Contrasts among Bidirectional Reflectance of Leaves, Canopies, and Soils

The apparent brightness of a natural surface depends on the characteristics and direction of incident radiation, surface radiative properties, and the direction from which the surface is viewed. The bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDF) for soils, vegetation canopies, and individual leaves have common features that arise from an anisotropic diffuse scattered component as well as specular reflections from irregular surfaces. The diffuse scattered component, however, tends to dominate canopy and soil BRDF's where as specular reflection tends to dominate leaf BRDF's. In this paper, simple models are presented for predicting soil and canopy BRDF's, and predicted results are compared with some measurements. This effort represents an attempt to illustrate the important features that cause observed BRDF's. The results of the models are compared with a simple three coefficient empirical equation that may be easier to invert than the causitive models so that radiation measurements can be used to obtain surface features. Some BRDF measurements from corn and soybean leaves provide a contrast for canopy and soil distributions, and also provide needed leaf properties that are important to vegetation canopy models. The knowledge of soil, canopy, and leaf BRDF's is combined into a single model, called Cupid, to predict the resultant BRDF of complex natural surfaces.     

Developments in Single-Mode Fiber Design, Materials, and Performance at Bell Laboratories

Some aspects of single-mode fiber research and development at Bell Laboratories are presented. The most recent evolution in single-mode fiber design and fabrication technology has resulted in a fiber in which mode size and zero dispersion wavelength can be independently chosen at a fixed cutoff wavelength.     

Color to gray and back: color embedding into textured gray images.

We have developed a reversible method to convert color graphics and pictures to gray images. The method is based on mapping colors to low-visibility high-frequency textures that are applied onto the gray image. After receiving a monochrome textured image, the decoder can identify the textures and recover the color information. More specifically, the image is textured by carrying a subband (wavelet) transform and replacing bandpass subbands by the chrominance signals. The low-pass subband is the same as that of the luminance signal. The decoder performs a wavelet transform on the received gray image and recovers the chrominance channels. The intent is to print color images with black and white printers and to be able to recover the color information afterwards. Registration problems are discussed and examples are presented.     

Power and politics: electricity trade in Eastern Europe

Changes in Europe have opened the way for greatly increased trade in electricity between Eastern and Western Europe. The author looks at the infrastructure in place in Europe. In particular the author discusses the electricity trading groups and east-west exchanges. The nations of central Europe are in a strategic location regarding power exchange. Their electricity systems are briefly discussed. The growth in electricity demand and the role of Russia are also discussed     

European television: politics and broadcasting in the EuropeanCommunity

The paper takes the European media revolution as its starting point and traces the history of the European Community's (EC's) first major legislation on audiovisual internationalization and deregulation-the `television without frontiers' directive on broadcasting. Specifically, the aims of the EC's audiovisual policy are characterized as tenuously resolving two conflicting models of broadcast regulation-the trusteeship model and the marketplace model. An evaluation of the `television without frontiers' directive on broadcasting highlights the politics of compromise at play in the EC's regulation of its audiovisual sector     

Fiber Optic Placing, Splicing, Testing, and Cable Design Experience at Bell Canada

Bell Canada has passed the stage of field trials and is now into the day-to-day operations, maintenance, and installation of FD-135 (135 Mbit/s) fiber optic transmission systems. The outside plant cables are manufactured by Northern Telecom and consist of a central stranded steel strength member with an extruded plastic slotted profile. Fibers, as well as two copper pairs which are used for servicing purposes and pressure monitoring, are loosely placed in the slots. Manually cleaved fibers are spliced with a V-groove alignment fusion set and are protected by a plastic splice package. Splice packages are inserted in an orderly fashion into an organizer tray which is then placed into a plastic closure allowing for pressurization and easy access of the cable. This paper provides an overview of the outside plant hardware and describes the various installation, splicing, and cable testing techniques that have been successfully used by Bell Canada.     

Energy policy and politics in China

In this paper the authors describe how, although sensitive to pollution's threat, China's political leaders have little room for manoeuvre and see worry about greenhouse gases as an ill-affordable luxury in terms of coal-fired electricity generation     

The end of AT&T: Ma Bell may be gone, but its innovations are everywhere

This paper looks back at AT&T's unparalleled history of research and innovation in the field of telecommunications following its acquisition by SBC Communications Inc. During the company's heyday, from 1925 to the mid-1980s, AT&T through Bell Labs brought us innovations and discoveries that changed the way we live and broadened our understanding of the universe. The list of innovations features many of the milestone developments of the 20th century including the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, fiber optics, and satellite communications. When it was a regulated monopoly, the company could afford to conduct risky future-oriented research. But as an ordinary corporation competing for customer dollars after its breakup and later spin-off, AT&T could no longer afford such luxury.     

Meta-imaging, The War Room, and the hyperreality of U.S. politics

In this essay we explore a new form of political communication, the meta-image , or the communicative act whereby political campaigns and their chroniclers publicly display and foreground the art and practice of political image construction. We examine a compelling example of meta-imaging-the 1993 film, The War Room . We identify how the film functions as a reflection of the hyperreality of U.S. politics. We then argue that The War Room , through the use of naturalized military metaphors, works toward the edification of image making as a normative campaign process and a reaffirmation of U.S. national identity.     

Stability of black, gray, and bright nonlinear guided waves in athin film bounded by a self-defocusing medium

Stability of nonlinear guided waves trapped in a thin linear film bounded by an infinite self-defocusing nonlinear medium is investigated. In addition to the trapped black and gray nonlinear guided waves, the existence of a novel class of bright nonlinear guided waves (with nonzero intensity background) is demonstrated. The gray and fundamental bright nonlinear guided waves are found stable whereas the black nonlinear guided waves are unstable to an asymmetric perturbation (but stable to a symmetric perturbation). The instability of the black nonlinear guided waves is shown to develop into various states, including stable gray and bright nonlinear guided waves, depending on initial excitations