Digital Commons Network^™

An Automatic Statistical Segmentation Algorithm For Extraction Of Fire And Smoke Regions, Ying Li, Anthony Vodacek, Yushan Zhu

Articles

Estimation of the extent and spread of wildland fires is an important application of high spatial resolution multispectral images. This work addresses a fuzzy segmentation algorithm to map fire extent, active fire front, hot burn scar, and smoke regions based on a statistical model. The fuzzy results are useful data sources for integrated fire behavior and propagation models built using Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems (DDDAS) concepts that use data assimilation techniques which require error estimates or probabilities for the data parameters. The Hidden Markov Random Field (HMRF) model has been used widely in image segmentation, but it is assumed …

Guarantees For The Success Frequency Of An Algorithm For Finding Dodgson-Election Winners, Christopher Homan, Lane Hemaspaandra

Articles

Dodgson’s election system elegantly satisfies the Condorcet criterion. However, determining the winner of a Dodgson election is known to be p 2-complete ([HHR97], see also [BTT89]), which implies that unless P = NP no polynomial-time solution to this problem exists, and unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to NP the problem is not even in NP. Nonetheless, we prove that when the number of voters is much greater than the number of candidates (although the number of voters may still be polynomial in the number of candidates), a simple greedy algorithm very frequently finds the Dodgson winners in such a way …

Forward And Backward Compatibility Of Solder Alloys With Component And Board Finishes, Anand Kannabiran, Elavarasan Pannerselvam, S. Manian Ramkumar

Articles

The primary objective of the research presented in this paper is to qualify the reliability of mixed assemblies by comparing them to the conventional Sn–Pb assembly and completely Pb-free assembly. The research investigates both forward and backward compatibility in electronic assemblies using a design of experiments (DOE) approach. The investigation utilized a test vehicle containing an area array component (BGA169) and chip components (0603 resistors). Hot air solder leveling (HASL) and organic solderability preservative (OSP) surface finishes were used on the test vehicles to represent Sn–Pb and Pb-free alternatives, respectively. The assembled test vehicles were cut into two panels—one containing …

Leveraging Automation And Integration To Improve Manufacturing Performance Under Uncertainty: An Empirical Study, Kun Liao, Qiang Tu

Articles

Throughout the history of manufacturing management, managers are constantly refining their skills for controlling and stabilizing against various technological and market uncertainties. Some of those skills such as division of labor and buffering technnical core from external changes had been very successful in the transition from craft to industrial manufacturing system, creating the powerhouse of US manufacturing.

Distributed Wrapper For Simset Monte Carlo Pet/Spect Simulator, Karl Baum, Maria Helguera

Articles

SimSET is a package for simulation of emission tomography data sets. Condor is a popular distributed computing environment. Simple C/C++ applications and shell scripts are presented which allow the execution of SimSET on the Condor environment. This is accomplished without any modification to SimSET by executing multiple instances and using its combinebin utility. This enables research facilities without dedicated parallel computing systems to utilize the idle cycles of desktop workstations to greatly reduce the run times of their SimSET simulations. The necessary steps to implement this approach in other environments are presented along with sample results.

Investigation Of Pet/Mri Image Fusion Schemes For Enhanced Breast Cancer Diagnosis, Karl Baum, Evan Schmidt, Kimberly Rafferty

Articles

The benefit of registration and fusion of functional images with anatomical images is well appreciated in the advent of PET/CT. There is an increasing interest in expanding this approach to PET/MRI. The focus of much of the related research has been on registering images from different modalities. However, the importance of appropriately jointly displaying (i.e. fusing) the registered images has often been neglected and underestimated. Our aim is to determine which fusion techniques are most useful for enhanced diagnostic performance, ease of use, efficiency, and accuracy for reading registered MRI and PET breast images. Preliminary results indicate that the radiologists …

Privacy Preserving Telecardiology Sensor Networks: Towards A Low-Cost Portable Wireless Hardware/Software Co-Design, Fei Hu, Meng Jiang, Mark Wagner

Articles

Recently, a remote-sensing platform based on wireless interconnection of tiny ECG sensors called Telecardiology Sensor Networks (TSN) provided a promising approach to perform lowcost real-time cardiac patient monitoring at any time in community areas (such as elder nursing homes or hospitals). The contribution of this research is the design of a practical TSN hardware/software platform for a typical U.S. healthcare community scenario (such as large nursing homes with many elder patients) to perform realtime healthcare data collections. On the other hand, due to the radio broadcasting nature ofMANET, a TSN has the risk of losing the privacy of patients’ data. …

Improving Software Practice Through Education: Challenges And Future Trends, Jorge Diaz-Herrera, Richard Leblanc Jr., Timothy Lethbridge

Articles

We argue that the software engineering (SE) community could have a significant impact on the future of the discipline by focusing its efforts on improving the education of software engineers. There are some bright spots such as the various projects to codify knowledge, and the development of undergraduate SE programs. However, there remain several key challenges, each of which is addressed in this paper: The challenges are 1) making programs attractive to students, 2) focusing education appropriately, 3) communicating industrial reality more effectively, 4) defining curricula that are forward-looking, 5) providing education for existing practitioners, 6) making SE education more …

Developing An Entrepreneurial Typology: The Roles Of Entrepreneurial Alertness And Attributional Style, Jintong Tang, Zhi Tang, Franz Lohrke

Articles

This study develops an entrepreneurial typology employing two dimensions, high versus low entrepreneurial alertness and internal versus external attributional styles that helps illustrate why entrepreneurs start new businesses. The resulting 2×2 typology of entrepreneurs identifies four entrepreneur types based on these two dimensions: the true believer, clueless, practical, and reluctant. Using a representative sample of 315 nascent entrepreneurs from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, we found that some types differed across three key entrepreneurial characteristics, need for achievement, risk-taking propensity, and commitment, thereby providing some preliminary empirical support for the typology’s validity. We conclude by discussing future research avenues.

Innovation-Supportive Culture: The Impact Of Organizational Values On Process Innovation, Shalini Khazanchi, Marianne Lewis, Kenneth Boyer

Articles

For managers, innovation is vital, but paradoxical, requiring flexibility and empowerment, as well as control and efficiency. Increasingly, studies stress organizational culture as a key to managing innovation. Yet innovation-supportive culture remains an intricate and amorphous phenomenon. In response, we explore how organizational values – a foundational building block of culture – impact a particular process innovation, the implementation of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). To unpack this scarcely studied construct, we examine three-dimensions of organizational values: value profiles, value congruence and value– practice interactions.

Transitory Price Changes In The Chinese Stock Markets, Zhaohui Zhang, Howard Nemiroff, Jiamin Wang

Articles

This paper examines opening and closing return patterns on the Chinese stock markets. We find that open-to-open returns are significantly more volatile than close-to-close returns. In addition, the correlation of the overnight return with the following daytime return is significantly negative, while the correlation of the daytime return with the following overnight return is strongly positive. The results show strong price continuation around the close and strong price reversal at the open, and the findings are not sensitive to trading volume. The findings are less likely to be caused by price limits. Our results are inconsistent with previous findings from …

The Next Generation: With Ceos Accepting Fewer Directorship Slots, Who's Filling Their Shoes?, Eugene Fram, William Stevenson

Articles

For decades, CEOs were natural candidates for outside directorships and filled the majority of open board positions. Then came Surbanes-Oxley, which heaped added responsibilities, as well as new liabilities, on board directors. Now CEO candidates are rejecting most new directorship offers in droves. Other are stepping down from many of their current boardroom positions in the face of mounting workloads and increased risks.

The Relationship Of Achievement Motivation And Risk-Taking Propensity To New Venture Performance: A Test Of The Moderating Effect Of Entrepreneurial Munificence, Jintong Tang, Zhi Tang

Articles

New venture start-up is an interactive process between individual and their environments. We thus propose and empirically test a model of the entrepreneurial process that examines the dynamic relationships between entrepreneurial process that examines the dynamic relationship between entrepreneurs' personality characteristics and environmental conditions. Findings reveal the entrepreneurs' achievement motivation significantly and positively relates to performance regardless of the munificence level in environment. However, risk-taking propensity is only negatively associated with performance at low munificence level.

Worse Than Death, Matthew Campbell, Sandra Saari

Articles

No abstract provided.

John David Bourchier: An Irish Journalist In The Balkans, Michael Foley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Waging A Private War: Us Security Contractors In Iraq, Tom Clonan

Articles

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly expressed grave misgivings about the activities of US ‘Private Military Company’ (PCM) Blackwater Security and has cited at least seven shooting incidents involving the company’s security contractors which have led to the deaths of dozens of Iraqi citizens. Headquartered in Moyock, North Carolina, Blackwater – which is under contract to the US State Department - is currently operating in Iraq without an Iraq Interior Ministry licence. This absence of Iraqi oversight is compounded by a 2004 Coalition Provisional Authority law signed by Paul Bremer which grants Blackwater immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. …

The Falklands War: Closer Fought Than Commonly Understood, Tom Clonan

Articles

Close Run Thing Twenty five years ago, this week, over three days of a desperately fought battle for control of the skies over the Falklands, the Argentine Air Force sank four British ships – HMS Ardent, HMS Antelope, HMS Coventry and the MV Atlantic Conveyor – in San Carlos Waters. The British Task Force eventually won the air-war by a whisper and managed to establish a beachhead at San Carlos. After the battle for the Falklands was over, Admiral John ‘Sandy’ Woodward, commander of the 1982 British taskforce admitted that the conflict was ‘a lot closer run than many would …

In The Line Of Fire: War Correspondents In Action, Tom Clonan

Articles

As of the 1st of December of this year, 171 journalists and other media workers have been killed – most of them murdered – in 35 different countries across the world. Sixty four of this number were killed in Iraq. Many others were killed covering conflict in Afghanistan and elsewhere making 2007 the worst year on record for deaths among journalists and media workers worldwide. Most foreign, development and war correspondents believe that a sea-change has taken place in the opening decade of the 21st Century in the manner in which wars are being waged, with journalists being deliberately targeted …

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine: Review, Tom Clonan

Articles

Naomi Klein, the award-winning Guardian columnist and best-selling author of the seminal ‘No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies’ (2000) has just completed her most ambitious project to date. With the publication of ‘Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism’, Klein may have achieved what many political leaders, economists and journalists the world over have failed to do during the tumultuous tenure of the current Bush Administration – namely to forensically prove that a ‘rolling coup’ has taken place within the United States that has subordinated its domestic and foreign policy imperatives to corporate interests and naked greed by …

Thunderbirds: Female Combat Pilots Us Air Force, Tom Clonan

Articles

The United States Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, the USAF Thunderbirds Squadron has performed aerobatic manoeuvres worldwide since its inception in 1953. This year, for the first time in the unit’s history, the Thunderbirds will fly to Ireland to perform at the Salthill Air Show on Sunday the 24th of June. The Thunderbird’s performance at Salthill will be its first ever in Ireland and the unit’s first deployment to Europe since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Thunderbirds Squadron consists of six F-16 C fighter jets flown by experienced combat pilots chosen …

The Need For A Speech Corpus, Dermot Campbell, Ciaran Mcdonnell, Marty Meinardi, Bunny Richardson

Articles

This paper outlines the ongoing construction of a speech corpus for use by applied linguists and advanced EFL/ESL students. The first section establishes the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills and pronunciation practice for EFL/ESL students. It argues for the need to use authentic native-to-native speech in the teaching/learning process so as to promote social inclusion and contextualises this within the literature, based mainly on the work of Swan, Brown and McCarthy. The second part addresses features of native speech flow which cause difficulties for EFL/ESL students (Brown, Cauldwell) and establishes the need for improvements in the …

Need For Social Policy To Recognise That People Are Excluded When They Cannot Afford To Give Their Children A Holiday, Bernadette Quinn

Articles

This research investigated how access to an annual holiday can benefit children living in poverty and their families. It studied children who had the opportunity to avail of a child-centred, structured group holiday provided by three NGOs. Study participants were drawn from a cross-section of disadvantaged areas in Dublin, comprising two inner-city and four suburban areas. Data collection involved 75 children and 35 guardians in the first stage, and 27 children and 16 guardians in subsequent stages. In total, 16 families participated in all stages of the research process, which used qualitative methods, including focus groups, in-depth interviews and observation. …

University Of Idaho Weighs Future Options In Statewide Legal Education, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

Articles

No abstract provided.

Storytelling And Leadership In The Deaf Community, Luane Davis Haggerty

Articles

JADARA, the official publication of ADARA. An organization for professionals networking for excellence in service delivery with individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. This article addresses a gap in scholarship on leadership styles in the Deaf community. There is an invisible style of leadership differing from the mainstream culture that has not been previously addressed in the literature at any depth. This article was intended to begin a discussion addressing this gap. My analysis of literature in the leadership fields, Deaf Studies and Performance Studies indicates a unique style of leadership by Deaf people within a Deaf community …

Population Study Of The Variation In Monochromatic Aberrations Of The Normal Human Eye Over The Central Visual Field, Matthew Sheehan, Alexander Goncharov, Veronica O'Dwyer, Vincent Toal, Christopher Dainty

Articles

Abstract

We present data analysis for ocular aberrations of 60 normal eyes measured with a Hartmann-Shack (HS) wavefront sensor (WFS). Aberration measurements were made on-axis and at 5 degree field angles in the nasal, inferior, temporal and superior semi-meridians. Particular attention is given to aberration distributions and possible strategies for aberration correction are discussed. A versatile HS WFS was designed and constructed with features of simultaneous pupil centre determination, off-axis capability, real-time data displays, and efficient lenslet sampling orientation. The subject alignment is achieved by the use of a parallel channel that is recombined with the sensing channel to simultaneously …

Science Fiction: The Literature Of Ideas. A Report Of The Lita Imagineering Interest Group Program. American Library Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 2006., Cassie Wagner

Articles

Each year, the LITA Imagineering Interest Group, in cooperation with publishers like Tor Books, hosts a panel discussion with eminent science fiction and/or fantasy authors. These writers talk about the ways their work relates to issues of the day, especially those related to libraries. This year’s panel consisted of Vernor Vinge, Jane Lindskold, and David Weber.

Reforming Redistricting: Why Popular Initiatives To Establish Redistricting Commissions Succeed Or Fail, Nicholas Stephanopoulos

Articles

No abstract provided.

What Happened On Deliberation Day, Cass R. Sunstein, Reid Hastie, David Schkade

Articles

What are the effects of deliberation about legal and political issues by like-minded people? This Essay reports the results of an experimental investigation involving sixty-three citizens in Colorado. Groups from Boulder, a predominantly liberal city, met to discuss global warming, affirmative action, and civil unions for same-sex couples. Groups from Colorado Springs, a predominately conservative city, discussed the same issues. The major effect of deliberation was to make group members more extreme in their views than they were before they started to talk. Liberals became more liberal on all three issues; conservatives became more conservative. As a result of intragroup …

The Case For For-Profit Charities, Anup Malani, Eric A. Posner

Articles

No abstract provided.

In Memoriam: Bernard D. Meltzer (1914-2007), Saul Levmore

Articles

No abstract provided.