A method to improve interest point detection and its GPU implementation

Interest point detection is an important low-level image processing technique with a wide range of applications. The point detectors have to be robust under affine, scale and photometric changes. There are many scale and affine invariant point detectors but they are not robust to high illumination changes. Many affine invariant interest point detectors and region descriptors, work on the points detected using scale invariant operators. Since the performance of those detectors depends on the performance of the scale invariant detectors, it is important that the scale invariant initial stage detectors should have good robustness. It is therefore important to design a detector that is very robust to illumination because illumination changes are the most common. In this research the illumination problem has been taken as the main focus and have developed a scale invariant detector that has good robustness to illumination changes. In the paper [6] it has been proved that by using contrast stretching technique the performance of the Harris operator improved considerably for illumination variations. In this research the same contrast stretching function has been incorporated into two different scale invariant operators to make them illumination invariant. The performances of the algorithms are compared with the Harris-Laplace and Hessian-Laplace algorithms [15]

Development of a co-cured composite torque shaft for rudder of high speed aircraft

The Carbon Fibre reinforced Composites are widely used in developing various composite parts of civil and13; military aircraft due to its high specific strength and specific stiffness. Rudder being a primary control surface in an aircraft, it is subjected to various loads and needs high degree of structural integrity. Usually rudders are made of metal with many fasteners. In NAL we have designed and developed a composite rudder. Specialty of this13; rudder is that it has a torque shaft made up of carbon composite and has only few rivets. Conventionally torque13; shaft s are made up of special metals like titanium. The objective of this paper is to highlight the development of13; various tooling techniques used to fabricate the composite torque shaft . All major parts of the torque shaft are13; made by Co-curing technique and the metal attachments are embedded to the composite parts by self locking13; mechanism design. To qualify the torque shaft fatigue tests are done and ageing studies performed to prove13; structural integrity of the torque shaft under extreme environmental conditions. This paper portrays the13; development efforts, tolling and fabrication approaches for successful realization of the CFRP Torque Shaft

Victims of stalking in India: A study of girl college students in Tirunelveli City

The word 'stalking' was not commonly known in India, until Priyadharshini Mattoo's case (1996) hit the headlines. Eve teasing, a colloquial word for gender harassment is popularly known and Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Eve-Teasing Act, 1998 on that was developed after the brutal killing of a girl named Sarika Shah in Chennai. Though, stalking is there in the past, it was not acknowledged with this terminology and it was always merged with Eve teasing. On the other hand, stalking is much graver than Eve teasing and it is an obsessive behaviour. After the Matoo's case, the Indian Criminal Justice System awoke and the National Commission for Women is ready with a draft Bill (Sexual Assault Prevention Bill) to make the Indian Penal Code more effective against the menace of stalkers. Research studies related to stalking in India are sparse and there is a need to study this phenomenon in depth. This paper presents some results from a study of stalking victims among Girl College students at Tirunelveli City, Tamil Nadu, India. In-depth questionnaire data are drawn on to investigate the course and nature of prolonged stalking in 150 self-defined victims. Findings indicate a pattern of repeated intrusions, the stalking harassment methods, lack of reporting behaviour, and effects of stalking on the victims

A Review Study on Trust and Breach of Psychological Contract

The aim of this study is to review on trust and breach of psychological contract. The purpose of the study is to identify briefly on the psychological contract and the important of psychological contract to the employer as well as employees. It is also to learn the content of psychological contract and to study in brief on the types of psychological contract, breach and violation. This study is carried out to identify the reactions to breach and violation of psychological contract, list down the reasons for a lack of trust among the employees and to learn the ways how the employers gain and maintain the trust. The consequences to the organizations when the employee’s trust are lacking and what will happen if employees trust is high also has studied to add knowledge on psychological contract aspects. Lastly, the impact to the employees when the psychological contract is violated also has been reviewed. For this research, qualitative research method was used to gather the data. The data obtained from journals, case studies and books and magazines was reviewed to gather the information for this project. The review found that there were four main importances. First it explained in detail the meaning the meaning of psychological contract and its importance to both employers and employees. Secondly, the research has explained briefly on types of psychological contract, types of breach and violation of psychological contract. Thirdly, the research has indicate the trust; from the perspective of employees and employers. Fourthly, the research explains the impacts for violation of psychological contract. From the review it could be concluded that breach of psychological contract can be upgraded if both parties; employees and employers are working together in a line. They have to change because of economical, political and social changes, therefore the working relationship also changing. To improve the employees from breach of psychological contract, the organizations can implement some of the suggested methods to reduce the breach of psychological contract

ETHNOBOTANICAL, PHYTOCHEMICAL AND PHARMCEUTICAL STUDIES OF MEDICINAL PLANT, VENTILAGO MADERASPATANA GAERTN (RED CREEPER): A REVIEW

Traditional plant therapies increasing in recent decade has a new wave of the research interest in plant kingdom. Scientific studies on a number of medicinal plants indicate that promising phytochemical compounds can be developed new drugs for many health problems. Ventilago maderaspatana (Red creeper) is medicinal plant traditionally used for the control of various diseases such as dyspepsia, leprosy, puruitis, etc. Chemical studies have shown that, stem bark contains Flavonoids, tannins etc. Some parts of its phytochemicals possess anticancer, antidiabetics and antiulcers activities. Thus, the present review made an attempt to highlight the ethno botanical and traditional uses as well as phytochemical and pharmacological studies on V. maderaspatana and it will help to develop new ailments for the treatment of various diseases

Bit plane slicing technique to classify date varieties

Varietal purity is an important parameter in the quality standards of dates. In general, variety identification is done by visual inspection method in grading and handling facilities. Online variety assessment using computer vision methods with minimum features and fast image processing and classification algorithms would be highly beneficial for the date industry. Three date varieties (Khalas, Fard and Madina) were classified using a single type of feature, Euler number, used on the eight bit planes available from gray scale images. An overall classification accuracy of 91.5% was achieved using a two layer neural network classifier with hyperbolic tangent sigmoid transfer function. Additionally, image segmentation was performed using the two most significant bit planes. Therefore, a complete feature extraction module based on logic values and morphological image processing as proposed here can be easily implemented in hardware

Landsat surface temperature data analysis for urban heat resilience: case study of Adelaide

Meeting: CUPUM 2017: 15th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management (11-14 July 2017 Adelaide, Australia )Smarter urban futures require resilient built environment in the context of climate change. This chapter demonstrates the application of satellite-based surface cover and temperature data to support planning for urban heat resilience. Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 data is used to analyse the correlation of urban surface covers to the urban heat island effect in Adelaide. Methods for data source selection, surface cover classification, surface temperature calculation and analysis are detailed in this chapter. Results indicate that tree canopy and surface water covers had the least surface temperature variations in mesoscale. The average minimum surface temperature of tree canopy cover was 2.79 °C lower than asphalt and 4.74 °C lower than paved areas. Freely available satellite urban surface temperature data can assist urban planning authorities in planning heat resilient urban spaces for smarter urban futures in the context of climate change.Ehsan Sharifi, Alpana Sivam, Sadasivam Karuppannan and John W Bolan