Compact Deep Color Features for Remote Sensing Scene Classification

Neural Processing Letters - Aerial scene classification is a challenging problem in understanding high-resolution remote sensing images. Most recent aerial scene classification approaches are based...     

On-Line Characterization of Morphology and Water Adsorption on Fumed Silica Nanoparticles

The first wetting layer on solid nanoparticles has direct implications on the roles these particles play in industrial processes and technological applications as well as in the atmosphere. We present a technique for online measurements of the adsorption of the first few water layers onto insoluble aerosol nanoparticles. Atomized fumed silica nanoparticles were dispersed from aqueous suspension and their hygroscopic growth factors (HGF) and number of the adsorbed water layers at subsaturated conditions were measured using a nanometer hygroscopic tandem differential mobility analyzer (HTDMA). Particle morphology was characterized by electron microscopy and particle density was determined by mobility analysis. The HGFs of the size-selected particles at mobility diameters from 10 to 50 nm at 90% relative humidity (RH) varied from 1.05 to 1.24, corresponding to 2–6 layers of adsorbed water. The morphology of the generated fumed silica nanoparticles varied from spheres at 8–10 nm to agglomerates at larger diameters with effective density from 1.7 to 0.8 g/cm³ and fractal dimension of 2.6. The smallest spheres and agglomerates had the highest HGFs. The smallest particles with diameters of 8 and 10 nm adsorbed two to three water layers in subsaturated conditions, which agreed well with the Frenkel, Halsey, and Hill (FHH) isotherm fitting. In comparison to the small spheres or large agglomerates, the compact agglomerate structure containing a few primary particles increased the number of adsorbed water layers by a factor of ～1.5. This was probably caused by the capillary effect on the small cavities between the primary particles in the agglomerate.     

Challenges in integrating requirements management with PLM

Nowadays, requirements management (RQM) is mostly not included in the current structures of product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, although RQM has become a critical activity throughout the PLM. Customer requirements with all related product information need not only be integrated with each other, but with all processes and stakeholders involved through the related business functions of product lifecycle. In this paper, we examine the various challenges of RQM, especially related to PLM. Company-specific challenges are identified, when integrating RQM with PLM in a case company acting in the automotive industry. The objective of this study is to find out how product-related information on customer requirements could better be utilised and integrated with PLM. We propose a new integration framework according to which the challenges at different integration levels are categorised. As a final conclusion, the study shows the core points where and how the concepts of PLM and RQM should be developed, as to create requirements integrated solutions for extended products and systems through the lifecycle.     

Research Challenges for 3G and Paving the Way for Emerging New Generations

The first third-generation (3G) systems are going to be implemented within the year 2001. Academia and industry are, however, already looking for means to improve the system performance further. Spectral efficiency and higher data rate are the goal. In order to achieve this goal, several means have to be combined. The most important of these are interference cancellation and multiuser detection, optimum space-time processing and adaptive modulation and coding. In the future several wireless systems having different performance characteristics, system structure and parameters will exist. This heterogeneity will make the seamless handover from system to system difficult if not appropriately solved. 4G (fourth generation) is an acronym without any generally accepted concept. We describe some desirable goals and features of the 4G systems.     

Synthesis of cobalt nanoparticles to enhance magnetic permeability of metal–polymer composites

Metallic cobalt nanoparticles were synthesized by hydrogen reduction method. Particles were coated in situ with carbon by adding ethene to reaction flow. Particles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray emission, X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence and BET method. The observed cobalt particle size distributions in different cobalt batches produced with unvarying reaction parameters was reproducible: The mean diameter of primary cobalt particle varied only 5% from the mean value of 76 nm in different batches. Increased carbon precursor concentration decreased mean diameter of cobalt particles to 17 nm. The produced nanoparticles were used as filler material in 0–3 type metal–polymer composites. Composite samples with varying filler loading were fabricated with mixing extrusion and injection moulding techniques. The magnetic properties of the fabricated composites were measured up to 1 GHz. In order to analyse the particle distribution in composite matrix and its effect on magnetic properties the microstructure was studied.     

LZgrep: a Boyer–Moore string matching tool for Ziv–Lempel compressed text

We present a Boyer–Moore (BM) approach to string matching over LZ78 and LZW compressed text. The idea is to search the text directly in compressed form instead of decompressing and then searching it. We modify the BM approach so as to skip text using the characters explicitly represented in the LZ78/LZW formats, modifying the basic technique where the algorithm can choose which characters to inspect. We present and compare several solutions for single and multipattern searches. We show that our algorithms obtain speedups of up to 50% compared to the simple decompress‐then‐search approach. Finally, we present a public tool, LZgrep, which uses our algorithms to offer grep‐like capabilities directly searching files compressed using Unix's Compress, a LZW compressor. LZgrep can also search files compressed with Unix gzip, using new decompress‐then‐search techniques we develop, which are faster than the current tools. This way, users can always keep their files in compressed form and still search them, uncompressing only when they want to see them. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toxicological characterization of particulate emissions from straw,Miscanthus, and poplar pellet combustion in residential boilers

Wood pellets have been used in domestic heating appliances for three decades. However, because the share of renewable energy for heating will likely rise over the next several years, alternative biomass fuels, such as short-rotation coppice or energy crops, will be utilized. We tested particulate emissions from the combustion of standard softwood pellets and three alternative pellets (poplar, Miscanthus sp., and wheat straw) for their ability to induce inflammatory, cytotoxic, and genotoxic responses in a mouse macrophage cell line. Our results showed clear differences in the chemical composition of the emissions, which was reflected in the toxicological effects. Standard softwood and straw pellet combustion resulted in the lowest PM₁ mass emissions. Miscanthus sp. and poplar combustion emissions were approximately three times higher. Emissions from the herbaceous biomass pellets contained higher amounts of chloride and organic carbon than the emissions from standard softwood pellet combustion. Additionally, the emissions of the poplar pellet combustion contained the highest concentration of metals. The emissions from the biomass alternatives caused significantly higher genotoxicity than the emissions from the standard softwood pellets. Moreover, straw pellet emissions caused higher inflammation than the other samples. Regarding cytotoxicity, the differences between the samples were smaller. Relative toxicity was generally highest for the poplar and Miscanthus sp. samples, as their emission factors were much higher. Thus, in addition to possible technical problems, alternative pellet materials may cause higher emissions and toxicity. The long-term use of alternative fuels in residential-scale appliances will require technological developments in both burners and filtration.

Copyright © 2016 American Association for Aerosol Research     

Low-dose computerized tomography of the jaw bone in pre-implantation diagnosis. Limits of dose reduction and accuracy of distance measurements

This commentary on the issues and challenges related to the provision of sex education in US schools opens by using a 1997 action of the Franklin County, North Carolina, school board as an example of the controversy. In this case, the school board ordered the removal of chapters on sex behavior, contraception, AIDS, and sexually transmitted diseases from its 9th grade health text book to comply with a new state law requiring public schools to teach sexual abstinence until marriage. While most US adults approve of sex education in schools, the abstinence-only movement has orchestrated a highly organized, successful campaign to remove information from schools and has garnered a $250 million commitment from the federal government to promote abstinence until marriage as part of welfare reform efforts. The commentary continues with a review of efforts to undermine sexuality education starting in the 1960s and sketches the current state of sex education efforts. The next section looks at the new strategy used by sex education opponents, which led them to refocus efforts on local school boards and state legislatures instead of national policies. Remaining topics include the other tactics used by sex education opponents, the heightened fear of teachers to discuss controversial subjects, the lack of teacher training to discuss sexuality, and the consequences of this situation in the classroom. Recommendations to redress this situation include improving professional training, forming local advisory committees, encouraging parental involvement, and promoting the benefits of comprehensive programs.     

Scale coding bag of deep features for human attribute and action recognition

Most approaches to human attribute and action recognition in still images are based on image representation in which multi-scale local features are pooled across scale into a single, scale-invariant encoding. Both in bag-of-words and the recently popular representations based on convolutional neural networks, local features are computed at multiple scales. However, these multi-scale convolutional features are pooled into a single scale-invariant representation. We argue that entirely scale-invariant image representations are sub-optimal and investigate approaches to scale coding within a bag of deep features framework. Our approach encodes multi-scale information explicitly during the image encoding stage. We propose two strategies to encode multi-scale information explicitly in the final image representation. We validate our two scale coding techniques on five datasets: Willow, PASCAL VOC 2010, PASCAL VOC 2012, Stanford-40 and Human Attributes (HAT-27). On all datasets, the proposed scale coding approaches outperform both the scale-invariant method and the standard deep features of the same network. Further, combining our scale coding approaches with standard deep features leads to consistent improvement over the state of the art.