A Graph‐based Approach to Continuous Line Illustrations with Variable Levels of Detail

This paper introduces a method for automatically generating continuous line illustrations, drawings consisting of a single line, from a given input image. Our approach begins by inferring a graph from a set of edges extracted from the image in question and obtaining a path that traverses through all edges of the said graph. The resulting path is then subjected to a series of post‐processing operations to transform it into a continuous line drawing. Moreover, our approach allows us to manipulate the amount of detail portrayed in our line illustrations, which is particularly useful for simplifying the overall illustration while still retaining its most significant features. We also present several experimental results to demonstrate that our approach can automatically synthesize continuous line illustrations comparable to those of some contemporary artists.     

Generation of templates for low-resolution text recognition using a hypothesis graph

We propose a recognition method of character-string images captured by portable digital cameras. A challenging task in character-string recognition is the segmentation of characters. In the proposed method, a hypothesis graph is used for recognition-based segmentation of the character-string images. The hypothesis graph is constructed by the subspace method, using eigenvectors as conditionally elastic templates. To obtain these templates, a generation-based approach is introduced in the training stage. Various templates are generated to cope with low-resolution. We have experimentally proved that the proposed scheme achieves high recognition performance even for low-resolution character-string images. The text was submitted by the authors in English. Hiroyuki Ishida. Received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Information Engineering and from the Graduate School of Information Science, respectively, at Nagoya University. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Information Science at Nagoya University. Ichiro Ide. Received his B.S. degree from the Department of Electronic Engineering, his M.S. degree from the Department of Information Engineering, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Tokyo. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Information Science at Nagoya University. Tomokazu Takahashi. Received his B.S. degree from the Department of Information Engineering at Ibaraki University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Ibaraki University. His research interests include computer graphics and image recognition. Hiroshi Murase. Received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Graduate School of Electrical Engineering at Nagoya University. He is currently a Professor in the Graduate School of Information Science at Nagoya University. He received the Ministry Award from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan in 2003. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.     

Structure of rapidly quenched glasses in the system Li2O-SiO2

Raman spectra of glasses in the Li₂O-SiO₂ system (41.3 Li₂O 61.3 mol%), prepared by rapid quenching, were measured. The proportions of SiO₄ units with 1–4 non-bridging oxygens per silicon (NBO/Si) and the fractions of bridging oxygen, non-bridging oxygen and free or full-active oxygen were determined for these glasses from quantitative analysis of the Raman spectra obtained. X-ray structural analysis of Li₂O-SiO₂ showed an increasing elongation of the average atomic distance of the Si-O pair with increase in Li₂O content due to weakening of the Si-O bond.     

A high-resolution transmission electron microscope study of a zinc oxide varistor

Investigations were made of varistor microstructure, the morphology of Bi₂O₃ at multiple ZnO grain junctions, Bi₂O₃/ZnO grain boundaries and ZnO/ZnO grain boundaries (especially whether Bi₂O₃ is present or not at the ZnO/ZnO grain boundary) by means of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray microanalysis in the scanning transmission electron microscope. Bi₂O₃ at multiple ZnO grain junctions consists of small particles of 0.1m in diameter, and they are vitrified to some extent. It is suggested that bismuth ions dissolve into ZnO grains over a 30 nm range from a Bi₂O₃/ZnO grain boundary; however, there is no bismuth at ZnO/ZnO grain boundaries.     

Further investigation on the thermal decomposition of aluminium dialkylamides

Both dimethylamino- (I) and diethylamino-alane dimers (II), [(R₂N)₂AlH]₂ (I, R=Me; II, R=Et) decompose above 800° C under a few hundred Pa of hydrogen to dark greyish, hard (Vickers hardness larger than 2000), oxidation-resistive and oxidation-protective deposits which are tentatively identified as Al₅C₃N. The deposits are stable to moisture and diluted hydrochloric acid in contrast to those obtained below 800° C, but they easily dissolve in sodium hydroxide solution at room temperature evolving a gas. The deposits on a stainless steel substrate adhere strongly to the substrate and remain so on rapid heating and cooling. The electrical resistivity of the deposits is in the range 10² to 10⁴ cm.     

Identification of chemical oviposition stimulants from rice grain forSitophilus zeamais motschulsky (Coleoptera,Curculionidae)

Chemical components stimulating oviposition bySitophilus zeamais in rice grain were isolated from rice bran and were found to be a mixture of ferulates, diglycerides, and free sterols. Oviposition preference of the species can be induced by synergistic action of these compounds.     

Superconductivity of Zr-Nb-Si amorphous alloys

Superconducting amorphous alloys with high strength and good ductility have been found in rapidly quenched alloys of the Zr-Nb-Si system. These alloys were produced in a continuous ribbon form of 1 to 2 mm width and 0.02 to 0.03 mm thickness using a modified single roller quenching apparatus. The amorphous alloys were formed over the whole composition range between zirconium and niobium, but the silicon content was limited to the relatively narrow range between about 12 and 24 at%. All the amorphous alloys showed a superconducting transition whose temperature, T _c, increased from 2.31 to 4.20 K with increasing niobium content or with decreasing silicon content. The upper critical magnetic field, H _c2, and the critical current density, J _c, for Zr₁₅Nb₇₀Si₁₅ alloy were of the order of 4.5 Tesla(T) and 5.5×10⁶ A m^–2 at 1.5 K in the absence of applied field. The upper critical field gradient at T _c, , and the electrical resistivity at 4.2 K, _n, decreased from 2.89 to 2.10 T K^–1 and from 2.70 to 1.80m, respectively, with the amount of niobium. The Debye temperature, _D, the electron-phonon coupling constant, , and the bare density of electronic states at the Fermi level, N(E _f ) were calculated from the experimentally measured values of _n, , Young's modulus and density by using the strong-coupling theories. From the comparison of T _c with their calculated parameters, it was found that is the most dominant parameter for T _c. The GL parameter, , and the GL coherence length, _GL(0), were estimated to be 70 to 100 and about 7.6 nm, respectively, from the experimental values of and _n by using the GLAG theory and hence it is concluded that the present amorphous alloys are an extremely dirty type-II superconductor having a very weak flux pinning force.     

Efficient blind dereverberation and echo cancellation based on independent component analysis for actual acoustic signals

This letter presents a new algorithm for blind dereverberation and echo cancellation based on independent component analysis (ICA) for actual acoustic signals. We focus on frequency domain ICA (FD-ICA) because its computational cost and speed of learning convergence are sufficiently reasonable for practical applications such as hands-free speech recognition. In applying conventional FD-ICA as a preprocessing of automatic speech recognition in noisy environments, one of the most critical problems is how to cope with reverberations. To extract a clean signal from the reverberant observation, we model the separation process in the short-time Fourier transform domain and apply the multiple input/output inverse-filtering theorem (MINT) to the FD-ICA separation model. A naive implementation of this method is computationally expensive, because its time complexity is the second order of reverberation time. Therefore, the main issue in dereverberation is to reduce the high computational cost of ICA. In this letter, we reduce the computational complexity to the linear order of the reverberation time by using two techniques: (1) a separation model based on the independence of delayed observed signals with MINT and (2) spatial sphering for preprocessing. Experiments show that the computational cost grows in proportion to the linear order of the reverberation time and that our method improves the word correctness of automatic speech recognition by 10 to 20 points in a RT??= 670 ms reverberant environment.