DAVAO CITY, Philippines – An information technology project here with a potential to revolutionize law enforcement got one of three Best Projects award this year of the government science agency and a commercial bank.
The project demonstrated the capability of a software to remove masks and mustaches from faces of people in photographs, with processing speed of only six to ten seconds, said Charmaine B. Espinas, a computer science graduating student at the Ateneo de Davao University, and a scholar of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
None of this technology has been in use in any of the government law enforcement and regulatory agencies according to the scanning of literature when the project was undertaken during the first school semester last year, she told an interview she granted at the Ateneo campus on Friday.
Only Japan and India have used this technology by their law security agencies, she said, citing results of the scanning of available information in the Internet.
The project was titled “An Offline Terminal-based Beard & Mustache Removal Using Sparse Matrix Representation for Feature Detection”, one of only two IT projects and a biology project that the were awarded P25,000 by the DOST and the Bank of Philippine Islands in their annual search for best IT, science and engineering projects by graduates.
In a DOST posting, Espinas was quoted as saying that her study “would prove helpful in handling security issues, citing the importance of image manipulation when needs arise”.
“Imagine images of criminals who use artificial beards and mustaches to hide their identities. There is definitely a need to unmask them,” she said.
The software was capable of generating the original face and skin texture after removing the hair outgrowths such as beards and mustaches, and was tested in 20 sample photographs lifted from the Internet.
“This may not be a super perfect but I think this is a breakthrough, especially in security matters,” she said.
She took interest at pursuing the capability of a software, trying to take a different route taken by many other graduates, who she said, were commonly drawn into algorithms, or programs that offer solutions to IT certain requirements, and network programs.
“I wanted to try a different path in the image manipulation field,” she said and expressed thanks at the support extended by her mentors, including that of a Jesuit scholar, who had been teaching IT and computer science here and abroad.
She said the project interested her “because it involved visual and graphical outputs”. “I like to research on things that are significant to others, even to those who are not experts in the field,” she added.
There had been no inquiries yet on the prospects of her project, although the BPI already offered her a managerial job.
Espinas won the “Best Projects” during the 2011 BPI-DOST Science Awards, along with classmate Joyce Ann J. Nacorda, with her software to restore pidgin texting language in the Internet chatting sites to their normal Tagalog translation, and Jenny Marie Quiao, also an Ateneo student of biology.
They received plaques, cash awards, and an opportunity to work at any BPI branches. They were awarded on February 11 at the Ateneo campus here.
The annual BPI-DOST Science Awards “encourages budding scientists and researchers to scale higher levels of excellence in their chosen fields”, the DOST said. The Awards started 1989 to recognize outstanding young men and women from all over the Philippines “whose efforts made them excel in specialized fields of science, namely: mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, and computer science”.
end
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Mainstreaming bat conservation
dumbfounded, so to speak at getting nearest to a swarm of . . . well, the bats.
Swarm, not a streak of only one as we experienced it during childhood, while we happened to pass by a mansanitas tree, a little taller than a shrub and produces
very small apple-like soft fruits.
this time, i am speaking about millions - the Guinness say the Monfort Bat Caves in Samal Island off the Davao Gulf, where bat scientists, enthusiasts and ecological advocates trooped to on January 26 to launch the 2011-2012 International Year of the Bats.
yes guys, you read it right, year of the bats, not the astrological year of the rabbit. well, as we also heard it during the speech of the Bat Mama, the founder of the Monfort Bat Caves and Consevation Foundation, Inc., that bats, much like the rabbit, are a bane to population control crusaders - bats are pregnant year-round, giving birth twice a year.
back to the launching, the bats just swarmed in and out of the five mouths of the three caves - hollowed out from a promontory at an equally breath-taking beach resort Samal is famous for in this little nook of the world,, and overlooking the well lit Davao City coastline. The bats swarmed, and twirled, and flap their wings, the uric smell notwithstanding, as they engage in their nocturnal fruit-hunting and feeding, for the next five hours or so, lasting before midnight.
The Monfort bat caves host to the world's largest concentration of fruit bats, and in their nocturnal feeding, they are estimated to fly as far as 40 kilometers from their abode. Farmers attested to their presence in the fruit-bearing area of DAvao City, in the Calinan area about 30 kilometers northwest of downtown.
Bats, unknown to many, are nature's natural pollinators, and growers of durian - the king of Philippine fruits, with threatening thorn-like spikes around the rind - attest to the bats' valuable contribution during fruiting season. to those who heard and seen the durian and heard of anecdotal notoriety about the durian smell, no, they dont smell like hell. they just smell, just like any real tasty fruits inviting all and sundry to partake of nature's bounty.
and back to the bats, before they continue to be shrouded in mysticism and suspicious underworld traits, they provided the natural background to the global launch of what would be also a global push to persuade governments to mainstream bat conservation, not only on environmental consideration - maintain the food chain, but also on untapped economic benefits to the local economy in terms of increased income to fruit farmers, but also to revenues that may be derived from declaring the abodes of bats as eco-tourism destinations.
as what a bat conservation leader based in Austin, Texas said, sometimes politicians would hearken to the economic arguments and benefits, than to even take a glance at environmental statements.
Swarm, not a streak of only one as we experienced it during childhood, while we happened to pass by a mansanitas tree, a little taller than a shrub and produces
very small apple-like soft fruits.
this time, i am speaking about millions - the Guinness say the Monfort Bat Caves in Samal Island off the Davao Gulf, where bat scientists, enthusiasts and ecological advocates trooped to on January 26 to launch the 2011-2012 International Year of the Bats.
yes guys, you read it right, year of the bats, not the astrological year of the rabbit. well, as we also heard it during the speech of the Bat Mama, the founder of the Monfort Bat Caves and Consevation Foundation, Inc., that bats, much like the rabbit, are a bane to population control crusaders - bats are pregnant year-round, giving birth twice a year.
back to the launching, the bats just swarmed in and out of the five mouths of the three caves - hollowed out from a promontory at an equally breath-taking beach resort Samal is famous for in this little nook of the world,, and overlooking the well lit Davao City coastline. The bats swarmed, and twirled, and flap their wings, the uric smell notwithstanding, as they engage in their nocturnal fruit-hunting and feeding, for the next five hours or so, lasting before midnight.
The Monfort bat caves host to the world's largest concentration of fruit bats, and in their nocturnal feeding, they are estimated to fly as far as 40 kilometers from their abode. Farmers attested to their presence in the fruit-bearing area of DAvao City, in the Calinan area about 30 kilometers northwest of downtown.
Bats, unknown to many, are nature's natural pollinators, and growers of durian - the king of Philippine fruits, with threatening thorn-like spikes around the rind - attest to the bats' valuable contribution during fruiting season. to those who heard and seen the durian and heard of anecdotal notoriety about the durian smell, no, they dont smell like hell. they just smell, just like any real tasty fruits inviting all and sundry to partake of nature's bounty.
and back to the bats, before they continue to be shrouded in mysticism and suspicious underworld traits, they provided the natural background to the global launch of what would be also a global push to persuade governments to mainstream bat conservation, not only on environmental consideration - maintain the food chain, but also on untapped economic benefits to the local economy in terms of increased income to fruit farmers, but also to revenues that may be derived from declaring the abodes of bats as eco-tourism destinations.
as what a bat conservation leader based in Austin, Texas said, sometimes politicians would hearken to the economic arguments and benefits, than to even take a glance at environmental statements.
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