Writer Identification Using Inexpensive Signal Processing Techniques

We propose to use novel and classical audio and text signal-processing and otherwise techniques for "inexpensive" fast writer identification tasks of scanned hand-written documents "visually". The "inexpensive" refers to the efficiency of the identification process in terms of CPU cycles while preserving decent accuracy for preliminary identification. This is a comparative study of multiple algorithm combinations in a pattern recognition pipeline implemented in Java around an open-source Modular Audio Recognition Framework (MARF) that can do a lot more beyond audio. We present our preliminary experimental findings in such an identification task. We simulate "visual" identification by "looking" at the hand-written document as a whole rather than trying to extract fine-grained features out of it prior classification.Comment: 9 pages; 1 figure; presented at CISSE'09 at http://conference.cisse2009.org/proceedings.aspx ; includes the the application source code; based on MARF described in arXiv:0905.123

Can Micro Health Insurance Reduce Poverty? Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper examines the impact of micro health insurance on poverty reduction in rural areas of Bangladesh. The research is based on household level primary data collected from the operating areas of the Grameen Bank during 2006. A number of outcome measures relating to poverty status are considered; these include household income, stability of household income via food sufficiency and ownership of non-land assets, and also the probability of being above or below the poverty line. The results show that micro health insurance has a positive association with all of these indicators, and this is statistically significant and quantitatively important for food sufficiency

Evaluating the Health Effects of Micro Health Insurance Placement: Evidence from Bangladesh

We examine the impact of micro health insurance placement on health awareness, healthcare utilization and health status of microcredit members in rural Bangladesh, using data from 329 households in the operating areas of Grameen Bank. The results are based on econometric analysis conditioned on placement of the scheme, and show that placement has a positive association with all of the outcomes. The results are statistically significant for health awareness and healthcare utilization, but not for heath status. Our study makes an important contribution to the literature as it provides evidence on the impact of MHI on a broad set of health outcomes

Caring, sharing widgets: a toolkit of sensitive widgets

Although most of us communicate using multiple sensory modalities in our lives, and many of our computers are similarly capable of multi-modal interaction, most human-computer interaction is predominantly in the visual mode. This paper describes a toolkit of widgets that are capable of presenting themselves in multiple modalities, but further are capapble of adapting their presentation to suit the contexts and environments in which they are used. This is of increasing importance as the use of mobile devices becomes ubiquitous

Dynamic instability in resonant tunneling

We show that an instability may be present in resonant tunneling through a quantum well in one, two and three dimensions, when the resonance lies near the emitter Fermi level. A simple semiclassical model which simulates the resonance and the projected density of states by a nonlinear conductor, the Coulomb barrier by a capacitance, and the time evolution by an iterated map, is used. The model reproduces the observed hysteresis in such devices, and exhibits a series of bifurcations leading to fast chaotic current fluctuations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

The development of iHARP: a multiple instruction issue processor chip

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.---- Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.During the last decade RISC ideas on processor architecture have become widely accepted. RISC architectures achieve significant performance advantages over CISC architectures by striving to execute one instruction per cycle. However, a traditional RISC architemre can never execute more than one instruction per cycle. Achieving further performance improvements beyond RISC depends on developing processors which fetch and execute more than one operation in each processor cycle.Final Accepted Versio

Time-varying model identification for time-frequency feature extraction from EEG data

A novel modelling scheme that can be used to estimate and track time-varying properties of nonstationary signals is investigated. This scheme is based on a class of time-varying AutoRegressive with an eXogenous input (ARX) models where the associated time-varying parameters are represented by multi-wavelet basis functions. The orthogonal least square (OLS) algorithm is then applied to refine the model parameter estimates of the time-varying ARX model. The main features of the multi-wavelet approach is that it enables smooth trends to be tracked but also to capture sharp changes in the time-varying process parameters. Simulation studies and applications to real EEG data show that the proposed algorithm can provide important transient information on the inherent dynamics of nonstationary processes

Aquaculture vis-a-vis agriculture

The effect of aquaculture, especially shrimp farming, on agriculture has caused heated debate among aquaculturists, agriculturists, and non-governmental organizations. As data on the negative impact of shrimp farming on adjacent rice fields are not available, a study was undertaken in rice fields skirting three shrimp farms: a semi-intensive farm; an extensive farm; and a semi-intensive farm with a buffer zone. The buffer zone was found to be helpful in preventing salinization of the adjacent agricultural fields and the Electrical Conductivity (EC) values (less than 1) reported were found to be harmless to the rice crop. Thus, aquaculture and agriculture can coexist in coastal areas if there are buffer zones in between

Validation of the performance of the Aquantic 2100A fish counter

This report looks at the validation of the performance of the Logie 2100A fish counter which was carried out at Forge Weir (River Lune) and Gunnislake Fish Pass (River Tamar), using a video recording system