Effective Use of Dilated Convolutions for Segmenting Small Object Instances in Remote Sensing Imagery

Thanks to recent advances in CNNs, solid improvements have been made in semantic segmentation of high resolution remote sensing imagery. However, most of the previous works have not fully taken into account the specific difficulties that exist in remote sensing tasks. One of such difficulties is that objects are small and crowded in remote sensing imagery. To tackle with this challenging task we have proposed a novel architecture called local feature extraction (LFE) module attached on top of dilated front-end module. The LFE module is based on our findings that aggressively increasing dilation factors fails to aggregate local features due to sparsity of the kernel, and detrimental to small objects. The proposed LFE module solves this problem by aggregating local features with decreasing dilation factor. We tested our network on three remote sensing datasets and acquired remarkably good results for all datasets especially for small objects

The Autonomous System Architecture of the Small SAR Satellite Operation System and On-Orbit Autonomous Operation Experiences

We are developing a small SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite for our commercial solution business. Our goal is to deploy at least 30 small SAR satellites in orbit and enable frequent and persistent observations until the Mid 2020s. We launched the satellite on 15th December 2020 by Rocket Lab\u27s Electron. We waited for a month until we took the first image to confirm the complete evacuation of the residual air and contaminations to prevent any hazardous electrical discharge. We took the first image on 8th February. The satellite is now operating in a fine state and acquiring images requested by the customers. We will make six satellite constellation until 2023. We also describe our system architecture including our solution business and the satellite development. Our business development team and the satellite development team are communicating with each other for adequate system architecture and agile satellite development. Our business development team acquires many novel needs from our customers. One of our goals is an agile reflection of the user\u27s needs for the satellite development. We are now establishing a process and an organization to extract those business needs, analyze them and identify the key requirements for the satellite performances and functions. We believe that one important challenge is to achieve application layer integration from a customer business system to a satellite on-board software through solution platform, data platform, satellite control ground system, and the satellite itself. We try to harmonize the software and information processes of the application layer, although the platform where the application is located, the organization where staffs belong, and their culture are different. We wish our activities contribute to our small satellite community or ecosystem and a system architecture including component suppliers, communication service providers, and data processing service providers

Management of gingival hyperplasia associated with sore mucositis in an acute leukemia patient

Gingival enlargement is a prominent symptom in patients with myelomonocytic leukemia (AML-M4) and acute monocytic leukemia (AML-M5). Poor oral hygiene may aggravate the condition. However, patients are apt to avoid oral care out of fear of the pain and hemorrhage associated with the myelopoietic disorder. Here we report a case of a patient with AML-M4 in whom oral care intervention from an early stage improved the quality of life by relieving the pain associated with mucositis and gingival overgrowth aggravated by preceding periodontal lesions

Meissner state of high-Tc oxide thin films observed by scanning superconducting quantum interference device microscopy

The magnetic level of the Meissner state in high-Tc oxide thin films is investigated using scanning superconducting quantum interference device microscopy. We find that the Meissner level observed is not uniquely determined and shifts with the temperature and depends on the doping level of individual oxide films. The result at higher temperature may be interpreted by a grain-coupled model which reflects the granular nature of high-Tc oxides and is useful for evaluation of high-Tc film quality

Management of gingival hyperplasia associated with sore mucositis in an acute leukemia patient

Gingival enlargement is a prominent symptom in patients with myelomonocytic leukemia (AML-M4) and acute monocytic leukemia (AML-M5). Poor oral hygiene may aggravate the condition. However, patients are apt to avoid oral care out of fear of the pain and hemorrhage associated with the myelopoietic disorder. Here we report a case of a patient with AML-M4 in whom oral care intervention from an early stage improved the quality of life by relieving the pain associated with mucositis and gingival overgrowth aggravated by preceding periodontal lesions