The HST Survey of BL Lac Objects: Gravitational Lens Candidates and Other Unusual Sources

We present HST observations of seven unusual objects from the HST ``snapshot survey'' of BL Lac objects, of which four are gravitational lens candidates. In three cases a double point sources is observed: 0033+595, with 1.58 arcsec separation, and 0502+675 and 1440+122, each with $\sim 0.3$ arcsec separation. The last two also show one or more galaxies, which could be either host or lensing galaxies. If any are confirmed as lenses, these BL Lac objects are excellent candidates for measuring H$_0$ via gravitational time delay because of their characteristic rapid, high amplitude variability. An additional advantage is that, like other blazars, they are likely superluminal radio sources, in which case the source plane is mapped out over a period of years, providing strong additional constraints on the lensing mass distribution. The fourth gravitational lens candidate is 1517+656, which is surrounded by three arclets forming an almost perfect ring of radius 2.4 arcsec. If this is indeed an Einstein ring, it is most likely a background source gravitationally lensed by the BL Lac object host galaxy and possibly a surrounding group or cluster. In the extreme case that all four candidates are true lenses, the derived frequency of gravitational lensing in this BL Lac sample would be an order of magnitude higher than in comparable quasar samples. We also report on three other remarkable BL Lac objects: 0138-097, which is surrounded by a large number of close companion galaxies; 0806+524, whose host galaxy contains an uncommon arc-like structure; and 1959+650, which is hosted by a gas rich elliptical galaxy with a prominent dust lane of $\sim 5\times 10^5 M_\odot$.Comment: 29 pages in total, 12 figure

Explainable and Advisable Learning for Self-driving Vehicles

Deep neural perception and control networks are likely to be a key component of self-driving vehicles. These models need to be explainable - they should provide easy-to-interpret rationales for their behavior - so that passengers, insurance companies, law enforcement, developers, etc., can understand what triggered a particular behavior. Explanations may be triggered by the neural controller, namely introspective explanations, or informed by the neural controller's output, namely rationalizations. Our work has focused on the challenge of generating introspective explanations of deep models for self-driving vehicles. In Chapter 3, we begin by exploring the use of visual explanations. These explanations take the form of real-time highlighted regions of an image that causally influence the network's output (steering control). In the first stage, we use a visual attention model to train a convolution network end-to-end from images to steering angle. The attention model highlights image regions that potentially influence the network's output. Some of these are true influences, but some are spurious. We then apply a causal filtering step to determine which input regions actually influence the output. This produces more succinct visual explanations and more accurately exposes the network's behavior. In Chapter 4, we add an attention-based video-to-text model to produce textual explanations of model actions, e.g. "the car slows down because the road is wet". The attention maps of controller and explanation model are aligned so that explanations are grounded in the parts of the scene that mattered to the controller. We explore two approaches to attention alignment, strong- and weak-alignment. These explainable systems represent an externalization of tacit knowledge. The network's opaque reasoning is simplified to a situation-specific dependence on a visible object in the image. This makes them brittle and potentially unsafe in situations that do not match training data. In Chapter 5, we propose to address this issue by augmenting training data with natural language advice from a human. Advice includes guidance about what to do and where to attend. We present the first step toward advice-giving, where we train an end-to-end vehicle controller that accepts advice. The controller adapts the way it attends to the scene (visual attention) and the control (steering and speed). Further, in Chapter 6, we propose a new approach that learns vehicle control with the help of long-term (global) human advice. Specifically, our system learns to summarize its visual observations in natural language, predict an appropriate action response (e.g. "I see a pedestrian crossing, so I stop"), and predict the controls, accordingly

Near-Infrared Imaging Polarimetry of S106 Cluster-Forming Region with SIRPOL

We present the results of wide-field JHKs polarimetry toward the HII region S106 using the IRSF (Infrared Survey Facility) telescope. Our polarimetry data revealed an extended (up to ~ 5') polarized nebula over S106. We confirmed the position of the illuminating source of most of the nebula as consistent with S106 IRS4 through an analysis of polarization vectors. The bright portion of the polarized intensity is consistent with the red wing component of the molecular gas. Diffuse polarized intensity emission is distributed along the north--south molecular gas lanes. We found the interaction region between the radiation from S106 IRS4 and the dense gas. In addition, we also discovered two small polarization nebulae, SIRN1 and SIRN2, associated with a young stellar objects (YSO). Aperture polarimetry of point-like sources in this region was carried out for the first time. The regional magnetic field structures were derived using point-like source aperture polarimetry, and the magnetic field structure position angle around the cluster region in S106 was found to be ~ 120\arcdeg. The magnetic fields in the cluster region, however, have three type position angles: ~ 20\arcdeg, ~ 80\arcdeg, and ~ 120\arcdeg. The present magnetic field structures are consistent with results obtained by submillimeter continuum observations. We found that the magnetic field direction in the dense gas region is not consistent with that of the low density gas region.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A

Underwater Video Survey: Planning and Data Processing

The importance of underwater video surveys as an exploration tool has been steadily increasing over recent years [1]. Better photographic equipment, more effective sources of illumination, and improved processing techniques - all make video surveying a reliable tool for seafloor habitat mapping, sediment boundary delineation and groundtruthing, mapping and documentation of forensic and archaeological sites. There is a change in attitude towards video surveying that affects the way the data is collected, and hence its quality. Earlier video data processing algorithms had to cope with whatever was recorded (often simultaneously with acquisition of other data, considered to be more important). Now we have a chance to plan ahead and organize a survey in a way most suitable for the processing. The goal of this paper is to review available processing techniques and to discuss preferable survey patterns, associated errors and processing stability

Sedimentological characterization of Antarctic moraines using UAVs and Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry

In glacial environments particle-size analysis of moraines provides insights into clast origin, transport history, depositional mechanism and processes of reworking. Traditional methods for grain-size classification are labour-intensive, physically intrusive and are limited to patch-scale (1m2) observation. We develop emerging, high-resolution ground- and unmanned aerial vehicle-based ‘Structure-from-Motion’ (UAV-SfM) photogrammetry to recover grain-size information across an moraine surface in the Heritage Range, Antarctica. SfM data products were benchmarked against equivalent datasets acquired using terrestrial laser scanning, and were found to be accurate to within 1.7 and 50mm for patch- and site-scale modelling, respectively. Grain-size distributions were obtained through digital grain classification, or ‘photo-sieving’, of patch-scale SfM orthoimagery. Photo-sieved distributions were accurate to <2mm compared to control distributions derived from dry sieving. A relationship between patch-scale median grain size and the standard deviation of local surface elevations was applied to a site-scale UAV-SfM model to facilitate upscaling and the production of a spatially continuous map of the median grain size across a 0.3 km2 area of moraine. This highly automated workflow for site scale sedimentological characterization eliminates much of the subjectivity associated with traditional methods and forms a sound basis for subsequent glaciological process interpretation and analysis

Unveiling the Active Nucleus of Centaurus A

We report new HST WFPC2 and NICMOS observations of the center of the nearest radio galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) and discuss their implications for our understanding of the active nucleus and jet. We detect the active nucleus in the near-IR (K and H) and, for the first time, in the optical (I and V), deriving the spectral energy distribution of the nucleus from the radio to X-rays. The optical and part of the near-IR emission can be explained by the extrapolation of the X-ray power law reddened by A_V~14mag, a value consistent with other independent estimates. The 20pc-scale nuclear disk discovered by Schreier et al. (1998) is detected in the [FeII] 1.64mic line and presents a morphology similar to that observed in Pa alpha with a [FeII]/Pa alpha ratio typical of low ionization Seyfert galaxies and LINERs. NICMOS 3 Pa alpha observations in a 50"x50" circumnuclear region suggest enhanced star formation (~0.3Msun/yr) at the edges of the putative bar seen with ISO, perhaps due to shocks driven into the gas. The light profile, reconstructed from V, H and K observations, shows that Centaurus A has a core profile with a resolved break at ~4" and suggests a black--hole mass of ~10^9 Msun. A linear blue structure aligned with the radio/X-ray jet may indicate a channel of relatively low reddening in which dust has been swept away by the jet.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, Astrophysical Journal, in press. High quality figures available at http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~marconi/colpic.htm