34 research outputs found
ConeQuest: A Benchmark for Cone Segmentation on Mars
Over the years, space scientists have collected terabytes of Mars data from
satellites and rovers. One important set of features identified in Mars orbital
images is pitted cones, which are interpreted to be mud volcanoes believed to
form in regions that were once saturated in water (i.e., a lake or ocean).
Identifying pitted cones globally on Mars would be of great importance, but
expert geologists are unable to sort through the massive orbital image archives
to identify all examples. However, this task is well suited for computer
vision. Although several computer vision datasets exist for various
Mars-related tasks, there is currently no open-source dataset available for
cone detection/segmentation. Furthermore, previous studies trained models using
data from a single region, which limits their applicability for global
detection and mapping. Motivated by this, we introduce ConeQuest, the first
expert-annotated public dataset to identify cones on Mars. ConeQuest consists
of >13k samples from 3 different regions of Mars. We propose two benchmark
tasks using ConeQuest: (i) Spatial Generalization and (ii) Cone-size
Generalization. We finetune and evaluate widely-used segmentation models on
both benchmark tasks. Results indicate that cone segmentation is a challenging
open problem not solved by existing segmentation models, which achieve an
average IoU of 52.52% and 42.55% on in-distribution data for tasks (i) and
(ii), respectively. We believe this new benchmark dataset will facilitate the
development of more accurate and robust models for cone segmentation. Data and
code are available at https://github.com/kerner-lab/ConeQuest.Comment: Accepted at WACV 202
Lightweight, Pre-trained Transformers for Remote Sensing Timeseries
Machine learning algorithms for parsing remote sensing data have a wide range
of societally relevant applications, but labels used to train these algorithms
can be difficult or impossible to acquire. This challenge has spurred research
into self-supervised learning for remote sensing data aiming to unlock the use
of machine learning in geographies or application domains where labelled
datasets are small. Current self-supervised learning approaches for remote
sensing data draw significant inspiration from techniques applied to natural
images. However, remote sensing data has important differences from natural
images -- for example, the temporal dimension is critical for many tasks and
data is collected from many complementary sensors. We show that designing
models and self-supervised training techniques specifically for remote sensing
data results in both smaller and more performant models. We introduce the
Pretrained Remote Sensing Transformer (Presto), a transformer-based model
pre-trained on remote sensing pixel-timeseries data. Presto excels at a wide
variety of globally distributed remote sensing tasks and outperforms much
larger models. Presto can be used for transfer learning or as a feature
extractor for simple models, enabling efficient deployment at scale
The GadX regulon affects virulence gene expression and adhesion of porcine enteropathogenic Escherichia coli in vitro
The ability of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) to express virulence
factor genes and develop attaching and effacing (AE) lesions is inhibited in
acidic environmental conditions. This inhibition is due to the activation of
transcription factor GadX, which upregulates expression of glutamic acid
decarboxylase (Gad). Gad, in turn, produces γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which
was recently shown to have a beneficial effect on the jejunal epithelium in
vitro due to increased mucin-1 levels. In the present study, we sought to test
whether forced GadX activation/overexpression abolishes virulence associated
features of EPEC and provokes increased GABA production. EPEC strains were
isolated from diarrheic pigs and submitted to activation of GadX by
acidification as well as gadX overexpression via an inducible expression
vector plasmid. GABA concentrations in the growth medium, ability for adhesion
to porcine intestinal epithelial cells (IPEC-J2) and virulence gene expression
were determined. Growth in acidified media led to increased GABA levels,
upregulated gadA/B expression and downregulated mRNA synthesis of the
bacterial adhesin intimin. EPEC strains transformed with the gadX gene
produced 2.1 to 3.4-fold higher GABA levels than empty-vector controls and
completely lost their ability to adhere to IPEC-J2 cells and to induce actin
accumulation. We conclude that intensified gadX activation can abolish the
ability of EPEC to adhere to the intestinal epithelium by reducing the
expression of major virulence genes
The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) CubeSat Mission
The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) is a 6U CubeSat mission recently selected by NASA\u27s Science Mission Directorate to fly as a secondary payload on first Exploration Mission (EM-1) of the Space Launch System (SLS), scheduled to launch in July 2018. LunaH-Map is led by a small team of researchers and students at Arizona State University, in collaboration with NASA centers, JPL, universities, and commercial space businesses. The LunaH-Map mission will reveal hydrogen abundances at spatial scales below 10 km in order to understand the relationship between hydrogen and permanently shadowed regions, particularly craters, at the Moon\u27s South Pole. The mission\u27s primary payload is designed to use the scintillator material Cs2YLiCl6:Ce, or CLYC to measure count rates of thermal and epithermal neutrons. Enabled by a low-thrust ion propulsion system, LunaH-Map will achieve lunar orbit insertion within ~12 months of SLS separation and maneuver into a highly elliptical, low-perilune (5-10 km) orbit centered around the South Pole of the Moon. In this orbit, LunaH-Map will achieve over 140 low-altitude fly-bys of the South Pole during its two month science phase. LunaH-Map and two fellow secondary payloads selected by NASA to fly on SLS EM-1 will be the first CubeSats to explore the Moon and interplanetary space
GEO-Bench: Toward Foundation Models for Earth Monitoring
Recent progress in self-supervision has shown that pre-training large neural
networks on vast amounts of unsupervised data can lead to substantial increases
in generalization to downstream tasks. Such models, recently coined foundation
models, have been transformational to the field of natural language processing.
Variants have also been proposed for image data, but their applicability to
remote sensing tasks is limited. To stimulate the development of foundation
models for Earth monitoring, we propose a benchmark comprised of six
classification and six segmentation tasks, which were carefully curated and
adapted to be both relevant to the field and well-suited for model evaluation.
We accompany this benchmark with a robust methodology for evaluating models and
reporting aggregated results to enable a reliable assessment of progress.
Finally, we report results for 20 baselines to gain information about the
performance of existing models. We believe that this benchmark will be a driver
of progress across a variety of Earth monitoring tasks
Integrating Machine Learning for Planetary Science: Perspectives for the Next Decade
Machine learning (ML) methods can expand our ability to construct, and draw
insight from large datasets. Despite the increasing volume of planetary
observations, our field has seen few applications of ML in comparison to other
sciences. To support these methods, we propose ten recommendations for
bolstering a data-rich future in planetary science.Comment: 10 pages (expanded citations compared to 8 page submitted version for
decadal survey), 3 figures, white paper submitted to the Planetary Science
and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-203
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Pan-viral serology implicates enteroviruses in acute flaccid myelitis.
Since 2012, the United States of America has experienced a biennial spike in pediatric acute flaccid myelitis (AFM)1-6. Epidemiologic evidence suggests non-polio enteroviruses (EVs) are a potential etiology, yet EV RNA is rarely detected in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)2. CSF from children with AFM (n = 42) and other pediatric neurologic disease controls (n = 58) were investigated for intrathecal antiviral antibodies, using a phage display library expressing 481,966 overlapping peptides derived from all known vertebrate and arboviruses (VirScan). Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) of AFM CSF RNA (n = 20 cases) was also performed, both unbiased sequencing and with targeted enrichment for EVs. Using VirScan, the viral family significantly enriched by the CSF of AFM cases relative to controls was Picornaviridae, with the most enriched Picornaviridae peptides belonging to the genus Enterovirus (n = 29/42 cases versus 4/58 controls). EV VP1 ELISA confirmed this finding (n = 22/26 cases versus 7/50 controls). mNGS did not detect additional EV RNA. Despite rare detection of EV RNA, pan-viral serology frequently identified high levels of CSF EV-specific antibodies in AFM compared with controls, providing further evidence for a causal role of non-polio EVs in AFM