New secondary batteries utilizing electronically conductive polymer cathodes

The objectives are to optimize the transport rates in electronically conductive polypyrrole films by controlling the morphology of the film and to assess the utility of these films as cathodes in a lithium/polypyrrole secondary battery. During this research period, a better understanding was gained of the fundamental electrochemical switching processes within the polypyrrole film. Three publications were submitted based on the work completed

A saliency dispersion measure for improving saliency-based image quality metrics

Objective image quality metrics (IQMs) potentially benefit from the addition of visual saliency. However, challenges to optimising the performance of saliency-based IQMs remain. A previous eye-tracking study has shown that gaze is concentrated in fewer places in images with highly salient features than in images lacking salient features. From this, it can be inferred that the former are more likely to benefit from adding a saliency term to an IQM. To understand whether these ideas still hold when using computational saliency instead of eyetracking data, we first conducted a statistical evaluation using 15 state of the art saliency models and 10 well-known IQMs. We then used the results to devise an algorithm which adaptively incorporates saliency in IQMs for natural scenes, based on saliency dispersion. Experimental results demonstrate this can give significant improvement

A saliency dispersion measure for improving saliency-based image quality metrics

Objective image quality metrics (IQMs) potentially benefit from the addition of visual saliency. However, challenges to optimising the performance of saliency-based IQMs remain. A previous eye-tracking study has shown that gaze is concentrated in fewer places in images with highly salient features than in images lacking salient features. From this, it can be inferred that the former are more likely to benefit from adding a saliency term to an IQM. To understand whether these ideas still hold when using computational saliency instead of eyetracking data, we first conducted a statistical evaluation using 15 state of the art saliency models and 10 well-known IQMs. We then used the results to devise an algorithm which adaptively incorporates saliency in IQMs for natural scenes, based on saliency dispersion. Experimental results demonstrate this can give significant improvement

Static scene illumination estimation from video with applications

We present a system that automatically recovers scene geometry and illumination from a video, providing a basis for various applications. Previous image based illumination estimation methods require either user interaction or external information in the form of a database. We adopt structure-from-motion and multi-view stereo for initial scene reconstruction, and then estimate an environment map represented by spherical harmonics (as these perform better than other bases). We also demonstrate several video editing applications that exploit the recovered geometry and illumination, including object insertion (e.g., for augmented reality), shadow detection, and video relighting

New Secondary Batteries Using Electronically Conductive Polymer Cathodes

A Li/Polypyrrole secondary battery was designed and built, and the effect of controlling the morphology of the polymer on enhancement of counterion diffusion in the polymer phase was explored. The experimental work was done at Colorado State University, while the mathematical modeling of the battery was done at Texas A and M University. Manuscripts and publications resulting from the project are listed

New secondary batteries utilizing electronically conductive polymer cathodes

The objectives of this project are to optimize the transport rates in electronically conductive polypyrrole films by controlling the morphology of the film and to assess the utility of these films as cathodes in a lithium/polypyrrole secondary battery. During this research period, progress has been made in improving the charge transport rate of the supermolecular-engineered polypyrrole electrode by eliminating the polypyrrole baselayer that hampered earlier work. Also, the fibril density of the polypyrrole electrode was increased, providing more electroactive sites per unit area

Automatic and topology-preserving gradient mesh generation for image vectorization

Demonska vjera polazi od toga da se ne nalazi isključivo u nevjeri, nego je ona onkraj nevjere. Ovim radom smo prvo željeli prikazati glavne postavke najbitnijih elemenata teologalne vjere da bismo kasnije kroz filozofske teze F. Hadjadja prikazali glavna obilježja vjere zlih demona koja su duhovnog karaktera i predstavljaju veliku opasnost za čovjeka i njegovu vjeru. Unatoč različitim tumačenjima, Hadjadj želi upozoriti na to da se zli demoni ne nalaze samo među ateistima, agnosticima i ostalim pokretima koji, na neki način, niječu Božu opstojnost, nego ti zli demoni zapravo vjeruju, pa zato za polazište uzima redak iz Jakovljeve poslanice u kojoj piše da oni „vjeruju i dršću”. Na kraju smo ovim radom prikazali važnost sinteze duše i tijela, odnosno utjelovljenja u kršćanstvu jer je misterij katoličke vjere misterij utjelovljenja i nemoguće je odbacivati tjelesnost kao što je to slučaj u različitim spiritualističkim dimenzijama.Demonic faith is not strictly associated with infidelity itself, but rather exists beyond it. This work aims to present the main postulates of the most crucial elements of the theological faith in order to show, using F. Hadjadj's philosophical thesis, the main characteristics associated with evil demons, which are of the spiritual nature and present great danger for man and his faith. Despite various interpretations, Hadjadj wishes to point out that evil demons do not dwel lonly within atheists, agnostics and other movements which, in a way, negate the existence of God, but that these evil demons actually do believe, and therefore he uses as a starting point the line from the Epistle of Jacob that states that demons „believe and tremble”. In the end, this work presented the importance of the body-soul synthesis, which is the incarnation in Christianity, since the mistery of the Catholic faith is the mistery of the incarnation, and it is impossible to discard corporeality, which is the case in various spiritual dimensions

Scan Integration as a Labeling Problem

Integration is a crucial step in the reconstruction of complete 3D surface model from multiple scans. Ever-present registration errors and scanning noise make integration a nontrivial problem. In this paper, we propose a novel method for multi-view scan integration where we solve it as a labelling problem. Unlike previous methods, which have been based on various merging schemes, our labelling-based method is essentially a selection strategy. The overall surface model is composed of surface patches from selected input scans. We formulate the labelling via a higher-order Markov Random Field (MRF) which assigns a label representing an index of some input scan to every point in a base surface. Using a higherorder MRF allows us to more effectively capture spatial relations between 3D points. We employ belief propagation to infer this labelling and experimentally demonstrate that this integration approach provides significantly improved integration via both qualitative and quantitative comparisons

Mesh saliency via spectral processing

We propose a novel method for detecting mesh saliency, a perceptuallybased measure of the importance of a local region on a 3D surface mesh. Our method incorporates global considerations by making use of spectral attributes of the mesh, unlike most existing methods which are typically based on local geometric cues. We first consider the properties of the log- Laplacian spectrum of the mesh. Those frequencies which show differences from expected behaviour capture saliency in the frequency domain. Information about these frequencies is considered in the spatial domain at multiple spatial scales to localise the salient features and give the final salient areas. The effectiveness and robustness of our approach are demonstrated by comparisons to previous approaches on a range of test models. The benefits of the proposed method are further evaluated in applications such as mesh simplification, mesh segmentation and scan integration, where we show how incorporating mesh saliency can provide improved results