Local scale variations within the same species are common in nature. The shape matching puzzle poses fascinating questions, like how should we measure the discrepancy between a small dog with large ears and a large one with small ears? are there similar geometric structures that are common to an elephant and a giraffe? what is the morphometric similarity between a blue whale and a dolphin? Exis...

Background Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) is an inherited cardiomyopathy characterized by fatty and fibrotic replacement of cardiac tissue, which ultimately affects the structure, function and electrical propagation of the ventricles. Diagnosis of ARVC is challenging and is currently guided by the 2010 Task force criteria (2010TFC), which includes criteria identified fro...

This study presents a method for quantitatively estimating leaf area index (LAI) in winter wheat by exploring bi-directional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) data. In BRDF data, near-infrared reflectance (NIR) which is sensitive to crown component, canopy cover and crown shape, is affected by illuminated crown component, while red reflectance is sensitive to canopy gaps and controlled b...

3D solid textures are important data for computer graphics applications, and the amount of the data is increasing. When a large number of the 3D solid textures are stored as databases, similarity search techniques and classification techniques are essential for effective use of the databases. We have applied 3D HLAC (Higher Order Local Autocorrelation) masks to 3D solid textures for extracting ...

Sunspots are solar features located in active regions of the Sun, whose number is an indicator of the Sun’s magnetic activity. Therefore accurate detection and classification of sunspots are fundamental for the elaboration of solar activity indices such as the Wolf number. However, irregularities in the shape of the sunspots and their variable intensity and contrast with the surroundings, make ...

Quantitative structure-activity relationship studies were performed to describe and predict the mutagenic activity of a set of 48 nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. From a larger pool of molecular descriptors (topological indices) we arrived at much a smaller set consisting of three correlating parameters. Such a variable selection is made using ncss software in that successive regressi...

Several recent studies have shown that n-octanol/water partition coefficients may not be a good predictor for estimating soil sorption coefficients of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), defined here as chemicals with log Kow greater than 5. Thus, an alternative QSAR model was developed that seems to provide reliable estimates for the soil sorption coefficients of persistent organic pollutant...

Statistical shape analysis has become of increasing interest to the neuroimaging community due to its potential to precisely locate morphological changes and thus potentially discriminate between healthy and pathological structures. This paper describes a combined boundary and medial shape analysis based on two different shape descriptions applied to a study of the hippocampus shape abnormaliti...

This paper is concerned with the choice of the materials to minimise the deformation of mechanical components caused by extraneous thermal and vibrational inputs. First, material ‘performance indices’ (combinations of material properties) are derived for systems subjected to low frequency sinusoidal vibration inputs and for systems subjected to broad– band excitation. A methodology is developed...

An instability index, called the shape factor (SF), for weather forecasting was proposed using temperature profiles from a NASA/LaRC-hosted web-page featuring NOAA Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) radiosonde data used for short-term weather predictions. The index of instability was predicated on the sign and magnitude of the gradient of the equivalent potential temperature. A training data set of tempe...