VIIRS-based high resolution spectral vegetation indices for quantitative assessment of vegetation health: second version

ABSTRACT

Two approaches could be utilized to derive the vegetation health indices from recently launched Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor with the goal to maintain the consistency with the long-term Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) vegetation health products. One approach is to convert VIIRS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)/brightness temperature (BT) to AVHRR, as the first version. The other is to derive long-term pixel-based VIIRS climatology without converting at NDVI/BT level. The second version of products, derived from the new VIIRS pseudo long-term climatology as presented in this article, can trace the signature of the long-term AVHRR vegetation health products quite well, in terms of histogram, correlation coefficients, time series, and so on. The extended products with higher resolutions also perform as expected, indicating that the constructed long-term high-resolution climatology is reasonable. The third version of the products, based on VIIRS real long-term climatology, still needs many years to develop.     

LMI-based minimax estimation and filtering under unknown covariances

In this paper, we consider a minimax approach to the estimation and filtering problems in the stochastic framework, where covariances of the random factors are completely unknown. The term ‘random factors’ refers either to unknown parameters and measurement noise in the estimation problem or to disturbance process and the initial state of a linear discrete-time dynamic system in the filtering problem. We introduce a notion of the attenuation level of random factors as a performance measure for both a linear unbiased estimate and a filter. This is the worst-case variance of the estimation error normalised by the sum of variances of all random factors over all nonzero covariance matrices. It is shown that this performance measure is equal to the spectral norm of the ‘transfer matrix’ and therefore the minimax estimate and filter can be computed in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Moreover, the explicit formulae for both the minimax estimate and the minimal value of the attenuation level are presented in the estimation problem. It turns out that the above attenuation level of random factors coincides with the attenuation level of deterministic factors that is the worst-case normalised squared Euclidian norm of the estimation error over all nonzero sample values of random factors. In addition, we demonstrate that the LMI technique can be applied to derive the optimal robust estimator and filter, when there is a priori information about convex polyhedral sets which unknown covariance matrices of random factors belong to. Two illustrative examples show advantages of the minimax approach proposed.     

Eddy-current quality control of soldering of current-carrying joints in electrical machines. I. General principles

The possibility of testing the electrical conductivity of soldered joints using and eddy-current transducer has been studied. The simplest model calculations allowing evaluation of the relative value of a signal from an inhomogeneity depending on its location inside a specimen are presented. It is shown that signals yielded by an eddy-current transducer are quite informative for determining the quality of soldering of current-carrying joints.     

Distinguishing the role of eating disturbance from depression in the sex role self-perceptions of anorexic and bulimic inpatients.

Previous research has linked specific sex role self-perceptions to two major eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia. To date, however, sex role self-perceptions and ideals unique to eating disturbance have not been distinguished from those related to depression and other concomitant psychopathology. The Bem Sex-Role Inventory was administered twice (self-ratings and ideal self-ratings) to 83 women: 37 eating disorder inpatients, 12 depressed inpatients, and 34 high school and college students. Results indicate that both patient groups scored significantly lower (p?p?     

Synthesis of multipurpose linear control laws of discrete objects under integral and phase constraints

Multipurpose linear discrete control laws are synthesized, which afford a suboptimal value of the goal functional of the integral type or the kind of maximum in time from the square of the norm of a controllable output in the fulfilment of integral and phase constraints.     

Asymptotics of Moments of Order Statistics and Failure Occurrence Sequences

The purpose of this paper is to develop new analytical techniques for the computation of asymptotics of the Laplace transforms (moments) of order statistics for several underlying distributions, among them the truncated Weibull and Makeham-Gompertz distributions. One of the main reasons to use moments of order statistics is their importance in practical applications for solving economic and technical problems in near real time. For example, with such techniques, one can form simple expressions for expectations of early failure times of big (multi-component) systems compounded from similar components. Applied statistics, optimal life-testing, operations research and prediction theory are also possible fields of applications of the approach developed here. The method presented here permits one to calculate estimates of remainder terms giving, thereby, the possibility of improving the precision of a result by increasing the number of terms in an expansion.     

Coexpression of Bcl-2, c-Myc, and p53 oncoproteins as prognostic discriminants in patients with colorectal carcinoma

Lanepitant is a high-affinity, selective neurokinin-1 receptor (NK-1) and is effective in the dural inflammation model of acute migraine. Lanepitant 30, 80, and 240 mg given orally was evaluated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study to determine its effect in reducing migraine pain and severity of associated symptoms. Outpatients treated four migraine headaches of moderate or severe pain intensity with study drug according to a randomization schedule. They recorded their pain intensity and severity of migraine-associated symptoms at 30, 60, 90, and 120 min. Although 53 patients were randomly allocated to a treatment sequence, only 40 patients completed all treatments. There was no statistically significant difference in improvement in migraine pain at any time for any of the treatments. Additionally, there was no change in severity of migraine-associated symptoms associated with lanepitant therapy. No adverse events could be attributed to lanepitant. Lanepitant was ineffective orally in treating acute migraine in this trial. This may be due to poor bioavailability during a migraine attack. Alternatively, the neurogenic inflammation hypothesis may not apply to migraine.