Artificial intelligence-based software (AID-FOREST) for tree detection: A new framework for fast and accurate forest inventorying using LiDAR point clouds

Forest inventories are essential to accurately estimate different dendrometric and forest stand parameters. However, classical forest inventories are time consuming, slow to conduct, sometimes inaccurate and costly. To address this problem, an efficient alternative approach has been sought and designed that will make this type of field work cheaper, faster, more accurate, and easier to complete. The implementation of this concept has required the development of a specifically designed software called "Artificial Intelligence for Digital Forest (AID-FOREST)", which is able to process point clouds obtained via mobile terrestrial laser scanning (MTLS) and then, to provide an array of multiple useful and accurate dendrometric and forest stand parameters. Singular characteristics of this approach are: No data pre-processing is required either pre-treatment of forest stand; fully automatic process once launched; no limitations by the size of the point cloud file and fast computations.To validate AID-FOREST, results provided by this software were compared against the obtained from in-situ classical forest inventories. To guaranty the soundness and generality of the comparison, different tree spe-cies, plot sizes, and tree densities were measured and analysed. A total of 76 plots (10,887 trees) were selected to conduct both a classic forest inventory reference method and a MTLS (ZEB-HORIZON, Geoslam, ltd.) scanning to obtain point clouds for AID-FOREST processing, known as the MTLS-AIDFOREST method. Thus, we compared the data collected by both methods estimating the average number of trees and diameter at breast height (DBH) for each plot. Moreover, 71 additional individual trees were scanned with MTLS and processed by AID-FOREST and were then felled and divided into logs measuring 1 m in length. This allowed us to accurately measure the DBH, total height, and total volume of the stems.When we compared the results obtained with each methodology, the mean detectability was 97% and ranged from 81.3 to 100%, with a bias (underestimation by MTLS-AIDFOREST method) in the number of trees per plot of 2.8% and a relative root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 9.2%. Species, plot size, and tree density did not significantly affect detectability. However, this parameter was significantly affected by the ecosystem visual complexity index (EVCI). The average DBH per plot was underestimated (but was not significantly different from 0) by the MTLS-AIDFOREST, with the average bias for pooled data being 1.8% with a RMSE of 7.5%. Similarly, there was no statistically significant differences between the two distribution functions of the DBH at the 95.0% confidence level.Regarding the individual tree parameters, MTLS-AIDFOREST underestimated DBH by 0.16 % (RMSE = 5.2 %) and overestimated the stem volume (Vt) by 1.37 % (RMSE = 14.3 %, although the BIAS was not statistically significantly different from 0). However, the MTLS-AIDFOREST method overestimated the total height (Ht) of the trees by a mean 1.33 m (5.1 %; relative RMSE = 11.5 %), because of the different height concepts measured by both methodological approaches. Finally, AID-FOREST required 30 to 66 min per ha-1 to fully automatically process the point cloud data from the *.las file corresponding to a given hectare plot. Thus, applying our MTLS-AIDFOREST methodology to make full forest inventories, required a 57.3 % of the time required to perform classical plot forest inventories (excluding the data postprocessing time in the latter case). A free trial of AID -FOREST can be requested at [email protected]

Unification of gauge couplings and the tau neutrino mass in Supergravity without R-parity

Minimal R-parity violating supergravity predicts a value for $alpha_s(M_Z)$ smaller than in the case with conserved R-parity, and therefore closer to the experimental world average. We show that the R-parity violating effect on the $alpha_s$ prediction comes from the larger two-loop b-quark Yukawa contribution to the renormalization group evolution of the gauge couplings which characterizes R-parity violating supergravity. The effect is correlated to the tau neutrino mass and is sensitive to the initial conditions on the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters at the unification scale. We show how a few percent effect on $alpha_s(M_Z)$ may naturally occur even with tau neutrino masses as small as indicated by the simplest neutrino oscillation interpretation of the atmospheric neutrino data from Super-Kamiokande.Comment: Latex, 21 pages including 2 figure

Single-phase five-level multilevel inverter based on a transistors six-pack module

This article introduces a single-phase five-level multilevel inverter based on six switches and two transformers. The proposed converter requires a single dc input source with low voltage. The disposition of switches makes it possible to build the converter with a transistors six-pack module off-the-shelves, traditionally used to build three-phase inverters, which simplifies the manufacturing process. The converter increases the voltage with two transformers; for that reason, it does not require an auxiliary step-up converter. The use of transformers (with the transformer’s turns ratio) allows for using the same topology for several input voltage levels. To verify the operation of the proposed multilevel inverter, a computer-based simulation was performed with PSIM, a software that considers parasitic components. The results show that the proposed converter can work properly

The consecutive disparity of precipitation in conterminous Spain

Precipitation irregularity constitutes a constraint for natural systems and socio-economic activities, particularly in water-scarce environments. Standard variability statistics such as the standard deviation, variance, and coefficient of variation do not consider the chronological order of these values. In Climatology, however, the temporal order of meteorological events is a relevant factor that can affect natural and socio-economic systems. In order to evaluate the disparity between consecutive values in precipitation series, we applied the Consecutive Disparity Index (D) to the monthly grid with the highest spatial resolution (10×10 km) existing in Peninsular Spain for the period December 1915–November 2015. Monthly, seasonal, and annual D values show an increase from north to southwest, especially in July and August. The D values for the month-to-month correlative series and for monthly mean precipitation reveal a relatively similar pattern. In the latter case, however, the low values are recorded towards southern Spain, following some mountain ranges in the Centre-East of the territory. Monthly, seasonal, and annual precipitation values are also negatively correlated with the corresponding D values. © 2021, The Author(s)

Supernova Bounds on Majoron-emitting decays of light neutrinos

Neutrino masses arising from the spontaneous violation of ungauged lepton-number are accompanied by a physical Goldstone boson, generically called Majoron. In the high-density supernova medium the effects of Majoron-emitting neutrino decays are important even if they are suppressed in vacuo by small neutrino masses and/or small off-diagonal couplings. We reconsider the influence of these decays on the neutrino signal of supernovae in the light of recent Super-Kamiokande data on solar and atmospheric neutrinos. We find that majoron-neutrino coupling constants in the range 3\times 10^{-7}\lsim g\lsim 2\times 10^{-5} or g \gsim 3 \times 10^{-4} are excluded by the observation of SN1987A. Then we discuss the potential of Superkamiokande and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory to detect majoron neutrino interactions in the case of a future galactic supernova. We find that these experiments could probe majoron neutrino interactions with improved sensitivity.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figure

Combining series elastic actuation and magneto-rheological damping for the control of agile locomotion

All-terrain robot locomotion is an active topic of research. Search and rescue maneuvers and exploratory missions could benefit from robots with the abilities of real animals. However, technological barriers exist to ultimately achieving the actuation system, which is able to meet the exigent requirements of these robots. This paper describes the locomotioncontrol of a leg prototype, designed and developed to make a quadruped walk dynamically while exhibiting compliant interaction with the environment. The actuation system of the leg is based on the hybrid use of series elasticity and magneto-rheological dampers, which provide variable compliance for natural-looking motion and improved interaction with the ground. The locomotioncontrol architecture has been proposed to exploit natural leg dynamics in order to improve energy efficiency. Results show that the controller achieves a significant reduction in energy consumption during the leg swing phase thanks to the exploitation of inherent leg dynamics. Added to this, experiments with the real leg prototype show that the combined use of series elasticity and magneto-rheologicaldamping at the knee provide a 20 % reduction in the energy wasted in braking the knee during its extension in the leg stance phase

RIP2 plays a role in cardiac Ca2+ mishandling prompted by chronic kidney disease

post-print81,7 K

The seesaw mechanism at TeV scale in the 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos

We implement the seesaw mechanism in the 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos. This is accomplished by the introduction of a scalar sextet into the model and the spontaneous violation of the lepton number. We identify the Majoron as a singlet under $SU_L(2)\otimes U_Y(1)$ symmetry, which makes it safe under the current bounds imposed by electroweak data. The main result of this work is that the seesaw mechanism works already at TeV scale with the outcome that the right-handed neutrino masses lie in the electroweak scale, in the range from MeV to tens of GeV. This window provides a great opportunity to test their appearance at current detectors, though when we contrast our results with some previous analysis concerning detection sensitivity at LHC, we conclude that further work is needed in order to validate this search.Comment: about 13 pages, no figure

Matter effects and CP violating neutrino oscillations with non-decoupling heavy neutrinos

The evolution equation for active and sterile neutrinos propagating in general anisotropic or polarized background environment is found and solved for a special case when heavy neutrinos do not decouple, resulting in non-unitary mixing among light neutrino states. Then new CP violating neutrino oscillation effects appear. In contrast to the standard unitary neutrino oscillations these effects can be visible even for two flavour neutrino transitions and even if one of the elements of the neutrino mixing matrix is equal to zero. They do not necessarily vanish with $\delta m^{2} \to 0$ and they are different for various pairs of flavour neutrino transitions ($\nu_e \to \nu_\mu$), ($\nu_\mu \to \nu_\tau$), ($\nu_\tau \to \nu_e$). Neutrino oscillations in vacuum and Earth's matter are calculated for some fixed baseline experiments and a comparison between unitary and non-unitary oscillations are presented. It is shown, taking into account the present experimental constraints, that heavy neutrino states can affect CP and T asymmetries. This is especially true in the case of $\nu_\mu \to \nu_\tau$ oscillations.Comment: 18 pages, 6 fig

On the Size of the Dark Side of the Solar Neutrino Parameter Space

We present an analysis of the MSW neutrino oscillation solutions of the solar neutrino problem in the framework of two-neutrino mixing in the enlarged parameter space $(\Delta m^2, \tan^2\theta)$ with $\theta \in (0,\frac{\pi}{2})$. Recently, it was pointed out that the allowed region of parameters from a fit to the measured total rates can extend to values $\theta \geq \frac{\pi}{4}$ (the so called ``dark side'') when higher confidence levels are allowed. The purpose of this letter is to reanalize the problem including all the solar neutrino data available, to discuss the dependence on the statistical criteria in the determination of the CL of the ``dark side'' and to extract the corresponding limits on the largest mixing allowed by the data. Our results show that when the Super-Kamiokande data on the zenith angle distribution of events and the spectrum information is included, the regions extend more into the dark side.Comment: 5 pages,latex file using RevTex. Two-layer aproximation for the Earth density replaced by numerical integration with PREM. Latest parametrization of the sun matter density (BP2000) is included. Misprints corrected. Conclusions unchanged. 5 postscript figures (bitmapped for compression). A full version of the paper can be found at http://ific.uv.es/~penya/papers/ To appear in Phys. Rev.