Aiding the Visually Impaired: Developing an efficient Braille Printer

With the large number of partially or completely visually impaired persons in society, their integration as productive, educated and capable members of society is hampered heavily by a pervasively high level of braille illiteracy. This problem is further compounded by the fact that braille printers are prohibitively expensive - generally starting from two thousand US dollars, beyond the reach of the common man. Over the period of a year, the authors have tried to develop a Braille printer which attempts to overcome the problems inherent in commercial printers. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to introduce two prototypes - the first with an emphasis of cost-effectiveness, and the second prototype, which is more experimental and aims to eliminate several demerits of Braille printing. The first prototype has been constructed at a cost significantly less than the existing commercial braille printers. Both the prototypes of the device have been constructed, which will be shown.Comment: 6 pages. IEEE accepted paper (not published yet) International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI-2017

Computer generated animation and movie production at LARC: A case study

The process of producing computer generated 16mm movies using the MOVIE.BYU software package developed by Brigham Young University and the currently available hardware technology at the Langley Research Center is described. A general overview relates the procedures to a specific application. Details are provided which describe the data used, preparation of a storyboard, key frame generation, the actual animation, title generation, filming, and processing/developing the final product. Problems encountered in each of these areas are identified. Both hardware and software problems are discussed along with proposed solutions and recommendations

Measuring social dynamics in a massive multiplayer online game

Quantification of human group-behavior has so far defied an empirical, falsifiable approach. This is due to tremendous difficulties in data acquisition of social systems. Massive multiplayer online games (MMOG) provide a fascinating new way of observing hundreds of thousands of simultaneously socially interacting individuals engaged in virtual economic activities. We have compiled a data set consisting of practically all actions of all players over a period of three years from a MMOG played by 300,000 people. This large-scale data set of a socio-economic unit contains all social and economic data from a single and coherent source. Players have to generate a virtual income through economic activities to `survive' and are typically engaged in a multitude of social activities offered within the game. Our analysis of high-frequency log files focuses on three types of social networks, and tests a series of social-dynamics hypotheses. In particular we study the structure and dynamics of friend-, enemy- and communication networks. We find striking differences in topological structure between positive (friend) and negative (enemy) tie networks. All networks confirm the recently observed phenomenon of network densification. We propose two approximate social laws in communication networks, the first expressing betweenness centrality as the inverse square of the overlap, the second relating communication strength to the cube of the overlap. These empirical laws provide strong quantitative evidence for the Weak ties hypothesis of Granovetter. Further, the analysis of triad significance profiles validates well-established assertions from social balance theory. We find overrepresentation (underrepresentation) of complete (incomplete) triads in networks of positive ties, and vice versa for networks of negative ties...Comment: 23 pages 19 figure

Molecular modelling of dendrimers for nanoscale applications

Dendrimers are well defined, highly branched macromolecules that radiate from a central core and are synthesized through a stepwise, repetitive reaction sequence that guarantees complete shells for each generation, leading to polymers that are monodisperse. The synthetic procedures developed for dendrimer preparation permit nearly complete control over the critical molecular design parameters, such as size, shape, surface/interior chemistry, flexibility, and topology. Recent results suggest that dendritic polymers may provide the key to developing a reliable and economical fabrication and manufacturing route to functional nanoscale materials that would have unique properties (electronic, optical, opto-electronic, magnetic, chemical, or biological). In turn, these could be used in designing new nanoscale devices. In this paper, we determine the 3D molecular structure of various dendrimers with continuous configurational Boltzmann biased direct Monte Carlo method and study their energetic and structural properties using molecular dynamics after annealing these molecular representations

Automated land-use mapping from spacecraft data

The author has identified the following significant results. In response to the need for a faster, more economical means of producing land use maps, this study evaluated the suitability of using ERTS-1 computer compatible tape (CCT) data as a basis for automatic mapping. Significant findings are: (1) automatic classification accuracy greater than 90% is achieved on categories of deep and shallow water, tended grass, rangeland, extractive (bare earth), urban, forest land, and nonforested wet lands; (2) computer-generated printouts by target class provide a quantitative measure of land use; and (3) the generation of map overlays showing land use from ERTS-1 CCTs offers a significant breakthrough in the rate at which land use maps are generated. Rather than uncorrected classified imagery or computer line printer outputs, the processing results in geometrically-corrected computer-driven pen drawing of land categories, drawn on a transparent material at a scale specified by the operator. These map overlays are economically produced and provide an efficient means of rapidly updating maps showing land use

Spatially Characterizing Effective Timber Supply

The structure of a computer-oriented cartographic model for assessing roundwood supply for generation of base load electricity is discussed. The model provides an analytical procedure for coupling spatial information of harvesting economics and owner willingness to sell stumpages. Supply is characterized in terms of standing timber; of accessibility considering various harvesting and hauling factors; and of availability as affected by ownership and residential patterns. Factors governing accessibility to timber include effective harvesting distance to haulic roads as modified by barriers and slopes. Haul distance is expressed in units that take into account the relative ease of travel along various road types to a central processing facility. Areas of accessible timber are grouped into spatial units, termed 'timbersheds', of common access to particular haul road segments that belong to unique 'transport zones'. Timber availability considerations include size of ownership parcels, housing density and excluded areas. The analysis techniques are demonstrated for a cartographic data base in western Massachusetts

SU(5) D-brane realizations, Yukawa couplings and proton stability

We discuss SU(5) Grand Unified Theories in the context of orientifold compactifications. Specifically, we investigate two and three D-brane stack realizations of the Georgi-Glashow and the flipped SU(5) model and analyze them with respect to their Yukawa couplings. As pointed out in arXiv:0909.0271 the most economical Georgi-Glashow realization based on two stacks generically suffers from a disastrous large proton decay rate. We show that allowing for an additional U(1) D-brane stack this as well as other phenomenological problems can be resolved. We exemplify with globally consistent Georgi-Glashow models based on RCFT that these D-brane quivers can be indeed embedded in a global setting. These globally consistent realizations admit rigid O(1) instantons inducing the perturbatively missing coupling 10105^H. Finally we show that flipped SU(5) D-brane realizations even with multiple U(1) D-brane stacks are plagued by severe phenomenological drawbacks which generically cannot be overcome.Comment: 34 pages v2 minor correction

Cognitive Information Processing

Contains research objectives and reports on two research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program by the U. S. Army Research Office, Durham, under Contract DA 36-039-AMC-03200(E)National Science Foundation (Grant GP-2495)National Institutes of Health (Grant MH-04737-05)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-496