PRISMS: remote high resolution in situ multispectral imaging of wall paintings

The non-invasive monitoring and examination of wall paintings in grotto sites, tombs and buildings is particularly important since these paintings are often extremely vulnerable. Traditionally, inspection of wall paintings at high resolution (i.e. sub-millimetre resolution) requires either scaffolding or some heavy and cumbersome mechanical structure to lift a person or camera to the upper parts of a wall or ceiling. We have developed a proto-type portable remote imaging multi-spectral camera that operates at ground level for in situ high-resolution colour and spectral imaging of wall paintings. We present here the latest developments for the instrument and examples of how the instrument can be used for diagnosis of wall paintings

PRISMS: a portable multispectral imaging system for remote in situ examination of wall paintings

We present a proto-type portable remote multispectral imaging system, PRISMS (Portable Remote Imaging System for Multispectral Scanning), that is light-weight, flexible and without any cumbersome mechanical structure for in situ high resolution colour and spectral imaging of large and inaccessible paintings such as wall paintings. This is the first instrument to be able to image paintings at inaccessible heights in situ from ground level to produce not only high resolution colour images but also multispectral images

Pigment identification with optical coherence tomography and multispectral imaging

We describe a new method for non-invasive pigment identification by combining the spectral reflectance in the visible spectrum with near infrared OCT cross-section images of the subsurface layer structure

Bidirectional optimization of the melting spinning process

This is the author's accepted manuscript (under the provisional title "Bi-directional optimization of the melting spinning process with an immune-enhanced neural network"). The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright 2014 @ IEEE.A bidirectional optimizing approach for the melting spinning process based on an immune-enhanced neural network is proposed. The proposed bidirectional model can not only reveal the internal nonlinear relationship between the process configuration and the quality indices of the fibers as final product, but also provide a tool for engineers to develop new fiber products with expected quality specifications. A neural network is taken as the basis for the bidirectional model, and an immune component is introduced to enlarge the searching scope of the solution field so that the neural network has a larger possibility to find the appropriate and reasonable solution, and the error of prediction can therefore be eliminated. The proposed intelligent model can also help to determine what kind of process configuration should be made in order to produce satisfactory fiber products. To make the proposed model practical to the manufacturing, a software platform is developed. Simulation results show that the proposed model can eliminate the approximation error raised by the neural network-based optimizing model, which is due to the extension of focusing scope by the artificial immune mechanism. Meanwhile, the proposed model with the corresponding software can conduct optimization in two directions, namely, the process optimization and category development, and the corresponding results outperform those with an ordinary neural network-based intelligent model. It is also proved that the proposed model has the potential to act as a valuable tool from which the engineers and decision makers of the spinning process could benefit.National Nature Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education of China, the Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities

Winding number transitions at finite temperature in the Abelian-Higgs model

Following our earlier investigations we examine the quantum-classical winding number transition in the Abelian-Higgs system. It is demonstrated that the sphaleron transition in this system is of the smooth second order type in the full range of parameter space. Comparison of the action of classical vortices with that of the sphaleron supports our finding.Comment: final version, to appear in J. Phys.

A holistic multimodal approach to the non-invasive analysis of watercolour paintings

A holistic approach using non-invasive multimodal imaging and spectroscopic techniques to study the materials (pigments, drawing materials and paper) and painting techniques of watercolour paintings is presented. The non-invasive imaging and spectroscopic techniques include VIS-NIR reflectance spectroscopy and multispectral imaging, micro-Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) and optical coherence tomography (OCT). The three spectroscopic techniques complement each other in pigment identification. Multispectral imaging (near infrared bands), OCT and micro-Raman complement each other in the visualisation and identification of the drawing material. OCT probes the microstructure and light scattering properties of the substrate while XRF detects the elemental composition that indicates the sizing methods and the filler content . The multiple techniques were applied in a study of forty six 19th century Chinese export watercolours from the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) to examine to what extent the non-invasive analysis techniques employed complement each other and how much useful information about the paintings can be extracted to address art conservation and history questions

Scheme for sharing classical information via tripartite entangled states

We investigate schemes for quantum secret sharing and quantum dense coding via tripartite entangled states. We present a scheme for sharing classical information via entanglement swapping using two tripartite entangled GHZ states. In order to throw light upon the security affairs of the quantum dense coding protocol, we also suggest a secure quantum dense coding scheme via W state in analogy with the theory of sharing information among involved users.Comment: 4 pages, no figure. A complete rewrritten vession, accepted for publication in Chinese Physic