Palliser Funiture Essay

Nowadays, Palliser Furniture Ltd. is a leading North American furniture company with local manufacturing facilities in Canada and Mexico, and they are dedicated to leader ship in design, service and customer value in the furniture industry. With a general agreement among manufacturers and retailers that the key success factors were: overall product quality and customer service, quick delivery and appropriate price, and innovative design. Palliser furniture did a good job on all of the aspects. Palliser outsources the raw leather from Brazil because Brazil has the best source of leather in the world. Also the raw leather was delivered from Brazil to Mexico to process such as cutting and swing which lower the cost of the furniture. The quality of the resources and powerful supplier is add-value for the value chain of the firm, and it can have a big impact on more efficiently integrating the activities within the firm. The quick delivery was another strategy for Palliser, which can be considered as a competitive advantage for the company. Compare with the rivals the Palliser is more focused on custom business, and was able to charge a slight premium for the service which directly eliminate customer’s inventory cost. This operation strategy is more flexible in terms of time and diversity. The design team of Palliser is passionate about the subtleties of style, and the collections reflect a carefully considered selection of pieces that represent quality feature extensive choice and impart innovation. Also, the developers carefully source and test materials to meet Palliser Furniture’s high standard for durability, safety and value. Overall, each department is integration through the whole company, which shows the management in Palliser Furniture Ltd is successful and effective as well.

A Review and Evaluation of Current Weight Control/Loss Interventions

There is much debate regarding the most effective method of treating obesity. Most of the research has been done on adults; however, research is increasingly being done on children and adolescents as the prevalence of obesity in this population increases.Treatment of obesity includes many different methods, including various dietary, exercise, and behavioral interventions, medication, and surgery. A study by Barlow, Trowbridge, Klish, and Dietz (2002) looked at various interventions recommended to overweight children and adolescents by different health care providers.The most common interventions recommended by health care providers included changes in eating patterns and limiting specific foods. Less frequently recommended interventions were low-fat diets and modest calorie restrictions.Very infrequently recommended interventions were very low-calorie diets and commercial diets. Several health care providers also listed â€Å"fruit and vegetables,† â€Å"portion control,â₠¬  â€Å"increase water,† â€Å"fiber,† and â€Å"learn to determine hunger and fullness levels† as other interventions that they recommended. In the adolescent population, the most frequently recommended dietary intervention by all types of health care providers questioned was â€Å"limiting specific foods.†All types of health care providers were also highly likely to recommend increasing physical activity and limiting sedentary behaviors as physical activity interventions. Very few health care providers recommended medication, appetite suppressants, herbal remedies, or weight loss surgery.The current consensus is that the most effective weight loss and maintenance treatment includes a combination of caloric restriction, increased physical activity, and behavioral therapy, with extended treatment contact, weight loss satisfaction, and social support contributing to positive long-term outcomes in both obese adults and children (Williamson & Stewart, 2005 ).Diets and Problems Associated with DietingThe increased pressure to alleviate the obesity epidemic led to a boom in the dieting industry. Twenty-five percent of men and 45% of women are currently trying to lose weight, equating to about 71 million Americans (Newstarget.com, 2005). In 1996, consumers spent $70 billion annually in health care costs, and an additional $33 billion per year, trying to lose weight or prevent the return of weight gain (Chatzky, 2002).In 2004, those values rose to $100 billion spent annually on health-care cost, and the US weight loss market value rose to $46.3 billion annually (Newstarget.com, 2005). Dieting products and services range from $1.29 for Slim-Fast bars up to $25,000 for gastric bypass (Chatzky, 2002) with the number of bariatric surgeries totaling about 140,000 procedures in 2003 (Newstarget.com, 2005).Sales of over-the-counter diet and herbal supplements totaled $16.8 billion in 2000 (Kane, 2001) and are expected to grow 11.5% to approximat ed $703 million by 2008 (NewsTarget.com, 2008).Diet drugs have been around for over 35 years but became generally accepted in the medical community by the early 1990’s. The FDA has approved several treatments as clinically safe (i.e. sibutramine and orlistat) for those individuals with a BMI >30 or BMI 27-29 with one or more obesity related co-morbidity (ADA, 1997). There are amphetamine-like derivates available for short-term use but weight gain often occurs once discontinued.The risks associated with obesity drugs are neurotoxicity, primary pulmonary hypertension, and becoming reliant on the medication as opposed to making desired healthy lifestyle changes (ADA, 2002). Many of the overthecounter products have no proven efficacy or short- or long-term weight loss (ADA, 2002).Many Americans have turned to various dieting methods as weight control measures, leading to the ‘yo-yo’ dieting affect, ultimately contributing to the ever-increasing obesity rates.Commerci al structured programs, such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and LA Weight Loss, are common approaches followed due to their convenience and support system. It is estimated that 7.1 million American frequent these commercial weight loss centers and their revenues are expected to grow 11% to $2 billion annually by 2008 (Newstarget.com, 2008).Miller (1999) performed a study to examine the history and effectiveness of diet and exercise in obesity therapy and to determine the best approach for future interventions.He summarized the dieting trends throughout the years with the initial strategy of the late 1950s to early 1960s focused on total fasting, which brought about quick weight loss but also increased risk of death due to serious loss of lean muscle mass and electrolytes. By the late 1960s to early 1970s, the emergence of the high protein/low carbohydrate diets became popular.These involved a diet with 5-10% of energy calories from carbohydrate and a resultant high fat content (50- 70% of calories) which relied on the high protein foods to minimize muscle catabolism and the low carbohydrate level to maintain a state of ketosis to theoretically increase fat burning (Miller 1999).The side effects ranged from nausea, hyperuricemia, fatigue and refeeding edema. In the mid 1970s, the trend shifted towards very low calorie liquid diets (VLCD) with ~300-400 kcal/day, which caused obvious weight loss through muscle catabolism and water release.The FDA terminated the use of this diet since ventricular arrhythmias resulted in 58 deaths. In the 1980s, the VLCD made a revival but at the level of 450-500 kcal/day, with fat content of ~2-18% of total calories, and up to 800 kcal/day for those individuals who were more active. Gallbladder disease and cardiac problems surfaced as side effects of this diet (Miller 1999).The low calorie commercial franchised programs such as Jenny Craig and Nutri/Systems arose in the 1980s as well. Meals were pre-packaged with ~1100-1200 kcal/d ay with the breakdown of energy approximately at 20% from protein, 20% from fat and 60% from carbohydrate.These programs found improved compliance compared to the VLCD, however a similar health risk was found to negatively impact the heart. Since the 1980s, numerous dieting books have hit the stores with many best sellers (i.e. Pritkins and Fit for Life).Despite the increased dieting trends, Miller (1999) noted that the NHANES determined the percentage of fat from kilocalories has dropped in the American diet but total energy has increased, particularly from refined or added sugars in the diet; in addition, obese individuals tend to consume less dietary fiber.Most people have attempted more than one diet method in their weight loss attempts with the average attempting a new method twice a year (FTC, 1997). Miller (1999) found that over the past 40 years, most dieting techniques cycle in and out of popularity and that many are actually hazardous to the health.Miller summarized that t he scientific community data indicated that a 15-week diet or diet plus exercise program led to a weight loss of about 11 kg in which 60-80% of the weight lost was kept off after one year, although most studies had limited long-term follow-up data and those available suggest that relapse to pre-diet weight typically occurred after 3-5 years. Many of the diets were difficult to assess due to their high dropout rates (some as high as 80%).Nutrition education and behavior modification programs, to include community education programs, worksite interventions, and home correspondence courses, typically resulted in ~10 kg weight loss with a 33% and 95% post-diet weight relapse at three and five years respectively.The commercial weight loss industry supplied little data over the last two decades, with much of it proclaimed scientifically inadequate due to small sample size, high dropout rates, poor study design and inadequate follow-up periods.Of the physician-directed programs, most did n ot result in a desired weight loss but better control of some of the co-morbidities associated with obesity (diabetes, CVD, etc.) (FTC, 1997).

African history Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

African history - Essay Example Ethiopian Christianity endured but did not expand missionary vision elsewhere in Africa or beyond. The 7th century saw retreatment of Christianity under the advance of Islam. However, it remained the chosen religion in Ethiopia and most of the North Africa regions (Olupona 95). Furthermore, the arrival of Portuguese in 15th introduced Christianity in the Sub-Saharan Africa. In 1652, the Dutch founded the beginnings of the Dutch Reform Church in the South of the Africa. In the rest of Africa, Christianity did not spread much in the 18th century. Rulers in the West Africa mildly received Christianity, seeing it as something to supplement their religions. Later, these rulers grew hostile when told they had to make a choice to take Christianity or traditional religion. South Africa had greater Christian Missionary activity. In 1737, the Moravian Brethren of Eastern Europe a mission and in 1799, the London Missionary Society followed their traditional religions until the 19th Century. At this time, Christian missionaries in Africa were driven by antislavery crusade and the Europeans interest of colonizing Africa. In areas where people had already converted to Islam, Christianity had little success. Missionaries who came in 19th century, hoping to convert the lo cal people, found the natives practicing their own Africanized Christianity (Olupona 100). The difference between the eastern (Swahili) and the western coasts of Africa as noted by early Portuguese explorers was very clear. This is because, in terms of city and empire configurations, the East Coast was subdivided up into three sections, that is, Barbar which was the horn of Africa’s Cushitic-speaking inhabitants, Zandj; which is found between the Lamu archipelago and the coastal point opposite Zanzibar and Sofala found between south of Zanzibar and southern Mozambique. Most of these coastal settlements appointed chiefs, either Arabs or Persians. The inter-mixing and

Hazards of Aluminium welding fume Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Hazards of Aluminium welding fume - Essay Example Electric welding was introduced in 1940s. Aluminium welding has been in prominence since 1970. There are several types of welding like Arc welding and Manual metal arc is a common process where the workers are exposed to the fumes. Carbon arc, Cold welding, Electron beam welding, Flux core arc welding, Gas welding, Gas metal arc welding, Gas tungsten arc welding, Shielded metal arc welding, Plasma arc welding, Laser beam welding are the other welding processes where workers are exposed to metal fumes. The welding workers have a high exposure of metal fumes and the exposure depends on place, confined space, workshop or open air. The metal fumes depend on not only the Aluminium but also the process involved which may produce gases like acetylene, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen , ozone, phosgene and tungsten. The metal fumes primarily enter the human system by inhalation route namely Respiration.. The deposition of these inhaled metallic particles is influenced by its physical and chemical properties and a variety of host factors. In the lungs, these particles produce a variety of reactions depending on the concentration, duration of the exposure of the particles, and degree of exposure. All Metallic particles greater than 10 are deposited on the Mucous membrane in the nose and pharynx. Particles between 3m and 10 m are deposited throughout the trachea of the lungs. Particles less than 3m are deposited in the alveoli and cause serious hazards. These particles have a fair chance of being carried into the blood stream and cause Hepatotoxicity and Nephrotoxicity. Health Hazards of Aluminium fumes : Hazards of Aluminium fumes have been well documented in various scientific journals. The health hazard assessment is done by sampling and analysis. Sampling has been well prescribed by the Draft British Standard (DD54) for breathing zone and background samples. Chemical analysis techniques for milligram amounts of fume obtained are outlined in DD54; part I.(Moreton,1982) Aluminium work related Asthma has been established by characteristic patterns of repeated peak flow measurements supported by changes in methacholine responsiveness in workers with work related asthma (Konyerud, 1994).A recent study by keith Harrison of the Queens land Fertility group, Australia has proved the testicular toxicity of such Chemicals in male workers. Studies have also proved that exposure of workers to these metal fumes aged between 20-64, admitted to 11 hospitals in England during the period between 1996-1999, caused health hazards and is a classic case of occupational hazard of metal fume exposure (Palmer, 2003). Further studies on 27 welders with long-term exposure to these metal fumes revealed a reversible increase in the risk of Pneumonia. In the sputum, cell counts, soluble levels of the metal, levels of Interleukin-8, tumour necrosis factor-, myeloperoxidase, metalloproteinase -9, Immunoglobulin (Ig)A, 2-macroglobulin and unsaturated metal binding capacity were analyzed and in the blood samples, evidence of neutrophil activation and IgG pneumococcal antibodies were analyzed. The studies concluded that the local inflammatory response was affected by chronic exposure (Palmer,2006). All welding workers thus, are exposed to acute or chronic respiratory disease. Welding fumes cause

In report format, prepare a services marketing mix (people, process, Essay - 1

In report format, prepare a services marketing mix (people, process, physical evidence) for the service offering on which you based assignment one - Essay Example All the outlets run their businesses 24/7 as opposed to what other institutions and players in the industry do. Definitely, providing accommodation service through any other system is questionable. The marketing process applied by the hotel justifies its quest to remain competitive in the industry and business. The process of marketing Holiday Inn starts with a decision defining the position of the hotel would be products, and services that would go on sale (Jerome 21). The visualized types of clients also appear at the initial stages of designing a marketing process. Essential marketing process includes creating awareness as of the hotel and its services and products as igniting the demand for the services and products offered at the hotel. They essentials help in meeting the set goals as well as gaining a competitive advantage in the market against other players. The growth of electronic marketing is one of the most influential, and essential patterns in the field of information and communication technology as well as marketing and business. The trend remains part of these fields over the past ten to twenty years. E marketing continues to revolutionize ways through which businesses carry out their promotional activities. The development of social media platforms provides the possibility to expand the manner in which business organizations and their interaction with consumers in future business environment. This discourse delves in to the analysis of the influence of e marketing on the business environment and the entire business as well. In carrying out the evaluation, the paper follows three comprehensible parts. Defining the concept of electronic marketing is in the first section the discourse giving room for evaluating ways through which e marketing contributes to the efforts by business institutions reaching their target market segment. Finally, the author of the paper

Project Plnning Skills Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Project Plnning Skills - Assignment Example (Charette, 2006, 21) With often called th project of competence, th pecification of project hould be a precie decription of what th project aim at carrying out, nd th criteria nd flexibility implied, it parameter, rnge, rnge, exit, ource, (Kameny, 2006, 115) participnt, budget nd calendar (take guard - to ee th note enviaging approximately calendar below). Uually th project mnager mut conult with othr nd thn agree th pecification of project with uperior, or competent authoritie. Th pecification cn imply everal outline before it i agreed. Specification of project are eential becaue thy create a meaurable reponibility for no matter whom who contntly wihe to evaluate how th project goe, or it ucce on th achievement. (Audrey, 2007, 12) Competence of project alo provide n eential dicipline nd a framework to keep th project on th way, nd concerned with th original objective nd agreed parameter. Correctly formulated nd agreed pecification of project alo protect th project mnager againt being held to explain th exit which are apart from th rnge original of th project or independent of th project mnager. It i th tage to agree of th pecial condition or th exception with thoe in th authority. Once you th 'VE publih competence you created a very firm whole of hope by which you will be judged. Thu if you have concern, or wnt to renegotiate, now ' th hour to do it. More th great project cn need everal week to produce nd be appropriate of competence of project. (Joyce, 2007, 13) Th majority of th normal project of buinee however have need for a few day thinking nd conulting to produce uitable pecification of project. Th etablihment nd th agreement of th pecification of project are n importnt proce even if your tak i th imple one. A template for a project pecification: 1. Decribe purpoe, aim nd deliverable. 2. State parameter (timecale, budget, rnge, cope, territory, authority). 3. State people involved nd th way th team will work (frequency of meeting, deciion-making proce). 4. Etablih 'break-point' at which to review nd check progre, nd

Greek mythology discussion questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Greek mythology discussion questions - Assignment Example On the other hand, a legend cannot be passed on to become a myth because myths have to originate from legends. Therefore, the reverse is impossible. The United States of America is characterized by a number of religious beliefs, which include Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all having different religious practices and beliefs. However, it is also evident that these religious groups do not perform their common rituals while in the U.S. as compared to other nations. This is because, in the U.S., there is a massive cultural assimilation that has led to the loss of various cultural rituals and languages as compared to other nations. Additionally, high profiling of people by the government bar people like Muslims from practicing their rituals due to the fear of being attached to terrorism activities. If Big Bang and law of nature were part of the intelligent design, then most people will not believe that these processes led to the creation of the solar system and everything that happens on Earth are all controlled by a supernatural being (Graves 267). The idea of apocalypse is a common thing to all cultures because everybody believes that one day the world will come to an end (Graves 184)). This is usually justified by death that is a ritual performed in all cultures. On the other hand, most cultures believe that death is a means of punishing those who offend the Supernatural being. Therefore, it is advisable to the good in order to survive. The idea of apocalypse is spread in order to instill fear in people so that they learn how to do good in order to survive death. The Ancient Romans had no myths because they did not try to humanize their deities with their personality and actions (Graves 87). It is until they met Greeks that their divine being underwent transformation. They were particularly influenced by the stories in the Greek myths. This is the reason they adopted Greek gods and gave them their own names. Numinous experience does not only happen

NesPaper Register Comparison (Linguistics) Essay

NesPaper Register Comparison (Linguistics) - Essay Example More number of function words was used in the second article compare to the second article. Function words were described in the 2nd page of class #2: Words and Word Classes. Verbs, nouns, pronouns, were used in high percentage by the author in order to describe the fatality and recovery of her father from an accident. The above three differences discussed shows the importance of the usage of grammar in day-to-day life. Words like thinking, excited, etc., usage of articles, function words, objective predicative, lexical words, etc., gives meaning to the descriptive methodologies. They provide different dimensions to express one's thoughts in phrases. References Ellen Goodman. (2006) Much ado about the Tom Kitten. Washington Post. August 3. Agence France-Presse. US soldiers shot prisoners in Iraq, private testifies. Agence France-Presse. August 3. Biber, D., Conrad, S. and Leech, G. (2002) Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Essex: Pearson Education

Creative Song Assignment Essay Example for Free

Creative Song Assignment Essay The Creative Song Assignment was an interesting assignment, because I have zero experience in mixing music. It was an interesting experience, because it did take me out of my comfort zone. When I first started, I felt lost. I had no idea what I was doing, so I decided to do a little research to see how I can best complete this assignment. I finally settled on using a program called Audacity and the genres of hip hop and alternative rock. I chose a program called audacity, because it gives you an option of mixing different songs. I am sure that there are a lot of other programs better suited for this assignment, but I found this to be pretty easy to use. I really enjoyed playing around with the different settings. It took me a couple of days before I finally picked two songs to work on. I am sure that there are many more experienced people out there that can mix my songs better than me, but I think I did a good job considering my experience level. I decide to pick hip hop and alternative rock, because they are two of my favorite genres. I know that hip hop and alternative rock have been mixed before, so I felt an intrigue in trying to accomplish this myself. I knew that I wanted to use Radiohead’s Karma Police as my alternative, because that is one of my favorite songs. I had a difficult time picking a rap song, because the lyrics did not match up well together. I finally decided to just use a hip hop beat that I found on soundcloud. In my opinion, I felt that this was best, because you can hear the lyrics of the alternative song, but still hear the hip hop beat. The part that took me a while was trying to get the songs in sync perfectly. I really wanted to find a way to lower the alternative rock song’s instrumentals, but I could not do it. I think it would have sounded better if I could mix the hip hop beat with the Karma Police vocals. I am sure it could probably be done with professional mixing equipment.

Two Articles Essay Example for Free

Two Articles Essay For this assignment, you will compose two short critical essays explaining and evaluating arguments by other authors. This assignment allows you to analyze an issue from a variety of perspectives and assess arguments for or against the issue. By focusing your attention on how the original authors use evidence and reasoning to construct and support their positions, you can recognize the value of critical thinking in public discourse. Read the two articles Predictive Probes, and New Test Tells Whom a Crippling Disease Will Hit—and When from the textbook and write two separate analytical summaries. These articles can be found in the chapter titled: Deciding to accept an argument: Compare the evidence. This assignment has two parts. Part 1—First Article Write an analytical summary of the article focusing on the article’s main claims. Include the following: †¢Identify the three ways the author uses evidence to support assertions. †¢Identify the places where evidence is employed as well as how the author uses this evidence. Discuss evidence as the reason vs. the support for the reason. Also discuss evidence as dependent on the issue/context. †¢Analyze how the author signals this usage through elements such as word choices, transitions, or logical connections. Part 2—Second Article Write an analytical summary of the article focusing on the article’s main claims. Include the following: †¢Identify the author’s use of the three elements: experiment, correlation, and speculation to support assertions. †¢Analyze how the author signals the use of these elements through language. For example, word choices, transitions, or logical connections. Write a 4–5-page paper in Word format. Apply APA standards to citation of sources. Use the following file naming convention: LastnameFirstInitial_M3_A2. doc. 1. What kind of evidence would you expect in the following arguments? †¢a. An argument that people who eat a special diet will have less chance of getting cancer. †¢b. An argument that God exists. †¢c. An argument that human cells secrete some substance under certain conditions. †¢d. An argument that stealing is unethical. †¢e. An argument that owning a pet tends to lower one’s blood pressure. Answers (a) evidence after the fact; (b) philosophical evidence (a general principle, for instance that the universe is orderly); (c) direct scientific experimentation; (d) philosophical evidence; (e) evidence after the fact 2. Underline the language in the following argument that you believe indicates that it does (or does not) admit its limits. It’s an obvious fact that living in the suburbs is better than city life. Everyone knows that cities are far more polluted and dangerous. And of course, people don’t even know their neighbors. On the other hand, suburbs are peaceful havens from the workaday world. READINGS The following two articles show breathtaking advances in the ability to detect whether a person will suffer from a particular genetic disease. The first article contains references to all three types of evidence discussed in this chapter. Compare the language used to depict direct experimentation, after-the-fact evidence, and values questions. Predictive probes by Jerry E. Bishop Several years ago, Nancy Wexler’s mother died of Huntington’s disease, a hereditary and always-fatal affliction that strikes in midlife. Since then, Ms. Wexler, the 38-year-old president of the Hereditary Diseases Foundation in Santa Monica, Calif. , has lived with the uncertainty of whether she, too, inherited the deadly gene. That uncertainty may soon be resolved. A few months ago, scientists announced they were on the verge of completing a new test to detect the gene for Huntington’s disease (formerly called Huntington’s chorea). But deciding whether to submit herself to the test is an anguishing choice for Ms. Wexler. â€Å"If I came out lucky, taking the test would be terrific, of course,† she says. But if I came out unlucky, well †¦Ã¢â‚¬  Her dilemma is an extreme example of the kind thousands of Americans will face in the not-too-distant future as scientists learn how to pinpoint genes that cause or predispose a person to a future illness. The test to detect the Huntington’s disease gene should be ready within one to two years. Researchers already have detected some of the gene s that can lead to premature heart attacks and, in the near future, hope to spot those that could predispose a person to breast or colon cancer. Eventually, scientists believe they will be able to detect genes leading to diabetes, depression, schizophrenia and the premature senility called Alzheimer’s disease. New Test Tells Whom a Crippling Disease Will Hit—and When Amy Jo Snider, a college senior, has put her career plans and romantic life on hold until she settles a gnawing question about her genetic legacy. During her Christmas break, the Charleston, SC, student plans to be tested for a gene that causes ataxia, a disease without a cure that destroys the brain cells governing muscle control. The disorder crippled and ultimately killed her father in middle age. Because of a recent breakthrough in genetic research, the 21-year-old Miss Snider will be able to find out whether she inherited the disease, and, if so, how soon and how hard ataxia may strike her. â€Å"I want to be tested before I start to show symptoms,† she says unflinchingly. â€Å"I’m graduating in May, and I have to start planning my life. † As agonizing as the knowledge might be, she says the uncertainty is worse. â€Å"If I’m in limbo, it’s not fair to people around me,† she says. â€Å"I can’t deal with not knowing. †

Inverse Matrix Condition Number

Inverse Matrix Condition Number Inverse Matrix and Condition No. Saswati Rakshit Contents (Jump to) Aim Scope/Applications Introduction/Basics Objective System Flow Mathematics Figure/Descriptions Future Works References Aim: Consider 2 random matrices B and C of size 8Ãâ€"8 and write a cpgm / matlab to find A to satisfy the bellow condition: If AÃâ€"B = C Prove A = CÃâ€"B-1 And repeat the pgm for matrix of size 32Ãâ€"32 and 128Ãâ€"128. Scope/Application: In many applications we require inversion of matrix. In Linear Algebra, if AÃâ€"B=C, and from B and C we can compute A where A=CÃâ€"B-1. Stimulus-Response Computations In this framework, a system is provided with an input, called a  stimulus, and the resulting response of the system is measured. Some typical examples of stimuli are visual scenes i.e. if we increase incident light’s intensity then scene’s brightness will increase. The general goal is to find a  function  that accurately describes the relation between stimulus and response. Many systems can be modeled as a linear combination of equations, and thus written as a matrix equation: [Interactions]{response}= {stimuli} The system response can thus be found using the matrix inverse. Sometimes in image processing application if we have noisy image matrix and if we know what the noise matrix was added we can find the clear image by multiplying noisy image matrix with inverted noise matrix. Intro/Basics: We have considered two 8Ãâ€"8 matrices B and C. We suppose AÃâ€"B = C. Now by performing matrix multiplication on A and B we get C. Now we have to compute A from B and C. So AÃâ€"B = C and we have to proof A = CÃâ€"B-1. It is conceptually easy to compute AÃâ€"B = C and to find A = CB-1 for 2 dimensional matrices. But for large dimensional matrices it is not possible to easily compute because there is some round off errors in A which is the result of B-1 related to B’s condition number. Thecondition numberof a function with respect to an argument measures how much the output value of the function can change for a small change in the input argument. The condition number of a regular (square) matrix is the product of the norm of the matrix and the norm of its inverse and hence depends on the kind of matrix-norm. Condition number of a square nonsingular (invertible) matrix A is defined by: cond () = |||| ·|||| where the || ·|| above could be any of the norms defined for matrices. The numerical value of the condition number of an nÃâ€"n matrix depends on the particular norm used .The norm of a square matrix A is a non-negative real number denoted by ||A||. These matrix norms have the following properties: 1. ||A|| à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¾Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ° if A ≠  0 2. ||à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ §A|| à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ½Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ §Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ã‚ ·Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼A|| for any scalar value à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ §Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ³Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ®Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼A|| à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ «Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼B|| ≠¤ à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼A|| à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ «Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼B||à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ´Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ®Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼AB|| ≠¤ à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼A|| ·Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼B||à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ µÃƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ®Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ax|| ≠¤ à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼A|| ·Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ ¼||à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  for any vector The norm of a matrix is a measure of how large its elements are. It is a way of determining the â€Å"size† of a matrix that is not necessarily related to how many rows or columns the matrix has. Three commonly used norms are: 1. The 1-norm: = This is the maximum absolute column sum where simply we sum the absolute values down each column and then take the biggest answer. 2. The inifinity-norm: = This is the maximum absolute row sum where simply we sum the absolute values along each row and then take the biggest answer. 3. The Euclidean norm: = This is the square root of the sum of all the squares. However, regardless of the norm, this condition number is always greater or equal to 1. If it is close to one, the matrix is well conditioned which means its inverse can be computed with good accuracy. If the condition number is large, then the matrix is said to be ill-conditioned. Practically, such a matrix is almost singular (not invertible), and the computation of its inverse or solution of a linear system of equations is prone to large numerical errors. A matrix that is not invertible has the condition number equal to infinity. Mathematically, if the condition number is less than ∞, the matrix is invertible. Numerically, there are roundoff errors which occur. A high condition number means that the matrix is almost non-invertible. The higher the condition number, the greater is the error in the calculation. This condition number helps to estimate how difficult a matrix will be to numerically invert. This condition number has certain properties: 1. For any matrix A, cond (A) ≠¥Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  1 2. For identity matrix, cond (I) = 1 3. For any matrix A and scalar à ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ §, cond à ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¨Ãƒ ¯Ã‚ Ã‚ §Ãƒ ¯Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  A) = cond (A) 4. For any diagonal matrix D = Diag(di), cond (D) = (max |di|)/(min|di|) A matrix A is ill-conditioned if relatively small changes in the input (in the matrix A) can cause large change in the output (the solution of Ax = b), i.e. the solution is not very accurate if input is rounded. Otherwise it is well-conditioned. If a matrix is ill-conditioned, then a small roundoff error can have a drastic effect on the output. However, if the matrix is well-conditioned, then the computerized solution is quite accurate. Thus the accuracy of the solution depends on the conditioning number of the matrix. Objective: To know how to determine the matrix inverse in an efficient manner. If AÃâ€"B=C and we have to prove A=CÃâ€"B-1 where A, B and C are nÃâ€"n matrices (n = 8, 32, 128) and find out the condition number of matrix using norms and finding accuracy. System flow: Steps performed: 1. Taking two matrices B and C of order 8Ãâ€"8. 2. Performing Matrix multiplication and result is stored in matrix A (performed using C Code) 3. Now calculate B-1 (performed using C Code) 4. Now again multiplying C and B-1. We get result matrix which is not accurate. 5. We need to calculate norms and condition number of a matrix (B) so we need to find norms of B and B-1. We can calculate norms in different way. Here we have used most popularly used 3 types of norms to calculate condition number of that matrix (B) which we need to get in inverse form. The norms are: 1-norm = Infinity-norm = iii) Euclidean norm = 6. Now we use norms to find condition number of matrix B by using formula cond (B) = |||| ·|||| Flow Diagram yes no Math For 22 Matrix First we consider a 22 matrix such that A= B= So by multiplying A and B we ge a 22 matrix C = Now We need to prove A=CB-1 So we need to find B-1 B-1 = 0.800 -0.200 -0.600 0.400 So now by doing CxB-1 = =A (proved) Before finding B-1 we can calculate condition number of B for the correctness of above proof, As we know cond (B) = |||| ·|||| Condition number using the 1-norm and inifinity-norm: Formula used Row Sum taking absolute values B = 2 13 3 47 Column sum 5 5 (taking absolute values) (max) Row sum B-1 = 0.800 -0.200 1.000 -0.600 0.400 1.000 Col Sum 1.4 .6 Applying 1-Norm = = maximum absolute column sum = 5, 1 = 1.4, So, cond1 (B) =  ·1 = 5Ãâ€"1.4= 7 Applying infinity-norm = = max absolute row sum = 7, ∞ = 1 So, cond∞ (B) =  ·Ã¢Ë†Å¾ = 7 Like this way we have also found condition number using the Euclidean norm which is = =5.47 = 1.095 CondE (B) =  ·E = 5.82 Here cond(B) is low in all cases.so we successfully get A =C. Because of low condition number of B,the inverse of B is acceptable. For 88 Matrix A = 1 2 3 4 1 2 2 1 2 3 1 4 3 4 2 1 4 1 3 2 3 3 1 2 2 2 1 4 2 2 2 1 3 2 1 4 3 1 2 1 1 1 2 3 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 3 3 2 1 2 2 B= 4 1 3 2 3 3 1 2 2 3 1 4 3 4 2 1 2 2 1 4 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 3 1 2 2 1 2 2 3 3 2 1 2 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 3 1 3 2 3 1 1 C=AÃâ€"B=27 30 28 52 27 37 28 20 35 38 42 64 35 46 35 27 42 35 41 59 37 43 31 27 29 29 32 49 28 37 27 22 34 30 35 50 32 39 28 25 22 24 24 41 21 29 22 17 23 25 22 39 22 30 20 15 34 33 30 53 32 40 28 23 B-1= -0.016 -0.429 0.063 0.524 0.063 -0.397 -0.222 0.587 -0.365 0.143 -0.540 0.048 0.460 -0.127 -0.111 0.508 0.095 0.071 -0.381 -0.143 0.119 0.381 -0.167 -0.024 0.270 -0.214 0.921 -0.905 -0.579 0.746 0.278 -0.484 0.206 0.571 0.175 -0.810 0.175 0.159 -0.111 -0.635 0.079 0.143 -0.317 0.381 -0.317 -0.016 0.111 0.063 -0.571 0.071 -0.714 1.857 0.786 -1.286 -0.500 0.643 0.159 -0.214 0.365 -0.238 -0.135 -0.032 0.722 -0.373 A=CÃâ€"B-1 =0.995 1.983 3.029 3.987 1.029 1.984 2.006 0.979 1.992 2.975 1.035 3.983 3.035 3.980 2.005 0.972 3.989 0.971 3.029 1.984 3.029 2.981 1.006 1.970 1.993 1.980 1.027 3.987 2.027 1.984 2.004 0.977 2.991 1.976 1.027 3.986 3.027 0.983 2.004 0.974 0.996 0.986 2.022 2.990 1.022 1.987 2.004 0.983 0.994 1.986 1.021 1.991 1.021 1.988 1.005 1.982 1.992 1.979 3.028 2.987 2.028 0.983 2.007 1.975 Relative Error for A11=(1-.995)=.005,A12= 0.017 and so on When we perform CÃâ€" B-1, we do not get original value of A because of B-1. If B-1 is not accurate we will not get accurate A. To get accuracy of A-1 we need to find condition number of B. As we know cond (B) = |||| ·|||| Condition number using the 1-norm and inifinity-norm: Formula used Row Sum taking absolute values B = 4 1 3 2 3 3 1 2 19 2 3 1 4 3 4 2 1 20 (max) 2 2 1 4 2 2 2 1 16 1 1 2 3 1 2 2 1 13 2 2 3 3 2 1 2 2 18 1 2 3 4 1 2 2 1 16 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 12 3 3 1 3 2 3 1 1 17 Column sum 16 16 15 25 16 19 13 11 (taking absolute values) (max) B-1 = For B-1, Row sum (max) taking absolute values = 6.428 (7th row) and column sum(max) taking absolute values = 4.906 (4th column) Applying 1-Norm = = maximum absolute column sum = 25, 1 = 4.906, So, cond1 (B) =  ·1 = 25Ãâ€"4.906 = 122.65 Applying infinity-norm = = max absolute row sum = 20, ∞ = 6.428 So, cond∞ (B) =  ·Ã¢Ë†Å¾ = 20Ãâ€"6.428 = 128.56. Like this way we have also found condition number using the Euclidean norm which is = 17.83. So here we can say that as the condition number of matrix B is high for all three cases, therefore the inverse of this matrix is showing numerical roundoff errors. Concept of Relative Error and Condition Number assume A is nonsingular and Ax = b if we change b to b + à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  b, the new solution is x + à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  x with A(x + à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  x) = b + à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  b the change in x is à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  x = A-1à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  b ‘condition’ of the solution †¢ the equations are well-conditioned if small à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  b results in small à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  x †¢ the equations are ill-conditioned if small à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  b can result in large à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  x [Singular matrix:A square matrix is called singular matrix if it’s determinant is zero.i.e. a singular matrix is not invertible] Example: Consider the linear system Ax = b with So = So here we easily find x= Now ,we change a small in b.let change in b is à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã¢â‚¬  b= So changed value= and solving the system A = we get =A= where x= changed to = due to small change in b. Now to calculate least condition number of the system we need to find Relative Error in the output and relative error in the input. Here we have relative error in the input/relative residual. = 0.01 Relative Error in the output =1 As we know, If condition number is closed to 1 then relative error and relative residual will be close. The condition number is defined by: Relative error in the output =Condition number Ãâ€" Relative error in the input. So,condition number= 1/.01=100 A matrix has high condition number is related to the fact that A is close to the singular matrix B= The following result shows that 1/cond(A) indicates how close A is to a singular matrix.Here cond(A) is 100 so, 1/cond(A)=.01 which is close enough. Description: The condition number associated with the  linear equation  Ax=bgives a bound on how inaccurate the solutionxwill be after approximation. This is before the effects of  round-off error  are taken into account; conditioning is a property of the matrix. Weshould think of the condition number as being the rate at which the solution,x, will change with respect to a change inb. Thus, if the condition number is large, even a small error inbmay cause a large error inx. On the other hand, if the condition number is small then the error inxwill not be much bigger than the error inb. The condition number may also be infinite, but this implies that the problem does not possess a unique, well-defined solution for each choice of data that is, the matrix is not invertible, and no algorithm can be expected to reliably find a solution. For large dimensional matrix such as for 3232 and 128128, the condition number is high and so inverse of that large dimensional matrix will give much error in output. Codes and Output Matrix multiplication int main() { int m, n, p, q, c, d, k, sum = 0; int A[10][10], B[10][10], C[10][10]; printf(Enter rows and columns of An); scanf(%d%d, m, n); printf(Enter the elements of An); for (c = 0; c for (d = 0; d scanf(%d, A[c][d]); printf(Enter rows and columns of Bn); scanf(%d%d, p, q); printf(Enter the elements of Bn); for (c = 0; c for (d = 0; d scanf(%d, B[c][d]); for (c = 0; c for (d = 0; d for (k = 0; k sum = sum + A[c][k]*B[k][d]; } C[c][d] = sum; sum = 0; } } for (c = 0; c for (d = 0; d printf(%dt, C[c][d]); printf(n); } getch(); } Matrix inverse #include #include int main() { float a[10][10],b[10][10],tem=0,temp=0,temp1=0,temp2=0,temp4=0,temp5=0; int n=0,m=0,i=0,j=0,p=0,q=0; printf(Enter size of 2d array(Square matrix) : ); scanf(%d,n); for(i=0;i { for(j=0;j { printf(Enter element no. %d %d :,i,j); scanf(%f,a[i][j]); if(i==j) b[i][j]=1; else b[i][j]=0; } } for(i=0;i { temp=a[i][i]; if(temp temp=temp*(-1); p=i; for(j=i+1;j { if(a[j][i] tem=a[j][i]*(-1); else tem=a[j][i]; if(temp temp=temp*(-1); if(tem>temp) { p=j; temp=a[j][i]; } } //row exchange in both the matrix for(j=0;j { temp1=a[i][j]; a[i][j]=a[p][j]; a[p][j]=temp1; temp2=b[i][j]; b[i][j]=b[p][j]; b[p][j]=temp2; } //dividing the row by a[i][i] temp4=a[i][i]; for(j=0;j { a[i][j]=(float)a[i][j]/temp4; b[i][j]=(float)b[i][j]/temp4; } //making other elements 0 in order to make the matrix a[][] an indentity matrix and obtaining a inverse b[][] matrix for(q=0;q { if(q==i) continue; temp5=a[q][i]; for(j=0;j { a[q][j]=a[q][j]-(temp5*a[i][j]); b[q][j]=b[q][j]-(temp5*b[i][j]); } } } printf(nnn); printf(Inverse of the matrix using Guass jordan elimination method:nn); for(i=0;i { for(j=0;j { printf(%.3f,b[i][j]); } printf(n); } getch(); } Matrix Condition Number #include #include int main() { int i,j,n,p,x=0,m=0,q,z=0,i1,j1; float Cond_A,poo,a[5][5],b[5],c[5],A[50][50],B[50][50],k[50],l[50]; printf(n n); printf(Program to find condition number of a matrix using infinity-norm); printf(n nn); printf(Enter rows and columns of An); scanf(%d%d, m, n); printf(Enter the elements of An); for (i = 0; i for (j = 0; j scanf(%f, A[i][j]); for(i=0;i { b[x]=0;c[x]=0; for(j=0;j { b[x]=b[x]+A[i][j]; } ++x; } for(i=0;i //FINDING LARGEST { if(b[i]>m) m=b[i]; } printf(largest row sum is %d,m); printf(nnEnter rows and columns of inv[A]n); scanf(%d%d, p, q); printf(Enter the elements of [A]n); for (i1 = 0; i1 for (j1 = 0; j1 scanf(%f, B[i1][j1]); for(i1=0;i1 { k[z]=0;l[z]=0; for(j1=0;j1 { k[z]=k[z]+B[i1][j1]; } ++z; } poo = k[0]; for(i1=1;i1 //FINDING LARGEST { if(k[i1]>poo) poo=k[i1]; } printf(largest row sum is %f,poo); Cond_A=m*poo; printf(nnCondition number of A is %f,Cond_A); //return 0; getch(); } Future works: If we work with a foggy image matrix(C) and we know the fog matrix(B) added to that image and the relation AÃâ€"B = C exist we will know whether it is possible to get the clear image matrix(A) by doing CÃâ€"B-1 calculating condition number of matrix B. If the condition number of matrix B is high then it is not possible to get accurate A from CÃâ€"B-1 as roundoff errors will increase. References: Matrix Inverse and Condition, Berlin Chen, Department of Computer Science Information Engineering, National Taiwan Normal University. Inversion error, condition number, and approximate inverses of uncertain matrices,  Laurent El Ghaoui, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,  University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. faculty.nps.edu/rgera/MA3042/2009/ch7.4.pdf www.rejonesconsulting.com/CS210_lect07.pdf http://teal.gmu.edu/ececourses/ece699/notes/note4.html Weisstein, Eric W. Matrix Norm. From MathWorldA Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MatrixNorm.html

Kurt Vonneguts Who Am I This T Essay -- essays research papers

Growing up we learn the importance of many different things. Of all these things, we have learned that being accepted into society, forming friendships, and loving someone are very important to us. In Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Who Am I This Time?';, we see through the experiences of Helene Shaw that by shutting ourselves off from others around us we can miss out on some of the most important things in life. Many things are important to us, one of these is being accepted by our society. We all hate to be the outsider or the new kid, because we feel alone and secluded . In “Who Am I This Time?';, Helene Shaw’s job kept her moving to a different town every eight weeks. She became very cold to her surroundings in order to ease the transition from ...

Chemistry: Acid-base Titration Essay -- essays research papers

Chemistry: Acid-Base Titration Purpose:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The objective of this experiment were: a) to review the concept of simple acid-base reactions; b) to review the stoichiometric calculations involved in chemical reactions; c) to review the basic lab procedure of a titration and introduce the student to the concept of a primary standard and the process of standardization; d) to review the calculations involving chemical solutions; e) to help the student improve his/her lab technique. Theory:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Titration was used to study acid-base neutralization reaction quantitatively. In acid-base titration experiment, a solution of accurately KHP concentration was added gradually to another solution of NaOH concentration until the chemical reaction between the two solutions were completed. The equivalence point was the point at which the acid was completely reacted with or neutralized by the base. The point was signaled by a changing of color of an indicator that had been added to the acid solution. Indicator was substance that had distinctly different colors in acidic and basic media. Phenolphthalein was a common indicator which was colorless in acidic and neutral solutions, but reddish pink was result in basic solutions. Strong acid (contained H+ ion) and strong base ( contained OH ) were 100% ionized in water and they were all strong electrolytes. Procedure: Part A. Investigating solid NaOH for use as a possible primary standard First o...

Visual Diagnosis Of Melanomas Health And Social Care Essay

Amelanotic melanoma is a type of skin malignant neoplastic disease in which the cells do non do melanin. They can be pink, ruddy, violet or of normal tegument colour, therefore hard to acknowledge. It has an asymmetrical form, and an irregular faintly pigmented boundary line. Their untypical visual aspect leads to detain in diagnosing, the forecast is bad. Recurrence rate is high. Figure: 3.11. Amelanotic melanoma on Canis familiaris ‘s toe3.12.10 Soft-tissue melanomaClear-cell sarcoma ( once known as malignant melanoma of the soft parts ) is a rare signifier of malignant neoplastic disease called sarcoma. It is known to happen chiefly in the soft tissues and corium. Rare signifiers were thought to happen in the GI piece of land before they were discovered to be different and redesignated as GNET. The return for such sort of melanoma is common. Clear cell sarcoma of the soft tissues in grownups is non related to the paediatric tumour known as clear cell sarcoma of the kidney. Under a microscope these tumours show some similarities to traditional tegument melanomas, and are characterized by solid nests and fascicules of tumour cells with clear cytol and outstanding nucleole. The clear cell sarcoma has a unvarying and typical morphological form which serves to separate it from other types of sarcoma.3.13 Diagnosis:Ocular diagnosing of melanomas is still the most common method employed by wellness professionals. Gram molecules that are irregular in colour or form are frequently treated as campaigners of melanoma. The diagnosing of melanoma requires experience, as early phases may look indistinguishable to harmless moles or non hold any colour at all. Peoples with a personal or household history of skin malignant neoplastic disease or of dysplastic nevus syndrome ( multiple untypical moles ) should see a skin doctor at least one time a twelvemonth to be certain they are non developing melanoma. There is no blood trial for observing melanomas. To observe melanomas ( and increase survival rates ) , it is recommended to larn what they look like ( see â€Å" ABCDE † mnemonic below ) , to be cognizant of moles and look into for alterations ( form, size, colour, rubing or shed blooding ) and to demo any leery moles to a physician with an involvement and accomplishments in skin malignance. A popular method for retrieving the marks and symptoms of melanoma is the mnemotechnic â€Å" ABCDE † : Asymmetrical tegument lesion. Boundary line of the lesion is irregular. Color: melanomas normally have multiple colourss. Diameter: moles greater than 6A millimeters are more likely to be melanomas than smaller moles. Enlarging: Enlarging or germinating A failing in this system is the diameter. Many melanomas present themselves as lesions smaller than 6A millimeter in diameter ; and all melanomas were malignant on twenty-four hours 1 of growing, which is simply a point. An sharp doctor will analyze all unnatural moles, including 1s less than 6A millimeter in diameter. Seborrheic Keratosis may run into some or all of the ABCD standards, and can take to false dismaies among laypeople and sometimes even doctors. An experient physician can by and large separate seborrheic keratosis from melanoma upon scrutiny, or with dermoscopy. Some advocate the system â€Å" ABCDE † , with E for development. Certainly moles that alteration and germinate will be a concern. Alternatively, some refer to E as lift. Elevation can assist place a melanoma, but deficiency of lift does non intend that the lesion is non a melanoma. Most melanomas are detected in the really early phase, or unmoved phase, before they become elevated. By the clip lift is seeable, they may hold progressed to the more unsafe invasive phase. Nodular melanomas do non carry through these standards, holding their ain mnemonic, â€Å" EFG † : Elevated: the lesion is raised above the environing tegument. Firm: the nodule is solid to the touch. Turning: the nodule is increasing in size. A recent and fresh method of melanoma sensing is the â€Å" ugly duckling mark † . It is simple, easy to learn, and extremely effectual in observing melanoma. Simply, correlativity of common features of a individual ‘s skin lesion is made. Lesions which greatly deviate from the common features are labeled as an â€Å" Ugly Duckling † , and further professional test is required. The â€Å" Small Red Riding Hood † mark suggests that persons with just tegument and light-colored hair might hold difficult-to-diagnose amelanotic melanomas. Extra attention and cautiousness should be rendered when analyzing such persons, as they might hold multiple melanomas and badly dysplastic birthmark. A dermatoscope must be used to observe â€Å" ugly ducklings † , as many melanomas in these persons resemble non-melanomas or are considered to be â€Å" wolves in sheep vesture † . [ 28 ] These fair-skinned persons frequently have lightly pigmented or amelanotic me lanomas which will non show easy-to-observe colour alterations and fluctuation in colourss. The boundary lines of these amelanotic melanomas are frequently indistinct, doing ocular designation without a dermatoscope really hard. Amelanotic melanomas and melanomas arising in fair-skinned persons ( see the â€Å" Small Red Riding Hood † mark ) are really hard to observe, as they fail to demo many of the features in the ABCD regulation, interrupt the â€Å" Ugly Duckling † mark, and are really hard to separate from acne scarring, insect bites, dermatofibromas, or freckles. Following a ocular scrutiny and a dermatoscopic test, or in vivo diagnostic tools such as a confocal microscope, the physician may biopsy the leery mole. A tegument biopsy performed under local anaesthesia is frequently required to help in doing or corroborating the diagnosing and in specifying the badness of the melanoma. If the mole is malignant, the mole and an country around it need deletion. Egg-shaped excisional biopsies may take the tumour, followed by histological analysis and Breslow marking. Punch biopsies are contraindicated in suspected melanomas, for fright of seeding tumour cells and rushing the spread of the malignant cells. Entire organic structure picture taking, which involves photographic certification of every bit much organic structure surface as possible, is frequently used during followup of bad patients. The technique has been reported to enable early sensing and provides a cost-efficient attack ( being possible with the usage of any digital camera ) , but its efficaciousness has been questioned due to its inability to observe macroscopic alterations. The diagnosing method should be used in concurrence with ( and non as a replacing for ) dermoscopic imagination, with a combination of both methods looking to give highly high rates of sensing.3.14 Dermatoscopy:Dermatoscopy ( dermoscopy or epiluminescence microscopy ) is the scrutiny of skin lesions with a dermatoscope. This traditionally consists of a magnifier ( typically x10 ) , a non-polarised visible radiation beginning, a crystalline home base and a liquid medium between the instrument and the tegument, and allows review of skin lesions unobs tructed by skin surface contemplations. Modern dermatoscopes dispense with the usage of liquid medium and alternatively usage polarised visible radiation to call off out skin surface contemplations. When the images or picture cartridge holders are digitally captured or processed, the instrument can be referred to as a â€Å" digital epiluminescence dermatoscope † .3.15 Advantages of dermatographyWith physicians who are experts in the specific field of dermoscopy, the diagnostic truth for melanoma is significantly better than for those skin doctors who do non hold any specialised preparation in Dermatoscopy. Thus, with specializers trained in dermoscopy, there is considerable betterment in the sensitiveness ( sensing of melanomas ) every bit good as specificity ( per centum of non-melanomas right diagnosed as benign ) , compared with bare oculus scrutiny. The truth by Dermatoscopy was increased up to 20 % in the instance of sensitiveness and up to 10 % in the instance of speci ficity, compared with bare oculus scrutiny. By utilizing dermatoscopy the specificity is thereby increased, cut downing the frequence of unneeded surgical deletions of benign lesions.3.16 Application of dermatoscopyThe typical application of dermatoscopy is early sensing of melanoma. Digital dermatoscopy ( video dermatoscopy ) is used for supervising skin lesions leery of melanoma. Digital dermatoscopy images are stored and compared to images obtained during the patient ‘s following visit. Leery alterations in such a lesion are an indicant for deletion. Skin lesions, which appear unchanged over clip, are considered benign. Common systems for digital dermoscopy are Fotofinder, Molemax or Easyscan. Aid in the diagnosing of tegument tumours – such as basal cell carcinomas, squamous cell carcinomas, cylindromas, dermatofibromas, angiomas, seborrheic keratosis and many other common tegument tumours have classical dermatoscopic findings. Aid in the diagnosing of itchs and pubic louse. By staining the tegument with India ink, a dermatoscope can assist place the location of the touch in the tunnel, easing scraping of the scabetic tunnel. By amplifying pubic louse, it allows for rapid diagnosing of the hard to see little insects. Aid in the diagnosing of warts. By leting a doctor to visualise the construction of a wart, to separate it from maize, callouses, injury, or foreign organic structures. By analyzing warts at late phases of intervention, to guarantee that therapy is non stopped prematurely due to hard to visualise wart constructions. Aid in the diagnosing of fungous infections. To distinguish â€Å" black point † ringworm, or ringworm capitis ( fungous scalp infection ) from alopecia areata. Aid in the diagnosing of hair and scalp diseases, such as alopecia areata, female androgenic alopecia, monilethrix, Netherton syndrome and woolly hair syndrome. Dermoscopy of hair and scalp is called trichoscopy.3.17 Computer Added Diagnosis for early sensing of Skin CancerMelanoma is the most deathly assortment of skin malignant neoplastic disease. Although less common than other tegument malignant neoplastic diseases, it is responsible for the bulk of skin malignant neoplastic disease related deceases globally. Most instances are curable if detected early and several standardised testing techniques have been developed to better the early sensing rate. Such testing techniques have proven utile in clinical scenes for testing persons with a high hazard for melanoma, but there is considerable argument on their public-service corporation among big populations due to the high work load on skin doctors and the subjectiveness in the reading of the showing. In add-on to deducing a set of computing machine vision algorithms to automatize popular tegument ego scrutiny techniques, this undertaking developed a nomadic phone application that provides a pre-screening tool for persons in the general population to assist measure their hazard. No computing machine application can supply a concrete diagnosing, but it can assist inform the person and raise the general consciousness of this unsafe disease. Melanoma develops in the melanocyte tegument cells responsible for bring forthing the pigment melanin which gives the tegument, hair, and eyes their colourss. Early phases of the malignant neoplastic disease present themselves as irregular tegument lesions. Detection techniques for early phase melanoma use the morphological features of such irregular tegument lesions to sort hazard degrees.A. Skin-Self Evaluations utilizing the ABCDE methodSurveies have shown that self-performed skin scrutinies can greatly better early sensing and survivability rates of melanoma [ 112 ] . The most constituted method for skin introspections to day of the month is the â€Å" ABCDE † promoted by the American Academy of Dermatology [ 113 ] . A elaborate tutorial for carry oning skin self-exams including illustration images for each characteristic is available in [ 113 ] . The â€Å" ABCDE † trial provides a widely accepted, standardised set of lesion characteristics to analyze. The characte ristics are designed for members of the general populace, but variableness in the reading of the characteristics weakens the overall public-service corporation of the trial [ 112 ] . Preprocessing Once a exaggerated image of a skin lesion is captured it is passed to a preprocessor. The preprocessor performs planetary image binarization via Otsu ‘s method [ 114 ] . Following binarization, a affiliated constituents analysis is performed and little part remotion for both positive and negative parts removes most of the image noise. 1 ) Asymmetry A lesion is considered potentially cancerous if â€Å" one half is unlike the other half. † This counsel is comparatively obscure, so techniques developed for dermatoscopy were used for inspiration. The dissymmetry mark computation is based on the symmetricalness map technique. Symmetry maps encode a step of a part ‘s symmetricalness, known as symmetricalness metric, comparative to a scope of axes of symmetricalness defined by angle. Lesion colour and texture comparings were used to encode symmetricalness. Normally the symmetricalness metric is a map of distance R from a part ‘s centre. To cipher the symmetricalness of an image section a symmetricalness map is created for the scope of symmetricalness axes go throughing through a part ‘s centre with angles runing from 0 to 180 grades. To deduce a scalar symmetricalness mark from the symmetricalness map, the planetary upper limit is used. The symmetricalness map technique is attractive because it is able to accomplish a grade of rotational invariability via the soap operator. However, ciphering symmetricalness maps with such a high declaration in angles is computationally expensive and colour and texture can change depending on the image ‘s lighting and focal point. Lighting and focal point are non traditionally major factors in dermatoscopy but they have a big impact in macro picture taking. 2 ) Boundary line The form and strength of a part ‘s boundary line are considered jointly when measuring hazard but the machine-controlled algorithm examines merely border strength. This is because the simple cleavage techniques used were a comparatively noisy step of a lesion ‘s boundary and the cleavage noise rapidly corrupts any boundary line form metric. However, border strength is comparatively easy to calculate. The strength gradient map can besides be computed utilizing a two-stage filter combination of Sobel and Gaussian meats. Once the image gradient map is computed, the gradient magnitude values at each pel along the lesion ‘s boundary line are summed and normalized by the boundary line ‘s size to cipher the mean gradient magnitude along the lesion ‘s boundary line. This mean gradient metric signifiers the boundary line strength hazard value. In general lesions with ill defined boundary lines. Proper pick of the Gaussian smoothing meat is of import given the comparative inaccuracy of the lesion cleavage. If excessively little a meat is used, the boundary line pels may non fall straight over pels with a high gradient magnitude. To cut down variableness, all lesion images are converted to grayscale before hiting. The standard divergence of the grayscale strength values of all the pels belonging to lesion parts has to be calculated. The standard divergence value is taken as the colour fluctuation hazard. B. Image Processing for Digital Dermatoscopy and Digital Macro Photography Epiluminescence Microscopy ( ELM ) , besides known as dermatoscopy, is a noninvasive technique for bettering the early sensing of skin malignant neoplastic disease [ 115 ] . In dermatoscopy, a set of polarized light filters or oil submergence render selected cuticular beds transparent and macro lenses magnify little characteristics non seeable to the bare oculus. Most dermatoscopes besides include characteristics to command illuming and focal conditions. Dermatoscopy is often combined with digital imaging engineering and a big organic structure of research is devoted to developing computerized processing techniques runing on the digital images produced. An version of the â€Å" ABCDE † method for skin introspections to dermatoscopic images was foremost presented in 1994 [ 116 ] .3.17.1 Image Acquisition TechniquesThe first measure in adept systems used for skin review involves the acquisition of the tissue digital image. The chief techniques used for this intent are the Epilum inence microscopy ( ELM, or dermoscopy ) , transmittal negatron microscopy ( TEM ) , and the image acquisition utilizing still or video cameras. ELM is capable of supplying a more elaborate review of the surface of pigmented tegument lesions and renders the epidermis translucent, doing many cuticular characteristics become seeable. TEM, on the other manus, can uncover the typical construction of organisation of elastic webs in the corium, and therefore, is largely used for analyzing growing and suppression of melanoma through its liposomes [ 117 ] .Arecently introduced method of ELM imagination is side-transillumination ( transillumination ) . In this attack, visible radiation is directed from a pealing around the fringe of a lesion toward its centre at an angle of 45a- ¦ , organizing a practical visible radiation beginning at a focal point about 1 centimeters below the surface of the tegument, therefore doing the surface and subsurface of the skin translucent. The chief advantage of transillumination is its sensitiveness to imaging increased blood flow and vascularisation and besides to sing the subsurface pigmentation in a birthmark. This technique is used by a paradigm device, called Nevoscope, which can bring forth images that have variable sum of transillumination and cross-polarized surface light [ 118 ] , [ 119 ] . The usage of commercially available photographic cameras is besides rather common in skin lesion review systems, peculiarly for telemedicine intents [ 120 ] , [ 121 ] .However, the hapless declaration in really little tegument lesions, i.e. , lesions with diameter of less than 0.5 centimeter, and the variable light conditions are non easy handled, and hence, high-resolution devices with low-distortion lenses have to be used. In add-on, the demand for changeless image colourss ( necessary for image duplicability ) remains unsated, as it requires existent clip, automated colour standardization of the camera, i.e. , accommoda tions and corrections to run within the dynamic scope of the camera and ever mensurate the same colour regardless of the lighting conditions. The job can be addressed by utilizing picture cameras [ 122 ] that are parameterizable online and can be controlled through package ( SW ) [ 123 ] , [ 124 ] . In add-on to the latter, improper sum of submergence oil or misalignment of the picture Fieldss in the captured picture frame, due to camera motion, can do either loss or quality debasement of the skin image. Acquisition clip mistake sensing techniques has to be developed harmonizing to [ 124 ] and it is done merely in an attempt to get the better of such issues. Computed imaging ( CT ) images have besides been used [ 125 ] in order to observe melanomas and track both advancement of the disease and response to intervention. Table: 3.2 Image Acquisition Methods Along With the Respective Detection Goals Image Acquisition Technique Detection Goal Video RGB Camera Tumor, Crust, hair, graduated table, glistening ulcer of skin lesions, skin erythema, Burn scars, Melanoma Recognition Tissue Microscopy Melanoma Recognition Still CCD Camera Wound Mending Ultraviolet light Melanoma Recognition Epiluminescence Microscopy ( ELM ) Melanoma Recognition Video microscopy Melanoma Recognition Multi frequence Electrical Electric resistances Melanoma Recognition Raman Spectra Melanoma Recognition Side-or Epi-transllumination ( utilizing Novoscope ) Melanoma Recognition Positron emanation imaging ( PET ) using fluorodeoxyglucose ( FDG ) [ 126 ] has besides been proven to be a extremely sensitive and suited diagnostic method in the theatrical production of assorted tumors, including melanoma, complementing structural imagination. FDG consumption has been correlated with proliferation rate, and therefore the grade of malignance of a given tumour. MRI can besides be used for tumour word picture [ 127 ] . Such methods are utilized largely for analyzing the metastatic potency of a skin melanoma and for farther appraisal. Finally, alternate techniques such multifrequency electrical electric resistance [ 128 ] or Raman spectra [ 129 ] have been proposed as possible showing methods. The electrical electric resistance of a biological stuff reflects fleeting physical belongingss of the tissue. Raman spectra are obtained by indicating a optical maser beam at a skin lesion sample. The optical maser beam excites molecules in the sample, and a scattering conseque nce is observed. These frequence displacements are maps of the type of molecules in the sample ; therefore, the Raman spectra clasp utile information on the molecular construction of the sample. Table I summarizes the most common image acquisition techniques found in literature along with the several sensing ends.3.17.2 Features for the Classification of Skin LesionsSimilarly to the traditional ocular diagnosing process, the computer-based systems look for characteristics and unite them to qualify the lesion as malignant melanoma, dysplastic birthmark, or common birthmark. The characteristics employed have to be mensurable and of high sensitiveness, i.e. , high correlativity of the characteristic with skin malignant neoplastic disease and high chance of true positive response. Furthermore, the characteristics should hold high specificity, i.e. , high chance of true negative response. Although in the typical categorization paradigm both factors are considered of import ( a trade-off expressed by maximising the country under the receiving system runing characteristic ( ROC ) curve ) , in the instance of malignant melanoma sensing, the suppression of false negatives ( i.e. , addition of true positives ) is evidently more of import. In the conventional process, the undermentioned diagnosing methods are chiefly used [ 130 ] : 1 ) ABCD regulation of dermoscopy ; 2 ) Pattern analysis ; 3 ) Menzies method ; 4 ) seven-point checklist ; and 5 ) Texture analysis. The characteristics used for each of these methods are presented in the followers. ABCD Rule: The ABCD regulation investigates the dissymmetry ( A ) , boundary line ( B ) , colour ( C ) , and differential constructions ( D ) of the lesion and defines the footing for a diagnosing by a skin doctor. To cipher the ABCD mark, the ‘Asymmetry, Border, Colors, and Dermoscopic constructions ‘ standards are assessed semi quantitatively. Each of the standards is so multiplied by a given weight factor to give a entire dermoscopy mark ( TDS ) . TDS values less than 4.75 indicate a benign melanocytic lesion, values between 4.8 and 5.45 indicate a leery lesion, and values of 5.45 or greater are extremely implicative of melanoma.A AsymmetryTo measure dissymmetry, the melanocytic lesion is bisected by two 90 ° axes that were positioned to bring forth the lowest possible dissymmetry mark. If both axes dermocopically show asymmetric contours with respect toA form, colourss and/or dermoscopic constructions, the dissymmetry mark is 2.A If there is dissymmetry on one axis merely, the mark is 1. If dissymmetry is absent with respect to both axes the mark is 0.A Boundary lineThe lesion is divided into eighths, and the pigment form is assessed. Within eachA one-eighth section, a crisp, disconnected cut-off of pigment form at the fringe receivesA a mark 1. In contrast, a gradual, indistinct cut-off within the section receives a scoreA of 0. Therefore, the maximal boundary line mark is 8, and the minimal mark is 0.A ColorSix different colourss are counted in finding the colour mark: white, ruddy, light brown, A dark brown, blue-gray, and black. For each colour nowadays, add +1 to the score.A White should be counted merely if the country is lighter than the next skin.A The maximal colour mark is 6, and the minimal mark is 1.3.18 Dermoscopic constructionsEvaluation of dermoscopic constructions focuses on 5 structural characteristics: web, structureless ( or homogenous ) countries, branched runs, points, and globules.A The presence of any characteristic consequences in a mark +1 Structureless ( or homogeneous ) countries must be larger than 10 % of the lesion to be considered present. Branched runs and points are counted merely when more than two are clearly seeable. The presence of a individual globule is sufficient for the lesion to be considered positive for globules. Asymmetry: The lesion is bisected by two axes that are positioned to bring forth the lowest dissymmetry possible in footings of boundary lines, colourss, and dermoscopic constructions. The dissymmetry is examined with regard to a point under one or more axes. The dissymmetry index is computed foremost by happening the chief axes of inactiveness of the tumour form in the image, and it is obtained by overlapping the two halves of the tumour along the chief axes of inactiveness and spliting the non-overlapping country differences of the two halves by the entire country of the tumour. Fig ( a ) Fig ( B ) : Figure: ( degree Celsius ) Figure: 3.12 ( a ) , ( B ) , ( degree Celsius ) : Calculation of symmetric matrix Boundary line: The lesion is divided into eight pie-piece sections. Figure: ( a ) Then, it is examined if there is a crisp, disconnected cutoff of pigment form at the fringe of the lesion or a gradual, indistinct cutoff. Border-based characteristics depicting the form of the lesion are so computed. In order to pull out boundary line information, image cleavage is performed. Figure: ( B ) Figure: ( C ) Fig 3.13. ( a ) , ( B ) , ( degree Celsius ) : Boundary line computation for Skin Lesion. It is considered to be a really critical measure in the whole procedure of skin lesion designation and involves the extraction of the part of involvement ( ROI ) , which is the lesion and its separation from the healthy tegument. Most usual methods are based on thresholding, part growth, and colour transmutation ( e.g. , chief constituents transform, CIELAB colour infinite and spherical co-ordinates [ 131 ] , and JSEG algorithm [ 132 ] ) . Extra methods affecting unreal intelligence Techniques like fuzzed boundary lines [ 133 ] and declaratory cognition ( melanocytic lesion images segmentation implementing by spacial dealingss based declaratory cognition ) are used for finding skin lesion characteristics. The latter methods are characterized as part attacks, because they are based on different colorization among the malignant parts and the chief boundary line. Another class of cleavage techniques is contour attacks utilizing classical border sensors ( e.g. , Sobel, Canny, etc. ) that produce a aggregation of borders go forthing the choice of the boundary up to the human perceiver. Hybrid attacks [ 134 ] usage both colour transmutation and border sensing techniques, whereas serpents or active contours 135 ] are considered the outstanding state-of-the art technique for boundary line sensing. More information sing boundary line sensing every bit good as a public presentation comparing of the aforesaid methods can be found in [ 136 ] and [ 137 ] . The most popular boundary line characteristics are the greatest diameter, the country, the boundary line abnormality, the tenuity ratio [ 138 ] , the disk shape index ( CIRC ) [ 139 ] , the discrepancy of the distance of the boundary line lesion points from the centroid location [ 140 ] , and the symmetricalness distance ( SD ) [ 133 ] . The CIRC is mathematically defined by the undermentioned equation: Where A is the surface of the examined country and P is its margin. SD calculates the mean supplanting among a figure of vertexes as the original form is transformed into a symmetric form. The symmetric form closest to the original form P is called the symmetricalness transform ( ST ) of P. The SD of an object is determined by the sum of attempt required to transform the original form into a symmetrical form, and can be calculated as follows: Apart from sing the boundary line as a contour, accent is besides placed on the characteristics that quantify the passage ( speed ) from the lesion to the tegument. Such characteristics are the minimal, maximal, mean, and discrepancy responses of the radient operator applied on the intesity image along the lesion boundary line. degree Celsius ) Color: Color belongingss inside the lesion are examined, and the figure of colourss present is determined. They may include light brown, dark brown, black, ruddy ( ruddy vascular countries are scored ) , white ( if whiter than the environing tegument ) , and slate blue. In add-on, colour texture might be used for finding the nature of melanocytic tegument lesions [ 141 ] . Typical colour images consist of the three-color channels red, green, and blue ( RGB ) . The colour characteristics are based on measurings on these colour channels or other colour channels such as cyan, magenta, yellow ( CMY ) , hue, impregnation, value ( HSV ) , Y-luminance, UV ( YUV ) chrominance constituents, or assorted combinations of them, linear or non. Additional colour characteristics are the spherical co-ordinates LAB norm and discrepancy responses for pels within the lesion [ 142 ] Color variegation may be calculated by mensurating lower limit, upper limit, norm, and standard divergences of the selected channel values and colour strength, and by mensurating chromatic differences inside the lesion. vitamin D ) Differential constructions: The figure of structural constituents present is determined, i.e. , pigment web, points ( scored if three or more are present ) , globules ( scored if two or more are present ) , structureless countries ( counted if larger than 10 % of lesion ) , and runs ( scored if three or more are present ) . 2 ) Form Analysis: The form analysis method seeks to place specific forms, which may be planetary ( reticulate, ball-shaped, sett, homogenous, starburst, parallel, and multicomponent, nonspecific ) or local ( pigment web, dots/globules/ moles [ 143 ] , runs, blue-whitish head covering, arrested development constructions, hypo-pigmentation, splodges, vascular constructions ) . 3 ) Menzies Method: The Menzies method looks for negative characteristics ( symmetricalness of form, presence of a individual colour ) and positive ( bluish-white head covering, multiple brown points, pseudopods, radial cyclosis, scar-like depigmentation, peripheral black dots/globules, multiple ( five to six ) colourss, multiple blue/gray points, broadened web ) . 4 ) Seven-Point Checklist: The seven-point checklist [ 144 ] , [ 145 ] refers to seven standards that assess chromatic features and the form and/or texture of the lesion. These standards are untypical pigment web, blue-whitish head covering, untypical vascular form, irregular runs, irregular dots/globules, irregular splodges, and arrested development constructions. Each one is considered to impact the concluding appraisal with a different weight. The dermoscopic image of a melanocytic tegument lesion is analyzed in order to grounds the presence of these standard standards ; eventually, a mark is calculated from this analysis, and if a entire mark of three or more is given, the lesion is classified as malignant, otherwise it is classified as birthmark. 5 ) Texture Analysis: Texture analysis is the effort to quantify texture impressions such as â€Å" all right, † â€Å" rough, † and â€Å" irregular † and to place, step, and use the differences between them. Textural characteristics and texture analysis methods can be slackly divided into two classs: statistical and structural. Statistical methods define texture in footings of local gray-level statistics that are changeless or easy varying over a textured part. Different textures can be discriminated by comparing the statistics computed over different subregions. Some of the most common textural characteristics are as follows. Neighboring gray-level dependance matrix ( NGLDM ) and lattice aperture wave form set ( LAWS ) are two textural attacks used for analysing and observing the pigmented web on tegument lesions. Dissimilarity, vitamin D, is a step related to contrast utilizing additive addition of weights as one moves off from the grey degree accompaniment matrix ( GLCM ) diagonal. Dissimilarity is calculated as follows: Where I is the row figure, J is the column figure, N is the entire figure of rows and columns of the GLCM matrix, and is the normalization equation in which Vi, J is the digital figure ( DN ) value of the cell I, J in the image window ( i.e. , the current gray-scale pel value ) . Angular 2nd minute ( ASM ) , which is a step related to methodicalness, where Pi, J is used as a weight to itself, is given by GLCM mean, I?i, which differs from the familiar average equation in the sense that it denotes the frequence of the happening of one pel value in combination with a certain neighbour pel value, is given by The research workers that seek to automatically place skin lesions exploit the available computational capablenesss by seeking for many of the characteristics stated earlier, every bit good as extra characteristics. 6 ) Other Features Utilized: The differential constructions as described in the ABCD method, every bit good as most of the forms that are used by the form analysis, the Menzies method, and the seven-point checklist are really seldom used for machine-controlled tegument lesion categorization, evidently due to their complexness. A fresh method presented in [ 140 ] utilizations 3-D pseudoelevated images of skin lesions that reveal extra information sing the abnormality and inhomogeneity of the examined surface. Several attempts concern mensurating the dynamicss of skin lesions [ 146 ] . The ratio of discrepancies RV in [ 147 ] has been defined as where standard divergence between yearss ( SDB2 ) is the between twenty-four hours discrepancy of the colour variable computed utilizing the mean values at each twenty-four hours of all lesion sites and topics, standard divergence intraday ( SDI2 ) is the intraday discrepancy of the colour variable estimated from the calculations at each twenty-four hours of all lesion sites and topics, and standard divergence analytical ( SDA2 ) is the discrepancy of the colour variable computed utilizing normal skin sites of all topics and times. Finally, ripple analysis has besides been used for break uping the tegument lesion image and utilizing ripple coefficients for its word picture [ 148 ] . C. Feature Selection The success of image acknowledgment depends on the right choice of the characteristics used for the categorization. The latter is a typical optimisation job, which may be resolved with heuristic schemes, greedy or familial algorithms, other computational intelligence methods, or particular schemes from statistical form acknowledgment [ e.g. , cross-validation ( XVAL ) , leave-one-out ( LOO ) method, consecutive forward drifting choice ( SFFS ) , consecutive backward drifting choice ( SBFS ) , chief constituent analysis ( PCA ) , and generalized consecutive characteristic choice ( GSFS ) ] [ 149 ] . The usage of characteristic choice algorithms is motivated by the demand for extremely precise consequences, computational grounds, and a peaking phenomenon frequently observed when classifiers are trained with a limited set of acquisition samples3.19 Skin Lesion Classification MethodsIn this subdivision, the most popular methods for skin lesion categorization are examined. The undertaking involves chiefly two stages after characteristic choice, larning and proving [ 150 ] , which are analyzed in the undermentioned paragraphs. A. Learning Phase During the learning stage, typical characteristic values are extracted from a sequence of digital images stand foring classified skin lesions. The most classical acknowledgment paradigm is statistical. Covariance matrices are computed for the discriminatory steps, normally under the multivariate Gaussian premise. Parametric discriminant maps are so determined, leting categorization of unknown lesions ( discriminant analysis ) . The major job of this attack is the demand for big acquisition samples. Nervous webs are webs of interrelated nodes composed of assorted phases that emulate some of the ascertained belongingss of biological nervous systems and pull on the analogies of adaptative biological acquisition. Learning occurs through larning over a big set of informations where the Learning algorithm iteratively adjusts the connexion weights ( synapses ) by minimising a given mistake map [ 151 ] , [ 152 ] . The support vector machine ( SVM ) is a popular algorithm for informations categorization in two categories [ 153 ] – [ 155 ] , [ 156 ] . SVMs allow the enlargement of the information provided by a learning dataset as a additive combination of a subset of the informations in the acquisition set ( support vectors ) . These vectors locate a hyper surface that separates the input informations with a really good grade of generalisation. The SVM algorithm is based on acquisition, proving, and public presentation rating, which are common stairss in every acquisition process. Learning involves optimisation of a convex cost map where there are no local lower limit to perplex the acquisition procedure. Testing is based on theoretical account rating utilizing the support vectors to sort a trial dataset. Performance rating is based on mistake rate finding as the trial dataset size tends to eternity. The adaptative wavelet-transform-based tree-structure categorization ( ADWAT ) method [ 157 ] is a specific tegument lesion image categorization technique that uses statistical analysis of the characteristic informations to happen the threshold values that optimally partitions the image-feature infinite for categorization. A known set of images is decomposed utilizing 2-D ripple transform, and the channel energies and energy ratios are used as characteristics in the statistical analysis. During the categorization stage, the tree construction of the campaigner image obtained utilizing the same decomposition algorithm is semantically compared with the tree-structure theoretical accounts of melanoma and dysplastic birthmark. A categorization variable ( CV ) is used to rate the tree construction of the campaigner image. CV is set to a value of 1 when the chief image is decomposed. The value of CV is incremented by one for every extra channel decomposed. When the algorithm decomposes a dy splastic birthmark image, merely one degree of decomposition should happen ( impart 0 ) . Therefore, for values of CV equal to 1, a campaigner image is assigned to the dysplastic nevus category. A value of CV greater than 1 indicates farther decomposition of the campaigner image, and the image is consequently assigned to the melanoma category. B. Testing Phase The public presentation of each classifier is tested utilizing an ideally big set ( i.e. , over 300 skin lesion image sets ) of manually classified images. A subset of them, for example, 80 % of the images, is used as a acquisition set, and the other 20 % of the samples is used for proving utilizing the trained classifier. The Learning and trial images are exchanged for all possible combinations to avoid prejudice in the solution. Most usual categorization public presentation appraisal in the context of melanoma sensing is the true positive fraction ( TPF ) bespeaking the fraction of malignant tegument lesions right classified as melanoma and the true negative fraction ( TNF ) bespeaking the fraction of dysplastic or nonmelanoma lesions right classified as nonmelanoma, severally [ 158 ] , [ 159 ] . A graphical representation of categorization public presentation is the ROCcurve, which displays the â€Å" trade-off † between sensitiveness ( i.e. , existent malignant lesions that are right identified as such, besides known as TPF ) and specificity ( i.e. , the proportion of benign lesions that are right identified, besides known as TNF ) that consequences from the convergence between the distribution of lesion tonss for melanoma and nevi [ 160 ] , [ 161 ] , [ 162 ] . A good classifier is one with stop ping point to 100 % sensitiveness at a threshold such that high specificity is besides obtained. The ROC for such a classifier will plot as a steeply lifting curve. When different classifiers are compared, the one whose curve rises fastest should be optimum. If sensitiveness and specificity were weighted every bit, the greater the country under the ROC curve ( AUC ) , the better the classifier is [ 163 ] .

Management Control Systems 4-6

Management Control group 1| Main Case Study 4-6| Mini case study 5-2| Tom Breteler – 930228 | Max Leigh Norman – 910904 Hanway Tran – 831226 16/11/2012| | | Main Case Study 4-6: Grand Jean Company Introduction This case study covers case 4-6 of ‘Management Control Systems’, written by Robert N. Anthony and Vijay Govindarajan (2007, 12th edition). The case discusses Grand Jean Company, a jeans manufacturing company, and describes several processes and issues in their organisation and management.In this report, we will we review and discuss the main problems that Grand Jean Company faces, analyse and propose solutions to these problems. During the course of this report, we will often refer to theory from the aforementioned literature, as well as external sources where needed. Explanations of concepts, theories and jargon will be given where necessary, but references will be provided in the end of the report easy reference. Lastly, we realise our soluti ons have their limitations and are unlikely to be implemented easily, or immediately effective.But we believe that our proposed changes will allow the company to reap the benefits from knowledge sharing and increased efficiency, as both plant managers and contractors can cooperate to find the best practice to accomplish their tasks at hand. Background Grand Jean is a clothing company with a long history, having been founded in the mid 18th century it has survived several great economic crises such as two world wars, the great depression in the late 1920s and the 1970s oil crisis.Having survived so many economic shocks and still be working as a profitable company, it is possible that this has caused top management in Grand Jean to believe that the business model they are employing is a sturdy model that always works. The scientific management model that was developed in the 1910s where cost efficiency and cost analysis was prevalent then; is something that we perceive is still preval ent now in Grand Jean (Anthony & Govindarajan, 2007). Their usage of key metrics is very old fashioned: * Focus on production quota for the factories. Budget estimating a plant’s future production by looking at historic production and add a little more for the following year * Using historic supervisor:employee ratio There seems to be a lot of territorial mentality between the different departments in that each department focus on their own performance, and are willing to intervene in another department to satisfy their own goal. The company also seemed to treat the management and employees at the headquarters more favourably than management and employees at production plants.Problems In this section, we shall further discuss the processes and circumstances at Grand Jean Company and lay out the problems, and more importantly we will explain why they are problems. Firstly, we feel that the company in overall is overly traditional and outdated, resulting in a general lack of fl exibility. The company’s processes and regulations are often strict and overly simplified, which has a negative effect on the realistic day-to-day operations. One of these regulations is the relationships Grand Jean Company has with its ndependent contractors. Grand Jean has 25 company-owned manufacturing plants, which are responsible for about two thirds of the total production; the rest is done by roughly 20 independent manufacturers. Some of these contractors have long-standing relationships with Grand Jean, whereas some are very new and short-term. Contract agreements are made by the production operations’ vice president, Tom Wicks, and a ceiling price is set for each individual type of pants.If a contractor complies with Grand Jean’s quality and reliability standards, they get paid the full ceiling price, but if Grand Jean is unsure, a lower price is paid until the contractor has proven himself. This leads to a high turnover rate for contractors, considerin g the intense domestic and foreign competition in the garment industry. Strict demands combined with lower financial (as well as non-financial) support can be incredibly taxing for new contractors, resulting in them not reaching the desired quotas.Grand Jean then immediately terminates the relationship, and does not try to aid its contractors in any way that we have noticed. This is a waste of invested time and resources in the relationship, which could be easily avoided by closer collaboration and communication, combined with more a more flexible framework. The existing facilities are not used for a period of time; which is an additional  waste of resources. The key metrics that Grand Jean use to evaluate the company’s performance are very outdated.The main focus throughout the company is to focus on production output and metrics that affect or can be derived from focusing on production quantity e. g. production/year, standard hours/pair. However, there seems to be no cons ideration of metrics that affect the overall performance of the company. As mentioned before, the contractor’s that failed to meet expectations were usually just replaced by a new contractor in the same existing facility, this is an activity that impacts the company’s overall performance, as time and money has to again be spent re-negotiating terms of agreement, setting up and starting production lines.Overall the key metrics do not focus on activities that can have a more profound impact on the company’s performance. The heavy focus on production quota causes the company to miss other aspects that could generate improvements e. g. in plant efficiency, gross profit margin, overhead- and back office costs. The heavy focus on production also caused some plant managers to hoard goods to be able to meet production quota. Grand Jean makes use of 5 separate marketing departments, this is motivated with the fact that they sell to different customers.We consider the dep artment structure of marketing in the current state to be obsolete, because it doesn’t make efficient use of the knowledge that can be obtained by having cross-departmental communication or by unifying the marketing department into one big unit. Having such similar functions in 5 departments creates a lot of overhead when it comes to research and demand forecasting. The 25 company-owned plants are treated as expense centres, implying their only goal is to reach a quota at a price as low as possible. If the focus is purely on getting the lowest cost per product possible, quality is likely to fall behind.Additionally, the plants are run on a tight regulatory system based on time-and-motion systems resembling Taylor’s scientific method; making it obviously outdated, made worse by the odd use of fixed learning curves: implying learning curves are a system to be applied instead of an ongoing process. Entire budgets are made extrapolating the production time for a single pai r of jeans, and mass scale benefits are religiously pursued; resulting in an extreme lack of flexibility which severely harms the collaboration and communication with the marketing department.A major problem as well is the restrictiveness of the production quotas. Like the budgets, the quotas too are extrapolated from individual production time per pair of jeans, and administered relentlessly: the budgets are pre-made monthly one year ahead of time, and there is no indication of any adaptation being made during that year. This obviously leads to an inability to react to changes, and is overly simplistic to say the least. Additionally, the bar of budgets and quotas is raised monthly (! , because â€Å"we expect people to improve around here† (Anthony & Govindarajan, 2007). Shockingly, these decisions are made arbitrarily without regard to external circumstances. If a plant reaches the quota, it is decided to have performed well, regardless of delivered quality, and if not, the plant is considered to have been working at a sub-reasonable level of speed and efficiency. Grand Jean acknowledges worker turnover and absenteeism are big problems in the plants, yet they do not show any awareness of any link from those problems to the strict quotas.Feedback is given monthly via phone, instead of in person, to see if the plants met the allowed standard labour hours compared to the actual labour hours, which is an accounting related principle that is often unsuited for practical issues such as production. This has negative consequences, the most disturbing being the plant managers retaining a safety stock when they exceed the quota, in order to make sure they can reach the quota again next year. This is done because production over the quota is not rewarded, and production is expected to increase from the year before, no matter how high the figures are.Considering Grand Jean has to turn down orders every end of the year, this is a shame when it comes to the usage o f resources, production and profit potential. Still, Grand Jean claims to look for other things but the quota as well when evaluating plants, such as the quality of the community relations and employee satisfaction. There are no concrete standards shown in the case for these measurements however, making the rating and bonus allocation system very arbitrary and subjective.This resulted in the finance and marketing departments being rewarded higher ratings than the production plants; which is particularly questionable considering most top-managers are from finance and marketing backgrounds. To us, this smells of favouritism, which is never a basis for a proper rating system, which should of course be objective and fair i. e. have procedural justice. Also, it was issued in the case that offices are often understaffed because Mr. Wicks consistently adheres to the traditional supervisor/worker ratio of 11:1, although the fact simply is that that ratio is insufficient and outdated.Plant m anagers feared to deviate from that ratio due to the fact that Mr. Wicks managed a plant with that ratio. This causes the plants to run with a supervisor/work ratio that doesn’t adapt to the changing external environment (Anthony & Govindarajan, 2007). Lastly, the company does not properly acknowledge the differences in technology and equipment and age of the plants, instead Grand Jean demands equal performance from them all. This is obviously not prudent, and results in the older plants having more difficulties in reaching the quota.Proposed solutions The company needs to improve the communication channels between the marketing and production departments. It seems as though these departments are working completely independently from each other which is concerning as their relationship is one of the most important within the organisation. Production relies on quantity targets set by the marketers, by having much more regular meetings, face to face rather than on the phone, th ere should be a reduced risk of drastic changes in quantity needed.It is more likely that a closer relationship between these departments will cause incremental changes in production which is much easier and cheaper to manage. Consequently there will be much less wastage or excess goods being produced. Continuing with the theme of collaboration, the 5 marketing departments need to work as parts of the same unit, rather than individual units with the same name. The text refers to some departments going about their own business in order to meet aims and objectives, even if these actions have negative consequences for other departments.All departments in the organisation are trying to add value to the end product but this should not be done by trampling on others who are trying to achieve the same goal. The managers or each marketing department need to meet and ensure that no actions taken by their individual units have a negative impact for another. This is not to say there shouldnâ⠂¬â„¢t be a competitive nature within the firm but it should be regulated so as not to cause harmful repercussions. At present, the rating system and bonus allocation system seems quite subjective and inexact.Firstly, the bias that occurs in favour of the financial departments needs to be eradicated. This could be done by outsourcing the task of rating the departments. As long as the external firm knew the industry and had a set of strict guidelines as to how to rate the performance of each department, there would be no bias and ratings between departments should be more evenly spread out. Currently, there is no incentive for plants to produce at maximum efficiency because if they happen to go over quota, they do not get rewarded for doing so.This ties in nicely with the second aspect of the ratings system. The case provided no exact guidelines to which each department was being assessed. Mr Wicks would call the departments and have a conversation about whether or not they met their production quota and generally ‘how things are’. The managers need to have face to face meetings and joint plant inspections in order to really gauge how production is performing; this will give a much more accurate picture and enable bonuses to be allocated more precisely.Contractors produce around a third of Grand Jean Company’s stock and as such, are an integral part of the production process. Instead of initially offering a lower price, Grand Jean could reduce uncertainty by allowing their contractors time to move up the learning curve by allowing them a lower quantity to be produced, which would be gradually increased once product quality and production reliability is delivered. Thus building Grand Jean’s relationship with their contractors, and avoiding resource destruction, despite the existing facilities being re-used.The reduced contractor turnover would increase the utilisation of the plants which will lend itself to increased production in the long term. As has been mentioned previously, some of the plants are up to 30 years old whereas some are as new as only 5 years old, however, there seems to be no allowance for this is the targets set by the company. It stands to reason that 30 years old technology is much more likely to; breakdown, be more costly to maintain, and be less efficient than 5 year old technology.Therefore, the quotas and maximum output of each plant should be heavily related to how new the plant and the technology is, presuming the staff are of equally skilled between the plants. Therefore, plant managers need to work more closely with market departments because they will be able to work out what targets are suitable for each plant rather than a ‘one size fits all’ quota system which at present, isn’t working particularly effectively. These new targets could be achieved through an initial meeting and assessment of the factory and review meetings every month to make sure the targets ar e being met.The current budgeting system is extremely primitive. The departmental managers review figures from the previous year and ‘add on a few’ because they assume the efficiency has increased and the staff ‘should’ have gotten better at their jobs. Whether these sweeping statements have some truth or not, it is obvious Grand Jean need to have a more specific budgeting and planning strategy. Using a more realistic budgeting system with more stretch would create actual learning curves instead of artificial, fixed ones.Due to more flexible targets and specific information from each individual plant capacities being used, coupled with the prospect of being rewarded for going over quota production, there should no longer be any need to hoard safety stock in order to meet targets later on in the year. Conclusion To conclude, it can be said that current affairs at Grand Jean Company are rigid and outdated, specifically in the areas of contracting relationship s, internal communication, budgeting, and reward systems. Our paper has described and explained the main issues at hand, and provided possible solutions to these problems as well.With these fixes in place, we as a team feel that Grand Jean could greatly improve its way of doing business. Mini Case Study 5-2: North Country Auto, Inc. It is prevalent that in North Country Auto, Inc. (NCA) the separate business units operated more as independent companies than subdivisions within a company. The business units’ managers themselves were aware of the problematic dilemma that the focus on their own profitability caused to the overall result of the company; even being fully aware that there were recurring situations that would have benefited the company had one department accepted a lower profit.The company lacks goal congruence between its business units, and Mr. Liddy’s endorsement of the current company structure doesn’t do anything to remedy the current friction. In stead of focusing on activities that create true value towards its customers, the company is engaging in accounting activities that do nothing to remedy the lack of goal congruence. We think Mr. Liddy should abandon the current structure for the new car-, used car- and service department, and instead structure it up with main business units, new and used car sales as one and body shop as the second one, with the service- and parts department operating as support.The new and used car sales and body shop would operate as profit centres with the service- and parts unit operating as an expense centre. To create goal congruence within the company, the department performance dependant bonuses should be removed. Instead NCA should implement a two tiered bonus program, the company’s performance should account for the larger part of the bonus program, to make sure that the department managers aren’t only thinking of their own performance.A suggestion would be to have a 20% depa rtment dependant and 80% company dependant bonus system. This would still allow a department with excellent performance to get a good reward for their above standard performance. This would increase the probability that the now different departments strive to work together to keep overall profits up and overall expenses down. Such a reward system would shift the personnels’ focus on the company’s total performance.The company should implement on one unified IT-system to make it easier to share information and hence promote inter departmental communications, thereby increasing the possibility of achieving synergy effects from the collective knowledge within the organisation. Restructuring the workflow, IT-systems and organisational structure itself won't achieve any positive effects, if the employees and managers themselves don’t embrace the new organisational structure, the whole reform will just end up being a new organization on paper.Hence why Mr. Liddy will have to be prepared to put in considerable effort to show that top management is supporting the new organisation that we propose. While it is possible to estimate a time frame for implementing a new workflow and information system, it is more difficult to estimate a time frame for when peoples’ behaviour will actually change. Without a change in behaviour, there is very a low possibility to gain any synergy effects from the new organisational structure.To implement this new organisation we propose a parallel multistage process; this requires top management to work on designing a new workflow, information system, organisational structure. And educate and involve department managers and employees to gain support for the new organisation to secure a working implementation. Bibliography Anthony, R. N. ; Govindarajan, V. (2007). MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS. 12th Edition. Net MBA website. [Online] Consulted on the 12-11-2012. URL: http://www. netmba. com/mgmt/scientific/ Appendix Pr oposal for new organisational structure for NCA.