DeepSolarEye: Power Loss Prediction and Weakly Supervised Soiling Localization via Fully Convolutional Networks for Solar Panels

The impact of soiling on solar panels is an important and well-studied problem in renewable energy sector. In this paper, we present the first convolutional neural network (CNN) based approach for solar panel soiling and defect analysis. Our approach takes an RGB image of solar panel and environmental factors as inputs to predict power loss, soiling localization, and soiling type. In computer vision, localization is a complex task which typically requires manually labeled training data such as bounding boxes or segmentation masks. Our proposed approach consists of specialized four stages which completely avoids localization ground truth and only needs panel images with power loss labels for training. The region of impact area obtained from the predicted localization masks are classified into soiling types using the webly supervised learning. For improving localization capabilities of CNNs, we introduce a novel bi-directional input-aware fusion (BiDIAF) block that reinforces the input at different levels of CNN to learn input-specific feature maps. Our empirical study shows that BiDIAF improves the power loss prediction accuracy by about 3% and localization accuracy by about 4%. Our end-to-end model yields further improvement of about 24% on localization when learned in a weakly supervised manner. Our approach is generalizable and showed promising results on web crawled solar panel images. Our system has a frame rate of 22 fps (including all steps) on a NVIDIA TitanX GPU. Additionally, we collected first of it's kind dataset for solar panel image analysis consisting 45,000+ images.Comment: Accepted for publication at WACV 201

An analysis of surgically treated cutaneous malignancies in central India

Background: Cutaneous malignancies constitute one of the most common human malignancies. Annually, more than 400,000 people are diagnosed to have skin cancer. The skin cancers are classified into melanomas and non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC). In India, skin cancers constitute about 1-2% of all the diagnosed cancers. The present study was undertaken on 41 patients presented to tertiary health centre to measure the frequency of cutaneous malignancies in our set up, analyse the demographic profile of the patients, assess the associated morbidity and mortality, formulate the treatment protocols and collect actionable evidence base for evolving useful strategies to address this emerging public health issue.Methods: Present study was carried out in the Department of surgical oncology, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS), Central India during the period from Jan 2015 to Dec 2017. The patients included in this study fulfilled the inclusion criteria which was first who presented with cutaneous malignancy confirmed by histopathology and surgical intervention.Results: Out of a total of 41 patients with various cutaneous malignancies, 53.7% (n=22) were males while 46.3 % (n=19) were females. The mean age was 53.92 years. There were 24 cases of SCC, 4 cases of BCC, 5 cases of malignant melanoma, two cases of malignant fibrous histiocytoma, two cases of sebaceous and one case each of dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans, epithelioma, capillary haemangioma and poorly differentiated carcinoma respectively. Face was the most frequent site of involvement (n=17), followed by trunk (n=6), scalp (n=5), lower limb (n=5), genital (n=4), upper limb (n=3) and neck (n=1).Conclusions: Cutaneous malignancies are not uncommon in our set up. In our set up, SCC constitutes the leading type. Painless skin lesion of a relatively long duration is the usual presenting feature. There is intense need of mass awareness and to impart knowledge about the medical and socioeconomic implications of this emerging health issue. This will not only help to prevent the avoidable causes but also prompt early medical consultation in case an individual develops such skin lesions.

The study of cutaneous malignancies at a tertiary care hospital in central india

Background: There has been an alarming rise in the incidence of various diseases including that of cancer in the world with increase in the incidence of cutaneous malignancies owing to various changes that have taken place in the society over the past few years with respect to the culture, the lifestyle and also a contributory role has been played by the changes in the atmosphere as a result of increase in the air pollutants in the environment. Based on the scenario, we decided to conduct a study to evaluate the presentation and the management cutaneous malignancies in a teaching hospital set up in central india.Methods: A retrospective study was conducted between the time period of 1 year on the records of patients who were diagnosed with cutaneous and related malignancies who were treated at our Institute on a predesigned semi structured performa. SPSS version 23.0 was used for the analysis of the data collected.Results: We evaluated a total of 29 cases, Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) was the most common histological type (51.72%) followed by melanoma (27.59%) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC, 20.69%). 75.86% of patients with cutaneous malignancies were males and 24.14% were females. Mortality rate observed was 13.7%.Conclusions: The most common cutaneous malignancy seen in this study was squamous cell carcinoma having increased propensity towards males than females. Rate of loco-regional disease and median disease-free survival is directly dependent on the adequacy of disease-free surgical margin and to the limited extent on the adjuvant therapy

Thrombocytosis as an Initial Presentation of Plasma Cell Neoplasm: A Case Report

Plasma cell neoplasms are usually associated with normal or decreased platelet count. The association of thrombocytosis and multiple myeloma is exceedingly rare, with only six such cases reported in the literature until now. Differentiating clonal from secondary causes of thrombocytosis can be extremely difficult, yet the distinction has important therapeutic implications. We report the case of a woman presenting with thrombocytosis that led to the diagnosis of multiple myeloma. The possible etiological link between both these entities is also discussed.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Chronic Lung Function Decline in Cotton Textile Workers: Roles of Historical and Recent Exposures to Endotoxin

Background: Long-term occupational exposure to cotton dust that contains endotoxin is associated with chronic respiratory symptoms and excessive decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1), but the mechanisms of endotoxin-related chronic airflow obstruction remain unclear. Objective: In the current study, we examined temporal aspects of the exposure–response relationship between airborne endotoxin exposure, longitudinal change in FEV1, and respiratory symptoms in a cohort of Chinese cotton textile workers. Methods: This prospective cohort study followed 447 cotton textile workers from 1981 to 2006.at approximately 5-year intervals. We used a generalized estimating equations approach to model FEV1 level and respiratory symptoms as a function of past exposure (cumulative exposure up to the start of the most recent 5-year survey interval) and cumulative exposure (within the most recent interval) to endotoxins, after adjusting for other covariates. Models were stratified by active versus retired work status and by years employed before the baseline survey (< 5 and ≥ 5 years). Results and conclusions: Past exposure to endotoxin was associated with reduced FEV1 level among retired cotton workers. Among all cotton workers, past exposure was more strongly associated with reduced FEV1 for those hired < 5 years before baseline than for those who were hired ≥ 5 years after baseline. Recent endotoxin exposure was significantly associated with byssinosis, chronic bronchitis, and chronic cough

Scaling of island size and capture zone distributions in submonolayer growth

Island size and capture zone distributions (ISDs, CZDs) are studied numerically in submonolayer growth with various critical island sizes and shapes. CZDs scaled by the variance show excellent agreement with the Wigner surmise, confirming the Pimpinelli-Einstein approach for large CZs / large island dynamics. The ISD decay as exp(-s^x), with x=4, x approx 2.4 and 2 for point, fractal, and square islands, respectively. A scaling approach explains the values of x from the Gaussian decay of CZD and the efficiency of islands to capture diffusing adatoms.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Residential Black Carbon Exposure and Circulating Markers of Systemic Inflammation in Elderly Males: The Normative Aging Study

Background: Traffic-related particles (TRPs) are associated with adverse cardiovascular events. The exact mechanisms are unclear, but systemic inflammatory responses likely play a role

Chronic Lung Function Decline in Cotton Textile Workers: Roles of Historical and Recent Exposures to Endotoxin

BackgroundLong-term occupational exposure to cotton dust that contains endotoxin is associated with chronic respiratory symptoms and excessive decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1), but the mechanisms of endotoxin-related chronic airflow obstruction remain unclear.ObjectiveIn the current study, we examined temporal aspects of the exposure-response relationship between airborne endotoxin exposure, longitudinal change in FEV1, and respiratory symptoms in a cohort of Chinese cotton textile workers.MethodsThis prospective cohort study followed 447 cotton textile workers from 1981 to 2006. at approximately 5-year intervals. We used a generalized estimating equations approach to model FEV1 level and respiratory symptoms as a function of past exposure (cumulative exposure up to the start of the most recent 5-year survey interval) and cumulative exposure (within the most recent interval) to endotoxins, after adjusting for other covariates. Models were stratified by active versus retired work status and by years employed before the baseline survey (&lt; 5 and &gt; or = 5 years).Results and conclusionsPast exposure to endotoxin was associated with reduced FEV1 level among retired cotton workers. Among all cotton workers, past exposure was more strongly associated with reduced FEV1 for those hired &lt; 5 years before baseline than for those who were hired &gt; or = 5 years after baseline. Recent endotoxin exposure was significantly associated with byssinosis, chronic bronchitis, and chronic cough

G2 phase chromatin lacks determinants of replication timing

Chromatin spatial organization helps establish the replication timing decision point at early G1. However, at G2, although retained, chromatin organization is no longer necessary or sufficient to maintain the replication timing program