Mobile Video Object Detection with Temporally-Aware Feature Maps

This paper introduces an online model for object detection in videos designed to run in real-time on low-powered mobile and embedded devices. Our approach combines fast single-image object detection with convolutional long short term memory (LSTM) layers to create an interweaved recurrent-convolutional architecture. Additionally, we propose an efficient Bottleneck-LSTM layer that significantly reduces computational cost compared to regular LSTMs. Our network achieves temporal awareness by using Bottleneck-LSTMs to refine and propagate feature maps across frames. This approach is substantially faster than existing detection methods in video, outperforming the fastest single-frame models in model size and computational cost while attaining accuracy comparable to much more expensive single-frame models on the Imagenet VID 2015 dataset. Our model reaches a real-time inference speed of up to 15 FPS on a mobile CPU.Comment: In CVPR 201

Stochastic Acceleration of 3^3He and 4^4He in Solar Flares by Parallel Propagating Plasma Waves: General Results

We study the acceleration in solar flares of $^3$He and $^4$He from a thermal background by parallel propagating plasma waves with a general broken power-law spectrum that takes into account the turbulence generation processes at large scales and the thermal damping effects at small scales. The exact dispersion relation for a cold plasma is used to describe the relevant wave modes. Because low-energy $\alpha$-particles only interact with small scale waves in the $^4$He-cyclotron branch, where the wave frequencies are below the $\alpha$-particle gyro-frequency, their pitch angle averaged acceleration time is at least one order of magnitude longer than that of $^3$He ions, which mostly resonate with relatively higher frequency waves in the proton-cyclotron (PC) branch. The $\alpha$-particle acceleration rate starts to approach that of $^3$He beyond a few tens of keV nucleon$^{-1}$, where $\alpha$-particles can also interact with long wavelength waves in the PC branch. However, the $^4$He acceleration rate is always smaller than that of $^3$He. Consequently, the acceleration of $^4$He is suppressed significantly at low energies, and the spectrum of the accelerated $\alpha$-particles is always softer than that of $^3$He. The model gives reasonable account of the observed low-energy $^3$He and $^4$He fluxes and spectra in the impulsive solar energetic particle events observed with the {\it Advanced Composition Explorer}. We explore the model parameter space to show how observations may be used to constrain the model.Comment: 29 pages, 11 Figures, Submitted to Ap

Stochastic Acceleration of 3He and 4He by Parallel Propagating Plasma Waves

Stochastic acceleration of $^3$He and $^4$He from a thermal background by parallel propagating turbulent plasma waves with a single power-law spectrum of the wavenumber is studied. In the model, both ions interact with several resonant modes. When one of these modes dominates, the acceleration rate is reduced considerably. At low energies, this happens for $^4$He, but not for $^3$He where contributions from the two stronger modes are comparable so that acceleration of $^3$He is very efficient. As a result, the acceleration of $^4$He is suppressed by a barrier below $\sim 100$ keV nucleon$^{-1}$ and there is a prominent quasi-thermal component in the $^4$He spectra, while almost all the injected $^3$He ions are accelerated to high energies. This accounts for the large enrichment of $^3$He at high energies observed in impulsive solar energetic particle events. With reasonable plasma parameters this also provides a good fit to the spectra of both ions. Beyond $\sim 1$ MeV nucleon$^{-1}$, the spectrum of $^3$He is softer than that of $^4$He, which is consistent with the observed decrease of the $^3$He to $^4$He ratio with energy. This study also indicates that the acceleration, Coulomb losses and diffusive escape of the particles from the acceleration site {\it all} play important roles in shaping the ion spectra. This can explain the varied spectral shapes observed recently by the {\it Advanced Composition Explorer}.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Apj

Cascade and Damping of Alfv\'{e}n-Cyclotron Fluctuations: Application to Solar Wind Turbulence Spectrum

With the diffusion approximation, we study the cascade and damping of Alfv\'{e}n-cyclotron fluctuations in solar plasmas numerically. Motivated by wave-wave couplings and nonlinear effects, we test several forms of the diffusion tensor. For a general locally anisotropic and inhomogeneous diffusion tensor in the wave vector space, the turbulence spectrum in the inertial range can be fitted with power-laws with the power-law index varying with the wave propagation direction. For several locally isotropic but inhomogeneous diffusion coefficients, the steady-state turbulence spectra are nearly isotropic in the absence of damping and can be fitted by a single power-law function. However, the energy flux is strongly polarized due to the inhomogeneity that leads to an anisotropic cascade. Including the anisotropic thermal damping, the turbulence spectrum cuts off at the wave numbers, where the damping rates become comparable to the cascade rates. The combined anisotropic effects of cascade and damping make this cutoff wave number dependent on the wave propagation direction, and the propagation direction integrated turbulence spectrum resembles a broken power-law, which cuts off at the maximum of the cutoff wave numbers or the $^4$He cyclotron frequency. Taking into account the Doppler effects, the model can naturally reproduce the broken power-law wave spectra observed in the solar wind and predicts that a higher break frequency is aways accompanied with a greater spectral index change that may be caused by the increase of the Alfv\'{e}n Mach number, the reciprocal of the plasma beta, and/or the angle between the solar wind velocity and the mean magnetic field. These predictions can be tested by future observations

Identification of contrastive and comparable school neighborhoods for childhood obesity and physical activity research

The neighborhood social and physical environments are considered significant factors contributing to children's inactive lifestyles, poor eating habits, and high levels of childhood obesity. Understanding of neighborhood environmental profiles is needed to facilitate community-based research and the development and implementation of community prevention and intervention programs. We sought to identify contrastive and comparable districts for childhood obesity and physical activity research studies. We have applied GIS technology to manipulate multiple data sources to generate objective and quantitative measures of school neighborhood-level characteristics for school-based studies. GIS technology integrated data from multiple sources (land use, traffic, crime, and census tract) and available social and built environment indicators theorized to be associated with childhood obesity and physical activity. We used network analysis and geoprocessing tools within a GIS environment to integrate these data and to generate objective social and physical environment measures for school districts. We applied hierarchical cluster analysis to categorize school district groups according to their neighborhood characteristics. We tested the utility of the area characterizations by using them to select comparable and contrastive schools for two specific studies. RESULTS: We generated school neighborhood-level social and built environment indicators for all 412 Chicago public elementary school districts. The combination of GIS and cluster analysis allowed us to identify eight school neighborhoods that were contrastive and comparable on parameters of interest (land use and safety) for a childhood obesity and physical activity study. CONCLUSION: The combination of GIS and cluster analysis makes it possible to objectively characterize urban neighborhoods and to select comparable and/or contrasting neighborhoods for community-based health studies