Human factors in cargo X-ray examination systems

The project investigated factors which may determine operator performance in X-ray screening of cargo, which is of similar importance to aviation security screening. A target detection paradigm showed significant difference in several measures of performance between baggage and postal contexts which provides evidence that these may constitute separate expertise domains.

Plane wave scattering by a spherical di-electric particle in motion : a relativistic extension of the Mie theory

Light scattering from small spherical particles has applications in a vast number of disciplines including astrophysics, meteorology optics and particle sizing. Mie theory provides an exact analytical characterization of plane wave scattering from spherical dielectric objects. There exist many variants of the Mie theory where fundamental assumptions of the theory has been relaxed to make generalizations. Notable such extensions are generalized Mie theory where plane waves are replaced by optical beams, scattering from lossy particles, scattering from layered particles or shells and scattering of partially coherent (non-classical) light. However, no work has yet been reported in the literature on modifications required to account for scattering when the particle or the source is in motion relative to each other. This is an important problem where many applications can be found in disciplines involving moving particle size characterization. In this paper we propose a novel approach, using special relativity, to address this problem by extending the standard Mie theory for scattering by a particle in motion with a constant speed, which may be very low, moderate or comparable to the speed of light. The proposed technique involves transforming the scattering problem to a reference frame co-moving with the particle, then applying the Mie theory in that frame and transforming the scattered field back to the reference frame of the observer.

Prospect of renewable energy sources and integrating challenges in Victoria, Australia

The Australian Government has targeted 20% of electricity generation from renewable energy sources by 2020. The 20% renewable energy target (RET) for Australia will be around 45000GWH in 2020. Renewable energy of Victoria also includes as part of support to achieve 20% RET in Australia. In Victoria wind and solar resources are abundant as compared to other sources of renewable energy. Solar radiation and wind speed data for Victoria State was collected from NASA surface meteorology and solar energy web site. A feasibility analysis has been carried out to explore the potentialities of wind and solar energy for Victoria State using hybrid optimization model of electric renewable (HOMER) software. This paper also represents the estimation analysis of RET for Victoria and describes the integrating challenges of renewable energy sources to the utility grid.