Academic literature on the topic 'Limited perceptibility'

Simple color-difference formulae and pictorial images have traditionally been used to estimate the visual impact of color errors introduced by image-reproduction processes. But the limited gamut of RGB cameras constrains such analyses, particularly of natural scenes. The purpose of this work was to estimate visual sensitivity to color errors introduced deliberately into pictures synthesized from hyperspectral images of natural scenes without gamut constraints and to compare discrimination thresholds expressed in CIELAB and S-CIELAB color spaces. From each original image, a set of approximate images with variable color errors were generated and displayed on a calibrated RGB color monitor. The threshold for perceptibility of the errors was determined in a paired-comparison experiment. In agreement with previous studies, it was found that discrimination between original and approximate images needed on average a CIELAB color difference ΔEab* of about 2.2. Although a large variation of performance across the nine images tested was found when errors were expressed in CIELAB units, little variation was obtained when they were expressed in S-CIELAB units.

Following a successful Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination pilot in 2013–2015 in Kitui county, Kenya introduced the HPV vaccine in October 2019 with a goal to immunize approximately 800,000 girls annually against HPV. Our study assessed the knowledge, attitudes, and practice of affected groups towards HPV infection and vaccination in two counties of Kenya. Semi-structured interviews from children aged between nine and thirteen years and key informants comprising of parents, head teachers, community leaders and health workers involved in HPV vaccination in health facilities from Mombasa and Tana-River counties were conducted. Content was analyzed thematically and coded for emerging themes using the QRS Nvivo 12 Plus (QRS International, Doncaster, Australia) software package. From our findings, a significant proportion of participants, especially children, have limited knowledge of the subject. Vaccination of boys was opposed by most participants. Parents and the community members are not in favor of HPV vaccination, as compared to the other groups. A similar pattern of inadequate knowledge and strongly opposed attitudes was observed in Tana-River and Mombasa. Active community involvement in primary prevention strategies may promote the uptake of the vaccine which can be achieved by robust awareness, modifying the negative beliefs about HPV vaccine and encouraging the perceptibility of HPV vaccination.

Articles and pronouns have already been extensively researched in various languages, including Dutch. Much less is known, however, about the pragmatic functions of these morphosyntactic forms during acquisition. The question to be investigated in the present research addresses the question of how Dutch children between 2;0 and 3;3 combine indefinite articles, definite/demonstrative articles and pronouns with pragmatic functions in reference. The research is located at the interface of morphosyntax and pragmatics. The choice of the form for a certain function is influenced by the child's ability to take on the listener's perspective. This ability is still developing in 2-year-olds, as is the acquisition of various morpho syntactic forms. The question is then, how do children combine forms with functions if they supposedly do not do this on the basis of the listener's knowledge of the referent. Three other possibilities are also investigated: specificity, discourse function and (visual) perceptibility. Both the form-function correspondences as well as errors in linking form to functions will be investigated for three Dutch children from the CHILDES-database. The results show that the children do not randomly distribute the morphosyntactic forms over pragmatic functions in reference. The patterns found can be explained on the basis of limited semantic use of forms and perceptual availability of the referent, followed by a growing sensitivity to discourse patterns.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between employee perceptions of diversity (i.e. significance of diversity and diversity management, and value of diversity practices employed) and perceived organizational performance. It also attempts to examine whether the perceptions of diversity vary among employees from different diversity backgrounds (i.e. across gender and categories) in Indian IT industry. Design/methodology/approach Primary data based on 402 respondents were analysed using statistical tools like factor analysis, correlations, analysis of variance, means, grand means, and regression. Findings Results indicated that employees irrespective of their diversity backgrounds positively acknowledged diversity and diversity management. However, limited but significant differences were observed among employee perceptions regarding valuing the diversity practices employed based on their diversity backgrounds. Further, employees’ perception of promotion of gender diversity was found to be positively related to perceived organizational performance. Research limitations/implications This paper relied on self-report surveys for data collection. Future studies should collect data using multiple methods to avoid common-method bias. As the sample was drawn from India, specifically from IT industry, the conclusions may not be generalized to other industries. Future studies may be conducted across industries covering different cultural settings. Practical implications Implications are first, that, in addition to investing in initiatives for promoting diversity, especially gender diversity, organizations need to ensure positive perceptibility of these initiatives by employees. Second, to foster acceptance and effectiveness of gender/diversity initiatives in organizations, managers need to ensure men and majority group employees are part of these initiatives. Third, IT industry needs to reassess their hiring strategies and should design diversity programmes with goals in mind, if not quotas, to hire and retain diverse employees to explore their potential contribution. Originality/value Inclusion of employees of Indian IT industry of different categories will definitely add value to the existing knowledge on diversity, management theory, and practice.

Abstract There is a set of statistical measures developed mostly in corpus and computational linguistics and information retrieval, known as keyness measures, which are generally expected to detect textual features that account for differences between two texts or groups of texts. These measures are based on the frequency, distribution, or dispersion of words (or other features). Searching for relevant differences or similarities between two text groups is also an activity that is characteristic of traditional literary studies, whenever two authors, two periods in the work of one author, two historical periods or two literary genres are to be compared. Therefore, applying quantitative procedures in order to search for differences seems to be promising in the field of computational literary studies as it allows to analyze large corpora and to base historical hypotheses on differences between authors, genres and periods on larger empirical evidence. However, applying quantitative procedures in order to answer questions relevant to literary studies in many cases raises methodological problems, which have been discussed on a more general level in the context of integrating or triangulating quantitative and qualitative methods in mixed methods research of the social sciences. This paper aims to solve these methodological issues concretely for the concept of distinctiveness and thus to lay the methodological foundation permitting to operationalize quantitative procedures in order to use them not only as rough exploratory tools, but in a hermeneutically meaningful way for research in literary studies. Based on a structural definition of potential candidate measures for analyzing distinctiveness in the first section, we offer a systematic description of the issue of integrating quantitative procedures into a hermeneutically meaningful understanding of distinctiveness by distinguishing its epistemological from the methodological perspective. The second section develops a systematic strategy to solve the methodological side of this issue based on a critical reconstruction of the widespread non-integrative strategy in research on keyness measures that can be traced back to Rudolf Carnap’s model of explication. We demonstrate that it is, in the first instance, mandatory to gain a comprehensive qualitative understanding of the actual task. We show that Carnap’s model of explication suffers from a shortcoming that consists in ignoring the need for a systematic comparison of what he calls the explicatum and the explicandum. Only if there is a method of systematic comparison, the next task, namely that of evaluation can be addressed, which verifies whether the output of a quantitative procedure corresponds to the qualitative expectation that must be clarified in advance. We claim that evaluation is necessary for integrating quantitative procedures to a qualitative understanding of distinctiveness. Our reconstruction shows that both steps are usually skipped in empirical research on keyness measures that are the most important point of reference for the development of a measure of distinctiveness. Evaluation, which in turn requires thorough explication and conceptual clarification, needs to be employed to verify this relation. In the third section we offer a qualitative clarification of the concept of distinctiveness by spanning a three-dimensional conceptual space. This flexible framework takes into account that there is no single and proper concept of distinctiveness but rather a field of possible meanings depending on research interest, theoretical framework, and access to the perceptibility or salience of textual features. Therefore, we shall, instead of stipulating any narrow and strict definition, take into account that each of these aspects – interest, theoretical framework, and access to perceptibility – represents one dimension of the heuristic space of possible uses of the concept of distinctiveness. The fourth section discusses two possible strategies of operationalization and evaluation that we consider to be complementary to the previously provided clarification, and that complete the task of establishing a candidate measure successfully as a measure of distinctiveness in a qualitatively ambitious sense. We demonstrate that two different general strategies are worth considering, depending on the respective notion of distinctiveness and the interest as elaborated in the third section. If the interest is merely taxonomic, classification tasks based on multi-class supervised machine learning are sufficient. If the interest is aesthetic, more complex and intricate evaluation strategies are required, which have to rely on a thorough conceptual clarification of the concept of distinctiveness, in particular on the idea of salience or perceptibility. The challenge here is to correlate perceivable complex features of texts such as plot, theme (aboutness), style, form, or roles and constellation of fictional characters with the unperceived frequency and distribution of word features that are calculated by candidate measures of distinctiveness. Existing research did not clarify, so far, how to correlate such complex features with individual word features. The paper concludes with a general reflection on the possibility of mixed methods research for computational literary studies in terms of explanatory power and exploratory use. As our strategy of combining explication and evaluation shows, integration should be understood as a strategy of combining two different perspectives on the object area: in our evaluation scenarios, that of empirical reader response and that of a specific quantitative procedure. This does not imply that measures of distinctiveness, which proved to reach explanatory power in one qualitative aspect, should be supposed to be successful in all fields of research. As long as evaluation is omitted, candidate measures of distinctiveness lack explanatory power and are limited to exploratory use. In contrast with a skepticism that has sometimes been expressed from literary scholars with regard to the relevance of computational literary studies on proper issues of the humanities, we believe that integrating computational methods into hermeneutic literary studies can be achieved in a way that reaches higher explanatory power than the usual exploratory use of keyness measures, but it can only be achieved individually for concrete tasks and not once and for all based on a general theoretical demonstration.

Early diagnostic and treatment of prostate cancer could be achieved using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to improve tumor perceptibility. Nonetheless, performing intra-MRI interventions present significant challenges due to intense magnetic fields and limited patient access. This paper presents an MRI-compatible manipulator using elastically averaged binary pneumatic air muscles (PAMs) to orient a needle into a targeted region of the prostate under the command of a physician. The proposed manipulator is based on an all-polymer compliant mechanism designed to make a completely MRI-compatible positioning system. A model based on the PAMs deformation energy is used to design the manipulator so that its discrete workspace, stiffness, and size meet clinically relevant design requirements. The model is also used to study the motion of the device during a state shift. A laboratory prototype of the device shows that the covered workspace, stiffness, and size of the manipulator can meet clinical requirements. Repeatability and accuracy are also acceptable with values of 0.5 mm and 1.7 mm, respectively. Finally, the manipulator’s behavior during state shift describes a hook-shaped motion that is both analytically predicted and experimentally observed.

Abstract Wildfire smoke is likely to have direct health effects on birds as well as influence movement, vocalization, and other avian behaviors. These behavioral changes may affect if and how birds are observed in the wild, although research on the effects of wildfire smoke on bird behavior is limited. To evaluate how wildfire smoke affects detection of birds, we combined data from eBird, an online community science program, with data from an extensive network of air quality monitors in the state of Washington over a 4-year period. We assessed how PM2.5, a marker of smoke pollution, affected the probability of observing 71 bird species during the wildfire seasons of 2015–2018 using bird observations from 62,908 eBird checklists. After accounting for habitat, weather conditions, seasonality, and survey effort, we found that PM2.5 affected the probability of observing 37% of study species. The ambient concentration of PM2.5 was negatively associated with the probability of observing 16 species and positively associated with the probability of observing 10 species, indicating that birds exhibit species-specific behavioral changes during wildfire smoke events that influence how they are observed. Our results suggest that wildfire smoke impacts the presence, availability, and/or perceptibility of birds. Impacts of smoke pollution on human observers, such as impaired visibility, may also influence detection of birds. These results provide a foundation for developing mechanistic hypotheses to explain how birds, and our studies of them, are impacted by wildfire smoke. Given the projected increase in large-scale wildfire smoke events under future climate change scenarios, understanding how birds are affected by wildfire smoke—and how air pollution may influence our ability to detect them—are important next steps to inform wildlife research and avian conservation.

Дисертаційна робота присвячена поглибленому вивченню природи виникнення зони каустики в поліагрегатному підвісі поплавкового гіроскопа, причини формування таких зон в підвісі, їх розвиток у часі і просторі і вплив на виникнення додаткових похибок поплавкового гіроскопа на резонансному рівні хвильового співпадання. Побудовані розрахункові схеми пружної взаємодії проникаючого акустичного випромінювання з поплавковим гіроскопом класу ДУСУ2 надають можливість для поглибленого аналізу причин появи технологічних ризиків експлуатаційних умов внаслідок формування особливостей резонансного типу – за умови великого значення хвильового розміру та незначної величини хвильового розміру. Додатково виявлена небезпека формування ще одного резонансу в підвісі – комбінованого резонансу. Проведені напівнатурні стендові дослідження ДУСУ2-30В та встановлена можливість штучного формування буферної зони для боротьби з негативним впливом проникаючого акустичного випромінювання на прилад. Встановлено наявність в рідинній складовій підвісу гіроскопа окрім циліндричної zone kaustikos ще і плоскої каустики в площині шпангоута корпуса. Експериментально доведена наявність висхідних теплових потоків і температурного стрибка у рідинній частині підвісу гіроскопа, які суттєво змінюють вихідний статичний стан та породжують стохастичний за структурою градієнт тепла, який не взмозі регулюватися тепловим кожухом. Вирішуються комплексні задачі для оборонної галузі: аналізується і окреслюється значення питань маскування та обмеженої примітності деяких типів бойової техніки – окопу для танка у фортифікаційних спорудах відкритого типу, субмарини, літаків палубної авіації.

A comprehensive series of emissions measurements were taken from two pieces of equipment used by the Canadian Forces. A field kitchen burner unit and the engine from the Light Armoured Vehicle III (LAVIII) were operated using two base fuels: low and ultra low sulphur diesel fuel blended with three different biofuels. Methylesters from canola, tallow and yellow grease were mixed in a range of volumetric proportions from 0 to 20%. Additionally, both very low sulphur diesel and aviation turbine fuel (JP-8) were tested against neat low sulphur diesel fuel. The complete chemical analysis conducted on all test fuels will not be presented here. A full range of gaseous emission measurements were obtained including oxides of nitrogen, unburnt hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and dioxide and limited sulphur dioxide measurements. Two means of monitoring particulate matter were used with one proving to be more effective than the other. Novel techniques were used to obtain the burner unit emissions results and the AVL 8-mode test sequence was applied to the Caterpillar engine from the LAVIII. Although emission trends were detected, levels were often on the margins of perceptibility of the gas analysis system, and atmospheric conditions were challenging. Nevertheless, a methodology was developed and refined. Some correlations were made between the chemical analysis and emissions results. The testing will allow the Canadian Army to estimate its emissions footprint.