Reference Systems

For decades, GNSS code measurements were much noisier than phase ones, limiting their applicability to ionospheric total electron content (TEC) studies. Ultra-wideband AltBOC signals changed the situation. This study revisits the Galileo E5 and BeiDou B2 AltBOC signals and their potential applications in TEC estimation. We found that TEC noises are comparable for the singlefrequency AltBOC phase-code combination and those of the dual-frequency legacy BPSK/QPSK phase combination, while single-frequency BPSK/QPSK TEC noises are much higher. A two-week high-rate measurement campaign at the ACRG receiver revealed a mean 100 sec TEC RMS (used as the noise proxy) of 0.26 TECU, 0.15 TECU, and 0.09 TECU for the BeiDou B2(a+b) AltBOC signal and satellite elevations 0-30 • , 30-60 • , and 60-90 • , correspondingly, and 0.22 TECU, 0.14 TECU, and 0.09 TECU for the legacy B1/B3 dual-frequency phase combination. The Galileo E5(a+b) AltBOC signal corresponding values were 0.25 TECU, 0.14 TECU, and 0.09 TECU; for the legacy signals' phase combination, the values were 0.19 TECU, 0.13 TECU, and 0.08 TECU. The AltBOC (for both BeiDou and Galileo) SNR exceeds those of BPSK/QPSK by 7.5 dB-Hz in undisturbed conditions. Radio frequency interference (the 28 August 2022 and 9 May 2024 Solar Radio Burst events in our study) decreased the AltBOC SNR 5 dB-Hz more against QPSK SNR, but, due to the higher initial SNR, the threshold for the loss of the lock was never broken. Today, we have enough BeiDou and Galileo satellites that transmit AltBOC signals for a reliable single-frequency vTEC estimation. This study provides new insights and evidence for using Galileo and BeiDou AltBOC signals in high-precision ionospheric monitoring.

This paper reviews digitization methods applied to digital control of a voltage-mode DC-DC buck converter, emphasizing practical limitations due to sampling frequency and quantization effects. The performance of digitization techniques (Tustin, Zero-Order Hold, Matched Pole-Zero, and Least Squares) is analyzed through MATLAB/Simulink simulations using realistic parameters derived from the Microchip Buck Converter PICtail™ Plus hardware platform (9 [V] input, 3.3 [V] output, 150 [kHz] switching frequency). Additionally, frequency response-based control, specifically a lead compensation, is employed to enhance the system's transient response and stability margins. The results provide practical insights for selecting suitable digitization methods and compensation strategies, identifying critical trade-offs at reduced sampling rates, and guiding future digital control implementations in power electronics.

AuScope is an initiative established under the National Collaboration Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to characterise the structure and evolution of the Australian continent. AuScope includes a Geospatial component that will enhance the accuracy and resolution of the National Geospatial Reference System including its temporal variability. This will have a direct impact on the many fields of science and industry that require accurate positioning to improve effectiveness. Ultimately it will also significantly improve the way geospatial data sets can be integrated. AuScope Geospatial will complement the other geoscience elements of AuScope by providing contemporary estimates of continental deformations including those resulting from plate tectonics stresses and anthropogenic (or human induced) causes. Knowledge of the deformation of the continent will lead to improved assessments of the state of stress of the continental crust and earthquake risk. This supports the development of improved risk mitigation procedures and updating of building codes. The improved understanding of the deformation of the continent will also assist studies of landscape evolution, research into soil types (agriculture) and salinity (land degradation). Geoscience Australia is working collaboratively with the

We assess the accuracy of some indirect approaches to invariant point (IVP), or system reference point, determination of satellite laser ranging (SLR) and very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) systems using both observed and simulated survey data sets. Indirect IVP determination involves the observation of targets located on these systems during specific rotational sequences and by application of geometrical models that describe the target motion during these sequences. Of concern is that most SLR and VLBI systems have

Sub-Commission 1.1: Coordination of Space Techniques Sub-Commission 1.2: Global Reference Frames Sub-Commission 1.3: Regional Reference Frames Sub-Commission 1.3 a: Europe Sub-Commission 1.3 b: South and Central America Sub-Commission 1.3 c: North America Sub-Commission 1.3 d: Africa Sub-Commission 1.3 e: Asia-Pacific Sub-Commission 1.3 f: Antarctica Sub-Commission 1.4: Interaction of Celestial and Terrestrial Reference Frames IC Project 1.2: Vertical Reference Frames IC Working Gr. 1.1: Environment Loading: Modelling for Reference Frame and Positioning IC Working Gr. 1.2: Precise Orbit Determination and Reference Frame Definition IC Working Gr. 1.3: Concepts and Terminology Related to Geodetic Reference Systems IC Working Gr. 1.4: Site Survey and Co-locations

Face recognition finds its place in a large number of applications. They occur in different contexts related to security, entertainment or Internet applications. Reliable face recognition is still a great challenge to computer vision and pattern recognition researchers, and new algorithms need to be evaluated on relevant databases. The publicly available IV 2 database allows monomodal and multimodal experiments using face data. Known variabilities, that are critical for the performance of the biometric systems (such as pose, expression, illumination and quality) are present. The face and subface data that are acquired in this database are: 2D audio-video talking-face sequences, 2D stereoscopic data acquired with two pairs of synchronized cameras, 3D facial data acquired with a laser scanner, and iris images acquired with a portable infrared camera. The IV 2 database is designed for monomodal and multimodal experiments. The quality of the acquired data is of great importance. Therefore as a first step, and in order to better evaluate the quality of the data, a first internal evaluation was conducted. Only a small amount of the total acquired data was used for this evaluation: 2D still images, 3D scans and iris images. First results show the interest of this database. In parallel to the research algorithms, open-source reference systems were also run for baseline comparisons.

Guidelines for developing and implementing sustainability indicators for marine capture "sheries were drafted during a recent expert consultation jointly organised by Australia and FAO in Sydney (Australia). This paper provides an overview of the guidelines and illustrates their application with an Australian example. As a background to the guidelines, the concept of sustainable development (SD) for marine capture "sheries was discussed and an agreed set of de"nitions and usage of common terms developed. The guidelines then outline the "ve sequential steps that need to be addressed in developing a meaningful set of indicators in the context of a Sustainable Development Reference System (SDRS). The "ve steps are:

Large phonetic corpora including both standard and variant transcriptions are available for many languages. However, applications requiring the use of dynamic vocabularies make necessary to transcribe words not present in the dictionary. Also, additional alternative pronunciations to standard forms have shown to improve recognition accuracy. Therefore, new techniques to automatically generate variants in pronunciations have been investigated and proven to be very effective. However, rule-based systems still remain useful to generate standard transcriptions not previously available or to build new corpora, oriented chiefly to synthesis applications. The present paper describes a letter-to-phone conversion system for Spanish designed to supply transcriptions to the flexible vocabulary speech recogniser and to the synthesiser, both developed at CSELT (Centro Studi e Laboratori relecomunicazioni), Turin, Italy. Different sets of rules are designed for the two applications. Symbols inventories also differ, although the IPA alphabet is the reference system for both. Rules have been written in ANSI C and implemented on DOS and Windows 95 and can be selectively applied. Two speech corpora have been transcribed by means of these grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules: a) the SpeechDat Spanish corpus which includes 4444 words extracted from the phonetically balanced sentences of the database b) a corpus designed to train an automatic aligner to segment units for synthesis, composed of 303 sentences (3240 words) and 338 isolated words; rule-based transcriptions of this corpus were manually corrected. The phonetic forms obtained by the rules matched satisfactorily the reference transcriptions: most mistakes on the first corpus were caused by the presence of secondary stresses in the SpeechDat transcriptions, which were not assigned by the rules, whereas errors on the synthesis corpus appeared mostly on hiatuses and on words of foreign origin. Further developments oriented to recognition can imply addition of rules to account for Latin American pronunciations (especially Mexican, Argentinian and Paraguayan); for synthesis, on the other hand, rules to represent coarticulatory phenomena at word boundaries can be implemented, in order to transcribe whole sentences.

Large phonetic corpora including both standard and variant transcriptions are available for many languages. However, applications requiring the use of dynamic vocabularies make necessary to transcribe words not present in the dictionary. Also, additional alternative pronunciations to standard forms have shown to improve recognition accuracy. Therefore, new techniques to automatically generate variants in pronunciations have been investigated and proven to be very effective. However, rule-based systems still remain useful to generate standard transcriptions not previously available or to build new corpora, oriented chiefly to synthesis applications. The present paper describes a letter-to-phone conversion system for Spanish designed to supply transcriptions to the flexible vocabulary speech recogniser and to the synthesiser, both developed at CSELT (Centro Studi e Laboratori relecomunicazioni), Turin, Italy. Different sets of rules are designed for the two applications. Symbols inventories also differ, although the IPA alphabet is the reference system for both. Rules have been written in ANSI C and implemented on DOS and Windows 95 and can be selectively applied. Two speech corpora have been transcribed by means of these grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules: a) the SpeechDat Spanish corpus which includes 4444 words extracted from the phonetically balanced sentences of the database b) a corpus designed to train an automatic aligner to segment units for synthesis, composed of 303 sentences (3240 words) and 338 isolated words; rule-based transcriptions of this corpus were manually corrected. The phonetic forms obtained by the rules matched satisfactorily the reference transcriptions: most mistakes on the first corpus were caused by the presence of secondary stresses in the SpeechDat transcriptions, which were not assigned by the rules, whereas errors on the synthesis corpus appeared mostly on hiatuses and on words of foreign origin. Further developments oriented to recognition can imply addition of rules to account for Latin American pronunciations (especially Mexican, Argentinian and Paraguayan); for synthesis, on the other hand, rules to represent coarticulatory phenomena at word boundaries can be implemented, in order to transcribe whole sentences.

GPS was used with ultra-short baselines (2-3 carrier wavelengths) in a triple antenna configuration to obtain attitude for General Aviation (GA) aircraft. Through algorithm selection and error source calibration, accuracies of 0.1°, 0.15°and 0.2°rms were obtained for pitch roll and yaw respectively. The accuracy and robustness of the system was enhanced by combining the ultra short-baseline GPS attitude solution with an attitude solution derived using inexpensive automotive grade rate gyros. The solid state gyros allow coasting through temporary GPS outages lasting 2 minutes with attitude errors less than 6 degrees. The combined GPS-inertial system has a 20Hz output sufficient to drive glass cockpit type displays. A prototype system was built and flight tested in a Beechcraft Queen Air. The system installed and flight tested in the Queen Air compares favorably to the perfor-mance of the existing vacuum driven instruments. It is currently being used in ongoing research at Stanford with futuristic high resolution displays .

Background In previous studies, rTMS has been successfully employed to interfere with the right posterior parietal cortex (rPPC) inducing neglect-like behavior in healthy subjects. Several studies have shown that the use of tools can modulate the boundaries between near and far space: indeed when far space is reached by the stick, far space can be remapped as near. Objective The aim of the present study was to investigate whether once that rTMS on the rPPC has selectively induced neglect-like bias in the near space (but not in the far space), neglect can appears also in the far space when the subjects used a tool to perform the task. Methods Fifteen right-handed healthy subjects executed a line length judgment task in two different spatial positions (60 cm: near space and 120 cm: far space), with or without rPPC on-line rTMS. In the far space condition, subjects performed the perceptual task while holding or not a tool. Results During rTMS, visuospatial performance significantly shi...

We present astrometric calibration of the Xuyi Schmidt Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic Anti-center (XSTPS-GAC). XSTPS-GAC is the photometric part of the Digital Sky Survey of the Galactic Anti-center (DSS-GAC), which is a photometric and spectroscopic sky survey, in combination with LAMOST. In order to select an astrometric reference catalog, we made comparisons between the four widely used astrometric catalogs, GSC2.3, USNO-B1.0, UCAC3 and PPMXL. PPMXL shows relatively small systematic errors in positions and more homogeneous proper motion distributions toward the Galactic Anti-center (GAC), and was selected as the reference catalog. Based on the high quality and bright reference stars that were picked out from PPMXL, we performed a 4th-order polynomial fitting in image units, to construct the transformation relation between coordinates used by XSTPS-GAC and standard coordinates, and to simultaneously correct the image distortions in the CCD. Then we applied the derived relation to all sources to obtain their mean celestial coordinates based on the International Celestial Reference System. For bright point sources with r < 17.0 mag, the accuracy of astrometric calibration could reach about 80 mas for each of the g, r, i bands, with systematic errors being less than 10 mas. But for the faint sources at the brightness limit of the survey, which was r ∼ 19.0 mag, the accuracy can still reach 200 mas. After combining all observations, the final weighted average coordinates could reach an accuracy of less than 70 mas for bright stars. For faint stars, the rms residuals of weighted coordinates decrease to ∼ 110 mas. The final combined XSTPS-GAC coordinates show a good consistency with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Abstract—This paper presents an approach based on semantic annotation of CVs and job offers for automating recruitment on the web. The main idea consists on modeling formally the semantic content of these documents in term of their acquirements (case of a CV) or requirements (case of a job offer) using a shared ontology between recruiters and job seekers. The domain ontology built is inspired from the most significant parts of these documents (personal qualifications, diplomas and job experiences) and handle the ...

Liquids, metastable liquids, and glasses; glassy soft matters; materials far from equilibrium and under extreme environments; atomistic modeling and simulation; neutron and X-ray scattering. More than 30 publications (Citations >700, h-index 14) in book sections, high-impact journals such as P.

The compression behaviour of closed cell aluminium foams (Al99.5, AlMg1Si0.6 and AlSi12 matrix alloys, TiH2 foaming agent) prepared by powder metallurgy was studied in the temperature range of 20–550◦C. It was observed that the temperature increase results in the decrease of the compression strength and energy absorption and increase of densification strain (plateau length) at constant density. The dependence of compression strength on foam density and temperature was successfully modelled using new proposed equation. The activation energy for compression of aluminium foams seems to be density dependent with a maximum at certain density range depending on foam composition. It was also found that the characteristic exponent Tf for the compression strength of aluminium foams is temperature dependent variable. The strain at compression strength (deformation up to the macroscopic failure of foam) is nearly temperature independent or decreases at constant density depending on aluminium a...

We combined the data from 2MASS and dUSNO-A2.0 catalogues in order to derive absolute proper motions of about 280 millions stars fainter than 12 m , covering the all sky excluding a narrow zone along the galactic equator. The proper motions were derived from 2MASS Point Sources Catalog and USNO-A2.0 positions with mean epoch difference about of 45 years for northern hemisphere and about of 17 years for south. The absolutization was done using about 1.4 million galaxies from 2MASS Extended Sources

This preprint is part of a three-paper series exploring physical realization as a temporally organized process constrained by relativistic causality.

The present paper addresses classical gravitational optics. It shows that gravitational light deflection and Shapiro time delay follow directly from a temporal realization gradient,

                                                                                              a=−c2∇α,

without introducing additional fields, modified dynamics, or spacetime curvature as a primitive assumption.

By integrating the realization-induced acceleration along null trajectories, a general expression for the deflection angle is derived for arbitrary radial profiles. The empirically observed impact-parameter dependence uniquely selects an inverse-square realization gradient and reproduces the standard Eddington light-deflection coefficient. The same realization field yields the logarithmic form of the Shapiro time delay.

Small deviations from the inverse-square profile generate characteristic, scale-dependent corrections to both effects, which are tightly constrained by existing precision measurements. The results demonstrate that classical gravitational optics can be understood as a cumulative effect of temporal organization, while remaining observationally indistinguishable from general relativity in the tested regime.

Context. Gaia Early Data Release 3 (Gaia EDR3) provides accurate astrometry for about 1.6 million compact (QSO-like) extragalactic sources, 1.2 million of which have the best-quality five-parameter astrometric solutions. Aims. The proper motions of QSO-like sources are used to reveal a systematic pattern due to the acceleration of the solar system barycentre with respect to the rest frame of the Universe. Apart from being an important scientific result by itself, the acceleration measured in this way is a good quality indicator of the Gaia astrometric solution. Methods. The effect of the acceleration is obtained as a part of the general expansion of the vector field of proper motions in Vector Spherical Harmonics (VSH). Various versions of the VSH fit and various subsets of the sources are tried and compared to get the most consistent result and a realistic estimate of its uncertainty. Additional tests with the Gaia astrometric solution are used to get a better idea on possible syst...

The hierarchy of reference frames used in the IGS and the procedures and rationale for realizing them are reviewed. The Conventions of the IERS lag developments in the IGS in a number of important respects. Recommenations are offered for changes in the IERS Conventions to recognize geocenter motion (as already implemented by the IGS) and to enforce greater model consistency in order to achieve higher precision for combined reference frame products. Despite large improvements in the internal consistency of IGS product sets, defects remain which should be addressed in future developments. If the IGS is to remain a leader in this area, then a comprehensive, long-range strategy should be formulated and pursued to maintain and enhance the IGS reference frame, as well as to improve its delivery to users. Actions should include the official designation of a high-performance reference tracking network whose stations are expected to meet the highest standards possible.

We have determined that somatic embryos of carrot exhibit a number of interesting and unusual properties when exposed to heat shock at different times in their development. Specifically, we have seen that mid-globular embryos can be arrested irreversibly in their development when heat-shocked, whereas all other stages of embryogenesis, both before and after this stage, are fully capable of normal development after the stress. In investigating the molecular basis of this developmental sensitivity to heat shock, using a cloned heat shock gene encoding a small heat shock protein, we have determined that globular embryos both synthesize and accumulate significantly less heat shock mRNA when compared with embryos of any other stage or to callus suspension cells. In fact, there appears to be no transcriptional induction of heat shock gene expression in response to heat shock during this time period; the gene is expressed at the same relatively low level both before and after heat shock. H...

Probe B uses a cryogenic optical telescope as an inertial reference system for the gyroscopes and as a sensor for the pitch and yaw part of the attitude control of the spacecraft. The telescope was made primarily of fused quartz that was bonded together using a potassium hydroxide bonding technique developed for the program. Roof prisms located at the telescope focal plane were used to divide the guide star image to give the pitch and yaw error information. The telescope met all the preflight requirements and the performance in flight was consistent with the ground test results. Due to a larger-than-expected space vehicle pointing error the telescope occasionally operated beyond its designed linear range. This increased two contributions to the systematic error for the science data analysis which were from the non-linearity of the pointing response and the scale factor change due to guide star color variation. The non-linearity error can be corrected using a cubic model for the response as a function of pointing angle derived from the flight data. Other systematic errors from the telescope are predominantly bias variations which have an insignificant effect on experiment error.

SUMMARY The Gordon, Cox & O&#39;Hare (1984) method has been used for deriving ‘small-circle’ arcs for a series of independently determined apparent polar-wander paths. the ‘small-circle’ approach is considered physically sensible, but unfortunately still requires excessive subjective ‘assistance’ to select the most plausible Euler poles and Euler colatitudes, particularly when there is little relative motion between the continent and the pole. None the less, polar-wander paths can be divided into prolonged ‘tracks’ separated by brief ‘cusps’. the cusps can be associated with particular tectonic events within the continent or groups of continents. This technique thus has the potential for providing a more geophysically realistic definition of apparent polar-wander paths that can be used to help identify non-Gaussian errors in palaeomagnetic data. In addition, the sharpness of most cusps provides a precise age for the onset or cessation of particular tectonic events. the simultaneous ...

The so-called flyby anomaly has encouraged several authors to analyze in detail the minor perturbative contributions to the trajectory of spacecraft performing a flyby manoeuvre. This anomaly consist of an unexplained increase or decrease of the asymptotic velocity of the spacecraft after a flyby of the Earth in the range of a few mm per second. Some order of magnitude estimations have been performed in recent years to dismiss many possible conventional effects as the source of such an anomaly but no explanation has been found yet. In this paper we perform a study of the perturbation induced by ocean tides in a flybying spacecraft by considering the time dependence of the location of the high tide as the Moon follows its orbit. We show that this effect implies a change of the spacecraft velocity of a few micrometers per second. We also consider the coupling of tesseral harmonics inhomogeneities and the rotation of the Earth and its impact of the spacecraft outgoing velocity. Significant corrections to the observed asymptotic velocities are found in this case but neither their sign nor their magnitude coincide with the anomalies. So, we can also rule this out as a conventional explanation.

Introduction: Facial symmetry refers to the balanced size, shape, and position of facial components, though perfect symmetry rarely exists. Minor asymmetries, often with the left side larger than the right, are common and may result from developmental, functional, traumatic, or pathological factors. Aim: Analysis and evaluation of facial asymmetry in different facial forms. Materials and Methods: Seventy-five subjects aged 15-35 years from the Department of Orthodontics, Mithila Minority Dental College, were categorized into Euryprosopic, Mesoprosopic, and Leptoprosopic groups.The photographs were cropped by using Adobe photoshop and analysis was done by Digimizer software. The photographs were analysed for 5 horizontal and 3 midline parameters. ANOVA test was performed to analyse the significant difference (at P ≤ 0.05). Results: Significant differences were found in both vertical and horizontal facial parameters among the three facial types, with Leptoprosopic individuals showing the highest values. However, no significant asymmetry was observed between the right and left sides in any group. Conclusion: Distinct vertical and horizontal facial proportions were observed across facial types, especially in Leptoprosopic individuals. Despite these variations, facial symmetry was maintained across all groups, supporting its relevance in orthodontics and facial reconstruction.

We discuss two different ways to determine the systematic effects on the star's observations obtained with the astrolabe. The first one is related to the absolute determination of the declinations got through stars belonging simultaneously to 30 • and 45 • zenith distance programmes. The absolute declinations were obtained from a global reduction including all the data. The second way uses a sum of chosen functions, added to the observational results in zenith distance obtained with astrolabes, which represent both the systematic differences ∆α and ∆δ between catalogues of stars and the instrumental effects ∆I. With this method it is possible to associate several different catalogues as only one. The interest is that it allows the utilization of even single passage stars to get systematic differences ∆α and ∆δ, what is not possible in classical procedure of astrolabe data reduction.

A regular observational programme with a photoelectric astrolabe have been performed at "Observatoire du Calern" (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, OCA, φ = +43 o 44 55.011 ; λ = -0 h 27 m 42.44 s , Calern, Caussols, France) for the last twenty years. It has been almost fully automatized between 1984 and 1987. Since 1988 the photoelectric astrolabe was used without any modification. In addition to determining the daily orientation of the local vertical, the yearly analysis of the residuals permits to derive corrections to the used star catalogue . A global reduction method was applied for the ASPHO observations. The new form of the equations give us the possibility of using the entire set of the observing program using data taken at two zenith distances (30 o and 45 o ). The program contains about 41648 stars' transits of 269 different stars taken at "Observatoire du Calern" (OCA). The reduction was based on the HIPPARCOS system. We discuss the possibility of computing absolute declinations through stars belonging simultaneously to the 30 o and 45 o zenith distances programmes. The absolute declination corrections were determined for 185 stars with precision of 0.027 and the value of the determined equator correction is -0.018 ± 0.005 . The instrumental effects were also determined. The mean epoch is 1995.29.

To meet the implementation constraint posed by ultra-wideband (UWB) delay lines, a new transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) structure is proposed where a group of reference and data pulses with short, uniform spacing is used for transmission. This structure enables a simple, robust and practical auto-correlation detector to be implemented in the receiver. It overcomes the major hurdle to practical implementation of conventional transmitted reference systems, that is, the long wideband delay line requirement. TRPC is also compatible with the signal format proposed within the IEEE 802.15.4a Working Group for coherent and non-coherent systems. The performance of the proposed TRPC receiver and non-coherent pulse position modulation (NC-PPM) with energy detection are analyzed and compared. Simulation results show that TRPC outperforms the conventional TR, NC-PPM, the recently proposed dual pulse scheme and the frequency shifted reference system. In particular, it achieves power saving over NC-PPM by about 1.3-1.9 dB for IEEE 802.15.4a channel model 1 and 1.3-2.3 dB for channel model 8.

Computer modeling through digital range images has been used for many applications, including 3D modeling of objects belonging to our cultural heritage. The scales involved range from small objects (e.g. pottery), to middle-sized works of art (statues, architectural decorations), up to very large structures (architectural and archaeological monuments). For any of these applications, suitable sensors and methodologies have been explored by different authors. The object to be modeled within this project is the "Plastico di Roma antica," a large plaster-of-Paris model of imperial Rome (16x17 meters) created in the last century. Its overall size therefore demands an acquisition approach typical of large structures, but it also is characterized extremely tiny details typical of small objects (houses are a few centimeters high; their doors, windows, etc. are smaller than 1 centimeter). This paper gives an account of the procedures followed for solving this "contradiction" and describes how a huge 3D model was acquired and generated by using a special metrology Laser Radar. The procedures for reorienting in a single reference system the huge point clouds obtained after each acquisition phase, thanks to the measurement of fixed redundant references, are described. The data set was split in smaller sub-areas 2 x 2 meters each for purposes of mesh editing. This subdivision was necessary owing to the huge number of points in each individual scan (50-60 millions). The final merge of the edited parts made it possible to create a single mesh. All these processes were made with software specifically designed for this project since no commercial package could be found that was suitable for managing such a large number of points. Preliminary models are presented. Finally, the significance of the project is discussed in terms of the overall project known as "Rome Reborn," of which the present acquisition is an important component.

This work relates to a rigorous study of the correlation among surface chemistry (FTIR, XPS), 3D structure (X-ray and neutron scattering), morphology (SEM, AFM), and electrochemical and impedance behavior of lithiated carbon electrodes in commonly used liquid electrolyte solutions. Four different types of carbons were explored in a single study. These included, for comparison, two types of disordered carbons, single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT), and synthetic graphite powder as a reference system. All four types of carbons develop a similar surface chemistry in alkyl carbonate solutions which is dominated by solvent reduction. The differences in the 3D structure of these carbons leads to pronounced differences in the mechanisms of Li-insertion into them. The effect of the carbons' 3D structure on the solid-state diffusion of Li-ions is demonstrated and discussed.

A spatial differentiation measure conceived as a reference system between the physical environment and the corresponding cognitive structuring that takes place in human minds is formulated as a virtual spatial interaction. The proposed measure aims to represent the widely shared features of the cognitive structure given to the environment. The theoretical framework includes concepts from self-organisation (synergetics) and cognitive information processing. This approach permits that the mental processes behind the structuring of environmental information be "projected" onto the urban space, becoming an intrinsic part of it. Hence, the structure given to the environment is defined as an imposition of a possible hierarchical order, determined by features internal and external to the observer. The fundamentals of environmental cognition were defined as the identification of information patterns by different criteria and the aggregation or segregation of information based on similarities (or equivalence) and differences in the detected information. Attributes are used in different combinations for the determination of variables that represent distinct aspects of environmental information structuring, and the interaction rules use these variables in processes of competition and co-operation between the environmental elements to determine which tend to create isolated patterns of information and which will be agglutinated in more generalised patterns. An experimental module was applied and the obtained results were contrasted with results from traditional survey methods of public image.

I liked to work on this project from the point o f technical and language challenge, but it also gave me the opportunity to improve my know ledge on many surrounding technical fields especially in the post-harvest handling o f agricultural products. Last but not least 1 am grateful to have been given the opportunity to meet lots o f people in many countries at conferences, discussions about projects and cultural events. a) Fixed transm itter and moving receiver b) Row s o f transm itters and receivers JS> -X®, GJf

Within a human motion analysis system, body parts are modeled by simple virtual 3D rigid objects. Its position and orientation parameters at frame t+ 1 are estimated based on the parameters at frame t and the image intensity variation from frame t to t + 1, under kinematic ...

AIM: This study aims to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of Kinect motion sensing input device’s three-dimensional (3D) models by comparing it with direct anthropometry and digital 2D photogrammetry. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Six profiles and four frontal parameters were directly measured on the faces of 80 participants. The same measurements were repeated using two-dimensional (2D) photogrammetry and (3D) images obtained from Kinect device. Another observer made the same measurements for 30% of the images obtained with 3D technique, and interobserver reproducibility was evaluated for 3D images. Intraobserver reproducibility was evaluated. Statistical analysis was conducted using the paired samples t-test, interclass correlation coefficient, and Bland-Altman limits of agreement. RESULTS: The highest mean difference was 0.0084 mm between direct measurement and photogrammetry, 0.027 mm between direct measurement and 3D Kinect’s models, and 0.018 mm between photogrammetry and 3D Kine...