Modelling 3D camera movement for vibration characterisation and multiple object identification with application to lighting assessment

Utilising cameras as a means to survey the surrounding environment is becoming increasingly popular in a number of different research areas and applications. Central to using camera sensors as input to a vision system, is the need to be able to manipulate and process the information captured in these images. One such application, is the use of cameras to monitor the quality of airport landing lighting at aerodromes where a camera is placed inside an aircraft and used to record images of the lighting pattern during the landing phase of a flight. The images are processed to determine a performance metric. This requires the development of custom software for the localisation and identification of luminaires within the image data. However, because of the necessity to keep airport operations functioning as efficiently as possible, it is difficult to collect enough image data to develop, test and validate any developed software. In this paper, we present a technique to model a virtual landing lighting pattern. A mathematical model is postulated which represents the glide path of the aircraft including random deviations from the expected path. A morphological method has been developed to localise and track the luminaires under different operating conditions. © 2011 IEEE.

Ixaru's Extended Frequency Dependent Quadrature Rules for Slater Integrals: Parallel Computation Issues

We describe recent progress of an ongoing research programme aimed at producing computational science software that can exploit high performance architectures in the atomic physics application domain. We examine the computational bottleneck of matrix construction in a suite of two-dimensional R-matrix propagation programs, 2DRMP, that are aimed at creating virtual electron collision experiments on HPC architectures. We build on Ixaru's extended frequency dependent quadrature rules (EFDQR) for Slater integrals and examine the challenge of constructing Hamiltonian matrices in parallel across an m-processor compute node in a block cyclic distribution for subsequent diagonalization by ScaLAPACK.

Temporal guidance of musicians’ performance movement is an acquired skill

The ancillary (non-sounding) body movements made by expert musicians during performance have been shown to indicate expressive, emotional, and structural features of the music to observers, even if the sound of the performance is absent. If such ancillary body movements are a component of skilled musical performance, then it should follow that acquiring the temporal control of such movements is a feature of musical skill acquisition. This proposition is tested using measures derived from a theory of temporal guidance of movement, “General Tau Theory” (Lee in Ecol Psychol 10:221–250, 1998; Lee et al. in Exp Brain Res 139:151–159, 2001), to compare movements made during performances of intermediate-level clarinetists before and after learning a new piece of music. Results indicate that the temporal control of ancillary body movements made by participants was stronger in performances after the music had been learned and was closer to the measures of temporal control found for an expert musician’s movements. These findings provide evidence that the temporal control of musicians’ ancillary body movements develops with musical learning. These results have implications for other skillful behaviors and nonverbal communication.

'All Good Things Must Come to an End': Terminating Co-Ownership Under the 'Old' Partition and Sale Rules

Despite its benefits, co-ownership of land creates problems where relations between the parties
have soured, or one person simply wants to extricate themselves from this arrangement. The
remedies of compulsory partition and sale allow one joint tenant or tenant in common to terminate
co-ownership against the wishes of the others, by seeking a court order to this effect. Throughout
parts of the common law world, this has be en based on nineteenth century English legislation namely
the Partition Act 1868, the key elements of which remain in force in Western Australia,
South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. This article provides an up-to-date
analysis of the law on compulsory partition and sale as derived from the 1868 Act and analogous
provisions, drawing not only on Australian cases, but on frequently overlooked decisions from
courts in both parts of Ireland and in parts of Canada, as well as ‘old’ English judgments on the
1868 Act.

Shifting Ground:Beyond National Architecture

The Irish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 charts a position for Irish architecture in a global culture where the modes of production of architecture are radically altered. Ireland is one of the most globalised countries in the world, yet it has developed a national culture of architecture derived from local place as a material construct. We now have to evolve our understanding in the light of the globalised nature of economic processes and architectural production which is largely dependent on internationally networked flows of products, data, and knowledge. We have just begun to represent this situation to ourselves and others. How should a global architecture be grounded culturally and philosophically? How does it position itself outside of shared national reference points?
heneghan peng architects were selected as participants because they are working across three continents on a range of competition-winning projects. Several of these are in sensitive and/or symbolic sites that include three UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Giants Causeway Visitor Centre in Northern Ireland, and the new Rhine Bridge near Lorelei.
Our dialogue led us to discussing the universal languages of projective geometry and number are been shared by architects and related professionals. In the work of heneghan peng, the specific embodiment of these geometries is carefully calibrated by the choice of materials and the detailed design of their physical performance on site. The stone facade of the Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre takes precise measure of the properties of the volcanic basalt seams from which it is hewn. The extraction of the stone is the subject of the pavilion wall drawings which record the cutting of stones to create the façade of the causeway centre.
We also identified water as an element which is shared across the different sites. Venice is a perfect place to take measure of this element which suggests links to another site – the Nile Valley which was enriched by the annual flooding of the River Nile. An ancient Egyptian rod for measuring the water level of the Nile inspired the design of the Nilometre - a responsive oscillating bench that invites visitors to balance their respective weights. This action embodies the ways of thinking that are evolving to operate in the globalised world, where the autonomous architectural object is dissolving into an expanded field of conceptual rules and systems. The bench constitutes a shifting ground located in the unstable field of Venice. It is about measurement and calibration of the weight of the body in relation to other bodies; in relation to the site of the installation; and in relation to water. The exhibit is located in the Artiglierie section of the Arsenale. Its level is calibrated against the mark of the acqua alta in the adjacent brickwork of the building which embodies a liminal moment in the fluctuating level of the lagoon.
The weights of bodies, the level of water, changes over time, are constant aspects of design across cultures and collectively they constitute a common ground for architecture - a ground shared with other design professionals. The movement of the bench required complex engineering design and active collaboration between the architects, engineers and fabricators. It is a kind of prototype – a physical object produced from digital data that explores the mathematics at play – the see-saw motion invites the observer to become a participant, to give it a test drive. It shows how a simple principle can generate complex effects that are difficult to predict and invites visitors to experiment and play with them.