Quality Index for Stereoscopic Images by Separately Evaluating Adding and Subtracting

The human visual system (HVS) plays an important role in stereo image quality perception. Therefore, it has aroused many people’s interest in how to take advantage of the knowledge of the visual perception in image quality assessment models. This paper proposes a full-reference metric for quality assessment of stereoscopic images based on the binocular difference channel and binocular summation channel. For a stereo pair, the binocular summation map and binocular difference map are computed first by adding and subtracting the left image and right image. Then the binocular summation is decoupled into two parts, namely additive impairments and detail losses. The quality of binocular summation is obtained as the adaptive combination of the quality of detail losses and additive impairments. The quality of binocular summation is computed by using the Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF) and weighted multi-scale (MS-SSIM). Finally, the quality of binocular summation and binocular difference is integrated into an overall quality index. The experimental results indicate that compared with existing metrics, the proposed metric is highly consistent with the subjective quality assessment and is a robust measure. The result have also indirectly proved hypothesis of the existence of binocular summation and binocular difference channels

Pricing Decisions of a Dual-Channel Supply Chain considering Supply Disruption Risk

Supply disruption may cause strong complaints of customers, which is a cost loss for the firms in the supply chain. Obviously, if realizing that there is the disruption risk, the members in a supply chain will adjust their decisions. For analyzing the influence, we consider a popular supply chain mode with dual channels, where one manufacturer has its direct sales channel and one traditional retailer channel. The manufacturer may suffer a supply disruption so that all ordered products by the retailer or the direct retail channel will be lost, and the members in supply chain will bear the corresponding disruption penalty from the customers. By considering four structures with different market power relations, the closed-form optimal price decisions of the four models are given. We found that the disruption factor improves the sales prices for any member structure as compared to the supply chain without the disruption. And the direct retail prices in the different modes are the same as each other, but the price of the traditional channel is influenced by the market share. And the sorts of the sales prices under different structures are given. We also conduct some extensive numerical analysis and compare the results under different structures. We observe that the expected optimal profits of considering the external penalty are smaller than those of no external penalty, and we give a sort of the optimal expected profits. And we also provide the effects of some parameters on the optimal decisions and the optimal expected profits

The Number of Limit Cycles Bifurcating from an Elementary Centre of Hamiltonian Differential Systems

This paper studies the number of small limit cycles produced around an elementary center for Hamiltonian differential systems with the elliptic Hamiltonian function H=12y2+12x2−23x3+a4x4(a≠0) under two types of polynomial perturbations of degree m, respectively. It is proved that the Hamiltonian system perturbed in Liénard systems can have at least [3m−14] small limit cycles near the center, where m≤101, and that the related near-Hamiltonian system with general polynomial perturbations can have at least m+[m+12]−2 small-amplitude limit cycles, where m≤16. Furthermore, in any of the cases, the bounds for limit cycles can be reached by studying the isolated zeros of the corresponding first order Melnikov functions and with the help of Maple programs. Here, [·] represents the integer function

Mechanical Performance of Concrete Made with Recycled Aggregates from Concrete Pavements

This research aims at analysing the mechanical performance of concrete with recycled aggregates from concrete pavements. First, the characteristics of various natural and recycled aggregates used in the concrete were thoroughly analysed. The composition of the recycled aggregates was determined and several physical and chemical tests of the aggregates were performed. In order to evaluate the mechanical performance of recycled concrete, cube compressive strength and flexural tensile strength tests were performed. The effect of recycled aggregates on the strength of recycled concrete is related to the strength of recycled aggregates, the strength of natural aggregates, and the strength of old concrete. The strength of recycled concrete decreases with increasing water-cement ratio. However, due to the water absorption of the recycled aggregate, it has a certain inhibitory effect on the strength reduction. As the replacement rate of recycled aggregates increases, the optimal sand ratio decreases. The sand ratio is controlled between 32% and 38%, which is ideal for recycled concrete. With the increase of fly ash content, the 7 d strength of recycled concrete has decreased to some extent, but the 28 d strength has been slightly improved. In addition, for compressive strength and flexural tensile strength, the optimal content of fly ash is different

The Algorithm of Habitat Discovery in Bird Migration

Bird migration has attracted an increasing attention. The study of habitats has played a vital role in the birds migratory. Previous researches, however, have encountered many problems, such as great limitations on research methods, low data utilization rate, statistics-focused and ineffective data processing and analysis methods. In this paper, the algorithm of habitat discovery is put forward by using computer’s data-mining technology based on the spatio-temporal characteristics of bird-watching data. First the algorithm detects and eliminates duplicate data to guarantee data standardization. Then density-based clustering algorithms are used to identify habitats where birds gathered. Finally the habitats of birds migratory are discovered

Exploring Maker Innovation: A Transdisciplinary Engineering Design Perspective

Researchers, designers, and engineers embrace the ongoing maker movement and view ‘grassroots innovation’ as essentially important for staying competitive in both academia and in industry. The research team gives full play to its expertise on innovation and entrepreneurship education. In the past five years of actively participating in the China-U.S. Young Maker Competition, the team coached and worked with over five hundred student makers to create innovative engineering prototypes focusing on the areas of community development, education, environmental protection, health and fitness, energy, transportation, and other areas of sustainable development by combining innovative design and emerging technologies. Several conceptual designs and developments are described. A transdisciplinary engineering design and teaching approach is presented and discussed. Due to the limited time allowed by the competition, more thorough design and development iterations will take place in a future study

A Self-Assessment Stereo Capture Model Applicable to the Internet of Things

The realization of the Internet of Things greatly depends on the information communication among physical terminal devices and informationalized platforms, such as smart sensors, embedded systems and intelligent networks. Playing an important role in information acquisition, sensors for stereo capture have gained extensive attention in various fields. In this paper, we concentrate on promoting such sensors in an intelligent system with self-assessment capability to deal with the distortion and impairment in long-distance shooting applications. The core design is the establishment of the objective evaluation criteria that can reliably predict shooting quality with different camera configurations. Two types of stereo capture systems—toed-in camera configuration and parallel camera configuration—are taken into consideration respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed evaluation criteria can effectively predict the visual perception of stereo capture quality for long-distance shooting