Air sampling of volatile sex pheromone components in a closed jar

A cotton wool plug, used as the source for pheromone release, was placed in closed 1-quart Mason jars, either at the mouth or at the rear of the jar. Air sampling of the two components of the sex pheromone (total 2.2 mg at the source) of the almond moth (Ephestia cautella) female showed that the saturation period near the source in still air was 20–22 hr and that far from the source was 40–50 hr, reaching a level of less than 1 ng/ml air. The ratio between the components (Z,E)-9,12-tetradecadienyl acetate, designated D, and (Z)-9-tetradecenyl acetate designated M, in the air was close to the original ratio for both sampling sites, albeit somewhat richer in the more volatile (Z)-9-tetradecenyl acetate (source 77.023.0 DM, air 73.0– 74.327.0–25.7; source 80.119.9, air 77.622.4; source 25.174.9, air 23.976. 1 DM). The total amount of pheromone per milliliter of air was two to three times larger near the source than far from it at the early stages of the evaporation and saturation process. When the amount of pheromone applied to the source was tripled (7 mg), the amount far from the source was almost tripled, or the saturation time was cut by factor of two to three.     

Distributed envy minimization for resource allocation

Minimizing envy in distributed discrete resource or task allocation, is an unusual distributed optimization challenge, since the quality of the allocation for each of the agents is dependent, not only on its own allocation, but on the allocation of others as well. Thus, in order to perform distributed search for allocations with minimal envy there is a need to design innovative algorithms that can cope with the challenging constraint structure of an envy minimization problem. Distributed methods for minimizing envy among agents in indivisible resource allocation problems are presented. First, Distributed Envy Minimization Problems (DEMP) are formulated as Distributed Constraint Reasoning problems. When the DEMPs are large, and cannot be solved by a complete search an incomplete local search algorithm is presented. Each transfer of a good from one agent to another involves the change of state of more than one agent. Thus, a minimizing envy local search algorithm must build upon actions (transfers) that include multiple agents. Since DEMPs are particularly susceptible to local minima during local search, the paper proposes an algorithm that alternates between two different hill climbing search phases. The first phase uses one-transfer steps while the other exploits envy cycle elimination steps. An algorithm that minimizes envy while preserving efficiency, is proposed. The proposed algorithm finds a Pareto optimal allocation with low envy. In the context of resource allocation problems, a Pareto optimal solution is particularly desirable since it presents a stable solution. The proposed algorithm first finds a divisible Pareto optimal envy-free allocation using a Fisher market equilibrium. This allocation is transferred into an indivisible allocation of goods while maintaining the Pareto optimal characteristic of the allocation and a low envy level among agents.     

Preservice Teachers’ Understandings of the Relation Between a Fraction or Integer and Its Decimal Expansion: Strength and Stability of Belief

Abstract

In an earlier study of preservice elementary and middle school teachers’ beliefs about repeating decimals, Weller, Arnon, and Dubinsky (2009) reported on a comparison of the mathematical performance of 77 preservice teachers who completed an APOS-based instructional unit with 127 preservice teachers who completed traditional instruction. The purpose of the current study, based on 47 interviews conducted 4 months after the instruction, during which time there was no further instruction on this topic, is to determine the strength and stability (over time) of the students’ beliefs, to uncover thinking that did not arise in the earlier study, and to see whether the interviews yield similar comparative results. The interviews did uncover changes in student thinking. The students who received the APOS-based instruction developed stronger and more stable (over time) beliefs that a repeating decimal is a number; a repeating decimal has a fraction or integer to which it corresponds; a repeating decimal in general equals its corresponding fraction or integer; and, in particular, In addition, a number of indices and categories were developed that may prove useful in other studies consisting of the comparison of interview and questionnaire data involving a large number of interview subjects.     

From conceptual models to schemata: An object-process-based data warehouse construction method

Data warehouse modeling is a complex task, which involves knowledge of business processes of the domain of discourse, understanding the structural and behavioral system's conceptual model, and familiarity with data warehouse technologies. The suitability of current data warehouse modeling methods for large-scale systems is questionable, as they require multiple manual actions to discover measures and relevant dimensional entities and they tend to disregard the system's dynamic aspects. We present an Object-process-based Data Warehouse Construction (ODWC) method that overcomes these limitations of existing methods by utilizing the operational system conceptual model to construct a corresponding data warehouse schema. We specify the ODWC method, apply it on a case study, evaluate it, and compare it to existing methods.     

Performance limitations of a free-space optical communication satellite network owing to vibrations: heterodyne detection

Free-space optical communication between satellites in a distributed network can permit high data rates of communication between different places on Earth. To establish optical communication between any two satellites requires that the line of sight of their optics be aligned during the entire communication time. Because of the large distance between the satellites and the alignment accuracy required, the pointing from one satellite to another is complicated because of vibrations of the pointing system caused by two fundamental stochastic mechanisms: tracking noise created by the electro-optic tracker and vibrations derived from mechanical components. Vibration of the transmitter beam in the receiver plane causes a decrease in the received optical power. Vibrations of the receiver telescope relative to the received beam decrease the heterodyne mixing efficiency. These two factors increase the bit-error rate of a coherent detection network. We derive simple mathematical models of the network bit-error rate versus the system parameters and the transmitter and receiver vibration statistics. An example of a practical optical heterodyne free-space satellite optical communication network is presented. From this research it is clear that even low-amplitude vibration of the satellite-pointing systems dramatically decreases network performance.     

Fiber-optic transmission of stretched pulses from a Q-switched ruby laser

Fiber-optic transmission of Q-switched ruby laser pulses is limited by fiber damage owing to the high laser-beam intensities. Pulse stretching with a semiconductor-based control circuit for the Pockels cell of the ruby laser to reduce the peak intensities is described. Pulses with durations from 200 ns to 1 μs and a coherence length of ~3 m were generated. These pulses were coupled into multimode optical fibers to investigate the transmission characteristics and the limits of transmittable pulse energies. Stretched pulses can be transmitted in quartz fibers with a 600-μm core diameter to pulse energies of 300 mJ, which is an increase by a factor of 4 compared with standard Q-switched pulses. It is expected that beam guiding of ruby laser pulses by fiber optics will significantly facilitate the use of holographic interferometry in technical applications such as vibration analysis.     

Joint Estimation of Shape and Reflectance using Multiple Images with Known Illumination Conditions

We propose a generative model based method for recovering both the shape and the reflectance of the surface(s) of a scene from multiple images, assuming that illumination conditions and cameras calibration are known in advance. Based on a variational framework and via gradient descents, the algorithm minimizes simultaneously and consistently a global cost functional with respect to both shape and reflectance. The motivations for our approach are threefold. (1) Contrary to previous works which mainly consider specific individual scenarios, our method applies indiscriminately to a number of classical scenarios; in particular it works for classical stereovision, multiview photometric stereo and multiview shape from shading. It works with changing as well as static illumination. (2) Our approach naturally combines stereo, silhouette and shading cues in a single framework. (3) Moreover, unlike most previous methods dealing with only Lambertian surfaces, the proposed method considers general dichromatic surfaces. We verify the method using various synthetic and real data sets.     

From embedded sensors to sensorial materials—The road to function scale integration

Ubiquitous computing is about to become part of our everyday lives by integrating hundreds of “invisible” to us computing devices in our environment, so that they can unobtrusively and constantly assist us. This will imply more and smaller “invisible” sensors, homogeneously distributed and at the same time densely packed in host materials, responding to various stimuli and immediately delivering information. In order to reach this aim, the embedded sensors should be integrated within the host material, heading towards sensorial materials. The first step is to omit all parts that are not needed for the sensorial task and to find new solutions for a gentle integration. This is what we call function scale integration. The paper discusses sensor embedding in the human hand as an example of integration in nature, new technological applications and main challenges associated with this approach.     

3D SSD tracking with estimated 3D planes

We present a tracking method where full camera position and orientation is tracked from intensity differences in a video sequence. The camera pose is calculated based on 3D planes, and hence does not depend on point correspondences. The plane based formulation also allows additional constraints to be naturally added, e.g., perpendicularity between walls, floor and ceiling surfaces, co-planarity of wall surfaces etc. A particular feature of our method is that the full 3D pose change is directly computed from temporal image differences without making a commitment to a particular intermediate (e.g., 2D feature) representation. We experimentally compared our method with regular 2D SSD tracking and found it more robust and stable. This is due to 3D consistency being enforced even in the low level registration of image regions. This yields better results than first computing (and hence committing to) 2D image features and then from these compute 3D pose.     

Calibration of Cameras with Radially Symmetric Distortion

We present algorithms for plane-based calibration of general radially distorted cameras. By this, we understand cameras that have a distortion center and an optical axis such that the projection rays of pixels lying on a circle centered on the distortion center form a right viewing cone centered on the optical axis. The camera is said to have a single viewpoint (SVP) if all such viewing cones have the same apex (the optical center); otherwise, we speak of NSVP cases. This model encompasses the classical radial distortion model [5], fisheyes, and most central or noncentral catadioptric cameras. Calibration consists in the estimation of the distortion center, the opening angles of all viewing cones, and their optical centers. We present two approaches of computing a full calibration from dense correspondences of a single or multiple planes with known euclidean structure. The first one is based on a geometric constraint linking viewing cones and their intersections with the calibration plane (conic sections). The second approach is a homography-based method. Experiments using simulated and a broad variety of real cameras show great stability. Furthermore, we provide a comparison with Hartley-Kang's algorithm [12], which, however, cannot handle such a broad variety of camera configurations, showing similar performance.