Jan van Eyck at London in 1428

On the basis of reports that Jan van Eyck visited England (he was well traveled in the service of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy), this essay speculates freely on what the diplomat and painter actually did in and around London for three weeks in 1428. The essay claims, for example, that van Eyck went to the village of Foots Cray to buy watercresses to use as models when painting greenery on the Ghent Altarpiece of the Mystic Lamb (which he completed in 1432). The recently erected gateway to the palace at Greenwich is said likewise to be the model for a towered gateway depicted on the altarpiece. After providing local detail about relevant parts of England in 1428, the essay closes with speculation (although the author writes, “The facts are known”) about the origin of a harp, of a purportedly Welsh variety, appearing on the altarpiece in the hands of an angel. The author argues that it was the instrument of an itinerant Breton musician whom van Eyck had heard in recital at the Poor Clares convent of the Holy Trinity at the Minories in Aldgate. The harpist subsequently murdered his Stepney landlady and was himself killed by enraged local housewives. Van Eyck is said to have purchased the man's harp when his worldly goods were posthumously sold.

Is Music Education in Tune With the Pursuit of Equity? An Examination of Access to Music Education in Michigan’s Schools

Access to music education in American schools is not guaranteed. Although national studies have demonstrated disparities based on poverty, race, and other markers, these studies miss a necessary level of local detail in describing access. Additionally, studies that exist are based on self-report surveys and prone to nonresponse bias. The purpose of this study was to describe access to music education at the state level. Using Michigan administrative data provided by the state department of education, we describe the state’s population of music educators and examine student access to music education. We found that music teachers differed from nonmusic teachers in a number of ways. We also identified substantial and persistent disparities in access to music education across the state. These findings have important implications for school arts education policy.

METROLOGY ENABLED REFLECTION TRANSFORMATION IMAGING TO RECONSTRUCT LOCAL DETAIL IN MANUFACTURED SURFACES

Understanding the performance of large high performance manufactured structures can require highly accurate dimensional measurement across large volumes with the often conflicting capability to record critical parts of the structure in fine detail. Examples include turbine blades, aircraft wings and off-site manufactured modular structures assembled on-site for city, energy and transport infrastructure. Established large-volume industrial metrology systems such as laser trackers and photogrammetry partially meet the need through the measurement of targets and reflectors, but are limited in capability to record high density local detail needed to capture the finest manufactured features. Whilst large-volume surface sensing is possible with laser radar, photogrammetric pattern projection and contact probing for example, the detail required at a local level typically demands local sensing which generally takes the form of a tracked sensor such as a triangulation laser scanner or hand held touch probe. Local sensing systems face challenges where surfaces have fine detail of similar magnitude to the local sensing system sampling capability and particularly for optical sensors where the light reflected back to the sensor by the surface includes specular reflections compounded by local geometry. This paper investigates how Reflection Transformation Imaging (RTI) with a dome camera and lighting system might be calibrated, characterised and tracked as an alternative technology that is more robust to material surface properties and capable of very fine surface detail capture. Laboratory results demonstrate the capability to characterise and locate the dome to sub-millimetric accuracy within a large-volume tracked space to achieve local surface sampling at the 30 μm × 30 μm level. A method utilising sparse touch probe points to seed conversion of low and high frequency normal maps into a common 3D surface is explored with local agreement with laser tracker surface probe check points to the order of 30 μm.

A Precise TIN Clipping Algorithm for Digital Mining Design of the Open-pit Coal Mine

TIN clipping algorithm is one of the basic algorithms for digital mining design of open-pit coal mine based on TIN model. In this paper, a precise TIN clipping algorithm for digital mining design of open-pit coal mine is proposed. Based on the constructed grid index of the clipped TIN and the clipping polygon, the clipping polygon is embedded into the clipped TIN by interpolating the vertex elevation of the clipping polygon and calculating its intersections with the clipped TIN. Then, according to the reconstructed topology of the TIN triangles located inside (outside) the clipping polygon, generate the boundary of those two triangles set, and construct the TIN between the boundaries using the one-time edge-prior CDT growth algorithm, thus , achieve the precise TIN clipping keeping the clipped TIN’s local detail features. The experiment results show that the algorithm proposed in this paper is efficient, stable in performance, and it has been applied to the digital mining design of the open-pit coal mine.

Visibility enhancement of color images using Type-II fuzzy membership function

Images taken in poor environmental conditions decrease the visibility and hidden information of digital images. Therefore, image enhancement techniques are necessary for improving the significant details of these images. An extensive review has shown that histogram-based enhancement techniques greatly suffer from over/under enhancement issues. Fuzzy-based enhancement techniques suffer from over/under saturated pixels problems. In this paper, a novel Type-II fuzzy-based image enhancement technique has been proposed for improving the visibility of images. The Type-II fuzzy logic can automatically extract the local atmospheric light and roughly eliminate the atmospheric veil in local detail enhancement. The proposed technique has been evaluated on 10 well-known weather degraded color images and is also compared with four well-known existing image enhancement techniques. The experimental results reveal that the proposed technique outperforms others regarding visible edge ratio, color gradients and number of saturated pixels.

David Gill FRS (1843–1914): The Making of a Royal Astronomer

David Gill was an outstanding astronomer over several decades at the end of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. He was famous for his observational accuracy, for his painstaking attention to detail, and for his hands-on knowledge of the fine points of astronomical instrumentation. Astronomy, though, was a second professional career for David Gill. This account maps out the surprising and unusual path of David Gill’s life before he became Her Majesty’s Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope. It covers aspects of his education, his horological career, his employment by Lord Lindsay to oversee the Dunecht observatory, his personal expedition to Ascension Island and his appointment as Her Majesty’s Astronomer at the age of 34. The account includes local detail and images not found in the main biography of David Gill. It ends with some detail of Gill’s continuing interest in clocks after his appointment.

Simulating Large-Scale Fatigue Test Specimens for Offshore Wind Monopiles

Size effects are extremely important to understand and accounting for their inclusion in fatigue tests is imperative in order to produce meaningful results. This can however be problematic as in dealing with very large offshore structural details and sections, testing to destruction can involve extremely large loads and gripping arrangements that can be cost prohibitive. It is therefore important to be able to simplify test specimens so that the local detail is retained without losing important size influences. This paper describes an investigation into whether or not extracted specimens from actual Offshore Wind Monopile Sections are in fact the best choice for fatigue testing. The results are analysed and a recommendation is made for future test programmes involving offshore wind monopile and tower applications.