Spatial Coherence (spatial + coherence)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


ReduceM: Interactive and Memory Efficient Ray Tracing of Large Models

COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM, Issue 4 2008
Christian Lauterbach
We present a novel representation and algorithm, ReduceM, for memory efficient ray tracing of large scenes. ReduceM exploits the connectivity between triangles in a mesh and decomposes the model into triangle strips. We also describe a new stripification algorithm, Strip-RT, that can generate long strips with high spatial coherence. Our approach uses a two-level traversal algorithm for ray-primitive intersection. In practice, ReduceM can significantly reduce the storage overhead and ray trace massive models with hundreds of millions of triangles at interactive rates on desktop PCs with 4-8GB of main memory. [source]


CHC++: Coherent Hierarchical Culling Revisited

COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM, Issue 2 2008
Oliver Mattausch
Abstract We present a new algorithm for efficient occlusion culling using hardware occlusion queries. The algorithm significantly improves on previous techniques by making better use of temporal and spatial coherence of visibility. This is achieved by using adaptive visibility prediction and query batching. As a result of the new optimizations the number of issued occlusion queries and the number of rendering state changes are significantly reduced. We also propose a simple method for determining tighter bounding volumes for occlusion queries and a method which further reduces the pipeline stalls. The proposed method provides up to an order of magnitude speedup over the previous state of the art. The new technique is simple to implement, does not rely on hardware calibration and integrates well with modern game engines. [source]


Fast Volume Rendering and Data Classification Using Multiresolution in Min-Max Octrees

COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM, Issue 3 2000
Feng Dong
Large-sized volume datasets have recently become commonplace and users are now demanding that volume-rendering techniques to visualise such data provide acceptable results on relatively modest computing platforms. The widespread use of the Internet for the transmission and/or rendering of volume data is also exerting increasing demands on software providers. Multiresolution can address these issues in an elegant way. One of the fastest volume-rendering alrogithms is that proposed by Lacroute & Levoy 1 , which is based on shear-warp factorisation and min-max octrees (MMOs). Unfortunately, since an MMO captures only a single resolution of a volume dataset, this method is unsuitable for rendering datasets in a multiresolution form. This paper adapts the above algorithm to multiresolution volume rendering to enable near-real-time interaction to take place on a standard PC. It also permits the user to modify classification functions and/or resolution during rendering with no significant loss of rendering speed. A newly-developed data structure based on the MMO is employed, the multiresolution min-max octree, M 3 O, which captures the spatial coherence for datasets at all resolutions. Speed is enhanced by the use of multiresolution opacity transfer functions for rapidly determining and discarding transparent dataset regions. Some experimental results on sample volume datasets are presented. [source]


Accounting for uncertainty in DEMs from repeat topographic surveys: improved sediment budgets

EARTH SURFACE PROCESSES AND LANDFORMS, Issue 2 2010
Joseph M. Wheaton
Abstract Repeat topographic surveys are increasingly becoming more affordable, and possible at higher spatial resolutions and over greater spatial extents. Digital elevation models (DEMs) built from such surveys can be used to produce DEM of Difference (DoD) maps and estimate the net change in storage terms for morphological sediment budgets. While these products are extremely useful for monitoring and geomorphic interpretation, data and model uncertainties render them prone to misinterpretation. Two new methods are presented, which allow for more robust and spatially variable estimation of DEM uncertainties and propagate these forward to evaluate the consequences for estimates of geomorphic change. The first relies on a fuzzy inference system to estimate the spatial variability of elevation uncertainty in individual DEMs while the second approach modifies this estimate on the basis of the spatial coherence of erosion and deposition units. Both techniques allow for probabilistic representation of uncertainty on a cell-by-cell basis and thresholding of the sediment budget at a user-specified confidence interval. The application of these new techniques is illustrated with 5 years of high resolution survey data from a 1,km long braided reach of the River Feshie in the Highlands of Scotland. The reach was found to be consistently degradational, with between 570 and 1970,m3 of net erosion per annum, despite the fact that spatially, deposition covered more surface area than erosion. In the two wetter periods with extensive braid-plain inundation, the uncertainty analysis thresholded at a 95% confidence interval resulted in a larger percentage (57% for 2004,2005 and 59% for 2006,2007) of volumetric change being excluded from the budget than the drier years (24% for 2003,2004 and 31% for 2005,2006). For these data, the new uncertainty analysis is generally more conservative volumetrically than a standard spatially-uniform minimum level of detection analysis, but also produces more plausible and physically meaningful results. The tools are packaged in a wizard-driven Matlab software application available for download with this paper, and can be calibrated and extended for application to any topographic point cloud (x,y,z). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


,Distribution of oxygen-18 and deuterium in river waters across the United States

HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 7 2001
Carol Kendall
Abstract Reconstruction of continental palaeoclimate and palaeohydrology is currently hampered by limited information about isotopic patterns in the modern hydrologic cycle. To remedy this situation and to provide baseline data for other isotope hydrology studies, more than 4800, depth- and width-integrated, stream samples from 391 selected sites within the USGS National Stream Quality Accounting Network (NASQAN) and Hydrologic Benchmark Network (HBN) were analysed for ,18O and ,2H (http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/ofr/ofr00-160/pdf/ofr00-160.pdf). Each site was sampled bimonthly or quarterly for 2·5 to 3 years between 1984 and 1987. The ability of this dataset to serve as a proxy for the isotopic composition of modern precipitation in the USA is supported by the excellent agreement between the river dataset and the isotopic compositions of adjacent precipitation monitoring sites, the strong spatial coherence of the distributions of ,18O and ,2H, the good correlations of the isotopic compositions with climatic parameters, and the good agreement between the ,national' meteoric water line (MWL) generated from unweighted analyses of samples from the 48 contiguous states of ,2H=8·11,18O+8·99 (r2=0·98) and the unweighted global MWL of sites from the Global Network for Isotopes in Precipitation (GNIP) of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of ,2H=8·17,18O+10·35. The national MWL is composed of water samples that arise in diverse local conditions where the local meteoric water lines (LMWLs) usually have much lower slopes. Adjacent sites often have similar LMWLs, allowing the datasets to be combined into regional MWLs. The slopes of regional MWLs probably reflect the humidity of the local air mass, which imparts a distinctive evaporative isotopic signature to rainfall and hence to stream samples. Deuterium excess values range from 6 to 15, in the eastern half of the USA, along the northwest coast and on the Colorado Plateau. In the rest of the USA, these values range from ,2 to 6,, with strong spatial correlations with regional aridity. The river samples have successfully integrated the spatial variability in the meteorological cycle and provide the best available dataset on the spatial distributions of ,18O and ,2H values of meteoric waters in the USA. Published in 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


A Change of Climate Provokes a Change of Paradigm: Taking Leave of Two Tacit Assumptions about Physical Lake Forcing

INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF HYDROBIOLOGY, Issue 4-5 2008
David M. Livingstone
Abstract Physically, lakes have traditionally been viewed as individual systems forced by statistically stationary local weather. This view implies that the physical response of a lake to external physical forcing is unique and stationary. Recent recognition of the importance of large-scale climatic forcing in driving physical lake processes, combined with the realisation that this forcing is undergoing a long-term trend as a result of climate change, has led to a shift in this paradigm. The new physical paradigm views lakes more in terms of a local response to large-scale climatic forcing modulated by the addition of local noise. A strong climate signal leads to large-scale spatial coherence in the physical lake response, while the existence of trends in large-scale climatic forcing associated with climate change means that both the forcing and the physical lake response are statistically non-stationary. Thus increasing realisation of the importance of climate and climate change is invalidating the tacit assumptions of individuality and stationarity that underlie the old conceptual framework, resulting in its gradual abandonment in favour of a new paradigm based on the concepts of spatial coherence and temporal non-stationarity. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source]


A monolithic Fresnel bimirror for hard X-rays and its application for coherence measurements

JOURNAL OF SYNCHROTRON RADIATION, Issue 2 2007
Ullrich Pietsch
Experiments using a simple X-ray interferometer to measure the degree of spatial coherence of hard X-rays are reported. A monolithic Fresnel bimirror is used at small incidence angles to investigate synchrotron radiation in the energy interval 5,50,keV with monochromatic and white beam. The experimental set-up was equivalent to a Young's double-slit experiment for hard X-rays with slit dimensions in the micrometre range. From the high-contrast interference pattern the degree of coherence was determined. [source]


Effect of surface roughness on the spatial coherence of X-ray beams from third-generation synchrotron radiation sources

JOURNAL OF SYNCHROTRON RADIATION, Issue 4 2000
Yun Wang
The effect of the surface roughness of optical elements, such as Be windows and reflection mirrors, in synchrotron radiation beamlines on the spatial coherence of the X-ray beam is investigated systematically by means of digital simulation, in which a new model for X-ray reflection from a rough surface is proposed. A universal factor is employed to evaluate the spatial coherence quantitatively, based on which critical values for surface roughness are reached. The results from simulation are consistent with those from experiments. [source]


The impact of climate variability on soybean yields in Argentina.

METEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 1 2007
Multivariate regression
Abstract Climate variability is examined and discussed in this work, emphasizing its influence over the fluctuation of soybean yield in the Pampas (central-eastern Argentina). Monthly data of rainfall, maximum and minimum temperatures, thermal range and seasonal rainfall were analysed jointly with the soybean yield in the period 1973-2000. Low-frequency variability was significant only in the minimum temperature during November in almost all the stations. This situation is favourable to the crop since during this month, seed germination, a growth stage sensitive to low temperatures, takes place. In the crop's core production region, 72% of the series of soybean yield presented a positive trend. Except in years with extreme rainfall situations, interannual variability of the soybean yield is in phase with the seasonal rainfall interannual variability. During these years, losses in the soybean crop occurred, with yield negative anomalies greater than one standard deviation. Soybean yield showed spatial coherence at the local scale, except in the crop's core zone. The association between each climate variable and yield did not show a defined regional pattern. Summer high temperature and rainfall excesses during the period of maturity and harvest have the greatest negative impact on the crop, whilst higher minimum temperatures during the growing season favour high yields. The joint effect of climate variables over yield was studied with multivariate statistical models, assuming that the effect of other factors (such as soil, technology, pests) is contained in the residuals. The regression models represent the estimates of the yield satisfactorily (high percentage of explained variance) and can be used to assess expected anomalies of mean soybean yield for a particular year. However, the predictor variables of the yield depend on the region. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society [source]