Texture Image Segmentation using Morphology in Wavelet Transforms

One of the essential and crucial steps for image understanding, interpretation, analysis and recognition is the image segmentation. This paper advocates a new segme- ntation scheme using morphology on wavelet decomposed images. The present paper provides a good segmentation on natural images and textures by dividing an image into non overlapping regions, which are homogenous in terms of certain features such as texture, spatial coordinates etc. using simple morphological operations. Morphological enhancement technique based on Top Hat transforms enhances the local contrast in this paper. The morphological treatment and followed by Otsu2019;s threshold overcomes the problem of noise and thin gaps, and also smooth the final regions. The experimental results on four different databases demonstrate the success of the proposed method, compared to many other methods

An Examination of the Maturity Effect in the Indian Commodities Futures Market

This paper has examined the Samuelson’s hypothesis which states that the price volatility increases as the contract nears its maturity. It has also examined the BCSS hypothesis which provides that negative covariance between the spot price and net cost of carry explains the maturity effect. The study has examined these hypotheses on the data for wheat and pepper futures contract traded at NCDEX from the date of listing of the contract to 31st March 2007 and the maturity effect has been examined for each contract individually. The study has indicated that maturity effect is present in around 45 per cent of the wheat and pepper contracts. Evidence supporting the BCSS hypothesis is present more strongly in the case of wheat as compared to pepper and 79 per cent of the contracts having maturity effect have depicted negative covariance in the case of wheat. Thus, it can be concluded that maturity effect is present and it is explained to a large extent by the negative co-variance between spot price and net carry cost. The study has observed that there is further scope for research in this area in relation to other agricultural commodities and also metals. Further studies can also be undertaken to find the informational efficiency and the reaction of informational flow to identify the reasons for the presence or absence of maturity effect.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Evaluation of water quality of mangrove ecosystems of Kundapura, Udupi district, Karnataka, Southwest coast of India.

The present study was carried out to evaluate the physico-chemical parameters of four selected sites of mangrove ecosystem, located at Kundapura, of Udupi district, Karnataka, Southwest coast of India, for a period of one year from August-2010 to July-2011. The physicochemical parameters play a vital role in the mangrove ecosystems. A seasonal variation in these parameters was observed throughout the study period and monthly comparisons were made as monsoon, pre-monsoon and post-monsoon. The results of the present investigations are compared with literature values and investigation reveals that there is a fluctuation in the physico-chemical characters of the water, this will be due to ebb and flow and change in the temperature and salinity as season changes

Redundancy Allocation of Partitioned Linear Block Codes

Most memories suffer from both permanent defects and intermittent random errors. The partitioned linear block codes (PLBC) were proposed by Heegard to efficiently mask stuck-at defects and correct random errors. The PLBC have two separate redundancy parts for defects and random errors. In this paper, we investigate the allocation of redundancy between these two parts. The optimal redundancy allocation will be investigated using simulations and the simulation results show that the PLBC can significantly reduce the probability of decoding failure in memory with defects. In addition, we will derive the upper bound on the probability of decoding failure of PLBC and estimate the optimal redundancy allocation using this upper bound. The estimated redundancy allocation matches the optimal redundancy allocation well.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, to appear in IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Jul. 201

Linear And Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis Of Fiber-reinforced Laminated Shells

This thesis presents a generalized numerical method for the geometrically nonlinear analysis of thin laminated composite shells. Exact expansion of the Green\u27s strain components are used for the inplane strains and linear strain-displacement relations are used for the transverse shear strains. These relations are then obtained for a general laminated shell geometry described by orthogonal curvilinear coordinates. Parabolic variation of the transverse shear stresses along the thickness and the effects of rotary inertia are included in the formulation. The developed equations of motion are based on a total Lagrangian frame of reference.;A Ritz-type solution scheme which involves a new concept of using Bezier surface patches to represent the displacement fields is presented in this thesis. The shape and size of these patches are controlled by certain arbitrary points called Control Points. Owing to the special characteristics of these Control Points, the treatment of displacements, slopes, curvatures, etc. at a particular edge becomes very simple. Hence the enforcement of boundary conditions along the edges is straightforward.;Initially, the linear free vibration study of laminated shells is performed by simplifying the nonlinear equations of motion. Numerical examples involving laminated spherical, conical and circular and noncircular cylindrical shells with open and closed geometries are investigated in detail. Good convergence of the natural frequencies is observed by using only eighth order Bezier surface patches. The validity and accuracy of the present analysis are demonstrated by comparing the calculated results with those available in the literature. The influences of material strength, number of layers, fiber orientation and boundary conditions on the natural frequencies are also examined for various shell geometries.;The geometrically nonlinear equations of motion are cast in a matrix form in terms of the Bezier control points. These equations are then solved using Beta-m time integration method and Newton-Raphson iterations. The numerical results obtained are initially compared with those available in the literature. The linear and nonlinear dynamic responses of laminated circular and noncircular cylindrical panels under point load are investigated and the effect of noncircularity on the response is also examined

Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA Analysis of Four Breeds of Sheep in Malaysia

The genetic variability and population structure of four populations of sheep breeds namely, Santa Ines, Barbados Blackbelly, Malin and the Dorset-Malin cross, was investigated using the Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RAPD-PCR). Eight 10-meroligonucleotide primers of arbitrary sequence (OPD-03, OPD-09, OPD-11, OPD-12, BRL-02, BRL-03, BRL-05, BRL-06) were used to amplify discrete regions of the sheep genome from 30 individuals per breed. The amplified product was electrophoresed using agarose gels to reveal banding patterns that could differentiate between individuals. These primers revealed a total of 65 DNA markers with a range in size of 228-1,871 bp. Of these markers, 38 or 58.5% were polymorphic while 27 or 42.5% were monomorphic. Primer OPD-09 amplified seven bands but all bands were 100% monomorphic in the four breeds. Two markers, BRL03.1 and BRL03.5 were found to be common and exclusive for the wool sheep breeds. Genetic distance was calculated using both the Dice's and Jaccard's similarity indices. High genetic values were seen within the Santa Ines breed (Dice: 0.0930; Jaccard: 0.1682) while the least variable population was the Dorset-Malin cross (Dice: 0.00693; Jaccard: 0.1280). Genetic distance values for Barbados Blackbelly and Malin was calculated as 0.0748 (Dice)/O.1378 (Jaccard) and 0.0813 (Dice)/O.0813 (Jaccard) respectively. The neighbour-joining and the UPGMA trees based on the Dice's and Jaccard's similarity indices showed little or no consensus on the clustering of the individuals in each population. Genetic distance between populations ranged from 0.1040 to 0.1357 based on the Dice's algorithm while the distance based on the Jaccard's algorithm ranged from 0.1875 to 0.2381. Greatest similarity was observed between Santa Ines and Barbados Blackbelly breeds (Dice: 89.6%; Jaccard: 81.2%) while the Santa Ines and the Dorset-Malin cross were the least similar (Dice: 86.4%; Jaccard: 76.2%). The neighbour-joining and UPGMA analysis showed the Santa Ines and Barbados Blackbelly to be closely linked, while the hair sheep breeds were closely related to the Malin. The Dorset-Malin cross was genetically furthest away from the rest of the breeds. Consensus tree produced after 100 bootstrapping show a confidence level of 78% between the Santa Ines and Barbados Blackbelly branch and a 61% confidence level between the hair sheep breeds and the Malin. Total number of phenotypes per primer ranged from 1 (OPD-09) to 62 (BRL-06). The Santa Ines population had a total of 61 phenotypes, which was the largest, followed by Barbados Blackbelly (56), Malin (54) and Dorset-Malin (43). All primers (except OPD-09) had phenotypes common either to the hair sheep or wool sheep breeds. The analysis of molecular variance showed that four out of the seven polymorphic primers (OPD-11, OPD-12, BRL-03, and BRL-06) were able to detect variance among fleece type, among populations and among individuals in a population. Primers OPD-03 and BRL-02 were unable to detect significant variance among the hair and wool breeds, while primer BRL-05 was unable to detect significant variance among the populations. Primer OPD-11 detected the highest variance among individuals (91.08%) while primer BRL-02 detected the lowest variance among individuals (8.46%). Overall data showed 74% variance among individuals within population, 20% variance among populations and 4% variance among fleece types. The genetic variability and structure of the four populations of sheep were identified through the RAPD-PCR assay. Such information is necessary in order to devise breeding or crossbreeding programs for the development of the sheep industry