the importance of shea tree to the people of south-western nigeria cannot be over emphasized considering both the economic and environmental uses of the tree. however, efforts have not been made to propagate its production by the farmers as the shea tree still grows in the wild state. it would be worthwhile to investigate farmers’ perception of shea nut tree as an economic tree and their attitu...

This paper presents advantages of catadioptric camera systems for robotic applications using the example of autonomous vehicles and driver assistance systems. We propose two different catadioptric stereo camera systems to improve environmental perception. Both stereo camera systems consist of at least one catadioptric camera, which combines a lens with a hyperbolic mirror and provides a panoram...

When evaluating environmental risk and its perception, psychosocial and psychosomatic factors may be of fundamental importance for public health programming and the promotion of quality of life. This is the case in particular where knowledge of the true health consequences of environmental exposure to given risk factors are incomplete or its action is within the range of values where we do not ...

Tobacco use and ETS issues present a significant challenge to conventional notions of risk communication, which were originally formulated in the late 1980s in the context of involuntary public exposures to chemicals, nuclear power, hazardous waste facilities, and similar technologies. Conventional wisdom on this subject encourages us to concentrate on risk message design and delivery parameter...

An autonomous environmental visual perception approach for humanoid robots is presented. The proposed framework exploits the available model information and the context acquired during global localization by establishing a vision-model coupling in order to overcome the limitations of purely data-driven approaches in object recognition and surrounding status assertion. The exploitation of the mo...

0167-8655/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.patrec.2010.09.028 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 721 608 8489; fa E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Gonza (T. Asfour), [email protected] (R. Dillmann). An autonomous environmental visual perception approach for humanoid robots is presented. The proposed framework exploits the available model information and the ...

OBJECTIVE: Balancing environmental quality with economic growth in less developed settings is clearly a challenge. Still surprisingly little empirical evidence has been brought to bear on the relative priority given environmental and socioeconomic issues among the residents themselves of such settings. This research explores such perceptions. METHODS: We undertake survey research with 2500 res...

a r t i c l e i n f o The notion that people with higher income are more concerned about environmental problems is deeply entrenched in economics and some other disciplines. Studies have shown a positive income effect on the intention to pay for environmental improvement. Perception of environmental risk, however, follows a different pattern of variation. This paper demonstrates a negative inco...

This document is dedicated to my parents who persuaded me to do my masters' and funded my education. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who, directly or indirectly, helped me complete this thesis. First, I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Debra Harris, for all the encouragement and guidance rendered to me during my course of study. I would also...