MULTIRESOLUTION SEGMENTATION FOR EXTRACTING PLASTIC GREENHOUSES FROM DEIMOS-2 IMAGERY

Abstract. Accurate greenhouse mapping can support environment monitoring and resource management. In an object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach focused on plastic covered greenhouses (PCG) classification, the segmentation is a crucial step for the goodness of the final results. Multiresolution segmentation (MRS) is one of the most used algorithms in OBIA approaches, being greatly enabled by the advent of the commercial software eCognition. Therefore, in addition to the segmentation algorithm used, it is very important to count on tools to assess the quality of segmentation results from digital images in order to obtain the most similar segments to the real PCG objects. In this work, several factors affecting MRS such as the type of input image and the best MRS parameters (i.e., scale, compactness and shape), have been analysed. In this regard, more than 2800 segmentations focused on PCG land cover were conducted from four pre-processed Deimos-2 very high-resolution (VHR) satellite orthoimages taken in the Southeast of Spain (Almería). Specifically, one multispectral and one pansharpened Deimos-2 orthoimages, both with and without atmospheric correction were tested in this work. The free access AssesSeg command line tool, based on a modified version of the supervised discrepancy measure named Euclidean Distance 2 (ED2), was used to determine the best MRS parameters for all the VHR satellite images. According to both the supervised discrepancy measure ED2 and visual perception, the best segmentation on PCG was obtained over the atmospherically corrected pansharpened Deimos-2 orthoimage, achieving very good results

El piearcts en querétaro - tercera etapa

Se reporta el avance de la tercera etapa del PIEARCTS en Querétaro, México: análisis estadístico e interpretación de datos de las once instituciones en donde se aplicó el COCTS a un total de 1374 sujetos. Se establece un horizonte de interpretación que integra los datos cuantitativos con la reflexión cualitativa, la cual está amparada en el contexto socio-histórico de cada institución y en la caracterización de cada grupo muestral. Los datos se analizan de acuerdo con el tipo de institución: tecnológica o humanística; nivel educativo: licenciatura, bachillerato, técnico o normal y con los grupos encuestados: estudiantes o profesores, considerando los datos sociodemográficos incluidos en la encuesta. Se calculan los índices de plausibilidad, adecuación, ingenuidad y cultura científica para cada reactivo y para cada sujeto. Con ellos se hacen comparaciones entre grupos

Internal violence at work preventive interventions: good practice policies and conflict management

Actualizaciones y revisiones[ES] La violencia interna en el lugar de trabajo es la que tiene lugar entre los trabajadores, incluidos mandos y directivos. Incluye la violencia física, el acoso sexual y el acoso psicológico, abarcando también otras conductas de violencia psicológica diferenciadas de éste. Debe ser considerada como un riesgo psicosocial, que supone un peligro importante para la salud y seguridad de las personas, y tiene repercusiones organizacionales a través de costes directos e indirectos. Considerar la violencia interna con este enfoque de riesgo laboral, supone que su abordaje se ha de realizar aplicando los principios de la acción preventiva, a la vez que permite adoptar estrategias de actuación dirigidas a la prevención del fenómeno. Las principales organizaciones a nivel mundial y nacional proponen la implementación de una política de prevención de la violencia en el lugar de trabajo. Este artículo trata sobre la conveniencia del desarrollo e implementación en las organizaciones de una política de prevención de la violencia interna, de carácter integral e integrado, que involucre a toda la organización, orientada a lograr entornos de trabajo más saludables y con un enfoque centrado en los factores organizativos y psicosociales. [EN] Internal violence in the workplace is that which happens between coworkers, including middle management and high command. It includes physical violence and sexual and psychological harassment, as well as other psychological violent conducts different from that. It must be considered as a psychosocial risk which involves important danger for people’s health and safety as well as organizational repercussions through direct and indirect costs. Considering internal violence from the “work risk” point of view means that it should be approached using the preventive action principles while it also allows the adoption of active strategies directed to prevent the phenomenon. Main national and international organizations propose to implement policies to prevent violence in the workplace. This article deals with the convenience of the development and implementation in organizations of an internal violence prevention policy, which involves all the organization, orientated to achieve healthy workplace environments focused on organizational and psychosocial factors. This article approaches the essential premises of internal violence prevention policies, dealing as well with the basic moments of the preventive strategy: — psychosocial risks evaluation — good practice policy — procedures for management of conflicts and psychological harassment at work — organizational communication strategies and formative actions To accomplish actual effectiveness, the internal violence prevention policies must be incorporated to the organization’s Prevention Management System, which will at the same time, be integrated in all the rest of the management systems of the company.N

Effect of an intervention based on child-care centers to reduce risk behaviors for obesity in preschool children

AbstractBackgroundPreschool age is a critical stage for health promotion and prevention of obesity, which is an emerging public health problem in children. The aim of this study was to design and evaluate the effect of a multifaceted intervention based on child-care centers to reduce risk behaviors for obesity among preschool children.MethodsA 12-month cluster-randomized community trial was conducted in 16 Mexican Institute of Social Security child-care centers in Mexico City. Children between 2 and 4 years of age enrolled in the selected child-care centers participated in the study. Intervention comprised 12 weekly curriculum sessions for the children, and six family workshops. Changes in children’s dietary and physical activity, food availability at home, and maternal feeding styles were determined after 6 and 12 months. Changes within groups among stages, and between groups by stage were analyzed through X2 test.ResultsThe intervention showed a decrease of home availability for some non-recommended foods and an increase in physical activity in the intervention group compared to the control group.ConclusionsImprovement in physical activity can be effective in the long term; innovative strategies aimed to modify family dietary risk behaviors are required

Experimental investigation of dynamical invariants in bipartite entanglement

The non-conservation of entanglement, when two or more particles interact, sets it apart from other dynamical quantities like energy and momentum. It does not allow the interpretation of the subtle dynamics of entanglement as a flow of this quantity between the constituents of the system. Here we show that adding a third party to a two-particle system may lead to a conservation law that relates the quantities characterizing the bipartite entanglement between each of the parties and the other two. We provide an experimental demonstration of this idea using entangled photons, and generalize it to N-partite GHZ states

Geometric Accuracy Assessment of Deimos-2 Panchromatic Stereo Pairs: Sensor Orientation and Digital Surface Model Production

Accurate elevation data, which can be extracted from very high-resolution (VHR) satellite images, are vital for many engineering and land planning applications. In this way, the main goal of this work is to evaluate the capabilities of VHR Deimos-2 panchromatic stereo pairs to obtain digital surface models (DSM) over different land covers (bare soil, urban and agricultural greenhouse areas). As a step prior to extracting the DSM, different orientation models based on refined rational polynomial coefficients (RPC) and a variable number of very accurate ground control points (GCPs) were tested. The best sensor orientation model for Deimos-2 L1B satellite images was the RPC model refined by a first-order polynomial adjustment (RPC1) supported on 12 accurate and evenly spatially distributed GCPs. Regarding the Deimos-2 based DSM, its completeness and vertical accuracy were compared with those obtained from a WorldView-2 panchromatic stereo pair by using exactly the same methodology and semiglobal matching (SGM) algorithm. The Deimos-2 showed worse completeness values (about 6% worse) and vertical accuracy results (RMSEZ 42.4% worse) than those computed from WorldView-2 imagery over the three land covers tested, although only urban areas yielded statistically significant differences (p < 0.05)

Remote Sensing of Agricultural Greenhouses and Plastic-Mulched Farmland: An Analysis of Worldwide Research

The total area of plastic-covered crops of 3019 million hectares has been increasing steadily around the world, particularly in the form of crops maintained under plastic-covered greenhouses to control their environmental conditions and their growth, thereby increasing production. This work analyzes the worldwide research dynamics on remote sensing-based mapping of agricultural greenhouses and plastic-mulched crops throughout the 21st century. In this way, a bibliometric analysis was carried out on a total of 107 publications based on the Scopus database. Different aspects of these publications were studied, such as type of publication, characteristics, categories and journal/conference name, countries, authors, and keywords. The results showed that “articles” were the type of document mostly found, while the number of published documents has exponentially increased over the last four years, growing from only one document published in 2001 to 22 in 2019. The main Scopus categories relating to the topic analyzed were Earth and Planetary Sciences (53%), Computer Science (30%), and Agricultural and Biological Sciences (28%). The most productive journal in this field was “Remote Sensing”, with 22 documents published, while China, Italy, Spain, USA, and Turkey were the five countries with the most publications. Among the main research institutions belonging to these five most productive countries, there were eight institutions from China, four from Italy, one from Spain, two from Turkey, and one from the USA. In conclusion, the evolution of the number of publications on Remote Sensing of Agricultural Greenhouses and Plastic-Mulched Farmland found throughout the period 2000–2019 allows us to classify the subject studied as an emerging research topic that is attracting an increasing level of interest worldwide, although its relative significance is still very limited within the remote sensing discipline. However, the growing demand for information on the arrangement and spatio-temporal dynamics of this increasingly important model of intensive agriculture is likely to drive this line of research in the coming years

Emergence of the pointer basis through the dynamics of correlations

We use the classical correlation between a quantum system being measured and its measurement apparatus to analyze the amount of information being retrieved in a quantum measurement process. Accounting for decoherence of the apparatus, we show that these correlations may have a sudden transition from a decay regime to a constant level. This transition characterizes a non-asymptotic emergence of the pointer basis, while the system-apparatus can still be quantum correlated. We provide a formalization of the concept of emergence of a pointer basis in an apparatus subject to decoherence. This contrast of the pointer basis emergence to the quantum to classical transition is demonstrated in an experiment with polarization entangled photon pairs.Comment: 4+2 pgs, 3 figures. Title changed. Revised version to appear on PR

Toxoplasma gondii in Meat for Human Consumption – A Brief Review of the Most Described Strategies for Its Detection and Quantification

Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic zoonotic disease widely distributed worldwide and is caused by the intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The definitive host of T. gondii is the domestic cat and the entire cat family, in which the sexual stages of the parasite develop. T. gondii can also infect a wide range of intermediate hosts, affecting most warm-blooded animals including humans. In humans, toxoplasmosis is usually asymptomatic in healthy individuals, but can develop lymphadenopathy and nonspecific symptomatology or even be fatal in infants with congenital toxoplasmosis and in immunocompromised patients. Transmission to humans is mainly through food, especially by eating undercooked meat or meat contaminated with tissue cysts. This has led to various public health organizations worldwide monitoring programs on T. gondii in animals intended for human consumption, especially in meat samples. One of the techniques employed in the laboratory is that based on the polymerase chain reaction and some of its variants, which have proven to be valuable tools for the detection of T. gondii in tissues for human consumption and many other types of biological samples. The development of different strategies for the molecular detection of T. gondii has led to the identification and quantification methodologies varying widely among laboratories. Therefore, this chapter reviews the main methods of extraction, purification, detection and quantification of T. gondii DNA in tissue samples from different species destined for human consumption