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

Phonon softening and double-well potential formation due to electron-phonon interaction in heavy-fermion systems

We investigate the periodic Anderson-Holstein model by using the dynamical mean-field theory combined with the exact diagonalization method. For the strong electron-phonon coupling g\simg g_c, the system shows an anomalous heavy-fermion behaviour which is accompanied by a large lattice fluctuation and an extreme phonon softening. We also calculate an effective potential for the ions and find that a simple harmonic potential for g\siml g_c changes into a double-well potential for g\simg g_c. The effective pairing interaction between the conduction electrons shows a maximum at $g \approx g_c$ where the superconducting transition temperature is expected to be maximum.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physica

Copper isotope fractionation between aqueous compounds relevant to low temperature geochemistry and biology

Isotope fractionation between the common Cu species present in solution (Cu[+], Cu[2+], hydroxide, chloride, sulfide, carbonate, oxalate, and ascorbate) has been investigated using both ab initio methods and experimental solvent extraction techniques. In order to establish unambiguously the existence of equilibrium isotope fractionation (as opposed to kinetic isotope fractionation), we first performed laboratory-scale liquid–liquid distribution experiments. Upon exchange between HCl medium and a macrocyclic complex, the [65]Cu/[63]Cu ratio fractionated by −1.06‰ to −0.39‰. The acidity dependence of the fractionation was appropriately explained by ligand exchange reactions between hydrated H2O and Cl[−] via intramolecular vibrations. The magnitude of the Cu isotope fractionation among important Cu ligands was also estimated by ab initio methods. The magnitude of the nuclear field shift effect to the Cu isotope fractionation represents only ∼3% of the mass-dependent fractionation. The theoretical estimation was expanded to chlorides, hydroxides, sulfides, sulfates, and carbonates under different conditions of pH. Copper isotope fractionation of up to 2‰ is expected for different forms of Cu present in seawater and for different sediments (carbonates, hydroxides, and sulfides). We found that Cu in dissolved carbonates and sulfates is isotopically much heavier (+0.6‰) than free Cu. Isotope fractionation of Cu in hydroxide is minimal. The relevance of these new results to the understanding of metabolic processes was also discussed. Copper is an essential element used by a large number of proteins for electron transfer. Further theoretical estimates of δ[65]Cu in hydrated Cu(I) and Cu(II) ions, Cu(II) ascorbates, and Cu(II) oxalate predict Cu isotope fractionation during the breakdown of ascorbate into oxalate and account for the isotopically heavy Cu found in animal kidneys

Interaction between Dislocations and θ\u27 Precipitates in an Aluminium-Copper Alloy

In the specimens containing θ\u27 precipitates, the interaction between moving dislocations and precipitates was observed, using an electron microscope with a special 16mm movie camera. The following interactions could be seen : (1) cross-slip of a dislocation between precipitates ; (2) cross-slip of a dislocation at the interface of a precipitate ; (3) bending of a dislocation at a precipitate ; (4) piled-up dislocations is front of a precipitate ; (5) the passing of a dislocation through a precipitate. These results were discussed

The role of hyperfine coupling in magnetic and quadrupolar ordering of Pr3Pd20Si6

We study the ternary clathrate Pr3Pd20Si6 in specific heat and AC-susceptibility measurements on a high-quality single crystal, distinguishing antiferromagnetic (AFM) and antiferroquadrupolar (AFQ) ordering on two sublattices of inequivalent Pr sites. The specific heat shows the direct involvement of nuclear spin degrees of freedom in the AFM ordering, which is well supported by our calculation of the hyperfine level scheme without adjustable parameters. Pr3Pd20Si6 is therefore one of the rare materials where the nuclear moments are involved in the formation of the magnetic ground state.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Association of Fatigue and Stress With Gray Matter Volume

Stress is associated with a greater risk for various health problems including reduced gray matter volume (GMV) and density in a number of brain regions. Previous studies show that neuroimaging could be a means to objectively evaluate stress. However, to date, no definite neuroimaging-derived measures are available to detect stress. In this research we used the gray-matter brain healthcare quotient (GM-BHQ), an MRI-based quotient for monitoring brain health based on GMV, as an objective scale to measure the association of stress with the whole brain. We recruited 63 healthy adults to acquire structural T1-weighted images and stress levels evaluated using three representative stress scales: the Profile of Mood States (POMS), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Chalder Fatigue Scale (CFS). We found that the GM-BHQ was sensitive to fatigue and the interaction between fatigue and stress