174 research outputs found
Donald O. Thompson: A remembrance
No full textThis paper was developed from the remarks delivered to honor Don Thompson by the banquet speakers at the 40th QNDE meeting, July 2013. Don died peacefully at his home just days later on July 29th after a two year battle with cancer. “Don was a tenacious fighter for what he believed in, and his vision and perseverance did much to establish NDE in both the US and wider global R&D community. He will be greatly missed by his many friends and colleagues in the NDE community”.This proceeding may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This proceeding appeared in Achenbach, Jan Drewes, G. Alers, Lester W. Schmerr Jr, and Leonard J. Bond. "Donald O. Thompson: A remembrance." AIP Conference Proceedings 1581, no. 1 (2014): 2135-2150. DOI: 10.1063/1.4865087. Posted with permission.</p
A alcunha galego no português de Santa Catarina: o que revelam os dados do ALERS / Galego as a Nickname in the Portuguese of Santa Catarina: Findings from ALERS
No full textÉ conhecida a figura dos galegos no folclore luso-brasileiro. A língua através de suas diversas expressões reflete a Galícia e seus habitantes na memória coletiva dos luso-brasileiros, mesmo que de maneira opaca. O objetivo deste estudo é descrever o uso da alcunha galego no português falado no Estado de Santa Catarina - SC, no sul do Brasil. As perspectivas da onomástica e da geolinguística delineiam as bases teóricas dessa investigação. Por meio dos dados levantados e disponibilizados pelo Atlas Linguístico-Etnográfico da Região Sul do Brasil - ALERS, foi possível analisar a pergunta “pessoa que tem cabelos loiros e tez clara, dizemos que é?” (Questionário 3.3.3 - ALERS). O levantamento lexicográfico dessa forma lexical revelou inicialmente uma diversidade de conteúdos semânticos tanto na Península Ibérica quanto na România Nova. O uso de galego em SC permeia duas importantes áreas geográficas de assentamento luso: a primeira no litoral, conhecida como zona açoriano-catarinense, marcada pela influência da imigração açoriana e a segunda historicamente descrita como rota de passagem de tropeiros e de influência paulista. Encravadas entre essas duas áreas estão as regiões coloniais, majoritariamente, italianas, alemãs e eslavas, para onde o uso da forma galego foi difundido. A acepção “pessoa de cabelos loiros” foi a de maior frequência. A hipótese é que sua origem seja resultado das diferenças fisionômicas entre as regiões sul e norte de Portugal. A carga semântica também poderia ser reflexo da situação dos galegos da Galiza em status de minoria e diáspora em Portugal, considerando-se os seus traços físicos como motivação denominativa
Comparing subjective image quality measurement methods for the creation of public databases
No full textMan-Machine InteractionElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
NMR analysis of the RPA dimer core RPA32D/14
No full textCHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL BIOLOGY
NMR STUDIES OF THE RPA DIMER CORE RPA32D/14
ILEANA ALERS RIVERA
Thesis under the direction of Professor Walter J. Chazin
Replication protein A (RPA) is the primary eukaryotic single-stranded DNA binding protein. RPA is an essential factor for DNA transactions including replication, repair and telomere maintenance, when the DNA is unwound for processing. Binding of RPA protects ssDNA from nucleases, formation of secondary structures and reannealing of the two strands. RPA also serves as a scaffold that orchestrates the assembly and disassembly of DNA processing machinery. RPA is a heterotrimer of subunits RPA70, RPA32 and RPA14, which together contain six OB-fold, one winged-helix and one disordered domain. Characterization by NMR of the structure and dynamics of RPA and the effect of interactions with DNA and DNA processing proteins is being used to understand the physical basis for RPA function. Recently, RPA was shown to bind DNA G-quadruplexes found at the end of telomeres and to disrupt these structures. This activity has been mapped to the RPA32/14 dimer. To enable NMR analysis of this system, we have undertaken a series of three-dimensional triple resonance NMR experiments acquired with TROSY enhancement at 800 MHz to assign the backbone resonances of RPA32D/14. Assignments were made for approximately 60% of the 149 residues of RPA32D/14 from these data and about half were confirmed in a NOESY experiment. These resonance assignments lay a foundation for characterizing the interaction of RPA32D/14 with G-quadruplex structures, and will facilitate future NMR analysis of the RPA trimer core and the full-length protein.
Approved: Date
No-Reference image quality assessment based on localized gradient statistics: Application to JPEG and JPEG2000
No full textMan-Machine InteractionElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Image Quality Experience
No full textWhile the world we live in becomes more saturated with ubiquitous digital displays, and as the threshold for creating digital media continues to drop, image quality is an issue that concerns an increasingly large segment of the population. Higher resolutions, increased dynamic range, and faster frame rates put increasing demands on resources such as disk space and transmission bandwidth. Unfortunately, these resources are also needed for other functionalities of our digital devices and are often in short supply. To find new ways to optimize the production pipeline of visual media while maintaining a good image quality, more knowledge is required about how we perceive visual content. In this work, we examine how a specific viewing task or content affect the viewing behavior of an observer. We then examine how localized differences in image integrity affect the overall perceived quality. From these results we gain knowledge on how image quality should be optimized for a given viewing behavior. In addition, we show that for specific tasks there is a limit to the required content integrity. We investigate these research questions empirically using eye tracking to scan in real time how the viewing behavior changes under different tasks and for different content, while one of the tasks involved scoring image quality. Our results show that the viewing task and image content have a significant effect on the viewing behavior. We also find that the region of interest has a 5 times stronger effect on perceived quality in still images than the rest of the image. In videos, this effect is increased to 10 times. This finding can be utilized to optimize digital content once the region of interest is identified. We finally find that certain applications can mask degradations in image quality, making it redundant to allocate extra resources to maintaining content integrity.Intelligent SystemsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
The Effect of Task on Visual Attention and its Application to Image Quality Assessment Metrics
No full textDetermining the perceived quality of a digital image can be done by showing it to a large group of people and ask them to rate its quality. However, this method is too cumbersome and time-consuming for most applications. Therefore, automatic metrics have been developed, which are able to objectively predict the perceived image quality without the need for any human input. Such image quality assessment metrics average the predicted quality across a whole image into a single quality value. To improve their performance, their predicted image quality is weighted with visual attention information: regions in the image that receive more attention are weighted more heavily in the quality assessment. Furthermore, the effect of a quality assessment task on visual attention is investigated via a large scale subjective experiment. The main findings are that 1) people who are looking freely pay more attention to the region of interest than people who are scoring the image quality, 2) applying the visual attention of people who are looking freely to image quality assessment metrics yields a higher performance gain than the visual attention of people who are scoring the image quality, and 3) the predicted image quality in the region of interest has a more positive influence on the overall predicted image quality than the quality in the background. In short, visual attention information can be used to increase the performance of image quality assessment metrics.Man-Machine InteractionElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Experiences in the Use of Guided Ultrasonic Waves to Scan Structures
No full textThe use of guided ultrasonic waves to rapidly interrogate large structures is a topic that is currently receiving considerable attention. The purpose of this paper, and the companion paper by Alers [1], is to briefly review some past experience that may not be readily available to current researchers since many of the results were not presented in archival publications. The work described in this paper was conducted in the context of exploring applications of electromagnetic-acoustic transducers (EMATs) [2,3] as a part of the NDE effort at the Rockwell International Science Center in the period 1970–1980. In addition to the author, others playing key roles in various parts of this effort included G. A. Alers, R. K. Elsley, C. M. Fortunko, M.W. Mahoney and C. F. Vasile. The companion paper by Alers includes subsequent developments at the private company, Magnasonics, Inc. as well as more recent work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Although EMAT’s were used in all of this work as the sensors to excite and detect the guided ultrasonic modes, the basic ideas apply to the use of guided modes excited by any kind of sensor to scan structures.</p
Bond Strength Measurements by Ultrasonic Spectroscopy
No full textThe goal of this project has been to discover techniques for predicting the strength of a metal-to-metal adhesive bond from nondestructive measurements on the completed structure. Both the cohesive strength of the adhesive material itself and the adhesive strength of the metal-to-adhesive interface must be determined separately. In previous phases of the program, it was demonstrated that the Fourier transform of the ultrasonic echo returned from a metal-adhesive-metal sandwich structure immersed in a water bath contained sufficient information to obtain a prediction of the cohesive strength of the joint. Furthermore, certain features of the Fourier transform were shifted by thin layers of "different" materials at the metal-to-adhesive interfaces so that detecting poor adhesion was also a possibility. During the current phase of the program, more reliable mechanical tests and more accurate measurement techniques were developed. As a result, measurements of the wave velocity in FM-400 adhesive joints subjected to different degrees of cure correlated with the cohesive shear strength of the joints. Quantitative measurements of the standing wave resonant frequencies in Chemlok 304 adhesive joints showed a correlation with the strength of adhesion at the metal-to-adhesive interface.</p
Effect of map sharing and confidence information in situation map-making
No full textThemasessie G) GIS en crisismanagement Stelling: 3D digitale modellen zijn geen overbodige luxe Reflectie vanuit de wetenscha
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