Deep Network for Simultaneous Decomposition and Classification in UWB-SAR Imagery

Classifying buried and obscured targets of interest from other natural and manmade clutter objects in the scene is an important problem for the U.S. Army. Targets of interest are often represented by signals captured using low-frequency (UHF to L-band) ultra-wideband (UWB) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology. This technology has been used in various applications, including ground penetration and sensing-through-the-wall. However, the technology still faces a significant issues regarding low-resolution SAR imagery in this particular frequency band, low radar cross sections (RCS), small objects compared to radar signal wavelengths, and heavy interference. The classification problem has been firstly, and partially, addressed by sparse representation-based classification (SRC) method which can extract noise from signals and exploit the cross-channel information. Despite providing potential results, SRC-related methods have drawbacks in representing nonlinear relations and dealing with larger training sets. In this paper, we propose a Simultaneous Decomposition and Classification Network (SDCN) to alleviate noise inferences and enhance classification accuracy. The network contains two jointly trained sub-networks: the decomposition sub-network handles denoising, while the classification sub-network discriminates targets from confusers. Experimental results show significant improvements over a network without decomposition and SRC-related methods

Electrical Properties Of Reactive Magnetron Sputtered Vanadium Oxide Thin Films

It is well known that vanadium oxide can take many different forms. However for this study, only the amorphous phase was investigated. Amorphous vanadium oxide (VOx) thin films were deposited on thermally grown silicon dioxide by DC magnetron sputtering using a vanadium metal target in an argon / oxygen atmosphere. The driving force of this study was to investigate the temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) and low resistivity in the amorphous films. Sheet resistance is very sensitive to small changes in temperature, making amorphous VOx very attractive to thermal sensor applications such as infrared detectors. To form the vanadium oxide, physical vapor deposition of vanadium metal at 200 Watts of DC power was used with varied amounts of oxygen in a primary argon atmosphere. During deposition, the concentration of oxygen was controlled by using a 20:80 mixture of O2 and Ar in conjunction with high purity Ar supply. Flow control techniques were derived and calculated to predict the percentage of oxygen before and during deposition to understand the reaction between the vanadium metal and oxygen. Concentrations of O2 in the deposition chamber were varied from 0.025% to 3.000% with the purpose of gaining an understanding of the affects of O2 concentration in amorphous VOx films. TCR and resistivity measurements were performed to characterize the films. The results showed a resistivity decrement with decreasing oxygen concentration. The films with lower concentrations of oxygen were found to have better TCR values then those with higher percentages of oxygen. To further reduce the resistivity of the VOx and maintain the TCR value, co-sputtering of noble metals (gold and platinum) with VOx was studied. The metals were co-sputtered at various power settings with the vanadium oxide reactive process at a fixed percentage of oxygen. The TCR and resistivity results showed that the additions of Au and Pt into VOx reduced the resistivity. However, only Au was found to improve TCR value. The results of these experiments showed that by reducing the amount of oxygen in the film, the ratio between TCR and resistivity further improved. Mechanical limits of the gas delivery system and the relatively low sensitivity to oxygen detection, gas flow control is limited when sputtering with only a single target. Several targets were therefore used during sputtering to allow for higher gas flows thereby increasing the effective sensitivity of the oxygen control. To increase the amount of available vanadium and still have a sufficient amount of detectible oxygen present, four vanadium targets were sputtered simultaneously. The measurements appeared to have a trend of increase in TCR values with a decrease in resistivity. For an ideal case, thermal sensor material should incorporate high TCR and low resistivity for better sensitivity. The amorphous vanadium oxide deposited by 4 vanadium targets seems to satisfy that requirement. In conclusion, a novel method has been established to fabricate amorphous vanadium oxide thin films with high TCR and low resistivity for infrared detectors

Understanding the role of chromatin remodeling in the regulation of circadian transcription in Drosophila.

Circadian clocks enable organisms to anticipate daily changes in the environment and coordinate temporal rhythms in physiology and behavior with the 24-h day-night cycle. The robust cycling of circadian gene expression is critical for proper timekeeping, and is regulated by transcription factor binding, RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) recruitment and elongation, and post-transcriptional mechanisms. Recently, it has become clear that dynamic alterations in chromatin landscape at the level of histone posttranslational modification and nucleosome density facilitate rhythms in transcription factor recruitment and RNAPII activity, and are essential for progression through activating and repressive phases of circadian transcription. Here, we discuss the characterization of the BRAHMA (BRM) chromatin-remodeling protein in Drosophila in the context of circadian clock regulation. By dissecting its catalytic vs. non-catalytic activities, we propose a model in which the non-catalytic activity of BRM functions to recruit repressive factors to limit the transcriptional output of CLOCK (CLK) during the active phase of circadian transcription, while the primary function of the ATP-dependent catalytic activity is to tune and prevent over-recruitment of negative regulators by increasing nucleosome density. Finally, we divulge ongoing efforts and investigative directions toward a deeper mechanistic understanding of transcriptional regulation of circadian gene expression at the chromatin level

IS014001 and OSHAS 18001, Effective EHS Management Tools for Shoe Factories in Vietnam Case Study

With growing demand from stakeholders, Vietnamese shoe factories desperately need to effectively implement sound EHS management systems. The ISO14001 and OSHAS 18001 standards ( the Standards ) have emerged as effective EHS management tools to serve those needs. However, the Vietnamese shoe industry has very limited experience in implementing those standards. They also do not understand the concept of cost-effectiveness and the challenges of implementation. Small medium enterprises anticipated difficulties in technology improvement required by the ISO 14001 due to resources limitation and all local companies concern about cost prohibited certification and no tangible market benefits (Greening Trade in Vietnam, 16). The purpose of this study was to identify the drivers, the values added, the challenges and the success factors of implementing the Standards at three shoe factories in Vietnam. The results tend to indicate that: 1) the key drivers of implementing the Standards were from stakeholder chain of actions, i.e. corporate policy, multinationals, customers, NGOs and labor groups. There was a shift from external directed to internal values regarding implementing standards at the studied factories; 2) implementing the Standards was value added. The benefits outweigh the costs. The key benefits include reduced injury, reduced waste handling costs and improved multinationals (clients) satisfaction; 3) key challenges include the workforce\u27s lack of knowledge of EHS Standards, no existing trade specific ISO 14001 and 18001 model at the time of implementing the Standards and the lack of standardized waste treatment and disposal facilities; and 4) key success factors include leadership\u27s commitment and employees\u27 involvement, top-down management , employee empowerment, and training. Most importantly, the study demonstrates evidence of successful implementing the Standards in shoe factories in Vietnam with improved EHS results

A Cyber-HIL for Investigating Control Systems in Ship Cyber Physical Systems under Communication Issues and Cyber Attacks

This paper presents a novel Cyber-Hardware-in-the-Loop (Cyber-HIL) platform for assessing control operation in ship cyber-physical systems. The proposed platform employs cutting-edge technologies, including Docker containers, real-time simulator $OPAL-RT$, and network emulator $ns3$, to create a secure and controlled testing and deployment environment for investigating the potential impact of cyber attack threats on ship control systems. Real-time experiments were conducted using an advanced load-shedding controller as a control object in both synchronous and asynchronous manners, showcasing the platform's versatility and effectiveness in identifying vulnerabilities and improving overall Ship Cyber Physical System (SCPS) security. Furthermore, the performance of the load-shedding controller under cyber attacks was evaluated by conducting tests with man-in-the-middle (MITM) and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. These attacks were implemented on the communication channels between the controller and the simulated ship system, emulating real-world scenarios. The proposed Cyber-HIL platform provides a comprehensive and effective approach to test and validate the security of ship control systems in the face of cyber threats.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figures, journal under revie

Consistency and convergence rate of phylogenetic inference via regularization

It is common in phylogenetics to have some, perhaps partial, information about the overall evolutionary tree of a group of organisms and wish to find an evolutionary tree of a specific gene for those organisms. There may not be enough information in the gene sequences alone to accurately reconstruct the correct "gene tree." Although the gene tree may deviate from the "species tree" due to a variety of genetic processes, in the absence of evidence to the contrary it is parsimonious to assume that they agree. A common statistical approach in these situations is to develop a likelihood penalty to incorporate such additional information. Recent studies using simulation and empirical data suggest that a likelihood penalty quantifying concordance with a species tree can significantly improve the accuracy of gene tree reconstruction compared to using sequence data alone. However, the consistency of such an approach has not yet been established, nor have convergence rates been bounded. Because phylogenetics is a non-standard inference problem, the standard theory does not apply. In this paper, we propose a penalized maximum likelihood estimator for gene tree reconstruction, where the penalty is the square of the Billera-Holmes-Vogtmann geodesic distance from the gene tree to the species tree. We prove that this method is consistent, and derive its convergence rate for estimating the discrete gene tree structure and continuous edge lengths (representing the amount of evolution that has occurred on that branch) simultaneously. We find that the regularized estimator is "adaptive fast converging," meaning that it can reconstruct all edges of length greater than any given threshold from gene sequences of polynomial length. Our method does not require the species tree to be known exactly; in fact, our asymptotic theory holds for any such guide tree.Comment: 34 pages, 5 figures. To appear on The Annals of Statistic