Has the final end-time generationspoken of by Jesus and the prophetsfinally arrived? Could our generation be the one that is witnessing the beginning phases of the second coming of the Lord? If so, will you be one of the faithful Jesus finds when He calls His church to heaven? In The Sifted Generation, Pastor Michael Henderson takes a unique look at the final generation from which the true church will be sifted just prior to the days of tribulation that are coming on the entire earth. The Bible tells us the times of that generation will be perilous! Blasphemies, selfishness, rebelliousness, gracelessness, slanderous hearts, hedonistic behavior, and a lack of respect for God, His church, and His commandments will rule the day. As evidenced in the social and cultural wars around the globe, it is evident that the world is already choosing its sides. Ironically, the Bible declares that a man will arise in the last days. He will be a religious leader who will have great charisma and the uncanny ability to garner support from large sections of unbelieving humanity. Through deceptive words, promises, and the quasi miraculous, this religious leader will then persuade his followers to support one even more sinister than he. This partner in deception will pounce on the opportunity to take the reins of the world under his control. The Sifted Generation explores what life will be like on Earth just before the Lord begins the consummation of all things. The question is: When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the Earth? (Luke 18:8). Other titles by the author are 25 Reasons to Believe, editor and co-author with Bernie Lutchman and John Snyder, and, Those Who Are Wise Will Shine! Michael also writes for the periodical, The American Church Magazine.

Planting and leading churches is a difficult calling. It can put strain on your mental and physical health, on your relationships with others, and even your relationship with God. Sifted offers practical guidance and hope for anyone going through a tough time in ministry or pastoral work. Founding pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu, Hawaii Wayne Cordeiro speaks the truth in love, offering wisdom and insight to walk alongside leaders as they face the challenges and hardships of planting and leading churches, while providing encouragement and inspiration for the journey. A seasoned church leader, Wayne shares the things he wishes he'd known when he was starting a new church. With additional stories from Francis Chan and Larry Osborne, each chapter includes a thought-provoking challenge question to develop a heart that is surrendered to God, focused on "being and becoming" versus "doing and accomplishing." Wayne will walk you through how to develop a healthy balance of personal care and spiritual leadership. But instead of a "how to" book on models and methods from men who have it all figured out, Sifted will help you process your journey in a way that: Challenges leaders' common scorecards of success. Encourages leaders to realize that they are not alone in what they are experiencing. Provides wisdom for the long haul to position younger leaders for a life of ministry. You many find yourself in a season of sifting. If you respond correctly, this season can be every bit as important as the time of harvest. Sifting builds the muscle of faith, giving us what we need for what lies just around the corner.

Abstract The transmission of digital TV signals to mobile receivers is often error-prone. As most TV broadcasting techniques provide only moderate error robustness, horizontal lines of consecutive image blocks are lost during decoding of the received video signals. In order to ensure high viewing experiences, these lost slices have to be filled by error concealment techniques. However, the reconstruction qualities of classical approaches which exploit spatial, temporal, or spatio-temporal signal correlations are not convincing yet. In the future, mobile TV receivers will support different broadcasting techniques in parallel. As a result, an erroneous high-resolution video signal and a correctly received low-resolution video signal, both representing the same TV service, will often be available. Focusing on the outlined scenario for multi-broadcast reception of digital TV signals, this thesis introduces the novel category of inter-sequence error concealment algorithms. The basic idea is to fill lost slices of the high-resolution video signal by the interpolated low-resolution video signal. Since the images of this reference signal are often cropped and delayed, robust spatio-temporal image alignment is crucial. By including a pixel-based or a feature-based alignment scheme, the proposed concealment algorithms provide excellent visual qualities and outstanding reconstruction qualities of up to 41 dB PSNR. Classical concealment techniques are outperformed by up to 15 dB PSNR. To further enhance the reconstruction quality, several extensions are introduced. First, the alignment robustness and the interpolation quality are increased. Subsequently, a classical temporal approach is incorporated as an alternative concealment mode to cope with low image qualities of the reference signal. Novel aspects include robust mode selection, enhanced motion estimation, and the reconstruction of the displaced frame differences from the reference signal. As a last extension, spatial refinement tackles blurring of concealed image blocks. Missing spectral components are recovered in a frequency selective way based on approximation and extrapolation principles. By combining all relevant extensions, the PSNR gain adds up to 20 dB with respect to classical concealment. Finally, inter-sequence error concealment is adapted to multi-broadcast reception of two erroneous high-resolution video signals. While spatial alignment can be omitted, classical concealment of blocks, being lost in both video signals, and drift compensation in predictively-coded frames are novel aspects. Again, high visual qualities are obtained and classical concealment is outperformed by up to 15 dB PSNR. Zusammenfassung Der Empfang digitaler Fernsehsignale mit mobilen Endgeräten wird meist durch Übertragungsfehler gestört. Da viele der eingesetzten Übertragungsstandards nur unzureichende Korrekturmechanismen bieten, können bei der Decodierung der empfangenen Videosignale Blockzeilenverluste auftreten. Um die Verlustgebiete zu verschleiern, werden üblicherweise zeitliche, örtliche oder zeitlich-örtliche Signalkorrelationen ausgenutzt. Die dabei erzielte Rekonstruktionsqualität ist jedoch häufig nicht zufriedenstellend. Zukünftig werden mobile Fernsehempfänger mehrere Übertragungsstandards parallel unterstützen. Durch den Einsatz dieser Mehrfachempfänger ist jedes Fernsehprogramm typischerweise in Form eines gestörten, hochauflösenden Videosignals und eines ungestörten, niedrigauflösenden Videosignals verfügbar. Ausgehend vom Mehrfachempfang digitaler Fernsehsignale wird in dieser Arbeit eine neue Gruppe von Verfahren zur Fehlerverschleierung beschrieben. Die grundlegende Idee dieser Ansätze besteht darin, verlorene Bildblöcke des hochauflösenden Videosignals durch Blöcke des interpolierten niedrigauflösenden Referenzsignals zu ersetzen. Da das Referenzsignal häufig nur Bildausschnitte zeigt und zudem meist zeitverzögert eintrifft, ist die korrekte Bestimmung der örtlichen Abbildungsparameter und des zeitlichen Versatzes ausschlaggebend für eine hochqualitative Verschleierung. Durch den Einsatz bildbasierter oder merkmalsbasierter Schätzverfahren werden eine exzellente visuelle Bildqualität und eine außergewöhnlich hohe Rekonstruktionsqualität erzielt. Der Spitzensignal-Rauschabstand beträgt bis zu 41 dB. Herkömmliche Verfahren werden um bis 15 dB übertroffen. Um die Rekonstruktionsqualität weiter zu erhöhen werden zahlreiche Erweiterungen der beschriebenen Verschleierungsansätze vorgeschlagen. Zuerst werden die Zuverlässigkeit der Parameterschätzung und die Interpolationsqualität verbessert. Danach wird ein herkömmliches zeitliches Verschleierungsverfahren integriert, um eine niedrige Bildqualität des Referenzsignals zu kompensieren. Neue Aspekte sind dabei die robuste Wahl des besseren Verschleierungsmodus, eine verbesserte Bewegungsschätzung und die Rekonstruktion des Prädiktionsfehlers unter Verwendung des Referenzsignals. Zuletzt wird die Bildschärfe bereits verschleierter Blöcke erhöht. Dazu werden fehlende Spektralanteile basierend auf frequenzselektiven Approximations- oder Extrapolationsansätzen wiederhergestellt. Durch die Kombination aller relevanten Erweiterungen wird die Rekonstruktionsqualität herkömmlicher Verfahren um bis zu 20 dB übertroffen. Abschließend werden die beschriebenen Fehlerverschleierungsverfahren an ein Szenario für den Mehrfachempfang digitaler Fernsehsignale angepasst, bei dem zwei fehlerhafte hochauflösende Videosignale verfügbar sind. Während die Schätzung der örtlichen Abbildungsparameter entfällt, müssen Bildblöcke, die in keinem der beiden Videosignale korrekt empfangen wurden, durch herkömmliche Verfahren verschleiert werden. Als weitere Neuerung wird ein Verfahren zur Kompensation des Drifteffekts in prädiktiv codierten Bildern vorgeschlagen. Auch bei diesem Empfangsszenario wird eine hohe visuelle Bildqualität erzielt und die Rekonstruktionsqualität herkömmlicher Verfahren um bis zu 15 dB übertroffen.

The 2010 Pacific-Rim Conference on Multimedia (PCM 2010) was held in Shanghai at Fudan University, during September 21–24, 2010. Since its inauguration in 2000, PCM has been held in various places around the Pacific Rim, namely Sydney (PCM 2000), Beijing (PCM 2001), Hsinchu (PCM 2002), Singapore (PCM 2003), Tokyo (PCM 2004), Jeju (PCM 2005), Zhejiang (PCM 2006), Hong Kong (PCM 2007), Tainan (PCM 2008), and Bangkok (PCM 2009). PCM is a major annual international conference organized as a forum for the dissemination of state-of-the-art technological advances and research results in the fields of theoretical, experimental, and applied multimedia analysis and processing. PCM 2010 featured a comprehensive technical program which included 75 oral and 56 poster presentations selected from 261 submissions from Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Norway, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the UK, and the USA. Three distinguished researchers, Prof. Zhi-Hua Zhou from Nanjing University, Dr. Yong Rui from Microsoft, and Dr. Tie-Yan Liu from Microsoft Research Asia delivered three keynote talks to the conference. We are very grateful to the many people who helped to make this conference a s- cess. We would like to especially thank Hong Lu for local organization, Qi Zhang for handling the publication of the proceedings, and Cheng Jin for looking after the c- ference website and publicity. We thank Fei Wu for organizing the special session on large-scale multimedia search in the social network settings.