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Local geometry of elementary visual computations
Get PDFVisual operators (e.g. edge detectors) are classically modelled using small circuits involving canonical computations, such as template-matching and gain control. Circuit models explain many aspects of the empirical descriptors that are used to characterize local visual operators, from sensitivity to classification images. Notwithstanding their utility, these models fail to provide a unified framework encompassing the variety of effects observed experimentally, such as the impact of contrast, SNR, and attention on the above descriptors. My goal is to start with a simple, plausible geometrical representation of the perceptual operation carried out by the observer, and to show that this representation is sufficiently expressive to capture a wide range of empirical effects associated with elementary visual computations. The resulting geometrical framework offers a new perspective on specific empirical descriptors, such as classification images and their second-order variants. For example, it relates these descriptors to notions of flatness and curvature in perceptual spac
Advancing INDOT’s Friction Test Program for Seamless Coverage of System: Pavement Markings, Typical Aggregates, Color Surface Treatment, and Horizontal Curves
Get PDFVarious highway projects, roadway safety, and maintenance all hinge on pavement friction. INDOT\u27s pavement friction test program has played a crucial role in addressing issues like wet pavement crash reduction, durable pavements surface friction, and sustainable aggregates. However, changes in the transportation sector, allied industries, societal needs, and economics present unique challenges that require proactive solutions. First, the existing field friction testing method, which uses a locked wheel skid tester (LWST) is limited to straight, flat pavement sections and excludes crash-prone areas like horizontal curves. Upgrading the program to cover horizontal curves on two-lane rural highways is vital for road safety. Second, the demand for friction testing on pavement markings at crash sites is rising. There\u27s currently no widely accepted standard method for national-scale pavement marking friction testing. The shift to wider longitudinal pavement markings, from 4 to 6 , driven by both human and autonomous vehicle safety, presents challenges for motorcyclists and pedestrians. The third challenge focuses on Color Surface Treatment (CST), which is increasingly used in Indiana bus and bike lanes for visibility, lane discipline, and friction performance, especially under frequent bus acceleration and braking. However, a lack of laboratory and field data necessitates investigating CST\u27s metrics and requirements for adequate friction. Advancing INDOT\u27s friction testing program to cover the entire highway system and address emerging friction challenges is imperative. The goals of this study included enhancing INDOT\u27s friction testing, ensuring comprehensive highway network coverage and providing reliable friction data to help INDOT address safety concerns. The research encompassed a thorough evaluation of various aggregates and pavement marking materials commonly used in Indiana through laboratory experiments, field tests, and data analysis to unveil their influence on pavement friction. Field friction measurements on colored bus and bike lanes were also conducted and thoroughly analyzed. Moreover, the tire-pavement interaction on horizontal curves was assessed on airport runways and highway sections through mechanistic-empirical analysis, and a friction testing model for horizontal curves was devised using finite element analysis and machine learning methodologies
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Get PDFThe Impact of AI on Research Overproduction: Evidence in Search Results
Get PDFThe release of generative AI products has raised numerous questions in the library information environment. One area which raises many concerns surrounding the use of AI is scholarly publication. The presence of AI raises numerous questions in relation to ethics of applying it in the production of academic research, and many academic publishers have not yet implemented standards for the use of AI regarding use, attribution, transparency, or disclosure. While difficult to prove with certainty in most cases, there is evidence via search results in popular databases to suggest the use of AI is having a noticeable impact on the volume of research production. The use of certain terms alleged to be commonly associated with content produced by generative AI shows sudden large increases in search results when queried against many popular academic literature databases. This talk seeks to demonstrate this phenomenon via the results of a specific literature search in Web of Science, and it will pose critical questions surrounding the impact of AI in research publication including the incentives to participate in research overproduction and the validity of impact factor in a world with AI
The Female Best-Friend Novel: Narration and the Reconsideration of the Political Act
Get PDFIn her article “The Female Best-Friend Novel: Narration and the Reconsideration of the Political Act,” Neta Stahl argues that twentieth- and twenty-first-century women novelists borrowed the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century best-friend narrative, reintroducing it for the purpose of challenging the very concept of the political act, namely, what modern, liberal society considers as a political action and what stands behind it. The article focuses on four novels written by novelists from four different countries: the American novelist Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973); the Israeli novelist Ronit Matalon’s Sarah, Sarah (2000); the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s L’amica geniale: Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta (Book 3 of The Neapolitan Novels: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, 2013); and the British novelist Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (2016). It demonstrates that in these novels, the political act is reconsidered, against the gaze of the best-friend and against the role of a supposedly female ‘prince charming’. Further, Stahl argues that the modern female best-friend novel is not a ‘female counterpart’ to the male best-friend novel, but rather a new take on a female literary tradition associated with a genre that is often dismissed by the intellectual elite as popular literature, thanks to its use of low-brow devices borrowed from the nineteenth-century novel
Review: Higher Education Internationalization and English Language Instruction: Intersectionality of Race and Language in Canadian Universities
Get PDFThis review focuses on the main points, methodology, and contribution to writing center studies in Higher Education Internationalization and English Language Instruction: Intersectionality of Race and Language in English Language Instruction by Xiangying Huo. Contributions to the field include a critical perspective of a non-native speaker\u27s experience as an English-language instructor across three research sites and an example of autoethnography as an effective methodology. The primary finding is that non-native students are less likely to initially perceive non-native English language instructors as legitimate
