5,580 research outputs found
Discriminating coastal rangeland production and improvements with computer aided techniques
The feasibility and utility of using satellite data and computer-aided remote sensing analysis techniques to conduct range inventories were tested. This pilot study was focused over a 250,000 acre site in Galveston and Brazoria Counties along the Texas Gulf Coast. Rectified enlarged aircraft color infrared photographs of this site were used as the ground truth base. The different land categories were identified, delineated, and measured. Multispectral scanner (MSS) bulk data from LANDSAT-1 was received and analyzed with the Image 100 pattern recognition system. Features of interest were delineated on the image console giving the number of picture elements classified; the picture elements were converted to acreages and the accuracy of the technique was evaluated by comparison with data base results for three test sites. The accuracies for computer aided classification of coastal marshes ranged from 89% to 96%
First Year Projects and Activities of the Environmental Remote Sensing Applications Laboratory (ERSAL)
Activities, pilot projects, and research that will effectively close the gap between state-of-the-art remote sensing technology and the potential users and beneficiaries of this technological and scientific progress are discussed in light of the first year of activity. A broad spectrum of resource and man-environment problems are described in terms of the central thrust of the first-year program to support land use planning decisions with information derived from the interpretation of NASA highlight and satellite imagery
Narrative, identity, and recovery from serious mental illness: A life history of a runner
In recent years, researchers have investigated the psychological effects of exercise for people with mental health problems, often by focusing on how exercise may alleviate symptoms of mental illness. In this article I take a different tack to explore the ways in which exercise contributed a sense of meaning, purpose, and identity to the life of one individual named Ben, a runner diagnosed with schizophrenia. Drawing on life history data, I conducted an analysis of narrative to explore the narrative types that underlie Ben's stories of mental illness and exercise. For Ben, serious mental illness profoundly disrupted a pre-existing athletic identity removing agency, continuity, and coherence from his life story. By returning to exercise several years later, Ben reclaimed his athletic identity and reinstated some degree of narrative agency, continuity, and coherence. While the relationships between narrative, identity, and mental health are undoubtedly complex, Ben's story suggests that exercise can contribute to recovery by being a personally meaningful activity which reinforces identity and sense of self
Contributions of temporal encodings of voicing, voicelessness, fundamental frequency, and amplitude variation to audiovisual and auditory speech perception
Auditory and audio-visual speech perception was investigated using auditory signals of invariant spectral envelope that temporally encoded the presence of voiced and voiceless excitation, variations in amplitude envelope and F-0. In experiment 1, the contribution of the timing of voicing was compared in consonant identification to the additional effects of variations in F-0 and the amplitude of voiced speech. In audio-visual conditions only, amplitude variation slightly increased accuracy globally and for manner features. F-0 variation slightly increased overall accuracy and manner perception in auditory and audio-visual conditions. Experiment 2 examined consonant information derived from the presence and amplitude variation of voiceless speech in addition to that from voicing, F-0, and voiced speech amplitude. Binary indication of voiceless excitation improved accuracy overall and for voicing and manner. The amplitude variation of voiceless speech produced only a small increment in place of articulation scores. A final experiment examined audio-visual sentence perception using encodings of voiceless excitation and amplitude variation added to a signal representing voicing and F-0. There was a contribution of amplitude variation to sentence perception, but not of voiceless excitation. The timing of voiced and voiceless excitation appears to be the major temporal cues to consonant identity. (C) 1999 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(99)01410-1]
Local Charge Excesses in Metallic Alloys: a Local Field Coherent Potential Approximation Theory
Electronic structure calculations performed on very large supercells have
shown that the local charge excesses in metallic alloys are related through
simple linear relations to the local electrostatic field resulting from
distribution of charges in the whole crystal.
By including local external fields in the single site Coherent Potential
Approximation theory, we develop a novel theoretical scheme in which the local
charge excesses for random alloys can be obtained as the responses to local
external fields. Our model maintains all the computational advantages of a
single site theory but allows for full charge relaxation at the impurity sites.
Through applications to CuPd and CuZn alloys, we find that, as a general rule,
non linear charge rearrangements occur at the impurity site as a consequence of
the complex phenomena related with the electronic screening of the external
potential. This nothwithstanding, we observe that linear relations hold between
charge excesses and external potentials, in quantitative agreement with the
mentioned supercell calculations, and well beyond the limits of linearity for
any other site property.Comment: 11 pages, 1 table, 7 figure
Modelling of precipitation during friction stir welding of an Al-Mg-Si alloy
In this study, microstructural evolution in AA 6082-T651 friction stir welds is simulated using a metallurgical model coupling a Monte Carlo random sampling technique and classical nucleation and growth theory. The calculated volume fraction and size distribution of precipitates are used to predict hardness. Some of the model parameters are calibrated from microstructure and hardness data available in the open literature. Temperature and hardness data in the region of the weld are obtained from FSW experiments. The temperature in the weld is predicted by finite element analysis, with a simplified thermo-mechanical approach, after calibration of heat transfer parameters in order to match the temperature measurements. The calculated thermal cycles are then applied to the metallurgical model. The subsequently predicted hardness profiles across the weld are then compared with experimental data
Clones in Graphs
Finding structural similarities in graph data, like social networks, is a
far-ranging task in data mining and knowledge discovery. A (conceptually)
simple reduction would be to compute the automorphism group of a graph.
However, this approach is ineffective in data mining since real world data does
not exhibit enough structural regularity. Here we step in with a novel approach
based on mappings that preserve the maximal cliques. For this we exploit the
well known correspondence between bipartite graphs and the data structure
formal context from Formal Concept Analysis. From there we utilize
the notion of clone items. The investigation of these is still an open problem
to which we add new insights with this work. Furthermore, we produce a
substantial experimental investigation of real world data. We conclude with
demonstrating the generalization of clone items to permutations.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl
A Golf Programme for People with Severe and Enduring Mental Health Problems
This article reports a pioneering golf programme for people with severe and enduring mental health problems. Following a discussion of the problems and possibilities of golf as a form of physical activity for this group, we outline the structure, organisation, and ethos of the golf programme. Through an analysis of qualitative case study data collected during the programme, we discuss the response to the programme from service users and mental health professionals. We conclude by highlighting aspects of the programme which were critical to its success and offering suggestions for further initiatives in this area
Virtual-crystal approximation that works: Locating a composition phase boundary in Pb(Zr_{1-x}Ti_3)O_3
We present a new method for modeling disordered solid solutions, based on the
virtual crystal approximation (VCA). The VCA is a tractable way of studying
configurationally disordered systems; traditionally, the potentials which
represent atoms of two or more elements are averaged into a composite atomic
potential. We have overcome significant shortcomings of the standard VCA by
developing a potential which yields averaged atomic properties. We perform the
VCA on a ferroelectric oxide, determining the energy differences between the
high-temperature rhombohedral, low-temperature rhombohedral and tetragonal
phases of Pb(Zr_{1-x}Ti_x)O_3 at x=0.5 and comparing these results to
superlattice calculations and experiment. We then use our new method to
determine the preferred structural phase at x=0.4. We find that the
low-temperature rhombohedral phase becomes the ground state at x=0.4, in
agreement with experimental findings.Comment: 5 pages, no figure
Evolution of Holographic Entanglement Entropy after Thermal and Electromagnetic Quenches
We study the evolution and scaling of the entanglement entropy after two
types of quenches for a 2+1 field theory, using holographic techniques. We
study a thermal quench, dual to the addition of a shell of uncharged matter to
four dimensional Anti-de Sitter (AdS_4) spacetime, and study the subsequent
formation of a Schwarzschild black hole. We also study an electromagnetic
quench, dual to the addition of a shell of charged sources to AdS_4, following
the subsequent formation of an extremal dyonic black hole. In these backgrounds
we consider the entanglement entropy of two types of geometries, the infinite
strip and the round disc, and find distinct behavior for each. Some of our
findings naturally supply results analogous to observations made in the
literature for lower dimensions, but we also uncover several new phenomena,
such as (in some cases) a discontinuity in the time derivative of the
entanglement entropy as it nears saturation, and for the electromagnetic
quench, a logarithmic growth in the entanglement entropy with time for both the
disc and strip, before settling to saturation.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figures. Corrected typos and added some discussion. To
appear in New J. Phy
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