Digital Commons Network^™

An Atmospheric Correction Parameter Calculator For A Single Thermal Band Earth-Sensing Instrument, Julia Barsi, John Barker, John Schott

Articles

An atmospheric correction tool has been developed for public web site access for the Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 thermal band. The Atmospheric Correction Parameter Calculator uses the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) modeled atmospheric global profiles for a particular date, time and location as input. Using commercially-available MODTRAN software and a suite of integration algorithms, the site-specific atmospheric transmission, and upwelling and downwelling radiances are derived. These calculated parameters can be applied to single band thermal imagery from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) or Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) to infer an at-surface kinetic temperature for all the pixels in …

Inter-Modality Non-Rigid Breast Image Registration Using Finite-Element Method, Andrzej Krol, Ioana Coman, James Mandel

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We have investigated a new approach for co-registration of functional PET images with anatomical MR images for breast-cancer detection. This registration is required for multimodality PET-MRI breast image fusion, an approach that could prove useful as an alternative to surgical breast biopsy, following equivocal or difficult-to-interpret mammograms. Our method uses fiducial skin markers placed on the breast that can be observed in PET and MRI. The intermodal geometrical displacements (i.e. differences between PET and MRI marker locations) are estimated from tomographic images. A finite-element-method (FEM) model of breast tissue, based upon an analogy between the orthogonal components of the displacement …

Diffusion Barrier Cladding In Si/Sige Resonant Interband Tunneling Diodes And Their Patterned Growth On Pmos Source/Drain Regions, Niu Jin, Sung-Yong Chung, Anthony Rice

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Si/SiGe resonant interband tunnel diodes (RITDs) employing -doping spikes that demonstrate negative differential resistance (NDR) at room temperature are presented. Efforts have focused on improving the tunnel diode peak-to-valley current ratio (PVCR) figure-of-merit, as well as addressing issues of manufacturability and CMOS integration. Thin SiGe layers sandwiching the B -doping spike used to suppress B out-diffusion are discussed. A room-temperature PVCR of 3.6 was measured with a peak current density of 0.3 kA/cm2. Results clearly show that by introducing SiGe layers to clad the B -doping layer, B diffusion is suppressed during post-growth annealing, which raises the thermal budget. A …

Perspectives On The History Of Deaf Education, Harry Lang

Articles

RIT community members may access full-text via RIT Libraries licensed databases: http://library.rit.edu/databases/ A history of the education of deaf persons is by its very nature a study of social and cultural change. This notion is epitomized in tracing prevailing attitudes about deaf people and how they learn. Such an understanding of deafness as an educational condition shapes the historical highlights discussed in this chapter.

Real-Life Perspectives: Quality Of Life Assessments, Susan Foster, Kerstin Moller

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This article explores the ways in which deaf college students who are members of minority racial groups think about and describe their identities. In-depth, semi structured interviews with 33 deaf students of Asian American, Hispanic American, and African American background were analyzed for themes regarding the self-reported identities of respondents. Results suggest that each person is a constellation of many parts, some of which are stronger than others but any of which can be drawn out in response to a particular set of circumstances, resulting in a contextual and interactive model of identity. Four factors arc described as central to …

Comparing Air Pollution From Ferry And Landslide Commuting, Alexander Farrell, Deborah Redman, James Corbett

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Recent and anticipated growth in passenger ferry service has been complicated by concerns about air pollution from marine engines that are only starting to be regulated. While marine engines are known to be a significant and growing source category in some locations, sparse data and analytical difficulties have prevented rigorous comparisons of marine and on-land passenger travel. Using data gathered in the San Francisco Bay Area, we model emissions from three passenger ferries and the matching on-land travel that would be used by commuters if ferry service were not available. The results are analyzed parametrically for levels of ridership and …

A Comparison Of Constant Stimuli And Gray Scale Methods Of Color Difference Scaling, Ethan Montag, David Wilber

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Two psychophysical techniques, the method of constant stimuli and the gray-scale comparison method, were used to determine color tolerances for three different color centers in the hue, chroma, and lightness directions in CIELAB color space. The same color-difference pairs were used as the stimuli in both experiments. Although the results followed the same trends, they were different for the two techniques. Based on comparison of the validity and precision of the results, as well as the ease of implementation, use, and analysis, the method of constant stimuli is the preferable method.

Object Segmentation And Labeling By Learning From Examples, Yaowu Xu, Eli Saber, Murat Tekalp

Articles

We propose a system that employs low-level image segmentation followed by color and two-dimensional (2-D) shape matching to automatically group those low-level segments into objects based on their similarity to a set of example object templates presented by the user. A hierarchical content tree data structure is used for each database image to store matching combinations of low-level regions as objects. The system automatically initializes the content tree with only “elementary nodes” representing homogeneous low-level regions. The “learning” phase refers to labeling of combinations of low-level regions that have resulted in successful color and/or 2-D shape matches with the example …

A Qualitative Study Of Teachers' Acceptance Of A Speech-To-Text Transcription System In High School And College Classrooms, Lisa Elliot, Susan Foster, Michael Stinson

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Student success using an assistive technology may be partially attributed to educators' acceptance of the technology. High school and college educators in New York and California participated in a qualitative study of the implementation of a speech-to-text support service for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Educators' interviews were analyzed using criteria from Rogers (1995) model of diffusion of innovations. Educators accepted the support service due to its relative advantage to other notetaking services, perceived simplicity of the system, and perceived potential for students. Acceptance was less clear-cut in the domains of compatibility and trialability. Educators were less …

Kubelka-Munk Theory And The Mtf Of Paper, Jonathan Arney, James Chauvin, Josh Nauman

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An experimental analysis of paper optical scattering is reported. The Kubelka– Munk parameters for scattering, S, absorption, K, thickness, L, and background reflectance, Rg , were measured for a variety of papers. Measurements were made of reflectance and transmittance using integrating sphere techniques, and the Kubelka– Munk Eqs. were inverted numerically to generate the corresponding S and K values. The modulation transfer function, MTF, of each paper sample was also measured by projecting a sharp edge onto the paper and measuring the resulting edge spread function. The MTF was calculated as the modulus of the Fourier transform of the derivative …

Energy Guides As Teaching Aids, David Farnsworth

Articles

This article may be accessed from the following website (additional fees may apply): http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3950/is_200301/ai_n9173558 One of the many challenges of teaching, especially on the lower level, is that of motivation. Thus, problems that students recognize as meaningful in life are of great help in the classroom. This problem could be used in algebra or a statistics course to provide motivation. The following analysis has students calculating appliance efficiency using basic arithmetic, and they can take this problem home to their own appliances as well as apply these skills to their future purchases.

Dye Desensitization Studies: Agbr Core-Shell Versus Agbr Core-Agibr Shell Emulsions, J. Zheng, A. Gary Difrancesco, Richard Hailstone

Articles

Four 0.73 μm core-shell octahedral emulsions, sulphur-plus-gold sensitized either internally or on the surface, were used to study dye desensitization by anionic J-aggregating dyes. Two of the emulsions were pure AgBr and two contained AgBr cores with AgI[0.01] Br[0.99] shells. Four dyes having a systematically varying electrochemical oxidation potential, E[ox], were studied at 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 per cent monolayer coverage. None of the dyes desensitized the internal image of either emulsion. However, desensitization of the surface-sensitized emulsions was observed, particularly for the dyes with E[ox] less than about 1.1 V (versus Ag/AgCl in acetonitrile), and it was …

A Model Of Electrophotographic Laser Printing That Is Independent Of Halftone Algorithm, Jonathan Arney, Peter Anderson, Sunadi Gunawan

Articles

A printer model for an electrophotographic printer is described that is capable of showing quantitatively the difference in behavior of different halftone patterns. The objective was to develop a model that is independent of the halftone pattern but as computationally simple as possible. A model employing a single point spread function was not found to be sufficiently reliable for this purpose. The model that was finally tested incorporated a point spread function for the distribution of toner mass, a toner delivery function, and a separate point spread function for scattering of light within the paper. The result was found to …

Perceived Image Contrast And Observer Preference: Ii. Empirical Modeling Of Perceived Image Contrast And Observer Preference Data, Anthony Calabria, Mark Fairchild

Articles

Psychophysical experimentation was performed on the perceived contrast of color images and its effect on observer preference. Goals of this research included the following: investigation into the roles of image lightness, chroma and sharpness manipulations on perceived image contrast; modeling the perception of image contrast with physical image parameters; the relation of perceived contrast of an image to the most preferred version of that image; and the generation of a large scale image contrast data set for later use in image difference/quality metric development. These goals were undertaken by administration of soft copy paired-comparison experiments of perceived image contrast and …

Perceived Image Contrast And Observer Preference: I. The Effects Of Lightness, Chroma, And Sharpness Manipulations On Contrast Perception, Anthony Calabria, Mark Fairchild

Articles

A large-scale investigation into the perception of contrast in color images was performed. Psychophysical experiments were performed to determine the influence of image lightness, chroma, and sharpness transforms on perceived image contrast and observer preference. The influence of these transforms on perceived contrast was investigated separately by independent soft copy, paired comparison tests of contrast perception and image preference. The perception of contrast across transformations was also investigated, as was the perception of image contrast relative to the most preferred image manipulation. In all, four experiments of contrast perception and image preference were performed by at least thirty-two observers each. …

A Three Component Model Based On Linear Color Addition In Halftones, Yoshihiko Azuma, Jonathan Arney

Articles

One would expect that colors of single ink halftones would be reproduced by linear addition of the colors of paper and ink, and consequently their chromaticity coordinates would be on the straight line connecting the colors of the paper and ink. However, it is typically observed that the chromaticity coordinate points of single ink halftones lie on a gentle curve other than on the straight line. This non-linearity suggests an existence of a third primary color that is involved in color reproduction of single ink halftones. This article describes the model in which reflectance spectra of halftones are represented by …

Analyzing Transformation-Based Simulation Metamodels, Maria Irizarry, Michael Kuhl, Emily Lada

Articles

To analyze a simulation (response surface) metamodel that involves a variance-stabilizing transformation of the original simulation- generated response, we present two techniques. In the first technique we compute an approximate percentile-type confidence interval for the mean of the original response at a selected factor-level combination (design point) as follows: we compute the usual confidence interval for the mean of the transformed response at that design point; and then we untransform the corresponding endpoints to obtain the desired confidence interval for the untransformed metamodel. In the second technique we compute the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) for the mean of the untransformed …

Incentives Versus Standards: Properties Of Accounting Income In Four East Asian Countries, Ray Ball, Ashok Robin, Shuang Wu

Articles

The East Asian counties Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand provide rare insight into the interaction between accounting standards and the incentives of managers and auditors. Their standards derive from common law sources (UK, US, and IAS) that are widely viewed as higher quality than code law standards. However, their preparers' incentives imply low quality. We show their financial reporting quality is not higher than under code law, with quality operationalized as timely recognition of economic income (particularly losses). It is

One-Way Permutations And Self-Witnessing Languages, Christopher Homan, Mayur Thakur

Articles

A desirable property of one-way functions is that they be total, one-to-one, and onto—in other words, that they be permutations. We prove that one-way permutations exist exactly if PaUP-coUP: This provides the first characterization of the existence of one-way permutations based on a complexity-class separation and shows that their existence is equivalent to a number of previously studied complexity theoretic hypotheses. We study permutations in the context of witness functions of nondeterministic Turing machines. A language is in PermUP if, relative to some unambiguous, nondeterministic, polynomial-time Turing machine accepting the language, the function mapping each string to its unique witness …

Knowledge Content And Worker Participation In Environmental Management At Nummi, Sandra Rothenberg

Articles

This paper looks at, within the context of lean production, how and in what ways employees participative work structures, New United Motor Manufacturing (NUMMI), to look more closely at the dynamics of worker participation in environmental management (i.e. management of pollution and waste). Finding show that while workers possess important contextual knowledge, the importance of process, intra-organizational and external knowledge make the role of specialist staff (both internal and external to the environmental function) critically important for environmental improvements. Additionally, environmental improvements often required a combination of more than one knowledge type. The paper discusses how the culture and management …

New Evidence On The Market For Directors: Board Membership And Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1310, Jeffrey Coles, Chun-Keung Hoi

Articles

We examine the relation between a board's decision to reject antitakeover provisions of Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1310 and subsequent labor market opportunities of those same board members. Compared to directors retaining all provisions, directors rejecting all protective provisions of SB1310 are three times as likely to gain additional external directorships and are 30 percent more likely to retain their internal slot on the board of that same Pennsylvania company. For external board seats, the results are driven by nonexecutive directors who are not members of the management team; for internal board seats, the results are driven by executive directors.

Pictorial Offset Corporation: Simultaneous Iso 9002 And 14001 Registration, Sandra Rothenberg, Monica Becker

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Pictorial Offset Corporation was the first company in the world to obtain simultaneous certification for ISO 9002 and 14001 in 1998 and ISO 9001 and 14001 in 2002. This family-owned and operated lithographic printer in Carlstadt, New Jersey traces its history back to 1938, and operated with more than an average level of environmental concern for a firm at that time. In the 1980s, however, what began with a straightforward examination of how chemicals were used in the firm ended with an acute understanding of the links between environmental management, wast generation and the bottom line. While most firms adopting …

The Impact Of Technostress On Role Stress And Productivity, Monideepa Tarafdar, Qiang Tu, T.S. Ragu-Nathan

Articles

Based on empirical survey data, this paper uses concepts from sociotechnical theory and role theory to explore the effects of stress created by informatino and computer technology (ICT) - that is, "technostress" - on role stress and on stress in user and identify factors that creat technostress. We next propose three hypotheses: (1) technostress is inversely related to individual productivity, (2) role stress is inversely related to individual productivity, and (3) technostress is directly related to role stress. We then use strucutral equation modeling on survey data from ICT users in 223 organizations to test the hypotheses. The results show …

Social Care Portfolio: An Aid To Integrated Learning And Reflection, Gay Graham, Bridgit Megarry

Articles

The focus of the paper is on the use of a specifically designed portfolio in social care training as an aid to both integrated learning and reflection. Integrated learning is achieved through the use of discrete sections in the portfolio which require students to discuss their practice placement agencies from perspectives that demonstrate their understanding of subjects such as theories and practices of social care, psychology, social policy, legal studies. Reflection, which is considered a core element of social care training, is examined as a learning tool. A model for the promotion of reflection is presented which utilises peer learning, …

Bridging The Ict Gap: A Study Of Uk Online Centres, John Cook, Matt Smith

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An initiative to create about 6,000 UK online centres aims to bridge the gap between those in society who have access to and are able to use information and communication technologies competently, and those who do not. UK online centres can be seen as networked community learning entities, playing an expanding role in formal and informal community-based learning.

The study described below provides a detailed snapshot of what was happening in UK online centres in the first nine months of 2002. The goal was to gain an improved understanding of the social context of the centres, and issues around the …

An Introduction To The Life And Works Of Jean Sulivan (1913-1980), Eamon Maher

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No abstract provided.

Ireland's Chance To Sway Security Policy In The Eu, Tom Clonan

Articles

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's call for highly mobile, rapidly deployable UN 'battle groups' reflects a growing requirement worldwide for what are termed 'third generation' peace-enforcement operations. First and second generation operations would typically describe the 'classical' UN peacekeeping mission mounted during the Cold War. Such operations dating between the 1940's and 1990's were normally deployed with UN Security Council approval and with the prior consent of the belligerent parties involved. The political maneuvering necessary to secure such consent allied with the typically large numbers of peacekeepers deployed during this period normally meant that it was usually several months, even …

Mission Impossible: The Us Military Cannot Provide Security In Iraq, Tom Clonan

Articles

The acronym METTS is familiar to military commanders the world over. METTS consists of a problem solving approach to military scenarios under the following headings; Mission, Enemy, Troops, Terrain, Space and time. When applied to the situation facing US commanders in Iraq - as the June 30th deadline for transition to power expires - many challenges become apparent. In terms of mission, the situation is complex. The military are favourably predisposed to simple mission statements that contain clearly articulated aims and objectives within a definite time-frame. The invasion phase of the war in Iraq was a classic example of such …

Us Situation In Iraq: Comparison With Vietnam, Tom Clonan

Articles

The acronym METTS is familiar to military commanders the world over. METTS consists of a problem solving approach to military scenarios under the following headings; Mission, Enemy, Troops, Terrain, Space and time. When applied to the situation facing US commanders in Iraq - as the June 30th deadline for transition to power expires - many challenges become apparent. In terms of mission, the situation is complex. The military are favourably predisposed to simple mission statements that contain clearly articulated aims and objectives within a definite time-frame. The invasion phase of the war in Iraq was a classic example of such …

Shaping Leisure/Tourism Places:The Role Of Holiday Home Owners: A Case Study Of Courtown, Co. Wexford, Ireland, Ziene Mottiar, Bernadette Quinn

Articles

This article investigates the role played by holiday home owners in shaping leisure / tourism places. Having reviewed recent trends in the holiday home literature, the paper argues the literature has failed to adequately consider how this group of actors can play a role in developing leisure / tourism places. The research is case study based and reports the findings of a study undertaken in Courtown, a small seaside resort in the Republic of Ireland. Specifically, it investigates the role that holiday home owners played in a controversy that arose with respect to developing tourism accommodation in an area of …