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It has been over a century since American women fought for gender equality. Yet, how much progress have we really made? The recent high profile cases of sexual assaults (#MeToo Movement) from Hollywood to political and other organizations indicate that women are far from being treated equally on all fronts. In this paper, the author intends to explore some explanations of this phenomenon, which is why, after so many years of women's struggles for gender equality, and several decades after the Civil Rights Movement, do we still face gender inequality and disrespectful speeches and actions against women? In order to understand what is really happening in American culture of gender in general, I would like to propose a few concepts as possible explanations. One is the double image or double message of female prototypes in American culture. On one hand, women are expected to be like the Roman Goddess of Venus, whose functions encompassed love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory. On the other hand, women are also told to be like the Greek Goddess Athena, who symbolizes wisdom, war and the crafts. "Athena was, perhaps, the wisest, most courageous, and certainly the most resourceful of the Olympian gods" (Mark Cartwright 2012). Related to these contradictive images, we also have "ideal gender culture" and "real gender culture" in our society. The "ideal gender culture" is that gender equality should be what we are supposed to strike for, and there is a false belief that American women have achieved equality already. Gender discrimination is history now (Rivers & Barnett, 2013). But the "real gender culture" is that women are still treated and portrayed as sex objects. Specifically, the author will focus on the aspect of 'sexualization' and 'hypersexualization' as a real gender culture in the U.S. in particular and the Western culture in general. The author did three brief course related surveys and some interviews to illustrate how much damage and confusion the conflicting female prototypes can do to college aged males and females. The results of the surveys supported the hypothesis of the author, which is in this dual level of gender cultures and emphasis on sexualization of women, young college students do show confusion and conflicted feelings and reactions towards women's sexualized images. Female students are torn between interpreting the sexualized female images as empowerment or depowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent tsunami events in Indonesia, Chile and Japan highlight the importance of understanding the near-source impacts of devastating tsunamis. These events have also raised awareness of the need for risk assessment for local (e.g. submarine and subaerial landslide-generated) and near-field tsunamis (those that can impact a coastal community less than an hour after generation). Although existing tsunami warning systems such as DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) are highly effective at providing an assessment and warning of far-field tsunami events, comparable systems do not currently exist for local and near-field events. Tsunami inundation models can predict coastal run-up yet the lack of wave amplitude, direction, and shape data within a few minutes of a near-field tsunami event limits the information needed for warning populations at risk. The Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) Observatory, combining the VENUS and NEPTUNE Canada cabled networks, is the world's largest regional ocean observation system with over 900 km of electro-optic cable. The ONC Observatory, located off the east and west coasts of Vancouver Island spans the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate and edge of the overriding North American plate, a region known to produce mega-thrust earthquakes. The ONC Observatory has an extensive tsunami monitoring system of bottom pressure recorders used to provide high resolution tsunami data for modeling far-field tsunamis in coastal regions [1]. Since the start-up of operations of the NEPTUNE Canada network in 2009, the capability of the system has already been proven by the high precision of the bottom pressure recorders that monitored the passage of the tsunami waves generated by the Samoan, Chilean, and Japanese earthquake events. The Observatory has an extensive sensor network covering a broad range of research themes and provides standardized connection ports for guest instruments. The system is supported by a sophisticated Data Management and Archiving System, which provides data acquisition, archiving, processing and visualization from sources across the Observatory. With the base core technologies and infrastructure for tsunami warning system research, the ONC Observatory is an ideal site for the test and evaluation of near-field tsunami detection technologies. This paper discusses how this unique infrastructure can be used to facilitate international collaboration, combining new technologies, concepts and algorithms to create an international near-field tsunami research facility to develop, evaluate, and test warning technologies and solutions for at-risk populations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents an index of the authors whose papers are published in the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A computationally efficient stereo matching algorithm is introduced providing high precision dense disparity maps via local aggregation approach. The proposed algorithm exploits a novel paradigm, namely separable successive weighted summation (SWS) among horizontal and vertical directions with constant operational complexity, providing effective connected 2D support regions based on local color similarities. The intensity adaptive aggregation enables crisp disparity maps which preserve object boundaries and depth discontinuities. The same procedure is also utilized to diffuse information through overlapped pixels during occlusion handling. According to the experimental results on Middlebury online stereo benchmark, the proposed method is one of the most effective local stereo algorithm providing high quality disparity models by unifying constant time filtering and weighted aggregation. Hence, the proposed algorithm provides a competitive alternative, with its efficient GPU and FPGA implementations, for various local methods in terms of achieving precise disparity maps from stereo video within fast execution time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Energy functions that are used in stereo problem, are still far from modeling the real world. The energy terms in the models are not successful on all image regions and it is very difficult to adjust the weights of these terms automatically. An exact model for the stereo problem will be too complex and intractable. Therefore, we need some extra information to achieve better results while using basic energy models. Knowing where a method fails is a very important information and in this paper, we show that graph-cuts based dual-mesh framework can provide this information. The proposed method can mark the reliable and unreliable parts of the image regions. It then blocks the effect of unreliable parts over the reliable parts and it repairs unreliable parts iteratively by using the information from reliable parts.We tested our algorithm on Middlebury image dataset and on stereo X-ray images. We compare our algorithm with the other stereo algorithms and achieve better results than the base graph-cut algorithm as well as the graph-cut based dual-mesh algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Virtual Generalizing Random Access Memory Weightless Neural Networks (VG-RAM WNN) is an effective machine learning technique that offers simple implementation and fast training and test. We examined the performance of VG-RAM WNN on binocular dense stereo matching using the Middlebury Stereo Datasets. Our experimental results showed that, even without tackling occlusions and discontinuities in the stereo image pairs examined, our VG-RAM WNN architecture for stereo matching was able to rank at 114th position in the Middlebury Stereo Evaluation system. This result is promising, because the difference in performance among approaches ranked in distinct positions is very small. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Space agency mission plans state the need to measure the seismic activity on Venus. Because of the high temperature on Venus (462° C average surface temperature) and the difficulty in placing and wiring multiple sensors using robots, a high temperature, wireless sensor using a wide bandgap semiconductor is an attractive option. This paper presents the description and proof of concept measurements of a high temperature, wireless seismometer sensor for Venus. A variation in inductance of a coil caused by the movement of an aluminum probe held in the coil and attached to a balanced leaf-spring seismometer causes a variation of 700 Hz in the transmitted signal from the oscillator/sensor system at 426° C. This result indicates that the concept may be used on Venus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We present an approach to unveil the underlying structure of dynamic scenes from a sparse set of local flow measurements. We first estimate those measurements at carefully selected locations, and subsequently group them into a finite set of different dense flow field hypotheses. These flow fields are represented as parametric functional models, and the number of flow models (=clusters) is determined by an information-theory based approach. Methodically, the grouping task is a two-step clustering scheme, whose intra-cluster modeling step exploits prior knowledge on real flow fields by enforcing low curvature, and the individual covariance matrices of the sparse local flow measurements are introduced in a principled way. The method has been tested successfully on both stereo and general motion sequences from the standard Middlebury database. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The connection of ubiquitous and social computing is an emerging research area which is combining two prominent areas of computer science. In this paper, we tackle this topic from different angles: We describe data mining methods for ubiquitous and social data, specifically focusing on physical and social activities, and provide exemplary analysis results. Furthermore, we give an overview on the Ubicon platform which provides a framework for the creation and hosting of ubiquitous and social applications for diverse tasks and projects. Ubicon features the collection and analysis of both physical and social activities of users for enabling inter-connected applications in ubiquitous and social contexts. We summarize three real-world systems built on top of Ubicon, and exemplarily discuss the according mining and analysis aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Choosing one's own viewpoint when watching a video program has long been a desire for viewers. To achieve this goal, view synthesis and depth map generation are two fundamental techniques. View synthesis is a signal processing procedure which creates dense virtual views based on sparse real views. Each object inside a frame is warped to a proper position according to its depth information to form the viewpoint changing perception for viewers. Hence, the correctness of depth map influences the view synthesis quality. To increase the accuracy of depth map, this paper proposes an edge-adaptive block matching scheme cooperated with an unreliable region repairing approach. The former avoid finding local minimum in stereo matching, and the latter repairs the errors caused by occlusion regions. As for view synthesis, this paper proposes a special warping method that can detect errors caused by boundary mismatches of objects between corresponding depth and color images to improve quality of the synthesized view. Besides, we also propose a compensative-filling method that can fix tiny cracks due to round-off errors. Because of these two features, the proposed view synthesis becomes more robust to tolerate errors inside depth maps when compared with previous schemes. Both the depth generation and view synthesis are extremely complex computations. Therefore, this paper also proposes a low-complexity computing technology based on group-of-pixels which increases 30 times of performance for depth map generation, and reduces 60% computation time of view synthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since Yoon and Kweon proposed the Adaptive Support-Weight approach (ASW) based on color similarity and geometric proximity, local stereo matching methods have experienced great improvement, even are better than most of global approaches. In ASW, how to choose proper parameters is a very difficult and ongoing issue. Until now most studies on ASW used empirical parameter values and little work focused on the discussion of the ASW parameter setting. In this paper, we presented a Relational Analysis Method (RAM) to investigate the effects of different parameters on the ASW performance. RAM simultaneously considers the changes of multiple parameters of ASW. Middlebury test platform and four standard test images are applied to conduct experiments. The results show that the different combinations of multiple parameters have significant influences on the ASW performance. The average bad pixels of the four images vary from 45.4% to 8.66%. The ASW performance obtained by using appropriate parameters is much better than several modified ASW methods. Thus through tuning the parameters of ASW, the performance can be greatly improved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Stereo matching is a fundamental problem in computer vision, which aims to compute the disparity between stereo image pairs. Depth discontinuous regions are one of the most difficult regions that stereo matching algorithms have to solve, to accurately compute the disparity in those regions, in continuous methods, energy functionals which explicitly modeled the discontinuity characteristic of disparity function are usually proposed, and then those functionals are relaxed into convex. Those energy functionals usually use a simple data term which is not robust to brightness changes, and complex projection algorithms are needed to solve the relaxed convex functional. In this paper, we take the segmentation prior into the data term to make the functional more robust to brightness changes, and we propose a simple projection algorithm to give a approximate solution when solving the relaxed stereo matching energy functional. Experiments showed that our method can give a satisfied solution as other continuous methods while have an advantage that is easy to implement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Stereo matching is a challenging issue in multicamera scene reconstruction, and recently many methods have been proposed in different contexts. This paper presents a template based stereo matching algorithm using graph-cut. First, a set of non-overlapping templates are derived from the reference image (left or right image) to represent the scene structure. Each template is assigned to a corresponding disparity value in order to obtain an energy function which is applied to construct a graph. The minimum cut on the graph by using graph-cut also minimizes the energy function. Experimental results on the Middlebury test set show that the proposed algorithm can obtain satisfactory stereo matching results and is competitive with the state-of-the-art algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes a novel concept for an extended lifetime, lightweight Venus lander. Historically, to operate in the 480° C, 90 atm, corrosive, mostly CO2 Venus surface environment, previous landers have relied on thick Ti spherical outer shells and thick layers of internal insulation. But even the most resilient of these landers operated for only about 2 hours before succumbing to the environment. The goal on this project is to develop an architecture that extends lander lifetime to 20–25 hours and also reduces mass compared to the Pioneer Venus mission architecture. The idea for reducing mass is to: (a) contain the science instruments within a spherical high strength lightweight polymer matrix composite (PMC) tank; (b) surround the PMC tank with an annular shell of high performance insulation pre-pressurized to a level that (after landing) will exceed the external Venus surface pressure; and (c) surround the insulation with a thin Ti outer shell that contains only a net internal pressure, eliminating buckling overdesign mass. The combination of the PMC inner tank and thin Ti outer shell is lighter than a single thick Ti outer shell. The idea for extending lifetime is to add the following three features: (i) an expendable water supply that is placed within the insulation or is contained in an additional vessel within the PMC tank; (ii) a thin spherical evaporator shell placed within the insulation a short radial distance from the outer shell; and (iii) a thin heat-intercepting liquid cooled shield placed inboard of the evaporator shell. These features lower the temperature of the insulation below what it would have been with the insulation alone, reducing the internal heat leak and lengthening lifetime. The use of phase change materials (PCMs) inside the PMC tank is also analyzed as a lifetime-extending design option. The paper describes: (1) analytical modeling to demonstrate reduced mass and extended life; (2) thermal conductivity testing of high performance insulation as a function of temperature and pressure; (3) a bench-top ambient pressure thermal test of the evaporation system; and (4) a higher fidelity test, to be conducted in a high pressure, high temperature inert gas test chamber, of a small-scale Venus lander prototype (made from two hemispherical interconnecting halves) that includes all of the aforesaid features. 22 CFR 125.4(b)(13) applicable [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to examine the degree of similarity of the persistent CO2 greenhouse found on Venus to that of ancient Mars. The discovery of Jarosite, a mineral formed in the presence of strong sulfuric acid, evokes conditions more associated with Venus, where strong oxidizing conditions and strong sulfuric and hydrochloric acids are observed in its clouds. It is observed that large areas of Mars are both aqueously altered and highly oxidized and that carbonates are not found in any quantity, and that this reflected also in Mars meteorites. This suggests that conditions may have been present on Mars that allowed a stable and persistent greenhouse by the production of a significant oxygen component in the atmosphere with attendant strong mineral acids. Soil compositions of both Venus and Mars established by the Venera and Viking probes both show strong enhancement of both sulfur and chlorine over earth soils, and like Mars, Venus is believed to have supported a paleo-ocean. Two problems confront models of conventional carbon dioxide greenhouses on Mars, one is the long term chemical stability of such an atmosphere against the formation of carbonates, and second is the short term thermodynamic instabilities of a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere to condensation in the presence of insolation, impacts, volcanic eruptions and other cooling events. Venus apparently solved the problem of carbonate formation by having an oxidizing and acid rich atmosphere. An oxygen component, either biogenic or created by photo-disassociation of water, could have created acidic and highly oxidized conditions on Mars that provided chemical stability to a greenhouse by preventing formation of carbonates. Also, the presence of a Northern Paleo-ocean on Mars would have created thermal and gas pressure buffering of the climatic system to stabilize it against minor thermodynamic perturbations. Therefore, Venus demonstrates a persistent greenhouse could have existed on Mars that was both oxygenically and hydrologically stabilized. The persistent greenhouse on mars could have been terminated by a large atmospheric cooling event in the Early Amazonian that froze over the paleo-ocean stabilizing the greenhouse. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concept study demonstrates that a long lived Venus rover mission could be enabled by a novel application of advanced RPS technology. General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) modules would be employed to drive an advanced thermoacoustic Stirling engine, pulse tube cooler and linear alternator that provides electric power and cooling for the rover. The Thermoacoustic Stirling Heat Engine (TASHE) is a system for converting high-temperature heat into acoustic power which then drives linear alternators and a pulse tube cooler to provide both electric power and coolin6g for the rover. A small design team examined this mission concept focusing on the feasibility of using the TASHE system in this hostile environment. A rover design is described that would provide a mobile platform for science measurements on the Venus surface for 60 days, with the potential of operating well beyond that. A suite of science instruments is described that collects data on atmospheric and surface composition, surface stratigraphy, and subsurface structure. An Earth-Venus-Venus trajectory would be used to deliver the rover to a low entry angle allowing an inflated ballute to provide a low deceleration and low heat descent to the surface. All rover systems would be housed in a pressure vessel in vacuum with the internal temperature maintained by the TASHE at under 50 °C. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transit Venus was observed in LAPAN Biak using a portable telescope with a diameter of 103 mm and recorded using ImagingSource CCD video camera. The backdrop effect was observed during the beginning of transit. This work tries to analyze this backdrop effect observed during this expedition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]