Recent MAGSAT results

Meyer, et al. have improved their original global crustal model and made a spherical harmonic analysis of the resulting magnetic field to n=50. The Z contours at 400 Km altitude from a field model composed of the first 15 degrees and order of their model and the terms n=16 to 29 from the MAGSAT model M051782 are presented. The main point to consider from such representations is that the lower order terms appear to contribute components comparable in magnitude to those of higher order. Thus, one should allow in making tectonic interpretations of global maps of anomalies such as those published by Langel, that there are likely continental scale (or smaller) features that have been removed along with the core field by the subtraction of the terms n=1 to 13 of the observed field. Planning for the analysis of data to be accrued by GRM should thus address this problem

Numerical solution of the geoelectrodynamic problem

The primary goal is to understand the sources of the near-Earth ambient magnetic field as observed by recent spacecraft surveys and surface variational magnetic observations so as to determine the electrical properties of the crust and upper mantle. Also included is the structure and changes on a short time scale of the core field which must be separated and identified. The Magsat data collection interval provides an opportunity to compare the vector field projections of ionospheric currents computed from surface data above the ionosphere as does the POGO data for scalar projections. The limitation of Magsat is its sun-synchronous orbit, which only sampled low latitudes at dawn and dusk, whereas POGO, though only making observations of the scalar field, sampled all local times. Magsat operated at a lower altitude than POGO (down to 350 km) whereas the orbits of the three POGO spacecraft ranged up to 1500 km and were never lower than about 400 km

A compilation of magnetic observatories

Magnetic observatories for use during international quiet sun year /iqsy

Automatic mapping of the geomagnetic field

Automatic mapping of geomagnetic field & electric current flow in ionospher

Projection-based image registration in the presence of fixed-pattern noise

A computationally efficient method for image registration is investigated that can achieve an improved performance over the traditional two-dimensional (2-D) cross-correlation-based techniques in the presence of both fixed-pattern and temporal noise. The method relies on transforming each image in the sequence of frames into two vector projections formed by accumulating pixel values along the rows and columns of the image. The vector projections corresponding to successive frames are in turn used to estimate the individual horizontal and vertical components of the shift by means of a one-dimensional (1-D) cross-correlation-based estimator. While gradient-based shift estimation techniques are computationally efficient, they often exhibit degraded performance under noisy conditions in comparison to cross-correlators due to the fact that the gradient operation amplifies noise. The projection-based estimator, on the other hand, significantly reduces the computational complexity associated with the 2-D operations involved in traditional correlation-based shift estimators while improving the performance in the presence of temporal and spatial noise. To show the noise rejection capability of the projection-based shift estimator relative to the 2-D cross correlator, a figure-of-merit is developed and computed reflecting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) associated with each estimator. The two methods are also compared by means of computer simulation and tests using real image sequences

OGO-2 Magnetic Field Observations During the Magnetic Storm of March 13-15, 1966

Magnetic disturbances examined for correlation of surface and satellite magnetic field measurement

Improving water utilization from a catchment perspective

Water management / Water scarcity / Water use efficiency / Catchment areas / Calibrations / Hydrology / Models / River basins / Participatory management / Water balance / Case studies / Asia / Africa / South Africa / Zimbabwe

The Benefits of a Professional Website for a Musician

For my capstone project at Boise State, I decided to create a website for my music. I am a music producer and needed a professional web presence for promotion, current and future fans, professional contacts, and to also serve as a portfolio of my work. There are also added benefits for future projects in the form of a blog and file selling features. I researched web-building platforms and methods as well the benefits of having a website for not just myself but for fans and other consumers of music and developed an action plan to create my own professional website. This paper will detail the research conducted, steps taken and outcomes achieved for my capstone project

A Shifting Research Agenda: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Must Prepare Students for Careers in Computing, Informatics, and Engineering

This paper describes the founding principles upon which historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) are built and examines their role in the high-tech economy. It examines and discusses the diversity issues that have led many to posit that HBCUs should embrace computing, informatics, and engineering as focal areas, and partner with Silicon Valley tech companies to ensure their graduates have the skills necessary for gainful employment. The Howard-West partnership of Howard University (an HBCU) with Google LLC and an enterprise architecture framework are presented as conceptual examples of how colleges and universities such as Howard University, can work together and with industry to introduce students to computing, regardless of major, to prepare them for the modern workforce. A conceptual framework is presented, guided by the outcomes of the social cognitive career theory. The theoretical orientation of this proposed work focuses on the intersection between individual, environmental, and behavioral attributes, and describes formative and summative evaluation criteria in support of the research and educational goals. HBCUs can be better served by prioritizing the very areas in which they are currently “overproducing” graduates—computing, informatics, and engineering. The proposed model can be adopted, modified, and integrated by HBCUs, and other universities and colleges, that suffer from a lack of disciplinary integration in their computing programs. The potential outcome of the work would be to attract and retain students to computing majors, which could have an impact on the technology workforce

Implementation of liquid culture for tuberculosis diagnosis in a remote setting: lessons learned.

Although sputum smear microscopy is the primary method for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis in low-resource settings, it has low sensitivity. The World Health Organization recommends the use of liquid culture techniques for TB diagnosis and drug susceptibility testing in low- and middle-income countries. An evaluation of samples from southern Sudan found that culture was able to detect cases of active pulmonary TB and extra-pulmonary TB missed by conventional smear microscopy. However, the long delays involved in obtaining culture results meant that they were usually not clinically useful, and high rates of non-tuberculous mycobacteria isolation made interpretation of results difficult. Improvements in diagnostic capacity and rapid speciation facilities, either on-site or through a local reference laboratory, are crucial