Remote in-situ detection of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene and other explosives using fiber optics

The goal of this research was to develop methods for the in-situ determination of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and other polynitroaromatic compounds in groundwater. The first approach was to use an adsorbent to preconcentrate TNT for direct determination. Poly(vinyl alcohol) was crosslinked with glutaraldehyde to form a clear gel that is transparent into the ultraviolet. The volume and swelling of the gel can be controlled by varying the amount of glutaraldehyde. The coefficient for TNT partitioning between the gel and water is 1.4. The gel offers important advantages as a matrix for chemical sensor development, but is not suitable for determining TNT in groundwater because the partition coefficient is too small. A TNT-sensitive membrane was prepared by dissolving the following in tetrahydrofuran: 0.50 g poly(vinyl chloride), 0.20 ml dioctyl phthalate, and 0.12 ml Jeffamine T-403, a polyoxyethyleneamine which reacts with TNT to produce colored products. The membrane is formed by casting the solution into a glass Petri dish with a diameter of 8.8 cm and allowing the solvent to slowly evaporate. Trace amounts of 1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, 2,4,5-trinitrotoluene, and N-picryl-methylnitramine also reacted with the membrane to produce a reddish brown color but their visible absorption spectra differ from that of TNT. Application of the membrane to groundwater sample analysis is comparable with previously developed HPLC methods. Recoveries from groundwater spiked to contain 0.1 to 4.0 ppm TNT ranged from 95% to 105%. Single fiber optical measurement of membrane absorption was developed for remote in-situ detection of TNT. Refractive index matching to reduce stray light and a reflector behind the membrane to increase reflected intensity were essential to keep the stray light levels small relative to the signal of interest. To compensate for drift, the reflected intensity at 500 nm is measured relative to the reflected intensity at 824 nm, a wavelength where intensity is not affected by color formation in the membrane. The rate at which the ratio of reflected intensity at 824 nm to reflected intensity at 500 nm increases is a function of TNT concentration

MCAM - The AR Photography Composition Education Prototype for Mobile Device Based on Augmented Reality Interactive

The current digital age and era where technological advancements and innovation have revolutionized various sectors, photos and videos are the most convenient and direct medium for people to record and share their personal lives today. In this digital era and internet age, mobile phone cameras have replaced cameras as the most widely used photography tools. While documenting personal life with photos, people gradually pay more and more attention to the artistry and aesthetics of photos. Just recording that life can no longer satisfy them, how to present more of their own life is a new pursuit of videos and pictures as it can be seen from the webpage. Many phone applications and specifically camera apps have a designed filter function that helps people to optimize their photos. These camera apps have gradually filled people\u27s mobile phones. Selecting a filter and then taking a photo-shoot has become a standard process for daily photography. If the image is not satisfactory after the shooting completed, the photos can be re-optimized by light adjustment and liquefaction deformation in the camera apps as it can be noted from the webpage on page 16. Unfortunately, the power of those filter functions cannot change the reality of the release of mediocre images because of the lack of composition skills. Compared to filters and other photo re-optimized functions, photography composition is the skill that people need to learn and master in the earlier stage. However, most people find it difficult to determine. In this project there will be a demonstration of how AR interactive instruction is rationally helping people in learning photography compositions; give users an enjoyable experience to improve the better skill of photography. This project will present in an interactive interface, and a prototype shows the use of this application

An Integrative Approach To The Approved Destination Status Tourism

Approved Destination Status (ADS) is a status granted to a foreign country by the Chinese government, which allows Chinese outbound tour groups to travel to that country. The ADS tourism market is different from the traditional tourism market. In this new market, a good percentage of tourists join the ADS group tours mainly for the purpose of assessing business and education opportunities in destination countries. A new, innovative and integrative approach is required for destination countries to meet the needs of ADS tourist and to gain the full economic benefit generated from the ADS tourism

Beyond saliency: understanding convolutional neural networks from saliency prediction on layer-wise relevance propagation

Despite the tremendous achievements of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in many computer vision tasks, understanding how they actually work remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel two-step understanding method, namely Salient Relevance (SR) map, which aims to shed light on how deep CNNs recognize images and learn features from areas, referred to as attention areas, therein. Our proposed method starts out with a layer-wise relevance propagation (LRP) step which estimates a pixel-wise relevance map over the input image. Following, we construct a context-aware saliency map, SR map, from the LRP-generated map which predicts areas close to the foci of attention instead of isolated pixels that LRP reveals. In human visual system, information of regions is more important than of pixels in recognition. Consequently, our proposed approach closely simulates human recognition. Experimental results using the ILSVRC2012 validation dataset in conjunction with two well-established deep CNN models, AlexNet and VGG-16, clearly demonstrate that our proposed approach concisely identifies not only key pixels but also attention areas that contribute to the underlying neural network's comprehension of the given images. As such, our proposed SR map constitutes a convenient visual interface which unveils the visual attention of the network and reveals which type of objects the model has learned to recognize after training. The source code is available at https://github.com/Hey1Li/Salient-Relevance-Propagation.Comment: 35 pages, 15 figure

SME Governance: Converging Definitions And Expanding Expectations

Recent events have focussed attention on corporate governance resulting in expectations for greater responsibility to shareholders and increasing obligations to an expanding group of stakeholders.  Our research explores the application of the increased emphasis on corporate governance in the SME context including application of the converging definitions and expanding expectations and some specific challenges.&nbsp

International Student Academic Performance: Some Statistical Evidence And Its Implications

Using time series data, this study shows that domestic students academic performance is generally better than international students performance, but the gap is significantly narrowing as international students performance is improving over time. The study also shows that there is no strong correlation between the percentage of international students in the student body and the international or domestic student performance during the limited study period. Contributing factors to, and policy implications of, the research outcomes are also discussed.

Organizational Change In Small And Medium Size Enterprises: Practice, Frequency And Achievement Of Objectives

Organizational changes are experienced by 40% of a group of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Canada according to authors’ recent survey. These SMEs report substantive attainment of the objectives which were pursued in implementing these change practices. An emerging concern in the pursuit and attainment of greater labour flexibility as an objective is that it impairs the creation of full time employment opportunities which is one of the expectations for SMEs. Data analysis fails to provide evidence of a strong link between implementation of organizational changes and financial performance of these firms, of which 80% have been operating for more than five years

Self-leadership of Skilled Manual Employees at Vip Juicemaker Oy

Whereas the automation and Intellectualization of production have been applied in modern indus-try increasingly, the manual workers with adept skills play an indispensable role within production activities of manufacturing industries. The aim of this study is to sort out the current situation of self-leadership skills at Vip Juicemaker Oy with a concentration on its skilled manual workers. The focus should be interesting and mean-ingful due to the qualitative analysis of such a minority group in human resources study. In partic-ular, the suggestion generated from the final result of the qualitative analysis on the current situa-tion of self-leadership among skilled manual workers at Vip Juicemaker Oy could have a positive impact on the productivity of its operation. The thesis is started with a theoretical part to clarify the entity of self-leadership and a qualitative analysis is conducted in the practical part to discover the current self-leadership skills of skilled manual workers at Vip Juicemaker Oy. At length, the first part is covered with theories to explain what the entity of self-leadership entails and why it is important for us to stress it. This part exam-ines concept, significance and different conditions of self-leadership. The second part is a qualitative analysis conducted to figure out the current situation of self-leaderships at our client company. Eight interviews are made with three senior managers and five skilled manual employees by questioning them the opinions and mindset towards self-leadership

Exploring The Relationship Between Accounting Professionals And Small And Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

This study explores the relationship between SMEs and professional accountants and the expectations that they hold for each other.  The findings show that SMEs use a combination of insourcing and outsourcing to meet their accounting needs; however, how to balance the two is a very important decision making issue.  SMEs’ frequent reliance on external accountants extends well beyond the normal scope of accounting into other aspects of business administration.  The study has important implications for growth and survival of professional accounting firms, education providers, and SMEs