Grassland Curing Index—a district model that allows forecasting of curing

A study at Braidwood, New South Wales, over three curing seasons has allowed the development of an empirical Grassland Curing Index (GCI) system for the district.

The GCI is a 100 unit scale, equivalent to visually assessed grassland curing (percentage). The GCI is based on the Soil Dryness Index (SDI). Compared with the Byram Keetch Drought Index (BKDI), the SDI reflects catchment run-off more accurately.

The GCI uses the daily evapotranspiration rate derived from daily maximum temperature and classes of soil dryness values in the evapotranspiration table to: determine the date that each ‘crop’ of grassland growth starts to cure; monitor curing of ‘crops’ of growth both singly and in combination; help determine when a rain period is likely to promote further growth; and forecast a likely range in grassland curing up to six weeks in advance.

A single-crop version of the GCI has been used in a limited operational feasibility study in Tasmania over the 1988–1989 season. When compared with satellite imagery and ground collected data, the GCI predicted vegetation moisture content with 66% accuracy. When used with the satellite imagery, 72% of the variance was explained.

GCI is more comfortable than other indices as an indicator of percentage curing. Curing is an indication of grassland moisture content. GCI offers a tool to assist fire managers with assessment and forecasting of grassland fire danger.     

A basis theorem for a class of max-plus eigenproblems

We study the max-plus equation

(∗)     

Parton distributions from a global QCD analysis of deep inelastic scattering and lepton-pair production

Parton distribution functions consistent with neutrino and muon deep inelastic scattering as well as Drell-Yan pair production results have been extracted. This analysis incorporates experimental systematic errors which are the dominant errors in recent deep inelastic scattering experiments. The dependence of the results on factors such as kinematic cuts in the data, heavy target corrections, and choice of initial functional form are also explored. The form adopted is motivated by perturbative QCD and particularly useful in exploring the small-x extrapolation of the distributions. This is crucial for studying the range of predictions for Collider, HERA, and SSC/LHC cross sections. Representative distribution function sets are presented in a very compact parametrized form both in the DIS and MS-bar renormalization schemes.This work is partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY89-05161. This work was also supported by Argonne National Laboratory during the 1988–89 academic year when the author was on Sabbatical leave at the Laboratory from IIT     

Monte Carlo simulations of star-branched polyelectrolyte micelles

The concentration profiles of monomers and counterions in star-branched polyelectrolyte micelles are calculated through Monte Carlo simulations, using the freely jointed chain model. We have investigated the onset of different regimes corresponding to the spherical and Manning condensation of counterions as a function of the strength of the Coulomb coupling. The Monte Carlo results are in fair agreement with the predictions of Self-Consistent-Field analytical models. We have simulated a real system of diblock copolymer micelles of (sodium-polystyrene-sulfonate)(NaPSS)-(polyethylene-propylene)(PEP) with f = 54 hydrophilic branches of N = 251 monomers at room temperature in salt-free solution. The calculated form factor compares nicely with our neutron scattering data. Received 18 July 2002 and Received in final form 11 October 2002 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: roger@drecam.saclay.cea.fr     

A Study on Consumers’ Visual Image Evaluation of Wrist Wearables

This study aimed to investigate consumers’ visual image evaluation of wrist wearables based on Kansei engineering. A total of 8 representative samples were screened from 99 samples using the multidimensional scaling (MDS) method. Five groups of adjectives were identified to allow participants to express their visual impressions of wrist wearable devices through a questionnaire survey and factor analysis. The evaluation of eight samples using the five groups of adjectives was analyzed utilizing the triangle fuzzy theory. The results showed a relatively different evaluation of the eight samples in the groups of “fashionable and individual” and “rational and decent”, but little distinction in the groups of “practical and durable”, “modern and smart” and “convenient and multiple”. Furthermore, wrist wearables with a shape close to a traditional watch dial (round), with a bezel and mechanical buttons (moderate complexity) and asymmetric forms received a higher evaluation. The acceptance of square- and elliptical-shaped wrist wearables was relatively low. Among the square- and rectangular-shaped wrist wearables, the greater the curvature of the chamfer, the higher the acceptance. Apparent contrast between the color of the screen and the casing had good acceptance. The influence of display size on consumer evaluations was relatively small. Similar results were obtained in the evaluation of preferences and willingness to purchase. The results of this study objectively and effectively reflect consumers’ evaluation and potential demand for the visual images of wrist wearables and provide a reference for designers and industry professionals.     

Photoconductivity derived from an exact modelling of the uncompensated one-donor model. III—problem of fitting the exact model with approximate models

Abstract

The paper is essentially devoted to a quantitative comparison of the exact (1D) model developed in Part I, with two approximate models indicated by Kittel (1D_a1) and by Van der Ziel (1D_a2). And this is made for identical values of their common parameters. This allows to show that models 1D and 1D_a1 generally present no suitable intervals for fitting. The model of Van der Ziel is more suited, for, a good fitting with the 1D model can be obtained, for relatively reduced G values, and for temperatures bounded upward by the characteristic temperature T ₀ defined previously. The role played by the sub-models, obtained after simplifying the 1D_ai model equations, is studied also.     

Field ionization theory: A new,analytic, formalism

A new formalism for the calculation of field ionization rate-constants near a model metal surface is derived. Approximate analytic formulae are given for the ionization rate-constant of an atom as a function of distance from the metal surface, for the total probability of ionization on a single pass through the ionization zone and for the width of the ionization zone. Theoretical estimates of best image fields are given for gas atoms of interest in field ion microscopy. The clarity of approach and computational ease of the method is shown to be compatible with the production of acceptably accurate results.     

Visual Speech Recognition with Lightweight Psychologically Motivated Gabor Features

Extraction of relevant lip features is of continuing interest in the visual speech domain. Using end-to-end feature extraction can produce good results, but at the cost of the results being difficult for humans to comprehend and relate to. We present a new, lightweight feature extraction approach, motivated by human-centric glimpse-based psychological research into facial barcodes, and demonstrate that these simple, easy to extract 3D geometric features (produced using Gabor-based image patches), can successfully be used for speech recognition with LSTM-based machine learning. This approach can successfully extract low dimensionality lip parameters with a minimum of processing. One key difference between using these Gabor-based features and using other features such as traditional DCT, or the current fashion for CNN features is that these are human-centric features that can be visualised and analysed by humans. This means that it is easier to explain and visualise the results. They can also be used for reliable speech recognition, as demonstrated using the Grid corpus. Results for overlapping speakers using our lightweight system gave a recognition rate of over 82%, which compares well to less explainable features in the literature.