Author: WaelBadawy
Algorithm-Based Low Power VLSI Architecture For 2d-Mesh Video Object Motion Tracking
The new VLSI architecture for video object (VO) motion tracking uses a novel hierarchical adaptive structured mesh topology. The structured mesh offers a significant reduction in the number of bits that describe the mesh topology. The motion of the mesh nodes represents the deformation of the VO. Motion compensation is performed using a multiplication-free algorithm for affine transformation, significantly reducing the decoder architecture complexity. Pipelining the affine unit contributes a considerable power saving. The VO motion-tracking architecture is based on a new algorithm. It consists of two main parts: a video object motion-estimation unit (VOME) and a video object motion-compensation unit (VOMC). The VOME processes two consequent frames to generate a hierarchical adaptive structured mesh and the motion vectors of the mesh nodes. It implements parallel block matching motion-estimation units to optimize the latency. The VOMC processes a reference frame, mesh nodes and motion vectors to predict a video frame. It implements parallel threads in which each thread implements a pipelined chain of scalable affine units. This motion-compensation algorithm allows the use of one simple warping unit to map a hierarchical structure. The affine unit warps the texture of a patch at any level of hierarchical mesh independently. The processor uses a memory serialization unit, which interfaces the memory to the parallel units. The architecture has been prototyped using top-down low-power design methodology. Performance analysis shows that this processor can be used in online object-based video applications such as MPEG-4 and VRML
Wael Badawy and Magdy Bayoumi, “Algorithm-Based Low Power VLSI Architecture For 2d-Mesh Video Object Motion Tracking,” The IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 12, No. 4, April 2002, pp. 227-237
Be Rebellious
In order to get consumers (whether they are retail or service customers or business-to-business audiences) to notice an advertising message, many companies resort to loudness and one-upmanship. Neither of these tactics works in the long run.
If your competition is talking loudly and you decide to yell louder, what do you think they will do? Yep. Theyíll start to scream. Nobody wins a shouting match when it comes to advertising. And usually youíll find you even lose a few customers in the process because they canít stand the noise.
Itís the same with one-upmanship. If you have to compete on more and better coupons or more and better discounts, giveaways or incentives unrelated to your core product, your revenue per sale decreases as well as your number of sales.
Customers see these types of games as gimmicky, fake and disingenuous; and they leave. The ones who do stay now view you and your competitors as commodities with no difference except your price. That is a dangerous place for a company to find itself.
The answer to clutter is not more clutter; itís finding who wants to hear you and speaking to them. So how do you compete if you canít out shout or out discount your competition? You get rebellious and radical with your advertising.
Do those words scare you? Thatís okay. Remember, youíre being courageous now. You can handle it. Besides, rebellious and radical arenít dirty words. They will help you draw attention away from your competition without resorting to screaming and insulting your customers.
Itís not about being outrageous just to get attention; itís about being remarkable. An advertising campaign with a strong rebellious strategy is, by its very nature, different from anything your audience will find from your competitorsí marketing efforts. Itís unexpected. Itís surprising. Itís effective.
There are two keys to creating a successfully rebellious advertising campaign. The first is the big idea. This idea comes from a strategy that is derived directly from your customers and their relationship with your brand. You arrive at this idea through a discipline called account planning. Weíll get into the details of both the big idea and account planning in later articles.
The second key to a successfully rebellious advertising campaign is attention. You canít gain attention if you donít learn to identify and then steer clear of the norm. It doesnít matter how great your product or service is or how large your potential market, if your target audience doesnít pay attention to your message, your ad budget has been wasted.
Think about these two keys while you flip through the newspaper or a magazine. Ponder them while you watch TV. You should notice something almost immediately. Most ads today donít seem to be based on any big idea. Many are so boring that you flip right past them without noticing them. Others get your attention but the ads donít have much to do with the product so you quickly forget the brand the ad was supposed to sell you. What an opportunity for your brand!
Now, there is a caveat to being rebellious. Your ads should never be different just for difference sake. The difference should be derived from your brandís uniqueness
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Be an Independent Nurse Contractor and Start your own Successful Nursing Agency
How To Start A Nursing Agency Business Guide Books are flooding the internet. Most of these manuals are extracts from articles found on the world wide web. Because individuals seeking to start their own nursing agency buy information guides that do not have all the contents and key tools for success, a good number of these agencies either fail within their first year of business or simply never get to launch their new business.Thats many business man today want to build their own nursing agency.
Entrepreneurs have made lucrative business in nursing agency, nursing registry, homecare business, medical recruiter recruiting, or as independent nurse contractor in their own field.The time is now for entrepreneurs to start a nursing agency,nursing registry business, operate a homecare business, or as a medical recruiter or just become an independent healthcare contractor. By being an independent healthcare contractor, you are bypassing the agency and are self employed. Healthcare facilities are the clients. Homecare are regulated by all levels of goverment from local to fedeal level. Homecare levels of regulations depends on the category of service provided to clients. Homecare services ranges from providing just companions or the more medically needed clients such as terminally ill clients. Homecare services can be in the form of social service, non-medical, and medical services.
Nurses now a days wake up and take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity. Are you tired of having no input in your career, little money in the bank, lack of respect for your profession and little compensation for the long hours and years of dedication? Starting a nursing agency business or becoming an Independent RN Contractor is a great way to renew your interest and rejuvenate your nursing career. An Independent contractor can contract his or her nursing services directly with a healthcare facility or with a patient and continue bedside practice.
You don’t have to be a nurse or a doctor to start your own Nursing Agency. All you need is our packages and the desire to be self employed. This is the only industry where there will always be a shortage. 2007 Professional Edition of “How To Start A Nursing Agency” covers all 50 states and is jam packed with new additional products and services, making it the most comprehensive guide offered on the internet today! And NEW Searchable Database of over 22,000 Hospitals and Nursing Homes.
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Best Internet Marketing Strategies ñ Success Is Yours
Do you have a list of words that you like? I used to have a pretty extensive list. I had lots of words on there, but unfortunately I have forgotten many of them because I wasnít thinking about them enough. This is depressing because that list was such a simple little pick me up to maintain. I also liked that I liked the words for absolutely no logical reason. For example, the word ìfusiaî was on there and Iím not even one hundred percent sure what color that is, but I like the sound. Incidentally, Iím thinking fusia is a burgundy-ish color.
I once was out to eat with a girlfriend named Kit (actually her name was Katrina and for some reason it was shortened to Kit rather than Kat). The relationship was clearly coming to a close, but we still had a few dinners and drinks in us before the official end. Anyways, that night she told me that she liked the word ìperpendicularî and although I was mentally tainted in my thinking about her, because I knew that we were going to break up, at the moment that she said that, she seemed to me the most beautiful woman in the world. I like words and I like people who like words.
Anyways, I just realized that I also like the word ìstrategyî. Iím not sure why. I like it and moreover, just thinking about it makes me wish I had a strategyÖfor anythingÖexcept marketing. I donít want a marketing strategy and I definitely donít want an internet marketing strategy. Much like my feelings towards Kit in a positive way, I think that I would be negatively influenced by someone who had an internet marketing strategy. I donít even want to think about what Iíd feel towards someone who claimed to have the best internet marketing strategy. So in conclusion, I feel that the word strategy is cool and I also feel that actual strategies are cool, but a marketing strategy to me reeks of exploitative intentions and to me that is just not cool.
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Be Courageous
For such a simple statement, this is one of the hardest things for people to do. It goes back to that damn survival instinct each of us is born with. If an animal draws attention to itself in the wild, it might soon find itself the main course of a larger animalís next meal. That fear of being chewed up and spit out has survived all our millions of years of evolution and is alive and well in todayís business environment.
Fight or flight is another instinct many of us havenít yet learned to manipulate. Itís easier to run away from a new idea than it is to stay and fight for it. With todayís leadership-by-committee mentality and intense public scrutiny, the easiest solution is unfortunately the most popular. Companies today often miss the forest through the trees. They tend to concentrate so much on short-term profit that they fail to make investments or take advantages of opportunities that promise long-term profit simply because they require a short-term loss.
It may also be argued that fighting for a new ideaówhether that means pushing for the development of a new product, staving off competitors or supporting a slumping brand rather than letting it dieóis usually undesirable because of such costs.
Certainly that might be true in the short term, but in the long run, giving up too soon my actually cost your company far more in lost revenues, public outrage or shrinking market share. It requires a different way of thinking. Advertising and promoting your business is an investment in your businessí future. Investments are not mere costs. They come with a benefit.
Letís get one thing straight from the very beginning. No company ever dominated its industry by operating with a philosophy of fear. And, ultimately, no company can survive if it doesnít learn to conquer its fear and take chances, make changes.
It is the ability to see past any short-term problems to the bigger, long-term picture that has fueled the meteoric rise of the worldís most successful companies. Nobody knew what Apple was before its history making 1985 Super Bowl commercial.
Apple paid to run that commercial only once, but it ran again hundreds of times around the country and the world during local and national news broadcasts. Stories about Apple and its commercial were front-page news for weeks.
When it comes to advertising, you might wonder what kinds of changes are needed. After all, itís just advertising. If your ads look like your competitorsí ads, if your messages are strikingly similar, if you talk to yourself instead of your customers, if you worry more about your logo being large enough than the message being attention-getting enough, you need to change.
Now this is just the first step, so we wonít get into any more detail here. The object of this step is to let you know that you need to screw up your courage and prepare to make some changes in your advertising that will have a profound effect on your bottom line.
Fear is the greatest motivator. However, instead of motivating people to act, it usually causes people to freeze or retreat. It takes courage to make the kinds of changes that are needed to survive in todayís crowded, complicated and competitive business environment.
Conquer your fear. Be courageous.
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Benefits Of The Business Cards
Sometimes being at the right place and time can do wonders for the business. This can happen in the street or in the mall and starts by just approaching a stranger. New contacts occur everyday and with a little initiative, the person may be able to close a sale or be referred to someone who may need it.
There are many ways that a person can attract customers to oneís business. Some do this by launching a marketing campaign in the form of an ad in the paper or on a billboard. Some donít use marketing at all and just flourish through word of mouth.
On a more personal level if that person travels around, the best thing to carry and give out is a business card.
Business cards are used by people in big and small time business. It reflects who the person is. It gives people an idea of what the person is capable of doing in the event that the service one offers is needed in the future.
Such instruments are easy and light to carry along. It saves a lot of time and trouble for the other person to jot down oneís contact details.
Making a business card is easy. One can do this at home and just print it in the computer. Should the person decide to have it done by a small printing firm, the individual should be sure that the spelling and the design is correct. This will make it easy for people to get hold of the services one can do.
Business cards should always have some important details such as the name and contact number where the person can be reached and the company that one works for. If the person is self-employed, this can also work to get more customers for the business.
Since most people who get business cards simply put it in the drawer with the others, one should be imaginative in letting people recall it.
A few good examples are giving it in the form of a magnet that can be placed in the fridge. Should that person drink coffee in the office, one can have a coaster made that people will surely notice. Since computers are a necessity in the workplace, a mouse pad will also be a good idea to give away.
There is also another way of making oneself noticed by other people. That is carrying the business cards of other people and giving it to those who need it. When this happens and the person asks how the card went to that person, the individual will be remembered and oneís services will surely be called upon in the future by these two potential customers.
Businesses survive due to a regular customers and having new clients. This will bring additional revenue for the company and allows the company to flourish. By using the resources one has such as the use of business cards, this will happen.
These small hard pieces of paper are things that one can give out at anytime. Be it in a convention or some other function related to work or in parties and other social gatherings that will really help increase customer traffic. Small things do come in small packages and bringing this handy thing around can really help the person a lot.
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MRI Data Compression Using a 3-D Discrete Wavelet transform
A low-power system that can be used to compress MRI data and for other medical applications is described. The system uses a low power 3-D DWT processor based on a centralized control unit architecture. The simulation results show the efficiency of the wavelet processor. The prototype processor consumes 0.5 W with total delay of 91.65 ns. The processor operates at a maximum frequency of 272 MHz. The prototype processor uses 16-bit adder, 16-bit Booth multiplier, and 1 kB cache with a maximum of 64-bit data bandwidth. Lower power has been achieved by using low-power building blocks and the minimal number of computational units with high throughput.
Published in:
Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, IEEE (Volume:21 , Issue: 4 )
- Page(s):
- 95 – 103
- ISSN :
- 0739-5175
- INSPEC Accession Number:
- 7389345
- DOI:
- 10.1109/MEMB.2002.1032646
- Date of Publication :
- Jul/Aug 2002
- Date of Current Version :
- 07 November 2002
- Issue Date :
- Jul/Aug 2002
- Sponsored by :
- IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
- Publisher:
- IEEE
Wael Badawy, Guoqing Zhang, Mike Talley, Michael Weeks and Magdy Bayoumi, “MRI Data Compression Using a 3-D Discrete Wavelet transform,” The IEEE Engineering in Medical and Biology Magazine, Vol. 21, Issue 4, July/August 2002, pp. 95-103.
Branding – do you know who you are?
There is such a lot of talk going around about branding, but what exactly is your brand and how do you use it to help you reach more people and market your products or services?
Your brand is the core of your marketing, the central theme around your products and services.
Your brand is not your Logo or your Company Name, unless of course you are Microsoft or the Yellow Pages online directory.
For people to come and hire you, or buy from you in droves, your brand needs to be crystal clear, attractive, exciting and powerful. In fact your brand needs to be powerful enough to rouse your customers into action, and at the same time it needs to actively express you, what youíre about and your uniqueness.
Once you’re sure of your brand you also gain a tangible and easy way of talking to people about what you do. It makes it so much easier to do your marketing when you have it clear in your mind what it is youíre selling in the first place.
When you’re creating your brand you are creating a memorable marketing message that will inspire people to take action and choose you over your competitors.
Here are five useful tips to help you find your brand:
Your Brand Tip 1
Your brand is the core of what you do. What feelings or emotions does your business inspire in you and in your customers? Did you know that peoplesí decision to buy is based on emotions, not facts?
Your Brand Tip 2
Think about how you present yourself, not just on your website but when people see you, talk to you on the phone, or read your email. Is your marketing consistently saying what you want it to? Are people getting confusing messages from you, or is it clear from the start what you do?
Your Brand Tip 3
Think like your potential customer, try to get inside their head and see your products or services from their point of view. How do they experience what you do, and how does it make them feel?
Your Brand Tip 4
What is it you do that makes you stand out from the crowd? If you don’t think you do, then you need to think of a way that you can, because your brand should be somehow different from everyone else’s, its not enough to be just the same as others but better.
Your Brand Tip 5
What are your best abilities, do you know your greatest strengths? Choose an unbiased person, who knows you well, to help you decide what your top attributes are; your brand should be based around your unique strengths and abilities.
Ultimately, creating a strong, memorable, compelling and meaningful brand is essential for successful marketing, and something you can do with a bit of thought, and may be a bit of help from your (unbiased) friends.
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A VLSI Architecture for Video Object Motion Estimation using a Novel 2-D Hierarchical Mesh
This paper proposes a novel hierarchical mesh-based video object model and a motion estimation architecture that generates a content-based video object representation. The 2-D mesh-based video object is represented using two layers: an alpha plane and a texture. The alpha plane consists of two layers: (1) a mesh layer and (2) a binary layer that defines the object boundary. The texture defines the object’s colors. A new hierarchical adaptive structured mesh represents the mesh layer. The proposed mesh is a coarse-to-fine hierarchical 2-D mesh that is formed by recursive triangulation of the initial coarse mesh geometry. The proposed technique reduces the mesh code size and captures the mesh dynamics.
The proposed motion estimation architecture generates a progressive mesh code and the motion vectors of the mesh nodes. The performance analysis for the proposed video object representation and the proposed motion estimation architecture shows that they are suitable for very low bit rate online mobile applications and the motion estimation architecture can be used as a building block for MPEG-4 codec.
Wael Badawy “A VLSI Architecture for Video Object Motion Estimation using a Novel 2-D Hierarchical Mesh,” Journal of Systems Architecture, ISSN 1383 – 7621, invited