text:
\section{Introduction}
Many important tasks in computer vision such as homography estimation, plane detection and motion estimation demand the ability to fit geometric models onto noisy data. This is a non-trivial task given that the scene typically consists of multiple geometric structures. Moreover, the observed data is likely contaminated with noise from different sources including measurement sensor noise and outliers. These are the main factors leading to biased solutions. Therefore many multi-model fitting algorithms are driven fundamentally by their capacity to robustly deal with the complexity of the data and unknown distributions of data errors and outliers \cite{pham2014interacting}.
These extracted geometric models are often drivers of other algorithms such as robotic navigation, dense reconstruction and multi-object tracking; applications in which time performance that is close to real-time is actively sought. This provides a need for  multi-model fitting algorithms that are not only robust to contamination but exhibit fast and repeatable runtimes.

The most common solution to the geometric multi-model fitting problem is RANSAC \cite{fischler1981random}. A greedy approach consisting of two steps: in the first step, a set of model proposals is sampled from the model parameter space in a hypothesis-verification fashion.  A refinement step is applied over the best-selected model supported by the maximum number of inliers. To deal with multiple models, an extended solution like \cite{torr1998geometric} suggests to apply RANSAC sequentially over the rest of data points. However, the optimality of the solution is not guaranteed therefore restricting its use in the presence of cluttered data. Running alongside these methods are greedy clustering methods that maximise the number of inliers to models \cite{toldo2008robust,magri2014t,magri2016multiple}.

Global energy based approaches \cite{isack2012energy, yu2011global, delong2012fast}  have gained popularity by presenting a more general optimisation framework that jointly fit all models present in multi-structural data.  In practice, global energy methods aim to find an optimal fitting solution by accounting for the model error in a data fidelity term for a given metric. In addition, the set of solutions can be constrained by encouraging spatial smoothness in a regularisation term. A more complete formulation considers also the number of models as a parameter to optimise for \cite{isack2012energy}. These approaches have shown to outperform greedy methods such as RANSAC at the expense of intractable computational complexity with respect to the number of models fitted.

Minimisation of this energy can be performed via combinatorial algorithms such as $\alpha$-expansion \cite{boykov2001fast} which operate in a discrete domain. These approaches have been largely applied to the multi-label image segmentation problem formalized as a graph cut Markov Random Field (MRF) based approach. In contrast, we present a general-purpose solution that exploits continuous multi-label optimisation, a framework that has been shown to be superior in terms of parallelisation and runtime performance \cite{nieuwenhuis-et-al-ijcv13}. Figure \ref{fig:runtime} shows the time performance of two continuous optimisation algorithms that utilise Partial Differential Equations(PDEs): PDEZGFN \cite{zach2008fast} and PDECCP \cite{chambolle2008convex}. Compared to their discrete counterparts, FASTPD \cite{komodakis2007fast} and $\alpha$-expansion \cite{boykov2001fast} with 4 and 8 connectivity respectively on a multi-label image segmentation  problem. From the Figure it can be seen that PDEZGFN exhibited the best run-time performance for the image-segmentation task.

Additionally \cite{nieuwenhuis-et-al-ijcv13} highlights an important characteristic of discrete methods: their tendency to have a high run-time variance among scenes with the same number of labels. To select the adequate solution for a particular application, $\alpha$-expansion solves a number of max flow problems until convergence. This solution, however highly depends not only on the input data but also the chosen label order. Moreover, the number of expansion steps per each max flow problem depend on the graph structure. These parameters strongly differ with the current labelling, leading to high variation during running time. In contrast, continuous approaches -- as the one we suggest here -- carry out the same computation steps on each data point reporting a smaller running time variance. In addition, the number of iterations until convergence does not depend on the initial label order.

Analogous to PEARL \cite{isack2012energy}, we convert the problem of geometric multi-model fitting to a multi-labelling problem where each model is represented through a label function over the data points. By relaxing the discrete labels we reduce the impact of the scaling factor which harms the original combinatorial problem. The optimal solution to the relaxed problem is obtained efficiently through a primal-dual solution \cite{chambolle2011first}. This is an important advantage since it supports point-wise updates, thus it facilitates a straightforward implementation on GPGPU hardware which in turns leads to a faster implementation as alluded to in \cite{nieuwenhuis-et-al-ijcv13}.

\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
  \includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{runtimecomparison.png}
\end{center}
  \caption{Statistical comparison of the runtimes of continuous optimisation approaches (PDEZGFN \cite{zach2008fast} and PDECCP \cite{chambolle2008convex}) against discrete approaches (FASTPD \cite{komodakis2007fast} and Alpha \cite{boykov2001fast}) for interactive image segmentation over all the images of the Graz dataset \cite{santner2010interactive}. The plot shows the cumulative distribution function $P(runtime<t)$ with PDEZGFN the fastest performing algorithm. Figure from \cite{nieuwenhuis-et-al-ijcv13}.}
\label{fig:runtime}
\end{figure}

We summarise the main contributions in this paper as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item We propose a novel global energy-based approach to fit and segment multi-structural data via a convex relaxation algorithm, CORAL. Unlike greedy methods, which maximise the number of inliers, this approach efficiently searches for a soft assignment of points to models by minimising the energy of the overall classification.
\item We provide a designed energy functional that encompasses spatial regularisation on a continuous label function while simultaneously minimising the number of labels that better adapt to the multi-structural data. It does not make any assumption on the sparsity of the data.
\item We demonstrate the adaptability of the approach to two important vision applications including multi-homography estimation and plane detection from RGB-D images. These applications show the versatility of our approach to different metrics with different norms used in the two instances.
\end{itemize}

We show that, when applied on both simulated and publicly available real datasets, the proposed approach outperforms other global energy based methods for geometric multi-model fitting. The paper is organised as follows. In Section \ref{sec:energy_fitting} we describe our framework on a continuous energy formulation. Section \ref{sec:convex_relaxation} describes the two-stage convex relaxation algorithm. The practical advantages of our geometric model fitting framework are demonstrated in Section \ref{sec:experiments_applications}. Finally, we discuss the advantages of our method and draw conclusions in Section \ref{sec:conclusions}.

\section{Energy Minimisation for Multi-model fitting}

\label{sec:energy_fitting}
We frame the geometric multi-model fitting as an optimisation problem where the quality of the solution is linked to an energy functional. The first term of the energy considers the geometric error of all data points to their corresponding models/labels. The energy also encompasses prior knowledge about locality in the solution by enforcing data points that are spatially close to have a higher likelihood of belonging to the same model. Finally, a different sort of regularisation that promotes compactness is imposed by favouring solutions that explain the data using as few models as possible. Equation \ref{eq:energy} represents these three ideas in a general formulation.
\begin{align}\label{eq:energy}
    \sum_{l=1}^L \left( \int_\Omega \rho_l({\bf u},\phi_l({\bf u})) + \lambda \omega_{\mathcal{N}} R( \nabla_{\mathcal{N}} \phi_l({\bf u}))d\Omega\right) +\beta L
\end{align}
We refer to the first term $\rho_l$ in equation \ref{eq:energy} as a data fidelity term, defined over the data points ${\bf u} \in  \Omega $, where $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^m$ represents a continuous domain. The data term can be seen as a geometric cost of a data point supporting a particular model.

The assignment of data points to their respective models is encapsulated through an indicator function
\begin{equation}\label{eq:indicator}
\phi_l({\bf u}) =
 \begin{cases}
   1 &  {\bf u} \in L_l\\
   0 & \text{otherwise }
  \end{cases}
\end{equation}
where the uniqueness in the label assignment can be achieved by adding the constraint $\sum_{l=1}^L \phi_l({\bf u}) = 1$.

In practice, some data points might not be explained by a geometric model. For this case, we add a special label $\emptyset$, representing the outlier model. In this way, we can assign a constant cost $\gamma$ to points that cannot be explained by any geometric model. The model cost for the outlier model in simply given by  $\rho_\emptyset({\bf u},\phi_\emptyset({\bf u}))=\gamma$.

The second term in Equation \ref{eq:energy} takes into account locality by promoting a homogeneous assignment of labels to neighbouring points. The $\nabla_{\mathcal{N}}$ operator calculates the gradient of the indicator function over the neighbourhood $\mathcal{N}$ of a point. The function $R$ is designed to penalise points that belong to the same neighbourhood but do not share the same model. This penalty can be evaluated using different norms $| \cdot |_{p}$. For instance, the standard 4-connected lattice implemented in graph cut algorithms \cite{boykov2001fast} can be obtained by implementing $\nabla_{\mathcal{N}}$ using forward differences combined with a Manhattan norm  $| \cdot |_{1,1}$ \footnote{In the 2D case, $|\nabla_{\mathcal{N}} \phi_l({\bf u})|_{1,1} = |\nabla_{x}\phi_l({\bf u})|+ |\nabla_{y}\phi_l({\bf u})|$}. Examples of how to calculate $\nabla_{\mathcal{N}}$ and other norms for different applications can be found in the supplementary material. The parameter $\lambda$ controls the trade-off between the smoothness/locality cost and the model cost. The weights $\omega_{\mathcal{N}}$ allow us to have a finer control of the dependencies between neighbouring pixels. For example, in cases where the $k$ nearest neighbours for a given point are actually at a far distance, we reduce the effect of the smoothness term by decreasing the value of $\omega$ according to the separation. Finally, the third term in Equation \ref{eq:energy} penalises the number of models $L$ by adding a constant cost $\beta$ per model.

\subsection{Label Relaxation}
\label{sec:convex_relaxation}

The constraint in Equation \ref{eq:indicator} makes the problem combinatorial and NP-hard so it can only be approximately solved. We use a known fast relaxation approach \cite{zach2008fast} that transforms the original problem into a convex one. While this relaxation is not the tightest, it produces good results in practice. The relaxation is based on allowing $\phi_l({\bf u})$ to take values in the interval $\phi_l({\bf u}) \in [0,1]$ instead of the binary set $\{0,1\}$. As a result, for a fixed number of models L, Equation (\ref{eq:energy}) with the linear equality constraint in $\phi_l({\bf u})$ becomes a convex optimisation problem.

\subsection{Continuous optimisation algorithm }

The CORAL optimisation is shown in Algorithm \ref{alg:contopt}. Our approach exploits continuous optimisation in a two-stage iterative solution: First, an inner primal-dual iterative algorithm is carried out to impose spatial regularisation. Second, we employ an outer iteration to minimise for the number of models.
\begin{algorithm}[t]
\{Initialisation\}\;
 Propose $s$ models using RANSAC\;
 \While{not converged}{
  Primal Dual Optimisation\;
  Merge Models\;
  Re-estimate models\;
 }
 \caption{CORAL}
 \label{alg:contopt}
\end{algorithm}

The solution adopted to solve the energy in Equation (\ref{eq:energy}) depends on the selection of the functionals $\rho_l$ and $R$. Non-smooth norms such as the $L_1$ norm have shown to be robust to reject outliers. However, its non-differentiable intrinsics prevents us of using standard optimisation techniques. Recent achievements on continuous optimisation \cite{chambolle2011first} show that non-smooth priors used in similar relaxed convex problems can be transformed into saddle point problems and then a first order primal-dual algorithm exists to find the optimal solution. In this paper, we apply the same transformation to our relaxed constrained problem.
\begin{align}\label{eq:legendre-fenchel}
 \int_{\Omega} |\nabla \phi_l({\bf u})|_{p} d\Omega \ = \ & \max_{\Psi_l({\bf u})} \int_{\Omega} \nabla \phi_l({\bf u}) \cdot \Psi_l({\bf u}) d\Omega \\
                                         & s.t. \ |\Psi_l({\bf u})|_{p *} \leq 1 \label{eq:legendre-fenchel-const}
\end{align}
where $\Psi_l({\bf u}): \Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^2$ is known as the dual function of $\phi_l({\bf u})$ and $|\cdot|_{p}$ and $|\cdot|_{p *}$ are dual norms. Although this transformation seems to apparently increase the complexity, the counterpart is that we can now use well known first order methods available for smooth problems to find the global solution of the relaxed energy.

The main steps for the global energy optimisation are summarised as follows:

\begin{algorithm}[t]
Initialisation\;
$\tau,\alpha>0, \theta\in[0,1]$\;
$\phi^0= \bar{\phi}^0=\Psi^0=0 $\;
\While{k $<$ N}{
{Dual Step}\;
$\Psi^{k+1}=\pi_{\Psi}(\Psi^k +\tau\nabla\bar{\phi}^k)$\;
{Primal Step}\;
$\phi^{k+1}=\pi_{\phi}(\phi^k-\alpha(\rho_l({\bf u},\phi^k)+\lambda\nabla^T \Psi^{k+1})$\;
{Relaxation step}\;
$\bar{\phi}^{k+1}=\phi^{k+1}+\theta(\phi^{k+1}-\phi^k)$
}
\caption{Primal Dual Optimisation}
\label{alg:PrimalDual}
\end{algorithm}

\begin{enumerate}
\item Geometric error and smoothing optimisation:
We summarise the first order primal dual optimisation  \cite{chambolle2011first} for the proposed energy in algorithm  \ref{alg:PrimalDual}.

Algorithm \ref{alg:PrimalDual} shows the steps of the primal dual optimisation where $\tau,\alpha$ are the step size parameters of the algorithm, with $\theta$ controlling the relaxation.  The values of these are determined using the diagonal preconditioning scheme \cite{pock2011diagonal}.

To fulfil the constraint in Equation \ref{eq:legendre-fenchel-const}, the gradient ascent step of the dual variable gets projected onto the feasible set with the projection $\pi_{\Psi}(\cdot)$ defined by
\begin{equation}
\pi_{\Psi}(\Psi)=\frac{\Psi}{\max(1,|\Psi|_{p*})}
\end{equation}
Similarly, the function $\pi_{\phi}(\cdot)$ projects the gradient descent step of the primal variable onto the simplex $\phi_l({\bf u}) \in [0,1] \ s.t. \ \sum_{l=1}^L \phi_l({\bf u}) = 1$. The projection onto the simplex is explained in the supplementary material.

\item Models reduction:
Regularisation for compactness of the solution is imposed by adding a fixed cost multiplied to the number of models in Equation \ref{eq:energy}. Although it is not explicitly formulated into the primal dual optimisation, the smoothing optimisation has the unexpected benefit of sometimes reducing the label compactness energy. The smoothing optimisation reduces the smoothness energy by enforcing a single label for spatially connected regions. Then redundant models are merged in this way leading to a more compact solution.

This however only holds when two models are spatially connected. If two models with similar parameters that are not spatially connected are merged into a single model this does not reduce the smoothness energy. To account for this case an extra step is performed after the primal dual optimisation that merges separated models with similar parameters. In the presence of noise, merging two models results in an increase in the geometric error energy.  If this increase is however less than $\beta$, the global energy still decreases. This extra model merging step explicitly performs an optimisation for the number of models in the solution, ensuring an optimal compact solution.
\end{enumerate}

Analogous to the $\alpha$-expansion algorithm \cite{isack2012energy}, our proposed optimisation cannot be directly applied to continuous data as the number of possible labels for a model with $p$ parameters is $\mathbb{R}^p$. To reduce the search space, stochastic sampling for a finite number of models $s$ should be performed. Moreover, to re-estimate models after the primal-dual optimisation is completed we need a one-to-one correspondence between indicator functions and models. To this end, we threshold the continuous labels by selecting the maximum value at each point. The geometric error can be further reduced by re-estimating models based on the assignment given by the thresholded solution. This provides a new initialisation point to the inner primal dual optimisation.

\section{Experiments and Applications}
\label{sec:experiments_applications}
 In this section we employ our proposed algorithm to address the extraction of planar regions in images for two different problems: the first corresponds to the known multi-homography estimation from two views. The second, is plane detection from a single RGB-D image. Our motivation is driven by the fact that detection of geometric structure from images is of widespread importance to applications such as camera calibration, camera motion estimation and surface reconstruction. We argue that existing approaches are limited for real-time functionality.

 The implicit assumption in both cases is that scenes consist mostly of man-made objects commonly found in urban outdoor and indoor environments (e.g. buildings, walls, screens, desks, etc.). The image setup choice (i.e. colour images versus range data) allows us to deal with different situations. On the one hand, indoor environments usually expose texture-less surfaces. In addition, matching algorithms will be affected by low-light conditions thus motivating the use of an RGB-D sensor. On the other hand, outdoor scenes are more abundant in texture. However, the use of a depth sensor is limited by its practical maximum range. A two-view homography estimation approach for plane detection with feature correspondences would result in a better choice. Under these assumptions, we show in the next sections the versatility of the proposed formulation with no special distinction on the distribution of data over the space domain. Furthermore we show the ability of our formulation to handle the different norms best suited for the two different situations.

\subsection{Two-view multi-homography estimation}
Our first application considers two views of a static scene with multiple planes. Given an sparse set of $n$ pixel correspondences in homogeneous coordinates between the two views ${\bf u}_i = ({\bf u}^1_i, {\bf u}^2_i) \in \mathbb{R}^2,\ i=1 \cdots n$, the homography ${\bf H}_{21} \in \mathbb{R}^{3\times3}$ establishes the mapping of pixels from the first view to the second view through an observed plane. This operation is denoted by ${\bf u}_i^{2} = {\bf H}_{21} {\bf u}_i^{1}$. We aim to find the classification of pixel matches with respect to several homographies while simultaneously rejecting outliers. A simplified version of the energy in Equation \ref{eq:energy} for this problem is proposed in Equation \ref{eq:homography_energy},
\begin{align}\label{eq:homography_energy}
    & \sum_{l=1}^L\bigg(\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i=1}^n (\| D({\bf u}_i, {\bf H}_{12}) \|_{\Sigma_{12}} +  \| D({\bf u}_i, {\bf H}_{21}) \|_{\Sigma_{21}}) \phi_l({\bf u}) \nonumber \\
    & + \lambda \sum_{i=1}^n \omega_{\mathcal{N}} |\nabla_{\mathcal{N}} \phi_l({\bf u}) |_{1,1} \bigg)  + \beta L
\end{align}
The data term is chosen to account for the symmetric transfer error of the re-projection operation. \footnote{Here, we refer to $D$ as the Mahalanobis distance $\| D({\bf u}_i, {\bf H}_{ab}) \|_{\Sigma_{ab}} = ({\bf u}_i^a - {\bf u}_i^{a'}) \Sigma^{-1}_{ab} ({\bf u}_i^a - {\bf u}_i^{a'})^T$.  $\Sigma_{ab}$ represents the propagated covariance matrix through the mapping induced by the corresponding homography.} The $\nabla_{\mathcal{N}}$ operator takes in to account the variation over the label function on a specified neighbourhood $\mathcal{N}$. In this paper we use a 4-connectivity neighbourhood although it can be easily extended to any connectivity pattern. $\omega_{\mathcal{N}}$ penalises pixels that are far away in terms of Euclidean distance. Model initialisation is carried out by applying the DLT algorithm \cite{hartley2003multiple}.

We analyse the accuracy of CORAL by conducting a simulated experiment with perfect data associations between views and perfect labelling. Further, we show the performance of our approach on the extensively validated Adelaide benchmark dataset \cite{wong2011dynamic}.

\subsubsection{Simulation Experiments}

To characterise the performance and robustness of CORAL with respect to existing algorithms, experiments were first run in a controlled simulation environment. The simulation environment consists of three planes, placed mutually orthogonally to each other. This configuration resembles, for instance, the end of a corridor or corner of a building whereby two walls and the ground are simultaneously observed. Uniform sampling of the planes creates the point features observable from two frames by a camera with associated noise $\sigma_{pixel}$. Samples of the simulation environment are shown in Table \ref{fig:noisequality}.

In addition to points directly sampled from planes, we add outliers at different percentages to the simulation. To do so, an uniform sampling of the scene space is performed. Then, points are similarly projected to the image planes. While these outlier points naturally account for points that do not originate from a plane, we argue that they also include points that are wrongly matched between image frames. A triangulation of a wrong match between frames leads to a point that lies arbitrarily in space even if one or both of its corresponding image points lied on a plane. This corresponds to our outlier generation model.

We first tested CORAL under different values of $\sigma_{pixel}$ in the absence of any outliers. This was compared to a implementation of sequential RANSAC. In addition, we compare to PEARL using the open-source implementation available in \cite{pearlcode}. The Misclassification Error (ME) is used as metric to quantify the accuracy.
\begin{equation}
    \mathbf{ME}=\frac{\# \textrm{Misclassified points}}{\#\textrm{points}}
    \label{eq:merror}
\end{equation}
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
   \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{RansacSimulation1.pdf}
\end{center}
   \caption{Misclassification error against sensor noise $\sigma_{pixel}$ in the absence of outliers. The errors are obtained for RANSAC , PEARL and CORAL algorithms. The ME is evaluated and averaged over ten different two-view pairs of the simulated environment.}
\label{fig:simnoise}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
   \includegraphics[width=0.95\linewidth]{ME_outliers.pdf}
\end{center}
   \caption{Mislabelling error against outlier percentage for the three methods. Evaluated  and averaged over ten different views.}
\label{fig:simoutliers}
\end{figure}

Results from the three approaches are shown in Figure \ref{fig:simnoise}. It is clear that the global energy approaches outperform RANSAC as the sensor noise increases, in fact CORAL reports better results than PEARL for the largest noise value. The higher ME reported by RANSAC in the presence of noise can be explained by analysing Table \ref{fig:noisequality}. The table shows the triangulated noisy points in the simulation environment for $\sigma_{pixel}=[0.5,1.5,1.5]$ together with the ground truth planes from which they were originally sampled from. Colour coding of membership to a particular model is used to show the results of the multi-homography extraction for the three stated approaches.

\begin{table*}[ht]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{ c c c}
        $\sigma_{pixel}=0.5$ & $\sigma_{pixel}=1.0$ & $\sigma_{pixel}=1.5$ \\

    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{RansacHom3dsigma05.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{RansacHom3dsigma1.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{RansacHom3dsigma15.pdf} \\

    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{PearlHom3dsigma05.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{PearlHom3dsigma1.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{PearlHom3dsigma15.pdf} \\

    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{ContOptHom3dsigma05.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{ContOptHom3dsigma1.pdf}  &
    \includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{ContOptHom3dsigma15.pdf} \\

    \end{tabular}
    \caption{ The triangulated positions of noisy pixels together with the ground truth planes (red, green,and blue patches) are shown under different values of $\sigma_{pixel}$. The results of the multi-homography detection are displayed by a colour coding the point classification to their assigned models. RANSAC, PEARL and CORAL results are shown in the first, second and third row respectively.}
    \label{fig:noisequality}
\end{table*}
For $\sigma_{pixel}=1.5$ RANSAC selects models that, though geometrically valid, are not consistent with the ground truth planes. See for example the combination of green and red points on the two vertical planes. The energy approaches are more robust to this kind of noise as the smoothness prior ensures convergence to a better solution consistent with the ground truth. This is shown in the last column of Table \ref{fig:noisequality}.

We also test our proposed formulation in terms of robustness against outlier contamination. In this work the outlier percentage is defined as the ratio of outliers to inliers. The results of the three methods are summarised in Figure \ref{fig:simoutliers} with the sensor noise set to $\sigma_{pixel}=1.0$. For low percentage values $< 60\%$ the energy methods are more robust than RANSAC, with PEARL exhibiting a small advantage over CORAL. At higher percentages, it becomes much more difficult to obtain the solution and the ME for all the different approaches appear to converge. This is due to an inherent bias in the ME given that the outlier model in this case, dominates the data. Although RANSAC can incorrectly label models, it would still reject outliers resulting in a lower ME as the outlier class increases.

\subsubsection{Experiments with real data}
Following the simulation verfication, we benchmarked our result against the state-of-the-art on real data. The AdelaideRmf dataset \cite{wong2011dynamic} is used in this evaluation. It consists of image pairs with extracted keypoints and manually labelled ground truth. The performance on this dataset of different multiple model fitting approaches is available in \cite{magri2016multiple}. From these results, we carried out a comparison of CORAL to T-linkage \cite{magri2014t}, J-linkage \cite{toldo2008robust}, SA-RCM \cite{pham2014random}, RPA \cite{magri2015robust},  Grdy-RansaCov and ILP-RansaCov \cite{magri2016multiple}. These results are shown in Table \ref{tab:BenchmarkME}.

From Table \ref{tab:BenchmarkME} it can be seen that the best mean performance is achieved using our algorithm, with few cases sharing the best performance.
The better median performance by Multi-H \cite{barath28multi} can be explained by its specialised initialisation using affine transformations that have been shown to be superior to the DLT. This approach then subsequently uses a PEARL formulation for energy minimisation. Our approach would also benefit from this specialised initialisation; however, for better comparison with the state of the art we utilise an initialisation based on the DLT for model generation.

Some of the images with the detected homographies are shown in Figure \ref{fig:benchmarkquality}. From this Figure it can be seen that our approach is able to deal with a varied range of models that make up the final solution.

\begin{table*}[t]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{ |c|| c| c| c| c| c| c| c| c|}
    \hline
          & J-Lnkg & T-Lnkg & RPA & SA-RCM & Grdy-RansaCov & ILP-RansaCov & Multi-H & \textbf{CORAL} \\ \hline
        mean    & 25.50 & 24.66 & 17.20 & 28.30 & 26.85 & 12.91 & 4.40 & \textbf{4.2117}  \\ \hline
        median   & 24.48 & 24.53 & 17.78 & 29.40 & 28.77 & 12.34 & \textbf{2.41} & 3.48  \\ \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{Misclassification error for two view plane segmentation in the AdelaideRmf dataset. Part of the results in this table are reported in \cite{magri2016multiple}. }
    \label{tab:BenchmarkME}
\end{table*}

\begin{figure*}
    \centering
    \begin{subfigure}[b]{0.3\textwidth}
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{Johnsona.pdf}
        \subcaption{Johnsona}
    \end{subfigure}
    ~

    \begin{subfigure}[b]{0.3\textwidth}
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{Johnsonb.pdf}
        \subcaption{Johnsonb}
    \end{subfigure}

    \begin{subfigure}[b]{0.3\textwidth}
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{ladysymon.pdf}
        \subcaption{ladysymon}
    \end{subfigure}

    \caption{Sample of images from the AdelaideRmf Dataset. With the membership to the different homographies indicated by the different colours. Crosses are used to signify points that are mislablled while the uniform outlier label $\emptyset$ is shown in purple through all figures.} \label{fig:benchmarkquality}
\end{figure*}

\subsection{Plane detection with RGB-D images}

The second case of structure detection is the extraction of planes from a single RGB-D image. In this scenario, we can exploit the regularity of the image pixel grid. This idea, in contrast to a 3D point cloud representation, will fully leverage the effects of the smoothness regularisation term. In other words, the individual pixel solutions will propagate along the domain of the image with a more clear definition of the local neighbourhood. In order to apply this idea, we chose to work on an inverse depth representation in a per-pixel basis. It can be shown that if two pixels ${\bf u}$ and ${\bf u}^*$ belong to the same planar surface in 3D, their inverse depths $\xi({\bf u})$ and $\xi({\bf u}^*)$ satisfy the following equation
\begin{equation}
    \xi({\bf u})-\xi(\mathbf{u}^{*})=\langle \mathbf{w},\mathbf{u}-\mathbf{u}^{*} \rangle
\end{equation}
where $\langle \cdot,\cdot \rangle$ represents the inner product between two vectors. $\mathbf{w} = (w_u,w_v) $ codifies the projection of the 3D plane normals into the image plane. A proof of the validity of this expression is given in the supplementary material.

In this application, the energy to be minimised is given by
\begin{align} \label{eq:energy_depth}
    &\sum_{l=1}^L \left(\int_{\Omega} (\|\xi({\bf u})-\xi({\bf u}^{*}) - \langle {\bf  w}, {\bf u} - {\bf u}^{*} \rangle \|_{\sigma_{\xi}})\phi_i({\bf u}) d\Omega \right.  \nonumber \\
    & \left. + \lambda \int_{\Omega} \omega_{\mathcal{N}}^\alpha |\nabla_{\mathcal{N}} \phi({\bf u}) |_{1,2} d\Omega \right) + \beta L
\end{align}
where $\omega_{\mathcal{N}}^\alpha = e^{-\| \nabla_{\mathcal{N}} I({\bf u})\|_{\alpha}}$ and $I$ represents the intensity of corresponding intensity image. These weights serve as a measure of edginess that can be controlled with parameter $\alpha$, thus aiding to preserve sharp discontinuities between objects. Note that we use the Mahalanobis distance on the inverse depth as data term. The rest of the elements in this equation are similar to the general-purpose energy proposed in Equation \ref{eq:energy}.

\begin{table*}[ht]

    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{ c c c c}
    Ground Truth & RANSAC & PEARL & CORAL \\
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image1255G_truth.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image1255Ransac.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image1255pearl.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image1255ContOpt.pdf} \\

    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image15G_truth.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image15Ransac.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image15pearl.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image15ContOpt.pdf} \\

    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image369G_truth.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image369ransac.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image369pearl.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image369ContOpt.pdf} \\

    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image457G_truth.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image457Ransac.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image457Pearl.pdf} &
    \includegraphics[width=0.24\textwidth]{Image457ContOpt.pdf} \\

    \end{tabular}
        \caption{Plane segmentation on a sample of RGB-D images from the NYU-Depth dataset. with the Ground Truth, RANSAC, PEARL and CORAL results presented for each image. Pixel membership to a plane model is shown by superposing on a pixel a color-coded point that assigns it to a specific plane model.}
    \label{fig:NYUsegmentation}
\end{table*}

To evaluate the performance of CORAL for plane detection using RGB-D images, we use the NYU-depth dataset \cite{Silberman:ECCV12}. This contains 1449 tuples of RGB, depth and labelled images for multiple instances of objects. For our evaluation, we selected a subset of 232 images containing scenes where either the walls, ceilings, desks,  floor or a combination of all of these surfaces are observed. This is to ensure that our selection contains images with significant planar regions. This subset however was not explicitly created for plane extraction. Therefore a suitable ground truth for our problem is not available. To obtain a ground truth, we employ the labels provided and fit planes to individual instances of objects in the scene with a minimum number of inliers. In addition, we merge planes with similar planar parameters to reduce redundancy of models in the data.

Four samples of the dataset are shown in Table \ref{fig:NYUsegmentation}. Each column represents the ground truth, RANSAC, PEARL and CORAL solutions with a color-code representing the different labels. The results show that the energy based methods produce more consistent plane models aligned with the expected ground truth. CORAL solutions show greater quality compared to PEARL solutions, in particular considering the first two images. In such cases, CORAL is able to identify more plane models than PEARL.

Table \ref{tab:BenchmarkME_RGBD} condenses the ME results for all three methods. As it is observed, CORAL outperforms PEARL in three of the four instances. To quantify performance over the whole subset used, an optimal value of $\lambda$ was trained using a quarter of the images in the subset. This was then evaluated over the remaining images with the mean errors over all three methods reported back in the Table.

\begin{table}[h]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{ |c| c| c| c|}
    \hline
          & RANSAC & PEARL & \textbf{CORAL}  \\ \hline
          Image 1  & 22.96 & 16.24 & \textbf{13.95}  \\
          Image 2  & 28.70 & 20.59 & \textbf{17.12}  \\
          Image 3  & 36.60 & 26.30 & \textbf{25.30}  \\
          Image 4  & 15.72 & \textbf{7.77} & 7.83  \\ \hline
           Test set  & 29.38 & 23.04 & \textbf{18.99}  \\ \hline
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{ME for RGB-D plane segmentation on the images shown in Table \ref{fig:NYUsegmentation} and a test set consisting of 232 images from the NYU-depth Dataset. }
    \label{tab:BenchmarkME_RGBD}
\end{table}

\section{Discussion and Conclusions}
\label{sec:conclusions}

In this work we have introduced CORAL, a global energy minimisation algorithm for geometric multi-model fitting. Our general solution uses a convex relaxation for model assignment leveraging advanced optimisation techniques in the continuous domain. Our approach inherits all the benefits described in the available survey presented in \cite{nieuwenhuis-et-al-ijcv13}. The advantages of CORAL over discrete solutions analysed in previous sections are mainly driven by its potential to parallel implementation compared to state-of-the-art methods that require sequential evaluations of labels. CORAL intrinsically boosts performance by simultaneously handling per-point evaluations over the labels. Additionally this speed-up comes bundled with reduced runtime variance as compared to graph-cut approaches. Making our approach more suitable for geometric model extraction with applications with real-time performance constraints.

Our formulation also allows for flexibility on the norms applied, which we characterise through the structure detection problem from images in two different scenarios. All this without degradation of performance as in these scenarios CORAL reports results that outperform or are at least equivalent to the best performances achieved using state-of-the-art methods.

In summary, CORAL brings in powerful optimisation machinery into the solution of geometric multi-model fitting. Offering an algorithm that is simultaneously able to robustly extract accurate models in the presence of contamination and offers improved time performance guarantees over the state of the art.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


The Loge Elementary student council recently delivered cookies to the Warrick County Sheriff's Office, Boonville Police Department and the Boonville Fire Department to thank them for everything they do.
When it comes to local schools, any issue with class sizes boils down to funding.
Students at Loge Elementary recently donated $950 worth of food to Bread of Life Ministry. The students collected more than enough food for Thanksgiving baskets and donated the 865 remaining food items to Bread of Life.
Fourth grade and Excel classes at Oakdale Elementary School will be honoring Veterans with a program at 1:15 p.m. for the school and 6:30 p.m. for family on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2015.
Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Vandeventer's class at Yankeetown celebrated their 50th day of school with '50s activities like learning the Bunny Hop.
Oakdale Elementary students celebrated their second annual Bullying and Drug Free walk to City Lake. The entire school participated in the walk on Monday, Oct. 26. It was the beginning of their Bullying Awareness and Red Ribbon Week.
For over 15 years, the Parent Teacher Organization at Lynnville Elementary has hosted the annual Fall Festival, and this year is no different.


text:
Q: C# Excel.Application - Issue with text field converted to Scientific notation I have follwing C# code which opens that tab delimited .txt file and does the saveas to Excel file. Problem what I am running into is some of the text field has value such as "9101010521297461515213" is getting converted to "9.10101E+21". How do I prevent getting converted to scientific notation and leave as text instead using below function ?
public void SaveTextFileAsExcel(string filefrompath, string filetopath, string newtabname)
{
    // Excel object references.
    Excel.Application m_objExcel = new Excel.Application();
    Excel.Workbooks m_objBooks = (Excel.Workbooks)m_objExcel.Workbooks;
    Excel._Workbook m_objBook = null;
    Excel.Sheets m_objSheets = null;
    Excel._Worksheet m_objSheet = null;
    // Frequenty-used variable for optional arguments.
    object m_objOpt = System.Reflection.Missing.Value;
    if (filefrompath != "")
    {
        m_objBooks.OpenText(filefrompath, Excel.XlPlatform.xlWindows,1,
                     Excel.XlTextParsingType.xlDelimited, Excel.XlTextQualifier.xlTextQualifierDoubleQuote,
                     false, true, false, false, false, false,m_objOpt, m_objOpt,
                     m_objOpt, m_objOpt, m_objOpt, m_objOpt, m_objOpt);

        m_objBook = m_objExcel.ActiveWorkbook;
        m_objSheets = m_objBook.Worksheets;

        m_objSheet = (Excel.Worksheet)m_objSheets.get_Item(1);//Get the reference of second worksheet

        string strWorksheetName = m_objSheet.Name;//Get the name of worksheet.
        if (newtabname != "")
        {
            m_objSheet.Name = newtabname;
        }

        if (filetopath !="")
        {
            // Save the text file in the typical workbook format and quit Excel.
            m_objBook.SaveAs(filetopath, Excel.XlFileFormat.xlWorkbookNormal,
                m_objOpt, m_objOpt, m_objOpt, m_objOpt, Excel.XlSaveAsAccessMode.xlNoChange, m_objOpt, m_objOpt,
                m_objOpt, m_objOpt, m_objOpt);
        } //if (filetopath !="")
    } //if (filefrompath != "")

    m_objBook.Close(false, m_objOpt, m_objOpt);
    m_objExcel.Quit();
} //SaveAsExcel

A: Although the question is old, this is a recurrent issue in all Excel versions.
In Excel, the presentation value property is called Value but you still can access the original value using FormulaR1C1.
I have had success converting one to another by forcing Value property to be the same as FormulaR1C1 (note: you have to set the column to text) with a for loop similar to this:
Sub RevertFormat()
  Dim ymax, xmax, x, y
  ymax = 245
  x = 3
  For y = 2 To ymax
      Sheet1.Cells(y, x).Value = Sheet1.Cells(y, x).FormulaR1C1
  Next
End Sub

You should be able to access the same properties through C#, though it might be troublesome it will work.
Unfortunately I don't known a way to deactivate scientific formatting by default on Excel.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Please tell me how I can purchase more points. Currently the system is not allowing me to.
"After much consideration, the decision has been made to retire Data.com Connect as of May 4th, 2019. Consequently, as of May 4th, 2018, you will no longer be able to purchase plans, contacts, or points with a credit card, and as of May 4th, 2019, you will no longer be able to purchase contacts with points."
Bad decision - really used this for job search.
That was the whole reason I was a customer of this service. I guess not anymore unfortunately.
I'm deeply disappointed that you have not allowed us to buy more points until at least April. Since I use this website daily and we purchased many points, it would be nice if that was still honored.


text:
.. automodule:: home.ts.graph
   :members:
   :undoc-members:
   :show-inheritance:

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


12 Gauge Red Automotive Wire 12 Ft. Package - WiringProducts, Ltd.
Small Pack of Red 12 AWG Primary Wire for General Purpose Low Voltage Use. Made in America.
12 gauge Red Primary Automotive Wire - 12 Foot Package - Wire is ROHS compliant. For general purpose automotive wiring and low voltage electrical use. Red PVC insulation. Strand count: 19-25. Temperature rating up to 176°F (80°C). Voltage rating: 60 volts. Made in the USA.


Get your sweat on with our fantastic Day Membership.
What are Day Membership Passes?
At The Gym, we believe fitness should fit around you – not the other way around.
So, whether you're working away or visiting a friend for a day, our Short Term Passes give you ultimate flexibility so you can get your sweat whenever and wherever you like.
If you're just stopping by or you'd like to try before you buy, our awesome Day Pass offers you complete access to your chosen gym, on your specified date, for up to 24 hours from just £4.99.
Or, if you're planning on sticking around for a while, there's Multi-Day Pass option which allows you access to The Gym for three or five consecutive days from just £12.99.
Simply, fill out the online form and you could go from sitting still to running on the treadmill in minutes with no ifs, buts, obligation or fuss.
As with all Short Term Passes, you'll get complete access to The Gym, including classes from the moment you sign up.
You can join on a Day or Multi-Day Pass providing you're over 18 years old either by heading to the website or signing up at the computer kiosk outside The Gym.
You'll then be given a unique PIN which can be used for the duration of your membership at a gym of your choice.
Please note: not all gyms run the Multi-Day Pass options. Also, Multi-Day Passes are for consecutive days only and your three or five day membership will begin from the moment you join up.
Can I get a Short Term Pass again?
Yes, absolutely. If you'd like to visit us again all you have to do is head back to the Members' Area and enter your email address and PIN that you used the last time to reinstate your Short Term Pass.
And if you really like what you see you can join up to The Gym at the kiosk outside. For more information, just ask one of our super-friendly staff who'll be more than happy to help.
At this time, we don't offer a Day Membership for under 18's. If you're between the ages of 16 and 18 and would like to take a look around, come and visit us during our manned hours to find out more.
The Gym staff are on site from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 5pm over the weekend and one of our friendly team will be more than happy to show you around.
Yes, we've got that covered too. Our Day Membership allows you to join in any, and as many, of our free classes at no extra cost to you.


text:
The D&S Blog
Please pardon our appearance. We are using an off-the-shelf WordPress theme while we wait for a full website redesign.
95 Berkeley St, 3rd floor
T:(617)447-2177
F:(617)447-2179
Tag: National Jobs for All Coalition
Thursday Links: "Fix Our T," SEC, TPP, etc.
(1) Fix "Our" T: On my walk from Boston's South Station to the D&S office this morning, I encountered an army of people in red "Fix Our T" t-shirts asking commuters to sign a petition to "Fix Our T." (The "T" is Boston's public transit systems, including a subway, buses, and commuter rail.) When I asked one of the petition-wielders what it was all about, she mumbled something about "increasing transparency and accountability." I said that wasn't enough information for me to sign anything, and asked if she had any handouts. (Lots of other people were just signing–people are really fed up with the T, especially after terrible service this winter in the wake of multiple blizzards!) She gave me a flyer which revealed that the petition was to "tell Beacon Hill [the state legislature] to work with Governor Baker and fix our T" and to "to adopt the responsible bipartisan reform proposed by Governor Baker."
It turns out that the website mentioned on these people's t-shirts, www.FixOurT.com, was put up by a group called the Coalition for a World Class public Transit System. It is made up of area chambers of commerce (the North Shore Chamber of Commerce, Metro South Chamber of Commerce, etc.), industry organizations (Massachusetts Lodging Association, Massachusetts Restaurant Association, Massachusetts Petroleum Council (!)), and free-market, pro-business lobbying organizations (the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation). The list of "solutions" to the T's problems is mostly bland and meaningless, but key items tip their hand as anti-union ("Provide greater accountability and transparency for the T's governance and management practices to ensure the entity is efficiently and effectively run while employing a productive workforce") and against increased funding for the T ("Ensure that the T balances its operating budget without the need for ever-increasing state assistance each year"). So it's pretty shady to be asking commuters to sign a petition without revealing that this is a big business group with an agenda that many commuters would disagree with. (As my co-editor Alejandro Reuss likes to point out, nobody ever suggests that the military should "balance its operating budget without the need for ever-increasing state assistance each year" they way fiscal conservatives seem to think actual public goods like Social Security, public transit, or USPS should.)
At least the Boston Globe got it right about the petition with this story: Business Groups Lobby in Favor of Baker's MBTA Plan. All these pro-business organizations give the lie to the claim (however technically true) on the group's Facebook page to be a "nonprofit organization," and also makes you wonder what they mean by "Our" T. It reminded me of a Short Run from our April 1975 issue that we republished in our Nov/Dec 2009 35th anniversary issue:
You Make It Work (April 1975)
The Reader's Digest editorial staff is preparing a year-long series of articles defending the U.S. economic system. The Business Roundtable, made up of top executives of 150 major corporations, is paying $1.2 million for the series, which will run under an "[advertisement]" label in each month's Digest and will be placed in 50 college newspapers as well.
The chairman of the Business Roundtable public information committee, which will supervise the series, is Vice President Paul M. Lund of AT&T. The title of the series is surprisingly up front (emphasis added): "OUR Economic System—YOU Make It Work."
(2) The SEC: Rootstrikers has a new report out about how compromised the current head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is, Mary Jo White, the SEC, and the Revolving Door. It is a great follow-up to Elizabeth Warren's June 2 letter to White criticizing her performance at the SEC, and it is a great riposte to the notion that White would be someone Wall St. wouldn't want to "mess with." From the executive summary:
A deeper dig into White's career indicates that not only has White's tenure at the SEC
been troubling, it has been a disappointment very much in keeping with her
professional track record. Her defenders are right in one very important regard: White
has in fact led the SEC exactly as one might expect she would based on her career.
White's career serves as an emblematic example of what is problematic about the
revolving door; indeed, she is also a proponent of the revolving door in her hiring and in
her personal statements. Her position on the SEC leads to an insolvable dilemma: her
lengthy and lucrative ties to Wall Street (Section A below) lead to justifiable calls for
frequent recusal, and her frequent recusals (see Section F) lead to frequent deadlock in
the commission, preventing adequate enforcement. White's tendency to hire people
for high ranking jobs at the SEC who are likely to avoid stringently enforcing laws
protecting society from the dangers of the insiders and large banks for whom they will
go to work for next (see Section E) is emblematic of her ideology opposing strong white
collar criminal enforcement (see Sections (C) and (D)).
Here's something from Bloomberg Business about the report: SEC Chair's Conflicts Fuel Sympathy for Wall Street, Group Says.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg Business also reported (here) that the SEC could act as soon as August 5th to (finally) implement a Dodd-Frank rule "that will force public companies to publish a ratio that compares the chief executive officer's reported pay with that of their typical worker."
What I find hilarious about the resistance to this rule is that corporations, exhibiting that "can't do attitude," have been whining about how much time it would take for them to calculate the pay rate of the "average" worker (with the median pay). But the Stanford University Engineering website has a delightful piece explaining how a doctoral student there, Michael Ohlrogge, figured out a way to do it using statistical sampling:
He began to contemplate how the SEC might use statistical sampling to calculate the required median compensation at a reasonable cost. His quantitative training in engineering had taught him that highly accurate statistical estimates could be derived using relatively small samples drawn from large populations. On the other hand, his legal training taught him that the SEC has broad discretion in interpreting and implementing such laws as it deems appropriate.
"You can actually get a very accurate median estimate by sampling as little as one-half of 1 percent of a company's workforce, even for massive multi-national companies," Ohlrogge said.
Ohlrogge submitted several comment letters to the SEC, building his case for statistical sampling. He analyzed legal precedent to argue that, despite there being no specific mention of statistical sampling in Dodd-Frank, the SEC would be justified in using sampling. Then, relying on his engineering skills, he crafted the sampling technique companies could use to estimate median income.
Well done. You can bet, though, that the corporations wouldn't have found it so burdensome to figure out if they thought they could profit from it (vs. the pay ratio promising to expose the ludicrousness of their executives' pay).
(3) TPP: Just two items to pass on about the TPP:
Dean Baker, Truthout, Victory Over Fast-Track TPP Must Be Cautious of Rich People's Rules. (The rules are: if you lose, you get to do it over and over again until you win. Think TARP.)
June Zaccone, National Jobs for All Coalition, The Trans Pacific Partnership: A Corporate Wish List. A nice and comprehensive report.
(4) Rana Plaza Victory: To end on an up note: we have been covering the efforts to get clothing retailers whose goods were being made in the Rana Plaza factory that collapsed in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013, in John Miller's articles After Horror, Apologetics, and After Horror, Change? (his columns in our last two Sept/Oct annual labor issues). Finally, change has arrived, as announced by the International Labor Rights Forum:
The International Labor Rights Forum is thrilled to announce that two years of campaigning, with over one million people participating, has succeeded in securing $30 million in compensation for the victims of the Rana Plaza building collapse – the deadliest disaster in the history of the global garment industry.
"This campaign victory would not have been possible without the hard work of workers' rights groups and labor unions on the ground in Bangladesh, and activism from a wide array of allies around the world who held more than a hundred store actions and demonstrations at corporate headquarters," said Judy Gearhart, Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Forum.
Maybe we're overcoming the dynamic Barry Deutsch documented in his cartoon for our March/April 2014 issue:
That's it for now.
Posted on June 18, 2015 June 26, 2015 Author Chris SturrTags Bloomberg Business, Business Roundtable, CEO compensation, Charlie Baker, Dean Baker, Dodd-Frank, International Labor Rights Forum, June Zaccone, Mary Jo White, MBTA, National Jobs for All Coalition, public transit, Rana Plaza, Rootstrikers, Securities and Exchange Commission, TPPLeave a comment
Tuesday Links: CEO Pay, Crisis Costs, Climate March, etc.
(1) Dr. Dollar on the Ex-Im Bank. Our latest piece from the (still in production) Sept/Oct issue: Arthur "Dr. Dollar" MacEwan answers this question from D&S reader Arne Alpert: "Congressional Republicans and the Heritage Foundation are making a big deal about the Export-Import Bank, calling it "crony capitalism." Are they right? Does the Ex-Im Bank serve a useful purpose, or is it just propping up the profits of trans-national corporations?"
(2) Susan Holmberg and Mark Schmitt, The Overpaid CEO. Interesting piece that focuses on the costs of high CEO pay. When CEOs get huge paychecks, "the company is choosing to pay executives instead of doing other things—distributing revenues to shareholders, raising wages for workers, or reinvesting in the business. But the greater cost may be the risky behavior that very high pay encourages CEOs to engage in, especially when pay is tied to short-term corporate performance." This piece resonates with our July/August cover story, Marianne Hill's Taming the Corporate Beast.
(3) David Cay Johnston, Corporate Deadbeats. The awesome DCJ has a cover story in Newsweek, which is back in print as of March (it stopped last December). The subtitle: How Companies Get Rich Off Of Taxes." Key quote: "How can a tax burden become a boon? Simple. Congress lets multinationals earn profits today but pay their taxes by-and-by. In effect, Uncle Sam is loaning these companies all that money they do not immediately turn over as taxes. And all of these loans come with the same attractive interest rate: zero." Great article; I'm not sure I like "Off Of" in the subtitle, though. Did Newsweek lay their editors off between December and March?
(4) Abby Scher, At Least Some Unions Step Up for Big Climate March. Former D&S co-editor Abby Scher had this piece at Truthout on Sunday. Choice quote: "The transit workers are my personal heroes of the climate justice movement; when you encounter members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 while flyering for the march on city streets, not only are they already on board, they often have something to say about the state of a world that doesn't deal with the reality of climate change."
(5) National Jobs for All Coalition, Green Jobs for All flyer. Hat-tip to Trudy Goldberg for this flyer that folks from the National Jobs for All Coalition will be handing out at this weekend's Climate March in NYC. Print some up and hand them out if you're going to the march! "Creating green jobs would solve both environmental and unemployment crises—as well as decrease our growing economic inequality."
(6) Americans for Financial Reform, Cost of the Crisis: A briefing paper from AFR, to mark the sixth (!) anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing. A summary:
Cost of the Crisis – An Updated Reckoning, Six Years After the Lehman Bros. Bankruptcy
On the sixth anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing (Sep. 15, 2008), the financial crisis is still severely affecting our economy. Today, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) released an updated compilation of the quantifiable costs of the financial crisis. A few highlights:
The Dallas Federal Reserve estimates the total U.S. economic output loss from the financial crisis and its aftermath will eventually be $6 trillion to $14 trillion, or $50,000 to $120,000 for every U.S. household.
Median household wealth in 2013 was $81,200, down 40.0% from $135,400 in 2007 before the financial crisis began (numbers in inflation-adjusted, 2013 dollars). Federal Reserve 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances, Table 4.
From the beginning of the recovery in 2009 through the end of 2013, wage rates decreased for the bottom 90 percent of workers, despite productivity growth of 4.8 percent over that period. On the other hand, the stock market and corporate profits (adjusted for inflation) have both surpassed their pre-recession peak. EPI.
More than five years after the recession officially ended, the unemployment rate (U-3) stands at 6.1 percent as of August 2014, up from a pre-crisis rate of 4.7 percent (in November 2007). Long-term unemployment remains at near-record levels. The typical (median) unemployed worker still takes over three months to exit unemployment – a longer period than has ever been observed during any recession period since World War II. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the end of the second quarter of 2014, 8.7 million households remained underwater on their mortgages, representing one out of every six homes with mortgage debt. The average negative equity amount for underwater homeowners was $72,381, or 34.8% more than the home's worth. In most markets, the largest part of the negative equity is in lower priced homes – 28 percent of the least expensive third of homes were underwater compared to 9 percent in the top tier. Zillow.
With $613 billion in debts, the Lehman bankruptcy was the largest bankruptcy in US history and a defining moment of the financial crisis.
–Chris Sturr
Posted on September 16, 2014 Author Chris SturrTags Abby Scher, Americans for Financial Reform, Arthur MacEwan, climate change, climate march, corporate taxes, David Cay Johnston, Export-Import Bank, Mark Schmitt, National Jobs for All Coalition, Newsweek, Susan Holmberg1 Comment

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Learn how to incorporate cannabis into an active lifestyle to promote the balance of mind, body, and soul while getting fit at our Huff & Puff H.I.I.T. Class! Challenge yourself with fun workouts to bumping tunes, that can be catered to your level of fitness and done at home anytime! High Intensity Interval Training is ideal for people looking for a blend of fast paced cardio and core building exercises that will tone and strengthen the body. High Coach Lia will show you how to get those Dab Abs you desire!


Introducing little Micah Joan Marie, born on September 19th 2012. Usha and Cyril kindly welcomed me into their home just ten days after the birth of their beautiful daughter. Micah was a perfect little model, happy to be swaddled in colourful fabrics and subjected to hairbands! Big brother Rémy took his cuddling responsibilities very seriously and I love the images of the two of them together. Cyril drew some inspiration from Robbie Williams and I hope that he and Usha will cherish these images as Micah grows up - I expect she has already changed so much in the ten days since we shot these!


Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler | Books, Movies, Reviews. Oh my!
Seventh in the Bryant & May detective mystery series revolving around two past-retirement-age detectives and the unit they've inspired. Based in London and taking place before the 2012 Olympic Games.
This series is great fun as it incorporates myths and mysteries that are "real" in our own world. Fowler makes it even more of a twist with Bryant's biggest weakness being his need to pull everything around myth and magic. It's also his greatest strength. Although May's mention of the 900- hotline is a crack-up. It's amazing how Fowler manages to tie all together: the blend of history, myth, modern corruption, and all those red herrings.
Shutting down the PCU is such a very government thing to do. A police unit with a very high success rate in solving crime. Oh, no. Can't have that… Do be sure to read the note for the incoming team. It is too, too funny, and if I were them, I'd head for the hills before I went into the former PCU offices, ROFL. They might want to consider wearing wearing haz-mat suits!
I had to laugh even more as some of the more reluctant members of the PCU team admit to missing the unit. Yup, even Renfield!! Who knew he had the heart of a romantic beneath that exterior.
May does a nice snow job on Faraday to get the unit provisionally back. Nothing appeals more than the threat of money *shakes her head* It sure does make a crazy reversal at the end. Of course, Faraday has to make it near impossible, which in turn makes for a crazy new office set-up.
The office location isn't the only change. The characters are having all sorts of epiphanies.
I totally understand Xander's anger. Unfortunately, ADAPT's practices are too prevalent in the business world…right along with the connivance of government.
The ending made me nuts. It hasn't actually resolved anything, and I'll have to dive into Off the Rails to find out if they get reinstated or what!?
PCU, especially Bryant and May, are under investigation for a number of illegal activities. And with the unit broken up, the team are each wandering off on their own job hunts. Until.
Colin's latest job turns up a headless corpse and Meera's bar-hopping ends with Herne the Hunter. Are they connected…? Bryant certainly believes so.
Giles doesn't help when he states that "you've got the same man dying twice in two separate places, days apart". It's a menace that is threatening one of the biggest redevelopment projects in London. One that government is desperate to see succeed.
Former Senior Detectives Arthur Bryant and John May (recovering from a cancer scare) are coping in different ways. Bryant has fallen into depression and won't see anyone. May is considering a private detective career. Without Bryant. Brigitte is the new love in May's life. Alma Sorrowbridge is the technical owner of the "loft" she shares with Bryant in the old toothbrush factory…and they're about to be homeless.
…a specialty unit formed at the start of World War II to handle crimes outside the usual that could affect morale. It cannot, however, survive the bureaucracy and hidebound thinking of today's governmental idio… power-hungry bureaucrats.
Detective Sergeant Janice Longbright is now working in a vintage clothing shop; she channels Diana Dors in her own sartorial style. Raymond Land, the former acting temporary chief, took early retirement and is stuck with Crippen, the office cat while his wife, Leanne, is taking all sorts of lessons from young studly men. The socially incompetent and former crime scene manager (with a preternatural skill at knowing what happened at a crime scene) and IT guy, Dan Banbury appears to be in demand. He also seems to be back with his wife. Giles Kershaw somehow landed on his feet and is still able to work in forensic pathology as the St. Pancras coroner. April May, John's granddaughter and their former office manager, is struggling against her agoraphobia again. Detective Sergeant Jack Renfield, a.k.a., Captain Bringdown, returns to the Met, dissatisfied; if he wants to keep his job, he'll have to spy on the team. Detective Constable (DC) Meera Mangeshkar is avoiding Colin's drunken calls. DC Colin Bimsley slips into alcoholic anger and takes on a number of odd jobs in between the fights he seeks out.
Police Constable Liberty DuCaine had tried to join PCU and instigates a new interest that Longbright reciprocates. Liberty's siblings include Equality and Fraternity. PC Darren Purviance is from Camden and reluctant to do his job. Rosa Lysandrou is the secretary (??) at the St. Pancras coroner's office. Professor Marshall, the previous coroner, had some kind of breakdown.
Maggie Armitage is a white witch and the leader of the St. James the Elder Coven. She's also an excellent friend of Bryant's and looks like "a deckchair piled with seaside knickknacks". She tells Bryant about the former tenants of their new "office". The young Rufus Abu is one of May's Haphazards and absolutely brilliant with computers. Sashi is one of Meera's friends. Mr. Hawker is an estate agent. Alfie Frommidge runs the Café Montmartre (formerly Alf's Cafe). Being so much fancier, Alfie is now charging double.
…oversight of PCU, and its Security Supervisor Oskar Kasavian has been doing all he can to shut them down. Most of it illegal. Leslie Faraday is the HO Police Liaison Officer. An idiot with a photographic memory. Janet Ramsey, the editor of Hard News, was the woman with whom Kasavian had had the affair (Ten Second Staircase, 4).
…where Ed Tremble works as the town planning officer who is fascinated by his area's history.
Rafi Abd al-Qaadir is trying to open a shop and needs a hand with renovations. Izabella and Piotr are dating. The pregnant Lizzi is getting fed up with her activist boyfriend, Xander Toth, the leader of the Battlebridge Action Group.
…near King's Cross and has a long, long history. The Reverend Charles Barton is the vicar. Austin Potterton has been hired to photograph and catalogue the graveyard for the diocese. Dr. Leonid Kareshi is an archivist hired to supervise a dig in the vault.
…developing a huge part of London. Marianne Waters is one of the senior partners. (Some interesting bits about Margaret Thatcher and Lady Porter, London's arch-villainess.) Maddox Cavendish is one of the original architects — and her hatchet man. Chris Lowry is the senior public relations officer. Joseph is one of the janitors. Clive is the chief electrician. Constantin "Dinu" is his trainee.
…one of the companies working for ADAPT. Terry Delaney was divorced and a truly nice guy who loved his daughter. His ex, Niamh Connor, is the nurse who treated Meera's arm. Mrs. Mbele was his neighbor. Jess is one of Terry's co-workers. Casey was Terry's girlfriend.
Mr. Fox is an invisible sociopath who soaks up knowledge from all whom he encounters. Mac is a young boy he takes under his "wing". Herne the Hunter is a man in a costume wearing a headdress of riveted knives.
Ethel, a cleaning lady, is helping out next door at Bea and Harold Barker's when the bomb hits. Alf is Ethel's husband. Keith Barker is Harold's son. Mrs. Irene "Auntie Reeny" Porter is the next-door neighbor. Her husband, Thomas, didn't survive. Their son, William, survived and had a daughter, Ellen.
Footwear Intelligence Technology (FIT) is a database system of shoe print types.
The cover is a grayed and speckled teal background with the title and author's name in a black script at top and bottom, respectively. The graphic centers around a dilapidated cardboard moving box around which swirls representative examples of Bryant's interests: a skull, a mask, a knife, and his trilby. The British flag reminds us of the story's setting, and the "Moved" sign reminds us of events in The Victoria Vanishes, 6.
The title, lol, is too true, for Bryant & May on the Loose present a danger to the Home Office's peace of mind since they're the ones who freed them up.
I've wanted to start this series and I might even have one of the books. Glad to know you like the books, Stormi.
They're definitely different with some terrific characters.


warby parker zelda review Not exclusively can an extraordinary suit of glasses look excellent, yet they can relax simple, enable you to see above anything you ever before have, as well as could affect you to ignore that even you are using them. All the same, there are, obviously, a great deal of glasses brand names available as well as they're not all equal.
warby parker zelda review That, as well as eyewear, can get quite expensive so you'll presumably have to think about the glasses you purchase prior to you obtain them.
Parker Warby eyeglass frames supply single-vision along with bifocal prime focus. It does not normally use trifocal focal points, so you'll should keep in mind that warby parker zelda review .
warby parker zelda review Parker Warby eyeglass frames have a lot placing everything on the line including sharp retro-hip casings, a smooth site, amazing service highlighting a house attempt the program, complimentary sending and returns, and also anarchical buzz that has been helping a substantial length of time.
warby parker zelda review One of the finest points about Warby Parker Sunglasses is that it boasts an effort on-at-home program. warby parker zelda review The program basically enables you to choose a solid five frameworks, after which you'll obtain five days to evaluate them out.
warby parker zelda review Determining the size is the least requiring component taking into account the fact that one of the most essential estimation is the size of the framework. When you make feeling of where you continue to be within the extent of thin to vast, you should have a couple of selections. Several of which could be somewhat well balanced.
The glasses it supplies are of good as well as premium quality. Every pair of glasses includes anti-glare and anti-scratch coverings together with UV defense at no added cost, which is an exceptionally respectable option.
Browsing the coverings on offer at the site is truly simple too.
Next off, you have to guarantee you're selecting a form that compliments your face. A rounder face could have to attempt a square form and vice versa.
A distinction in the shade of a side can influence the form to look completely adjusted. It's crucial to try a couple of hues in the shape and also size that fits you ideal. Concentrating on the tone of your skin is important because a few hues could be exceedingly harsh, or in reality clean you out.
Consider your personal style while picking a covering. In case you incline towards quirkier clothes, you could likely attract off a crazy side. Although that despite whether your style is routinely excellent – loco glasses could be an awesome technique to develop an impression!
They're focused on bringing you glasses at an affordable cost, despite whether your solution is extra knotted compared to the majority of.
Warby Parker's glasses are easy to comprehend. The frames are light and slim. Intended to protect your eyes, the centerpieces are made making use of UV defense, hostile to scratch, and also versus glow technology.
You can get the suitable fit using Warby Parker's internet estimating instruments. There's a casing for every face write! They run in width from thin, medium, and large, additionally, to determining among conventional and low nose connect fits.
Warby Parker makes use of just the best products available. Regardless of whether they're making the frameworks from Japanese titanium or Italian cellulose acetic acid derivation, the developers see the globe to bring clients the best top quality thing.
Warby Parker's websites make glasses on order as well as are readily available online. All you need is a brand-new treatment from an eye doctor. You can browse online for Warby Parker locations in the USA. Parker Warby eyeglass frames are likewise provided complimentary delivery as well as returns. Just make certain that you maintain the initial receipt.
At Warby Parker, their adage is acquired a pair and gives a pair. Regularly, they figure exactly what variety of glasses has been cost that point coordinate that number as a gift to their non-benefit partners. The act of basically providing spectacles is consistently a temporary option. However, preparing team participants to distribute spectacles has long-haul advantages. By providing these individuals work abilities, they've been enabled to have a long-lasting result.
Eyeglasses have actually made some remarkable development since the troublesome structures you wore as a kid or the specifications your grandpa can never ever show up to discover. Massive and square or magnificently rounded cases in tortoiseshell, dark or even brilliant shades have proceeded toward coming to be a trend and not just for fashionable people and also library sweethearts.
The most effective qualities Warby Parker sunglasses are modest and wise; in addition to they are quickly readily available online. Along these lines, not solely will you look incredible in your new Warby Parker designs; nevertheless you'll in addition understand that your cash money is being utilized to fantastic inspirations.


text:
Vesna Rožič (23 de març de 1987 - 23 d'agost de 2013) va ser una jugadora d'escacs eslovena. Va rebre el títol de la FIDE de Mestra Internacional Femenina (WIM) l'abril de 2006. Rožič va arribar a ser la segona millor jugadora d'escacs eslovena, després d'Anna Muzitxuk.

Va guanyar el campionat femení d'Eslovènia els anys 2007 i 2010. El 2007, Rožič també es va convertir en la campiona femenina del Mediterrani a Antalya. En esdeveniments per equips, va representar Eslovènia en quatre Olimpíades d'escacs femenines (2002, 2008, 2010 i 2012), quatre Campionats d'Europa d'escacs per equips femenins (2005, 2007, 2009 i 2011), sis Copes Mitropa femenines (2006, 2007, 2006, 2007, 2007, 2009 i 2011)., 2010 i 2012) i quatre Campionats d'Europa per equips femenins sub-18 (2001, 2002, 2003 i 2004). A la Copa Mitropa Femenina hi va guanyar dos ors per equips (els anys 2005 i 2006), quatre plata per equips (els anys 2007, 2009, 2010 i 2012) i dues medalles d'or individuals (els anys 2006 i 2012).

Rožič va morir de càncer peritoneal el 23 d'agost de 2013.

Referències

Enllaços externs

 Obituari de la FIDE
 Vesna Rožič a OlimpBase.org

Competidores en les olimpíades d'escacs femenines representant Eslovènia
Mestres Internacionals Femenines d'escacs
Esportistes de Ljubljana
Morts el 2013
Jugadores d'escacs eslovenes
Jugadors d'escacs de la dècada del 2000
Jugadors d'escacs de la dècada del 2010

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Facade Ordinance
On October 19, 2016, the City of Cincinnati passed Ordinance 329-2016, which requires that the facades of tall buildings of advanced age are maintained in a safe condition and do not pose public safety hazards. Ordinance 329-2016 also ordained the Cincinnati Municipal Code to include a new chapter entitled "Chapter 1127, General Inspection Programs."
Ordinance Administration
The Department of Buildings administers the facade ordinance for the City of Cincinnati. The department is located at 805 Central Avenue, Suite 500, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202; telephone: 513.352.3271.
City of Cincinnati
Department of Buildings
Chapter 1127, General Inspection Programs: Sec. 1127-03 - Facades of Tall Buildings
Buildings Requiring Inspection
The Ordinance applies to all buildings that have an age since completed construction of fifteen years or more and all, or a portion of which, is at least five stories or at least sixty feet above established grade, whichever is less. For more information, see Sec. 1127-03. - Facades of Tall Buildings.
Inspection and Reporting
The owner or person in control of a building subject to the ordinance shall cause an examination of the building's facade to be performed by a professional who is a registered architect or engineer authorized to practice in the State of Ohio. Each professional conducting a facade examination shall prepare a written inspection report to document the findings of the examination. Each report shall be prepared with the understanding that, because of the physical properties of the many materials commonly used for constructing facades, and the limitations on detecting concealed internal wall distress, the report might not document all "unsafe and imminently hazardous" conditions in facades that are not visible from the exterior. Therefore, an inspection report shall not constitute a representation that all "unsafe and imminently hazardous" conditions in the facade that is the subject of the report have been identified.
Inspection Schedule by Building Category
category I
Wall constructed in contact with non-corroding metal
Every 12 years
category II Wall constructed in contact with corrosion resistant metal Every 8 years
category III Wall secured with adhesive bond or masonry headers Every 8 years
category IV Walls in contact with corrodible metal Every 5 years
Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.
E-mail: facadeordinance@wje.com
City of Cincinnati Department of Buildings
805 Central Avenue, Suite 500, Cincinnati, OH, 45202
WJE FACADE ASSESSMENT SERVICES >
RELATED INFORMATION FROM WJE.COM
Clients turn to WJE when they need a firm that fully understands the aesthetic and functional... MORE >
Services | Building Enclosures
Learn about reducing the risk of degradation in your building facades. MORE >
Webinars | Understanding the Causes and Significance of Facade Degradation
WJE professionals have successfully diagnosed and solved problems in thousands of building facades MORE >
Services | Facade Assessment
Learn about our Indianapolis office MORE >
Offices | Indianapolis
© 2023 Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.
This page serves as a knowledge base for information regarding the facade ordinances of various cities, including Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Jersey City, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and St. Louis.


text:
News Sports Business NoCo Life Opinion Obituaries E-Edition Legals
Wolfe says he's ready to return to football
AURORA, Colo. – Derek Wolfe says he's finally healthy after suffering a seizure in November that doctors now believe was related to the spinal cord injury he suffered in the preseason.
In an interview outside his home with Denver television stations KCNC and KMGH this week, the Broncos' defensive lineman said he's back up to 280 pounds, having regained 20 of the 30 pounds he lost last season, and will resume training next week.
"I'm ready to go. I'm going to be better than I was," said Wolfe, who had been reticent to talk to reporters during the season as he and his doctors were stumped by his symptoms that included weight loss and irritability.
Wolfe was sidelined for 10 days in August after his arms and legs went numb following a frightening hit in a preseason game at Seattle on Aug. 17. He was cleared in time for the opener against Baltimore.
Then, on a bus ride to the airport for a flight to Kansas City on Nov. 29, Wolfe suffered a seizure and was taken to University Hospital in Denver, where he underwent a battery of tests over four days.
Wolfe practiced just twice after that, on Dec. 25 and 27, after which the Broncos sent him home to rest, realizing he wouldn't be able to return to help shore up their defense in the playoffs.
"I had a bruise on my spinal cord," Wolfe told the stations. "… I thought it was fully healed and I came back a little too soon and I just kept hitting it, kept hitting it, kept hitting it. And it screwed my nervous system up a little bit, just kind of crisscrossed the wires a little bit.
"And really just mentally, it was hard to deal with because I didn't know what was going on and why I was losing weight and all this, and my adrenals weren't functioning right, nothing was really working right and what it came down to was I needed to let it heal, I needed to let myself heal. So, I took about two months and I just did nothing. And I feel better than I've ever felt before."
Wolfe said the seizure he suffered on the bus ride to the airport wasn't the kind where there's foaming at the mouth or convulsions but one in which he just suddenly felt very tired and started sweating profusely, which he dismissed as the effects of having just showered after practice and putting on his three-piece suit.
"I was thinking I just need to get to the plane so I can take a nap," Wolfe recounted.
He started to slump into the aisle, however, and Von Miller grabbed him and "Terrance Knighton started yelling, 'Stop the bus! Stop the bus!" Wolfe recounted.
Twenty-six hours later, Wolfe woke up in intensive care. So confused about where he was and why he was strapped down, he broke the hospital bed before he could be calmed down, he said.
At first, he didn't realize he'd been there that long and his first question was whether he'd be able to play against the Chiefs that weekend. Doctors told him they'd had to put him in a medically induced coma to run tests and do spinal taps to rule out such things as brain tumors.
After his comeback stalled in December and he realized he wasn't going to get back on the field for the playoffs, Wolfe retreated to his home a few miles from team headquarters and he said didn't even watch football for a while.
He did go to the Super Bowl, however, in New Jersey, where he and several other defensive starters such as Von Miller, Chris Harris Jr., Kevin Vickerson and Rahim Moore watched helplessly from the sideline as the Broncos were throttled 43-8 by the Seattle Seahawks.
"It was tough to sit there and watch it happen because I think if our defense was healthy, it's a different ballgame," Wolfe said. "… Nothing against Seattle, they're a great football team and they played a really good game and they had a great season, but I just really would have liked to see what it would have been like to have our true defense out there."
Contact Us Help Center Support Local Businesses Advertise Your Business Advertising Terms and Conditions Buy and Sell Licensing & Reprints Subscriber Guide My Account Give Feedback
© 2021 www.coloradoan.com. All rights reserved.


Brooklyn Trails brought to you by MISCAMPING.com.
You'll love the unique, national park-like location in the lush "Irish Hills" while spending time with family and friends. Enjoy your campsite for just a few days or stay at MIS all week — and for one low price!
Enhance your race experience by camping near the NASCAR action. You're just a short walk to all the trackside action of Michigan International Speedway.
Brooklyn Trails Campground is located across from the track on Brooklyn Highway.
MISCAMPING.com Brooklyn Trails Campground opens at Noon on Monday of race week.
NEW in 2019! Brooklyn Trails and M-50 Creekside Campground guests have the option of coming in on Thursday for a lower price.


text:
Leading Health and Life Sciences in Nova Scotia
About BioNova
Members & Resources
Sector Growth
NEWS RELEASE: WeUsThem Inc. wins the second Health Challenge Pitch Event, focusing on mental health and wellness
Oct 2, 2020 | News
WeUsThem Inc. wins the second Health Challenge Pitch Event, focusing on mental health and wellness
HALIFAX, NS (October 2, 2020) – WeUsThem Inc. has been named the winner of the second Health Challenge Pitch Event, after presenting their mental health and wellness solution to a panel of judges on Friday, October 2.
WeUsThem Inc., is an internationally recognized full-service ad agency who has created imTeen, a technology that empowers youth to track and take care of their health on a daily basis. They were one of four companies who participated in the Health Challenge Pitch Event, created in partnership with Nova Scotia Health, QEII Foundation, BioNova and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The company will receive $100,000 and Nova Scotia Health will now consider their solution for scaled deployment.
Participants had 10 minutes to present their medical technologies, with five minutes allocated for judges to ask questions of the presenters.
This event was the second of five virtual pitch competitions focusing on health innovation; it was created to drive innovation in the medtech space and encourage the adoption of technologies that exist to improve the accuracy and level of care medical practitioners require to keep people well, and to make concise, life-saving diagnoses and treatments for patients in Atlantic Canada.
The next pitch event topic will be announced in the coming weeks, and will focus on another health priority identified by Nova Scotia Health.
Visit voltaeffect.com/health-challenge to learn more about the event and find updates on the next topic.
"These pitch events have been instrumental in highlighting some of the impressive medtech companies in Atlantic Canada that are working on solutions to enhance patient care. We look forward to continuing this partnership, and following the growth and development of WeUsThem Inc. as they collaborate with Nova Scotia Health."
– Martha Casey, Volta CEO
"On behalf of Nova Scotia Health, we congratulate WeUsThem Inc. on their successful pitch and we look forward to working with them. We would also like to thank everyone who submitted a proposal and presented today. It is clear from today's event that Nova Scotia has so much to offer by way of innovative medtech solutions."
– Dr. Gail Tomblin Murphy, Vice President, Research, Innovation + Discovery and CNE, Nova Scotia Health
"Atlantic Canada's Health and Life Sciences industry is comprised of hundreds of companies who are making globally disruptive health innovations and we're thrilled to be able to showcase them through the Health Challenge. We look forward to keeping up with WeUsThem Inc.'s success and we will be here to support them as they continue their company growth."
– Scott Moffitt, Executive Director, BioNova
"The QEII Foundation is extremely proud to be part of this initiative, addressing the conversation head-on and tackling some of the big needs in our community. Investing in innovative solutions in mental health and wellness is an investment in the health of our community."
– Susan Mullin, President and CEO, QEII Foundation
"The quality of ideas presented this week is proof that Atlantic Canada is home to top-tier talent and innovative start-ups that want to push the envelope. Congratulations to WeUsThem Inc. on earning the opportunity to grow your business and help your fellow Nova Scotians suffering from mental health and addictions issues."
– Andy Fillmore, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and Member of Parliament for Halifax, on behalf of the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for ACOA
About Volta
Volta (formerly Volta Labs) is one of Canada's largest innovation hubs, located in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. Volta is creating a space where members of the Atlantic Canadian innovation ecosystem can work, connect and learn from one another by accessing co-working space, participating in programs and attending events. Volta has been home to more than 50 startups through its Residency program, which has created more than 300 jobs and raised a combined total of $60-million in equity financing.
About Nova Scotia Health
Nova Scotia Health provides health services to Nova Scotians and a wide array of specialized services to Maritimers and Atlantic Canadians. We operate hospitals, health centres and community-based programs across the province. Our team of health professionals includes employees, doctors, researchers, learners and volunteers. We work in partnership with community groups, schools, governments, foundations and auxiliaries and community health boards. Visit nshealth.ca for more.
BioNova leads the development of Health and Life Sciences in Nova Scotia. Our industry-led sector growth plan, BioFuture 2030, has made us the fastest growing sector in Atlantic Canada. We represent over 100 companies in Nova Scotia who have raised over $65 million in investment dollars since the beginning of 2020.
About QEII Health Sciences Centre Foundation
The QEII Foundation inspires generosity to advance health care at the QEII. With financial support from all levels of the community, the QEII Foundation helps fund new technologies, medical research, innovation and professional education that contribute to life-changing moments experienced every day by patients and their loved ones. By working together with people who share a vision of better health, the Foundation strengthens care delivered at the QEII, improving the health and lives of Atlantic Canadians.
About the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency works to create opportunities for economic growth in Atlantic Canada by helping businesses become more competitive, innovative and productive, by working with diverse communities to develop and diversify local economies, and by championing the strengths of Atlantic Canada. Together, with Atlantic Canadians, ACOA is building a stronger economy. For more information, please visit www.acoa-apeca.gc.ca.
Kelly Reinsborough, Director, Innovation, Nova Scotia Health
[email protected], 902-223-3539
Patti Green, Communications Coordinator, Nova Scotia Health
Laurie Snell, Marketing Manager, Volta
l[email protected], 902-220-2544
Chris Brooks, Director, Communications and Outreach, ACOA Nova Scotia
Shana Cristoferi, Marketing Manager, BioNova,
Tanya MacLean, VP Communications and Marketing, QEII Foundation
[email protected], 902489-5664
Sona Nanotech Closes Unbrokered Private Placement Financing for $2.26m in Gross Proceeds
Motryx announces partnership with Aerocom
NEWS RELEASE – BioNova Announces Swiftsure Innovations as the Winner of the Tenth Annual BioInnovation Challenge (BIC) at BioPort 2020
DeCell Technologies Obtain First Ever in the World Patent Protection
Start-Ups Selected for Innovacorp's Fall 2020 Sprint Program
BIONOVA CONTACT
#46 1344 Summer Street
Canada B3H 0A8
Sona Nanotech Closes Unbrokered Private Placement Financing for $2.26m in Gross Proceeds December 16, 2020
Motryx announces partnership with Aerocom December 14, 2020
NEWS RELEASE – BioNova Announces Swiftsure Innovations as the Winner of the Tenth Annual BioInnovation Challenge (BIC) at BioPort 2020 November 4, 2020
DeCell Technologies Obtain First Ever in the World Patent Protection November 4, 2020
Start-Ups Selected for Innovacorp's Fall 2020 Sprint Program October 21, 2020
3D BioFibR Raises $550K Round October 19, 2020
BioNova @BioNovaNS
Windsor NS & Charlottetown PEI based @BioVectra have safely onboarded over 150 new highly-skilled team members since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 👏. Check out the latest additions to their leadership team. https://t.co/zBfPOu7SyH
© 2019 BioNova