Some applications such as the autonomous navigation in natural terrain and the automation of map making process require high-level scene descriptions as well as geometrical representation of the natural terrain environments. In this paper, we present methods for building high level terrain descriptions, referred as topographic maps, by extracting terrain features like "peaks", "pits", "ridges",...

Spinal cord infarction is much rarer than cerebral stroke, but its early recognition is important as it may signify serious aortic conditions. The most frequent type is anterior spinal artery syndrome, presenting with bilateral weakness (usually paraparesis), impairment of spinothalamic sensation and preservation of deep sensation. Depending on its level, it may present with respiratory dysfunc...

the dedicated satellite mission goce will sense various small mass variations along its path around the earth. here we study the effect of the earth’s topography and atmosphere on goce data. the effects depend on the magnitude of topographic height, and they will therefore vary by region. as the effect of the atmosphere and topography must be removed from the total gravity anomaly prior to geoi...

This report addresses the problem of extracting topographic features from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) imagery. The features are used for Earth science applications and include slope, curvature, aspect, flow direction, flow accumulation and compound topographic index (CTI). The objective of our work is (1) to support topographic feature extraction similar to the one in ArcGIS, (2) to...

We introduce GTM-SD (Generative Topographic Mapping for Structured Data), which is the first compositional generative model for topographic mapping of tree-structured data. GTM-SD exploits a scalable bottom-up hidden-tree Markov model that was introduced in Part I of this paper to achieve a recursive topographic mapping of hierarchical information. The proposed model allows efficient exploitati...

Understanding the maintenance of high tropical tree species diversity requires disentangling the effects of habitat vs. geographic distance. Using floristic, topographic, and soil nutrient data from 105 0.6-ha plots in mixed dipterocarp forest throughout Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, we explore the degree to which floristic patterns are habitat-driven from local to landscape scales. We assess how ...

Topographic convergence and divergence are first order controls on the hillslope and catchment hydrological response, as evidenced by similarity parameter analyses. Hydrological models often do not take convergence as measured by contour curvature directly into account; instead they use comparable measures like the topographic index, or the hillslope width function. This paper focuses on the qu...

A 2D laser-scanner was deployed at the high tide runup limit of a pure gravel beach (Loe Bar, Cornwall, England) to measure high-frequency (2.5 Hz) swash hydrodynamics and topographic changes during an energetic wave event. Measurements performed with the laser-scanner were corrected to compensate for levelling and orientation errors, and a variance threshold was applied to separate the beach t...

GABAergic cells of the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) can potentially exert strong control over transmission of information through thalamus to the cerebral cortex. Anatomical studies have shown that the reticulo-thalamic connections are spatially organized in the visual, somatosensory, and auditory systems. However, the issue of how inhibitory input from TRN controls the functional propertie...