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Environmental factors affect daily milk production in dairy animals. The aim of this study was to quantify the effects of environmental factors, specifically mean temperature (°C), relative humidity (%), temperature–humidity index (THI), solar radiation (°), pluvial precipitation (mm) and lunar calendar (full moon, waxing quarter, waning quarter, new moon), on milk production (kg/d). The analysis was based on 96,195 morning and evening milking records documented on 109 consecutive days, from 869 Lacaune ewes. Ewes were housed in groups of 174 individuals. The analysis was performed in two independent procedures, a Pearson correlation analysis and a multivariate analysis of the ewe's interrelationships, which was based on the total variance estimate and a Varimax-rotated factorial analysis. Milk yield (kg/d) was significantly (p < 0.05) negatively correlated with mean temperature (-0.24), relative humidity (-0.16), THI (-0.24), and radiation (-0.18), which suggests that the higher these environmental factors, the lower the milk yield. Lunar calendar had a significant (p < 0.01) effect on milk production yield; specifically, yields were higher on the full moon and new moon (2.25 ± 0.05 kg/day) than they were on the crescent or waning moon (2.17 ± 0.05 kg/day). In conclusion, ewes that had been exposed to higher mean temperature, relative humidity, THI and solar radiation had the lowest milk yield, and milk yields are highest on full and new moons. The results of this work may be helpful in making predictions for milk production in Lacaune ewes in the Mediterranean region throughout the year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep neural networks are currently trained under data-parallel setups on high-performance computing (HPC) platforms, so that a replica of the full model is charged to each computational resource using non-overlapped subsets known as batches. Replicas combine the computed gradients to update their local copies at the end of each batch. However, differences in performance of resources assigned to replicas in current heterogeneous platforms induce waiting times when synchronously combining gradients, leading to an overall performance degradation. Albeit asynchronous communication of gradients has been proposed as an alternative, it suffers from the so-called staleness problem. This is due to the fact that the training in each replica is computed using a stale version of the parameters, which negatively impacts the accuracy of the resulting model. In this work, we study the application of well-known HPC static load balancing techniques to the distributed training of deep models. Our approach is assigning a different batch size to each replica, proportional to its relative computing capacity, hence minimizing the staleness problem. Our experimental results (obtained in the context of a remotely sensed hyperspectral image processing application) show that, while the classification accuracy is kept constant, the training time substantially decreases with respect to unbalanced training. This is illustrated using heterogeneous computing platforms, made up of CPUs and GPUs with different performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) collects hundreds of images over large spatial observation areas on the Earth's surface, recording scenes at different wavelength channels and providing a vast amount of information. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have been widely used for the classification of HSI datasets, understood as a single sequence of pixel vectors with high dimensionality. However, the RNN model scales poorly when dealing with HSI scenes with large dimensionality. In order to mitigate this problem, this paper presents a new RNN classifier based on simple recurrent units that performs HSI classification in a highly scalable and efficient way. Our experimental results (conducted on four real HSI datasets) reveal very good performance, not only in terms of classification accuracy (in line with existing methods), but also in terms of computational performance when dealing with large datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in remote sensing techniques allow for the collection of hyperspectral images with enhanced spatial and spectral resolution. In many applications, these images need to be processed and interpreted in real-time, since analysis results need to be obtained almost instantaneously. However, the large amount of data that these images comprise introduces significant processing challenges. This also complicates the analysis performed by traditional machine learning algorithms. To address this issue, dimensionality reduction techniques aim at reducing the complexity of data while retaining the relevant information for the analysis, removing noise and redundant information. In this paper, we present a new real-time method for dimensionality reduction and classification of hyperspectral images. The newly proposed method exploits artificial neural networks, which are used to develop a fast compressor based on the extreme learning machine. The obtained experimental results indicate that the proposed method has the ability to compress and classify high-dimensional images fast enough for practical use in real-time applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Target detection is an important technique in hyperspectral image analysis. The high dimensionality of hyperspectral data provides the possibility of deeply mining the information hiding in spectra, and many targets that cannot be visualized by inspection can be detected. But this also brings some problems such as unknown background interferences at the same time. In this way, extracting and taking advantage of the background information in the region of interest becomes a task of great significance. In this paper, we present an unsupervised background extraction-based target detection method, which is called UBETD for short. The proposed UBETD takes advantage of the method of endmember extraction in hyperspectral unmixing, another important technique that can extract representative material signatures from the images. These endmembers represent most of the image information, so they can be reasonably seen as the combination of targets and background signatures. Since the background information is known, algorithm like target-constrained interference-minimized filter could then be introduced to detect the targets while inhibiting the interferences. To meet the rapidly rising demand of real-time processing capabilities, the proposed algorithm is further simplified in computation and implemented on a FPGA board. Experiments with synthetic and real hyperspectral images have been conducted comparing with constrained energy minimization, adaptive coherence/cosine estimator and adaptive matched filter to evaluate the detection and computational performance of our proposed method. The results indicate that UBETD and its hardware implementation RT-UBETD can achieve better performance and are particularly prominent in inhibiting interferences in the background. On the other hand, the hardware implementation of RT-UBETD can complete the target detection processing in far less time than the data acquisition time of hyperspectral sensor like HyMap, which confirms strict real-time processing capability of the proposed system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphological building index (MBI) and morphological shadow index (MSI) are recently developed techniques that aim at automatically detect buildings/shadows using high-resolution remotely sensed imagery. The traditional mathematical morphology operations are usually time-consuming as they are based on the consideration of a wide range of image-object properties, such as brightness, contrast, shapes, sizes, and in the application of series of repeated transformations (e.g., classical opening and closing operators). In the case of MBI and MSI, the computational complexity is also increased due to the use of multiscale and multidirectional morphological operators. In this paper, we provide a computationally efficient implementation of MBI and MSI algorithms which is specifically developed for commodity graphic processing units using NVIDIA CUDA. We perform the evaluation of the parallel version of the algorithms using two different NVIDIA architectures and three widely used hyperspectral data sets. Experimental results show that the computational burden introduced when considering multidirectional morphological operators can be almost completely removed by the developed implementations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remotely sensed hyperspectral imaging offers the possibility to collect hundreds of images, at different wavelength channels, for the same area on the surface of the Earth. Hyperspectral images are characterized by their large volume and dimensionality, which makes their processing and storage difficult. As a result, several techniques have been developed in previous years to perform hyperspectral image analysis on high-performance computing architectures. However, the application of cloud computing techniques has not been as widespread. There are many potential advantages in exploiting cloud computing architectures for distributed hyperspectral image analysis. In this paper, we present a cloud implementation (developed using Apache Spark) of the popular K-means algorithm for unsupervised hyperspectral image clustering. The experimental results suggest that cloud architectures allow for the efficient distributed processing of large hyperspectral image data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperspectral imaging is an active area of research in Earth and planetary observation. One of the most important techniques for analyzing hyperspectral images is spectral unmixing, in which mixed pixels (resulting from insufficient spatial resolution of the imaging sensor) are decomposed into a collection of spectrally pure constituent spectra, called endmembers weighted by their correspondent fractions, or abundances. Over the last years, several algorithms have been developed for automatic endmember extraction. Many of them assume that the images contain at least one pure spectral signature for each distinct material. However, this assumption is usually not valid due to spatial resolution, mixing phenomena, and other considerations. A recent trend in the hyperspectral imaging community is to design endmember identification algorithms which do not assume the presence of pure pixels. Despite the proliferation of this kind of algorithms, many of which are based on minimum enclosing simplex concepts, a rigorous quantitative and comparative assessment is not yet available. In this paper, we provide a comparative analysis of endmember extraction algorithms without the pure pixel assumption. In our experiments we use synthetic hyperspectral data sets (constructed using fractals) and real hyperspectral scenes collected by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

dvances in sensor technology are revolutionizing the way remotely sensed data is collected, managed and analyzed. The incorporation of latest-generation sensors to airborne and satellite platforms is currently producing a nearly continual stream of high-dimensional data, and this explosion in the amount of collected information has rapidly created new processing challenges. For instance, hyperspectral signal processing is a new technique in remote sensing that generates hundreds of spectral bands at different wavelength channels for the same area on the surface of the Earth. Many current and future applications of remote sensing in Earth science, space science, and soon in exploration science will require (near) real-time processing capabilities. In recent years, several efforts have been directed towards the incorporation of high-performance computing (HPC) systems and architectures in remote sensing missions. With the aim of providing an overview of current and new trends in parallel and distributed systems for remote sensing applications, this paper explores three HPC-based paradigms for efficient implementation of the Pixel Purity Index (PPI) algorithm, available from the popular Kodak’s Research Systems ENVI software package, as a representative case study for demonstration purposes. Several different parallel programming techniques are used to improve the performance of the PPI on a variety of parallel platforms, including a set of message passing interface (MPI)-based implementations on a massively parallel Beowulf cluster at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and on a variety of heterogeneous networks of workstations at University of Maryland; a Handel-C implementation of the algorithm on a Virtex-II field programmable gate array (FPGA); and a compute unified device architecture (CUDA)-based implementation on graphical processing units (GPUs) of NVidia. Combined, these parts deliver an excellent snapshot of the state-of-the-art in those areas, and offer a thoughtful perspective on the potential and emerging challenges of adapting HPC systems to remote sensing problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to describe a realistic framework to understand parallel performance of high-dimensional image processing algorithms in the context of heterogeneous networks of workstations (NOWs). As a case study, this paper explores techniques for mapping hyperspectral image analysis techniques onto fully heterogeneous NOWs. Hyperspectral imaging is a new technique in remote sensing that has gained tremendous popularity in many research areas, including satellite imaging and aerial reconnaissance. The automation of techniques able to transform massive amounts of hyperspectral data into scientific understanding in valid response times is critical for space-based Earth science and planetary exploration. Using an evaluation strategy which is based on comparing the efficiency achieved by an heterogeneous algorithm on a fully heterogeneous NOW with that evidenced by its homogeneous version on a homogeneous NOW with the same aggregate performance as the heterogeneous one, we develop a detailed analysis of parallel algorithms that integrate the spatial and spectral information in the image data through mathematical morphology concepts. For comparative purposes, performance data for the tested algorithms on Thunderhead (a large-scale Beowulf cluster at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) are also provided. Our detailed investigation of the parallel properties of the proposed morphological algorithms provides several intriguing findings that may help image analysts in selection of parallel techniques and strategies for specific applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]