Development of a satellite SAR image spectra and altimeter wave height data assimilation system for ERS-1

The applicability of ERS-1 wind and wave data for wave models was studied using the WAM third generation wave model and SEASAT altimeter, scatterometer and SAR data. A series of global wave hindcasts is made for the surface stress and surface wind fields by assimilation of scatterometer data for the full 96-day SEASAT and also for two wind field analyses for shorter periods by assimilation with the higher resolution ECMWF T63 model and by subjective analysis methods. It is found that wave models respond very sensitively to inconsistencies in wind field analyses and therefore provide a valuable data validation tool. Comparisons between SEASAT SAR image spectra and theoretical SAR spectra derived from the hindcast wave spectra by Monte Carlo simulations yield good overall agreement for 32 cases representing a wide variety of wave conditions. It is concluded that SAR wave imaging is sufficiently well understood to apply SAR image spectra with confidence for wave studies if supported by realistic wave models and theoretical computations of the strongly nonlinear mapping of the wave spectrum into the SAR image spectrum. A closed nonlinear integral expression for this spectral mapping relation is derived which avoids the inherent statistical errors of Monte Carlo computations and may prove to be more efficient numerically

Geometric accuracy of LANDSAT-4 MSS image data

Analyses of the LANDSAT-4 MSS image data of North Georgia provided by the EDC in CCT-p formats reveal that errors of approximately + or - 30 m in the raw data can be reduced to about + or - 55 m based on rectification procedures involving the use of 20 to 30 well-distributed GCPs and 2nd or 3rd degree polynomial equations. Higher order polynomials do not appear to improve the rectification accuracy. A subscene area of 256 x 256 pixels was rectified with a 1st degree polynomial to yield an RMSE sub xy value of + or - 40 m, indicating that USGS 1:24,000 scale quadrangle-sized areas of LANDSAT-4 data can be fitted to a map base with relatively few control points and simple equations. The errors in the rectification process are caused by the spatial resolution of the MSS data, by errors in the maps and GCP digitizing process, and by displacements caused by terrain relief. Overall, due to the improved pointing and attitude control of the spacecraft, the geometric quality of the LANDSAT-4 MSS data appears much improved over that of LANDSATS -1, -2 and -3

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION ON METAL CASTING IN VERTICAL SOLIDIFICATION

The metals and alloys solidification can be defined as a transient heat transfer process. A liquid/solid transformation is followed by thermal energy liberation, with a movable boundary separating two phases with different thermophysical properties. The solidification is of great interest to mechanical and chemical engineers. It is a non-linear transient phenomenon, where heat transfer between the casting and the mold plays a important role. This paper aims to propose a study of heat flow from the casting to the mold using a numerical technique to compute the temperature history of all points inside the casting. The cooling process consists of water-cooled mold with heat being extracted only from the bottom, resulting in unidirectional vertical solidification. The ANSYS software was used to obtain the temperature distribution in the casting. Good agreement was obtained when the simulation results were compared with the experimental data

Production of Reliable Flight Crucial Software: Validation Methods Research for Fault Tolerant Avionics and Control Systems Sub-Working Group Meeting

The state of the art in the production of crucial software for flight control applications was addressed. The association between reliability metrics and software is considered. Thirteen software development projects are discussed. A short term need for research in the areas of tool development and software fault tolerance was indicated. For the long term, research in format verification or proof methods was recommended. Formal specification and software reliability modeling, were recommended as topics for both short and long term research

CEAI: CCM based Email Authorship Identification Model

In this paper we present a model for email authorship identification (EAI) by employing a Cluster-based Classification (CCM) technique. Traditionally, stylometric features have been successfully employed in various authorship analysis tasks; we extend the traditional feature-set to include some more interesting and effective features for email authorship identification (e.g. the last punctuation mark used in an email, the tendency of an author to use capitalization at the start of an email, or the punctuation after a greeting or farewell). We also included Info Gain feature selection based content features. It is observed that the use of such features in the authorship identification process has a positive impact on the accuracy of the authorship identification task. We performed experiments to justify our arguments and compared the results with other base line models. Experimental results reveal that the proposed CCM-based email authorship identification model, along with the proposed feature set, outperforms the state-of-the-art support vector machine (SVM)-based models, as well as the models proposed by Iqbal et al. [1, 2]. The proposed model attains an accuracy rate of 94% for 10 authors, 89% for 25 authors, and 81% for 50 authors, respectively on Enron dataset, while 89.5% accuracy has been achieved on authors' constructed real email dataset. The results on Enron dataset have been achieved on quite a large number of authors as compared to the models proposed by Iqbal et al. [1, 2]

The free jet as a simulator of forward velocity effects on jet noise

A thorough theoretical and experimental study of the effects of the free-jet shear layer on the transmission of sound from a model jet placed within the free jet to the far-field receiver located outside the free-jet flow was conducted. The validity and accuracy of the free-jet flight simulation technique for forward velocity effects on jet noise was evaluated. Transformation charts and a systematic computational procedure for converting measurements from a free-jet simulation to the corresponding results from a wind-tunnel simulation, and, finally, to the flight case were provided. The effects of simulated forward flight on jet mixing noise, internal noise and shock-associated noise from model-scale unheated and heated jets were established experimentally in a free-jet facility. It was illustrated that the existing anomalies between full-scale flight data and model-scale flight simulation data projected to the flight case, could well be due to the contamination of flight data by engine internal noise

The balance store card for the design and validation instruments to measure the academic teacher's achievement and performance

The evaluation of faculty work is critical for the university accreditation. Moreover, particularly sensitive to this related tendency of faculty work evaluation; it is necessary to go beyond the knowledge factor and concentrating more in the degree of satisfaction of the stakeholders included in the process of university education. In this context, this research aims to design and validate the instruments directed to explore the internal academic environment of the faculty at the Centro Regional de Veraguas, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama; considered as dimensional axes to the organization, development, and the psycho-pedagogic properties of academic work. For the present research, the BSC methodology was used in different stages of strategic planning and program evaluation. The Delphi technique was used to validate the content and the construction of the instruments. The validation of the reliability value was established by the Cronbach's alpha value by using the SPSS for analysing the data.The evaluation of faculty work is critical for the university accreditation. Moreover, particularly sensitive to this related tendency of faculty work evaluation; it is necessary to go beyond the knowledge factor and concentrating more in the degree of satisfaction of the stakeholders included in the process of university education. In this context, this research aims to design and validate the instruments directed to explore the internal academic environment of the faculty at the Centro Regional de Veraguas, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama; considered as dimensional axes to the organization, development, and the psycho-pedagogic properties of academic work. For the present research, the BSC methodology was used in different stages of strategic planning and program evaluation. The Delphi technique was used to validate the content and the construction of the instruments. The validation of the reliability value was established by the Cronbach's alpha value by using the SPSS for analysing the data

The Balance Score Card for the Design and Validation Instrumens to Measure the Academic Teachers´s Achievement and Performance

The evaluation of faculty work is critical for the university accreditation. Moreover, particularly sensitive to this related tendency of faculty work evaluation; it is necessary to go beyond the knowledge factor and concentrating more in the degree of satisfaction of the stakeholders included in the process of university education. In this context, this research aims to design and validate the instruments directed to explore the internal academic environment of the faculty at the Centro Regional de Veraguas, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama; considered as dimensional axes to the organization, development, and the psycho-pedagogic properties of academic work. For the present research, the BSC methodology was used in different stages of strategic planning and program evaluation. The Delphi technique was used to validate the content and the construction of the instruments. The validation of the reliability value was established by the Cronbach's alpha value by using the SPSS for analysing the data.The evaluation of faculty work is critical for the university accreditation. Moreover, particularly sensitive to this related tendency of faculty work evaluation; it is necessary to go beyond the knowledge factor and concentrating more in the degree of satisfaction of the stakeholders included in the process of university education. In this context, this research aims to design and validate the instruments directed to explore the internal academic environment of the faculty at the Centro Regional de Veraguas, Universidad Tecnologica de Panama; considered as dimensional axes to the organization, development, and the psycho-pedagogic properties of academic work. For the present research, the BSC methodology was used in different stages of strategic planning and program evaluation. The Delphi technique was used to validate the content and the construction of the instruments. The validation of the reliability value was established by the Cronbach's alpha value by using the SPSS for analysing the data

An approach to impact analysis in software maintenance

Impact analysis is a software maintenance activity, which consists of determining the scope of a requested change, as a basis for planning and implementing it. After a change request has been specified (change understanding) and the initial part of the system to be changed has been identified (change localization), impact analysis helps to understand consequences of the change on other parts of the system. Induced changes, also named ripple effects, among software components are detected. Most existing approaches perform impact analysis for changes occurring at the code level. In this thesis, concepts developed to perform impact analysis at the code level are applied to trace changes occurring at the design level. The method consists of proposing an activity model addressing the different steps of impact analysis and a data model on which propagations of changes can be traced. The method is validated with a case study applied to a system from the aerospace field. The tools we developed on PCTE help for consistency checks in HOOD based designs during editing. Our data-model based on an Entity Relationship notation describes a way to model HOOD diagrams in PCTE and further on to propagate changes on the repository. Examples chosen address the design phase of a simple engine system. We show that addressing modifications at a higher level of abstraction than the code eases understanding and localization of changes. It also limits the propagation of ripple effects (i.e., unexpected behaviour of the system) by detecting secondary changes at an earlier stage

School Leadership Styles and Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Relationship to Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Four School Districts in Northern UAE.

This study aimed to identify school leadership patterns and their relationship to the academic achievement of secondary school students in four Northern Emirates in the UAE as perceived by the teachers. The study was guided by four research questions and used the quantitative research method. Data for this study were collected through a questionnaire divided into four sections. The first section included demographic information of participants. The second was the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) in its most recent version, which measures passive, transactional, and transformational leadership. The third consisted of ten statements that assessed instructional leadership. The last section comprised two restricted-choice questions. The questionnaire was sent to 24 secondary schools in Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah and Sharjah Office District and was completed by 522 male and female teachers. The means and standard deviations were used to describe the four style of leadership. Then, Statistical analysis were used to find out whether principal leadership style differed according to principal gender and/or school district. The means and standard deviation were used to answer the last two research questions: to identify the school principal pattern of leadership which could affect the academic achievements of students. The results of the study showed that the passive and avoidant leadership styles were not practiced in the schools of the four districts while three other leadership styles (transactional, transformational and instructional) were practiced to a high degree. The study found that the instructional leadership style appeared to be practiced extensively in Fujairah district and by female principals. The fourth conclusion reached was that teachers felt that there was a strong relationship between the leadership style or pattern and student academic achievements; they perceived that the instructional leadership style leads to higher achievement of students