Image enhancement using fuzzy intensity measure and adaptive clipping histogram equalization

Image enhancement aims at processing an input image so that the visual content of the output image is more pleasing or more useful for certain applications. Although histogram equalization is widely used in image enhancement due to its simplicity and effectiveness, it changes the mean brightness of the enhanced image and introduces a high level of noise and distortion. To address these problems, this paper proposes image enhancement using fuzzy intensity measure and adaptive clipping histogram equalization (FIMHE). FIMHE uses fuzzy intensity measure to first segment the histogram of the original image, and then clip the histogram adaptively in order to prevent excessive image enhancement. Experiments on the Berkeley database and CVF-UGR-Image database show that FIMHE outperforms state-of-the-art histogram equalization based methods

The Ninth Visual Object Tracking VOT2021 Challenge Results

acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Price reform of the food and agricultural markets in China: 1978-1993.

This work examines price reforms in both food and agricultural markets within China from 1978 to 1993. This work then found that pragmatic economic reforms in agriculture generally became successful in that they raised the overall income of those peasants comprising more than eighty percent of the total Chinese population. These reforms also increased savings in the rural sector and tax revenues for the presiding governmental infrastructure. Concomitantly, the reforms also stimulated demand for industrial products, which in turn provided new opportunities for more-competitive enterprises.This work simulated resultant, food and agricultural product prices as a function of various supply and demand factors. During these simulations, the author both formulated and tested several hypotheses regarding certain economic factors that affect price formation. Here, the limitations of the present value model were explored in the context of China's food and agricultural markets. Surprisingly, the results did actually confirm that price formation remains a function of economic fundamentals, thus again proving dependent on supply and demand. As discussed in this work, a time-series Error Correction Model provides one way to acknowledge this crucial fact. The results reported here in therefore suggest a more appropriate way to structure future econometric estimations.Next, rising agricultural productivity in response to these reforms released labor forces from agriculture, thus entirely replacing collectivism with "peasant capitalism." Both events then resulted in an increased food supply for the rising urban population. Here, rising agricultural productivity contributed significantly to China's strong, overall economic growth, thereby ensuring the reforms' endurance. Above all, the agricultural reforms changed the Soviet pricing system (in food and agricultural markets) and created an almost completely free market-pricing system. These markets, along with their increasing capability to detect relative scarcities and opportunities, have ultimately become the chief guiding force for resource allocation

Assessment of statistical eddy-viscosity turbulence models for unsteady flow at part and overload operation of centrifugal pumps

The accuracy of linear eddy-viscosity URANS turbulence modelling is assessed for off-design operation of a single stage radial centrifugal pump. The open source software OpenFOAM is utilized. Hot wire probes have been utilized for measurement of spatially and temporally resolved validation data at the impeller discharge of the air-operated pump. The ensemble-averaged mean flow angle is in qualitatively good agreement to data for the entire operation range, while minor deviations occur close to the volute tongue due to impeller-volute interaction. Turbulence statistics from the simulation are compared to ensemble-averaged velocity RMS from measurements. RMS distribution is also qualitatively well reproduced for near-design and overload operation. A more pronounced RMS mis-prediction occurs in part load in the region of high impeller-volute tongue interaction and reveals limitations of turbulence modelling in highly unsteady flow regions of centrifugal pumps

Antiproteinase 3 Positive Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis Presenting with Heart Failure and Intraventricular Thrombosis

Eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) is a rare systemic vasculitis commonly with cardiac complications. We describe a case of anti-PR3 ANCA-positive EGPA complicated by congestive heart failure and intraventricular thrombosis. Interestingly, the thrombus was resolved rapidly with steroid and cyclophosphamide in the setting of interrupted anticoagulation. To the best of our knowledge, we report the first case of anti-PR3 positive EGPA with extensive cardiac involvement. Our patient had overlapping features with previously studied ANCA-positive and ANCA-negative EGPA cases. We also hypothesize that the thrombogenic potential of eosinophils may play a central role in thrombogenesis in EGPA and aggressive immunosuppressive therapy remains the cornerstone of treatment, and the addition of anticoagulation therapy in the setting of thrombus formation and also very high risk of bleeding needs to be considered cautiously

A Sparse Temporal Synchronization Algorithm of Laser Communications for Feeder Links in 5G Nonterrestrial Networks

To foster the rollout of 5G in unserved areas, 3GPP has kicked off a study item on new radio to support nonterrestrial networks (NTNs). Due to ultra-wideband of laser, laser communication is very promising for the feeder links of NTNs; however, imprecise temporal synchronization hinders its deployment, which results from a combination of propagation delay, velocity, acceleration, and jerk of NTN platform. The prior synchronization algorithms are inapplicable to the temporal synchronization in laser communications due to the extremely high data rate and Doppler shift. This paper is devoted to addressing the temporal synchronization problem in laser communications. In particular, we first observe the sparsity of laser signal in time-frequency domain. On top of this observation, we propose a new sparsity-aware algorithm for temporal synchronization without carrier aid through sparse discrete polynomial-phase transform and sparse discrete fractional Fourier transform. Subsequently, we implement the proposed algorithm via designing a hardware prototype. To further evaluate its performance, we conduct extensive simulations, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of good accuracy, low power consumption, and low computational complexity, suggesting its attractiveness for the feeder links of 5G NTNs

Hysteresis Modeling and Compensation of Piezoelectric Actuators Using Gaussian Process with High-Dimensional Input

Rate-dependent hysteresis seriously deteriorates the positioning accuracy of the piezoelectric actuators, especially when tracking high-frequency signals. As a widely-used nonparametric Bayesian method, the Gaussian process (GP) has proven its effectiveness in nonlinear hysteresis modeling. In this paper, the dimension of the input to the GP model is extended to consider more dynamic features of the tracking signal so as to improve the rate-dependent hysteresis modeling accuracy. In contrast with the traditional training set containing only the position and speed information, the acceleration and jerk information, as well as their temporal distribution information, is also included in the input of the model. An inverse hysteresis compensator (IHC) is established in the same way, and open-loop and closed-loop controllers are developed by using the IHC. Experimental results on a PEA stage show that with the increase in the input dimension, the hysteresis modeling accuracy improves greatly and, thus, the controllers based on IHC can achieve a better tracking performance