Digital Commons Network^™

Liquid Crystal Based Optical Switches, Yuliya Semenova, S. Dovgalets, Yuri Panarin, Gerald Farrell

Articles

Optical switches using two electro-optical effects in liquid crystals are proposed and investigated for incorporation in a switch matrix for optical networks. These two devices employ selective reflection in cholesteric layers and total reflection at the border between glass and nematic liquid crystal. Prototypes of these switches have been designed and their parameters have been investigated. Initial results suggest the switching contrast ratio of 38.5 and 42 dB, respectively, with insertion loss about 2.3…2.9 dB for polarized light.

A Simple Phase-Shifting Lateral Shearing Interferometer, Emilia Mihaylova, Maurice Whelan, Vincent Toal

Articles

A phase-shifting electronic speckle pattern shearing interferometer with a very simple shearing device is proposed. Two partially reflective glass plates are used to introduce the shear in this new interferometer. The reflection coefficients of the coatings on the two plates are 0.3 and 0.7. The distance between the two glass plates controls the size of the shear. The proposed new interferometric system is simple, flexible, and low cost.

Mobile And Accessible Dublin: An Application Of The Prospective Methodology In Developing A Vision For The Future Integration Of Transportation And Land Use In Dublin, Elzbieta Krawczyk

Articles

Contemporary cities can be characterised by a high pace of change and the growing complexity of their systems. Technological, economic and social evolution brings transformation that needs to be dealt with and accommodated in order to sustain consistent harmonious growth. Many cities are not prepared to adapt to these changes. This results in a vast range of urban problems. The rapid growth of Dublin during the last decade has intensified infrastructural and transportation problems. A number of institutions have been addressing these difficulties through the application of various solutions. This paper presents an attempt to address the lack of efficient …

The History Of Seafood In Irish Cuisine And Culture, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire

Articles

Fish is one of the most abundant wild foods available to a small island nation. Certain species of seafood have moved from being ‘poor man’s food’ to ‘luxury food’ over time. It may be said that the Irish do not behave as island people since we have little or no history of exploiting the sea compared to our European partners. Ireland was late developing its fishing industry and now suffers reduced EU fish quotas, the unfortunate but necessary result of decades of over-fishing on European waters. This paper investigates the historical role seafood has played in Irish cuisine and culture …

Government Policy Towards Innovation In The United States, Canada, And The European Union As Manifested In Patent, Copyright, And Competition Laws, Daniel J. Gifford

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THE United States, Canada, the European Union, Japan and most industrialized nations have adopted patent, copyright and other intellectual property laws. A major or primary purpose of those laws is to foster innovation, including technological innovation. Industrial and technological innovation is generally perceived as a good because technological advances increase a society's productivity, 1 thus increasing its wealth and raising living standards. The major industrialized nations also possess competition laws, one of whose purposes is to preserve, foster and support competitive markets. These nations want to preserve competitive markets because competitive markets help to allocate available resources to their highest …

Bringing The Environment In From The Cold, Thomas Power

Articles

The aim of this essay is to present an overview of some of the basic concepts underlying the mainstream approach to the role of economics in the analysis of the causes and treatment of environmental degradation. It evaluates the mainstream view depicted by Helm and Pearce and analyses economic externalities in context, conventional economic approaches and imperfect information.

Anomalies, Warts And All: Four Score Of Liberty, Privacy And Equality, Francisco Valdes

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Lawrence was decided exactly eighty years after the first liberty-privacy case, and in the midst of a fierce kulturkampf striving to roll back civil rights generally. In this Article, Professor Valdes situates Lawrence in the context formed both by these four score of liberty-privacy jurisprudence that precede it as well as by the politics of backlash that envelop it today. After canvassing the landmark rulings from Meyer in 1923 to Lawrence in 2003, in the process acknowledging both their emancipatory strengths and their traditionalist instrumentalism, Professor Valdes concludes that Lawrence is a long overdue recognition of the prior precedents and …

Lord Of The Liens: Towards Greater Efficiency In Secured Syndicated Lending, William H. Widen

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No abstract provided.

Changing Channels And Bridging Divides: The Failure And Redemption Of American Broadcast Television Regulation, Anthony E. Varona

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No abstract provided.

The Anti-Emergency Constitution, Laurence H. Tribe, Patrick O. Gudridge

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No abstract provided.

Teaching Ethics/Doing Justice, Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Color/Identity/Justice: Chicano Trials (Book Review), Anthony V. Alfieri

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No abstract provided.

Pari Passu And A Distressed Sovereign's Rational Choices, William Wilson Bratton

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No abstract provided.

A Neural Network Approach To Key Frame Extraction, Rajesh Narasimha, Andreas Savakis, Raghuveer M. Rao, Ricardo De Queiroz

Articles

We present a neural network based approach to key frame extraction in the compressed domain. The proposed method is an amalgamation of both the MPEG-7 descriptors namely motion intensity descriptor and spatial activity descriptor. Shot boundary detection and block motion estimation techniques are employed prior to the extraction of the descriptors. The motion intensity (“pace of action”) is obtained using a fuzzy system that classifies the motion intensity into five categories proportional to the intensity. The spatial activity matrix determines the spatial distribution of activity (“active regions”) in a frame. A neural network is used to pick those frames as …

To Catch A Thief: What To Do With Plagiarists In The Language, Literature Or Culture Classroom, Sue Norton

Articles

This paper looks at why students in Higher Education, particularly in language, literature and culture couses, plagiarise. It considers some of the ways assessors respond.

Turning An Articulated Truck On A Spreadsheet, Jim Mcgovern

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This paper describes how a standard office spreadsheet application was used to set up an engineering model for the simulation and analysis of the turning of articulated trucks

Dit And Student Retention, Frank Costello

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No abstract provided.

A Two Phase Approach To Bayesian Network Model Selection And Comparison Between The Mdl And Dgm Scoring Heuristics, Michael Kane, Sahin Ferat, Andreas Savakis

Articles

This paper presents an efficient algorithm for learning a Bayesian belief network (BBN) structure from a database, as well as providing a comparison between two BBN structure fitness functions. A Bayesian belief network is a directed acyclic graph representing conditional expectations. In this paper, we propose a two-phase algorithm. The first phase uses asymptotically correct structure learning for efficient search space exploration, while the second phase uses greedy model selection for accurate search space exploration. The minimum description length (MDL) structure fitness function is also compared with the database given model probability (DGM) fitness function in the second phase. The …

Framework For Evaluation Of Tribal Water Settlements, Barbara Cosens

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No abstract provided.

Who Pays For Progress?: Accident Law In Florida, 1845-1886, James L. Hunt

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No abstract provided.

Effective Hourly Rates Of Contingency-Fee Lawyers: Competing Data And Non-Competitive Fees, Lester Brickman

Articles

The article critically examines the impact of contingency fees on the tort system, arguing that these fees have risen significantly over the past few decades without a corresponding increase in risk, leading to exploitative practices that harm clients and drive up costs. The author challenges Herbert Kritzer's research on contingency fees, asserting that Kritzer's data underestimates the true earnings of specialized contingency-fee lawyers and fails to represent national trends accurately. The article advocates for reforms to align contingency fees more closely with the actual risk and effort involved in cases, ensuring fairness for clients and reducing systemic inefficiencies.

Of World Music And Sovereign States, Professors And The Formation Of Legal Norms, Justin Hughes

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No abstract provided.

Mwir And Lwir Spectral Signatures Of Water And Associated Materials, Herbert J. Mitchell, Carl Salvaggio

Articles

Spectral infrared emissivity measurements have been made of a variety of materials both with and without surface water. The surface water was either natural, in the form of dew or residual rainwater, or artificially introduced by manual wetting. Materials naturally high in water content were also measured. Despite the rather diverse spectral population of the underlying materials, they exhibited very similar, featureless, water-like spectra; spectrally flat with a very high magnitude across the emissive infrared region. The implication to exploitation personnel that may use emissive infrared hyperspectral image data is that in areas where condensation is likely (e.g. high humidity) …

The Importance Of Background In The Detection And Identification Of Gas Plumes Using Emissive Infrared Hyperspectral Sensing, Herbert Mitchell, Gerard P. Jellison, David P. Miller, Carl Salvaggio, Craig J. Miller

Articles

Using a Fourier transform infrared field spectrometer, spectral infrared radiance measurements were made of several generated gas plumes against both a uniform sky and terrestrial background. Background temperature, spectral complexity, and physical homogeneity each influenced the success of emissive infrared spectral sensing technology in detecting and identifying the presence of a gas plume and its component constituents. As expected, high temperature contrast and uniform backgrounds provided the best conditions for detectability and diagnostic identification. This report will summarize some of SITAC’s findings concerning plume detectability, including the importance of plume cooling, plumes in emission and absorption, the effects of optical …

Supply Chain Design And Re-Engineering: A Systems Approach, Edward Sweeney

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No abstract provided.

Engineering Is Fun - Let's Celebrate, Jim Mcgovern

Articles

In this news article the author outlines why the Faculty of Engineering at DIT and all its professional engineering graduates have cause to celebrate 50 years of engineering at DIT from September 2003.

The Laconomics Of Apples And Oranges: A Speculative Analysis Of The Economic Concept Of Commensurability, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Articles

The article challenges the commensurability debate, arguing that the opposition between commensurability and incommensurability is not a resolvable conflict but a necessary paradox rooted in human subjectivity and symbolic thought. Drawing on the philosophical traditions of Kant, Hegel, and Lacan, the analysis posits that both quantitative and qualitative aspects are essential in legal and economic decision-making, emphasizing the need to manage rather than resolve this paradox. The speculative approach suggests that rationality involves acknowledging and navigating this duality, rather than adhering to one side of the debate.

Autonomous Field-Deployable Wildland Fire Sensors, Robert Kremens, Jason Faulring, A. Gallagher, A. Seema, Anthony Vodacek

Articles

An Autonomous Fire Detector (AFD) is a miniature electronic package combining position location capability [using the Global Positioning System (GPS)], communications (packet or voice-synthesized radio), and fire detection capability (thermal, gas, smoke detector) into an inexpensive, deployable package. The AFD can report fire-related parameters, like temperature, carbon monoxide concentration, or smoke levels via a radio link to firefighters located on the ground. These systems are designed to be inserted into the fire by spotter planes at a fire site or positioned by firefighters already on the ground. AFDs can also be used as early warning devices near critical assets in …

Real-Time Video Annotation Using Mpeg-7 Motion Activity Descriptors, Andreas Savakis, Pawel Sniatala, Radoslaw Rudnicki

Articles

The MPEG-7 standard provides a framework of standardized tools that can be used to describe and efficiently manage multimedia content. Visual descriptors include color, texture, shape and motion. In this paper, we address the hardware implementation of MPEG-7 motion descriptors using Handel-C. In particular, descriptors for motion intensity and spatial distribution of motion activity are generated and implemented.

Assessing The Impact Of The Concrete Canoe And Steel Bridge Competitions On Civil Engineering Technology Students, Valerie L. Sirianni, Kerin L. Lee, Matt D. Lefevre, James W. Lindholm, Abi Aghayere, Maureen Valentine

Articles

The new accreditation criteria (TC2K) of the Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET require an assessment of Program Intended Learning Outcomes. Some of the learning outcomes required by the “a” through “k” and the Civil criteria of TC2K include leadership skills, teamwork skills, project management skills, communication skills, and design and construction skills.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Institute for Steel Construction (AISC) sponsors regional and national concrete canoe and steel bridge competitions on an annual basis. The Civil Engineering Technology (CET) students at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) have participated in these competitions for …