Few-Cost Salient Object Detection with Adversarial-Paced Learning

Detecting and segmenting salient objects from given image scenes has received great attention in recent years. A fundamental challenge in training the existing deep saliency detection models is the requirement of large amounts of annotated data. While gathering large quantities of training data becomes cheap and easy, annotating the data is an expensive process in terms of time, labor and human expertise. To address this problem, this paper proposes to learn the effective salient object detection model based on the manual annotation on a few training images only, thus dramatically alleviating human labor in training models. To this end, we name this task as the few-cost salient object detection and propose an adversarial-paced learning (APL)-based framework to facilitate the few-cost learning scenario. Essentially, APL is derived from the self-paced learning (SPL) regime but it infers the robust learning pace through the data-driven adversarial learning mechanism rather than the heuristic design of the learning regularizer. Comprehensive experiments on four widely-used benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively approach to the existing supervised deep salient object detection models with only 1k human-annotated training images. The project page is available at https://github.com/hb-stone/FC-SOD

Shape model and rotation acceleration of (1685) Toro and (85989) 1999 JD6 from optical observations

The Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect is a net torque caused by solar radiation directly reflected and thermally re-emitted from the surface of small asteroids and is considered to be crucial in their dynamical evolution. By long-term photometric observations of selected near-Earth asteroids, it's hoped to enlarge asteroid samples with a detected YORP effect to facilitate the development of a theoretical framework. Archived light-curve data are collected and photometric observations are made for (1685) Toro and (85989) 1999 JD6, which enables measurement of their YORP effect by inverting the light curve to fit observations from a convex shape model. For (1685) Toro, a YORP acceleration $\upsilon=(3.2\pm0.3)\times10^{-9}\ \rm{rad\cdot d^{-2}}(1\sigma\ error)$ is updated, which is consistent with previous YORP detection based on different light-curve data; for (85989) 1999 JD6, it is determined that the sidereal period is $7.667749\pm 0.000009$ h, the rotation pole direction locates is at $\lambda=232\pm 2^{\circ},\ \beta = -59\pm 1^{\circ}$, the acceleration is detected to be $\upsilon = (2.4\pm0.3)\times10^{-8}\ \rm{rad\cdot d^{-2}}(1\sigma\ error)$ and in addition to obtaining an excellent agreement between the observations and model. YORP should produce both spin-up and spin-down cases. However, including (85989) 1999 JD6, the $\rm{d}\omega/\rm{d}t$ values of eleven near-Earth asteroids are positive totally, which suggests that there is either a bias in the sample of YORP detections or a real feature needs to be explained.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

Rapid transform optimisation strategy for decoherence-protected quantum register in diamond

Decoherence-protected spins associated with nitrogen-vacancy color centers in diamond possess remarkable long coherence time, which make them one of the most promising and robust quantum registers. The current demand is to explore practical rapid control strategies for preparing and manipulating the such register. Our work provides all-microwave control strategies optimized using multiple optimization methods to significantly reduce the processing time by $80\%$ with a set of smooth near-zero-endpoints control fields that are shown to be experimentally realizable. Furthermore, we optimize and analyze the robustness of these strategies under frequency and amplitude imperfections of the control fields, during which process we use only $16$ samples to give a fair estimation of the robustness map with $2500$ pixels. Overall, we provide a ready-to-implement recipe to facilitate high-performance information processing via decoherence-protected quantum register for future quantum technology applications.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Comparative Study on Volatile Flavor of Chinese Acid-curd Cheese Using Sensory Evaluation, Gas Chromatography-Ion Mobility Spectrometry and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

The difference in the volatile flavors of five different Chinese acid-curd cheeses including milk fan, milk cake, Qula (yak milk cheese), Hurood cheese and milk knot was analyzed by sensory evaluation, gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results of sensory evaluation showed that the five cheeses had a significant difference in flavor. Among them, dairy fan, with strong milky, fruity and bread-like aromas, had the best overall aroma performance and the highest preference score. The combination of GC-IMS and GC-MS expanded the detection range of volatile flavor compounds, and could more comprehensively reflect the volatile compounds in different Chinese acid-curd cheeses. The sensory evaluation results were verified by GC-IMS analysis. All five samples had their own characteristic peak areas, and the characteristic peak areas of dairy fan and Qula were significantly larger than those of the other samples. GC-MS analysis showed that the proportion of acids in dairy fan, Hurood cheese and Qula was the highest, the proportion of esters in milk cake was the highest, and the proportion of alcohols in milk knot was the highest. The calculation of odor activity value (OAV) combined with the results of principal component analysis (PCA) showed that ethanol, ethyl butyrate, ethyl caproate, 2-heptanone and δ-caprylactone were the major contributors to the flavor of dairy fan. Phenethyl formate, phenethyl acetate, caprylic acid, lauric acid and n-decanoic acid were the major contributors to the flavor of Qula. Dodecyl aldehyde was identified as the characteristic flavor compound of dairy cake. Partial least squares analysis (PLSA) revealed the correlation between aroma properties and volatile flavor compounds. Dairy fan has the potential to be developed and promoted in China because of its excellent flavor and consumer preference

Even Visually Intact Cell Walls in Waterlogged Archaeological Wood Are Chemically Deteriorated and Mechanically Fragile: A Case of a 170 Year-Old Shipwreck

Structural and chemical deterioration and its impact on cell wall mechanics were investigated for visually intact cell walls (VICWs) in waterlogged archaeological wood (WAW). Cell wall mechanical properties were examined by nanoindentation without prior embedding. WAW showed more than 25% decrease of both hardness and elastic modulus. Changes of cell wall composition, cellulose crystallite structure and porosity were investigated by ATR-FTIR imaging, Raman imaging, wet chemistry, 13C-solid state NMR, pyrolysis-GC/MS, wide angle X-ray scattering, and N2 nitrogen adsorption. VICWs in WAW possessed a cleavage of carboxyl in side chains of xylan, a serious loss of polysaccharides, and a partial breakage of β-O-4 interlinks in lignin. This was accompanied by a higher amount of mesopores in cell walls. Even VICWs in WAW were severely deteriorated at the nanoscale with impact on mechanics, which has strong implications for the conservation of archaeological shipwrecks