Subtraction Rule Research Articles

Crisis of Unequal Distribution of Wealth

Robert Nozick is most prominently known as the hero of the anti-taxation movement and chief libertarian. However, in his later writings he introduced a rule that could justify estate taxation of up to 100 percent, the subtraction rule. This paper shows that this subtraction rule is not only compatible with the core pillars of his entitlement theory, but also necessary for self-ownership from a strictly libertarian-individualistic point of view. As such, it deals with the compatibility of such estate taxation with the historical non-patternedness of the entitlement theory as well as with the notion of self-ownership as core elements of Nozickian libertarianism. In particular, it is argued that self-ownership requires an intimate bond or explicit consent between the initial creator of an object and the current inheritor because the initial creator has poured a part of herself into the object. Where that explicit or implicit consent is not given, the transgression of the initial creator’s right has to be compensated by the inheritor. That compensation is realized through estate taxation. The subtraction rule could, therefore, help combat the ever-increasing cascading of wealth through generations and provide a useful tool for a more equal distribution of wealth.

Multi-modal image fusion technique for enhancing image quality with multi-scale decomposition algorithm

ABSTRACT Multi-modality image fusion is an effective technique for fusing complementary information from multi-modality images into an integrated image. The additional information obtained from fused images not only enhances visibility to the human eye, but also complements the limitations of each image. The existing image fusion techniques lacks in preserving the quality of image. Therefore to preserve the structure information and perform the detailed information of source images, a novel image fusion scheme based on Multi-Scale Singular Value Decomposition (MSVD) is proposed. Initially, source images are decomposed into detailed and smooth layer by means of MSVD. Then low- and high-frequency components are extracted with the help of proposed filtering technique and subtraction rule. For efficiently selecting appropriate components, Optimisation algorithm is performed by maximising the mutual information of images. Finally, based on additive fusion rule, the fused images are reconstructed through inverse of MSVD approach. The efficiency of the proposed fusion rule is determined by the comparative analysis with existing image fusion method in terms of Mutual Information (MI), Standard Deviation, Entropy, Correlation etc. The experimental outcome shows the superiority of proposed method and it outperforms state-of-the-art methods by providing better quality image with good clarity. Furthermore, the fused image illustrates better visual effect and edge consistency.

Secure Optical QAM Transmission Using Chaos Message Masking

Abstract This work presents the joint use of advance modulation scheme i. e. m-QAM and optical chaos to combine the best of the two advantages i. e. higher data rates and security. A semiconductor laser diode is driven into chaotic region using direct modulation scheme and 4-QAM signal is added by Chaos message masking (CMS). The chaotically masked data stream is transmitted over an optical communication link to investigate the propagation issues and synchronization of chaos at the receiver. The transmitted chaos is synchronized at the receiver to unmask the QAM stream and binary data by using subtraction rule and conventional QAM demodulator, respectively. The deterioration of constellation diagrams and bit error rate found dependent upon transmitter/receiver synchronization and link parameters. The use of 4-QAM chaotic scheme is extendable to m-QAM and is applicable to long haul, short haul point to point and for passive optical networks.

Design Issues of Digital and Analog Chaotic RoF Link Using Chaos Message Masking

This work presents the joint use of Radio Over Fiber and optical chaos to investigate the secure ROF link. Merging the two technologies, optical chaos for physical layer communication security and Radio over Fiber creates new design issues which have been identified and studied in detail in this paper for both analog Radio Frequency/Intermediate Frequency and digitized data. A semiconductor laser diode is driven into chaotic region using direct modulation scheme and RoF signal is added by chaos message masking scheme. The chaotically masked signal is transmitted over an optical communication link to investigate the propagation issues and synchronization of chaos at the receiver. The transmitted chaos is synchronized at the receiver to unmask the signal by using subtraction rule. To investigate the performance of chaotic communication system for Radio over Fiber transmission, the figure of merits like Bit error rate, Quality factor, Eye Opening Penalty and Root-mean-squared phase jitter are studied for digital data and Signal to Noise ratio and Total Harmonic Distortion are studied for analog waveform to address the effects of link length and data rate/message bandwidth.

Model-Based Dereverberation Preserving Binaural Cues

The ability of the human auditory system for sound localization mainly depends on the binaural cues, especially interaural time and level differences (ITD and ILD). In the context of digital hearing aids and binaural audio transmission systems, these cues can be severely degraded by independent bilateral signal processing such as dereverberation or noise reduction. This contribution presents a novel two-stage binaural dereverberation algorithm which explicitly preserves the binaural cues. The first stage is based on a statistical model of the room impulse responses (RIR) and comprises a spectral subtraction rule which reduces late reverberation only. It includes a smoothing process of the spectral gains to reduce musical tones. In a second stage, the residual reverberation is attenuated by a dual-channel Wiener filter. This is derived from a coherence model of the reverberant sound field taking into account shadowing effects of the head. The overall binaural-input binaural-output structure efficiently reduces both early and late reverberation. In experiments as well as informal listening tests using measured binaural room impulse responses, the proposed algorithm significantly improves speech quality according to objective and subjective measures.

Low Delay Noise Reduction and Dereverberation for Hearing Aids

A new system for single-channel speech enhancement is proposed which achieves a joint suppression of late reverberant speech and background noise with a low signal delay and low computational complexity. It is based on a generalized spectral subtraction rule which depends on the variances of the late reverberant speech and background noise. The calculation of the spectral variances of the late reverberant speech requires an estimate of the reverberation time (RT) which is accomplished by a maximum likelihood (ML) approach. The enhancement with this blind RT estimation achieves almost the same speech quality as by using the actual RT. In comparison to commonly used post-filters in hearing aids which only perform a noise reduction, a significantly better objective and subjective speech quality is achieved. The proposed system performs time-domain filtering with coefficients adapted in the non-uniform (Bark-scaled) frequency-domain. This allows to achieve a high speech quality with low signal delay which is important for speech enhancement in hearing aids or related applications such as hands-free communication systems.

The Subtraction Rule and its Effects on Pricing in the Electricity Industry

The paper deals with the substraction rule, which has been proposed by the working group security of supply in service of the cartel offices of the federal republic and the states as an instrument to identify improperly inflated network access charges in the electricity industry. We analyze firms' price responses and adaptions to this rule. The results suggest that the introduction of the subtraction rule would increase prices, regardless of whether network access charges are improperly inflated or not.

Improved Epstein–Glaser renormalization. II. Lorentz invariant framework

The Epstein–Glaser type T-subtraction introduced by one of the authors in a previous paper is extended to the Lorentz invariant framework. The advantage of using our subtraction instead of the Epstein and Glaser standard W-subtraction method is especially important when working in Minkowski space, as then the counterterms necessary to keep Lorentz invariance are simplified. We show how T-renormalization of primitive diagrams in the Lorentz invariant framework directly relates to causal Riesz distributions. A covariant subtraction rule in momentum space is found, sharply improving upon the BPHZL method for massless theories.

Soft thresholding for DCT speech enhancement

A speech enhancement method in the DCT domain using a new soft thresholding strategy is proposed. Exploiting the behaviour of the amplitude distribution of the DCT coefficients, a linear function is introduced for amplitude thresholding, unlike the conventional constant noise-level subtraction rule. The experimental results show significant improvement in output SNR and quality as compared top previously reported results.

Spectral subtraction based on phonetic dependency and masking effects

A speech state-dependent spectral subtraction method to regulate the blind spectral subtraction for improved enhancement is proposed. In this method, a modified subtraction rule is applied over the speech selectively contingent to the speech state being voiced or unvoiced, in an effort to incorporate the acoustic characteristics of phonemes. The aim is to remedy the subtraction induced signal distortion attained by two state-dependent procedures: spectrum sharpening and minimum spectral bound. In order to remove the residual noise, the proposed method employs a procedure utilising the masking effect. The proposed spectral subtraction, including state-dependent subtraction and residual noise reduction using the masking threshold, shows effectiveness in terms of the compensation of spectral distortion in the unvoiced region as well as residual noise reduction.

Integrating velocity, time, and distance information: A developmental study

The development of understanding the relationships between velocity, time, and distance was investigated in three tasks. In each task, values of two dimensions were given, and 5-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults had to infer values of the third dimension. These inferences were made in all age groups. The integration rules were found to depend upon age and task. In the distance = time × velocity task, all age groups obeyed the normative multiplication rule. In the time = distance ÷ velocity task, the two older age groups obeyed the normative division rule, but the 5-year-olds shifted to a simpler subtraction rule. In the velocity = distance ÷ time task, which was the most difficult, the two older age groups simplified to use of a subtraction rule, and the 5-year-olds simplified even further to use of a distance-only rule. The knowledge level revealed for young children contrasts sharply with results from previous studies using Piagetian choice tasks, which apparently investigate selective attention to one dimension rather than conceptual understanding of relations.