Evaluation of elicitation methods to quantify Bayes linear models

The Bayes linear methodology allows decision makers to express their subjective beliefs and adjust these beliefs as observations are made. It is similar in spirit to probabilistic Bayesian approaches, but differs as it uses expectation as its primitive. While substantial work has been carried out in Bayes linear analysis, both in terms of theory development and application, there is little published material on the elicitation of structured expert judgement to quantify models. This paper investigates different methods that could be used by analysts when creating an elicitation process. The theoretical underpinnings of the elicitation methods developed are explored and an evaluation of their use is presented. This work was motivated by, and is a precursor to, an industrial application of Bayes linear modelling of the reliability of defence systems. An illustrative example demonstrates how the methods can be used in practice

A virtual printer and reference printing conditions

In a late binding workflow, data is commonly prepared in an output-referred state based on a reference intermediate RGB colour encoding. Such encodings may have a larger gamut than the target printing condition, and so there is some ambiguity over how to preview the data before it has been converted to the target printing condition. Here we propose an additional intermediate encoding, referred to as a 'virtual printer' which bridges the gap between three component reference RGB or PCS encodings, and reference CMYK printing conditions. The virtual printer has a large colour gamut which represents a superset of most available print gamuts. It is defined here in terms of the reflectance and colorimetric coordinates of the virtual colorants, and associated colour mixing model. When used in a colour reproduction workflow, documents can be initially rendered to the printer-like gamut of the virtual printer, and channel preferences (such as black generation) can be defined. Re-rendering to a reference printing condition and associated colour gamut is deferred, thus supporting re-purposing of the document

Studies of hair for use in lime plaster: Implications for conservation and new work

Historic buildings constructed with lime plasters often require repairs and re-plastering of areas as part of a maintenance and conservation regime. Hair is commercially available for use in lime plaster and mortar, as it is still used today to provide additional strength and crack resistance to fresh plaster. In this study we examine commercially available imported hair from a number of species as well as fresh, untreated horse hair. Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) demonstrates a loss of keratin structure in most of the imported, treated hair samples, including horse hair compared to untreated indigenous horse hair samples. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) shows that the imported horse hair has high levels of cysteic acid present which is not shown in the fresh, untreated hair. The results obtained suggest that imported hairs are treated with an oxidising agent such as bleach or acid prior to sale, and this weakens the hair making it more susceptible to failure in a building context

Technical Note: Gray tracking in medical color displays-A report of Task Group 196

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