Feature Article

In my two and a half years as editor of the IAPR Newsletter, I have established some regular, and some irregular, columns that are described on this page. I have another objective for the Newsletter, that is, for a higher degree of participation from readers and members of the IAPR—all 7,500 of you. The IAPR Newsletter format allows contributions of many kinds: from feature articles to bulletin board items of interest. Each of these areas is discussed below in the context of the standard Newsletter format. See which area suits you best and let me know what kind of article you would be willing to contribute.

Feature Article – The Newsletter usually begins with a feature article. This is an article on a technical subject related to pattern recognition. The target audience is one with pattern recognition interest, though not necessarily with pattern recognition technical knowledge.

The “wow” factor is important in choosing a topic for a feature article. I have tried to choose topics that would cause readers to say, “Wow, I never knew this technology was being used there!” The origami article (January, 2005, html; pdf) was very popular, I believe, because it met this criterion. I have also tried to find examples of pattern recognition technologies that are well proven to provide benefit, and may be used in everyday life. The traffic engineering article (July, 2005, html; pdf) is an example of this. We drive over “electromagnetic loops” in roads (as evidenced by the rectangular cuts in the pavement) every day, but do we know how pattern recognition is involved in our daily commutes? Finally, I like articles that involve pattern recognition “heroes” who have persevered to bring their technology to use. It takes more than a good idea to make an impact, and I try to relate in the articles how most successes have involved short-term failures and other trials and tribulations that the principals endure and beat along the road to success. In this regard, I mention the article on pattern recognition in sports (April, 2003, pdf only). The researchers’ goal was to make tennis broadcasts more enjoyable by using pattern recognition techniques. Their path to ultimate success was like an up-and-coming tennis star who, first of all, plays the backcourts and sometimes loses, but eventually ends up triumphing at center court.

If you know of pattern recognition stories that you think would make a good feature article, please let me know.

Can You Help? – A second type of article in the Newsletter is entitled, “Can You Help?” There have been two of these. “Pattern Recognition in Designs of Archaeological Ceramic Sherds” (July, 2005, html; pdf)and “Pattern Recognition in Cryptic Wildlife Species” (April, 2005, html; pdf). The first article describes a problem encountered on an archaeological dig in the southeastern United States. That is, to recognize and match the designs on broken portions of pottery. The second article describes a problem encountered by scientists studying cryptic cats in Costa Rica. They are trying to identify individual cats by their stripe patterns. In both cases, the scientists involved contacted the IAPR Secretariat hoping that there might be some way to match their problem with a pattern recognition researcher who either had a solution or was interested in developing one. In both cases, there have been matches made. I’m sure there are other requests that come to IAPR members. If you know of a problem in the pattern recognition domain whose story might make for interesting reading, please relate this to me.

BooksBooksBooks – Another type of article contains book reviews. A very popular article on Pattern Recognition Books (July, 2004, pdf only) surveyed a number of professors worldwide on which books they used and liked in this field. This issue has a review of a new book: Kernel Methods for Pattern Analysis.

I have two requests with respect to books: one for authors and one for reviewers. Authors, please contact me if you have recently published a book so that I can have the book reviewed in the Newsletter. Prospective reviewers, if you see a new pattern recognition book that you’d like to review, and you have some experience in the field to be able to write an objective review, please let me know. Also, I receive books from publishers regularly. If you’d like to write a review on a pattern recognition book, or one in a related field, I might already have a book that I could send you for review. Let me know.

Conference and Workshop Reports – In each issue, we attempt to publish reports from all IAPR-sponsored conferences and workshops in the intervening period. I would ask conference and workshop chairpersons to designate authors and that these authors send a report to the Newsletter in a timely manner after the event. We try to include a photo as well with each published report. Furthermore, I request that the author endeavors to convey in the report something beyond the factual items of number of papers presented, etc. That is, I’d like to see these reports convey to people who could not attend the conference any news of novel developments in the field, exciting findings presented, and/or the general direction of the field as indicated by people and presentations at the conference. This is a little more work than just describing the conference, but I believe it is much more interesting to readers and beneficial to the progress of the field.

Letters to the Editor – Please write! Once the Newsletter became electronic, space considerations were no longer an issue. The first published e-letter to the editor was from Richard Duda, regarding his book (with Peter Hart and David Stork) being named most popular pattern recognition book in the survey described above. The letter in the current issue gives some behind-the-scenes insight into the use of traffic cameras to “automatically” recognize cars for violations.

Of Interest – This is a bulletin board for which IAPR members are welcome to submit items. Recentl postings have included post-doc positions, new publications, and discussion groups. Note that the IAPR Newsletter does not generally advertise non-IAPR events; the IAPR-sponsored events are published in the “Calls for Papers” section.

Be a part of your Newsletter—Contribute!