Improved image classification with neural networks by fusing multispectral signatures with topological data

Automated schemes are needed to classify multispectral remotely sensed data. Human intelligence is often required to correctly interpret images from satellites and aircraft. Humans suceed because they use various types of cues about a scene to accurately define the contents of the image. Consequently, it follows that computer techniques that integrate and use different types of information would perform better than single source approaches. This research illustrated that multispectral signatures and topographical information could be used in concert. Significantly, this dual source tactic classified a remotely sensed image better than the multispectral classification alone. These classifications were accomplished by fusing spectral signatures with topographical information using neural network technology. A neural network was trained to classify Landsat mulitspectral signatures. A file of georeferenced ground truth classifications were used as the training criterion. The network was trained to classify urban, agriculture, range, and forest with an accuracy of 65.7 percent. Another neural network was programmed and trained to fuse these multispectral signature results with a file of georeferenced altitude data. This topological file contained 10 levels of elevations. When this nonspectral elevation information was fused with the spectral signatures, the classifications were improved to 73.7 and 75.7 percent

Secure and Verifiable Electronic Voting in Practice: the use of vVote in the Victorian State Election

The November 2014 Australian State of Victoria election was the first statutory political election worldwide at State level which deployed an end-to-end verifiable electronic voting system in polling places. This was the first time blind voters have been able to cast a fully secret ballot in a verifiable way, and the first time a verifiable voting system has been used to collect remote votes in a political election. The code is open source, and the output from the election is verifiable. The system took 1121 votes from these particular groups, an increase on 2010 and with fewer polling places

The Pitfalls of Work Requirements in Welfare-to-Work Policies: Experimental Evidence on Human Capital Accumulation in the Self-Sufficiency Project

This paper investigates whether policies that encourage recipients to exit welfare for full-time employment influence participation in educational activity. The Self-Sufficiency Project ('SSP') was a demonstration project where long-term welfare recipients randomly assigned to the treatment group were offered a generous earnings supplement if they exited welfare for full-time employment. We find that treatment group members were less likely to upgrade their education along all dimensions: high-school completion, enrolling in a community college or trade school, and enrolling in university. Thus, 'work-first'; policies that encourage full-time employment may reduce educational activity and may have adverse consequences on the long-run earnings capacity of welfare recipients. We also find that there was a substantial amount of educational upgrading in this population. For instance, among high-school dropouts at the baseline, 19% completed their diploma by the end of the demonstration. Finally, we simulate the consequences of the earnings supplement in the absence of adverse effects on educational upgrading. Doing so alters the interpretation of the lessons from the SSP demonstration.welfare policy, human capital, experimental methods, earnings supplementation

CoolBeans: Using Technology to Encourage Real-World Informal Interaction

Informal interaction is considered an important part of the work ethic and process in business and academia. We found that the new facilities for a computer science department at the University of Southampton were not conducive to this, and designed a technology-based solution to improve social awareness and encourage interaction using a presence-aware application and web interface. Users could use the system to find out who was taking a break and to invite others to do so. Initial results suggest that the project both encouraged social activity and became a popular fixture in the area on which efforts were focused

Feasibility study of using the overlap-Dirac operator for hadron spectroscopy

We investigate a number of algorithms that calculate the quark propagators for the overlap-Dirac fermion operator. The QCD simulations were performed at beta = 5.9 with a lattice volume of 16**3*32.Comment: LATTICE99(Chiral Fermions) 3 pages, 2 figures. A problem with the incorrect definition of the overlap mass has been corrected. The results have changed, but not the conclusions of the pape

Field Line Universal relaXer (FLUX): A Fluxon Approach to Coronal Magnetic Field Modeling

We describe a novel method for modeling the global, steady solar wind using photospheric magnetic fields as a driving boundary condition. Prior wind models in this class include both rapid heuristic methods that use potential field extrapolation and variants thereof, trading rigor for computation speed, and detailed 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models that attempt to simulate the entire solar corona with a degree of physical rigor, but require large amounts of computation. The Field Line Universal relaXer (FLUX), an open-source numerical code which implements the 'fluxon' semi-lagrangian approach to MHD modeling, provides an intermediate approach between these two general classes. In particular, the fluxon approach to MHD describes the magnetic field through discrete analogues of magnetic field lines, relaxing these structures to a stationary state of force balance. In this work we introduce a one-dimensional solar wind solution along each fieldline, providing an ensemble of solutions that are interpolated back onto a uniform grid at an outer boundary surface. This provides advantages in physical rigor over heuristic semi-analytic techniques, and in computational efficiency over full 3D MHD techniques. Here we describe the underlying methodology and the FLUXPipe modeling pipeline process.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap