Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) thin films were prepared by directly sputteringCu (In,Ga)Se2 quaternary target consisting of (Cu: 25%, Zn: 12.5%, Sn; 12.5%and S: 50%). The composition and structure of CZTS layers have beeninvestigated after annealing at 200 0C, 350 0C and 500 0C under vacuum. Theresults show that recrystallization of the CZTS thin film occurs and increasingthe grain size with a preferred orie...

Religious freedom encompasses the right of religious groups to define tenets their faith andto organise themselves according these tenets, without arbitrary State interference. However, limitsof groups’ autonomy are controversial, especially in those cases where exercise religiousautonomy seems be at odds with non-discrimination standards. The Inter-American Court HumanRights has adopted many d...

This paper describes how to use backstepping to develop control laws to perform trajectory tracking for a nonlinear, underactuated surface vessel. The research extends earlier backstepping designs for underactuated vessels by explaining how to select outputs when generalized forces act on the vessel. The resulting control law can correct orientation errors to track linear trajectories and can t...

A nonlinear control law to steer the unicycle model to a static or dynamic target pose is presented. If the target is static the control signals are smooth in their arguments and the solution guarantees exponential convergence of the distance and orientation errors to zero. The major advantages of the proposed approach are that there is no need for path planning and, in principle, there is no n...

An accurate localization system (Carrier Phase diierential GPS receiver) allows the design and implementation of an absolute vehicle guidance system. The preliminary work, presented in this paper, was aimed at validating the use of one GPS receiver in a vehicle guidance system, without any orientation sensor. We designed and implemented a non linear control law to perform a line-following task....

We propose a new context-sensitive active contour for 2D corpus callosum segmentation. After a seed contour consisting of interconnected parts is being initialized by the user, each part will start to deform according to its own motion law derived from high-level prior knowledge, and is constantly aware of its own orientation and destination during the deformation process. Experimental results ...

Amplitude spectra of natural images look surprisingly alike. Their shape is governed by the famous 1/f power law. In this work we propose a novel low parameter model for describing these spectra. The Sum-of-Superellipses conserves their common falloff behavior while simultaneously capturing the dimensions of variation—concavity, isotropy, slope, main orientation—in a small set of meaningful ill...

This paper extends the continuous inertia-free control law for spacecraft attitude tracking derived in prior work to the case of three axisymmetric reaction wheels. The wheels are assumed to be mounted in a known and linearly independent, but not necessarily orthogonal, configuration with an arbitrary and unknown orientation relative to the unknown spacecraft principal axes. Simulation results ...