Canadian development and commercialization of a North American mobile satellite service

Canada recognized early the value of mobile satellite communications, originally through the planning of a military system and subsequently through the development of the Canadian Mobile Satellite (MSAT) systems. Acting on behalf of the government, the Department of Communications (DOC) defined and carried out a complete plan for the implementation of Mobile Satellite Services (MSS). Based on an extensive dialogue between government, industry, and users and encompassing all technical, economic regulatory, and institutional aspects, this plan resulted in the completion by 1986 of a comprehensive business plan and a decision for commercial MSS delivery. The Canadian lead for a commercial system was quickly followed by others, and in particular the U.S., giving rise to the concept of North American MSS

Intrapersonal curiosity: Inquisitiveness about the inner self

Intrapersonal Curiosity (InC) is the desire to learn more about one’s inner-self. A pool of 39 experimental InC items were administered to 988 participants (498 women), along with other measures of curiosity and personality. Three InC factors with acceptable model fit were identified, from which three internally consistent (alphas > .89) 4-item subscales were developed: “Understanding Emotions and Motives”, “Reflecting on the Past”, and “Exploring Identity and Purpose”. The InC scales correlated positively with other curiosity measures, evidencing convergent validity; divergent validity was demonstrated on the basis of weak relations to other constructs. The InC scales were positively associated with less self-awareness, poorer self-regulation, and experiences of distress, suggesting that InC tends to be higher in individuals who lack, but seek, new intrapersonal knowledge to reduce uncertainty about the self

Segmentation

There is a need to automate terrain feature mapping so that to make the process more objective and less time consuming by using proper feature extraction techniques. The objective of this study was the use of object-oriented image analysis methods for the automatic extraction of alluvial fan terrain units. The study area was located in the Death Valley, Nevada, USA. The data used included an ASTER L1 satellite image and the 1 o Digital Elevation Model. The methodology developed for alluvial fan extraction included preprocessing of the digital data: filtering of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for noise removal, a Fourier Transform Wedge filter for the elimination of striping in the ASTER data and geometric co-registration of the satellite and DEM data. A multiresolution segmentation technique was then developed, delivering object primitives at four resolution levels. At the first and finest level, three physiographic feature types (basins, piedmonts and mountains) were extracted from the DEM to be used in the rule-based fuzzy classification of the following levels. Then, a knowledge base including definitions of Alluvial materials, Mountains, Basin floor salt deposits and Basin floor sediments was implemented. The second level was classified by the nearest neighbour classifier using spectral information for the first iteration of the classification procedure. For a second iteration, the knowledge base was further expanded primarily with heuristics concerning contextual information of the alluvial materials related to the geomorphological features extracted at the first level. Finally, in the last level, a projection was made, classifying the image into two classes: Alluvial Fans and Not Alluvial fans. The method gave good results in detecting alluvial fan units, working best for large shape alluvial fans. Some minor problems were encountered for the smaller alluvial fans, due to the difficulty of their boundar

Adult life stage and crisis as predictors of curiosity and authenticity: Testing inferences from Eriksons lifespan theory

During periods of developmental crisis, individuals experience uncomfortable internal incongruence and are motivated to reduce this through forms of exploration of self, other and world. From this, we inferred that crisis would relate positively to curiosity and negatively to a felt sense of authenticity. A quasi-experimental design using self-report data from a nationally representative UK sample (N = 963) of adults in early life (20-39 yrs.), midlife (40-59 yrs.) and later-life (60+) showed a pattern of findings supportive of the hypotheses. Three forms of curiosity (intrapersonal, perceptual and epistemic D-type) were significantly higher, while authenticity was lower, among those currently in crisis that those of the same age group not in crisis. Crisis was also related to curiosity about particular book genres; early adult crisis to self-help and spirituality, midlife to self-help and biography, and later life to food and eating

Editor's Note

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