可见光与红外图像融合质量评价指标分析

目的 客观评价作为图像融合的重要研究领域,是评价融合算法性能的有力工具。目前,已有几十种不同类型的评价指标,但各应用领域包括可见光与红外图像融合,仍缺少统一的选择依据。为了方便比较不同融合算法性能,提出一种客观评价指标的通用分析方法并应用于可见光与红外图像融合。方法 将可见光与红外图像基准数据集中的客观评价指标分为两类,分别是基于融合图像的评价指标与基于源图像和融合图像的评价指标。采用Kendall相关系数分析融合指标间的相关性,聚类得到指标分组;采用Borda计数排序法统计算法的综合排序,分析单一指标排序和综合排序的相关性,得到一致性较高的指标集合;采用离散系数分析指标均值随不同算法的波动程度,选择充分体现不同算法间差异的指标;综合相关性分析、一致性分析及离散系数分析,总结具有代表性的建议指标集合。结果 在13对彩色可见光与红外和8对灰度可见光与红外两组图像源中,分别统计分析不同图像融合算法的客观评价数据,得到可见光与红外图像融合的建议指标集(标准差、边缘保持度),作为融合算法性能评估的重要参考。相较于现有方法,实验覆盖20种融合算法和13种客观评价指标,并且不依赖主观评价结果。结论...     

A general unified framework for pairwise comparison matrices in multicriterial methods

In a multicriteria decision making context, a pairwise comparison matrix A = (a_ij) is a helpful tool to determine the weighted ranking on a set X of alternatives or criteria. The entry a_ij of the matrix can assume different meanings: a_ij can be a preference ratio (multiplicative case) or a preference difference (additive case) or a_ij belongs to [0, 1] and measures the distance from the indifference that is expressed by 0.5 (fuzzy case). For the multiplicative case, a consistency index for the matrix A has been provided by T.L. Saaty in terms of maximum eigenvalue. We consider pairwise comparison matrices over an abelian linearly ordered group and, in this way, we provide a general framework including the mentioned cases. By introducing a more general notion of metric, we provide a consistency index that has a natural meaning and it is easy to compute in the additive and multiplicative cases; in the other cases, it can be computed easily starting from a suitable additive or multiplicative matrix. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Assessing the capability of broadband indices derived from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager to monitor above ground biomass and salinity in semiarid saline environments of the Bahía Blanca Estuary,Argentina

In arid and semi-arid ecosystems, salinisation and desertification are the most common processes of land degradation, and satellite data may provide a valuable tool to assess land surface condition and vegetation status. The aim of this study was to evaluate the capability of Landsat 8 OLI (Operational Land Imager) remote sensing information and broadband indices derived from it, to monitor above ground biomass (AGB) and salinity in two different semiarid saline environments (unit a and unit b) in the Bahía Blanca Estuary. Unit a (Ua) is composed of bushes of Cyclolepis genistoides in association with Atriplex undulata and 41% of bare soil. Unit b (Ub) is composed of dense thickets of Allenrolfea patagonica in association with C. genistoides and 34% of bare soil. Pearson’s correlation analyses were performed between field estimates of AGB and salinity (soil salinity and interstitial water salinity) and remote sensing estimates. Satellite data include surface reflectance of individual bands, vegetation indices (NDVI [normalised difference vegetation index], SAVI [soil-adjusted vegetation index], MSAVI2 [modified soil-adjusted vegetation index], NDII [normalised difference infrared index], GNDVI [green normalised difference vegetation index], GRNDI [green-red normalised difference index], OSAVI [optimised soil-adjusted vegetation index], SR [simple ratio]), and salinity indices (SI1, SI2, SI3 [salinity index 1, 2 and 3, respectively] and BI [brightness index]). Correlation analyses involving AGB were performed twice; first considering all months and then again excluding the months with higher soil salinities. In Ua, soil adjusted vegetation indices SAVI and MSAVI2 showed to be suitable to detect changes in the total green AGB and C. genistoides green AGB (the major contributor to total green AGB). After excluding data from December and January (the months with the highest soil salinity), green AGB of A. undulata also showed a significant positive correlation with soil adjusted indices SAVI, MSAVI2 and OSAVI. Although proportionally this species was not a large contributor to the total biomass, it is characterised by a high leaf reflectance, which makes it suitable for biomass retrieval. In Ub, significant positive correlations were obtained between NDVI, SAVI, NDII, OSAVI and SR indices and the AGB green ratio, but significant negative correlations were obtained between A. patagonica red AGB and these vegetation indices. When December and January were excluded from the analysis the negative correlations between vegetation indices NDVI, OSAVI and SR and red AGB remained significant (r = ?0.68, ?0.76 and ?0.7, respectively). The positive correlations between these indices and AGB green ratio (r = 0.73, 0.78 and 0.75, respectively) remained significant as well. Significant negative correlations were also found between NDVI, NDII, GNDVI, OSAVI and SR indices and field salinity estimates. As soil salinisation induces A. patagonica reddening, red AGB and soil salinity covariate in the field, and the negative correlation with vegetation indices may be useful to retrieve information on both variables combined, which are indicative of water stress. Correlation analysis between field estimates of salinity and spectral salinity indices showed significant positive correlation for all the tested indices. The obtained results highlight the importance of a thoughtful selection of remote sensing indices to account for changes in vegetation biomass, especially in arid and semiarid environments particularly sensitive to desertification and salinisation. Also, ground truth cannot be overlooked, and field work is necessary to test index performance in every case.     

SAIL: Structure-aware indexing for effective and progressive top-k keyword search over XML documents

Keyword search in XML documents has recently gained a lot of research attention. Given a keyword query, existing approaches first compute the lowest common ancestors (LCAs) or their variants of XML elements that contain the input keywords, and then identify the subtrees rooted at the LCAs as the answer. In this the paper we study how to use the rich structural relationships embedded in XML documents to facilitate the processing of keyword queries. We develop a novel method, called SAIL, to index such structural relationships for efficient XML keyword search. We propose the concept of minimal-cost trees to answer keyword queries and devise structure-aware indices to maintain the structural relationships for efficiently identifying the minimal-cost trees. For effectively and progressively identifying the top-k answers, we develop techniques using link-based relevance ranking and keyword-pair-based ranking. To reduce the index size, we incorporate a numbering scheme, namely schema-aware dewey code, into our structure-aware indices. Experimental results on real data sets show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches significantly, in both answer quality and search efficiency.     

Full-body interface pressure testing as a method for performance evaluation of clinical support surfaces

A method for evaluating the performance of clinical support surfaces is required by designers in their efforts to produce better clinical support surfaces that will reduce the incidence of pressure ulcers. In this study, a Pressure Index (P_index) is defined which is derived from an analytical equation used to evaluate the average interface pressure, the peak pressure, the magnitude of the peak pressure, and the number of peak pressures on the entire body. The type of subjects needed to represent a population of users as well as the head of bed elevations necessary to simulate clinical applications were integrated with the P_index to create a single-value mean pressure index which can be used to evaluate any type of surface. To determine the accuracy and repeatability of the mean pressure index, three surfaces (a standard hospital innerspring, a replacement foam mattress, and a low-airloss surface) were tested and evaluated using this method. The low airloss performed the best and the standard innerspring clearly performed the worst (p < 0.0001). The method appeared to accurately and reproducibly predict the relative performance of the three surfaces in reducing pressure.     

L 2-optimal identification of MIMO errors-in-variables models from the v-gap geometrical interpretation

An L ₂-optimal identification method is extended to cope with MIMO errors-in-variables (EIV) model estimation based on a geometrical interpretation for the v-gap metric. The L ₂-optimal approximate models are composed of system and noise models and characterised by a normalised right graph symbol (NRGS) and its complementary inner factor (CIF), respectively. This metric can be evaluated as the supreme of sine values of the maximal principal angles between NRGS frequency responses of two concerned models. In order to make full use of the angular cosine formula for complex vectors to reduce computational loads, a CIF of the NRGS of the perturbed model is introduced and thus, the system parameter optimisation can be efficiently solved by sequential quadratic programming methods. With the estimated system model, the associated noise model can be built by right multiplication of an inner matrix. Finally, a simulation example demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed identification method.     

A new three-band spectral index for mitigating the saturation in the estimation of leaf area index in wheat

The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a commonly used index for monitoring crop growth status. Previous studies have shown that the leaf area index (LAI) estimation based on NDVI is limited by saturation that occurs under conditions of relatively dense canopies (LAI > 2 m² m^–2). To reduce the saturation effect, we suggested new spectral indices through the spectral indices approach. The results suggested that the two-band normalized difference spectral index (NDSI = ((ρ_{940 –} ρ₇₃₀) /(ρ₉₄₀ + ρ₇₃₀))) resulted from the two-band spectral indices approach and the three-band modified normalized difference spectral index (mNDSI = ((ρ_{940 –} 0.8 × ρ₉₅₀) – ρ₇₃₀) /((ρ_{940 –} 0.8 × ρ₉₅₀) + ρ₇₃₀)) resulted from the three-band spectral indices approach, and they were able to mitigate saturation and improve the LAI prediction with a determination coefficient (R²) of 0.77 and 0.78, respectively. In the validation based on data from independent experiments, these new indices exhibited an accuracy with relative root mean square error (RRMSE) lower than 23.38% and bias higher than –0.40. These accuracies were significantly higher than those obtained with some existing indices with good performance in LAI estimation, such as the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) (RRMSE = 30.19%, bias = –0.34) and the modified triangular vegetation index 2 (MTVI2) (RRMSE = 29.30%, bias = –0.28), and the indices with the ability to mitigate the saturation, such as the wide dynamic range vegetation index (WDRVI) (RRMSE = 31.37%, bias = –0.54), the red-edge wide dynamic range vegetation index (red-edge WDRVI) (RRMSE = 26.34%, bias = –0.54), and the normalized difference red-edge index (NDRE) (RRMSE = 28.41%, bias = –0.56). Additionally, these new indices were more sensitive under moderate to high LAI conditions (between 2 and 8 m² m^–2). Between these two new developed spectral indices, there was no significant difference in the accuracy and sensitivity assessments. Considering the index structure and convenience in application, we demonstrated that the two-band spectral index NDSI((ρ_{940 –} ρ₇₃₀) /(ρ₉₄₀ + ρ₇₃₀)) is efficient in mitigating saturation and has considerable potential for estimating the LAI of canopies throughout the entire growing season of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), whereas the three-band spectral index contributes lesser in the saturation mitigation provided the red-edge band has been contained.     

Your comments matter: incorporating viewers’ comments for ranking online video content using bibliometrics

ABSTRACT

The quality of user-generated content over World Wide Web media is a matter of serious concern for both creators and users. To measure the quality of content, webometric techniques are commonly used. In recent times, bibliometric techniques have been introduced to good effect for evaluation of the quality of user-generated content, which were originally used for scholarly data. However, the application of bibliometric techniques to evaluate the quality of YouTube content is limited to h-index and g-index considering only views. This paper advocates for and demonstrates the adaptation of existing Bibliometric indices including h-index, g-index and M-index exploiting both views and comments and proposes three indices h_vc, g_vc and m_vc for YouTube video channel ranking. The empirical results prove that the proposed indices using views along with the comments outperform the existing approaches on a real-world dataset of YouTube.     

A novel reversible data hiding scheme by introducing current state codebook and prediction strategy for joint neighboring coding

Reversible data hiding (RDH) in compression domain is an important research issue in the security of digital multimedia. Obtaining a high embedding rate and a low compression rate are the main goals of compression domain RDH. This paper proposes a novel RDH scheme to improve joint neighboring coding (JNC) scheme. In embedding process, the first index SC _1st in current state codebook (SC) and median edge detector (MED) prediction P _med are exploited. These two parameters are employed to replace the right-up and left-up neighboring SMVQ indices, which have lower correlation with the current index. As a result, a more concentrated distribution of difference “d” is obtained. Difference “d” is computed by the difference between the current SMVQ index and its left, upper neighboring indices, P _med and SC _1st after embedding secret bits. The experimental results show that our work achieves the average compression rate of 0.45/0.51/0.57 bpp and the average embedding efficiency of 0.28/0.36/0.43 after embedding 2/3/4 bits secret data into each SMVQ index. As demonstrated in the comparative results, it can be observed that the proposed scheme outperforms the other previous works.

     

Compressibility indices of saturated clays by group method of data handling and genetic algorithms

Compression index (C _c) and recompression index (C _r) are used to estimate the consolidation settlement of fine-grained soils. As the determination of these indices from oedometer test is relatively time-consuming, in present research group method of data handling-type neural network optimized using genetic algorithms is used to estimate the compressibility indices (C _c and C _r) of saturated clays. C _c and C _r were modeled as a function of three variables including the initial void ratio (e ₀), liquid limit (LL) and specific gravity (G _s). Three hundred data sets collected from multiple sites in the province of Mazandaran, Iran, were used for the training and testing of the models. The predicted compressibility indices were compared with those of experimentally measured values to evaluate the performances of the proposed models. The results showed that appreciable improvement toward other correlations has been achieved. At the end, sensitivity analyses of the obtained models were carried out to evaluate the influence of input parameters on model outputs and showed that e ₀ and LL are the most influential parameters on C _c and C _r, respectively. Also, it has been demonstrated that the compressibility indices predicted by models are considerably influenced by changing measured G _s (uncertainty). In other words, the mean absolute percent error values increase greatly by G _s variation. Therefore, it needs more accuracy to measure this parameter in the laboratory.

     

Vapour sensing with conductive polymer nanocomposites (CPC): Polycarbonate-carbon nanotubes transducers with hierarchical structure processed by spray layer by layer

The development of conductive polymer nanocomposite (CPC) sensors for volatile organic compounds (VOC) detection has been carried out using a spray layer by layer (LbL) process. This technique was successfully used to hierarchically structure polycarbonate-multiwall carbon nanotubes (PC-CNT) solutions into a double percolated architecture as attested by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical microscopy (OM). PC-CNT vapour sensing behaviour was investigated as a function of CNT content, films thickness, vapour flow and vapours solubility parameter. The response ranking A_r(toluene) > A_r(methanol) > A_r(water) of PC-CNT was found to be coherent with κ₁₂ Flory–Huggins interaction parameters provided that signals are normalised by analyte molecules number. Signals shape was interpreted to the light of Langmuir–Henry–Clustering (LHC) model and found to be proportional to vapour content.     

Detection of stressed oil palms from an airborne sensor using optimized spectral indices

Existing vegetation indices and red-edge techniques have been widely used for the assessment of vegetation status and vegetation health from remote-sensing instruments. This study proposed and applied optimized Airborne Imaging Spectrometer for Applications (AISA) airborne hyperspectral indices in assessing and mapping stressed oil palm trees. Six vegetation indices, four red-edge techniques, a standard supervised classifier and three optimized AISA spectral indices were compared in mapping diseased oil palms using AISA airborne hyperspectral imagery. The optimized AISA spectral indices algorithms used newly defined reflectance values at wavelength locations of 734 nm (near-infrared (NIR)) and 616 nm (red). The selection of these two bands was based on laboratory statistical analysis using field spectroradiometer reflectance data. These two bands were then applied to the AISA airborne hyperspectral imagery using the three optimized algorithms for AISA data. The newly formulated AISA hyperspectral indices were D2 = R ₆₁₆/R ₇₃₄, normalized difference vegetation index a (NDVIa)?=?(R ₇₃₄ – R ₆₁₆)/(R ₇₃₄?+?R ₆₁₆) and transformed vegetation index a (TVIa)?=?((NDVIa?+?0.5)/(abs (NDVIa?+?0.5))?×?[abs (NDVIa?+?0.5)]^1/2. The classification results from the optimized AISA hyperspectral indices were compared with the other techniques and the optimized AISA spectral indices obtained the highest overall accuracy. D2 and NDVIa obtained 86% of overall accuracy followed by TVIa with 84% of overall accuracy.     

Robust satisfactory fault-tolerant control of uncertain linear discrete-time systems: an LMI approach

Fault-tolerant control is an important issue in practical systems. Based on satisfactory control and estimation theory, a passive fault-tolerant control strategy is proposed for a class of uncertain linear discrete-time systems in this article. Manipulating linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique, robust fault-tolerant state-feedback controllers are designed which take the possible actuator faults and sensor faults into consideration, respectively. The closed-loop systems are guaranteed by the designed controllers to meet the required constraints on regional pole index φ(q, r), steady-state variance matrix X index and control-cost function V ²(u) index simultaneously. Then, whether possible faults occur or not, the closed-loop systems would maintain the three desirable performance indices accordingly. Meanwhile, the consistency of the performance indices mentioned earlier is also discussed for fault-tolerant control.     

Structural optimization of a full-text <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-gram index using relational normalization

As the amount of text data grows explosively, an efficient index structure for large text databases becomes ever important. The n-gram inverted index (simply, the n-gram index) has been widely used in information retrieval or in approximate string matching due to its two major advantages: language-neutral and error-tolerant. Nevertheless, the n-gram index also has drawbacks: the size tends to be very large, and the performance of queries tends to be bad. In this paper, we propose the two-level n-gram inverted index (simply, the n-gram/2L index) that significantly reduces the size and improves the query performance by using the relational normalization theory. We first identify that, in the (full-text) n-gram index, there exists redundancy in the position information caused by a non-trivial multivalued dependency. The proposed index eliminates such redundancy by constructing the index in two levels: the front-end index and the back-end index. We formally prove that this two-level construction is identical to the relational normalization process. We call this process structural optimization of the n-gram index. The n-gram/2L index has excellent properties: (1) it significantly reduces the size and improves the performance compared with the n-gram index with these improvements becoming more marked as the database size gets larger; (2) the query processing time increases only very slightly as the query length gets longer. Experimental results using real databases of 1 GB show that the size of the n-gram/2L index is reduced by up to 1.9–2.4 times and, at the same time, the query performance is improved by up to 13.1 times compared with those of the n-gram index. We also compare the n-gram/2L index with Makinen’s compact suffix array (CSA) (Proc. 11th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching pp. 305–319, 2000) stored in disk. Experimental results show that the n-gram/2L index outperforms the CSA when the query length is short (i.e., less than 15–20), and the CSA is similar to or better than the n-gram/2L index when the query length is long (i.e., more than 15–20).     

ConsilientSFL: using preferential voting system to generate combinatorial ranking metrics for spectrum-based fault localization

Spectrum-based fault localization (SFL) techniques have shown considerable effectiveness in localizing software faults. They leverage a ranking metric to automatically assign suspiciousness scores to certain entities in a given faulty program. However, for some programs, the current SFL ranking metrics lose effectiveness. In this paper, we introduce ConsilientSFL that is served to synthesize a new ranking metric for a given program, based on a customized combination of a set of given ranking metrics. ConsilientSFL can be significant since it demonstrates the usage of voting systems into a software engineering task. First, several mutated, faulty versions are generated for a program. Then, the mutated versions are executed with the test data. Next, the effectiveness of each existing ranking metric is computed for each mutated version. After that, for each mutated version, the computed existing metrics are ranked using a preferential voting system. Consequently, several top metrics are chosen based on their ranks across all mutated versions. Finally, the chosen ranking metrics are normalized and synthesized, yielding a new ranking metric. To evaluate ConsilientSFL, we have conducted experiments on 27 subject programs from Code4Bench and Siemens benchmarks. In the experiments, we found that ConsilientSFL outperformed every single ranking metric. In particular, for all programs on average, we have found performance measures recall, precision, f-measure, and percentage of code inspection, to be nearly 7, 9, 12, and 5 percentages larger than using single metrics, respectively. The impact of this work is twofold. First, it can mitigate the issue with the choice and usage of a proper ranking metric for the faulty program at hand. Second, it can help debuggers find more faults with less time and effort, yielding higher quality software.

     

Estimating the nitrogen nutrition index in grass seed crops using a UAV-mounted multispectral camera

The application of adequate nitrogen (N) fertilizers to grass seed crops is important to achieve high seed yield. Application of N will inevitably result in over-fertilization on some fields and, concomitantly, an increased risk of adverse environmental impacts, such as ground- and/or surface-water contamination. This study was designed to estimate the N status of two grass seed crops: red fescue (Festuca rubra L.) and perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) using images captured with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) mounted multispectral camera. Two types of UAV, a fixed-wing UAV and a multi-rotor UAV, operating at two different heights and mounted with the same multispectral camera, were used in different field experiments at the same location in Denmark in the period from 432 to 861 growing degree-days. Seven vegetation indices, calculated from multispectral images with four bands: red, green, red edge and near infrared (NIR), were evaluated for their relationship to dry matter (DM), N concentration, N uptake and N nutrition index (NNI). The results showed a better prediction of N concentration, N uptake and NNI, than DM using vegetation indices. Furthermore, among all vegetation indices, two red-edge-based indices, normalized difference red edge (NDRE) and red edge chlorophyll index (CI_RE), performed best in estimating N concentration (R² = 0.69–0.88), N uptake (R² = 0.41–0.84) and NNI (R² = 0.47–0.86). In addition, there was no effect from the choice of UAV, and thereby flight height, on the estimation of NNI. The choice of UAV type therefore seems not to influence the possibility of diagnosing N status in grass seed crops. We conclude that it is possible to estimate NNI based on multispectral images from drone-mounted cameras, and the method could guide farmers as to whether they should apply additional N to the field. We also conclude that further research should focus on estimating the quantity of N to apply and on further developing the method to include more grass species.     

Ranking of fuzzy numbers by a new metric

In this paper, a new approach for comparison among fuzzy numbers based on new metric distance (D _TM) is proposed. All reasonable properties of ranking function are proved. At first, the distance on the interval numbers based on convex hall of endpoints is proposed. The existing distance measures for interval numbers, (Bardossy and Duckstein in Fuzzy rule-based modeling with applications to geophysical, biological and engineering systems. CRC press, Boca Raton, 1995; Diamond in Info Sci 46:141–157, 1988; Diamond and Korner in Comput Math Appl 33:15–32, 1997; Tran and Duckstein in Fuzzy Set Syst 130:331–341, 2002; Diamond and Tanaka Fuzzy regression analysis. In: Slowinski R (ed) Fuzzy sets in decision analysis, operations research and statistics. Kluwer, Boston, pp 349–387, 1998) do not satisfy the properties of a metric distance, while the proposed distance does. It is extended to fuzzy numbers and its properties are proved in detail. Finally, we compare the proposed definition with some of the known ones.     

Assessment of plant nitrogen stress in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) through hyperspectral indices

A field experiment with wheat was conducted with four different nitrogen and four different water stress levels, and hyperspectral reflectances in the 350–2500 nm range were recorded at six crop phenostages for two years (2009–2010 and 2010–2011). Thirty-two hyperspectral indices were determined using the first-year reflectance data. Plant nitrogen (N) status, characterized by leaf nitrogen content (LNC) and plant nitrogen accumulation (PNA), showed the highest R ² with the spectral indices at the booting stage. The best five predictive equations for LNC were based on the green normalized difference vegetation index (GNDVI), normalized difference chlorophyll index (NDCI), normalized difference₇₀₅ (ND₇₀₅) index, ratio index-1dB (RI-1dB) and Vogelman index a (VOGa). Their validation using the second-year data showed high R ² (>0.80) and ratio of performance to deviation (RPD; >2.25) and low root mean square error (RMSE; <0.24) and relative error (<10%). For PNA, five predictive equations with simple ratio pigment index (SRPI), photochemical reflectance index (PRI), modified simple ratio₇₀₅ (mSR₇₀₅), modified normalized difference₇₀₅ (mND₇₀₅) and normalized pigment chlorophyll index (NPCI) as predicting indices yielded the best relations with high R ² > 0.80. The corresponding RMSE and RE of these ranged from 1.39 to 1.13 and from 24.5% to 33.3%, respectively. Although the predicted values show good agreement with the observed values, the prediction of LNC is more accurate than PNA, as indicated by higher RMSE and very high RE for the latter. Hence, the plant nitrogen stress of wheat can be accurately assessed through the prediction of LNC based on the five identified reflectance indices at the booting stage.     

Assessing corn water stress using spectral reflectance

Multiple remote-sensing techniques have been developed to identify crop-water stress; however, some methods may be difficult for farmers to apply. If spectral reflectance data can be used to monitor crop-water stress, growers could use this information as a quick low-cost guideline for irrigation management, thus helping save water by preventing over-irrigating and achieving desired crop yields. Data was collected in the 2013 growing season near Greeley, Colorado, where drip irrigation was used to irrigate 12 corn (Zea mays L.) treatments with varying water-deficit levels. Ground-based multispectral data were collected and three different vegetation indices were evaluated. These included the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the optimized soil-adjusted vegetation index (OSAVI), and the Green normalized difference vegetation index (GNDVI). The three vegetation indices were compared to water stress as indicated by the stress coefficient (K_s), and water deficit in the root zone was calculated using a soil water balance. To compare the indices to K_s, vegetation ratios were developed from vegetation indices in the process of normalization. Vegetation ratios are defined as the non-stressed vegetation index divided by the stressed vegetation index. Results showed that vegetation ratios were sensitive to water stress as indicated by the good coefficient of determination (R² > 0.46) values and low root mean square error (RMSE < 0.076) values when compared to K_s. To use spectral reflectance to manage crop-water stress, an example irrigation trigger point of 0.93 for the vegetation ratios was determined for a 10–12% loss in yield. These results were validated using data collected from a different field. The performance of the vegetation ratio approach was better than when applied to the main field giving higher goodness of fit values (R² > 0.63), and lower error values (RMSE < 0.043) between K_s and the vegetation indices.     

Precision Evaluation of Search Engines

In this paper, we present a general approach for statistically evaluating precision of search engines on the Web. Search engines are evaluated in two steps based on a large number of sample queries: (a) computing relevance scores of hits from each search engine, and (b) ranking the search engines based on statistical comparison of the relevance scores. In computing relevance scores of hits, we study four relevance scoring algorithms. Three of them are variations of algorithms widely used in the traditional information retrieval field. They are cover density ranking, Okapi similarity measurement, and vector space model algorithms. In addition, we develop a new three-level scoring algorithm to mimic commonly used manual approaches. In ranking the search engines in terms of precision, we apply a statistical metric called probability of win. In our experiments, six popular search engines, AltaVista, Fast, Google, Go, iWon, and NorthernLight, were evaluated based on queries from two domains of interest: parallel and distributed processing, and knowledge and data engineering. The first query set contains 1726 queries collected from the index terms of papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. The second set contains 1383 queries collected from the index terms of papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. Search engines were queried and compared in two different search modes: the default search mode and the exact phrase search mode. Our experimental results show that these six search engines performed differently under different search modes and scoring methods. Overall, Google was the best. NorthernLight was mostly second in the default search mode, whereas iWon was mostly second in the exact phrase search mode.