Can small be beautiful? assessing image resolution requirements for mobile TV

Mobile TV services are now being offered in several countries, but for cost reasons, most of these services offer material directly recoded for mobile consumption (i.e. without additional editing). The experiment reported in this paper, aims to assess the image resolution and bitrate requirements for displaying this type of material on mobile devices. The study, with 128 participants, examined responses to four different image resolutions, seven video encoding bitrates, two audio bitrates and four content types. The results show that acceptability is significantly lower for images smaller than 168×126, regardless of content type. The effect is more pronounced when bandwidth is abundant, and is due to important detail being lost in the smaller screens. In contrast to previous studies, participants are more likely to rate image quality as unacceptable when the audio quality is high

The new very small angle neutron scattering spectrometer at Laboratoire Leon Brillouin

The design and characteristics of the new very small angle neutron scattering spectrometer under construction at the Laboratoire Leon Brillouin is described. Its goal is to extend the range of scattering vectors magnitudes towards 2x10{-4} /A. The unique feature of this new spectrometer is a high resolution two dimensional image plate detector sensitive to neutrons. The wavelength selection is achieved by a double reflection supermirror monochromator and the collimator uses a novel multibeam design

Depending on the Kindness of Strangers? Trust Relationships in Ambient Societies

The vision of the ambient society relies on the constant exchange of personal information among multiple devices, individuals and organisations. The high number of microtrust decisions required in such a scenario calls for automated trust management. In this paper we discuss a set of contextual properties of transactions that ensure trust and trustworthy action in everyday situation and suggest how they can be incorporated in trust management for ambient technologies. We identify institutions, repeated interactions and reputation as contextual properties that support cooperation. We then discuss the limitations and risks of assuring cooperation based on contextual properties alone. Firstly, a subjective assessment of personal properties (e.g.benevolence and integrity) also forms an important basis for trust in others. Furthermore trust based on contextual properties is hard to establish in the case of vague outcomes, and multi-dimensional risks. Finally, establishing one’s own trustworthiness requires giving access to personal information. Ambient technologies must also allow individuals to remain untrusted but private

A catalog of Kazarian galaxies

The entire Kazarian galaxies (KG) catalog is presented which combines extensive new measurements of their optical parameters with a literature and database search. The measurements were made using images extracted from the STScI Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) of Jpg(blue), Fpg(red) and Ipg(NIR) band photographic sky survey plates obtained by the Palomar and UK Schmidt telescopes. We provide accurate coordinates, morphological type, spectral and activity classes, blue apparent diameters, axial ratios, position angles, red, blue and NIR apparent magnitudes, as well as counts of neighboring objects in a circle of radius 50 kpc from centers of KG. Special attention was paid to the individual descriptions of the galaxies in the original Kazarian lists, which clarified many cases of misidentifications of the objects, particularly among interacting systems. The total number of individual Kazarian objects in the database is now 706. We also include the redshifts which are now available for 404 galaxies and the 2MASS infrared magnitudes for 598 KG. The database also includes extensive notes, which summarize information about the membership of KG in different systems of galaxies, and about revised activity classes and redshifts. An atlas of several interesting subclasses of KG is also presented.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, Accepted in Astrophysics, Vol. 53, No. 1, 2010 (English translation of Astrofizika

Determination of Chlorinated organic compounds in aqueous matrices

Thirteen pure volatile, semi-volatile and non-volatile chlorinated organic compounds of molecular weights ranging from trichloroethylene (MW = 131.39 g mole -¹) to hexachlorobenzene (MW = 284.78 g mole-¹) were determined in aqueous matrices by GC-ECD. After 10% salt addition, different extraction tests were performed using fibres whose adsorbing phase was based on microsphere carbon particles characterized by a constant size. Five experimental parameters were optimized: extraction temperature and time, position of the fibre in the GC injector port, desorption temperature and time. The optimized analytical protocol was employed to determine the efficiency of a real activated carbon adsorption plant to remove organic chlorinated pollutants from an industrial wastewater at ng l-¹ levels

Social media-predicted personality traits and values can help match people to their ideal jobs

© 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Work is thought to be more enjoyable and beneficial to individuals and society when there is congruence between one's personality and one's occupation. We provide large-scale evidence that occupations have distinctive psychological profiles, which can successfully be predicted from linguistic information unobtrusively collected through social media. Based on 128,279 Twitter users representing 3,513 occupations, we automatically assess user personalities and visually map the personality profiles of different professions. Similar occupations cluster together, pointing to specific sets of jobs that one might be well suited for. Observations that contradict existing classifications may point to emerging occupations relevant to the 21st century workplace. Findings illustrate how social media can be used to match people to their ideal occupation

Accounting for Taste: Using profile similarity to improve recommender systems

Recommender systems have been developed to address the abundance of choice we face in taste domains (films, music, restaurants) when shopping or going out. However, consumers currently struggle to evaluate the appropriateness of recommendations offered. With collaborative filtering, recommendations are based on people's ratings of items. In this paper, we propose that the usefulness of recommender systems can be improved by including more information about recommenders. We conducted a laboratory online experiment with 100 participants simulating a movie recommender system to determine how familiarity of the recommender, profile similarity between decision-maker and recommender, and rating overlap with a particular recommender influence the choices of decision-makers in such a context. While familiarity in this experiment did not affect the participants' choices, profile similarity and rating overlap had a significant influence. These results help us understand the decision-making processes in an online context and form the basis for user-centered social recommender system design

Stochastic dominance to account for uncertainty and risk in conservation decisions

Practical conservation normally requires making decisions in the face of uncertainty. Our attitude toward that uncertainty, and the risks it entails, shape the way conservation decisions are made. Stochastic dominance (SD), a method more commonly used in economics, can be used to rank alternative conservation actions by comparing the probability distributions of their outcomes, making progressive simplified assumptions about the preferences of decision makers. Here, we illustrate the application of SD to conservation decisions using the recovery plan for an endangered frog species in Australia as a case study. Stochastic dominance is simple and intuitively appealing for conservation decisions; its broader application may encourage conservation decision makers to consider probabilistic uncertainty in light of their preferences, which may otherwise be difficult to recognize and assess transparently. A better treatment of attitudes towards uncertainty and risk may help ensure rational decision making in conservation and remove potential causes of stakeholder conflict

Precise absolute astrometry from the VLBA imaging and polarimetry survey at 5 GHz

We present in this paper accurate positions of 857 sources derived from the astrometric analysis of 16 eleven-hour experiments from the Very Long Baseline Array imaging and polarimetry survey at 5 GHz (VIPS). Among observed sources, positions of 430 objects were not determined before at a milliarcsecond level of accuracy. For 95% of the sources the uncertainty of their positions range from 0.3 to 0.9 mas, with the median value of 0.5 mas. This estimate of accuracy is substantiated by the comparison of positions of 386 sources that were previously observed in astrometric programs simultaneously at 2.3/8.6 GHz. Surprisingly, the ionosphere contribution to group delay was adequately modeled with the use of the total electron contents maps derived from GPS observations and only marginally affected estimates of source coordinates.Comment: Accepted for publication by the Astronomical Journal. 7 pages, 2 tables, 4 figures. Submission contains an ascii file with the catalogue. You can get the catalogue by downloading the source of this paper and extracting file table2.tx

Photometric observations of selected, optically bright quasars for Space Interferometry Mission and other future celestial reference frames

Photometric observations of 235 extragalactic objects that are potential targets for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) are presented. Mean B, V, R, I magnitudes at the 5% level are obtained at 1 - 4 epochs between 2005 and 2007 using the 1-m telescopes at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station. Of the 134 sources which have V magnitudes in the Veron & Veron-Cetty catalog a difference of over 1.0 mag is found for the observed-catalog magnitudes for about 36% of the common sources, and 10 sources show over 3 mag difference. Our first set of observations presented here form the basis of a long-term photometric variability study of the selected reference frame sources to assist in mission target selection and to support in general QSO multi-color photometric variability studies.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figures, 4 table