New applications of Spectral Edge image fusion

In this paper, we present new applications of the Spectral Edge image fusion method. The Spectral Edge image fusion algorithm creates a result which combines details from any number of multispectral input images with natural color information from a visible spectrum image. Spectral Edge image fusion is a derivative–based technique, which creates an output fused image with gradients which are an ideal combination of those of the multispectral input images and the input visible color image. This produces both maximum detail and natural colors. We present two new applications of Spectral Edge image fusion. Firstly, we fuse RGB–NIR information from a sensor with a modified Bayer pattern, which captures visible and near–infrared image information on a single CCD. We also present an example of RGB–thermal image fusion, using a thermal camera attached to a smartphone, which captures both visible and low–resolution thermal images. These new results may be useful for computational photography and surveillance applications. © (2016) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

A Hoard of Stone Beads near Lake Chad, Nigeria

In 1980, a small pot containing 622 carnelian and quartz beads was found accidentally at Ala, in the Nigerian part of the clay plain south of Lake Chad. It appears to constitute a hoard of wealth which its owner buried and subsequently failed to retrieve. Beads of this sort first appear in this area in the second half of the first millennium A.D., but also occur in second-millennium deposits. However, they are usually found as grave goods, and the Ala discovery is almost the only example of a hoard of such beads known to the author. Their presence on the stoneless Chadian plain indicates the development of trading contacts with other areas, but neither the source of the raw materials nor the place of manufacture of the beads is known. The quartz could have come from the Cameroon Mountains but the origin of the carnelian, often assumed to be from India, remains problematic. More attention needs to be paid to the possibility of West African sources and production, but there is also an urgent necessity both to compile a corpus of firmly dated material and to conduct characterization studies that could throw more light on the origin of the carnelian

Archaeology at the University of New England, 1975-6

An account of current research at the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of New England, was published in Australian Archaeology 3, just a year ago (Connah, 1975) . The purpose of the present account is to bring the reader up to date with archaeological activities at Armidale over the last year

Synthesis and Characterisation of Multifunctional Bioresponsive Magnetic Resonance Imaging Probes

The development of bioresponsive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents (CAs) specific to monitoring Ca2+ fluctuations are of increasing interest for fMRI studies of neural activity. Such probes can provide key information regarding their microenvironment through changes in MR signal which in turn can lead to vital information concerning the functioning of tissue being extracted. Thus far, a number of CAs sensitive to Ca2+ have been developed ranging from ‘small’ molecular systems to larger nano-sized derivatives. Here, an extension to this ever growing field with the development of a range monomeric, multimeric and nano-sized Ca2+-responsive smart contrast agents (SCAs) is described. A range of bioresponsive dendrimeric CAs with different structures and charge distributions are described in the pursuit of probes for T1-weighted imaging and r2/r1 ratiometric imaging probes. The use of nano-sized platforms enabled higher Gd3+ loading and slower diffusion rates, which are favoured characteristics for in vivo applications. The impact of structural and charge changes resulted in significant consequences for the performance of the probes as Ca2+-responsive MRI CAs. The most active probe displayed common changes in r1 while also exhibiting a remarkable increase in the r2/r1 ratio, greater than that previously achieved. Further investigation revealed that only through a synergistic combination of an increase in q with a change in size and rigidity of the conjugate could such relaxometric changes be realised. This ultimately provided significant insights into the behaviour of such dendrimeric systems and provided a model in which future preparations should be based in the development of T1-weighted and r2/r1 ratiometric probes to visualise Ca2+ fluctuations dynamically. Deeper structural studies were performed on two monomeric systems in which the linker length between the MR reporting moiety and the bioresponsive unit were extended. Various studies revealed significant differences in relaxometric behaviour between the probes. Characterisation with a range of techniques revealed structural changes in the complex coordination environment between the ‘off’ and ‘on’ states which is expected for such systems. Furthermore, the diffusive behaviour of each complex described systems which do not significantly change upon Ca2+ coordination. The results of this study revealed how subtle structural changes can significantly impact the performance of a SCA, thus helping to identify the requirements for future probes. The final parts of this work focused on employing solid phase synthetic techniques as an alternative to standard solution phase chemistry in the preparation of more ‘complex’ SCA derivatives. In one approach, a functionalised bismacrocyclic derivative was assembled on solid phase through the use of multiple building blocks in a straightforward manner. The potency of this probe was confirmed by relaxometric titrations. In a second study, a targeted multimeric probe consisting of three SCA monomers and the RGD peptide sequence was developed. This multimer showed significant increases in relaxivity upon Ca2+ addition. The use of solid phase protocols in both of these cases allowed for more complex SCAs to be developed, which would otherwise be extremely difficult following solution phase protocols. Furthermore, the use of peptide scaffolds allows for simple customisation in which multimeric or multifunctional probes can be developed, providing an additional synthetic tool for chemists attempting to develop bioresponsive MRI CAs

Current Research at the Department Of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of New England

Research interests include topics outside as well as inside Australia, for instance my own work on the Late Stone Age and Iron Age of West Africa has recently led to the publication of the Archaeology of Benin, by Oxford University Press. Further material is in preparation for publication concerning the Lake Chad area of N.E. Nigeria. Likewise, Iain Davidson is presently completing work on man-environment relationships during the late Pleistocene in Spain

Battlefield Casualty: The Archaeology of a Captured Gun

Many artefacts in museums lack adequate information about the context from which they were collected. Not surprisingly, this often applies to artefacts recovered from battlefields, where chaotic conditions can result in uncertainty about their origins. This paper examines the case of a Second World War German 88 mm gun preserved in an Australian museum. The museum had little contextual information for this weapon, except that the Australian Army captured it in North Africa in 1942, probably after the Second Battle of El Alamein. However, an archaeological analysis of the gun, particularly of damage incurred during battle, can link it to photographs taken after the battle and re-establish its historical context and the circumstances of its acquisition. In this way, a museum artefact can become more than a mere exhibit: it can be made to document its own past

Persona obscura: re-reading Reima Pietilä

Peer Reviewe

Influential Article Review - Profit-driven Scheme For Limited-Resource Projects With Adjustable Capacity Limits

This paper examines operations. We present insights from a highly influential paper. Here are the highlights from this paper: We consider a novel generalization of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). Unlike many established approaches for the RCPSP that aim to minimize the makespan of the project for given static capacity constraints, we consider the important real-life aspect that capacity constraints can often be systematically modified by temporarily assigning costly additional production resources or using overtime. We, furthermore, assume that the revenue of the project decreases as its makespan increases and try to find a schedule with a profit-maximizing makespan. Like the RCPSP, the problem is NP-hard, but unlike the RCPSP, it turns out that an optimal schedule does not have to be among the set of so-called active schedules. Scheduling such a project is a formidable task, both from a practical and a theoretical perspective. We develop, describe, and evaluate alternative solution encodings and schedule decoding mechanisms to solve this problem within a genetic algorithm framework and we compare the solutions obtained to both optimal reference values and the results of a commercial local search solver called LocalSolver. For our overseas readers, we then present the insights from this paper in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German

Automatic age and gender classification using supervised appearance model

YesAge and gender classification are two important problems that recently gained popularity in the research community, due to their wide range of applications. Research has shown that both age and gender information are encoded in the face shape and texture, hence the active appearance model (AAM), a statistical model that captures shape and texture variations, has been one of the most widely used feature extraction techniques for the aforementioned problems. However, AAM suffers from some drawbacks, especially when used for classification. This is primarily because principal component analysis (PCA), which is at the core of the model, works in an unsupervised manner, i.e., PCA dimensionality reduction does not take into account how the predictor variables relate to the response (class labels). Rather, it explores only the underlying structure of the predictor variables, thus, it is no surprise if PCA discards valuable parts of the data that represent discriminatory features. Toward this end, we propose a supervised appearance model (sAM) that improves on AAM by replacing PCA with partial least-squares regression. This feature extraction technique is then used for the problems of age and gender classification. Our experiments show that sAM has better predictive power than the conventional AAM