End-to-End Trainable Deep Active Contour Models for Automated Image Segmentation: Delineating Buildings in Aerial Imagery

The automated segmentation of buildings in remote sensing imagery is a challenging task that requires the accurate delineation of multiple building instances over typically large image areas. Manual methods are often laborious and current deep-learning-based approaches fail to delineate all building instances and do so with adequate accuracy. As a solution, we present Trainable Deep Active Contours (TDACs), an automatic image segmentation framework that intimately unites Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Active Contour Models (ACMs). The Eulerian energy functional of the ACM component includes per-pixel parameter maps that are predicted by the backbone CNN, which also initializes the ACM. Importantly, both the ACM and CNN components are fully implemented in TensorFlow and the entire TDAC architecture is end-to-end automatically differentiable and backpropagation trainable without user intervention. TDAC yields fast, accurate, and fully automatic simultaneous delineation of arbitrarily many buildings in the image. We validate the model on two publicly available aerial image datasets for building segmentation, and our results demonstrate that TDAC establishes a new state-of-the-art performance.Comment: Accepted to European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 202

ПЕРСПЕКТИВИ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ SMART-СТРАТЕГІЇ В РОЗВИТКУ ПІСЛЯДИПЛОМНОЇ МЕДИЧНОЇ ОСВІТИ

The main principles and prospects for using the new education strategy, which was named by SMART, are considered. It is shown that the most important principle of medical postgraduate SMART-education is to ensure its competence-oriented orientation, that is, constant updating of the content of training. It is emphasized that the solutions to the problems of SMART education are related to two areas: the recognition of the need to combine formal and informal learning and the intellectualization of knowledge transfer processes.Рассмотрены основные принципы и перспективы использования новой стратегии образования, которая получила название SMART. Показано, что важнейшим принципом медицинского последипломного SMART-образования является обеспечение его компетентностной ориентированности, то есть постоянное обновление содержания обучения. Подчеркивается, что решение проблем SMART-образования связано с двумя направлениями: признанием необходимости объединения формального и информального обучения и интеллектуализацией процессов передачи знаний.Розглянуто основні принципи та перспективи використання нової стратегії освіти, що здобула назву SMART. Показано, що найважливішим принципом медичної післядипломної SMART-освіти є забезпечення її компетентнісної орієнтованості, тобто постійного оновлення змісту навчання. Підкреслюється, що рішення проблем SMART-освіти пов'язано з двома напрямами: визнанням необхідності об'єднання формального й інформального навчання та інтелектуалізацією процесів передавання знань

QCD analysis of W- and Z-boson production at Tevatron

Recent measurements of the W-boson charge asymmetry and of the Z-boson production cross sections, performed at the Tevatron collider in Run II by the D0 and CDF collaborations, are studied using the HERAFitter framework to assess their impact on the proton parton distribution functions (PDFs). The Tevatron measurements, together with deep-inelastic scattering data from HERA, are included in a QCD analysis performed at next-to-leading order, and compared to the predictions obtained using other PDF sets from different groups. Good agreement between measurements and theoretical predictions is observed. The Tevatron data provide significant constraints on the d-valence quark distribution

A Closest Point Proposal for MCMC-based Probabilistic Surface Registration

We propose to view non-rigid surface registration as a probabilistic inference problem. Given a target surface, we estimate the posterior distribution of surface registrations. We demonstrate how the posterior distribution can be used to build shape models that generalize better and show how to visualize the uncertainty in the established correspondence. Furthermore, in a reconstruction task, we show how to estimate the posterior distribution of missing data without assuming a fixed point-to-point correspondence. We introduce the closest-point proposal for the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. Our proposal overcomes the limitation of slow convergence compared to a random-walk strategy. As the algorithm decouples inference from modeling the posterior using a propose-and-verify scheme, we show how to choose different distance measures for the likelihood model. All presented results are fully reproducible using publicly available data and our open-source implementation of the registration framework

Measurement of neutral current e+/-p cross sections at high Bjorken x with the ZEUS detector

The neutral current e+/-p cross section has been measured up to values of Bjorken x of approximately 1 with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 187 inv. pb of e-p and 142 inv. pb of e+p collisions at sqrt(s) = 318GeV. Differential cross sections in x and Q2, the exchanged boson virtuality, are presented for Q2 geq 725GeV2. An improved reconstruction method and greatly increased amount of data allows a finer binning in the high-x region of the neutral current cross section and leads to a measurement with much improved precision compared to a similar earlier analysis. The measurements are compared to Standard Model expectations based on a variety of recent parton distribution functions.Comment: 39 pages, 9 figure

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum