Detection of ocean color changes from high altitudes

The detection of ocean color changes, thought to be due to chlorophyll concentrations and gelbstoffe variations, is attempted from high altitude (11.3km) and low altitude (0.3km). The atmospheric back scattering is shown to reduce contrast, but not sufficiently to obscure color change detection at high altitudes

Programming Not Only by Example

In recent years, there has been tremendous progress in automated synthesis techniques that are able to automatically generate code based on some intent expressed by the programmer. A major challenge for the adoption of synthesis remains in having the programmer communicate their intent. When the expressed intent is coarse-grained (for example, restriction on the expected type of an expression), the synthesizer often produces a long list of results for the programmer to choose from, shifting the heavy-lifting to the user. An alternative approach, successfully used in end-user synthesis is programming by example (PBE), where the user leverages examples to interactively and iteratively refine the intent. However, using only examples is not expressive enough for programmers, who can observe the generated program and refine the intent by directly relating to parts of the generated program. We present a novel approach to interacting with a synthesizer using a granular interaction model. Our approach employs a rich interaction model where (i) the synthesizer decorates a candidate program with debug information that assists in understanding the program and identifying good or bad parts, and (ii) the user is allowed to provide feedback not only on the expected output of a program, but also on the underlying program itself. That is, when the user identifies a program as (partially) correct or incorrect, they can also explicitly indicate the good or bad parts, to allow the synthesizer to accept or discard parts of the program instead of discarding the program as a whole. We show the value of our approach in a controlled user study. Our study shows that participants have strong preference to using granular feedback instead of examples, and are able to provide granular feedback much faster

Revisiting Employment Division v. Smith

The Supreme Court wrongly decided Employment Division v. Smith. Without briefing or argument over the Free Exercise Clause’s meaning, Smith eliminated the constitutional right to exercise religion and replaced it with an equal protection rule. The decision threatens religious freedom and encourages conflict. The Supreme Court should revisit Smith. This article shows that the majority’s arguments in Smith fail and contradict the Free Exercise Clause’s text, purpose, and original meaning. The Smith majority gave no sound legal or policy reason for its decision. Indeed, the decision conflicted with settled precedents that no party questioned. Nor did it determine the constitutional text’s meaning or examine historical evidence. The decision solely rests on the majority’s mistaken fears that religious liberty would require arbitrary judicial balancing and cause anarchy. The Free Exercise Clause’s text, purpose, and original meaning confirm that the clause protects religious freedom, not equality. The text guarantees the right to exercise religion without government interference—and it presents no exception. History shows why. The founding generation considered religious liberty an unalienable right that supersedes civil duties. This understanding prompted the Founders to protect religious freedom. To this end, the founders used a familiar legal concept from the colonies and states: the free exercise principle. It protected the broad right to freely exercise religion but excluded practices that would endanger peace and safety. The Founders enshrined this principle in the Free Exercise Clause

Quantization of multiresolution transform coefficients for high compression of digital images

New developments in transformation theory have fueled interest in methods that employ transformation in the computation process. Theory from various disciplines including electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, and computer science have benefited from these advances. The greatest impact in computer science by these methods is in the area of image compression. Digital image compression is currently of high interest in computer science. The growing demand for images in computers has grown faster than the technology and thus solutions are sought. This work deals with the problem of quantization of resultant coefficients of the transforms in compression methods that perform transformation of the data. The digital image data transformations include quadrature mirror filtering, conjugate quadrature filtering, and wavelet methods. The process of transformation may be implemented in a reversible manner such that no change in the data is present. Quantization does not enjoy this luxury and implementation of a quantization scheme should be a careful and precise process. Various transformation processes are examined and the resultant data from the multiresolution sub-band coding process is targeted by quantization methods developed for compression of the data

English-Vietnamese Translation: An Internship

The art of translation lies in a literary limbo, subservient to the creativity and expressions of others. Yet in attempting to bridge two different languages and cultures, it entails unique problems as difficult as those encountered in any other literary activity. The following is the report of a project carried out with the Translation Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the fall of 1975 as a senior Honors project in fulfillment of requirements for graduation from the Honors Program at U.S.U. Since this internship itself formed the bulk of my project, the following is presented as a personal and occasionally subjective report of that experience, not primarily as the product of academic research. The project was concerned principally with the translation of the Book of Mormon into Vietnamese. My involvement was based on abilities and interests gained in nearly a year and a half served as an L.D.S. missionary in Saigon, South Vietnam, supplemented by use of Chinese in Hong Kong previously. Comments on translation and some of the particular difficulties in Vietnamese-English translations are also influenced by experience gained in translating Doan thi Thu Anh\u27s journal of her family\u27s evacuation from Vietnam, published in Sunstone, Vol. 1 No. 2 (Spring) 1976, and a number of Vietnamese poems translated for an honors class in Far Eastern Thought