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Copyright of Journal of Plant Protection & Pathology is the property of Egyptian National Agricultural Library (ENAL) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: The task of document examiners is very challenging, as they need to gather all the relevant facts to make an informed decision regarding the questioned document. In the present study, a total of 300 handwriting samples from 100 different writers (involving 50 right-handed and 50 left-handed) were collected at Bundelkhand University, Jhansi. Slant and stroke, as characteristic features of handwriting, were visually examined under a stereomicroscope to ascertain the handedness. Methods: Slants and Strokes as characteristic features were analyzed in a total of 300 handwriting samples collected from 50 left-handed and 50 right-handed writers of age 17–22 years. A reference text comprising three pangram sentences printed on A4 paper and a blue ball point pen was used for sampling. Results: The data collected during the study were analyzed using a statistical method (Chi-square test) and revealed that the left-handed writers (LHWs) had a significantly (P < 0.05) different writing style than the right-handed ones. Results indicated that LHWs are more likely to make strokes in the right-to-left direction and slant of letters in the backward direction, while right-handed writers make strokes in the left-to-right direction and slant of letters in the forward direction. Conclusions: The findings of the study showed valuable insight and highlighted the significance of the direction of slant and horizontal stroke as potential indicators for the determination of handedness.

Echo chambers and filter bubbles are potent metaphors that encapsulate widespread public fear that the use of social media may limit the information that users encounter or consume online. Specifically, the concern is that social media algorithms combined with tendencies to interact with like-minded others both limits users’ exposure to diverse viewpoints and encourages the adoption of more extreme ideological positions. Yet empirical evidence about how social media shapes information consumption is inconclusive. We articulate how characteristics of platform algorithms and users’ online social networks may combine to shape user behavior. We bring greater conceptual clarity to this phenomenon by expanding beyond discussion of a binary presence or absence of echo chambers and filter bubbles to a richer set of outcomes incorporating changes in both diversity and slant of users’ information sources. Using a data set with over four years of web browsing history for a representative panel of nearly 200,000 U.S. adults, we analyzed how individuals’ social media usage was associated with changes in the information sources they chose to consume. We find differentiated impacts on news consumption by platform. Increased use of Facebook was associatedwith increased information source diversity and a shift toward more partisan sites in news consumption; increased use of Reddit with increased diversity and a shift toward more moderate sites; and increased use of Twitter with little to no change in either. Our results demonstrate the value of adopting a nuanced multidimensional view of how social media use may shape information consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multisensory integration depends on causal inference about the sensory signals. We tested whether implicit causal-inference judgements pertain to entire objects or focus on task-relevant object features. Participants in our study judged virtual visual, haptic and visual–haptic surfaces with respect to two features—slant and roughness—against an internal standard in a two-alternative forced-choice task. Modelling of participants' responses revealed that the degree to which their perceptual judgements were based on integrated visual–haptic information varied unsystematically across features. For example, a perceived mismatch between visual and haptic roughness would not deter the observer from integrating visual and haptic slant. These results indicate that participants based their perceptual judgements on a feature-specific selection of information, suggesting that multisensory causal inference proceeds not at the object level but at the level of single object features. This article is part of the theme issue 'Decision and control processes in multisensory perception'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a specific area of handwriting expertise – research of the completed short notes with deliberately changed handwriting. The author emphasizes that the expertise of these objects due to their small volume is a highly complex identification problem. The article pays special attention to short notes made in the Armenian language, highlighting and describing their specific features such as the degree of compression, slowing down the pace of movement with an unreasonable stop of the writing instrument, presence of blunt initial and final strokes. The slant is an essential factor in expert research of the short notes performed with the deliberate change of writing. Also, the change in the tempo leads to a sharp simplification of letter structures and incomplete execution of letter elements; simultaneously, complications of individual letters or their elements can be observed. The author analyzes all these statements in-depths using specific examples.

When periodic stimuli such as vertical sinewave gratings are presented to the two eyes, the initial stage of disparity estimation yields multiple solutions at multiple depths. The solutions are all frontoparallel when the sinewaves have the same spatial frequency; they are all slanted when the sinewaves have quite different frequencies. Despite multiple solutions, humans perceive only one depth in each visual direction: a single frontoparallel plane when the frequencies are the same and a series of small slanted planes-Venetian blinds-when the frequencies are quite different. These percepts are consistent with a preference for solutions that minimize absolute disparity or overall slant. The preference for minimum disparity and minimum slant are identical for gaze at zero eccentricity; we dissociated the predictions of the two by measuring the occurrence of Venetian blinds when the stimuli were viewed in eccentric gaze. The results were generally quite consistent with a zero-disparity preference (Experiment 1), but we also observed a shift toward a zero-slant preference when the edges of the stimulus had zero slant (Experiment 2). These observations provide useful insights into how the visual system constructs depth percepts from a multitude of possible depths.

Handwritten words can never complement printed words because the former are mostly written in either skewed or slanted form or in both. This very nature of handwriting adds a huge overhead when converting word images into machine-editable format through an optical character recognition system. Therefore, slope and slant corrections are considered as the fundamental pre-processing tasks in handwritten word recognition. For solving this, researchers have followed a two-pass approach where the slope of the word is corrected first and then slant correction is carried out subsequently, thus making the system computationally expensive. To address this issue, we propose a novel one-pass method, based on fitting an oblique ellipse over the word images, to estimate both the slope and slant angles of the same. Furthermore, we have developed three databases considering word images of three popular scripts used in India, namely Bangla, Devanagari, and Roman, along with ground truth information. The experimental results revealed the effectiveness of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art methods used for the aforementioned problem.

This present study analyzes the role played by the media during the controversy between Government of Pakistan and its Supreme Court in 2012. This study is particularly focused on the issues pertinent to the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) case. It employed content analysis as research study and quantitatively examined the columns in the Pakistani newspapers; including, Dawn and Daily Jang for the one year time period in the year 2012. A conflicting relationship has been found between the government and judiciary concerning the National reconciliation ordinance (NRO). It was concluded thatDawn and Daily Jang, both newspapers, follow the same agenda about the NRO issue as both of these newspapers offered negative coverage of this issue. Compared to Jang, Dawn was more inclined to the negative framing of judiciary, and Jang was inclined to the negative reporting of government performance. Hence, the Pakistani Print media has framed the issues negatively between the government and the judiciary. Frequent negative slants were observed in Urdu newspaper as compared to English newspaper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previously, we developed a stratified process for slant perception. First, optical transformations in structure-from-motion (SFM) and stereo were used to derive 3D relief structure (where depth scaling remains arbitrary). Second, with sufficient continuous perspective change (≥45°), a bootstrap process derived 3D similarity structure. Third, the perceived slant was derived. As predicted by theoretical work on SFM, small visual angle (<5°) viewing requires non-coplanar points. Slanted surfaces with small 3D cuboids or tetrahedrons yielded accurate judgment while planar surfaces did not. Normally, object perception entails non-coplanar points. Now, we apply the stratified process to object perception where, after deriving similarity structure, alternative metric properties of the object can be derived (e.g. slant of the top surface or width-to-depth aspect ratio). First, we tested slant judgments of the smooth planar tops of three different polyhedral objects. We tested rectangular, hexagonal, and asymmetric pentagonal surfaces, finding that symmetry was required to determine the direction of slant (AP&P, 2019, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01859-5). Our current results replicated the previous findings. Second, we tested judgments of aspect ratios, finding accurate performance only for symmetric objects. Results from this study suggest that, first, trackable non-coplanar points can be attained in the form of 3D objects. Second, symmetry is necessary to constrain slant and aspect ratio perception. Finally, deriving 3D similarity structure precedes estimating object properties, such as slant or aspect ratio. Together, evidence presented here supports the stratified bootstrap process for 3D object perception. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Planning interactions with objects in the surrounding environment entails the perception of 3D shape and slant. Studying ways through which 3D metric shape and slant can be perceived accurately by moving observers not only sheds light on how the visual system works, but also provides understanding that can be applied to other fields, like machine vision or remote sensing. The current study is a logical extension of previous studies by the same authors and explores the roles of large continuous perspective changes, relief structure, and symmetry in a stratified process for object perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Handwritten words can never complement printed words because the former are mostly written in either skewed or slanted form or in both. This very nature of handwriting adds a huge overhead when converting word images into machine-editable format through an optical character recognition system. Therefore, slope and slant corrections are considered as the fundamental pre-processing tasks in handwritten word recognition. For solving this, researchers have followed a two-pass approach where the slope of the word is corrected first and then slant correction is carried out subsequently, thus making the system computationally expensive. To address this issue, we propose a novel one-pass method, based on fitting an oblique ellipse over the word images, to estimate both the slope and slant angles of the same. Furthermore, we have developed three databases considering word images of three popular scripts used in India, namely Bangla, Devanagari, and Roman, along with ground truth information. The experimental results revealed the effectiveness of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art methods used for the aforementioned problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a brief survey on the properties of submanifolds in metallic Riemannian manifolds. We focus on slant, semi-slant and hemi-slant submanifolds in metallic Riemannian manifolds and, in particular, on invariant, anti-invariant and semi-invariant submanifolds. We also describe the warped product bi-slant and, in particular, warped product semi-slant and warped product hemi-slant submanifolds in locally metallic Riemannian manifolds, obtaining some results regarding the existence and nonexistence of non-trivial semi-invariant, semi-slant and hemi-slant warped product submanifolds. We illustrate all these by suitable examples.

In the last decade, the study of media slant attracted a great deal of attention in economics. However, the research so far focused on political bias and its methodology relied on a purely quantitative analysis measured by the frequency of phrases. This article brings attention to the economic news and combines a quantitative with a qualitative analysis by reading the news reports/articles and deriving from this reading the analytical categories used for statistical calculations. This article deals with economic bias in general: how do the media view the economy? Do they buttress their arguments and reasoning by relying on scientific concepts or research? Do they take stances on specific issues? Who is qualified as "economist" in the media? are among the issues raised by this article. The study covers articles published throughout 2014 in France by the newspapers with the largest circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slope and slant correction of offline handwritten word images are two of the major pre-processing steps in document image processing, because these reduce the variations in writing, thereby make further processing of the same much easier. This paper presents novel slope and slant correction methods that are applied in three different script handwritten words namely Devanagari, Bangla and Roman. The language dependency and the computational complexity of state-of-the-art approaches towards the word level slope and slant correction are addressed here. A new technique for approximate core region detection is introduced here for skew detection and then linear regression is recursively applied to de-skew the word image. Whereas, in case of slant correction, a novel cost function over the vertical projection of de-skewed image is designed and optimized to fix the uniform slant angle of text words. A new benchmarked database is developed herein to evaluate the proposed methods both quantitatively and qualitatively. Comparison of the performances by our methods with some existing slope and slant correction methods reveals that our methods are more accurate and faster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In almost contact metric manifolds, we consider two kinds of submanifolds: pointwise slant, pointwise semi-slant. On these submanifolds of cosymplectic, Sasakian and Kenmotsu manifolds, we obtain characterizations and study their topological properties and distributions. We also give their examples. In particular, we obtain some inequalities consisting of a second fundamental form, a warping function and a semi-slant function.

Estimating local surface orientation (slant and tilt) is fundamental to recovering the three-dimensional structure of the environment. It is unknown how well humans perform this task in natural scenes. Here, with a database of natural stereo-images having groundtruth surface orientation at each pixel, we find dramatic differences in human tilt estimation with natural and artificial stimuli. Estimates are precise and unbiased with artificial stimuli and imprecise and strongly biased with natural stimuli. An image-computable Bayes optimal model grounded in natural scene statistics predicts human bias, precision, and trial-by-trial errors without fitting parameters to the human data. The similarities between human and model performance suggest that the complex human performance patterns with natural stimuli are lawful, and that human visual systems have internalized local image and scene statistics to optimally infer the three-dimensional structure of the environment. These results generalize our understanding of vision from the lab to the real world.

Although Nigeria has witnessed agitations for the country's restructuring, literature on the issue is scarce. This study thus examined how Nigerian media report the restructuring agitations with particular attention paid to sources of stories, frames and slants. A total of 417 newspaper stories and 267 television stories were content analysed. The period covered was from May 30, 2015 to March 30, 2018. The result of the study showed a significant relationship between media ownership and sources of stories, frames used as well as slants adopted. Based on the results of this study, the researchers conclude that ownership significantly influenced media reports on restructuring agitations in Nigeria. The theoretical implications of these results have been examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this article is to construct optimal inequalities on some submanifolds in a Bochner-Kähler manifold involving Casorati curvatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce the notion of bi-slant submanifolds of a para Hermitian manifold. They naturally englobe CR, semi-slant, and hemi-slant submanifolds. We study their first properties and present a whole gallery of examples.

Polymer concrete (PC) is a commonly used material in construction due to its improved durability and good bond strength to steel substrate. PC has been suggested as a repair and seal material to restore the bond between the cement annulus and the steel casing in wells that penetrate formations under consideration for CO 2 sequestration. Nanoparticles including Multi-Walled Carbon Nano Tubes (MWCNTs), Aluminum Nanoparticles (ANPs) and Silica Nano particles (SNPs) were added to an epoxy-based PC to examine how the nanoparticles affect the bond strength of PC to a steel substrate. Slant shear tests were used to determine the bond strength of PC incorporating nanomaterials to steel; results reveal that PC incorporating nanomaterials has an improved bond strength to steel substrate compared with neat PC. In particular, ANPs improve the bond strength by 51% over neat PC. Local shear stresses, extracted from Finite Element (FE) analysis of the slant shear test, were found to be as much as twice the apparent/average shear/bond strength. These results suggest that the impact of nanomaterials is higher than that shown by the apparent strength. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) measurements of epoxy with and without nanomaterials showed ANPs to influence curing of epoxy, which might explain the improved bond strength of PC incorporating ANPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]