Interpretable Hyperspectral AI: When Non-Convex Modeling meets Hyperspectral Remote Sensing

Hyperspectral imaging, also known as image spectrometry, is a landmark technique in geoscience and remote sensing (RS). In the past decade, enormous efforts have been made to process and analyze these hyperspectral (HS) products mainly by means of seasoned experts. However, with the ever-growing volume of data, the bulk of costs in manpower and material resources poses new challenges on reducing the burden of manual labor and improving efficiency. For this reason, it is, therefore, urgent to develop more intelligent and automatic approaches for various HS RS applications. Machine learning (ML) tools with convex optimization have successfully undertaken the tasks of numerous artificial intelligence (AI)-related applications. However, their ability in handling complex practical problems remains limited, particularly for HS data, due to the effects of various spectral variabilities in the process of HS imaging and the complexity and redundancy of higher dimensional HS signals. Compared to the convex models, non-convex modeling, which is capable of characterizing more complex real scenes and providing the model interpretability technically and theoretically, has been proven to be a feasible solution to reduce the gap between challenging HS vision tasks and currently advanced intelligent data processing models

Center for low-gravity fluid mechanics and transport phenomena

Research projects in several areas are discussed. Mass transport in vapor phase systems, droplet collisions and coalescence in microgravity, and rapid solidification of undercooled melts are discussed

The Middle Manager Role In Academic Libraries

The academic library middle manager (ALMM) role is little understood and understudied. Using Organizational Role Theory, Middle Managers’ Four Strategic Roles, and the Taxonomy of Managerial Performance Requirements as frameworks, this study was designed to identify and describe the expectations of the middle manager role in academic libraries; to discover the extent to which members of the middle managerâs role set agree about the expectations of the role; to learn the activities and behaviors ALMMs actually perform; to discover how employees learn the role; to learn to what extent AALMs experience role conflict, role ambiguity, and turnover intentions; and the extent to which ALMMs participate in strategic activities. This multiple case study utilized multiple perspective interviews, observations, questionnaires, and document analysis to gather data from 41 library employees across three academic libraries in order to create a bricolage of ALMM role set members’ perceptions, expectations, activities, and behaviors. Based on the degree to which employees’ expressed expectations overlapped (expectations consensus), participants expect ALMMs to communicate effectively, maintain technical proficiency, maintain good working relationships, and coordinate subordinates. But ALMMs also received a wide variety of expectations from their role set members and organizational documents, making them vulnerable to role conflict and role ambiguity. ALMMs also performed many activities that were not expressed as role set member expectations. Library employees learned the ALMM role through social interplay and learning rather through organizational documents or formal training. ALMMs in new positions and those subject to significant organizational change experience greater role ambiguity, while ALMMs who participate in strategic activities experience less role ambiguity. Findings support a further critique of ALMM preparation and training, including LIS education

Nomadic Passions: Encounters with Difference and Troubling Affect in the Novels of Jean Rhys

This thesis addresses the largely unchallenged assumption that the passivity of Jean Rhys’s protagonists is a dysfunctional limitation of agency. It proposes that Rhys’s critique of oppressive forms of power is at the heart of a passivity which is in opposition to dominant ways of being and thinking. It is argued that in Rhys’s four later novels there is a textual insistence on both the positive value of difference and the potentiality of difficult feeling. The study rethinks the value of Rhysian negativity using the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze as a presiding framework along with contemporary feminist theory, especially the work of Sianne Ngai and Sara Ahmed. Deleuze’s celebration of difference and his theorisations with Félix Guattari of minor literature and affect are used to interrogate the complexities of Rhys’s style and narrative strategies, and to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of her use of passivity as subversion and her exploration of becoming in the modern world. The thesis analyses how Rhys’s navigation of passionate dissent and morbid affects challenges the values attached to the less powerful and posits an alternative to the conventional quest for happiness. Focusing on failure, a textual death drive and the problem of female transmission, the study identifies in Rhys’s later four novels a preoccupation with the limitations of the literary text, and contends that her work conducts a ‘libidinal mapping’ which addresses the problem of complicity. It is argued that a search for the conditions of communality spans these novels. Deleuze’s intensive reading method is used to think through what emerges in Rhys’s inscription of difficult connection in numerous fraught scenes, and the thesis questions whether, ultimately, danger and negative affect attend or in fact permit the possibility of self-making for the emerging subject

A numerical study of barotropic instability of a zonally varying easterly jet.

The structure and behavior of barotropi cal ly unstable and stable wave disturbances in the vicinity of a zonally varying easterly jet are studied numerically with a linearized barotropic vorticity equation on a B-plane. The easterly jet is approximated by a Bickley jet with a slow zonal variation. The numerical results are also compared with a simple mechanistic analytical model using the local phase speed and growth rate concepts. The results are grossly similar in several respects to that expected from the parallel flow theory of barotropic instability, however, the resultant structure of the waves causes a spatial growth rate greater than predicted by the local growth rates computed with a parallel flow model. In the stable region, the structure leads to strong dynamic damping. When a uniform advective velocity is added to a variable mean flow, the differences between the behavior of the computed waves and that implied by the parallel flow theory are somewhat reduced. The waves remove kinetic energy from the mean flow and most of this energy is removed on the downwind side of the jet. The computed structure and behavior of the waves have a number of features that resemble those observed in the vicinity of the upper troposphere easterly jet during the summer monsoon.http://archive.org/details/numericalstudyof00tupaCommander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Integrating rotordynamic and electromagnetic dynamic models for flexible-rotor electrical machines

The magnetic field within electrical machines causes an interaction between the electrical and mechanical dynamics of the system. In the simplest cases, when the rotor mean position is central in the stator, the interaction manifests itself mainly as a negative stiffness between the rotor and the stator. When the rotor mean position is offset relative to the stator, then components of force arise whose frequency in the stationary frame is twice the electrical frequency of the supply. For induction machines in particular, both the electrical system and the mechanical system may be quite complex dynamically in the sense that over the range of frequencies of interest, it is necessary to consider a number of degrees of freedom in both the electrical part of the model and the mechanical part. This work sets out a structured and formal approach to the preparation of such models. Each different combination of voltage and slip is examined separately. In each case, the first step is to compute the steady-state reference solution for machine currents as a function of time. Then, the electro-magnetic behaviour of the electrical machine is linearised around that reference solution. The result is a linear time-dependent model for the electromagnetic behaviour which is then easily coupled with a linear model for the mechanical dynamics. The mechanical dynamics are usually stationary. Floquet methods can then be applied to determine whether the system is stable and the response of the system to mechanical or electrical perturbations can be computed quickly. The analysis method is applied to a particular three-phase induction machine which has parallel paths integrated into its winding structure in the sense that each of the phases is split into a "Wheatstone-bridge" arrangement following. Currents passing diametrically through a phase in the vertical direction account for the main torque-producing components of stator field. Currents passing diametrically through the phase in the horizontal direction account for transverse forces. The parallel paths can be switched to open-circuit or closed-circuit without affecting the torque-producing function of the machine and all of the stator conductors contribute to torque-production.For a number of combinations of voltage and slip, the machine is stable irrespective of whether the parallel paths are open-circuit or not but the effective damping of the machine for synchronous vibration is shown to be much higher with the parallel paths in closed-circuit

Integrating rotordynamic and electromagnetic dynamic models for flexible-rotor electrical machines

The magnetic field within electrical machines causes an interaction between the electrical and mechanical dynamics of the system. In the simplest cases, when the rotor mean position is central in the stator, the interaction manifests itself mainly as a negative stiffness between the rotor and the stator. When the rotor mean position is offset relative to the stator, then components of force arise whose frequency in the stationary frame is twice the electrical frequency of the supply. For induction machines in particular, both the electrical system and the mechanical system may be quite complex dynamically in the sense that over the range of frequencies of interest, it is necessary to consider a number of degrees of freedom in both the electrical part of the model and the mechanical part. This work sets out a structured and formal approach to the preparation of such models. Each different combination of voltage and slip is examined separately. In each case, the first step is to compute the steady-state reference solution for machine currents as a function of time. Then, the electro-magnetic behaviour of the electrical machine is linearised around that reference solution. The result is a linear time-dependent model for the electromagnetic behaviour which is then easily coupled with a linear model for the mechanical dynamics. The mechanical dynamics are usually stationary. Floquet methods can then be applied to determine whether the system is stable and the response of the system to mechanical or electrical perturbations can be computed quickly. The analysis method is applied to a particular three-phase induction machine which has parallel paths integrated into its winding structure in the sense that each of the phases is split into a "Wheatstone-bridge" arrangement following. Currents passing diametrically through a phase in the vertical direction account for the main torque-producing components of stator field. Currents passing diametrically through the phase in the horizontal direction account for transverse forces. The parallel paths can be switched to open-circuit or closed-circuit without affecting the torque-producing function of the machine and all of the stator conductors contribute to torque-production.For a number of combinations of voltage and slip, the machine is stable irrespective of whether the parallel paths are open-circuit or not but the effective damping of the machine for synchronous vibration is shown to be much higher with the parallel paths in closed-circuit

The middle manager role in academic libraries

The academic library middle manager (ALMM) role is little understood and understudied. Using Organizational Role Theory, Middle Managers’ Four Strategic Roles, and the Taxonomy of Managerial Performance Requirements as frameworks, this study was designed to identify and describe the expectations of the middle manager role in academic libraries; to discover the extent to which members of the middle managerâs role set agree about the expectations of the role; to learn the activities and behaviors ALMMs actually perform; to discover how employees learn the role; to learn to what extent AALMs experience role conflict, role ambiguity, and turnover intentions; and the extent to which ALMMs participate in strategic activities. This multiple case study utilized multiple perspective interviews, observations, questionnaires, and document analysis to gather data from 41 library employees across three academic libraries in order to create a bricolage of ALMM role set members’ perceptions, expectations, activities, and behaviors. Based on the degree to which employees’ expressed expectations overlapped (expectations consensus), participants expect ALMMs to communicate effectively, maintain technical proficiency, maintain good working relationships, and coordinate subordinates. But ALMMs also received a wide variety of expectations from their role set members and organizational documents, making them vulnerable to role conflict and role ambiguity. ALMMs also performed many activities that were not expressed as role set member expectations. Library employees learned the ALMM role through social interplay and learning rather through organizational documents or formal training. ALMMs in new positions and those subject to significant organizational change experience greater role ambiguity, while ALMMs who participate in strategic activities experience less role ambiguity. Findings support a further critique of ALMM preparation and training, including LIS education.Doctor of Philosoph

Aeronautical engineering: A cumulative index to a continuing bibliography

This bibliography is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in NASA SP-7037 (197) through NASA SP-7037 (208) of Aeronautical Engineering: A Continuing Bibliography. NASA SP-7037 and its supplements have been compiled through the cooperative efforts of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This cumulative index includes subject, personal author, corporate source, foreign technology, contract, report number, and accession number indexes