Thematic accuracy of the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001 land cover for Alaska

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2001 Alaska land cover classification is the first 30-m resolution land cover product available covering the entire state of Alaska. The accuracy assessment of the NLCD 2001 Alaska land cover classification employed a geographically stratified three-stage sampling design to select the reference sample of pixels. Reference land cover class labels were determined via fixed wing aircraft, as the high resolution imagery used for determining the reference land cover classification in the conterminous U.S. was not available for most of Alaska. Overall thematic accuracy for the Alaska NLCD was 76.2% (s.e. 2.8%) at Level II (12 classes evaluated) and 83.9% (s.e. 2.1%) at Level I (6 classes evaluated) when agreement was defined as a match between the map class and either the primary or alternate reference class label. When agreement was defined as a match between the map class and primary reference label only, overall accuracy was 59.4% at Level II and 69.3% at Level I. The majority of classification errors occurred at Level I of the classification hierarchy (i.e., misclassifications were generally to a different Level I class, not to a Level II class within the same Level I class). Classification accuracy was higher for more abundant land cover classes and for pixels located in the interior of homogeneous land cover patches.     

Urban growth modeling of Kathmandu metropolitan region, Nepal

The complexity of urban system requires integrated tools and techniques to understand the spatial process of urban development and project the future scenarios. This research aims to simulate urban growth patterns in Kathmandu metropolitan region in Nepal. The region, surrounded by complex mountainous terrain, has very limited land resources for new developments. As similar to many cities of the developing world, it has been facing rapid population growth and daunting environmental problems. Three time series land use maps in a fine-scale (30 m resolution), derived from satellite remote sensing, for the last three decades of the 20th century were used to clarify the spatial process of urbanization. Based on the historical experiences of the land use transitions, we adopted weight of evidence method integrated in cellular automata framework for predicting the future spatial patterns of urban growth. We extrapolated urban development patterns to 2010 and 2020 under the current scenario across the metropolitan region. Depending on local characteristics and land cover transition rates, this model produced noticeable spatial pattern of changes in the region. Based on the extrapolated spatial patterns, the urban development in the Kathmandu valley will continue through both in-filling in existing urban areas and outward rapid expansion toward the east and south directions. Overall development will be greatly affected by the existing urban space, transportation network, and topographic complexity.     

An efficient certifying algorithm for the Hamiltonian cycle problem on circular-arc graphs

A certifying algorithm for a problem is an algorithm that provides a certificate with each answer that it produces. The certificate is an evidence that can be used to authenticate the correctness of the answer. A Hamiltonian cycle in a graph is a simple cycle in which each vertex of the graph appears exactly once. The Hamiltonian cycle problem is to determine whether or not a graph contains a Hamiltonian cycle. The best result for the Hamiltonian cycle problem on circular-arc graphs is an O(n²logn)-time algorithm, where n is the number of vertices of the input graph. In fact, the O(n²logn)-time algorithm can be modified as a certifying algorithm although it was published before the term certifying algorithms appeared in the literature. However, whether there exists an algorithm whose time complexity is better than O(n²logn) for solving the Hamiltonian cycle problem on circular-arc graphs has been opened for two decades. In this paper, we present an O(Δn)-time certifying algorithm to solve this problem, where Δ represents the maximum degree of the input graph. The certificates provided by our algorithm can be authenticated in O(n) time.     

Guarding a set of line segments in the plane

We consider the following problem: Given a finite set of straight line segments in the plane, find a set of points of minimum size, so that every segment contains at least one point in the set. This problem can be interpreted as looking for a minimum number of locations of policemen, guards, cameras or other sensors, that can observe a network of streets, corridors, tunnels, tubes, etc. We show that the problem is strongly NP-complete even for a set of segments with a cubic graph structure, but in P for tree structures.     

Parameterized complexity of coloring problems: Treewidth versus vertex cover

We compare the fixed parameter complexity of various variants of coloring problems (including List Coloring, Precoloring Extension, Equitable Coloring, L(p,1)-Labeling and Channel Assignment) when parameterized by treewidth and by vertex cover number. In most (but not all) cases we conclude that parametrization by the vertex cover number provides a significant drop in the complexity of the problems.     

遥感技术在全球变化研究中的应用

首先通过全球卫星遥感监测系统的介绍,阐述了遥感技术在全球环境数据获取中的重要性。然后概述了遥感技术在土地覆盖、痕量气体,湿地以及地表参数反演等全球变化研究热点问题中的应用及进展情况,遥感技术已渗入到全球变化研究诸多领域,成为全球变化研究计划的重要组成部分,从辅到主要手段乃至某些问题研究的唯一手段,遥感技术发挥着越来越重要的作用。     

逻辑函数的无冗余覆盖选择问题

逻辑函数的最小化算法可分为两大步骤：产生本源蕴涵项和在这些蕴涵项中选择一个最小覆盖。人说后者比前者更加困难,这的确是事实。我们这里提出一个无冗余和选择一个最小覆盖的算法。给定函数ｆ的一个本源覆盖Ｇ,首先将Ｇ分为三个子集：实质本源项子集Ｅ,完全冗余项子集Ｒ和相对冗余项子集Ｐ。然后在Ｐ中选择一个子集Ｐ＾＊,使Ｐ＾＊∪Ｅ为ｆ的一个近似最小覆盖。很明显,后一项任务比前者要复杂得多。所以,我们的讨论侧重于后     

谈插图在流行音乐CD封套设计中的应用

文章分析了插图在流行音乐CD封套设计中广泛应用的原因,对CD封套设计中的插图三个显著特点:时尚性、形式多元化、视觉艺术化进行了重点分析与讨论,证实插图在流行音乐CD封套设计中的优势所在,阐释了其美学价值和商业价值。     

Timestamping messages and events in a distributed system using synchronous communication

Determining order relationship between events of a distributed computation is a fundamental problem in distributed systems which has applications in many areas including debugging, visualization, checkpointing and recovery. Fidge/Mattern’s vector-clock mechanism captures the order relationship using a vector of size N in a system consisting of N processes. As a result, it incurs message and space overhead of N integers. Many distributed applications use synchronous messages for communication. It is therefore natural to ask whether it is possible to reduce the timestamping overhead for such applications. In this paper, we present a new approach for timestamping messages and events of a synchronously ordered computation, that is, when processes communicate using synchronous messages. Our approach depends on decomposing edges in the communication topology into mutually disjoint edge groups such that each edge group either forms a star or a triangle. We show that, to accurately capture the order relationship between synchronous messages, it is sufficient to use one component per edge group in the vector instead of one component per process. Timestamps for events are only slightly bigger than timestamps for messages. Many common communication topologies such as ring, grid and hypercube can be decomposed into edge groups, resulting in almost 50% improvement in both space and communication overheads. We prove that the problem of computing an optimal edge decomposition of a communication topology is NP-complete in general. We also present a heuristic algorithm for computing an edge decomposition whose size is within a factor of two of the optimal. We prove that, in the worst case, it is not possible to timestamp messages of a synchronously ordered computation using a vector containing fewer than components when N ≥ 2. Finally, we show that messages in a synchronously ordered computation can always be timestamped in an offline manner using a vector of size at most . An earlier version of this paper appeared in 2002 Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS). The author V. K. Garg was supported in part by the NSF Grants ECS-9907213, CCR-9988225, an Engineering Foundation Fellowship. This work was done while the author C. Skawratananond was a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin.     

双锥平衡密封盖在装酸槽车上的应用

在装酸槽车上采用了“双锥平衡密封盖”，解决了汽车运输过程及贮罐贮存中酸雾对环境的污染问题，并实现了装卸过程中的压力自控，从而简化了操作，减少了浪费，取得了良好社会经济效益。