Using remote vision: The effects of video image frame rate on visual object recognition performance

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.The process of using remote vision was simulated in order to determine the effects of video image frame rate on the performance in visual recognition of stationary environmental hazards in the dynamic video footage of the pedestrian travel environment. The recognition performance was assessed against two different video image frame rate variations: 25 and 2 fps. The assessment included a range of objective and subjective criteria. The obtained results show that the effects of the frame rate variations on the performance are statistically insignificant. This paper belongs to the process of development of a novel system for navigation of visually impaired pedestrians. The navigation system includes a remote vision facility, and the visual recognition of the environmental hazards by the sighted human guide is a basic activity in aiding the visually impaired user of the system in mobility

Online grocery retailing in Jordan: Future perspectives

Electronic commerce (e-Commerce) has been considered as the way of conducting business transactions online. The use of e-commerce technologies is widely accepted around the world since it offers organizations many opportunities to improve their performance. However, it is still skeptical that using this technology will come up with positive expectations. This study aimed at identifying the possible benefits and barriers that may affect the Jordanian grocery retailers’ decision to adopt this kind of technologies

Fuzzy Nambu-Goldstone Physics

In spacetime dimensions larger than 2, whenever a global symmetry G is spontaneously broken to a subgroup H, and G and H are Lie groups, there are Nambu-Goldstone modes described by fields with values in G/H. In two-dimensional spacetimes as well, models where fields take values in G/H are of considerable interest even though in that case there is no spontaneous breaking of continuous symmetries. We consider such models when the world sheet is a two-sphere and describe their fuzzy analogues for G=SU(N+1), H=S(U(N-1)xU(1)) ~ U(N) and G/H=CP^N. More generally our methods give fuzzy versions of continuum models on S^2 when the target spaces are Grassmannians and flag manifolds described by (N+1)x(N+1) projectors of rank =< (N+1)/2. These fuzzy models are finite-dimensional matrix models which nevertheless retain all the essential continuum topological features like solitonic sectors. They seem well-suited for numerical work.Comment: Latex, 18 pages; references added, typos correcte

Non-thermal plasma technology for the abatement of NOx and SOx from the exhaust of marine diesel engine

Non-thermal plasma based technology is proposed to the abatement of NOx and SOx of the exhaust gas from marine diesel engine. Proposed technology uses electron gun and microwave energy to generate the plasma. Fundamentals of non-thermal plasma and chemistry are presented with a set of simulation results of the reduction of NOx and SO2 for a typical two stoke marine diesel exhaust engine which is supported by an experimental results obtained with microwave plasma. A new scheme is also proposed in this paper to generate required plasma for the treatment of NOx and SOx form high exhaust flow rate

Quantum Fields on the Groenewold-Moyal Plane: C, P, T and CPT

We show that despite the inherent non-locality of quantum field theories on the Groenewold-Moyal (GM) plane, one can find a class of ${\bf C}$, ${\bf P}$, ${\bf T}$ and ${\bf CPT}$ invariant theories. In particular, these are theories without gauge fields or with just gauge fields and no matter fields. We also show that in the presence of gauge fields, one can have a field theory where the Hamiltonian is ${\bf C}$ and ${\bf T}$ invariant while the $S$-matrix violates ${\bf P}$ and ${\bf CPT}$. In non-abelian gauge theories with matter fields such as the electro-weak and $QCD$ sectors of the standard model of particle physics, ${\bf C}$, ${\bf P}$, ${\bf T}$ and the product of any pair of them are broken while ${\bf CPT}$ remains intact for the case $\theta^{0i} =0$. (Here $x^{\mu} \star x^{\nu} - x^{\nu} \star x^{\mu} = i \theta^{\mu \nu}$, $x^{\mu}$: coordinate functions, $\theta^{\mu \nu} = -\theta^{\nu \mu}=$ constant.) When $\theta^{0i} \neq 0$, it contributes to breaking also ${\bf P}$ and ${\bf CPT}$. It is known that the $S$-matrix in a non-abelian theory depends on $\theta^{\mu \nu}$ only through $\theta^{0i}$. The $S$-matrix is frame dependent. It breaks (the identity component of the) Lorentz group. All the noncommutative effects vanish if the scattering takes place in the center-of-mass frame, or any frame where $\theta^{0i}P^{\textrm{in}}_{i} = 0$, but not otherwise. ${\bf P}$ and ${\bf CPT}$ are good symmetries of the theory in this special case.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, revised, 2 references adde

Mobile robot based electrostatic spray system for controlling pests on cotton plants in Iraq

A mobile robot based electrostatic spray system was developed to combat pest infestation on cotton plants in Iraq. The system consists of a charged spray nozzle, a CCD camera, a mobile robot (vehicle and arm) and Arduino microcontroller. Arduino microcontroller is used to control the spray nozzle and the robot. Matlab is used to process the image from the CCD camera and to generate the appropriate control signals to the robot and the spray nozzle. COMSOL multi-physics FEM software was used to design the induction electrodes to achieve maximum charge transfer onto the fan spray liquid film resulting in achieving the desired charge/mass ratio of the spray. The charged spray nozzle was operated on short duration pulsed spray mode. Image analysis was employed to investigate the spray deposition on improvised insect targets on an artificial plant.The ministry of higher education and scientific research of Iraqi governmen

Reduction of NOx and PM in Marine Diesel Engine Exhaust Gas using Microwave Plasma

Abatement of NOx and particulate matters (PM) of marine diesel exhaust gas using microwave (MW) non-thermal plasma is presented in this paper. NOx mainly consist of NO and less concentration of NO2 in a typical two stoke marine diesel engine and microwave plasma generation can completely remove NO. MW was generated using two 2kW microwave sources and a saw tooth passive electrode. Passive electrode was used to generate high electric field region within microwave environment where high energetic electrons (1-3eV) are produced for the generation of non-thermal plasma (NTP). 2kW gen-set diesel exhaust gas was used to test our pilot-scale MW plasma reactor. The experimental results show that almost 100% removal of NO is possible for the exhaust gas flow rate of 60l/s. It was also shown that MW can significantly remove soot particles (PM, 10nm to 365nm) entrained in the exhaust gas of 200kW marine diesel engine with 40% engine load and gas flow rate of 130l/s. MW without generating plasma showed reduction up to 50% reduction of PM and with the plasma up to 90% reduction. The major challenge in these experiments was that igniting the desired plasma and sustaining it with passive electrodes for longer period (10s of minutes) as it required fine tuning of electrode position, which was influenced by many factors such as gas flow rate, geometry of reactor and MW power

On Time-Space Noncommutativity for Transition Processes and Noncommutative Symmetries

We explore the consequences of time-space noncommutativity in the quantum mechanics of atoms and molecules, focusing on the Moyal plane with just time-space noncommutativity ($[\hat{x}_\mu ,\hat{x}_\nu]=i\theta_{\mu\nu}$, \theta_{0i}\neqq 0, $\theta_{ij}=0$). Space rotations and parity are not automorphisms of this algebra and are not symmetries of quantum physics. Still, when there are spectral degeneracies of a time-independent Hamiltonian on a commutative space-time which are due to symmetries, they persist when \theta_{0i}\neqq 0; they do not depend at all on $\theta_{0i}$. They give no clue about rotation and parity violation when \theta_{0i}\neqq 0. The persistence of degeneracies for \theta_{0i}\neqq 0 can be understood in terms of invariance under deformed noncommutative ``rotations'' and ``parity''. They are not spatial rotations and reflection. We explain such deformed symmetries. We emphasize the significance of time-dependent perturbations (for example, due to time-dependent electromagnetic fields) to observe noncommutativity. The formalism for treating transition processes is illustrated by the example of nonrelativistic hydrogen atom interacting with quantized electromagnetic field. In the tree approximation, the $2s\to 1s +\gamma$ transition for hydrogen is zero in the commutative case. As an example, we show that it is zero in the same approximation for $\theta_{0i}\ne 0$. The importance of the deformed rotational symmetry is commented upon further using the decay $Z^0 \to 2\gamma$ as an example.Comment: 13 pages, revised version, references adde

Frequency-sweep examination for wave mode identification in multimodal ultrasonic guided wave signal

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Ultrasonic guided waves can be used to assess and monitor long elements of a structure from a single position. The greatest challenges for any guided wave system are the plethora of wave modes arising from the geometry of the structural element which propagate with a range of frequency-dependent velocities and the interpretation of these combined signals reflected by discontinuities in the structural element. In this paper, a novel signal processing technique is presented using a combination of frequency-sweep measurement, sampling rate conversion, and Fourier transform. The technique is applied to synthesized and experimental data to identify different modes in complex ultrasonic guided wave signals. It is demonstrated throughout the paper that the technique also has the capability to derive the time of flight and group velocity dispersion curve of different wave modes in field inspections. © 2014 IEEE

Client-server-based LBS architecture: A novel positioning module for improved positioning performance

Permission to distribute obtained from publisher.This work presents a new efficient positioning module that operates over client-server LBS architectures. The aim of the proposed module is to fulfil the position information requirements for LBS pedestrian applications by ensuring the availability of reliable, highly accurate and precise position solutions based on GPS single frequency (L1) positioning service. The positioning module operates at both LBS architecture sides; the client (mobile device), and the server (positioning server). At the server side, the positioning module is responsible for correcting user’s location information based on WADGPS corrections. In addition, at the mobile side, the positioning module is continually in charge for monitoring the integrity and available of the position solutions as well as managing the communication with the server. The integrity monitoring was based on EGNOS integrity methods. A prototype of the proposed module was developed and used in experimental trials to evaluate the efficiency of the module in terms of the achieved positioning performance. The positioning module was capable of achieving a horizontal accuracy of less than 2 meters with a 95% confidence level with integrity improvement of more than 30% from existing GPS/EGNOS services