Note the listing below is an archive from several years ago when this seminar series was still running.

The listing is included here for those who still look at it, but since it's been years since anyone has downloaded any of the seminar materials linked in the listing, I have removed those files to conserve web space. The links themselves still remain below and will give a "file not found" error - if you find you'd like one of these files just email me.



The APL Lunchtime Seminar series has been running off and on since early 2000, generally with time off in the summers and kicking up again in the fall. These lunchtime seminars take place in somewhat spurious groupings of Fridays at noon in the Hardisty Conference Center (although this year has not seen much activity at all). Unlike the Thursday afternoon APL seminars, these presentations are more geared toward day-to-day functional issues and introductions to topics, rather than higher level descriptions of the latest advancements in specialized areas of research. And as the name implies, we eat our lunches during the presentations, so it's a very informal atmosphere.

Our conference center has plenty of presentation equipment available to presenters, including digital projector, overhead projector, vcr and video monitor, and projection screens - presenters can assume all these things will be waiting for them in the room. Other equipment (slide projector, etc) is generally available too; just ask Andy ahead of time for these.



Feb 6th 2004 : Submarine Sea-Ice Draft, Image Processing on a Grand Scale
by Mark Wensnahan

We are currently digitizing large amounts of paper strip charts of ice draft measurements made by Navy submarines in the Arctic. The project requires that we scan the charts and use a variety of image editing and processing techniques to convert a data trace into scaled and corrected digital data. The project involves a number of unique technical problems. For example, how do you scan a strip chart that is 23 meters long? How do you edit and process an image that is 800 megabytes in size? How do you make the process as simple and fast as possible so that you can edit hundreds of charts?

 

Sept 26th 2003 : An Introduction to Automatic Differentiation
by Brad Bell

Brad Bell will give an introduction to the theory of Automatic Differentiation as discussed in the following two web pages:
http://www.seanet.com/~bradbell/CppAD/intro.xml
http://www.seanet.com/~bradbell/CppAD/first.xml
If your browser does not support MathML or has difficulty with these pages, you can view them with the math replaced by Latex in the following web pages:
http://www.seanet.com/~bradbell/CppAD/intro.htm
http://www.seanet.com/~bradbell/CppAD/first.htm

 

Dec 13th 2002 : Unit and Regression Testing in Java and C++
by Beth Kirby

View this presentation's visual materials here
What is unit testing anyway and why would Joe (or Josie) Programmer care? In this talk I discuss JUnit, which is a testing framework developed originally by Kent Beck and Erich Gamma, and CppUnit, which is a C++ port of JUnit. Very briefly, the beauty of JUnit is that it makes testing easier and it makes developing regression tests automatic. I shall discuss the value of unit and regression testing and how it is done.

 

Aug 23rd 2002 : Human Systems Research for Navy Applications
by David Jones

I'll discuss several on-going research projects that are investigating the human systems component of decision making for naval strike warfare and expeditionary warfare.

 

July 26th 2002 : Intro to Neural Networks
by Megan Hazen

I will give an overview of Feed-Forward Artificial Neural Networks, with an emphasis on the applications developed at APL. The goal of the presentation will be to show the mechanics of the networks, and to discuss their capabilities and limitations. Examples of acoustic model emulation will also be shown.

 

July 19th 2002 : Image Processing : An Overview, Part 2
by Pete Brodsky
View this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 2.8MB zipped ppt file).

Subjects Covered:
  • Common definitions and sources of images
  • Image processing vs image analysis
  • Techniques for enhancement:
    • Convolution filters
    • Smoothing, sharpening, edge-detection
    • Nonlinear filters (median, max, etc)
    • Histogram-based operations
    • Morphological processing
  • Brief intro to pattern recognition and "computer vision"
  • The Java Advanced Imaging library and Java 3D
  • Some applications at APL

 

June 21st 2002 : Image Processing : An Overview, Part 1
by Pete Brodsky
(materials available with Part II)

 

Nov 9th 2001 : Department of Defense Funding and APL-UW
by Marc Stewart
View this presentation's visual materials here (130kB).

Much mystery surrounds the Defense Department's process for allocating money it receives from taxpayers to ultimate recipients such as APL-UW. My talk seeks to lift the shroud a little by explaining not only the mechanics (Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System, and Enactment), but also, from a higher plane, how Ideas become Systems and where our kind of research and development fits in the process.

 

May 11th 2001 : A Brief Overview of the US Navy
by David Jones

This is a quick, functional overview of the US Navy, including the following topics:
  • fleets, ships, aircraft
  • how the Navy does meteorology and oceanography
  • how the Navy funds that meteorology and oceanography research
  • Dave's cool at-sea photos

 

Apr 27th 2001 : Video Editing with Adobe Premiere
by Arthur Chan

This is a tutorial session on "Adobe Premiere", and the art and science of video production for an environment like our laboratory. The speaker will go through a complete video production regimen of acquiring video, digitizing, editing, voice and image addition, special effects, and final presentation.

 

Apr 13th 2001 : How-to Securely Use Unix Systems
by Peter Burkholder
View this presentation's web material here.

Unix/Linux computing security practicum. We will discuss principles of safe network computing while securing a stock RedHat 7.0 installation. Hacking demonstration if time permits.

 

Mar 30th 2001 : A Whirlwind Tour of C++, Part 4:
Exceptions and Exception Safety in C++
by Bob Goddard
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 267.4kB).
Also, note the booklist of recommended software books on Bob's website.

The standard way of reporting an error in C++ is to throw an exception. Why? Why not return status flags? Can I avoid exceptions altogether? (No.) Under what circumstances is it appropriate for a function to throw an exception? What happens when an exception is thrown? What happens when it is caught? What happens in between those events? What can go wrong? What does it mean for a program to be "exception safe"? How can I make sure that my program is well-behaved in the presence of exceptions?

This seminar is aimed at software developers who already have a reasonably firm grasp of the principles of object oriented programming. But even if your grasp is a little slippery, come anyway and I will adapt.

 

Dec 15th 2000 : A Whirlwind Tour of C++, Part 3:
Generic Programming and the Standard Template Library
by Bob Goddard
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 598.4kB).
Also, note the booklist of recommended software books on Bob's website.

Part 1 was a quick overview of C++ classes, and Part 2 introduced C++ templates and the STL container classes. This time I will continue with STL's other components: iterators, algorithms, and function objects. I might touch on allocators, traits, and other tools. The emphasis will be on how the STL components fit together, why the STL is organized that way, how it can be extended.

C++ templates, STL, and STL's concepts and conventions support a new style known as "generic programming", which is distinct from and complementary to the "object oriented programming" style. A good C++ programmer should know when, why, and how to use each style. This seminar will help you make those decisions wisely.

 

Dec 1st 2000 : Introduction to Spectral Analysis
by Don Percival
View this presentation's materials online here.

Since the advent of the modern digital computer, spectral analysis has become the most commonly used technique for analyzing time series (a sequence of observations collected over time). This seminar is intended to be a friendly introduction to spectral analysis, with an emphasis on the key concepts behind the subject and with a discussion of some of its potential uses.

 

Nov 17th 2000 : A Whirlwind Tour of C++, Part 2:
Templates and the Standard Template Library
by Bob Goddard
(Materials for Parts I-III available under Part III above)
Also, note the booklist of recommended software books on Bob's website.

I was delighted that the audience for my seminar, "A Whirlwind Tour of C++", showed so much interest and asked so many questions. However, my "fast and shallow" coverage turned out slower and deeper than I intended. SO, I would like to continue the series, preferably soon before the first installment is forgotten.

 

Nov 3rd 2000 : A Whirlwind Tour of C++
by Bob Goddard
(Materials for Parts I-III available under Part III above)
Also, note the booklist of recommended software books on his Bob's website.

A very fast, very shallow overview of ANSI/ISO Standard C++, including its standard library. What's in it, what's NOT in it, and why? The emphasis will be on the objectives of the language, and the compromises made to achieve those objectives. Book reviews included.

 

Oct 27th 2000 : Various Choices for Distributed Architecture
by Keith Kerr
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 154kB).

What I would like to do is talk for about 15-20 min. about various techniques for distributed programming. I will use the Java language programming interfaces for illustration, mainly because I think that offers a more coherent picture of the broad range available. So I would talk about plain old vanilla sockets, RMI (pure), RMI (over IIOP), CORBA, Java Web Server, Java Servlets, Java Server Pages, Java Spaces, Jini, Java Web Start and JNLP, perhaps Messaging, and various distributed agent technologies using higher level protocols such as ACL, KQML, or KIF. Obviously, that's a lot to cover, so the coverage will be brief.

What I would then like is to have some of the other EIS folks talk about projects they are working on that either use (or might use) one of more of these techniques. What I would like this to be is a loose and brief informational sharing of possibilities and problems. Hopefully, out of this might come a more in depth examination of the issues in distributed programming, and a sharing of ideas and implementations.

 

Oct 13th 2000 : Europa Research and How it Relates to APL
by Andy Ganse
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 7.0MB).

A growing amount of evidence shows that Europa (a moon of Jupiter) very likely has a large ocean of salty water underneath its surface layer of water ice. Not only is that really cool because water-based environments are the ones we consider more likely to support extraterrestrial lifeforms, but it's also cool because this potentially opens up our own Laboratory to a whole new exciting realm of oceanography. On an overview level, I'll describe some basic info about Europa, the recent discoveries that so strongly support the Europan under-ice ocean theory, who we know already that are working on related projects, and what kinds of project possibilities could potentially lay open to us in this field.

 

Sep 29th 2000 : Acoustic Bottom Characterization
by DJ Tang

Two new instruments were developed and deployed during SAX99 to measure surficial sediment variability at centimeter scales. Such data serve as input to acoustic models predicting sound scattering in the frequency range of 10 - 50 kHz. One instrument, IMP (In situ Measurement of Porosity) measures sediment conductivity at 1-cm resolution in the horizontal dimensions and at 3-mm resolution in the depth dimension. From this instrument the following information is derived: (1) 3-D porosity or density variation in the top 12 cm of sediments, and (2) 2-D bottom roughness and associated spectra. The second instrument, the Acoustic Imager (AI), is a 3-D sediment tomographic tool with 1-cm resolution operating at 170 kHz. Information derived from the AI includes (1) 3-D sediment sound speed variability, (2) 3-D variability of sediment attenuation coefficients, (3) the presence and distribution of discrete scatterers such as shell pieces, and (4) the temporal variability of the above parameters over 3 days. Progress of these analyses will be given.

 

Sep 15th 2000 : Programming for Machine Vision and Pattern-Matching
by Megan "Mega" Hazen
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 5.9MB).

This talk will be an introduction to computer vision, particularly in the area of pattern recognition. I will include theoretical background, as well as practical concerns and techniques. My focus will be on presenting general information, with an eye towards using these ideas in APL projects. My hope is that this talk will serve as a starting-point for all your future computer vision needs!

 

Aug 11th 2000 : Relational Database Use and Design
by Andy Ganse
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 300kB).

Topics covered include:
  • What the heck are relational databases?
  • What are some common uses of them and why would I want to bother?
  • How would I use them in a scientific/computational setting?
  • How do they work inside?
  • SQL - the standard language for interfacing databases
  • Some available relational database programs to use
  • How to design a relational database structure

 

July 28th 2000 : The Global Positioning System (GPS)
or
"Where Am I (to within 30 meters 95% SEP, 1 sigma)?"
by Pete "Snake" Brodsky
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention: 1.65MB).

Topics covered include:
  • Brief history
  • How it works in a nutshell
  • The GPS constellation
  • Timing issues
  • Signal properties
  • Positioning and Timing accuracies
  • Improvement techniques (differential,
    carrier tracking, etc.)
  • Possibly a receiver demo

 

July 14th 2000 : Using UML - Use Case Analysis
by Mark Kruger

Topics covered include:
  • overview
  • use case analysis
  • process
  • diagrams (such as class diagrams)
  • and even an comprehensive example!

 

June 16th 2000 : Intro to Object Oriented Development
by Pete "Snake" Brodsky
Download this presentation's visual materials here (attention : 197kB).

Topics covered include:
  • What is it and why is it used?
  • Basic concepts.
  • Terminology.
  • Design vs implementation.
  • UML and associated tools.

 

May 19th 2000 : Software Design Techniques Overview
by Mark Kruger and Patrick Tewson
Download Patrick's presentation visual materials here (attention : 120kB).

Brief overview of software design tools and schools of thought for both the objected-oriented paradigm (Kruger) and the procedural one (Tewson).

 

Apr 21st 2000 : FORTRAN 90/95
by Mike Macaulay
Download this presentation's handout-packet in a PDF file here (attention : 130kB).
(To read this file you must have the free software Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

A brief description of the new features available in FORTRAN 90 & 95 to show that FORTRAN is still a very viable and important programming language today, especially in the math and science arenas. Will include comparisons to FORTRAN 77.

 

Apr 7th 2000 : Introduction to CASS Sonar Modeling Software
by Chris Eggen
(This presentation's HTML/JPG files are available in-house to legit folks in APL who are interested. Contact Andy Ganse.)

CASS (Comprehensive Acoustic Sonar Simulation) is the Navy Standard High and Mid Frequency Acoustic Model. I will discuss briefly some of the things it can do and how to set it up and run it.

 

Mar 24th 2000 : Basics of Underwater Acoustics
by Warren Fox
Download this presentation's Powerpoint slides here (attention : 1.1MB).

This presentation will give a brief introduction to some of the basic concepts of underwater acoustics from an engineering point of view. After an overview of the uses of underwater sound, topics to be covered include sound generation and reception, units and conventions for measurement and reporting, fundamental sound propagation concepts with respect to oceanic sound speed profiles, and the passive and active sonar equations.

 

Mar 10th 2000 : How to Write a Proposal
by Gordie Swartzman
Download this presentation's Powerpoint slides here (attention : 479kB).

An introduction to writing proposals for grants and contracts within the scientific research world.

 

Feb 25th 2000 : How to Set Up Your Own Website + Beginning HTML
by Andy Ganse
Browse this presentation's HTML files here.

So you've browsed through an HTML book, maybe even made a small HTML file, and then ran into trouble. How do you get from there to putting everything up on a new website somewhere; how do you connect everything together; how much do you really need to learn to make a decent looking website? This introductory presentation shows how to do all this, emphasizing making a work-related APL website. I'll show how even just beginning HTML can get you really far, and share some nifty HTML tricks.

 

Feb 11th 2000 : Java - What's the Big Deal?
by Pete "Snake" Brodsky
Download this presentation's Powerpoint slides here (attention : 105kB).

Topics covered include:
  • What is Java, what it's not
  • Brief history of development
  • Basic components
  • How it's better (how it's worse)
  • Use in high-end (numerical, scientific) computing