SMART CONTENT COMPOSER

This paper describes techniques related to a smart content composer that may be implemented on a client media player/platform and/or a content distribution platform. The smart composer creates a superior viewing experience to watch any content on any type of display device, even when the aspect ratios of the generated content and the display device are different, such that the original aspect ratio of the generated content is maintained for display in one or more identified fields of view on any given display device. In addition, the smart composer may be enabled to create a tailored and potentially new content presentation each time, for the same personal and/or shared media content (e.g., images and videos), such that the user is not provided with the same presentation of the same content over and over. Instead, the presentation of this content may be dynamically composed according to one or more factors, such as a user’s context, and may in certain cases be optimized for specific sentiments of the user. Based on the customized output, the smart content composer may in some cases also be configured to automatically generate personal or special topic digests of, e.g., videos or trailers that are based on the customized presentation of content, which may be shared with other users. As a result, the techniques described herein may provide an innovative viewing experience for users, and they may also provide improved content creation and sharing mechanisms

Foundations of Character - Developing Character and Values in the Early Years

Foundations of Character takes a deep and insightful look into character and values development during the 'early years' phase of education. It is commonly assumed that the influences on the early years of a child'slife are determinative for the future individual: the evidence from this report suggests that it is more complex. Children's exposure to and engagement in early childhood education is currently a widespread phenomenon in England, with 92% of three year olds and 98% of four year olds benefitting from some free early years education of up to 15 hours per week. This study aimed to explore the developing dispositions, values and attitudes of a sample of young children in the familiar contexts of their homes, early education settings, and primary schools. It was hoped that this exploration would also provide insights into the values of the significant adults in these children's lives, and these adults' views about the development of character and values

Strategy Selection for Product Service Systems Using Case-based Reasoning

A product service system integrates products and services in order to lower environmental impact. It can achieve good eco-efficiency and has received increase in the last decade. This study focuses on strategy selection for product service system design. Case-based reasoning is utilized to provide suggestions for finding an appropriate strategy. To build a case database, successful PSS cases from the literature and websites were collected and formulated. Twelve indices under three categories were analyzed and selected to describe cases. A lot of successful PSS cases and their information were collected. Forty seven cases were used in this study because of the completeness of information. The analytic hierarchic process is used to find the relative weights of the factors that relate to the selection of customers. These weights are used in calculating the similarity in the case-based reasoning process. The successful strategy of the most similar case is extracted and recommended for PSS strategy determination. More than 90% of tested cases obtained an appropriate strategy from the most similar case. Finally, two new products are introduced to find the best strategy for product service system design and development using the proposed case-based reasoning system

WERE U.S. CROP YIELDS RANDOM IN RECENT YEARS?

Crop Production/Industries,

PRICE, YIELD, AND GROSS REVENUE VARIABILITY FOR SELECTED GEORGIA CROPS

Demand and Price Analysis,

High-throughput intensity diffraction tomography with a computational microscope

We demonstrate a motion-free intensity diffraction tomography technique that enables direct inversion of 3D phase and absorption from intensity-only measurements for weakly scattering samples. We derive a novel linear forward model, featuring slice-wise phase and absorption transfer functions using angled illumination. This new framework facilitates flexible and efficient data acquisition, enabling arbitrary sampling of the illumination angles. The reconstruction algorithm performs 3D synthetic aperture using a robust, computation and memory efficient slice-wise deconvolution to achieve resolution up to the incoherent limit. We demonstrate our technique with thick biological samples having both sparse 3D structures and dense cell clusters. We further investigate the limitation of our technique when imaging strongly scattering samples. Imaging performance and the influence of multiple scattering is evaluated using a 3D sample consisting of stacked phase and absorption resolution targets. This computational microscopy system is directly built on a standard commercial microscope with a simple LED array source add-on, and promises broad applications by leveraging the ubiquitous microscopy platforms with minimal hardware modifications