Statistical Modeling of SAR Images: A Survey

Statistical modeling is essential to SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) image interpretation. It aims to describe SAR images through statistical methods and reveal the characteristics of these images. Moreover, statistical modeling can provide a technical support for a comprehensive understanding of terrain scattering mechanism, which helps to develop algorithms for effective image interpretation and creditable image simulation. Numerous statistical models have been developed to describe SAR image data, and the purpose of this paper is to categorize and evaluate these models. We first summarize the development history and the current researching state of statistical modeling, then different SAR image models developed from the product model are mainly discussed in detail. Relevant issues are also discussed. Several promising directions for future research are concluded at last

The promise of democracy: The performative social contract, pluralism, and equality

In this paper, I will use methods associated primarily with applied ethics and economic theory to provide a philosophical demonstration, within the social contract tradition, of the importance for a democracy of the substantive equality of its citizens. The social contract is a familiar modality of contemporary democratic theorising in political philosophy. An unfamiliar but promising way of thinking about the social contract is via analogy with some features, and in particular, the extended temporality and, indeed, performativity, of “real-world” contracting. Real-world contractors agree to create the conditions, over a temporally-extended period, in which the terms of their agreement are materially realised. The question of their contract’s ethical standing is not an ex ante one-off, but is considered, rather, against a sequence of ex post milestones. Ideally, as this sequence unfolds, the contractors (and others) will (performatively) summon into being the very conditions that embody the terms of the contract, thus progressively authorising it ex post facto. This approach draws on ideas, in jurisprudence, about relational contracts, and, in economics, about incomplete contracts. An approach of this general kind is well adapted to the circumstances of diversity in which all contemporary political theorising is placed and, arguably, gives a rationale for something like the modern social-democratic welfare state

A fragile existence: a transdisciplinary food systems research program cut short

This chapter starts with a brief background on the challenge of food and nutrition security and the promise of a food systems approach to address this challenge. It tells the story of the Global Change Institute (GCI) Food Systems Program. The chapter describes the GCI Food Systems Program, emphasizing outputs from the program, including some ongoing research and teaching activities. Unfortunately for food systems research, the Australian Research Council is strongly based on disciplinary categories and themes, and the Rural Industry Research and Development Corporations are based on agricultural commodities. While the GCI more generally, and Food Systems Program specifically, can be viewed as an internal (The University of Queensland) attempt to facilitate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, this attempt required supporting institutional reform with external stakeholders, including external research funding organisations. The term “food systems” refers to a specific approach to addressing food and nutrition security, and it is gaining considerable support in international literature

Naturalizing the essential tension

Kuhn’s “essential tension” between conservative and innovative imperatives in enquiry has an empirical analogue—between the potential benefits of collectivization of enquiry and the social dynamic impediments to effective sharing of information and insights in collective settings. A range of empirical materials from social psychology and organization theory are considered which bear on the issue of balancing these opposing forces and an institution is described in which they are balanced in a way which is appropriate for collective knowledge production