LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) mounted with static and mobile vehicles has been rapidly adopted as a primary sensor for mapping natural and built environments for a range of civil and military applications. Recently, technology advancement in electro-optical engineering enables acquiring laser returns at high pulse repetition frequency (PRF) from 100Hz to 2MHz for airborne LiDAR, which leads to an increase in the density of 3D point cloud significantly. Traditional systems with lower PRF had a single pulse-in-air zone (PIA) big enough to avoid a mismatch between pulse pair at the receiver. Modern multiple pulses-in-air (MPIA) technology ensures multiple windows of operational ranges for single flight line and no blind-zones; downside of the technology is projection of atmospheric returns closer to same PIA zone of neighbouring ground points and more likely to be overlapping with objects of interest. These characteristics of noise compromise the quality of the scene and encourage usage of noise filtering neural network as existing filters are not effective. A noise filtering deep neural network requires a considerable volume of the diverse annotated dataset, which is expensive. We developed simulation for data augmentation based on physical priors and Gaussian generative function. Our study compares deep learning networks for noise filtering and shows performance gain on 3D U-Net. Then, we evaluate 3D U-Net for simulation-based data augmentation, which shows an increase in precision and F1-score. We also provide an analysis of the underline spatial distribution of points and their impact on data augmentation, and noise filtering.
Abstract. On 8 August 2009, the extreme rainfall of Typhoon Morakot triggered enormous landslides in mountainous regions of southern Taiwan, causing catastrophic infrastructure and property damages and human casualties. A comprehensive evaluation of the landslides is essential for the post-disaster reconstruction and should be helpful for future hazard mitigation. This paper presents a systematic approach to utilize multi-temporal satellite images and other geo-spatial data for the post-disaster assessment of landslides on a regional scale. Rigorous orthorectification and radiometric correction procedures were applied to the satellite images. Landslides were identified with NDVI filtering, change detection analysis and interactive post-analysis editing to produce an accurate landslide map. Spatial analysis was performed to obtain statistical characteristics of the identified landslides and their relationship with topographical factors. A total of 9333 landslides (22 590 ha) was detected from change detection analysis of satellite images. Most of the detected landslides are smaller than 10 ha. Less than 5% of them are larger than 10 ha but together they constitute more than 45% of the total landslide area. Spatial analysis of the detected landslides indicates that most of them have average elevations between 500 m to 2000 m and with average slope gradients between 20° and 40°. In addition, a particularly devastating landslide whose debris flow destroyed a riverside village was examined in depth for detailed investigation. The volume of this slide is estimated to be more than 2.6 million m3 with an average depth of 40 m.
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 12 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above. ; The needle-like surface morphology evolution in oxygen plasma in combination with a secondary gas (Cl2, CHF3 or CF4) by inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) on a free-standing polycrystalline diamond was investigated. The addition of CF4 can produce trans-polyacetylene (t-PA), which is similar to the result when the pure O2 etching takes place, and generate compact needle-tip particles. However, the t-PA disappears with the introduction of Cl or H ions. The optimised etching parameters for the needle-like structure formation are as following: Cl2/O2 ratio 20% and RF-power (RFP) 100 W, where more compact and even nano-needles are realised with an average etching rate of 2 μm/min. The Cl2/O2 plasma etching results indicate that the time-dependent etching mechanism of diamond nano-needles results from (1 1 1) crystal plane selective etching and preferential graphitisation at the twin-plane boundary and dislocation area. ; This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (no. 2016YFE0133200) and the European Union's Horizon-2020 Research program (no. 734578). Special thanks to the national high-level university-sponsored graduate program of China Scholarship Council (CSC). ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print
SummaryThe increasing prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents has become one of the most important public health issues around the world. Lack of physical activity is a risk factor for obesity, while being obese could reduce the likelihood of participating in physical activity. Failing to account for the endogeneity between obesity and physical activity would result in biased estimation. This study investigates the relationship between overweight and physical activity by taking endogeneity into consideration. It develops an endogenous bivariate probit model estimated by the maximum likelihood method. The data included 4008 boys and 4197 girls in the 5th–9th grades in Taiwan in 2007–2008. The relationship between overweight and physical activity is significantly negative in the endogenous model, but insignificant in the comparative exogenous model. This endogenous relationship presents a vicious circle in which lower levels of physical activity lead to overweight, while those who are already overweight engage in less physical activity. The results not only reveal the importance of endogenous treatment, but also demonstrate the robust negative relationship between these two factors. An emphasis should be put on overweight and obese children and adolescents in order to break the vicious circle. Promotion of physical activity by appropriate counselling programmes and peer support could be effective in reducing the prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents.
Abstract. The relationship between variations in surface latent heat flux (SLHF) and marine earthquakes has been a popular subject of recent seismological studies. So far, there are two key problems: how to identify the abnormal SLHF variations from complicated background signals, and how to ensure that the anomaly results from an earthquake. In this paper, we proposed four adjustable parameters for identification, classified the relationship and analyzed SLHF changes several months before six marine earthquakes by employing daily SLHF data. Additionally, we also quantitatively evaluate the long-term relationship between earthquakes and SLHF anomalies for the six study areas over a 20 yr period preceding each earthquake. The results suggest the following: (1) before the South Sandwich Islands, Papua, Samoa and Haiti earthquakes, the SLHF variations above their individual background levels have relatively low amplitudes and are difficult to be considered as precursory anomalies; (2) after removing the clustering effect, most of the anomalies prior to these six earthquakes are not temporally related to any earthquake in each study area in time sequence; (3) for each case, apart from Haiti, more than half of the studied earthquakes, which were moderate and even devastating earthquakes (larger than Mw = 5.3), had no precursory variations in SLHF; and (4) the correlation between SLHF and seismic activity depends largely on data accuracy and parameter settings. Before any application of SLHF data on earthquake prediction, we suggest that anomaly-identifying standards should be established based on long-term regional analysis to eliminate subjectivity. Furthermore, other factors that may result in SLHF variations should also be carefully considered.
MARTON, George Iuliu/0000-0003-2469-4900; Ziolkowska, Oliwia/0000-0002-0696-2839; Wyrzykowski, Lukasz/0000-0002-9658-6151; Gromadzki, Mariusz/0000-0002-1650-1518; Zielinski, Pawel/0000-0001-6434-9429; Kiss, Csaba/0000-0002-8722-6875 ; WOS: 000563107500001 ; We present optical-infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations of Gaia 18dvy, located in the Cygnus OB3 association at a distance of 1.88 kpc. Gaia 18dvy was noted by the Gaia alerts system when its light curve exhibited a greater than or similar to 4 mag rise in 2018-2019. the brightening was also observable at mid-infared wavelengths. the infrared colors of Gaia 18dvy became bluer as the outburst progressed. Its optical and near-infrared spectroscopic characteristics in the outburst phase are consistent with those of bona fide FU Orionis-type young eruptive stars. the progenitor of the outburst is probably a low-mass K-type star with an optical extinction of similar to 3 mag. A radiative transfer modeling of the circumstellar structure, based on the quiescent spectral energy distribution, indicates a disk with a mass of 4 x 10(-3)M. Our simple accretion disk modeling implies that the accretion rate had been exponentially increasing for more than 3 yr until mid-2019, when it reached a peak value of 6.9 x 10(-6)M yr(-1). in many respects, Gaia 18dvy is similar to the FU Ori-type object HBC 722. ; European Research Council (ERC) under the European UnionEuropean Research Council (ERC) [716155]; Hungarian Academy of SciencesHungarian Academy of Sciences [LP2018-7/2019, KEP-7/2018]; Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office [GINOP 2.3.2-15-2016-00003, PD-128360]; Polish NCN DAINA [2017/27/L/ST9/03221]; European CommissionEuropean CommissionEuropean Commission Joint Research Centre [730890]; Polish MNiSWMinistry of Science and Higher Education, Poland [DIR/WK/2018/12]; Research Council of LithuaniaResearch Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) [S-LL-19-2]; Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia [176011]; DFGGerman Research Foundation (DFG) [SPP 1992, WA 1047/11-1]; MINECO (Spanish Ministry of Economy) [RTI2018-095076-B-C21]; Polish NCN MAESTRO [2014/14/A/ST9/00121] ; We thank the anonymous referee, whose questions and comments significantly improved the paper. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 716155 (SACCRED), Lendulet LP2018-7/2019 and KEP-7/2018 of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, GINOP 2.3.2-15-2016-00003 and PD-128360 of the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office, Polish NCN DAINA grant 2017/27/L/ST9/03221, European Commission's Horizon 2020 OPTICON grant 730890, Polish MNiSW grant DIR/WK/2018/12, grant No.S-LL-19-2 of the Research Council of Lithuania, Project No.176011 "Dynamics and kinematics of celestial bodies and systems" of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, DFG priority program SPP 1992 "Exploring the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets" (WA 1047/11-1), the MINECO (Spanish Ministry of Economy) through grant RTI2018-095076-B-C21 (MINECO/FEDER, UE). the Joan Oro Telescope (TJO) of the Montsec Astronomical Observatory (OAdM) is owned by the Catalan Government and is operated by the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC). MG is supported by the Polish NCN MAESTRO grant 2014/14/A/ST9/00121. We acknowledge ESA Gaia, DPAC, and the Photometric Science Alerts Team. We thank Christina Conner, Megan Davis, Alessandro Dellarovere, Hannah Gallamore, Mira Ghazali, Aaron Kruskie, Dylan Mankel, Jesse Leahy-McGregor, Brandon McIntyre, Barrett Ross, Courtney Wicklund, and Evan Zobel for observing Gaia 18dvy at the Michigan State University Observatory. Based on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, operated by the Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. Based on observations obtained with telescopes of the University Observatory Jena, which is operated by the Astrophysical Institute of the Friedrich-Schiller-University.
