5,153 research outputs found
Securitising participation in the Philippines: KALAHI and community-driven participation
Participatory approaches to development have been implemented increasingly. One form is the World Bank’s community-driven development (CDD) programme. Participation has, also, become increasingly securitised since 2001. One instance of these trends was the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan (KALAHI) project in the Philippines. This paper examines the implementation of CDD and the problems of its securitisation, using the Philippines as a case study. A composite conceptual framework is advanced that draws upon the international analyses of development. Adapting the concepts of securitisation and de-politicisation, it argues that a new hegemonic-development framework has appeared: the Securitised-Washington consensus. The analysis assesses these trends through the examples of KALAHI and Philippine politics and economics. It suggests that securitised CDD projects result in token efforts at political reform and poverty alleviation that often are contradicted by counter-trends towards development decline and militarisation. Unless these deep-rooted problems are confronted, localised participation is likely to remain ineffectual
The impact of heat acclimation on physiological response to exercise and performance at hot and temperate conditions
The motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants of (-2) curves
In this paper we calculate the motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants for
(-2)-curves arising from 3-fold flopping contractions in the minimal model
programme. We translate this geometric situation into the machinery developed
by Kontsevich and Soibelman, and using the results and framework developed
previously by the authors we describe the monodromy on these invariants. In
particular, in contrast to all existing known Donaldson-Thomas invariants for
small resolutions of Gorenstein singularities these monodromy actions are
nontrivial.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figure
Deep Learning Features at Scale for Visual Place Recognition
The success of deep learning techniques in the computer vision domain has
triggered a range of initial investigations into their utility for visual place
recognition, all using generic features from networks that were trained for
other types of recognition tasks. In this paper, we train, at large scale, two
CNN architectures for the specific place recognition task and employ a
multi-scale feature encoding method to generate condition- and
viewpoint-invariant features. To enable this training to occur, we have
developed a massive Specific PlacEs Dataset (SPED) with hundreds of examples of
place appearance change at thousands of different places, as opposed to the
semantic place type datasets currently available. This new dataset enables us
to set up a training regime that interprets place recognition as a
classification problem. We comprehensively evaluate our trained networks on
several challenging benchmark place recognition datasets and demonstrate that
they achieve an average 10% increase in performance over other place
recognition algorithms and pre-trained CNNs. By analyzing the network responses
and their differences from pre-trained networks, we provide insights into what
a network learns when training for place recognition, and what these results
signify for future research in this area.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. Accepted by International Conference on Robotics
and Automation (ICRA) 2017. This is the submitted version. The final
published version may be slightly differen
Physics-Guided Adversarial Machine Learning for Aircraft Systems Simulation
In the context of aircraft system performance assessment, deep learning
technologies allow to quickly infer models from experimental measurements, with
less detailed system knowledge than usually required by physics-based modeling.
However, this inexpensive model development also comes with new challenges
regarding model trustworthiness. This work presents a novel approach,
physics-guided adversarial machine learning (ML), that improves the confidence
over the physics consistency of the model. The approach performs, first, a
physics-guided adversarial testing phase to search for test inputs revealing
behavioral system inconsistencies, while still falling within the range of
foreseeable operational conditions. Then, it proceeds with physics-informed
adversarial training to teach the model the system-related physics domain
foreknowledge through iteratively reducing the unwanted output deviations on
the previously-uncovered counterexamples. Empirical evaluation on two aircraft
system performance models shows the effectiveness of our adversarial ML
approach in exposing physical inconsistencies of both models and in improving
their propensity to be consistent with physics domain knowledge
A distributed camera system for multi-resolution surveillance
We describe an architecture for a multi-camera, multi-resolution surveillance system. The aim is to support a set of distributed static and pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras and visual tracking algorithms, together with a central supervisor unit. Each camera (and possibly pan-tilt device) has a dedicated process and processor.
Asynchronous interprocess communications and archiving of data are achieved in a simple and effective way via a central repository, implemented using an SQL database.
Visual tracking data from static views are stored dynamically into tables in the database via client calls to the SQL server. A supervisor process running on the SQL server determines if active zoom cameras should be dispatched to observe a particular target, and this message is effected via writing demands into another database table.
We show results from a real implementation of the system comprising one static camera overviewing the environment under consideration and a PTZ camera operating
under closed-loop velocity control, which uses a fast and robust level-set-based region tracker. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach and its feasibility to multi-camera systems for intelligent surveillance
DEVELOPMENT OF EXPERIMENTS FOR THE HARVESTING AND STORING OF VIDALIA SWEET ONIONS
Sweet onions brought in nearly $70 million in 1998. Sweet onions have a soft bulb which makes them susceptible to injury if handled too roughly. Once injured, invasion by pathogens tends to render the bulbs unusable except for quick sale. They were harvested by hand until about ten years ago when efforts were begun to develop a mechanical harvester. Also, at that time, work was underway to develop a way of storing part of the crop so as to extend the market window beyond the traditional 6-8 weeks. Low temperature and low oxygen atmosphere conditions proved to be the most suitable. In 1998 and 1999, sweet onions were hand and machine harvested. They were stored for 30 weeks to determine the practicality of extending the market window. Storability of onions in bulk from the two harvest methods were compared using a mixed model analysis. A mixed model analysis was done on all the research data collected between 1992 and 1998 on curing and storing onions
Galactic H2CO Densitometry I: Pilot survey of Ultracompact HII regions and methodology
We present a pilot survey of 21 lines of sight towards UCHII regions in the
H2CO 1-1 (6cm) and 2-2 (2cm) transitions, using the H2CO centimeter lines as a
molecular gas densitometer. Using Arecibo and Green Bank beam-matched
observations, we measure the density of 51 detected H2CO line pairs and present
upper limits on density for an additional 24 detected 1-1 lines. We analyze the
systematic uncertainties in the H2CO densitometer, achieving H2 density
measurements with accuracies ~ 0.1-0.3 dex. The densities measured are not
correlated with distance, implying that it is possible to make accurate density
measurements throughout the galaxy without a distance bias. We confirm that
ultracompact HII regions are associated with gas at densities n(H2)~10^5cm^-3.
The densities measured in line-of-sight molecular clouds suggest that they
consist of low volume filling factor (f~10^-2) gas at high (n(H2)>10^4cm^-3)
density, which is inconsistent with purely supersonic turbulence and requires
high-density clumping greater than typically observed in gravoturbulent
simulations. We observe complex line morphologies that indicate density
variations with velocity around UCHII regions, and we classify a subset of the
UCHII molecular envelopes as collapsing or expanding. We compare these
measurements to Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey 1.1mm observations, and note that
most UCHII regions have 1.1mm emission consisting of significant (5-70%)
free-free emission and are therefore not necessarily dominated by optically
thin dust emission. A comparison of our data with the Mangum et al. starburst
sample shows that the area filling factor of dense (n(H2)~10^5cm^-3) molecular
gas in typical starburst galaxies is <~0.01, but in extreme starburst galaxies
like Arp 220, is ~0.1, suggesting that Arp 220 is physically similar to an
oversized UCHII region.Comment: 39 pages, 46 figures, 8 tables, EmulateApJ 2-column format. Accepted
for publication in ApJ. Full resolution version:
http://casa.colorado.edu/~ginsbura/papers/h2co_pilot_draft0607.pdf, published
at http://stacks.iop.org/0004-637X/736/14
THE EFFECT OF GRIP POSITION ON UPPER LIMB ANGULAR KINEMATICS DURING TENNIS TOPSPIN DOUBLE-HANDED BACKHAND STROKES
The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of grip on upper limb angular kinematics of sub-elite tennis players during a topspin double-handed backhand while aiming crosscourt. Sixteen sub-elite right-handed tennis players performed double-handed backhand trials using two different non-dominant grips (eastern & continental). Upper limb trajectory data was captured using the Vicon motion capture system (250 Hz). Greater peak angular velocity was observed in the eastern grip at the dominant shoulder (flexion, extension, abduction, adduction) and non-dominant shoulder (extension), elbow (pronation) and wrist (flexion, ulna and radial deviation). Subsequently peak linear velocities for the racket head (horizontal), and upper limb resultant joint centres were greater in the eastern condition. Collectively, these data suggest that using the eastern grip in the non-dominant limb is more optimal for developing racket head speed, and may provide coaches relevant information for athlete development in double-handed backhands
- …