Multispecies Fruit Flower Detection Using a Refined Semantic Segmentation Network

In fruit production, critical crop management decisions are guided by bloom intensity, i.e., the number of flowers present in an orchard. Despite its importance, bloom intensity is still typically estimated by means of human visual inspection. Existing automated computer vision systems for flower identification are based on hand-engineered techniques that work only under specific conditions and with limited performance. This letter proposes an automated technique for flower identification that is robust to uncontrolled environments and applicable to different flower species. Our method relies on an end-to-end residual convolutional neural network (CNN) that represents the state-of-the-art in semantic segmentation. To enhance its sensitivity to flowers, we fine-tune this network using a single dataset of apple flower images. Since CNNs tend to produce coarse segmentations, we employ a refinement method to better distinguish between individual flower instances. Without any preprocessing or dataset-specific training, experimental results on images of apple, peach, and pear flowers, acquired under different conditions demonstrate the robustness and broad applicability of our method

Upper limit on mh in the MSSM and M-SUGRA vs. prospective reach of LEP

The upper limit on the lightest CP-even Higgs boson mass, mh, is analyzed within the MSSM as a function of tan(beta) for fixed mtop and Msusy. The impact of recent diagrammatic two-loop results on this limit is investigated. We compare the MSSM theoretical upper bound on mh with the lower bound obtained from experimental searches at LEP. We estimate that with the LEP data taken until the end of 1999, the region mh < 108.2 GeV can be excluded at the 95% confidence level. This corresponds to an excluded region 0.6 <= tan(beta) <= 1.9 within the MSSM for mtop = 174.3 GeV and Msusy <= 1 TeV. The final exclusion sensitivity after the end of LEP, in the year 2000, is also briefly discussed. Finally, we determine the upper limit on mh within the Minimal Supergravity (M-SUGRA) scenario up to the two-loop level, consistent with radiative electroweak symmetry breaking. We find an upper bound of mh \approx 127 GeV for mtop = 174.3 GeV in this scenario, which is slightly below the bound in the unconstrained MSSM.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

The Quest for an Intermediate-Scale Accidental Axion and Further ALPs

The recent detection of the cosmic microwave background polarimeter experiment BICEP2 of tensor fluctuations in the B-mode power spectrum basically excludes all plausible axion models where its decay constant is above $10^{13}$ GeV. Moreover, there are strong theoretical, astrophysical, and cosmological motivations for models involving, in addition to the axion, also axion-like particles (ALPs), with decay constants in the intermediate scale range, between $10^9$ GeV and $10^{13}$ GeV. Here, we present a general analysis of models with an axion and further ALPs and derive bounds on the relative size of the axion and ALP photon (and electron) coupling. We discuss what we can learn from measurements of the axion and ALP photon couplings about the fundamental parameters of the underlying ultraviolet completion of the theory. For the latter we consider extensions of the Standard Model in which the axion and the ALP(s) appear as pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons from the breaking of global chiral $U(1)$ (Peccei-Quinn (PQ)) symmetries, occuring accidentally as low energy remnants from exact discrete symmetries. In such models, the axion and the further ALP are protected from disastrous explicit symmetry breaking effects due to Planck-scale suppressed operators. The scenarios considered exploit heavy right handed neutrinos getting their mass via PQ symmetry breaking and thus explain the small mass of the active neutrinos via a seesaw relation between the electroweak and an intermediate PQ symmetry breaking scale. We show some models that can accommodate simultaneously an axion dark matter candidate, an ALP explaining the anomalous transparency of the universe for $\gamma$-rays, and an ALP explaining the recently reported 3.55 keV gamma line from galaxies and clusters of galaxies, if the respective decay constants are of intermediate scale.Comment: 43pp, 4 figures. v2: version accepted for publication in JHE

Resistivity and Thermopower of Ni2.19Mn0.81Ga

In this paper, we report results of the first studies on the thermoelectric power (TEP) of the magnetic heusler alloy Ni$_{2.19}$Mn$_{0.81}$Ga. We explain the observed temperature dependence of the TEP in terms of the crystal field (CF) splitting and compare the observed behavior to that of the stoichiometric system Ni$_2$MnGa. The resistivity as a function of temperature of the two systems serves to define the structural transition temperature, T$_M$, which is the transition from the high temperature austenitic phase to low temperatures the martensitic phase. Occurrence of magnetic (Curie-Weiss) and the martensitic transition at almost the same temperature in Ni$_{2.19}$Mn$_{0.81}$Ga has been explained from TEP to be due to changes in the density of states (DOS) at the Fermi level.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, Accepted in Physical Review B vol 70, Issue 1

Hamiltonian thermodynamics of three-dimensional dilatonic black holes

The action for a class of three-dimensional dilaton-gravity theories with a cosmological constant can be recast in a Brans-Dicke type action, with its free $\omega$ parameter. These theories have static spherically symmetric black holes. Those with well formulated asymptotics are studied through a Hamiltonian formalism, and their thermodynamical properties are found out. The theories studied are general relativity ($\omega\to\infty$), a dimensionally reduced cylindrical four-dimensional general relativity theory ($\omega=0$), and a theory representing a class of theories ($\omega=-3$). The Hamiltonian formalism is setup in three dimensions through foliations on the right region of the Carter-Penrose diagram, with the bifurcation 1-sphere as the left boundary, and anti-de Sitter infinity as the right boundary. The metric functions on the foliated hypersurfaces are the canonical coordinates. The Hamiltonian action is written, the Hamiltonian being a sum of constraints. One finds a new action which yields an unconstrained theory with one pair of canonical coordinates $\{M,P_M\}$, $M$ being the mass parameter and $P_M$ its conjugate momenta The resulting Hamiltonian is a sum of boundary terms only. A quantization of the theory is performed. The Schr\"odinger evolution operator is constructed, the trace is taken, and the partition function of the canonical ensemble is obtained. The black hole entropies differ, in general, from the usual quarter of the horizon area due to the dilaton.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figures, references added, minor changes in the revised versio

Monte Carlo Simulations of Ultrathin Magnetic Dots

In this work we study the thermodynamic properties of ultrathin ferromagnetic dots using Monte Carlo simulations. We investigate the vortex density as a function of the temperature and the vortex structure in monolayer dots with perpendicular anisotropy and long-range dipole interaction. The interplay between these two terms in the hamiltonian leads to an interesting behavior of the thermodynamic quantities as well as the vortex density.Comment: 10 figure