Online Approach for Spatio-Temporal Trajectory Data Reduction for Portable Devices

In this paper, we propose a new method for correcting the depth image, which was obtained by applying a matching scheme to stereo images and often includes parts with large error, based on the sparsity of depth image. When the depth image is obtained by a stereo matching, a small pixel correspondence error causes large estimation errors in the depth image. Also, original depth image can be considered to have sparsity the same as many natural signals without noise. So we correct the depth image that was obtained by the stereo matching, based on the sparsity of the original depth image. First, the depth image parts with a higher probability of containing large estimation errors are selected as the areas in which the depth has relatively large difference from that which was obtained by applying the median filter to the estimated depth image. Second, the depth image is applied with the inpainting procedure based on the data sparsity [1] as shown in Fig. 1 in which the data of the selected area are treated as being lost. In particular the depth image in a region, which corresponds to an object in 3-D space, is wavelet transformed by SA-DWT (Shape-Adaptive Discrete Wavelet Transform). The smaller wavelet coefficients are truncated to zero with a threshold procedure. With decreasing threshold value, the wavelet transform, smaller coefficient zeroing, and the inverse wavelet transform processes are repeated until the processed depth image is converged. Experiments show that the proposed method is able to remove large errors in the depth image which had been obtained by the stereo matching scheme.

Quality and cloud flags of GOSAT/FTS: Fourier Transform Spectrometer onboard Greenhouse gasses Observation Satellite products taking into account cirrus clouds and thick aerosols are considered and proposed. Influence due to cirrus and thick aerosol on estimation of column CO2 and CH4 with GOSAT/FTS data is clarified. Relatively large estimation errors are observed in column CO2 and CH4 retrievals with FTS data in some atmospheric conditions. In order to find such cases, retrieval results and quality/cloud flags in the GOSAT/FTS data products are checked. Through the investigation, it is found that relatively large error is caused by convergence problem due to cirrus clouds and thick aerosols. In the proposed paper, some of the cases of which relatively large estimation error is occurred at the Saga TCCON (The Total Carbon Column Observing Network) site are investigated. Also, a comparative study is conducted between standard products provided by NASA/JPL and the Levenberg-Marquardt based least square method of column CO2 and CH4 retrieval. It is suggested that some improvements of estimation accuracy of column CO2 and CH4 retrieval with GOSAT/FTS data can be expected.

We introduce a new algorithm, K-best-first search (KBFS), which is a generalization of the well known best-first search (BFS). In KBFS, each iteration simultaneously expands the K best nodes from the open-list (rather than just the best as in BFS). We claim that KBFS outperforms BFS in domains where the heuristic function has large errors in estimation of the real distance to the goal state or does not predict dead-ends in the search tree. We present empirical results that confirm this claim and show that KBFS outperforms BFS by a factor of 15 on random trees with dead-ends, and by a factor of 2 and 7 on the Fifteen and Twenty-Four tile puzzles, respectively. KBFS also finds better solutions than BFS and hill-climbing for the number partitioning problem. KBFS is only appropriate for finding approximate solutions with inadmissible heuristic functions.

A common goal of conventional fisheries management is to maintain fishing mortality at a rate that ensures an adequate level of lifetime egg production (LEP) for population sustainability. However, larvae from young spawners can experience higher mortality rates than larvae of older spawners, reducing the effect of egg production by young females (hereafter, maternal age effects). This reduction leads to an error in LEP that can be accounted for by reducing the fishing mortality rate, but raises the question of the magnitude of these errors if they are present but not accounted for. Calculations using parameters from a typical long-lived fish demonstrated that maternal age effects resulted in large errors in estimates of lifetime reproduction when there was a large contrast in the larval mortality rate extending over the reproductive life span. Errors were small when maternal age effects reduced the reproductive potential of only the very youngest spawners, at ages when a small fraction of females are mature. A specific example using the empirically derived maternal age effect for black rockfish (Sebastes melanops) indicated that errors in traditional management would be small for this species.

Upsurges and downsurges are calculated and plotted for a simple pump discharge line provided with an air chamber. Basic parameters such as pipeline constant, air chamber parameter, pipe wall friction, and orifice resistance are used. The results of this paper can be used to determine the necessary volume of the air chamber. Computer studies indicate that the assumption of the rigid water column and the concentration of pipe friction at the pump end of the pipeline yields reasonably good results at the pump end; however, because of these assumptions, large errors in estimation of both upsurges and downsurges occur at the midpoint and particularly at the quarter point of the pipeline. Pipe friction has a substantially different effect on surges than that of the orifice resistance; these two effects should therefore be considered separately. A differential orifice is recommended and considered; this orifice should have a low resistance to flow out of the chamber.

The analysis of nutrient budgets is a common method for assessing the biogeochemical function of estuaries including denitrification and nutrient retention rates. The Land Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) guidelines for constructing such budgets concentrate on the simplest case where an estuary or embryment is treated as a single box which is well-mixed both vertically and horizontally and at steady-state. We show that these simplifying assumptions can lead to significant and sometimes very large errors in estimates of internal retention (or production) rates. If the load to an estuary varies significantly through the year, the use of time-averaged concentrations of nutrient and salinity to calculate retention rates is shown to cause errors of up to 30% depending on the circumstances. The second case considered examines the consequences of treating an estuary which has significant long-estuary salinity and nutrient gradients as a well-mixed box. In a simple case considered, the calculated internal production from a distributed source is underestimated by a factor of two. The errors are shown to depend on the estuary's mixing and geometrical characteristic as well as on the location of the nutrient sources. The third case considers the errors in the calculated internal retention/production rates of treating an estuary with a two-layer circulation as a single-box system. The potential errors are severe. A comparison between a one-box analysis and a two-box analysis which accounts for the true estuarine circulation shows that the two analyses can yield calculated retention rates of opposite sign. In this situation, one configuration for the estuary would appear to sequester nutrient, whereas the other would be a net exporter of nutrient.

Area reduction factors (ARFs), which are used to convert estimates of extreme point rainfall to estimates of extreme area-averaged rainfall, are central to conventional flood risk assessment. Errors in the estimation of ARFs can result in large errors in subsequent estimates of design rainfall and discharge. This paper presents a critical examination of commonly used ARFs, particularly those from the U.S. Weather Bureau TP-29, demonstrating that they do not adequately represent the true properties of extreme rainfall. This lack of representativeness is due mainly to formulations that mix rainfall observations from different storms and different storm types. Storm catalogs developed from a 10-year high-resolution radar rainfall data are used set to estimate storm-centered ARFs for Charlotte, North Carolina. Storms are classified as either tropical or nontropical to demonstrate that storm type strongly influences spatial rainfall structure. While there appears to be some relationship between ARF str...

Connected vehicles are at risk of exposing their location history when using potentially untrusted location-based services (LBSs) in the driving process. We propose a method called mutually obfuscating paths (MOP) that enables vehicles to provide highly accurate realtime location updates to LBS while preventing the LBS from tracking vehicles. The instrument is to leverage connected vehicles' two network interfaces: in-car LTE Internet (for accessing LBS) and car-to-car Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC)-communication (for obfuscating their paths). The main idea of MOP is that vehicles, when appropriate, generate made-up but plausible location updates for each other, making their paths continuously branching off from the LBS' viewpoint. We evaluations show that MOP provides strong privacy protection even under continuous and highly accurate location updates.

In [I], an algorithm based on phase variations of received pilot symbols was proposed to estimate one of the most important channel parameters, maximum Doppler shift, f d . However, AWGN (Additive white gauss noise) will cause large estimation error in some cases. In order to analyze the influence of noise, we extended the phase probability density function (pdf) in [1] to the scenario with both fading and AWGN, then the estimation error is characterized in closed-form expression. By this error expression, we found that power control will affect the estimator of [1] and we proposed a modification method based on SNR estimation to obtain accurate Doppler shift estimation in moderate low SNRs (signal-to-noise ratio). Simulation results show high accuracy in wide range of velocities and SNRs.

Unexplained factors and their effects on second pass [formula omitted]-squared’s

Shear wave elasticity imaging applies an acoustic radiation force to generate shear waves, where the shear wave speed is often estimated with time-of-flight calculations. To characterize the errors in time-of-flight estimates of the shear wave speed, three-dimensional simulated shear wave particle velocities and shear wave particle displacements are computed with time-domain Green's functions for a Kelvin-Voigt model. Estimated shear wave speeds are obtained from cross correlations and time-to-peak calculations, and the results demonstrate the effects of time-domain dispersion and noise on estimates of the shear wave speed. Time-domain dispersion of the propagating shear wave produces large errors in estimates performed with shear wave particle velocities and/or cross-correlations close to the push beam, and in the absence of noise, the errors in the shear wave speed estimated at the focal depth diminish with distance from the push beam. However, shear wave attenuation also increases sensitivity to noise as the distance from the push beam increases. Time-to-peak and cross-correlation methods consistently achieve much smaller errors with shear wave particle displacements than with shear wave particle velocities. Furthermore, cross-correlations are much more robust with respect to noise, and larger values of the shear viscosity increase the sensitivity of each method to noise.

Quantifying the significance of isotropic joints in structural analysis

This work investigates the onset of wetting failure for displacement of Newtonian fluids in parallel channels. A hydrodynamic model is developed for planar geometries where an advancing fluid displaces a receding fluid along a moving substrate. The model is evaluated with three distinct approaches: (i) the low-speed asymptotic theory of Cox [J. Fluid Mech. 168, 169–194 (1986)], (ii) a one-dimensional (1D) lubrication approach, and (iii) a two-dimensional (2D) flow model solved with the Galerkin finite element method (FEM). Approaches (ii) and (iii) predict the onset of wetting failure at a critical capillary number Cacrit, which coincides with a turning point in the steady-state solution family for a given set of system parameters. The 1D model fails to accurately describe interface shapes near the three-phase contact line when air is the receding fluid, producing large errors in estimates of Cacrit for these systems. Analysis of the 2D flow solution reveals that strong pressure gradients are needed to pump the receding fluid away from the contact line. A mechanism is proposed in which wetting failure results when capillary forces can no longer support the pressure gradients necessary to steadily displace the receding fluid. The effects of viscosity ratio, substrate wettability, and fluid inertia are then investigated through comparisons of Cacrit values and characteristics of the interface shape. Surprisingly, the low-speed asymptotic theory (i) matches trends computed from (iii) throughout the entire investigated parameter space. Furthermore, predictions of Cacrit from the 2D flow model compare favorably to values measured in experimental air-entrainment studies, supporting the proposed wetting-failure mechanism.

Risky actions: Why and how to estimate variability in motor performance

Such cloud radiative propenies as reflectance, transmittance, and absorptance of mixed-phase clouds have been simulated for the stratocumulus cloud observed on 30 January 1999 within the Japanese Cloud and Climate Study (JACCS) program, in which simultaneous observations of the cloud microphysical and radiative properties were conducted. The stratocumulus cloud was in mixed-phased condition, and highly heterogeneous vertically and horizontally with different mixing ratios of liquid water droplets and ice particles. A vertically-homogeneous, plane-parallel mixed-phase cloud model could reproduce the observed visible (VIS; wavelength < 0.7 μm) band radiative properties, but it could not reproduce the near-infrared (NIR; > 0.7 μm) band radiative properties. A multi-layered, plane-parallel mixed-phase cloud model could consistently reproduce the observed VIS-band and NIR-band radiative properties within the measurement accuracy. It is found that the venical profiles of water droplets and ice particles are an important factor to determine the radiative properties of mixed-phase clouds. The simulated results suggested that the NIR-band reflectance and absorptance could vary by more than 0.1 due to different vertical distributions of the cloud microphysical properties even the model clouds had constant liquid-water-path and ice-water-path. The visible and near-infrared solar reflection can be also affected by the vertical profiles of cloud microphysical properties; it is suggested that the conventional passive remote sensing under the assumption of vertical-homogeneity, may bring large errors in estimation of the microphysical propenies of mixed-phase clouds.