There is a high demand for fully automated methods for the analysis of primary particle size distributions of agglomerated, sintered or occluded primary particles, due to their impact on material ...properties. Therefore, a novel, deep learning-based, method for the detection of such primary particles was proposed and tested, which renders a manual tuning of analysis parameters unnecessary.
As a specialty, the training of the utilized convolutional neural networks was carried out using only synthetic images, thereby avoiding the laborious task of manual annotation and increasing the ground truth quality. Nevertheless, the proposed method performs excellent on real world samples of sintered silica nanoparticles with various sintering degrees and varying image conditions.
In a direct comparison, the proposed method clearly outperforms two state-of-the-art methods for automated image-based particle size analysis (Hough transformation and the ImageJ ParticleSizer plug-in), thereby attaining human-like performance.
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•Deep Learning can significantly help to automate image-based PSD analysis.•The proposed method can achieve human-like performance at superhuman speed.•Image synthesis can produce lifelike SEM images, suitable for deep learning.
Fiber-shaped materials (e.g. carbon nano tubes) are of great relevance, due to their unique properties but also the health risk they can impose. Unfortunately, image-based analysis of fibers still ...involves manual annotation, which is a time-consuming and costly process.
We therefore propose the use of region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNNs) to automate this task. Mask R-CNN, the most widely used R-CNN for semantic segmentation tasks, is prone to errors when it comes to the analysis of fiber-shaped objects. Hence, a new architecture – FibeR-CNN – is introduced and validated. FibeR-CNN combines two established R-CNN architectures (Mask and Keypoint R-CNN) and adds additional network heads for the prediction of fiber widths and lengths. As a result, FibeR-CNN is able to surpass the mean average precision of Mask R-CNN by 33% (11 percentage points) on a novel test data set of fiber images.
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•Deep Learning can significantly help to fully automate image-based fiber analysis.•Already existing network architectures can be tailored to your own requirements.•The proposed method can accurately analyse fiber shapes, widths and lengths.•Even overlapping fibers and fibers occluded by clutter can be detected reliably.
The inland area of southwestern Sweden is well known for its well-preserved archaeological animal and human remains dating back to the Mesolithic and Neolithic (10000-4000 and 4000-1700 BC). They ...allow application of multiple bioarchaeological methods, giving insights into various and complementary aspects of prehistoric human life, as well as economic and social structures. One important aspect concerns human mobility and its relation to social networks and to circulation of objects. Here, strontium isotope analysis plays a crucial role. The present study aims to construct a strontium isotope baseline of southwestern Sweden with considerably greater coverage and higher resolution than previously published data. As the region has been affected by glacial events, the relation between bedrock geology and isotope signals of the bioavailable strontium in such areas is given special attention. We determined strontium isotope ratios for 61 water and five archaeological animal samples, and combined the data with previous measurements of two water and 21 non-domestic faunal samples. The results reveal a complex pattern. Several areas with distinct baseline ranges can be distinguished, although with overlaps between some of them. Overall, the bioavailable strontium isotope signals mirror the basement geology of the region. The highest ratios occur in the geologically oldest eastern parts of the Precambrian terrain, while lower ratios are found in the western part, and the lowest ratios occur in the youngest Paleozoic areas. At the same time, there are minor deviations compared to the underlying bedrock, due to glacial transport, overlying sediments, and local intrusions of younger rocks. The background data set now available allows for more nuanced and detailed interpretations of human and animal mobility in the region, in particular by identification of subregions with differing strontium isotope ratios within the Precambrian province. Also, we can now identify long distance mobility with greater confidence.
Sr isotopes are a powerful tool used to reconstruct human mobility in archaeology. This requires extensive bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr baselines used as reference for deciphering potential areas of ...origin. We define the first extensive bioavailable Sr isotope baselines for the different geographical regions and surface lithologies of Greece by combining new Sr data with previously published bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr data. We present 82 new Sr concentrations and 87Sr/86Sr signatures of plants, soil leachates, surface waters and spring waters from Central Greece and combine these with published baseline values from all over Greece. We define individual baselines for ten of the thirteen geographical regions of Greece. We also provide soil leachate 87Sr/86Sr ratios from the two archaeological Bronze Age sites of Kirrha and Ayios Vasileios in Central and Southern Greece and demonstrate the validity and applicability of the new baselines for these sites. The bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr compositions of Central Greece define a narrow range of 87Sr/86Sr values between 0.70768 — 0.71021, with the widest range observed for the soil leachates. Sr derived from carbonate weathering appears to be the most important Sr source sampled by the proxies. There is an overall larger variability in baseline ranges of the different geographical regions, the narrowest is that for West Greece and the widest that for West Macedonia. In addition, we computed statistical Sr isotope ranges for the five main surface lithological groups characterising the sampling sites of the various proxies. Narrowly ranged, unradiogenic bioavailable Sr isotope signatures are typical of areas characterised by igneous outcrops as well as by Cenozoic and Mesozoic sediments. Areas, where Palaeozoic and Precambrian bedrock outcrops dominate, produce significantly wider ranges. Our study promotes the usefulness of multi-proxy baselines for geographical reference purposes and thus their promising applicability for future human mobility studies.
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•We present bioavailable Sr data from plants, soils and waters from Central Greece.•Carbonate weathering appears to control the Sr isotope signatures of the proxies.•The applicability of the environmental proxies as baseline material is evaluated.•Statistical, bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr ranges are defined for Greece and its provinces.•These can serve as reference baselines in human mobility studies.
Advanced interferometric SAR processing techniques (Persistent Scatterer Interferometry, Small Baseline Subset) are able to detect and monitor various surface displacements caused by e.g. gravitative ...mass movement, subrosion, groundwater extraction, fluid injection, natural gas extraction. These processes can e.g. cause damage to buildings and infrastructure, affect ecosystems and agriculture or affect the economic use of the geological underground by influencing the hydrogeological setting. Despite the maturity and operational readiness of the PSI technology it is rarely used in operational workflows of the German user community (e.g. from responsible authorities).
In order to support the operational use of this technique a “Ground Motion Service Germany” has been designed by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in collaboration with the user community, land surveying agencies, SME and research institutions. A major outcome of this collaboration is the user request regarding a PSI-WAP (Persistent Scatterer Interferometry Wide-Area-Product) dataset of the entire nation (approx. 360,000km2) based on Sentinel-1 data. For this reason the PSI mapping coverage is increased by mosaicking PSI data products from adjacent SAR data stacks. Several case studies has been performed to demonstrate the design of the service. Within this paper one case study regarding the PSI-WAP technique and the calibration/validation scheme is presented.
The pilot study is focusing on the built up of an officially approved PSI-WAP dataset. The study area covers an area of >30,000km2 and is located in the Northwest German Basin. This is the first time a PSI-WAP analysis is performed in this area. Several natural processes (e.g. compaction of marine sediments, peat growth/shrinkage) and anthropogenic activities (e.g. natural gas extraction, rock salt mining) are causing surface displacements in the study area. The PSI-WAP analysis is based on six adjacent ERS-1/-2 data stacks covering the timespan from 1992 until 2001. Each data stack consists of 49 to 73 acquisitions. A comparison of the PSI results with thematic data (e.g. cumulated volume of extracted natural gas and location of natural gas fields) indicates that a part of the detected land subsidence is caused by natural gas extraction.
To summarize, this paper shows i) the design of the “Ground Motion Service Germany” and ii) a pilot study to exemplarily demonstrate a PSI-WAP, the calibration/validation scheme and value-added-products.
•Concept of the Ground Motion Service Germany•Proof of concept using a pilot study located in the North-West German Basin•PSI Wide-Area-Product including GNSS-cal/val workflow
The third millennium BCE was a period of major cultural and demographic changes in Europe that signaled the beginning of the Bronze Age. People from the Pontic steppe expanded westward, leading to ...the formation of the Corded Ware complex and transforming the genetic landscape of Europe. At the time, the Globular Amphora culture (3300–2700 BCE) existed over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, but little is known about their interaction with neighboring Corded Ware groups and steppe societies. Here we present a detailed study of a Late Neolithic mass grave from southern Poland belonging to the Globular Amphora culture and containing the remains of 15 men, women, and children, all killed by blows to the head. We sequenced their genomes to between 1.1- and 3.9-fold coverage and performed kinship analyses that demonstrate that the individuals belonged to a large extended family. The bodies had been carefully laid out according to kin relationships by someone who evidently knew the deceased. From a population genetic viewpoint, the people from Koszyce are clearly distinct from neighboring Corded Ware groups because of their lack of steppe-related ancestry. Although the reason for the massacre is unknown, it is possible that it was connected with the expansion of Corded Ware groups, which may have resulted in competition for resources and violent conflict. Together with the archaeological evidence, these analyses provide an unprecedented level of insight into the kinship structure and social behavior of a Late Neolithic community.
In many applications of Monte Carlo nonlinear filtering, the propagation step is computationally expensive, and hence the sample size is limited. With small sample sizes, the update step becomes ...crucial. Particle filtering suffers from the well-known problem of sample degeneracy. Ensemble Kalman filtering avoids this, at the expense of treating non-Gaussian features of the forecast distribution incorrectly. Here we introduce a procedure that makes a continuous transition indexed by ... between the ensemble and the particle filter update. We propose automatic choices of the parameter ... such that the update stays as close as possible to the particle filter update subject to avoiding degeneracy. In various examples, we show that this procedure leads to updates that are able to handle non-Gaussian features of the forecast sample even in high-dimensional situations. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
Starch degradability was studied in six indigenous Philippine rice cultivars differing in amylose contents. An in vitro enzymatic starch digestion method was applied in order to estimate the expected ...glycemic index in vivo based on the kinetics of starch hydrolysis in vitro. Two different treatments were investigated: first, samples were cooked and analysed immediately; second, samples were cooked and stored in a refrigerator for 24 h at a temperature of 4 °C in order to induce a retrogradation effect. The results indicate substantial differences in the estimated glycemic index between rice cultivars. Values ranged between 68 and 109 for cooked rice and between 64 and 87 for stored rice containing retrograded starch. Starch hydrolysis tended to be more rapid and more complete for waxy cultivars than for high amylose cultivars. Storing rice in the refrigerator led to a reduction of the estimated glycemic index for all cultivars. The highest decrease in starch hydrolysis after cool storing was seen for the waxy cultivars.
We present the first comprehensive multi-isotopic data on human and animal remains from the Final Neolithic Corded Ware culture (ca. 2900-2300 cal. BC) in south-eastern Poland. The study focused on ...communities of two settlement areas located in the Małopolska Upland and in the Subcarpathian region. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes of bone collagen were investigated to obtain insights into human dietary preferences, whereas the strontium isotope composition of human tooth enamel was used to trace the mobility and provenance of individuals. Sr isotope data point to a non-local origin of at least one-quarter of the investigated individuals in the Subcarpathian region, consistent with associated allochthonous grave inventories of eastern or western origins. In contrast, all investigated individuals in the Małopolska Upland were of local origin. Furthermore, our study shows an example that the use of fauna for the assessment of the local 87Sr/86Sr range of an archaeological site can lead to incorrect conclusions and suggests that a detailed Sr isotopic survey of the geological background and its hydrologic elements is necessary to provide conclusive constraints for the identification of local and non-local individuals in prehistoric communities. Carbon and nitrogen isotope composition of bone collagen indicate an omnivorous diet that included C3-based terrestrial plant and animal resources, in which plant food dominated. In both regions, there were no significant sex differences in dietary intakes. Higher δ15Ncoll values of younger infants presumably reflect the effect of weaning.
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