Characteristics of Billfish Anglers in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean

A mail survey of 1,984 U.S. billfish tournament anglers was completed to examine their fishing activity, attitudes, trip expenditures, consumer's surplus, catch levels, and management preferences. A sample of 1,984 anglers was drawn from billfish tournaments in the western Atlantic Ocean (from Maine to Texas, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) during 1989. A response rate of 61% was obtained (excluding nondeliverables). Anglers averaged 13 billfish trips per year, catching a billfish 40% of the time while 89% of billfish caught were released with <1 billfish per year per angler retained. Catch and retention rates varied by region. Expenditures averaged $1,600 per trip, but varied by region. The annual consumer's surplus was$262 per angler, but increased to $448 per angler if billfish populations were to increase. An estimated 7,915 tournament anglers in the U.S. western Atlantic spent$179,425,000 in pursuit of billfish in 1989. Anglers opposed management options that would diminish their ability to catch a billfish, but supported options limiting the number of billfish landed

Color homography

We show the surprising result that colors across a change in viewing condition (changing light color, shading and camera) are related by a homography. Our homography color correction application delivers improved color fidelity compared with the linear least-square.Comment: Accepted by Progress in Colour Studies 201

3D Lip Event Detection via Interframe Motion Divergence at Multiple Temporal Resolutions

The lip is a dominant dynamic facial unit when a person is speaking. Detecting lip events is beneficial to speech analysis and support for the hearing impaired. This paper proposes a 3D lip event detection pipeline that automatically determines the lip events from a 3D speaking lip sequence. We define a motion divergence measure using 3D lip landmarks to quantify the interframe dynamics of a 3D speaking lip. Then, we cast the interframe motion detection in a multi-temporal-resolution framework that allows the detection to be applicable to different speaking speeds. The experiments on the S3DFM Dataset investigate the overall 3D lip dynamics based on the proposed motion divergence. The proposed 3D pipeline is able to detect opening and closing lip events across 100 sequences, achieving a state-of-the-art performance

Parametric Trajectory Representations for Behaviour Classification

This paper presents an empirical comparison of strategies for representing motion trajectories with fixed-length vectors. We compare four techniques, which have all previously been adopted in the trajectory classification literature: least-squares cubic spline approximation, the Discrete Fourier Transform, Chebyshev polynomial approximation, and the Haar wavelet transform. We measure the class separability of five different trajectory datasets- ranging from vehicle trajectories to pen trajectories- when described in terms of these representations. Results obtained over a range of dimensionalities indicate that the different representations yield similar levels of class separability, with marginal improvements provided by Chebyshev and Spline representations. For the datasets considered here, each representation appears to yield better results when used in conjunction with a curve parametrisation strategy based on arc-length, rather than time. However, we illustrate a situation- pertinent to surveillance applications- where the converse is true

A Classroom Experiment on Exchange Rate Determination with Purchasing Power Parity

We develop a classroom experiment on exchange rate determination appropriate for undergraduate courses in macroeconomics and international economics. Students represent citizens from different countries and need to obtain currency to purchase goods. By participating in a sealed bid auction to buy currency, students gain a better understanding of currency markets and the determination of exchange rates. The implicit framework for exchange rate determination is one in which prices are perfectly flexible (in the long run) so that purchasing power parity (PPP) prevails. Additional treatments allow students to examine the impact of transport costs, nontradable goods and tariffs on the exchange rate and to explore possible deviations from PPP.