Fast and Robust Small Infrared Target Detection Using Absolute Directional Mean Difference Algorithm

Infrared small target detection in an infrared search and track (IRST) system is a challenging task. This situation becomes more complicated when high gray-intensity structural backgrounds appear in the field of view (FoV) of the infrared seeker. While the majority of the infrared small target detection algorithms neglect directional information, in this paper, a directional approach is presented to suppress structural backgrounds and develop a more effective detection algorithm. To this end, a similar concept to the average absolute gray difference (AAGD) is utilized to construct a novel directional small target detection algorithm called absolute directional mean difference (ADMD). Also, an efficient implementation procedure is presented for the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm effectively enhances the target area and eliminates background clutter. Simulation results on real infrared images prove the significant effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: The Final version (Accepted in Signal Processing journal

Ecotoxicology of heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Zn and Cu) in flat tree oysters Isognomon alatus (GMELIN) from Sepang, Malaysia

The status of heavy metals pollution in the Sepang Besar River and Sepang Kecil River was studied in August 1998. In general heavy metals concentrations in flat tree oyster 1. alatus, sediments and water from Sepang Besar River were found significantly (p <0.05) higher than those from Sepang Kecil River. Furthermore field experiments were conducted to study the accumulation and depuration of heavy metals in oysters. The rates of metals accumulations in oysters were found to be 42.70, 1.77, 0.95, 0.84 µg g⁻¹ month⁻¹ for Zn, Cu, Cd and Pb, respectively. The polluted oysters were transferred to clean area to estimate the depuration rates. Significant reduction of metals concentrations in oyster was observed. About 87%, 83%, 78% and 59% for Cd, Pb, Cu and Zn were detected after six months being transferred to clean area, respectively. The metals accumulation and depurations patterns in oysters in the laboratory conditions were also investigated. The mean metal concentrations in oysters exposed to metals solution of 100 µg rt at the end of two weeks were 32.70, 63. 19, 35.40, 7.44 µg got , which were 44, 3, 8 and 7 times greater than their initial levels for Cd, Zn, Cu and Pb, respectively. The exposed oysters were transferred to clean seawater and the metals depurations were investigated for one week. In general about 78%, 81%, 87% and 88% of the accumulated Zn, Cu, Pb and Cd were depurated from oysters 1. alatus. Results from laboratory experiments indicated that there were differences in the mechanisms for the metals accumulation and depurations in various organs of 1. alatus. In general, in both accumulation and depuration experiments, gill, byssus and mantle play major role whereas muscle, shell and visceral mass have no significant role. Furthermore laboratory experiments were showed that the accumulation rates of metals through contaminated water were higher than the metals accumulation rates through contaminated algae. It is believed that oysters 1. alatus accumulate heavy metals through contaminated seawater rather than contaminated algae. The LCso levels of metals for oysters were observed to be 478.63, 436.51, 676.08 and 295.12 µg rl for Cu, Pb, Zn and Cd, respectively. The toxicity effects of heavy metals on filtration rate of oysters were also studied and the filtration rate of oysters 1. alatus exposed to 125 and 150 µg rl of all metals were decreased. In both toxicity experiments the trend of metals toxicity on oysters were found Cd > Pb > Cu > Zn

Environmental policy in Jordan : analysis, gap identification, and strategies for improvement

Jordan is a country with a tremendously fragile environment. It faces substantial environmental challenges due to its delicate environmental resources and its limited financial assets. These challenges are aggravated by the scarcity of available water, deterioration of the water resources, land contamination, desertification, mismanagement of land use, and air pollution. Attempting to describe the “State of the Environment” and to provide an informed analysis of the threats to the nation’s environment is a Herculean task. This analysis examines the efforts made by Jordan in regard to protection and management of the environment. This thesis provides a snapshot of the major environmental issues and threats the country faces today. Recommendations for improvement leading to a more sustainable environmental situation in Jordan include: increased emphasis on pollution prevention, training of Jordanian university graduates in environmental policy development and implementation, as well as community-wide environmental education, improved systems for planning and monitoring the use of land and other resources, and a more efficient organization of the Ministry of the Environment that provides enhanced enforcement capabilities. These findings have potential to be important not only for Jordan, but for many neighboring countries in the Middle East as well, because there are many commonalities in the history and geography

Efficient Turkish Text Classification Approach for Crisis Management Systems

In this paper, an effective tweet classification system that fully supports the Turkish language has been developed. The proposed system can be used for mining (classifying) the recently published and publicly available tweets to fmd the crisis's most related and useful tweets to gain situational awareness, which can help in taking the correct responses in order to prevent or at least decrease the effect of such situations. A deep study was carried out to improve and optimize the proposed system. In more detail, some intensive experiments were performed to investigate the performance of some well-known machine learning algorithms, i.e., K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Naive Bayes (NB) when used for text (tweets) classification. Then, the performances of the ensemble systems of the studied algorithms and the Random Forest (RF), AdaBoost Classifier (AdaBoost), GradientBoosting Classifier (GBC) ensemble systems have also been observed. As shown in the experimental evaluation and analysis, the proposed approach has stability, robustness, and can achieve quite good performance when processing the Turkish language. The performance of the proposed classifier was also compared with two state-of-the-art text classification approaches, i.e., "Empirical" and "Turkish Deep "

Analysis of chromosomal rearrangements after replication restart

Impediments to DNA replication are known to induce gross chromosomal rearrangements (GCRs) and copy-number variations (CNVs). GCRs and CNVs underlie human genomic disorders and are a feature of cancer. During cancer development, environmental factors and oncogene-driven proliferation promote replication stress. Resulting GCRs and CNVs are proposed to contribute to cancer development and therapy resistance. Using an inducible system that arrests replication forks at a specific locus in fission yeast, chromosomal rearrangement was investigated. In this system, replication restart requires homologous recombination. However, it occurs at the expense of gross chromosomal rearrangements that occur by either faulty template usage at restart or after the correctly restarted fork U-turns at inverted repeats. Both these mechanisms of chromosomal rearrangement generate acentric and reciprocal dicentric chromosomes. The work in this thesis analyses the timing of replication restart and appearance of chromosomal rearrangements in a single cell cycle after induction of fork stalling. This research also identifies the recombination-dependent intermediates corresponding to the two pathways of rearrangements. Moreover, the DNA integrity checkpoint responses after replication fork arrest, homologous recombination dependent replication restart, and the accumulation of GCRs are investigated

تقدير نظام التدفق البيئي لتحديد الحد الأدنى من التدفق للحد من التلوث: وادي زومر - فلسطين كدراسة حالة

Possible factors that play a role in restoring a flow regime that supports a healthy environment were identified for Wadi Zomar, Palestine. The hydrograph shows that threshold discharges for bed drying are less than 0.14 m3/s, bar formation is less than 0.4 ms/s and floodplain inundation events are over 3 m3/s. The HEC-RAS model suggests a continuous discharge throughout the year that maintains the base flow in the range of 0.5 m3/s. The model suggests that the restoration process is controlled by two main factors: role of sufficient flow and flood inundation frequency

Rheumatoid arthritis

This issue of eMedRef provides information to clinicians on the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and therapeutics of rheumatoid arthritis

Adaptive and Online Health Monitoring System for Autonomous Aircraft

Good situation awareness is one of the key attributes required to maintain safe flight, especially for an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). Good situation awareness can be achieved by incorporating an Adaptive Health Monitoring System (AHMS) to the aircraft. The AHMS monitors the flight outcome or flight behaviours of the aircraft based on its external environmental conditions and the behaviour of its internal systems. The AHMS does this by associating a health value to the aircraft's behaviour based on the progression of its sensory values produced by the aircraft's modules, components and/or subsystems. The AHMS indicates erroneous flight behaviour when a deviation to this health information is produced. This will be useful for a UAS because the pilot is taken out of the control loop and is unaware of how the environment and/or faults are affecting the behaviour of the aircraft. The autonomous pilot can use this health information to help produce safer and securer flight behaviour or fault tolerance to the aircraft. This allows the aircraft to fly safely in whatever the environmental conditions. This health information can also be used to help increase the endurance of the aircraft. This paper describes how the AHMS performs its capabilities