Basic Distortions Research Articles

A History of the ‘Alawis: From Medieval Aleppo to the Turkish Republic, by Stefan Winter

Stefan Winter has written a sweeping and highly original survey of ‘Alawi history in what is today Syria, Lebanon and southern Turkey. The ‘Alawis, a deep-rooted religious minority in the region, have aroused added interest of late, given the grim course of the Syrian Civil War, now in its eighth year. Though Winter ends his survey in the late 1930s and thus does not specifically address the rise of ‘Alawi power in contemporary Syria, the book offers essential background to the present conflict. Indeed, Winter’s study—exemplary in its analytical sophistication and rigorous use of primary evidence—advances many insights that aid understanding of identity in the Middle East well beyond the ‘Alawis. The book’s central motivation is to counter the dominant meta-narrative of ‘Alawi history that views the community through an essentialising sectarian lens. This story, crafted by European Orientalists and perpetuated by subsequent scholarship, has been obsessed with ‘Alawis’ religious particularities and framed their past as one of ‘deviance, marginality, and oppression’ (p. 1). Two basic distortions have resulted from this perspective. First, it assumes ‘Alawis are, and always have been, a uniform group without meaningful internal differences or divergent evolutions. Second, it misses the more significant ways in which ‘Alawis were not persecuted but instead robustly integrated in the societies in which they existed. If the goal is to understand the complexity of lived experience and to extend ‘Alawis agency, a different kind of history is needed.

JET ENGINE INLET DISTORTION SCREEN AND DESCRIPTOR EVALUATION

Total pressure distortion is one of the three basic flow distortions (total pressure, total temperature and swirl distortion) that might appear at the inlet of a gas turbine engine (GTE) during operation. Different numerical parameters are used for assessing the total pressure distortion intensity and extent. These summary descriptors are based on the distribution of total pressure in the aerodynamic interface plane. There are two descriptors largely spread around the world, however, three or four others are still in use and can be found in current references. The staff at the University of Defence decided to compare the most common descriptors using basic flow distortion patterns in order to select the most appropriate descriptor for future department research. The most common descriptors were identified based on their prevalence in widely accessible publications. The construction and use of these descriptors are reviewed in the paper. Subsequently, they are applied to radial, angular, and combined distortion patterns of different intensities and with varied mass flow rates. The tests were performed on a specially designed test bench using an electrically driven standalone industrial centrifugal compressor, sucking air through the inlet of a TJ100 small turbojet engine. Distortion screens were placed into the inlet channel to create the desired total pressure distortions. Of the three basic distortions, only the total pressure distortion descriptors were evaluated. However, both total and static pressures were collected using a multi probe rotational measurement system.

Blind watermarking algorithm for a sequence of TV images

A problem of digital watermarking of a sequence of TV images is considered. An algorithm of embedding of such watermarks based on combining singular decomposition and Haar filtration procedures and a corresponding blind algorithm of watermark retrieval are developed. It is shown that the embedded watermark is stable to basic distortions arising in the TV path, e.g., enhancement of noise, loss of definition, truncation and compression of the multimedia material by MPEG2 or AVC algorithms. Owing to noise-immune encoding, the number of correctly retrieved bits of digital watermarks can reach 100%.

Regional Disparity in Human Development and Govt. Sponsored Inclusive Development Programmes in India: An Interstate Analysis

The last two decades of development research was busy in making a link between ends and means of development. The focus was shifted to provide more priority to the ends of development rather than means. The neoclassical indicators of economic progress like Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product failed to reflect the well-being and freedom actually enjoyed by population. The concept of human development defines people's well being as the end of development and economic growth as a means. Enlarging human capabilities became one of the primary objectives of most of the developing country since early 1990s. Several government programmes were launched in India for enhancing the level of human development across states specially during the decade of 2000. These programmes are mainly meant for eradicating poverty, for raising the level of employment and for making the deprived and marginalized section of the population to participate in the production process. This paper attempts to evaluate the trend and pattern of inequality in human development across states of India by formulating a human development index using Euclidean distance. The absolute β and σ convergence test of human development index indicates a sign of convergence of human development across states of India. In addition to this, the study sheds some light on the association between the process of Government sponsored inclusive development programmes and the level of human development in the context of different states of India. Empirical evidences suggest that an all-inclusive government programmes would facilitate the process of human development by addressing the basic distortions in the level of human development in the Indian economy.

A new similarity measure based on shape information for invariant with multiple distortions

Due to the characteristics of noise and volatility, two similar time series always appear in diverse kinds of distortions, which usually are considered as the combinations of the following basic transformations: noise, amplitude shift, amplitude scaling, temporal scaling, and linear drift. In this paper, a novel similarity measure (SIMshape) invariant to these basic distortions and any combinations of them is proposed. It is parameter-free and easy to implement. Specifically, a multi-scale shape approximation for time series based on Discrete Haar Wavelet Transform, key point extraction and symbolization is presented first; then, based on this proposed representation and a scale-weight factor, a robust similarity measure is proposed. The novelty of SIMshape lies in two aspects as follows: (a) symbolizing key points sequence extracted from approximate wavelet coefficients; (b) adding the scale-weight factor and shape similarity in the similarity criterion. To show the effectiveness and efficiency, SIMshape is compared with other popular methods Euclidean Distance (ED), LB_keogh, Complexity Invariant Distance (CID), and ASEAL (Approximate Shape Exchange ALgorithm) using two indices: the number of kinds of distortions and the degree of distortion. Obtained results show that compared with ED, CID, LB_keogh, and ASEAL, SIMshape has better robustness in synthetic data, and shows better performance in real time series classification.

The Accuracy of Determination of Radar Shadows

Abstract Currently, the GIS software is often used to perform various tasks related to spatial planning. Exemplary use of GIS techniques is determination of marine radar shadows. Such analysis can be helpful during creating surveillance systems, which generally consist of several radar stations. But the use of standard analysis tools with the default functionality may not always yield satisfactory results. The reason for this, in the case of radar sensors, is the image distortion caused by the characteristics of the radar beam. This paper presents a modified method for the visibility analysis, which includes two basic radar image distortions - angular and radial distortion. Such improvement gives much more accurate results during determination of radar shadows then application of standard methods of viewshed analysis. Presented method was verified in the aspect of accuracy by using real radar image and radiolocation target. Further accuracy study took into consideration different DSM models used to perform viewshed analyses.

Raman spectroscopy ofCaMnO3:Mode assignment and relationship between Raman line intensities and structural distortions

Polarized Raman spectra of oriented finely twinned ${\mathrm{CaMnO}}_{3}$ thin films and nonpolarized Raman spectra of ${\mathrm{CaMnO}}_{3}$ ceramics were studied at room temperature using several excitation laser wavelengths. The selection rules for the polarized Raman spectra, obtained from samples consisting of finely twinned orthorhombic domains, were calculated and the symmetry of all observed Raman lines was determined. The relationship between the intensity of the Raman lines and the distortions in the $\mathrm{AB}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ perovskites with ${\mathrm{GdFeO}}_{3}$-type structure is discussed. These distortions can be described as superposition of four simple basic distortions: two ${\mathrm{MnO}}_{6}$ octahedral tilts, Jahn-Teller deformation of ${\mathrm{Mn}}^{3+}{\mathrm{O}}_{6}$ octahedra, and shift of the A ions from their sites in the ideal perovskite. Twenty of the 24 Raman-allowed modes in the real ${\mathrm{GdFeO}}_{3}$-type structure have counterparts in only one of the four simpler structures, obtained by a single basic distortion. The assignment of the Raman lines of ${\mathrm{CaMnO}}_{3}$ to definite atomic vibrations, most of them activated by a single basic distortion, was made in close comparison with the results of lattice dynamical calculations and the Raman spectra of isostructural ${\mathrm{LaMnO}}_{3}$ and ${\mathrm{CaGeO}}_{3}.$

How Much Do Taxes Discourage Incorporation?

One of the most basic distortions created by the double taxation of corporate income is the disincentive to incorporate. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which the aggregate allocation of assets and taxable income in the U.S. between corporate vs. noncorporate forms of organization during the period 1959-86 has responded to the size of the tax distortion discouraging firms from incorporating. In theory, profitable firms should shift out of the corporate sector when the tax distortion to incorporating is larger, and conversely for firms with tax losses. Our empirical results provide strong support for these theoretical forecasts, and hold consistently across a wide variety of specifications and measures of the tax variables. Measured effects are small, however, throwing doubt on the economic importance of tax-induced changes in organizational form.

Psychoacoustical evaluation of the pitch-synchronous overlap-and-add speech-waveform manipulation technique using single-formant stimuli.

This article presents two experiments dealing with a psychoacoustical evaluation of the pitch-synchronous overlap-and-add (PSOLA) technique. This technique has been developed for modification of duration and fundamental frequency of speech and is based on simple waveform manipulations. Both experiments were aimed at deriving the sensitivity of the auditory system to the basic distortions introduced by PSOLA. In experiment I, manipulation of fundamental frequency was applied to synthetic single-formant stimuli under minimal stimulus uncertainty, level roving, and formant-frequency roving. In experiment II, the influence of the positioning of the so-called "pitch markers" was studied. Depending on the formant and fundamental frequency, experimental data could be described reasonably well by either a spectral intensity-discrimination model or a temporal model based on detecting changes in modulation of the output of a single auditory filter. Generally, the results were in line with psychoacoustical theory on the auditory processing of resolved and unresolved harmonics.

Possible commensurate structures for TaTe4 and related compounds.

We show that for 2a\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}2a\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}3c commensurate structures of ${\mathrm{TaTe}}_{4}$ and related compounds, structures with space-group symmetry P4/mcc and P4/ncc can both be formed by using either of two different basic distortions corresponding to starting with longitudinal or with transverse Ta distortion modes. The phenomenological model corresponding to starting with the longitudinal Ta mode is analyzed in detail.