Multispectral image fusion for detecting land mines

This report details a system which fuses information contained in registered images from multiple sensors to reduce the effects of clutter and improve the ability to detect surface and buried land mines. The sensor suite currently consists of a camera that acquires images in six bands (400nm, 500nm, 600nm, 700nm, 800nm and 900nm). Past research has shown that it is extremely difficult to distinguish land mines from background clutter in images obtained from a single sensor. It is hypothesized, however, that information fused from a suite of various sensors is likely to provide better detection reliability, because the suite of sensors detects a variety of physical properties that are more separable in feature space. The materials surrounding the mines can include natural materials (soil, rocks, foliage, water, etc.) and some artifacts

The Founders\u27 Multi-Purpose Chief Justice: The English Origins of the American Chief Justiceship

During the founding era, the American Chief Justice was nearly unrecognizable to modern eyes. Rather than a purely judicial officer, the Chief Justice was a multi-purpose minister, serving as a judge, an administrator, a diplomat, and an advisor. He was what we call the “multi-purpose Chief Justice.” The multi-purpose Chief Justice of the Early Republic originated with the ancient English office of the Lord Chief Justice. English judges historically served as multi-purpose ministers to the king, engaging in administrative and even political tasks. This was especially true for the Lord Chief Justice. Even as other English judges settled into more limited judicial roles, the Lord Chief Justice remained deeply integrated in British politics and government. The paradigmatic multi-purpose Chief Justice was Lord Mansfield, whose tenure from 1757 until 1789 profoundly influenced the American Framers. This Article contends that the English conception of a multi-purpose Chief Justice accompanied the title “Chief Justice” to America. The text of the Constitution, the debates at the Constitutional Convention, and the broader legal archive together indicate that the Framers expected the American “Chief Justice” to look and act like its English antecedent. The first Chief Justice, John Jay, did not disappoint. Jay was a Chief Justice cast in the mold of Lord Mansfield, presiding over the Supreme Court while also serving on administrative commissions, engaging in diplomacy, and routinely offering the President legal and political advice. Our recovery of the Chief Justice’s transatlantic origins offers a new angle on both English legal institutions and on the early American Chief Justice. It also poses questions about the judicial role and the separation of powers, highlighting the tension between modern doctrine and the actual practice of the Framers in the context of the judiciary

Land mine detection using multispectral image fusion

Our system fuses information contained in registered images from multiple sensors to reduce the effects of clutter and improve the ability to detect surface and buried land mines. The sensor suite currently consists of a camera that acquires images in six bands (400nm, 500nm, 600nm, 700nm, 800nm and 900nm). Past research has shown that it is extremely difficult to distinguish land mines from background clutter in images obtained from a single sensor. It is hypothesized, however, that information fused from a suite of various sensors is likely to provide better detection reliability, because the suite of sensors detects a variety of physical properties that are more separable in feature space. The materials surrounding the mines can include natural materials (soil, rocks, foliage, water, etc.) and some artifacts. We use a supervised learning pattern recognition approach to detecting the metal and plastic land mines. The overall process consists of four main parts: Preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection, and classification. These parts are used in a two step process to classify a subimage. We extract features from the images, and use feature selection algorithms to select only the most important features according to their contribution to correct detections. This allows us to save computational complexity and determine which of the spectral bands add value to the detection system. The most important features from the various sensors are fused using a supervised learning pattern classifier (the probabilistic neural network). We present results of experiments to detect land mines from real data collected from an airborne platform, and evaluate the usefulness of fusing feature information from multiple spectral bands

Distribution of presynaptic inhibition on type-identified motoneurones in the extensor carpi radialis pool in man

The question was addressed as to whether the magnitude of Ia presynaptic inhibition might depend on the type of motor unit activated during voluntary contraction in the wrist extensor muscles. For this purpose, we investigated the effects of applying electrical stimulation to the median nerve on the responses of 25 identified motor units to radial nerve stimulation delivered 20 ms after a conditioning stimulation.The reflex responses of the motor units yielded peaks in the post-stimulus time histograms with latencies compatible with monosynaptic activation. Although median nerve stimulation did not affect the motoneurone net excitatory drive assessed from the mean duration of the inter-spike interval, it led to a decrease in the contents of the first two 0.25 ms bins of the peak. This decrease may be consistent with the Ia presynaptic inhibition known to occur under these stimulation conditions.In the trials in which the median nerve was being stimulated, the finding that the response probability of the motor units, even in their monosynaptic components, tended to increase as their force threshold and their macro-potential area increased and as their twitch contraction time decreased suggests that the median nerve stimulation may have altered the efficiency with which the Ia inputs recruited the motoneurones in the pool.These effects were consistently observed in seven pairs of motor units each consisting of one slow and one fast contracting motor unit which were simultaneously tested, which suggests that the magnitude of the Ia presynaptic inhibition may depend on the type of motor unit tested rather than on the motoneurone pool excitatory drive.The present data suggest for the first time that in humans, the Ia presynaptic inhibition may show an upward gradient working from fast to slow contracting motor units which is able to compensate for the downward gradient in monosynaptic reflex excitation from ‘slow’ to ‘fast’ motor units. From a functional point of view, a weaker Ia presynaptic inhibition acting on the fast contracting motor units may contribute to improving the proprioceptive assistance to the wrist myotatic unit when the contraction force has to be increased

Meeting report ESC forum on drug eluting stents, European Heart House, Nice, 27-28 September 2007

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