Did the price control achieve its goal?

As a result of the 1973 oil embargo and the subsequent increase of world oil prices, the oil price control program took place in order to reduce the impact of sharply higher external oil prices. In this regard, since the domestic price for oil was below that of the world market, the price control effort seemed to be regarded as successful. Did the oil price control achieve its goal? Maybe not. This study shows that the price control for the domestically produced crude oil was ineffective and enhanced the ability of external suppliers to manipulate prices.Oil Price Price Control

Defect Detection in Ceramic Images Using Sigma Edge Information and Contour Tracking Method

In this paper, we suggest a method of detecting defects by applying Hough transform and least squares on ceramic images obtained from non-destructive testing. In the ceramic images obtained from non-destructive testing, the background area, where the defect does not exist, commonly shows gradual change of luminosity in vertical direction. In order to extract the background area which is going to be used in the detection of defects, Hough transform is performed to rotate the ceramic image in a way that the direction of overall luminosity change lies in the vertical direction as much as possible. Least squares is then applied on the rotated image to approximate the contrast value of the background area. The extracted background area is used for extracting defects from the ceramic images. In this paper we applied this method on ceramic images acquired from non-destructive testing. It was confirmed that extracted background area could be effectively applied for searching the section where the defect exists and detecting the defect

Automatic segmentation of large bowl obstruction area with hough transform from erect abdominal radiograph images

Large bowel obstruction is less frewuent but often appears acute and needs emergent treatment. Erect abdominal radiograph is usually the first imaging study performed in patients suspected of having large bowel obstruction. However, that mordality suffers from operator subjectivity thus a fully automatic computer aied tool is necessary. In this paper, we peopose an automatic large bowel feature (air-fluid region) segmentation method based on Canny edge detection and Hough transform. In experiment, the proposed method was successful in finding target region from large bowel obstruction patients’ radiographic images in all 30 cases provided. Whilie limited only applicable to the large bowel obstruction cases, the proposed method is practically feasible in application

Drift-induced modifications to the dynamical polarization of graphene

The response function of graphene is calculated in the presence of a constant current across the sample. For small drift velocities and finite chemical potential, analytic expressions are obtained and consequences on the plasmonic excitations are discussed. For general drift velocities and zero chemical potential, numerical results are presented and a plasmon gain region is identified that is related to interband transitions. © 2015 American Physical Societyopen0