Edge Enhancement Investigations by Means of Experiments and Simulations

Standard neutron imaging procedures are based on the “shadow” of the transmitted radiation, attenuated by the sample material. Under certain conditions significant deviations from pure transmission can be found in the form of enhancement or depression at the edges of the samples. These effects can limit the quantification process in the related regions. Otherwise, an enhancement and improvement of visibility can be achieved e.g. in defect analysis. In systematic studies we investigated the dependency of these effects on the specific material (mainly for common metals), such as the sample-to-detector distance, the beam collimation, the material thickness and the neutron energy. The beam lines ICON and BOA at PSI and ANTARES at TU München were used for these experiments due to their capability for neutron imaging with highest possible spatial resolution (6.5 to 13.5 micro-meter pixel size, respectively) and their cold beam spectrum. Next to the experimental data we used a McStas tool for the description of refraction and reflection features at edges for comparison. Even if minor contributions by coherent in-line propagation phase contrast are underlined, the major effect can be described by refraction of the neutrons at the sample-void interface. Ways to suppress and to magnify the edge effects can be derived from these findings.Fil: Lehmann, E.. Paul Scherrer Institut; SuizaFil: Schulz, M.. Technische Universitat Munchen; AlemaniaFil: Wang, Y.. China Insititute of Atomic Energy; ChinaFil: Tartaglione, Aureliano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Coherence of PRNU weighted estimations for improved source camera identification

This paper presents a method for Photo Response Non Uniformity (PRNU) pattern noise based camera identification. It takes advantage of the coherence between different PRNU estimations restricted to specific image regions. The main idea is based on the following observations: different methods can be used for estimating PRNU contribution in a given image; the estimation has not the same accuracy in the whole image as a more faithful estimation is expected from flat regions. Hence, two different estimations of the reference PRNU have been considered in the classification procedure, and the coherence of the similarity metric between them, when evaluated in three different image regions, is used as classification feature. More coherence is expected in case of matching, i.e. the image has been acquired by the analysed device, than in the opposite case, where similarity metric is almost noisy and then unpredictable. Presented results show that the proposed approach provides comparable and often better classification results of some state of the art methods, showing to be robust to lack of flat field (FF) images availability, devices of the same brand or model, uploading/downloading from social networks

Delving in the loss landscape to embed robust watermarks into neural networks

International audienc

Capsule Networks with Routing Annealing

International audienc

HEMP: High-order entropy minimization for neural network compression

We formulate the entropy of a quantized artificial neural network as a differentiable function that can be plugged as a regularization term into the cost function minimized by gradient descent. Our formulation scales efficiently beyond the first order and is agnostic of the quantization scheme. The network can then be trained to minimize the entropy of the quantized parameters, so that they can be optimally compressed via entropy coding. We experiment with our entropy formulation at quantizing and compressing well-known network architectures over multiple datasets. Our approach compares favorably over similar methods, enjoying the benefits of higher order entropy estimate, showing flexibility towards non-uniform quantization (we use Lloyd-max quantization), scalability towards any entropy order to be minimized and efficiency in terms of compression. We show that HEMP is able to work in synergy with other approaches aiming at pruning or quantizing the model itself, delivering significant benefits in terms of storage size compressibility without harming the model's performance

A multiscale approach for precipitation verification applied to the FORALPS case studies

International audienceMultiscale methods, such as the power spectrum, are suitable diagnostic tools for studying the second order statistics of a gridded field. For instance, in the case of Numerical Weather Prediction models, a drop in the power spectrum for a given scale indicates the inability of the model to reproduce the variance of the phenomenon below the correspondent spatial scale. Hence, these statistics provide an insight into the real resolution of a gridded field and must be accurately known for interpolation and downscaling purposes. In this work, belonging to the EU INTERREG IIIB Alpine Space FORALPS project, the power spectra of the precipitation fields for two intense rain events, which occurred over the north-eastern alpine region, have been studied in detail. A drop in the power spectrum at the shortest scales (about 30 km) has been found, as well as a strong matching between the precipitation spectrum and the spectrum of the orography. Furthermore, it has also been shown how the spectra help understand the behavior of the skill scores traditionally used in Quantitative Precipitation Forecast verification, as these are sensitive to the amount of small scale detail present in the fields

New conditions for finite-time stability of impulsive dynamical systems via piecewise quadratic functions

In this paper, the use of time-varying piecewise quadratic functions is investigated to characterize the finite-time stability of state-dependent impulsive dynamical linear systems. Finite-time stability defines the behavior of a dynamic system over a bounded time interval. More precisely, a system is said to be finite-time stable if, given a set of initial conditions, its state vector does not exit a predefined domain for a certain finite interval of time. This paper presents new sufficient conditions for finite-time stability based on time-varying piecewise quadratic functions. These conditions can be reformulated as a set of Linear Matrix Inequalities that can be efficiently solved through convex optimization solvers. Dif ferent numerical analysis are included in order to prove that the presented conditions are able to improve the results presented so far in the literature

The mobility of Atlantic baric depressions leading to intense precipitation over Italy: a preliminary statistical analysis

International audienceThe speed of Atlantic surface depressions, occurred during the autumn and winter seasons and that lead to intense precipitation over Italy from 1951 to 2000, was investigated. Italy was divided into 5 regions as documented in previous climatological studies (based on Principal Component Analysis). Intense precipitation events were selected on the basis of in situ rain gauge data and clustered according to the region that they hit. For each intense precipitation event we tried to identify an associated surface depression and we tracked it, within a large domain covering the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions, from its formation to cyclolysis in order to estimate its speed. "Depression speeds" were estimated with 6-h resolution and clustered into slow and non-slow classes by means of a threshold, coinciding with the first quartile of speed distribution and depression centre speeds were associated with their positions. Slow speeds occurring over an area including Italy and the western Mediterranean basin showed frequencies higher than 25%, for all the Italian regions but one. The probability of obtaining by chance the observed more than 25% success rate was estimated by means of a binomial distribution. The statistical reliability of the result is confirmed for only one region. For Italy as a whole, results were confirmed at 95% confidence level. Stability of the statistical inference, with respect to errors in estimating depression speed and changes in the threshold of slow depressions, was analysed and essentially confirmed the previous results

Ciguatera mini review: 21st century environmental challenges and the interdisciplinary research efforts rising to meet them

Globally, the livelihoods of over a billion people are affected by changes to marine eco-systems, both structurally and systematically. Resources and ecosystem services, provided by the marine environment, contribute nutrition, income, and health benefits for communities. One threat to these securities is ciguatera poisoning; worldwide, the most commonly reported non‐bacterial seafood‐related illness. Ciguatera is caused by the consumption of (primarily) finfish contaminated with ciguatoxins, potent neurotoxins produced by benthic single‐cell microalgae. When consumed, ciguatoxins are biotransformed and can bioaccumulate throughout the food‐web via complex path-ways. Ciguatera‐derived food insecurity is particularly extreme for small island‐nations, where fear of intoxication can lead to fishing restrictions by region, species, or size. Exacerbating these com-plexities are anthropogenic or natural changes occurring in global marine habitats, e.g., climate change, greenhouse‐gas induced physical oceanic changes, overfishing, invasive species, and even the international seafood trade. Here we provide an overview of the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century regarding the many facets of ciguatera, including the complex nature of this illness, the biological/environmental factors affecting the causative organisms, their toxins, vectors, detection methods, human‐health oriented responses, and ultimately an outlook towards the future. Ciguatera research efforts face many social and environmental challenges this century. However, several future‐oriented goals are within reach, including digital solutions for seafood supply chains, identifying novel compounds and methods with the potential for advanced diagnostics, treatments, and prediction capabilities. The advances described herein provide confidence that the tools are now available to answer many of the remaining questions surrounding ciguatera and therefore protection measures can become more accurate and routine

Cauda Equina Enhancing Lesion in an HIV-Infected Patient. Case Report and Literature Review.

We report the case of an HIV-infected young men with neuro-toxoplasmosis localized in the spinal cord. The patient received chemotherapy and immunotherapy for Burkitt lymphoma one year before. At the time of the diagnosis of toxoplasmosis, he was on prophylaxis with trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole and in complete remission of Burkitt lymphoma. The CD4+ T cell count was 270/μl and the HIV viremia was undetectable. These findings suggest that in this patient, the immunodeficiency promoting the neurologic toxoplasmosis arose more from previous immuno-chemotherapy than from the HIV-infection itself. On the whole, this case highlights that the risk stratification for opportunistic infections of HIV-infected patients should carefully consider their previous medical history and therapies received