Automatic player position detection in basketball games

This paper presents us with a framework for the automatic player position detection (APPD) in the game of basketball. Court players are detected in the images broadcasted via television stations. In them, at any point of time, the view is from only one camera. This makes the detection process much more difficult. The player detection is based on the mixture of non-oriented pictorial structures. The detection of body parts is performed by the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm. The results of these detections are combined together with constraints on their locations, which specify the position of one body part with respect to the parent body part. In order to train the whole model, we used a latent form of SVM called the latent SVM (LSVM). Such approach generated the statistical accuracy of about 82 %, which represents one of the best results in basketball player detection framework. Beside players, the algorithm detected a certain number of false positive objects. These are mostly people from the audience and the referees as well. This paper contains a simple and robust solution to remove them all, based on the play court boundaries and the histogram comparison. Separating players in different teams is done by k-means clustering. The inputs to this algorithm are saturation histograms calculated on the jerseys. A spatial transformation is determined by the detected play court boundaries and the actual court measures. Using this transformation, points representing the location of detected players in TV images are mapped to the actual location of players on the court, which was the main goal of our research. The proposed solution is sound and efficient. In addition, it is backed up by the experimental results obtained using the model of the actual footage of basketball games.     

Discovering Interesting Association Rules from Legal Databases

The Knowledge Discovery from Databases (KDD) technique called 'association rules' is applied to a large data set representing applicants for government-funded legal aid. Results indicate that KDD can be an invaluable tool for legal analysts. Association rules discovered identify associations between variables that are present in the data set though are not necessarily causal. Interesting rules can prompt analysts to formulate hypotheses for further investigation. The identification of interesting rules is typically performed using an objective measure of 'interesting' although this measure is often not sufficiently accurate to eliminate all uninteresting rules. In this article, a subjective measure of interestingness is adopted in conjunction with the objective measures. This leads to the ability to focus more accurately on those rules that surprise the analyst and are therefore more likely to be interesting. In general, KDD techniques have not been applied to law despite possible benefits because data is often stored in narrative form rather than in structured databases. However, the impending introduction of data warehouses that collect data from a number of organizations across a legal system presents invaluable opportunities for analysts using KDD.     

Some uses of radioactive techniques in the tool wear process

Radioactivity is induced in the wear surface of cutting tools by irradiating with heavy charged particles from a cyclotron. This technique of activating tools has the advantage of producing the desired amount and type of radioactivity and hence is important for operator safety. The depth of activation is about 180 μm and therefore wear of the tools can be assessed by following the radioactivity decrease. This technique of wear measurement has been used in various machining operations and further applications are discussed.     

Numerical simulation of ammonia/methane/air combustion using reduced chemical kinetics models

Ammonia appears to be a potential alternative fuel that can be used as a hydrogen vector and fuel for gas turbines and internal combustion engines. Chemical mechanisms of ammonia combustion are important for the development of ammonia combustion systems, but also as a mean of investigation of harmful NOx emissions, so they can be minimized. Despite of large body of experimental and modelling work on the topic of ammonia combustion, there is still need for additional investigation of combustion kinetics.The object of this work is further numerical study of ammonia combustion chemistry under conditions resembling industrial ones. After literature review, three mechanisms of ammonia combustion that also include carbon chemistry are used for simulation of experimental premixed swirl burner with the aim of evaluating their performance. San Diego mechanism, that was also the most detailed one, proved to be the best in terms of emissions, but neither one of the models was able to accurately reproduce CO emission after equivalence ratio went beyond 0.81. It was also observed that oxygen is excessively consumed. This study contributes to the current knowledge by providing new insights in ammonia burning conditions closely resembling those in industrial applications, and consequently is expected that insights obtained will help in the design of real industrial burning systems.     

Using nitrogen isotope fractionation to assess abiotic reduction of nitroaromatic compounds

Compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) is an increasingly important tool for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of transformations of organic compounds in contaminated environments. To date, the use of CSIA has been mainly restricted to the elements C and H, although Nconstitutes a very important reactive centerfor many priority contaminants. To evaluate the potential use of N isotope effects in the fate assessment of organic contaminants, we investigated the N isotope enrichment during the abiotic reduction of 4 substituted nitroaromatic compounds (NACs), using two abiotic model reductants, namely Fe(ll) sorbed to goethite (alpha-FeOOH) and juglone (8-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinone) in the presence of H2S. Substantial and virtually identical isotope enrichment factors, EpsilonN, of about -30%, indicative of the breaking of one N-O bond, were found for all NACs, regardless of the reductant involved and the substitution of the NAC. These results indicate that the EpsilonN-values determined in our study could be representative for the reduction of aromatic NO2-groups and thus be used to assess the abiotic transformation of NACs qualitatively and quantitatively in complex anoxic environments.     

IR-change and colour changes of long-oil air drying alkyd paints as a result of UV irradiation

In this study the formation of photo-oxidative species was studied by monitoring the changes in the FT-IR spectra and colour changes. To stabilize long-oil air drying alkyd paint, separate and synergistic influence of two stabilizers were used Uvasorb^®S28 as the UV-absorber and Uvasorb^®HA29 as the stabilizer which inhibits the degradation of some groups. In the presence of UV radiation (450 h, λ > 300 nm), the alkyd paint undergoes photodegradation with gradual change of its colour. The photochemical degradation of the alkyd paint is associated with an increase in the hydroxyl content and broadening of the absorption in the carbonyl region. Analysis of the colour changes in alkyd surface during photodegradation was carried out by measuring CIEL*a*b* colour components (L*, a*, b* and ΔE*). Overall, ΔE* colour change correlates well with photodegradation of alkyd paint by relative increase of the concentration of carbonyl and hydroxyl groups determinated by FT-IR measurements.     

δ¹⁵N enrichment suggests possible source for halogenated 1'-methyl-1,2'-bipyrroles (MBPs)

Polyhalogenated 1'-methyl-1,2'-bipyrroles are natural products that biomagnify into upper trophic levels of marine food webs. Here we demonstrate that they are unusually enriched in (15)N (δ(15)N from +19.3‰ to +28.1‰) relative to other biosynthetic organic compounds measured to date and the mammals from which the compounds were isolated. We argue the (15)N enrichment likely stems from enriched precursors and/or fractionation during biosynthesis and is not from MBP degradation. We also consider possible sources of MBPs in light of these results.     

Methyl methacrylate and acrylamide crosslinked macroporous copolymers

In this work the synthesis of a crosslinked macroporous copolymer was effected from methyl methacrylate and acrylamide. The synthesis process began with emulsion prepolymerization, followed by sol–gel copolymerization until a hard block was obtained. Determination of the properties of the obtained material was carried out by FTIR, mercury porosimetry, and SEM microscopy. The material was characterized by a porous structure with open pores. The macroporous copolymer obtained can be used for polymer–analog reactions and the transformation of amide and ester groups into acyl azide groups. It can be used as a hard inert support for the immobilization of enzymes, or other proteins, by condensation of acyl azide group on polymer with the free amino group from the base amino acid of enzyme/protein. For the immobilization of microorganisms it can be used by vacuum diffusion of microorganism suspension into the porous structure, without active group transformation reactions. With microorganisms in the polymer pores, microorganism colonies form within the copolymer by microbial fermentation. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 387–395, 2004