Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Full Body Versus Partial Body Graphic Labeling On Beverage Packaging, Toni Gomes

All Theses

Through the collection of quantitative and qualitative data, the shelf presence of
full body graphic labels versus partial body graphic labels on plastic beverage bottles was
examined and evaluated. Eye tracking was used to collect phenomenological data atop
the stimuli, while a shopping checklist was used to collect purchase preference. A postexperiment
survey was also conducted in order to gather qualitative data regarding
possible purchase influences.
The experiment was a 2 (label size) x 6 (beverage flavor) x 2 (age group) study,
conducted with 28 participants in a consumer retail environment using mobile eye
tracking technology. The goal of this …

Defining Industry Expectations And Misconceptions Of Art And Technology Co-Creativity, Vanessa C. Brasfield

Department of Computer Graphics Technology Degree Theses

The primary purpose of this study was to establish whether or not students and industry professionals share the same views about what students should be learning in animation education, what skills are necessary, and whether or not students graduating with a bachelor’s degree would be adequately prepared for an entry level position. To establish where misconceptions lie, surveys were issued to three groups: undergraduate students, post-graduate students, and industry professionals. These surveys were then analyzed using paired t-test for validation and question relevance, and ANOVA models to establish whether or not groups shared viewpoints. These data established significance within the …

Assessing Color Discrimination, Joshua R. Maxwell

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to evaluate human color vision discriminability within individuals that have color normal vision and those that have color deficient vision. Combinations of 15 colors were used from a list of colors recommended for computer displays in Air Traffic Control settings, a population with some mildly color vision deficient individuals. After a match to sample test was designed to assess the limits of human color vision discrimination based on color saturation and hue, standard color diagnostic tests were used to categorize college students as having normal or deficient color vision. The results argue that color …

Use Of Building Information Modelling In Responding To Low Carbon Construction Innovations: An Irish Perspective, Alan V. Hore

Conference papers

At present the Irish construction industry is facing one of its most uncertain and challenging periods and will see major cuts in all areas of the economy in 2012. Despite this, Ireland pushes forward in sustainability initiatives with the Government ruling that environmentally-friendly policies are to get priority in competing for State contracts worth up to €16 billion a year. This and further initiatives are in place, so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 20% by the year 2020. By the end of 2018 the public sector must own or rent only buildings with high energy-saving standards …

Evaluating Human-Robot Implicit Communication Through Human-Human Implicit Communication, Andrew Xenos Richardson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research is examining ways to make human-robot (HR) communication more natural. Incorporating natural communication techniques is expected to make HR communication seamless and more natural for humans. Humans naturally incorporate implicit levels of communication, and including implicit communication in HR communication should provide tremendous benefit. The aim for this work was to evaluate a model for humanrobot implicit communication. Specifically, the primary goal for this research was to determine whether humans can assign meanings to implicit cues received from autonomous robots as they do for identical implicit cues received from humans. An experiment was designed to allow …

Simulation Visualization Rhetoric And It's Practical Implications, D'An Knowles Ball, Andrew J. Collins

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Modeling and simulation has moved far beyond simple data representation into the world of visual communication over the past 15 years; ultimately, the acceptance of M&S within mainstream science and society will depend on the results that are produced visually. A simulation’s function is of primary importance to its end result, but it cannot be denied that the discipline of M&S now prizes fancy graphics to communicate. Rhetorical methodological decisions have the greatest impact on the end user, and considerations that bring visual rhetoric to modeling and simulation should be examined as a necessity to application. This paper will expose …

Joint Source-Channel Coding For Error Resilient Transmission Of Static 3d Models, Mehmet Oğuz Bi̇ci̇, Andrey Norkin, Gözde Akar

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, performance analysis of joint source-channel coding techniques for error-resilient transmission of three dimensional (3D) models are presented. In particular, packet based transmission scenarios are analyzed. The packet loss resilient methods are classified into two groups according to progressive compression schemes employed: Compressed Progressive Meshes (CPM) based methods and wavelet based methods. In the first group, layers of CPM algorithm are protected unequally by Forward Error Correction (FEC) using Reed Solomon (RS) codes. In the second group, embedded bitstream obtained from wavelet based coding is protected unequally with FEC as well. Both groups of methods are scalable with …

Virtual Worlds And Conservational Channel Evolution And Pollutant Transport Systems (Concepts), Chenchutta Denaye Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many models exist that predict channel morphology. Channel morphology is defined as the change in geometric parameters of a river. Channel morphology is affected by many factors. Some of these factors are caused either by man or by nature. To combat the adverse effects that man and nature may cause to a water system, scientists and engineers develop stream rehabilitation plans. Stream rehabilitation as defined by Shields et al., states that "restoration is the return from a degraded ecosystem back to a close approximation of its remaining natural potential" [Shields et al., 2003]. Engineers construct plans that will restore streams …

Investigation Of Tactile Displays For Robot To Human Communication, Daniel Barber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Improvements in autonomous systems technology and a growing demand within military operations are spurring a revolution in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). These mixed-initiative human-robot teams are enabled by Multi-Modal Communication (MMC), which supports redundancy and levels of communication that are more robust than single mode interaction. (Bischoff & Graefe, 2002; Partan & Marler, 1999). Tactile communication via vibrotactile displays is an emerging technology, potentially beneficial to advancing HRI. Incorporation of tactile displays within MMC requires developing messages equivalent in communication power to speech and visual signals used in the military. Toward that end, two experiments were performed to investigate the feasibility …

Mathematical Model Development Of Super-Resolution Image Wiener Restoration, Amr H. Yousef, Jiang Li, Mohammad A. Karim

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In super-resolution (SR), a set of degraded low-resolution (LR) images are used to reconstruct a higher-resolution image that suffers from acquisition degradations. One way to boost SR images visual quality is to use restoration filters to remove reconstructed images artifacts. We propose an efficient method to optimally allocate the LR pixels on the high-resolution grid and introduce a mathematical derivation of a stochastic Wiener filter. It relies on the continuous-discrete-continuous model and is constrained by the periodic and nonperiodic interrelationships between the different frequency components of the proposed SR system. We analyze an end-to-end model and formulate the Wiener filter …

Evaluation Of Interpolation And Registration Techniques In Magnetic Resonance Image For Orthogonal Plane Super Resolution Reconstruction, Amir Pasha Mahmoudzadeh

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Super resolution reconstruction (SRR) combines several perspectives of an image (typically low resolution) in order to reconstruct a more complete and comprehensive (higher resolution) image. The aim is to use this concept on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, for which the standard is to scan in several-plane orientation in a 2D fashion. As a result, clinical MRI, functional MRI (FMRI), diffusion weighted imaging (DWI)/diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and MR angiography (MRA) tend to have high in- plane resolution but low resolution in the slice-select direction. By combining the 2 scans of the orthogonal plane, new 3D images can be reconstructed. …

2011 - The Sixteenth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Sixteenth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 26, 2011. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Postearthquake Recovery Of A Water Distribution System: Discrete Event Simulation Using Colored Petri Nets, Ronaldo Luna, Nandini Balakrishnan, Cihan H. Dagli

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Planning and preparedness is essential for any resilient infrastructure system. Modeling and simulation give engineers and planners a better understanding of the system and help them make better decisions. the objective of this study is to demonstrate an improved model for the disaster restoration process by using a discrete event simulation approach. the study also aims to help improve the post-earthquake restoration process by simulating restoration curves. in this paper, colored Petri nets are used to model the system and to simulate its behavior. the resource allocation after a rare event such as an earthquake differs from the resource allocation …

Information Theory In Scientific Visualization, Chaoli Wang, Han-Wei Shen

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

In recent years, there is an emerging direction that leverages information theory to solve many challenging problems in scientific data analysis and visualization. In this article, we review the key concepts in information theory, discuss how the principles of information theory can be useful for visualization, and provide specific examples to draw connections between data communication and data visualization in terms of how information can be measured quantitatively. As the amount of digital data available to us increases at an astounding speed, the goal of this article is to introduce the interested readers to this new direction of data analysis …

Dynamic Video Object Detection With Single Ptu Camera, Yun Ye, Song Ci, Yanwei Liu, Hui Tang

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

This paper presents a video object detection method under dynamic background with single PTU (pantilt unit) camera. The overall procedure contains two steps. First the moving object is tracked through interactive Mean Shift estimation and PTU control. Camera angular speed is updated online according to the estimated object position, whereby the object can remain in the center area of the image plane. In the second step, the foreground is detected through background subtraction and shape contour. An adaptive correlation thresholding method is applied to mitigate the detection distortion in boundary areas. Variational level set contour is then applied to further …

On The Visual Quality Enhancement Of Super-Resolution Images, Amr Hussein Yousef, Jiang Li, Mohammad Karim, Andrew G. Tescher (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Super-resolution (SR) is the process of obtaining a higher resolution image from a set of lower resolution (LR) blurred and noisy images. One may, then, envision a scenario where a set of LR images is acquired with a sensor on a moving platform. In such a case, an SR image can be reconstructed in an area of sufficient overlap between the LR images which generally have a relative shift with respect to each other by subpixel amounts. The visual quality of the SR image is affected by many factors such as the optics blur, the inherent signalto- noise ratio of …

A Graphical User Interface For The Blind And Deafblind, David Veal

ECU Research Week

No abstract provided.

Development Of Visualization Facility At The Gis And Remote Sensing Core Lab, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas, Haroon Stephen, William J. Smith, Zhongwei Liu

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Presentations

Visualization using advanced computational and graphic equipment has become a standard way of present day research. Availability of low cost and fast processing units, high resolution displays with graphic processing units, and specialized software has brought complex visualization capabilities to an office desktop. Nevertheless, when dealing with large datasets such as, global climate, geospatial, and social data the office desktop falls short and calls for a centralized visualization facility with high end computing and graphics equipment.

Visualization Facility at GIS and Remote Sensing Core Lab would be a useful and important addition to the UNLV IT infrastructure. It would provide …

Fast Block Motion Estimation With Edge Alignment On H.264 Video Coding, Chi-Han Chuang, Chien-Hua Su, Shyi-Chyi Cheng

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

This paper presents a novel block matching scheme with edge alignment strategy on H.264 video coding, which uses multiple references and multiple block sizes for motion estimation in order to improve the rate-distortion performance. In H.264, the computational complexity is linearly dependent on the number of allowed reference frames and block sizes using the full exhaustive search. Many fast block-matching algorithms reduce the computational complexity of motion estimation by carefully designing the search patterns with different shapes or sizes which have significant impact on the search speed and distortion performance. However, the search speed and the distortion performance conflict often …

“Hydraulic Fracturing Efficiency In The Olmos Sand Formation”, Lauren N. Fogarty

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

A Parallel Histogram-Based Particle Filter For Object Tracking On Simd-Based Smart Cameras, Henry Medeiros, Germán Holguín, Paul J. Shin, Johnny Park

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We present a parallel implementation of a histogram-based particle filter for object tracking on smart cameras based on SIMD processors. We specifically focus on parallel computation of the particle weights and parallel construction of the feature histograms since these are the major bottlenecks in standard implementations of histogram-based particle filters. The proposed algorithm can be applied with any histogram-based feature sets—we show in detail how the parallel particle filter can employ simple color histograms as well as more complex histograms of oriented gradients (HOG). The algorithm was successfully implemented on an SIMD processor and performs robust object tracking at up …

Multi-Scale Edge Detection Algorithms And Their Information-Theoretic Analysis In The Context Of Visual Communication, Bo Jiang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The unrealistic assumption that noise can be modeled as independent, additive and uniform can lead to problems when edge detection methods are applied to low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) images. The main reason for this is because the filter scale and the threshold for the gradient are difficult to determine at a regional or local scale when the noise estimate is on a global scale. Therefore, in this dissertation, we attempt to solve these problems by using more than one filter to detect the edges and discarding the global thresholding method in the edge discrimination. The proposed multi-scale edge detection algorithms …

Re-Engineering A Trash/Recycling Collection Vehicle Based On Challenging Customer Requirements, Edward Smith

All Theses

Engineering design starts with the definition of design requirements. These requirements define the design problem and must be satisfied for a solution to be acceptable. While many design methodologies exist for defining design requirements, none presently provides a systematic approach for designers to challenge requirements. Yet, Pahl and Beitz, Hazelrigg, and Suh all argue that a designer should continually question the need for each requirement and refine them as the product evolves. Thus, there exists a need to develop a comprehensive method that enables a designer to verify, review/question, and revise requirements throughout the design process. This research uses the …

Super-Resolution Using Adaptive Wiener Filters, Russell C. Hardie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The spatial sampling rate of an imaging system is determined by the spacing of the detectors in the focal plane array (FPA). The spatial frequencies present in the image on the focal plane are band-limited by the optics. This is due to diffraction through a finite aperture. To guarantee that there will be no aliasing during image acquisiton, the Nyquist criterion dictates that the sampling rate must be greater than twice the cut-off frequency of the optics. However, optical designs involve a number of trade-offs and typical imaging systems are designed with some level of aliasing. We will refer to …

High Utility Video Surveillance System On Public Transport Using Wimax Technology, Iftekhar Ahmad, Daryoush Habibi

Research outputs pre 2011

Video surveillance on public transport is a useful tool to fight against anti-social behaviour like vandalism, harassment, graffiti and terrorism. Real-time video surveillance on moving public transport faces serious technological challenges mainly due to limited throughput offered by existing communication technologies at high vehicular speeds. Success of real-time video surveillance on public transport heavily depends on future communication technologies like WiMAX. WiMAX has emerged as an exciting technology with promises to offer high throughput and improved quality of services (QoS), key requirements for video surveillance on public transport. WiMAX however, offers limited throughput at high vehicular speeds mainly because of …

Risk Matrix Input Data Biases, Eric D. Smith, William T. Siefert, David Drain

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Risk matrices used in industry characterize particular risks in terms of the likelihood of occurrence, and the consequence of the actualized risk. Human cognitive bias research led by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky exposed systematic translations of objective probability and value as judged by human subjects. Applying these translations to the risk matrix allows the formation of statistical hypotheses of risk point placement biases. Industry-generated risk matrix data reveals evidence of biases in the judgment of likelihood and consequence-principally, likelihood centering, a systematic increase in consequence, and a diagonal bias. Statistical analyses are conducted with linear regression, normal distribution fitting, …

Identifying And Comparing Key Process Attributes For Sustainable Building Delivery In India And The U.S., Prashanth Palanisamy

All Theses

India is a rapidly developing nation with the associated brisk pace of construction. More sustainable building practices for construction in India would have social, environmental, and economic benefits. However, the key process attributes for successfully planning, designing, and constructing sustainable buildings in India are largely undefined. Other projects in India would benefit from a rigorous identification of these key process attributes which could help leapfrogging the sustainable building delivery in India to the best available practices.
Sustainable buildings require different delivery processes than traditional buildings; this can lead to process wastes due to unfamiliarity or incompatibility of the processes. These …

Computing For Knowledge Management: From Nonaka To Visualisation And Knowledge Maps, Helmut Huber

Dissertations

Management itself is not always clearly understood, however, the confusion can be sorted if the underlying theory is clearly distinguished from its implementations. There also may be a specific role for computing in Knowledge Management. It is suggested that Knowledge Management technologists seek a unique strategic position for Computing in Knowledge Management, for reasons of clarity and differentiation from Information Systems. The effective transfer of knowledge is one of the main themes or core competency in Knowledge Management. This is also one of the areas where Knowledge Management technologists may find the niche for a distinct and unique contribution the …

Multilayer Image Inpainting Approach Based On Neural Networks, Quan Wang, Zhaoxia Wang, Che Sau Chang, Ting Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes an image inpainting approach based on the self-organizing map for dividing an image into several layers, assigning each damaged pixel to one layer, and then restoring these damaged pixels by the information of their respective layer. These inpainted layers are then fused together to provide the final inpainting results. This approach takes advantage of the neural network's ability of imitating human's brain to separate objects of an image into different layers for inpainting. The approach is promising as clearly demonstrated by the results in this paper.

Sensorimotor Experience In Virtual Environments, Katherine Grace August

Dissertations

The goal of rehabilitation is to reduce impairment and provide functional improvements resulting in quality participation in activities of life, Plasticity and motor learning principles provide inspiration for therapeutic interventions including movement repetition in a virtual reality environment, The objective of this research work was to investigate functional specific measurements (kinematic, behavioral) and neural correlates of motor experience of hand gesture activities in virtual environments stimulating sensory experience (VE) using a hand agent model. The fMRI compatible Virtual Environment Sign Language Instruction (VESLI) System was designed and developed to provide a number of rehabilitation and measurement features, to identify optimal …