The use of machine vision for assessment of fodder quality

At present fodder is assessed subjectively. The evaluation depends greatly on a personal opinion and there can be large variations in assessments. The project has investigated the use of machine vision in several ways, to provide measures of fodder quality that will be ojective and independent of the assessor. Growers will be able to quote a quality measure that buyers can trust. The research includes the possibility of discerning colour differences that are beyond the capability of the human eye, while still using equipment that is of relatively modest cost

Cooperatives: A Competitive Yardstick for Health Care

�As the national debate over health care reform continues, consideration is increasingly being given to the use of consumer-focused health care cooperatives as a key strategy for providing access to affordable health care and insurance for the millions of consumers and small businesses not presently able to afford or obtain adequate health care. Historically in many other sectors, the cooperative form of business has been successfully adapted by farmers, consumers, businesses, and public bodies as an effective strategy for attaining scale, lowering costs, improving incomes, providing services, and creating a better functioning marketplace. Reasons for forming cooperatives and analysis of cooperative movements can typically be traced to presence of a market failure (Schrader). Thus, as this nation seeks to remedy the plight of millions of uninsured urban and rural residents, cooperative models are properly on the table,

Commercialisation of precision agriculture technologies in the macadamia industry

A prototype vision-based yield monitor has been developed for the macadamia industry. The system estimates yield for individual trees by detecting nuts and their harvested location. The technology was developed by the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture, University of Southern Queensland for the purpose of reducing labour and costs in varietal assessment trials where yield for individual trees are required to be measured to indicate tree performance. The project was commissioned by Horticulture Australia Limited

Cora

As a novel, Cora operates in the genre of the thriller and harkens to the novels of Dean Koontz, Owl Goingback, and John Saul. It is a tightly told tale meant to make the reader read and then read some more, and the main objective is entertainment. The title character of the novel, Cora, is a beautiful sixteen-year old girl from southern California. When her family is attacked by a razor-wielding psychopath in a parking garage in Beverly Hills , she alone escapes, but something has changed for both Cora and the killer, linking the two in ways neither immediately understands. Deeply in shock after witnessing the massacre of her family, Cora is sent to an island off the coast of Maine, where her grandfather heads a psychiatric clinic devoted the study of catatonia. As Dr. Cole Johnstone and his one-time love interest, Dr. Sarah Delacort, struggle to help the comatose girl, it quickly becomes evident that they are also running a race against time, because something is hunting the girl in her dreams, something that won\u27t stop until Cora is dead. Cora is a novel of suspense with elements of the horrific. Much of it takes the form of a chase, and there is the omnipresent feeling that time is ticking down, that things are quickly coming to a head, and that when they finally do, something terrible is going to happen. It is also, however, a book centered around its characters, a diverse cast all looking for something different. As the two main characters of the novel, Sarah Delacort and Dr. Cole Johnstone drive the narrative along through their attempts to help Cora. But they are also rediscovering themselves and each other; Cole and Sarah were once seriously involved but haven\u27t spoken in years, and both have undergone drastic changes since last they met. Cole is struggling to deal with the death of his young son, and Sarah is trying to piece back together a life torn apart by her unique gift. Most of the novel\u27s horrific elements come from Luis Argento, the cop who killed Cora\u27s family and who is fixated on killing her next. During his trek across the country he leaves a trail of bodies in his wake, unable to control the violent impulses constantly thrumming through his body. Like most novels of horror and suspense, Cora ends with the bad guy getting his comeuppance

Book Review

Book review of "Renegotiating Health Care -- Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration" by Leonard J. Marcus, with Barry C. Dorn, Phyllis B. Kritek, Velvet G. Miller and Janice B. Wyatt (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995).Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution

The Solution of a Singular Integral Equation Arising From a Lifting Surface Theory for Rotating Blades

A technique is presented for the solution of a linear, two dimensional, singular, Volterra integral equation of the first kind. The integral equation, originally developed by Farassat and Myers, is derived from the basic equations of linearized acoustics and models the lifting force experienced by an infinitesimally thin surface moving tangent to itself. As a particular application, the motion of modern high speed aircraft propellers (Advanced Technology Propellers) is considered. The unknown propeller blade surface pressure distribution is approximated by a piecewise constant function and the integral equation is solved numerically by the method of collocation. Certain simplifying assumptions applied to the propeller blade model lead to a radical reduction in complexity of the solution methodology. This research is motivated by the need to obtain accurate, cost efficient propeller blade surface pressure information to be used as input to Advanced Technology Propeller Noise Prediction methods. Currently, these data are supplied by state of the art computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods which require the calculation of the entire flow field. Though these methods yield highly accurate solutions, they are considered by the aeroacoustician to be time consuming and expensive from a computational point of view. The above integral equation method, on the other hand, involves only surface calculations, requiring much less computational expense relative to CFD methods. Results are presented that demonstrate the validity of the integral equation model and the solution procedure. Propeller noise predictions using results from the method presented here are in excellent agreement with those obtained from CFD methods

Variations: Building a Digital Music Library Community

Over the past 15 years, Indiana University has been a leader in the development of digital library systems for music through a series of projects collectively known as Variations. Most recently, the Variations3 project, funded in part by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, supported the release of the Variations digital music library system as open source software, freely available for use by other institutions. The Variations system is in production use at seven colleges and universities beyond IU, with approximately ten others actively piloting the system. In this talk, we will summarize the results of the Variations3 project's development and evaluation activities, discuss some of the successes in and challenges to adoption by other institutions, and discuss potential future directions for the project

Machine vision system for counting macadamia nuts

A need has been identified for more advanced technology to assist harvesting in the macadamia nut industry. An accurate automated method for counting nuts as they are harvested is required to replace manual labour in varietal strain investigation. A machine vision approach of counting the nuts in real time as they are collected has been chosen. This paper presents a machine vision system that implements fast, efficient algorithms for circle detection and object tracking. Experimental results from initial field tests show that the method is a viable option and further field trials will be undertaken