Remote sensing of wetlands, marshes, and shorelines in Michigan including St. John's Marsh

Remote sensing data are used to show the strategic relationship of the endangered marsh to population centers of SE Michigan. The potential ecological consequences and the impact of past development and changing lake levels are discussed. Applications of remote sensing are presented showing its usefulness for preparing statewide infrared wetland and forest mapping

A nanoradian differential VLBI tracking demonstration

The shift due to Jovian gravitational deflection in the apparent angular position of the radio source P 0201+113 was measured with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) to demonstrate a differential angular tracking technique with nanoradian accuracy. The raypath of the radio source P 0201+113 passed within 1 mrad of Jupiter (approximately 10 Jovian radii) on 21 Mar. 1988. Its angular position was measured 10 times over 4 hours on that date, with a similar measurement set on 2 Apr. 1988, to track the differential angular gravitational deflection of the raypath. According to general relativity, the expected gravitational bend of the raypath averaged over the duration of the March experiment was approximately 1.45 nrad projected onto the two California-Australia baselines over which it was measured. Measurement accuracies on the order of 0.78 nrad were obtained for each of the ten differential measurements. The chi(exp 2) per degree of freedom of the data for the hypothesis of general relativity was 0.6, which suggests that the modeled dominant errors due to system noise and tropospheric fluctuations fully accounted for the scatter in the measured angular deflections. The chi(exp 2) per degree of freedom for the hypothesis of no gravitational deflection by Jupiter was 4.1, which rejects the no-deflection hypothesis with greater than 99.999 percent confidence. The system noise contributed about 0.34 nrad per combined-baseline differential measurement and tropospheric fluctuations contributed about 0.70 nrad. Unmodeled errors were assessed, which could potentially increase the 0.78 nrad error by about 8 percent. The above chi(exp 2) values, which result from the full accounting of errors, suggest that the nanoradian gravitational deflection signature was successfully tracked

Guide to the nature and methods of analysis of the clay fraction of tephras from the South Auckland region, New Zealand.

The manual outlines some of the more common laboratory procedures available for qualitatively and quantitatively analysing the composition of the tephric clays, many of which are difficult to determine because of their short range order or 'amorphous' nature. Techniques described and assessed in terms of their rapidity and quantitativeness include XRD, IR, DTA, TEM and SEM, sodium fluoride reactivity, chemical dissolution analyses, and surface area measurements. No one technique alone produces a definitive clay fraction analysis of tephric deposits. -from Author

Dynamic trust models for ubiquitous computing environments

A significant characteristic of ubiquitous computing is the need for interactions of highly mobile entities to be secure: secure both for the entity and the environment in which the entity operates. Moreover, ubiquitous computing is also characterised by partial views over the state of the global environment, implying that we cannot guarantee that an environment can always verify the properties of the mobile entity that it has just received. Secure in this context encompasses both the need for cryptographic security and the need for trust, on the part of both parties, that the interaction is functioning as expected. In this paper we make a broad assumption that trust and cryptographic security can be considered as orthogonal concerns (i.e. an entity might encrypt a deliberately incorrect answer to a legitimate request). We assume the existence of reliable encryption techniques and focus on the characteristics of a model that supports the management of the trust relationships between two entities during an interaction in a ubiquitous environment

On Vague Computers

Vagueness is something everyone is familiar with. In fact, most people think that vagueness is closely related to language and exists only there. However, vagueness is a property of the physical world. Quantum computers harness superposition and entanglement to perform their computational tasks. Both superposition and entanglement are vague processes. Thus quantum computers, which process exact data without "exploiting" vagueness, are actually vague computers

L’intégration de la musique et du français au programme d’immersion française : avantages pour l’apprentissage de ces deux matières

Cet article traite de l'intégration de la musique au programme de français langue seconde et de son influence sur l'apprentissage de la musique et du français. Un programme « musique-langue » qui vise l'apprentissage des concepts de patrons (patterns) mélodiques-rythmiques et de forme musicale offrant des similitudes importantes avec la compréhension et la production orales et écrites du français a été expérimenté par les titulaires de classe. Six classes en deuxième année d'immersion française au Nouveau-Brunswick ont formé l'échantillon: groupe contrôle (n = 64), groupe expérimental (n = 63). Tous les sujets ont subi des prétests et des post-tests. L'application des procédures statistiques MANOVA et MANCOVA révèle une différence significative entre les deux groupes lors des tests de musique et de productions orale et écrite du français.This article examines a program which integrates music into the curriculum for French as a second language as well as the influence of this on learning music and French. Classroom teachers experimented a program of "music-language" whose objective was the learning of melody-rhythm patterns and musical form which provided similarities to oral and written comprehension and production in French. The sample included six classes of Grade 2 children in French immersion in New Brunswick : a control group (n=64) and an experimental group (n = 63). All subjects were administered pre and post tests. Application of ANOVA and ANCOVA statistical procedures revealed significant differences between the two groups on music tests and in oral and written French tests.Este articulo discute la integracion de la mûsica en el programa de francés como lengua segunda y su influencia en el aprendizaje de la mûsica y el francés. Un grupo de titulares de clase expérimenté un programa "musica-lenguas" cuyo objetivo es el aprendizaje de los conceptos de patrones melodico-ritmicos y de forma musical, que presentan semejanzas importantes con la comprension y la producciôn oral y escrita del francés. La muestra comprendiô seis clases de segundo ano de inmersion francesa en Nuevo Brunswick, agrupadas en un grupo de control (n=64) y un grupo experimental (n=63). Todos los sujetos pasaron pretests y posttests. Un anàlisis de la varianza y la covarianza revelo diferencias significativas entre los dos grupos en las pruebas de miisica y producciôn oral y escrita del francés.Dieser Artikel behandelt die Integration der Musik in das Fach "Französich als Zweitsprache" und ihre Bedeutung für das Erlernen der Musik und der franzosichen Sprache. Die Klassenlehrer haben einen "Musikund Sprachenlehrplan" erprobt, bei dem es um das Begreifen von melodisch-rhythmischen Grundstrukturen und von musikalischer Form geht, die starke Ähnlichkeiten zum mündlichen und schriftlichen Verstehen und Produzieren französicher Konstruktionen aufweisen. Die Stichprobe bestand aus sechs Gruppen der 2. Französich-Klasse in ausschliefilich französischer Umgebung: Kontrollgruppe (n = 64), Probegruppe (n = 63). Mit alien Beteiligten wurden Vor- und Nachtests angestellt. Die Anwendung der statistischen Priifverfahren ANOVA und ANCOVA weist bei den Musiktests und bei den miindlichen und schriftlichen Tests der Bildung französischer Konstruktionen einen signifikanten Unterschied zwischen den beiden Gruppen auf

Some economic benefits of a synchronous earth observatory satellite

An analysis was made of the economic benefits which might be derived from reduced forecasting errors made possible by data obtained from a synchronous satellite system which can collect earth observation and meteorological data continuously and on demand. User costs directly associated with achieving benefits are included. In the analysis, benefits were evaluated which might be obtained as a result of improved thunderstorm forecasting, frost warning, and grain harvest forecasting capabilities. The anticipated system capabilities were used to arrive at realistic estimates of system performance on which to base the benefit analysis. Emphasis was placed on the benefits which result from system forecasting accuracies. Benefits from improved thunderstorm forecasts are indicated for the construction, air transportation, and agricultural industries. The effects of improved frost warning capability on the citrus crop are determined. The benefits from improved grain forecasting capability are evaluated in terms of both U.S. benefits resulting from domestic grain distribution and U.S. benefits from international grain distribution

Multi-scale Orderless Pooling of Deep Convolutional Activation Features

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) have shown their promise as a universal representation for recognition. However, global CNN activations lack geometric invariance, which limits their robustness for classification and matching of highly variable scenes. To improve the invariance of CNN activations without degrading their discriminative power, this paper presents a simple but effective scheme called multi-scale orderless pooling (MOP-CNN). This scheme extracts CNN activations for local patches at multiple scale levels, performs orderless VLAD pooling of these activations at each level separately, and concatenates the result. The resulting MOP-CNN representation can be used as a generic feature for either supervised or unsupervised recognition tasks, from image classification to instance-level retrieval; it consistently outperforms global CNN activations without requiring any joint training of prediction layers for a particular target dataset. In absolute terms, it achieves state-of-the-art results on the challenging SUN397 and MIT Indoor Scenes classification datasets, and competitive results on ILSVRC2012/2013 classification and INRIA Holidays retrieval datasets

Stratigraphy and reserves of pumiceous sand deposits in Perry's 'Asparagus Block' at Horotiu

The stratigraphic relationships between the deposits of the Hinuera Formation and the Taupo Pumice Alluvium are described over a 16 ha plot of land known as the 'Asparagus Block' at Horotiu. The Hinuera Formation is exposed at the surface at the southern end of this block, and is overlain by a wedge of Taupo Pumice Alluvium which increases in thickness from 0 to 8 m northwards across the block. Lithofacies in the Hinuera Formation are dominated by trough cross-bedded gravelly sands (lithofacies AI), with common cross-laminated sands (lithofacies B) and massive to horizontally laminated silts (lithofacies D). The pumice content of these deposits is mainly 70%. Lithofacies in the Taupo Pumice Alluvium are dominated by horizontally to inclined (tabular cross-) bedded slightly gravelly sands and sands (lithofacies G 1/2), with common occurrences of horizontally bedded to massive sandy silts (lithofacies D). The pumice content of these Taupo deposits is high, typically >80%. Cross-sections are presented showing an interpreted subsurface distribution of these lithofacies from south to north through the 'Asparagus Block'. The estimated reserve of extractable pumice sand from the block is of the order of about 400,000 to 450,000 m³