540 research outputs found
Eliciting Uncertain Resilience Information for Risk Mitigation
The literature of risk, mitigation, and resilience is rich in classifications and recommendations. The missing link is evaluation: ideally, data based; initially, based on expert judgment. We present a novel approach for eliciting probability distributions describing mitigation effectiveness. This approach can be used by subject matter experts (SMEs) who are not specialists in mathematics or engineering. A visual interface permits each expert to sketch a distribution by moving five colored dots on the user interface. The engine can weight and combine estimates from several SMEs into an aggregate density function suitable for presentation, and an aggregate cumulated distribution for use in Monte Carlo simulations. Additional supporting software adapts the tool for real-time support of virtual Delphi-type sessions involving multiple distributed experts. Use of the tool in a study aimed at controlling information and communication technology supply chain risks yields valuable information on those threats, and on the tool itself
User Generated Multi-Dimensional Classification in an Adaptive Network Library Interface
Classification can be thought of as defining subject matter classes, and assigning information bearing items (IBEs) to those classes as a way to support organization and retrieval of those IBEs. This corresponds to a Platonic view in which subjects reside in a world of abstractions, and real world IBEs are mapped to them (many-te-many) as accurately as possible
A quest for the lost types of Lophiotoma (Gastropoda: Conoidea: Turridae): integrative taxonomy in a nomenclatural mess
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The Online Books Evaluation Project at Columbia University Final Report
From winter 1995 to autumn 1999, the Online Books Evaluation Project at Columbia University explored the potential for online books to become significant resources in the academic world. The Project analyzed (1) the Columbia community’s adoption of and reaction to online books; (2) the relative life cycle costs of producing and owning online books and their print counterparts; (3) the implications of traditions of scholarly communications and publishing and marketplace reactions for online books. This report encompasses all of the project’s analyses, in most cases incorporating data for the period ending June 1999. It includes a discussion of our methodology as well as findings on the following issues: (1) developments in environmental factors in general and at Columbia; (2) use of the online books; (3) users’ reactions to the books in their various formats, from surveys and individual and group interviews; (5) costs of publishing and maintaining print and online books in a library; (6) scholarly communications issues; and (7) college and university librarians’ reactions to the concept of online books
Autonomous Apple Fruitlet Sizing and Growth Rate Tracking using Computer Vision
In this paper, we present a computer vision-based approach to measure the
sizes and growth rates of apple fruitlets. Measuring the growth rates of apple
fruitlets is important because it allows apple growers to determine when to
apply chemical thinners to their crops in order to optimize yield. The current
practice of obtaining growth rates involves using calipers to record sizes of
fruitlets across multiple days. Due to the number of fruitlets needed to be
sized, this method is laborious, time-consuming, and prone to human error. With
images collected by a hand-held stereo camera, our system, segments, clusters,
and fits ellipses to fruitlets to measure their diameters. The growth rates are
then calculated by temporally associating clustered fruitlets across days. We
provide quantitative results on data collected in an apple orchard, and
demonstrate that our system is able to predict abscise rates within 3.5% of the
current method with a 6 times improvement in speed, while requiring
significantly less manual effort. Moreover, we provide results on images
captured by a robotic system in the field, and discuss the next steps required
to make the process fully autonomous
Knots in Charged Polymers
The interplay of topological constraints and Coulomb interactions in static
and dynamic properties of charged polymers is investigated by numerical
simulations and scaling arguments. In the absence of screening, the long-range
interaction localizes irreducible topological constraints into tight molecular
knots, while composite constraints are factored and separated. Even when the
forces are screened, tight knots may survive as local (or even global)
equilibria, as long as the overall rigidity of the polymer is dominated by the
Coulomb interactions. As entanglements involving tight knots are not easy to
eliminate, their presence greatly influences the relaxation times of the
system. In particular, we find that tight knots in open polymers are removed by
diffusion along the chain, rather than by opening up. The knot diffusion
coefficient actually decreases with its charge density, and for highly charged
polymers the knot's position appears frozen.Comment: Revtex4, 9 pages, 9 eps figure
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