Despite being selected, as a debutant actor, Chatterjee was nevertheless unsure of his career choice and especially his looks, as he didn't consider himself photogenic. However, on 9 August 1958, when the first shooting of the film was accepted in a single take, he realized that he had found his vocation. Thus Soumitra's film debut came in 1959 in Satyajit Ray's "The World of Apu" (Apur Sansar). In fact Ray believed with a beard Chatterjee looked like young poet laureate Tagore.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Soumitra would go on to collaborate with Ray in fourteen films. His centrality to Ray's work is akin to other key collaborations in the history of cinema — Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa, Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini, De Niro and Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, Max von Sydow and Ingmar Bergman, Jerzy Stuhr and Krzysztof Kieślowski, Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog. After "Apur Sansar", he also worked with Sharmila Tagore in a number of Ray's films, apart from working with leading star actor of the period, Uttam Kumar, with whom he has often been compared, in eight films.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Chatterjee was cast in diverse roles by Ray and some of the stories and screenplays that Ray wrote were said to be written with him in mind. Soumitra featured as "Feluda/Pradosh Chandra Mitter", the famous private investigator from Calcutta in Ray's "Feluda" series of books, in two films in the 1970s "Sonar Kella" (1974) and "Joi Baba Felunath" (1979). These two films were the first film series made for Feluda and are considered as the Feluda original film series. He was the first person who portrayed the iconic Bengali sleuth Feluda. Satyajit Ray made some illustrations of Feluda based on Soumitra's body figure and look in the 1970s Feluda books. After him Sabyasachi Chakrabarty took the role of the iconic Bengali hero Feluda in the mid-1990s.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Soumitra had approached Satyajit Ray to suggest a name for a little magazine founded by Soumitra and Nirmalya Acharya in 1961. Satyajit Ray had named the magazine "Ekkhon" (Now), he designed the inaugural cover page and illustrated the cover pages regularly even after Soumitra had stopped editing the magazine. Nirmalya continued editing the magazine, and several of Ray's scripts were published in the magazine.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Besides working with Ray, Soumitra excelled in collaborations with other well-known Bengali directors such as Mrinal Sen and Tapan Sinha. He earned critical acclaim for his role of an impostor in Mrinal Sen's "Akash Kusum" (1965). He was equally confident in playing the swashbuckling horse-riding villain in Tapan Sinha's "Jhinder Bandi" (1961) giving the legendary Uttam Kumar a tough challenge. In the romantic film "Teen Bhubaner Pare" (1969), he shared the screen with actress Tanuja, the film was noted for his "flamboyant" style of acting. Besides films, Chatterjee continued acting in Kolkata-based Bengali theatre, and also published over 12 poetry books.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Entering the 1980s and 1990s, he started working with contemporary directors, like Goutam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Anjan Das and Rituparno Ghosh, and even acted on television. In 1986, he played the role of a swimming coach, Khitish Singh(Khidda) in film "Kony" (1986) directed by Saroj Dey, who was part of the film collective Agragami. The film is about a young girl from a slum, who wants to become a swimmer. At the 32nd National Film Awards, the film won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment. Later in a 2012 interview, he called Kony one of the best films of his career. He even recalled using film's catch-phrase "Fight-Koni-fight" in hard times, as a chant to himself to lift his "aging spirits". The phrase had become popular with middle-class Bengalis at the time. He also starred in his biopic "Abhijaan" directed by Parambrata Chatterjee, an artist himself. The movie was released in April 2022 posthumously as a tribute to Soumitra featuring Jisshu Sengupta who portrayed the younger self of the late artist.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: He replaced Mrityunjay Sil as the lead artist in 1958. Mrityunjay Sil was at the peak of his theatre career at that time. But due to personal issues he suggested his friend, Soumitra's name. Mrityunjay Sil is often credited with being one of the few people to have helped Soumitra. But he soon left his job.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: After a two-decade long busy career as a leading man of Bengali cinema, he returned to theatre in 1978, with his production "Naam Jiban", staged at Biswarupa Theatre in Kolkata. This led to other plays like "Rajkumar" (1982), "Phera" (1987), "Nilkantha" (1988), "Ghatak Biday" (1990) and "Nyaymurti" (1996), beside notable plays like "Tiktiki" (1995), an adaptation of "Sleuth" and "Homapakhi" (2006). Besides acting, he has written and directed several plays, translated a few and also branched out to poetry reading in recent decades.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Since 14 November 2010, he regularly performed in the title role of the play "Raja Lear" directed by Suman Mukhopadhyay and produced by Minerva Repertory Theatre, a play based on King Lear by William Shakespeare. Soumitra received widespread critical and popular accolades for his acting in the play.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Chatterjee received the '"Commandeur"' Officier des Arts et Metiers, the highest award for arts given by the French government in 1999, and the Lifetime Award at the Naples Film Festival, Italy. He turned down the Padma Shri award from the Indian government in the 1970s. In 2004, he accepted the prestigious Padma Bhushan award from the President of India. He has been the subject of a full-length documentary named "Gaach" by French film director Catherine Berge. In 1998, he was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award given by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama.


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: Incidentally, besides receiving eight awards from the Bengal Film Journalists' Association for the best actor and international recognition for his acting prowess, Chatterjee never won a National Film Award for acting in the early part of his career, which established his reputation as an actor, working with directors like Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and Mrinal Sen. Thus, over the years, he has been vocal about his feelings of disappointment and alleging bias in the National Film Awards committee towards awarding popular and mainstream cinema. Thus, in a gesture of protest against, he turned down the 2001 Special Jury Award for "Dekha" directed by Goutam Ghose. Later in an interview he stated "the National Film Awards, overlooked my performances in several powerful roles. When I did "Kony", Shashi Kapoor was adjudged the best actor. Anil Kapoor was feted (Best Actor) for "Pukar" while "Dekha" was awarded a 'consolation' prize".


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: However, after receiving the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour given by Government of India in 2004, he changed his viewpoint towards awards, and stated "Now (after Padma Bhushan) I feel I don't have the right to hurt my viewers by rejecting an award." A few years later, on 9 June 2008, he was awarded the 2007 National Film Award for Best Actor for "Podokkhep" (Footsteps) (2006), which he accepted though stating "after decades of acting, I do not attach too much value to it".


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: In 2010, he won Best Supporting Actor at 54th Asia-Pacific Film Festival for his role in Angshumaner Chhobi (2009).


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: In 2012, he was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest award in cinema given annually by the Government of India for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. In 2014, he received the introductory Filmfare Awards East for Best Male Actor (Critics) for his role in "Rupkatha Noy" and also he won Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award – South (1994).


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: "The Master and I: Soumitra on Satyajit", Soumitra Chatterjee, tr. by Arunava Sinha. Supernova Publishers, 2014. . Translation of Chatterjee's "Manikdar Sange".


title: Soumitra Chatterjee

text: On 5 October 2020, Chatterjee tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted on 6 October in Belle Vue Clinic, Kolkata. However, he tested negative to the second COVID-19 test conducted on 14 October. In the meantime, his complications (urinary tract infection, fluctuations in sodium potassium levels, etc.) made the condition critical and he had to be admitted to ITU. From 13 October, his condition started to improve marginally and on 14 October, he was transferred from a Covid unit to a non-Covid unit. He was kept on BiPAP support and invasive ventilation for in the critical times; after his improvement in health, the treatment mechanisms were changed. He was under the supervision of a medical team of 16 physicians. On 25 October, his condition further deteriorated. On 15 November 2020, Chatterjee died due to COVID-19 induced encephalopathy at Bellevue hospital in Kolkata at 12.15 p.m.


title: Sea salt

text: Sea salt is salt that is produced by the evaporation of seawater. It is used as a seasoning in foods, cooking, cosmetics and for preserving food. It is also called bay salt, solar salt, or simply salt. Like mined rock salt, production of sea salt has been dated to prehistoric times.


title: Sea salt

text: Commercially available sea salts on the market today vary widely in their chemical composition. Although the principal component is sodium chloride, the remaining portion can range from less than 0.2 to 10% of other salts. These are mostly calcium, potassium, and magnesium salts of chloride and sulfate with substantially lesser amounts of many trace elements found in natural seawater. Though the composition of commercially available salt may vary, the ionic composition of natural saltwater is relatively constant.


title: Sea salt

text: Sea salt is mentioned in the Vinaya Pitaka, a Buddhist scripture compiled in the mid-5th century BC. The principle of production is evaporation of the water from the sea brine. In warm and dry climates this may be accomplished entirely by using solar energy, but in other climates fuel sources have been used. Modern sea salt production is almost entirely found in Mediterranean and other warm, dry climates.


title: Sea salt

text: Such places are today called salt works, instead of the older English word saltern. An ancient or medieval saltern was established where there was:


title: Sea salt

text: In this way, salt marsh, pasture (salting), and salt works (saltern) enhanced each other economically. This was the pattern during the Roman and medieval periods around The Wash, in eastern England. There, the tide brought the brine, the extensive saltings provided the pasture, the fens and moors provided the peat fuel, and the sun sometimes shone.


title: Sea salt

text: The dilute brine of the sea was largely evaporated by the sun. In Roman areas, this was done using ceramic containers known as briquetage. Workers scraped up the concentrated salt and mud slurry and washed it with clean sea water to settle impurities out of the now concentrated brine. They poured the brine into shallow pans (lightly baked from local marine clay) and set them on fist-sized clay pillars over a peat fire for final evaporation. Then they scraped out the dried salt and sold it.


title: Sea salt

text: In traditional salt production in the Visayas Islands of the Philippines, salt are made from coconut husks, driftwood, or other plant matter soaked in seawater for at least several months. These are burned into ash then seawater is run through the ashes on a filter. The resulting brine is then evaporated in containers. Coconut milk is sometimes added to the brine before evaporation. The practice is endangered due to competition with cheap industrially-produced commercial salt. Only two traditions survive to the present day: asín tibuok and túltul (or dúkdok).


title: Sea salt

text: In the colonial New World, slaves were brought from Africa to rake salt on various islands in the West Indies, Bahamas and particularly Turks and Caicos Islands.


title: Sea salt

text: Today, salt labelled "sea salt" in the US might not have actually come from the sea, as long as it meets the FDA's purity requirements. All mined salts were originally sea salts since they originated from a marine source at some point in the distant past, usually from an evaporating shallow sea.


title: Sea salt

text: Some gourmets believe sea salt tastes better and has a better texture than ordinary table salt. In applications that retain sea salt's coarser texture, it can provide a different mouthfeel, and may change flavor due to its different rate of dissolution. The mineral content also affects the taste. The colors and variety of flavors are due to local clays and algae found in the waters the salt is harvested from. For example, some boutique salts from Korea and France are pinkish gray, some from India are black. Black and red salts from Hawaii may even have powdered black lava and baked red clay added in. Some sea salt contains sulfates. It may be difficult to distinguish sea salt from other salts, such as pink Himalayan salt, Maras salt from the ancient Inca hot springs, or rock salt (halite) .


title: Sea salt

text: Black lava salt is a marketing term for sea salt harvested from various places around the world that has been blended and colored with activated charcoal. The salt is used as a decorative condiment to be shown at the table.


title: Sea salt

text: The nutritional value of sea salt and table salt are about the same as they are both primarily sodium chloride. Table salt is more processed than sea salt to eliminate minerals and usually contains an additive such as silicon dioxide to prevent clumping.


title: Sea salt

text: Iodine, an element essential for human health, is present only in small amounts in sea salt. Iodised salt is table salt mixed with a minute amount of various salts of the element iodine.


title: Sea salt

text: Studies have found some microplastic contamination in sea salt from the US, Europe and China. Sea salt has also been shown to be contaminated by fungi that can cause food spoilage as well as some that may be mycotoxigenic.


title: Sea salt

text: In traditional Korean cuisine, jugyeom (, 竹鹽), which means "bamboo salt", is prepared by roasting salt at temperatures between 800 and 2000 °C in a bamboo container plugged with mud at both ends. This product absorbs minerals from the bamboo and the mud, and is claimed to increase the anticlastogenic and antimutagenic properties of the fermented soybean paste known in Korea as "doenjang". However, these claims are not substantiated by high-quality studies.


title: Arienne Mandi

text: Arienne appeared in the shows, "NCIS", "Hawaii Five-O", "The Interns", "", and In The Vault. She also played the lead in the film Baja.


title: Arienne Mandi

text: Mandi was born in Los Angeles, California. She is Chilean and Iranian. Mandi is fluent in Spanish, French, Persian and English. She made the following statement in regards to her sexuality: "If there were to be anything close to what I feel it would be pan. I accept love in all forms and I give love. It’s just all love." In a podcast episode of "Scissoring Isn't A Thing", Mandi confirmed that Nazanin Mandi is her cousin.


title: David Kang

text: David Kang (born 1970) is an Australian barrister. In January 1994 he fired two blank shots from a starting pistol at Charles, Prince of Wales in protest at the treatment of several hundred Cambodian asylum seekers held in detention camps in Australia.


title: David Kang

text: David Kang was born in Australia to Robert Kang, a former Republic of Korea Air Force helicopter pilot. At the time of the starting pistol incident, in 1994, Kang was an anthropology student at Macquarie University. Kang later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology from the university.


title: David Kang

text: On 26 January 1994, the 23-year old Kang fired two blank shots from a starting pistol at Charles, Prince of Wales during an Australia Day speech at Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour in Sydney.


title: David Kang

text: Kang jumped a small fence at the front of the stage and ran onto the stage, firing the first shot with his pistol as he rushed towards the Prince, who had just risen to approach the lectern on the stage. He was wrestled to the ground by police after crashing into the lectern as he fired the second shot. At least 15 people jumped onto the assailant, while the Prince's bodyguard shielded the Prince, who was removed from the stage. The Prince sustained no injuries and would next visit Sydney on 28 February 2005.


title: David Kang

text: One police officer received a cut hand while tackling Kang. Local police expressed admiration for the speed with which the Prince's Senior Personal Protection Officer, Superintendent Colin Trimming, rose to protect the Prince. The personal bravery of the Prince was also remarked upon by Ian Kiernan, saying that the prince was "cool as a cucumber".


title: David Kang

text: Others on the stage included Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair, AO (the Governor of New South Wales), John Fahey (the Premier of New South Wales), Frank Sartor (the Lord Mayor of Sydney), and Tony Lauer (the New South Wales Commissioner of Police).


title: David Kang

text: Kang had been the second person to attack a royal in Sydney after Irishman Henry James O'Farrell. O'Farrell shot at Prince Alfred and was later hanged. At the time, Kang was mistakenly reported as being of Cambodian descent and the incident sparked some debate about monarchism and republicanism in Australia.


title: David Kang

text: Kang was arrested and taken to Sydney Police Centre on Goulburn Street. On the following day, he appeared in court and, facing six charges, including two under the "Federal Crimes (Internationally Protected Persons) Act 1976" (Cth) (i.e., attacking an internationally protected person) and charges of illegally using a firearm, possessing a firearm, affray, and assault, was remanded in custody until 4 February 1994. If convicted on all counts, Kang could have received a 20-year sentence.


title: David Kang

text: In court, Kang testified that he was suffering from depression and was protesting the plight of Cambodian refugees in Australia. Kang had previously written letters to the Prince of Wales, the President of the United States, the United Nations, and the Pope, among others, and had received a form letter reply from the Prince.


title: David Kang

text: Kang was found guilty of threatening unlawful violence and sentenced to 500 hours of community service.


title: David Kang

text: 11 years after the event, Kang said of the incident, "What happened 11 years ago was an extremely traumatic experience and I have certainly moved on in my life and now I have become a barrister here in Sydney." He also emphasized he did not intend to hurt anyone during his protest.


title: David Kang

text: Following the incident, Kang earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Technology Sydney and a Bachelor of Laws with honours from the Sydney Law School.


title: David Kang

text: Despite having been found guilty of a crime, the New South Wales Bar Association found that Kang was a "fit and proper person", with the president of the New South Wales Bar Association remarking that he had "served his time", admitting him as a barrister in 2004. Kang practises as a barrister, specialising in criminal law, commercial and corporations law, equity, and medical negligence, at Ada Evans Chambers in Sydney.


title: David Kang

text: Kang is married with two children. His interests, as listed on his chambers website, include tennis, soccer, and swimming.


title: Columbarium

text: A columbarium (; pl. columbaria) is a structure for the reverential and usually public storage of funerary urns, holding cremated remains of the deceased.


title: Columbarium

text: The term can also mean the nesting boxes of pigeons. The term comes from the Latin ""columba"" (dove) and, originally, solely referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons called a dovecote.


title: Columbarium

text: Roman columbaria were often built partly or completely underground. The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is an ancient Roman example, rich in frescoes, decorations, and precious mosaics.


title: Columbarium

text: Today's columbaria can be either free standing units, or part of a mausoleum or another building. Some manufacturers produce columbaria that are built entirely off-site and brought to the cemetery by a large truck. Many modern crematoria have columbaria. Examples of these are the columbaria in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and Golders Green Crematorium in London.


title: Columbarium

text: In other cases, columbaria are built into church structures. One example is the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (Los Angeles, California), which houses a number of columbarium niches in the mausoleum built into the lower levels of the Cathedral. The construction of columbaria within churches is particularly widespread in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. An example can be seen at the Church of St Nicolas in Old Town Square (Prague). In the Roman Catholic Church, although traditional burial is still preferred, cremation is permitted provided that the cremated remains are buried or entombed and that the cremation is not done for reasons contrary to the Catholic faith. As a result, columbaria can be found within some Catholic cemeteries.


title: Columbarium

text: Columbaria are often closely similar in form to traditional Buddhist temples, which from ancient times have housed cremated ashes. In Buddhism, ashes of the deceased may be placed in a columbarium (in Chinese, a "naguta" ("bone-receiving pagoda"); in Japanese, a "nōkotsudō" ("bone-receiving hall"), which can be either attached to or a part of a Buddhist temple or cemetery. This practice allows for the family of the deceased to visit the temple in order to carry out traditional memorials and ancestor rites.


title: Columbarium

text: In the Beit Guvrin area several series of large caves dug into soft rock were found. There were several theories about their original use, for ritual burial, for growing pigeons to be used for ritual sacrifice, or for raising pigeons for fertilizer production. One such cave had been covered by an earthquake close to the time of its original usage and had no signs of secondary usage; neither ashes nor pigeon droppings were found in it.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: The Hi-Fi murders were the torture and killings of three people during a robbery at the Hi-fi Shop, a home audio store in Ogden, Utah, on the evening of April 22, 1974. Several men entered the Hi-fi Shop shortly before closing time and began taking hostages; two would survive but with severe life-changing injuries. Violence included kicking a pen into an ear and the brutal rape of an eighteen-year-old girl who was later shot in the head. The hostages were also forced to drink a corrosive drain cleaner, causing burns to their mouths and throats. The crime became notorious for its violence and accusations of racial bias in the Utah judiciary.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: Police only had enough evidence to convict three enlisted United States Air Force airmen: Dale Selby Pierre, William Andrews, and Keith Roberts. Pierre and Andrews were both sentenced to death and executed for murder and aggravated robbery, while Roberts, who had remained in a getaway vehicle, was convicted of robbery.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: On April 22, 1974, Pierre, Andrews, Roberts, and three other men drove in two vans to the Hi-Fi Shop at 2323 Washington Boulevard, Ogden, just before closing time. Four of the group entered the shop brandishing handguns, while Roberts and another man remained with the vehicles. Two employees, Stanley Walker, aged 20, and Michelle Ansley, aged 18, were in the store at the time and were taken hostage. Pierre and Andrews took the two into the store's basement and bound them. The gang then began robbing the store.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: Later, a 16-year-old boy, Cortney Naisbitt, arrived to thank Walker for allowing him to park his car in the store's parking lot as he ran an errand next door. He was also taken hostage and tied up in the basement with Walker and Ansley.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: Later that evening, Orren Walker, Stanley Walker's 43-year-old father, became worried that his son had not returned home and went to the store. Cortney Naisbitt's mother, Carol Peterson Naisbitt, also arrived at the shop later that evening looking for her son, who was late getting home. Both Orren Walker and Carol Naisbitt were taken hostage and tied up in the basement.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: With five people now held hostage in the basement, Pierre told Andrews to get something from their van. Andrews returned with a bottle in a brown paper bag, from which Pierre poured a cup of Drano drain cleaner. Pierre ordered Orren to administer it to the other hostages, but he refused, and was bound, gagged, and left face-down on the basement floor.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: Pierre and Andrews then propped the hostages into sitting positions and forced them to drink the Drano, telling them it was vodka laced with sleeping pills. It immediately caused blisters on the victims' lips, burnt their tongues and throats, and peeled the flesh around their mouths. Ansley, still begging for her life, was forced to drink the Drano, although Orren said she coughed less than the other victims. Pierre and Andrews tried to duct-tape the hostages' mouths shut to hold quantities of drain cleaner in and to silence their screams, but the oozing blisters prevented the adhesive from sticking. Orren was the last to be given the Drano, but seeing what was happening to the other hostages, allowed it to pour out of his mouth and then mimicked the convulsions and screams of his son and other hostages.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: Pierre became angry because the deaths were taking too long, and were too loud and messy, so he shot Carol and Cortney Naisbitt in the backs of their heads, killing Carol but leaving Cortney alive. Pierre then shot at Walker but missed. He fatally shot Stanley before again shooting at Orren, this time grazing the back of his head.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: Pierre took Ansley to the far corner of the basement, forced her at gunpoint to remove her clothes, then repeatedly raped her after telling Andrews to leave for 30 minutes. Afterwards, he allowed her to use the bathroom while he watched, then dragged her, still naked, back to the other hostages, threw her on her face, and fatally shot her in the back of the head. According to Orren's testimony, her last words were "I am too young to die."


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: Andrews and Pierre noted that Orren was still alive, so Pierre mounted him, wrapped a wire around his throat, and tried to strangle him. When this failed, Pierre and Andrews inserted a ballpoint pen into Orren's ear. Pierre stomped it until it punctured his eardrum, broke, and exited his throat. Pierre and Andrews went upstairs, finished loading equipment into their van, and left.


title: Hi-Fi murders

text: The victims included the following five individuals, three of whom were murdered. Each of the victims were bound, forced to drink liquid Drano, and later shot. Nonetheless, two individuals, now deceased, survived their injuries.