Several topics connecting basic vision research to image compression and image quality are discussed: 1) A battery of about 7 specially chosen simple stimuli should be used to tease apart the multiplicity of factors affecting image quality. 2) A "perfect" static display must be capable of presenting about 135 bits/mm2. This value is based on the need for 3 pixels/mm and 15 bits/pixel. 3) Image ...

Imagine the situation: “One day, you notice an old country woman crossing a downtown street, just about to put one foot down on the rails of the streetcar line. [...] Suppose, now, that at the very moment she puts her foot on the rail a streetcar comes rushing down the tracks toward her. If the old woman does not notice the car and continues across the tracks nothing will happen. But if someone...

In the last decade there have been many results about special families of graphs whose number of perfect matchings is given by perfect or near perfect powers (N. Elkies et al., J. Algebraic Combin. 1 (1992), 111– 132; B.-Y. Yang, Ph.D. thesis, Department of Mathematics, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 1991; J. Propp, New Perspectives in Geometric Combinatorics, Cambridge University Press, 1999). In this pa...

In 1961, P.W. Kasteleyn enumerated the domino tilings of a 2n × 2n chessboard. His answer was always a square or double a square (we call such a number "squarish"), but he did not provide a combinatorial explanation for this. In the present thesis, we prove by mostly combinatorial arguments that the number of matchings of a large class of graphs with 4-fold rotational symmetry is squarish; our ...

With rapid changes in the business environment, organizations are increasingly looking at human resources as a unique asset that can provide sustained competitive advantage. As much as, people are viewed among the most important resources to firms, HR strategy would be central to achieve competitive advantages .Firms should view HR strategy as an important tool for integrating competencies insi...

A graph is a split graph if its vertices can be partitioned into a clique and a stable set. A graph is a k-split graph if its vertices can be partitioned into k sets, each of which induces a split graph. We show that the strong perfect graph conjecture is true for 2-split graphs and we design a polynomial algorithm to recognize a perfect 2-split graph.

The scratching of pen against paper signaled something at once mundane and momentous. “What is your name, your age, your residence?” asked Harvey Risk, a representative of the Southern Claims Commission. “My name is Mary Blackburn.... My age is about forty-fi ve years. My residence near Middlebrook,” the claimant responded. The commission awarded compensation for property losses during the Amer...