New Techniques for the Next Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Mission

The Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) has been a great success, and has addressed many critical scientific questions (Moos, et al, 2000). However, it has also highlighted the need for even more powerful instrumentation in the 900- 1200 A, regime. In particular, significantly increased effective area will permit the pursuit of additional scientific programs currently impractical or impossible with FUSE. It is unlikely that FUSE will last more than a few more years. Nor is it likely that any large scale UV-optical follow-on to HST (such as SUVO) will include the 900-1200 A, bandpass. However, FUSE remains well oversubscribed and continues to perform excellent science. Therefore, a MIDEX class mission in the next 4-6 years that could significantly improve on the FUSE capabilities would be a powerful scientific tool that would be of great utility to the astronomical community. It would open up new scientific programs if it can improve on the sensitivity of FUSE by an order of magnitude. We have identified a powerful technique for efficient, high-resolution spectroscopy in the FUV (and possibly the EUV) that may provide exactly what is needed for such a mission To achieve a factor of 10 improvement in effective area, we propose using a large (meter class), low-cost, grazing incidence metal optics. This would produced in a manner similar to the EUVE mirrors (Green, et al, 1986), using diamond turning to create the optical figure followed by uncontrolled polishing to achieve a high quality surface. This process will introduce significant figure errors that will degrade the image quality. However, if a holographic grating is employed, which has utilized the actual telescope in the recording geometry, all wavefront errors will be automatically corrected in the end-to-end spectrometer, and high quality spectroscopy will be possible with low quality (and low-cost) optics. In this way a MIDEX class FUSE can be proposed with 10 times the effective area of the current instrument

Efficient 2-D Gray-Scale Dilations and Erosions with Arbitrary Flat Structuring Elements

An efficient algorithm is presented for the computation of gray-scale morphological operations with 2-D structuring elements (S.E.). The required computing time is independent of the image content and of the number of gray levels used. For circular S.E.s, it always outperforms the only existing comparable method, which was proposed earlier, by a factor between 1.8 and 8.6, depending on the image type. So far, filtering using multiple S.E.s is always done by performing the operator for each size and shape of the S.E. separately. With our method filtering with multiple S.E.s can be performed by a single operator for a reduced computational cost per size or shape, which makes this method more suitable for use in granulometries, dilation-erosion scale spaces, and template matching using the hit-or-miss transform

Connected Attribute Filtering Based on Contour Smoothness

A new attribute measuring the contour smoothness of 2-D objects is presented in the context of morphological attribute filtering. The attribute is based on the ratio of the circularity and non-compactness, and has a maximum of 1 for a perfect circle. It decreases as the object boundary becomes irregular. Computation on hierarchical image representation structures relies on five auxiliary data members and is rapid. Contour smoothness is a suitable descriptor for detecting and discriminating man-made structures from other image features. An example is demonstrated on a very-high-resolution satellite image using connected pattern spectra and the switchboard platform

A CLINICAL PERSPECTIVE OF POSITIONING FOR THE ENDURANCE BICYCLIST

Optimal fitting of the endurance bicyclist to the bicycle is vital for improving performance, increasing control, avoiding overuse injuries, and promoting comfort. Neutral position of the bicyclist as well as static and dynamic fitting for the road and off-road bicyclist is important. Musculoskeletal screening procedures of the bicyclist are also important and emphasis will be placed on prevention and intervention of two common overuse injuries: anterior knee pain and lower back pain. Comparisons of bicycle fit and overuse injuries for the off-road bicyclist and racer will also be introduced

Vector-attribute filters

A variant of morphological attribute filters is developed, in which the attribute on which filtering is based, is no longer a scalar, as is usual, but a vector. This leads to new granulometries and associated pattern spectra. When the vector-attribute used is a shape descriptor, the resulting granulometries filter an image based on a shape or shape family instead of one or more scalar values