Digital Commons Network^™

A Polarized Clutter Measurement Technique Based On The Governing Equation For Polarimetric Remote Sensing In The Visible To Near Infrared, James Ii Shell, John R. Schott

Articles

Polarization adds another dimension to the spatial intensity and spectral information typically acquired in remote sensing. Polarization imparted by surface reflections contains unique and discriminatory signatures which may augment spectral target-detection techniques. While efforts have been made toward quantifying the polarimetric bidirectional reflectance distribution function (pBRDF) responsible for target material polarimetric signatures, little has been done toward developing a description of the polarized background or scene clutter. An approach is presented for measuring the pBRDF of background materials such as vegetation. The governing equation for polarized radiance reaching a sensor aperture is first developed and serves as a basis for …

Using Multispectral Information To Decrease The Spectral Artifacts In Sparse-Aperture Imagery, Noah R. Block, Robert E. Introne, John Schott

Articles

Optical sparse-aperture telescopes represent a promising new technology to increase the effective diameter of an optical system while reducing its weight and stowable size. The sub-apertures of a sparse-aperture system are phased to synthesize a telescope system that has a larger effective aperture than any of the independentsub-apertures. Sparse-apertures have mostly been modeled to date using a "gray-world" approximation where the input is a grayscale image. The gray-world model makes use of a "polychromatic" optical transfer function (OTF) where the spectral OTFs are averaged to form a single OTF. This OTF is then convolved with the grayscale image to create …

Time-Gated Topographic Lidar Scene Simulation, Scott D. Brown, Daniel Blevins, John R. Schott

Articles

The Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Image Generation (DIRSIG) model has been developed at the RochesterInstitute of Technology (RIT) for over a decade. The model is an established, first-principles based scene simulationtool that has been focused on passive multi- and hyper-spectral sensing from the visible to long wave infrared (0.4 to 14 µm). Leveraging photon mapping techniques utilized by the computer graphics community, a first-principles based elastic Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) model was incorporated into the passive radiometry framework so that the model calculates arbitrary, time-gated radiances reaching the sensor for both the atmospheric and topographicreturns. The active LIDAR …

Using The Matrix R Method For Spectral Image Archives, Yonghui Zhao, Lawrence Taplin, Mahdi Nezamabadi

Articles

Conventional color digital cameras can only produce three-channel images so they are limited when high-quality color reproduction is required. Alternatively, spectral imaging increases the number of channels and can retrieve spectral reflectance for each scene pixel. The major goal of spectral imaging is high spectral accuracy, while it may also be beneficial to achieve high colorimetric accuracy for a specific viewing condition. A new spectral reconstruction method, called the matrix R method, was developed to achieve both goals simultaneously. An experiment was performed to test this method. The experimental results have been very promising; average color difference for all targets …

Developing A Participatory Consultation Process For Quality Reviews:The Initial Stage Of The European University Associations Quality Review Of The Technological University Dubin, Aidan Kenny

Articles

This paper describes the evolution of a consultation process utilized by the Technological University Dubin (DIT) as part of a quality review process. An emphasis is placed on outlining: the collaborative nature of the enquiry; the guidelines and code of ethics adopted; the social research methodology utilized both quantitative (online surveys, staff n=1831, student’s n=21094) and qualitative (6 staff focus groups n=45 and 4 stakeholder focus groups n=24 and faculty board submissions 6). Instrument construction, theme sheet design and sampling procedures and response rate are detailed. The author, as consultation facilitator, provides an narrative of events and applies theory to …

Friction And Adhesion In Rigid Surface Indentation Of Nitrile Rubber, Stephen Jerrams

Articles

When a rigid body in the form of a plane strain indentor is forced into an elastomer, the asperities on the surface of the indentor are filled by the softer material. As depth of ingress increases, the rubber displaced into the indentor asperities exhibits stick-slip behaviour. The rubber adheres to the rigid body and if the depth of ingress is held at a maximum, the level of adhesion remains constant despite short-term load relaxation occurring in the rubber.

This text describes the influence of a range of factors on indentation forces and adhesion in rigid indentation of hydrogenated nitrile rubbers. …

Hard Cases And The Politics Of Righteousness, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The law of bioethics has been the law of cases. Interpreting the common law and the Constitution, judges have written the law of informed consent, abortion, and assisted suicide. Reacting to causes célèbres, legislatures have written the law of advance directives and end of life decisions. The long, sad death of Terri Schiavo eclipsed even the long, sad deaths of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Beth Cruzan in the duration and strength of the attention and passions it evoked. What are Schiavo’s lessons? Hard cases, lawyers say, make bad law. Why? First, hard cases are atypical cases. They present abnormal …

Deformable Model For 3d Intramodal Nonrigid Breast Image Registration With Fiducial Skin Markers, Mehmet Unlu, Andrzej Krol, Ioana Coman, James A. Mandel, Karl G. Baum, Wei Lee, Edward D. Lipson, David H. Feiglin

Articles

We implemented a new approach to intramodal non-rigid 3D breast image registration. Our method uses fiducial skin markers (FSM) placed on the breast surface. After determining the displacements of FSM, finite element method (FEM) is used to distribute the markers’ displacements linearly over the entire breast volume using the analogy between the orthogonal components of the displacement field and a steady state heat transfer (SSHT). It is valid because the displacement field in x, y and z direction and a SSHT problem can both be modeled using LaPlace’s equation and the displacements are analogous to temperature differences in SSHT. It …

Molecular And Clinical Analyses Of Greig Cephalopolysyndactyly And Pallister-Hall Syndromes: Robust Phenotype Prediction From The Type And Position Of Gli3 Mutations, Jennifer J. Johnston, Isabelle Olivos-Glander, Christina Killoran, David Tilstra Md

Articles

Mutations in the GLI3 zinc-finger transcription factor gene cause Greig cephalopolysyndactyly syndrome (GCPS) and Pallister-Hall syndrome (PHS), which are variable but distinct clinical entities. We hypothesized that GLI3 mutations that predict a truncated functional repressor protein cause PHS and that functional haploinsufficiency of GLI3 causes GCPS. To test these hypotheses, we screened patients with PHS and GCPS for GLI3 mutations. The patient group consisted of 135 individuals: 89 patients with GCPS and 46 patients with PHS. We detected 47 pathological mutations (among 60 probands); when these were combined with previously published mutations, two genotype-phenotype correlations were evident. First, GCPS was …

Contradictions In Irish Academic Research, Stephen Jerrams, John Donovan

Articles

The conditions that govern academic research vary greatly from country to country and research in the Republic of Ireland was and remains markedly different from that of its larger European neighbours and the United States. Despite the quality of its education system and the excellent reputation of its universities, until recently Ireland had relatively low levels of academic research. Pinnacles of excellence could be found in certain disciplines, but state funding was low and issues relating to industrial collaborations, international partnerships, commercialisation and the exploitation of Intellectual Property (IP) rarely arose. Even today the Irish Government’s spending on academic research, …

Ethical Issues In Asbestos Litigation, Lester Brickman

Articles

Asbestos litigation has given rise to over 50,000,000 claims against 8400 former producers, distributors, installers and sellers of asbestos-containing products. To date, 850,000 claimants have sought compensation, costing businesses and insurance companies over $70 billion and resulting in more than 70 bankruptcies. Over 100,000 deaths are attributable to asbestos exposure with an additional 40,000 deaths anticipated over the next 30 years. Despite the significance of the ethical issues generated by the processes of acquiring, pressing and settling the most massive litigation in history, the legal literature is substantially devoid of any such discussion. One possible reason for this paucity of …

Discrete Wavelet Transform Core For Image Processing Applications, Andreas E. Savakis, Richard Carbone

Articles

This paper presents a flexible hardware architecture for performing the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) on a digital image. The proposed architecture uses a variation of the lifting scheme technique and provides advantages that include small memory requirements, fixed-point arithmetic implementation, and a small number of arithmetic computations. The DWT core may be used for image processing operations, such as denoising and image compression. For example, the JPEG2000 still image compression standard uses the Cohen-Daubechies-Favreau (CDF) 5/3 and CDF 9/7 DWT for lossless and lossy image compression respectively. Simple wavelet image denoising techniques resulted in improved images up to 27 dB …

Comparison Of Radio Observations And Numerical Simulations Of The Radio Lobes Of Cygnus A, Joel C. Carvalho, Ruth A. Daly, Matthew P. Mory, Christopher P. O'Dea

Articles

We present a comparison of radio observations of the archetypal powerful radio galaxy Cygnus A and 2-D numerical hydrodynamical simulations. We characterize some global trends in the observed radio properties and compare them with the properties of a simulated radio source. The numerical results are the following. Jets propagating in a constant density atmosphere will decelerate with time. Thus, the estimated dynamical age of the source will be greater than the actual age of the source. For a source similar to Cygnus A the difference will be about a factor of 2. The second moment gives an accurate representation of …

Water Conservation And Resuse Strategy For Ireland, Liam Mccarton, Sean O'Hogain

Articles

The traditional approach to meeting increased demand is to augment supply. However, mobilising new resources involves ever higher costs. Increasing water efficiency by reducing the amount of water required to accomplish a given task can significantly contribute towards balancing supply and demand. The water saved as a result of PCC reduction can be used to augment existing supplies. This can be the least cost option, particularly when the environmental and social costs of developing new resources are included in the analysis. Allied to this is the concept of sustainability, which can be defined as ‘development that meets the needs of …

The Supermassive Black Hole In The Seyfert 2 Galaxy Ngc 5252, Alessandro Capetti, Alessandro Marconi, Duccio Macchetto, David J. Axon

Articles

We present results from HST/STIS long-slit spectroscopy of the gas motions in the nuclear region of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 5252. The observed velocity field is consistent with gas in regular rotation with superposed localized patches of disturbed gas. The dynamics of the circumnuclear gas can be accurately reproduced by adding to the stellar mass component a compact dark mass of MBH = 0.95 (−0.45;+1.45) ×109 M⊙, very likely a supermassive black hole (BH). Contrarily to results obtained in similar studies rotational broadening is sufficient to reproduce also the behaviour of line widths. The BH mass estimated for NGC …

Metabolite Fingerprinting In Transgenic Nicotiana Tabacum Altered By The Escherichia Coli Glutamate Dehydrogenase Gene, R. Mungur, A. D. M. Glass, D. B. Goodenow, David A. Lightfoot

Articles

With about 200 000 phytochemicals in existence, identifying those of biomedical significance is a mammoth task. In the postgenomic era, relating metabolite fingerprints, abundances, and profiles to genotype is also a large task. Ion analysis using Fourier transformed ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) may provide a high-throughput approach to measure genotype dependency of the inferred metabolome if reproducible techniques can be established. Ion profile inferred metabolite fingerprints are coproducts. We used FT-ICR-MS-derived ion analysis to examine gdhA (glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH; EC 1.4.1.1)) transgenic Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) carrying out altered glutamate, amino acid, and carbon metabolisms, that fundamentally alter plant …

Computational Design And Experimental Testing Of A Novel Axial Flow Lvad, Alexandrina Untaroiu, Houston Wood, Paul Allaire

Articles

Thousands of cardiac failure patients per year in the United States could benefit from long-term mechanical circulatory support as destination therapy. To provide an improvement over currently available devices, we have designed a fully implantable axial-flow ventricular assist device with a magnetically levitated impeller (LEV-VAD). In contrast to currently available devices, the LEV-VAD has an unobstructed blood flow path and no secondary flow regions, generating substantially less retrograde and stagnant flow. The pump design included the extensive use of conventional pump design equations and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling for predicting pressure-flow curves, hydraulic efficiencies, scalar fluid stress levels, exposure …

Modeling Of Electrooptic Polymer Electrical Characteristics In A Three-Layer Optical Waveguide Modulator, Michael Watson, Paul Ashley, Andrew Guenthner

Articles

The electrical characteristics of electrooptic polymer waveguide modulators are often described by the bulk reactance of the individual layers. However, the resistance and capacitance between the layers can significantly alter the electrical performance of a waveguide modulator. These interface characteristics are related to the boundary charge density and are strongly affected by the adhesion of the layers in the waveguide stack. An electrical reactance model has been derived to investigate this phenomenon at low frequencies. The model shows the waveguide stack frequency response has no limiting effects below the microwave range and that a true dc response requires a stable …

Dsp Utilization In Digital Color Printing, Eli Saber, Sohail Dianat, Lalit Mestha

Articles

This article discusses the utilization of DSP techniques to digital printing systems, particularly in transforming multidimensional signals from electronic to hardcopy formats by utilizing digital printing solutions and controlling the "marking" engine that is at the heart of the electrophotographic system. Researchers and DSP practitioners are urged to share their vision on the novel use of signal processing algorithms to analyze, manipulate, and solve problems related to high-end digital printing.

Lossless Generalized-Lsb Data Embedding, Mehmet Cilik, Gaurav Sharma, Ahmet Tekalp

Articles

We present a novel lossless (reversible) data-embedding technique, which enables the exact recovery of the original host signal upon extraction of the embedded information. A generalization of the well-known least significant bit (LSB) modification is proposed as the data-embedding method, which introduces additional operating points on the capacity-distortion curve. Lossless recovery of the original is achieved by compressing portions of the signal that are susceptible to embedding distortion and transmitting these compressed descriptions as a part of the embedded payload. A prediction-based conditional entropy coder which utilizes unaltered portions of the host signal as side-information improves the compression efficiency and, …

Color Image Processing: Basics And Special Issue Overview, H. Joel Trussell, Eli Saber, Michael Vrhel

Articles

Humans have always seen the world in color but only recently have we been able to generate vast quantities of color images with such ease. In the last three decades, we have seen a rapid and enormous transition from grayscale images to color ones. Today, we are exposed to color images on a daily basis in print, photographs, television, computer displays, and cinema movies, where color now plays a vital role in the advertising and dissemination of information throughout the world. Color monitors, printers, and copiers now dominate the office and home environments, with color becoming increasingly cheaper and easier …

Color Image Generation And Display Technologies, Michael Vrhel, Eli Saber, H. Joel Trussell

Articles

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the transformations and limitations that occur in color imaging input and output devices. We concentrate on two common recording devices and three common output devices. First we provide an overview of digital scanners and cameras, and then we discuss inkjet and laser printers. Finally, liquid crystal display (LCD) devices are presented.

An Introductory Software Engineering Course That Facilitates Active Learning, Stephanie Ludi, Swaminathan Natarajan, Thomas Reichlmayr

Articles

At the Rochester Institute of Technology, the undergraduate introductory software engineering course has been redesigned from a lecture-lab format to a project-centric studio format. The new format blends the lecture material with the project work. As a result, students drive their own learning experience based on scaffolding created by the course design. The challenges faced and the techniques and strategies utilized in the planning and delivery of the course will be discussed, including the utilization of online learning support infrastructure. This paper presents instructor experiences, analysis of student feedback, lessons learned and recommendations for other educators considering an active learning …

Study Of Transmission Response Of Edge Filters Employed In Wavelength Measurements, Qian Wang, Gerald Farrell, Thomas Freir

Articles

The ratiometric wavelength-measurement system is modeled and an optimal design of transmission response of the employed edge filter is demonstrated in the context of a limited signal-to-noise ratio of the signal source. The corresponding experimental investigation is presented. The impact of the limited signal-to-noise ratio of the signal source on determining the optimal transmission response of edge filters for a wavelength-measurement application is shown theoretically and experimentally.

Imagine Ahead, Plan Backwards: Prospective Methodology In Urban And Regional Planning, Elzbieta Krawczyk, John Ratcliffe

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No abstract provided.

Ruminations On Dissemination: Limits On Administrative And Judicial Review Under The Information Quality Act, Stephen M. Johnson

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Supporters call it "one of the most significant developments in the federal rulemaking system since passage of the Administrative Procedure Act." Opponents suggest that it "may well prove the most destructive half-page of law that most people do not know is on the books." It is the Information Quality Act, enacted in 2000 as a two paragraph rider to appropriations legislation for the 2001 fiscal year. While it was supposed to improve the quality of information that the government relies upon in decision making, critics assert that the Act contributes to the ossification of rulemaking, encourages agencies to make decisions …

Institutional Mission Vs. Policy Constraint?: Unlocking Potential, Ellen Hazelkorn

Articles

The research-intensive and competitive knowledge society is putting HEIs (higher education institutions) under the spotlight. While many HEIs around the world do not proclaim or wish to be research-intensive institutions the majority desire to intensify their research activity because it is seen as a sine qua non of higher education. Accordingly, HEIs are busy making critical strategic choices concerning human resources, the research environment, the teaching-research nexus, organisational and management structure, and funding. Governments are also making choices, using policies and financial instruments to help shape institutional mission, priorities and HE systems. But if governments genuinely desire to widen access …

Theoretical And Experimental Investigations Of Macro-Bend Losses For Standard Single Mode Fibers, Qian Wang, Gerald Farrell, Thomas Feir

Articles

Modeling of macro-bend losses for single mode fibers with multiple cladding or coating layers is presented. Macro-bend losses for standard single mode fibers (SMF28) are investigated theoretically and experimentally, showing that the inner primary coating layer of SMF28 has a significant impact on the bend losses and most of the radiation field is absorbed in the inner primary coating layer of SMF28. The agreement between theoretical calculations and experimental measurements suggests that the so-called elastooptical correction in modeling is not required for SMF28.

Use Of Advanced Synthesis Tools In Teaching Vlsi Design, Kevin Berwick, Dominic Nardone

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No abstract provided.

Seeing Crime And Punishment Through A Sociological Lens: Contributions, Practices, And The Future, Bernard E. Harcourt, Tracey L. Meares, John Hagan, Calvin Morrill

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No abstract provided.