The use of field-programmable gate arrays for the hardware acceleration of design automation tasks

This paper investigates the possibility of using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (Fr’GAS) as reconfigurable co-processors for workstations to produce moderate speedups for most tasks in the design process, resulting in a worthwhile overall design process speedup at low cost and allowing algorithm upgrades with no hardware modification. The use of FPGAS as hardware accelerators is reviewed and then achievable speedups are predicted for logic simulation and VLSI design rule checking tasks for various FPGA co-processor arrangements

Estimating the Benefits of Water Quality Improvements in the Upper Narragansett Bay

An EPA-sponsored study of the benefits to Rhode Island residents of the water quality improvement in the Upper Narragansett Bay showed that the estimated annual costs ($2.9 million) exceeded the expected annual benefits ($2.0 million). That analysis evaluated only user benefits which were measured via expenditures; nonuser (intrinsic) benefits were not included. This study estimated the benefits to Rhode Island residents using the "Contingent Valuation" approach and responses from 435 residents to a 1985 survey about swimming and shellfishing. Aggregate annual benefits were estimated to be in the range of $30-60 million for "swimmable" and$30-70 million for "shellfishable" water quality, depending on the type of measure (mean or median) and survey format. Secondary objectives of the study were to test different versions of "willingness to pay" questions and compare mean and median values for measurement. Aside from payment vehicle bias, we found no evidence of serious bias.contingent valuation, pollution, water quality benefits, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The Economic Impact of the Rhode Island Film Commission

The Rhode Island Film Commission was founded in 1984 with the goal to increase revenues coming into the state and stimulate economic activity within the state through the film/video industry. Because of a serious state financial crisis the existence of the Commission, at least in its present form, is threatened. A study of the impacts of the Commission was conducted to examine its contributions to the state. The results showed that film industry activities attributable to the Commission generated average annual direct spending in the state of almost $8 million leading to$1 million in new wages for state residents. In addition, film industry activities generated $261 thousand in tax revenues for the state compared to the commission\u27s annual budget of$164 thousand. Despite the profitability of the Commission to the state government, the significance of sales and wage impacts to the state\u27s economy and other obvious but unmeasured social benefits, the survival of the Commission is still in doubt

Multispectral texture synthesis

Synthesizing texture involves the ordering of pixels in a 2D arrangement so as to display certain known spatial correlations, generally as described by a sample texture. In an abstract sense, these pixels could be gray-scale values, RGB color values, or entire spectral curves. The focus of this work is to develop a practical synthesis framework that maintains this abstract view while synthesizing texture with high spectral dimension, effectively achieving spectral invariance. The principle idea is to use a single monochrome texture synthesis step to capture the spatial information in a multispectral texture. The first step is to use a global color space transform to condense the spatial information in a sample texture into a principle luminance channel. Then, a monochrome texture synthesis step generates the corresponding principle band in the synthetic texture. This spatial information is then used to condition the generation of spectral information. A number of variants of this general approach are introduced. The first uses a multiresolution transform to decompose the spatial information in the principle band into an equivalent scale/space representation. This information is encapsulated into a set of low order statistical constraints that are used to iteratively coerce white noise into the desired texture. The residual spectral information is then generated using a non-parametric Markov Ran dom field model (MRF). The remaining variants use a non-parametric MRF to generate the spatial and spectral components simultaneously. In this ap proach, multispectral texture is grown from a seed region by sampling from the set of nearest neighbors in the sample texture as identified by a template matching procedure in the principle band. The effectiveness of both algorithms is demonstrated on a number of texture examples ranging from greyscale to RGB textures, as well as 16, 22, 32 and 63 band spectral images. In addition to the standard visual test that predominates the literature, effort is made to quantify the accuracy of the synthesis using informative and effective metrics. These include first and second order statistical comparisons as well as statistical divergence tests

Two \u3ci\u3eEntomophthora\u3c/i\u3e Species Associated with Disease Epizootics of the Alfalfa Weevil, \u3ci\u3eHypera Postica\u3c/i\u3e (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), in Ontario

Recent studies have shown that disease epizootics in Ontario populations of the alfalfa weevil, Hypera postica (Gyllenhal), are caused by a complex of two fungi

MARINE TOURISM RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN KOREA

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,