Internet firms charge a wide range of prices for homogeneous products, and high-priced firms remain high-priced and low-priced firms remain low-priced over long periods. One explanation is that high-price firms are charging a premium for superior service. An alternative, price-dispersion explanation is that firms vary the prices for informed and uniformed consumers (Salop and Stiglitz, 1977) or...

The development of a low-cost, sensitive colorimetric sensor array for the detection and identification of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is reported. Using an array composed of chemoresponsive dyes, enormous discriminatory power is possible in a simple device that can be imaged easily with an ordinary flatbed scanner. Excellent differentiation of closely related organic compounds can be ach...

Single-sensor approaches to multimodal biometric authentication targeting the human hand in multiple-matcher scenarios provide higher security in terms of accuracy and resistance to biometric system attacks than unimodal systems. This paper introduces a novel multimodal hand biometric system using palmar images acquired by a commercially available flatbed scanner. Hence, the presented approach ...

Inexpensive and easy-to-use linear and area-array scanners have frequently substituted as colorimeters and densitometers for low-frequency (i.e., large area) hard copy image measurement. Increasingly, scanners are also being used for high spatial frequency, image microstructure measurements, which were previously reserved for high performance microdensitometers. In this paper we address charact...

A flatbed scanner is used to collect a digital image of a polished cross-section through a concrete pavement. Image processing software is used to classify each pixel in the image as either cement paste, aggregate, or air void. The distance to the nearest air void is calculated for each pixel classified as cement paste using an accumulated cost surface algorithm. The presence of aggregate is ac...

A method for analyzing combinatorial DNA arrays using oligonucleotide-modified gold nanoparticle probes and a conventional flatbed scanner is described here. Labeling oligonucleotide targets with nanoparticle rather than fluorophore probes substantially alters the melting profiles of the targets from an array substrate. This difference permits the discrimination of an oligonucleotide sequence f...

Recently solution scanometry, as a new, simple, fast, portable, and economic method was introduced for determination of acidity constants of indicator and dyes. In this study, a method was applied for the determination of the acidity constant of p-Rosolic acid (RA) and Bromoxylenol blue (BXB) indicators. The method is based on scanning of Plexiglas® sheet containing colored solutions with a fla...

The cost of building a digitizing system for image-based rendering can be prohibitive. Furthermore, the physical size, weight, and complexity of these systems has, in effect, limited their use to small objects and indoor scenes. The primary motivations for this project is to reduce the acquisition cost of light-field capture devices and create a portable system suitable for acquiring outdoor sc...

The cost of building a digitizing system for image-based rendering can be prohibitive. Furthermore, the physical size, weight, and complexity of these systems has, in effect, limited their use to small objects and indoor scenes. The primary motivations for this project is to reduce the acquisition cost of light-field capture devices and create a portable system suitable for acquiring outdoor sc...