SAMATS: Texture Extraction Explained

The creation of detailed 3D buildings models, and to a greater extent the creation of entire city models, has become an area of considerable research over the last couple of decades. The accurate modeling of buildings has LBS (Location Based Services) applications in entertainment, planning, tourism and e-commerce to name just a few. Many modeling systems deployed to date require manual correspondences to be made across the image set in order to determine the models 3D structure. This paper describes SAMATS, a Semi-Automated Modelling and Texturing System, which has the capability of producing geometrically accurate and photorealistic building models without the need for manual correspondences from a set of geo-referenced terrestrial images. This paper is the third in a trilogy of publications describing the entire SAMATS system, and describes the third of three components that comprise the full functionality of the complete SAMATS implementation. It focuses on the texture extraction step in detail, while providing an overview only of SAMATS’ other two components

An appreciation of, and tribute to, Will Johnson on the occasion of his retirement

This paper presents an overview of the scholarly work of Will Johnson on the occasion of his retirement from Cardiff University. It also includes new translations from two of his junior colleagues, Drs. Brodbeck and Hegarty, as tributes to his scholarly and collegial contribution

Fuel cells for power generation and organic waste treatment on the island of Mull

In-situ use of biomass and organic waste streams have the potential to provide the key to energy self sustainability for islands and remote communities. Traditionally biogas fuels have been used in combustion engines for electric power generation. However, fuel cells offer the prospect of achieving higher generating efficiencies, and additionally, important environmental benefits can be achieved by way of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, whilst providing a carbon sink. This paper presents the design details of a biogas gas plant and fuel cell installation that will provide a practical solution on an island (and be applicable in other remote and rural areas) where connection to the grid can be expensive, and where biofuels can be produced on site at no significant extra cost

Farmers’ Awareness, Preference and Adoption of Soil Conservation Practices in Zing Local Government Area of Taraba State, Nigeria

This study examined the awareness, preference and adoption of soil conservation practices among farmers in Zing Local Government Area of Taraba State. A multistage purposive and random sampling technique was used in selecting the respondents used for the study. A total of 50 farmers were selected from five farming communities (10 farmers in each in Lamma, Monkin, Bitako, Zing A and Zing B). The result indicated most of the farmers (80%) practice conservation techniques. 10%, 4% and 6% of the respondents are aware of the practice but never practiced it, not aware and have practiced but given up, respectively. Reasons for the practice of soil conservation techniques included immediate monetary gain (100%) and prevention of erosion (96%). Other reasons include 78%, 76%, 66%, 58% and 40%  improving soil fertility (78%), preventing erosion (76%), reducing heat stress (66%), and ensuring long term sustainability of land (58%)  and advice of extension agent (40%). 48% indicated that they are just doing what other farmers are doing. Farmers are aware of soil conservation practices and many are practicing various types. Keywords: Awareness, Preference, Adoption, Soil Conservation practice

史诗化叙事：南亚宗教文献中的天堂和地狱 Chinese translation of 'epics' of heaven and hell in Early South Asia

This paper offers an overview of some Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of Heaven and Hell as they are developed in selected early Indian texts

Encompassing the Sacrifice: On the Narrative Construction of the Significant Past in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata

Cardiff University The Mahābhārata has, for millennia, been pivotal to processes of the construction of ideas of the cosmic and social past in South Asia. The text has also been of critical importance in establishing connections between Vedic and post-Vedic cosmic and social self-understandings. The key theoretical issue that underlies both these roles is of the nature of the relationship between narrative and the construction of forms of significant social knowledge in human social groups. The investigation of this relationship presents challenges to received conceptions of culture, history and structure within the academic disciplines of both Anthropology and History. Thisstudy explores the complex orientation to the past evident in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata. It also addresses the relationship between ideas of the past and issues of self-presentation in the text. I argue that the text constitutes itself as a ‘reflective’ or ‘theoretical’ technology in early South Asian religious discourse and that this strategy is intimately related to antecedent Vedic forms of knowledge and practice. I argue that this understanding of the text can shed light on wider processes in the formation and consolidation of Sanskritic knowledge systems in early South Asia. I also suggest that the example of the Mahābhārata can help refine more general theoretical orientations to the relationship between narrative, history and culture

Introduction: Toward an old understanding of philology: Exploring the literary construction of place as religious and social commentary in Asia

Cardiff UniversityThere is no doubt that the idea of place matters. Human beings have long been willing to fight and die for rights, symbolic and material, over both tangible and intangible places. However, the types of expression and performance that transmit and adapt ideas of place are less well understood than the brute fact of the enduring power of certain charged locations. That is to say, we know that certain places are significant but we are less sure as to the mechanisms of how and why they are made so. In addition, scholarly work in this area has tended to consider the literary and performative construction of place to always be bound up with these determinate locations rather than a variety of social functions. Literary engagements with the category of place, as this volume will demonstrate, encompass a wide range of uses. A suggestive but by no means exhaustive list of those that reflect the analytic content of this volume would have to include: political and religious legitimation, the construction of the significant past, the expression of agreement and dissent in relation to prevailing and emergent ideologies, and the transmission and adaptation of systems of socially significant knowledge in response to a wide variety of historical circumstances. Literatures of place, then, provide an extraordinarily rich source of information as to the ways in which human beings maintain and transform their understandings of not just the world around them, but themselves