Advances in Forensic Geochemistry

This chapter is meant to give the state of the art of forensic geochemistry and recent advances. In terms of forensic organic geochemistry, detecting mature organic matter including polluting hydrocarbons follows an experimental procedure by using recent experimental analytical techniques. However, the interpretation of these results needs an understanding of the geochemical context to make a distinction between the natural and the human made origin of oil. Infrared data coupled with statistical analyses would have an important relevance for the detection of the pollution during the Anthropocene, which is marked an increasing human pollution reaching the level of environmental crimes. In terms of nuclear and isotopic forensic geochemistry, recent studies provided that nuclear forensics considers the fact that some measurable parameters or signatures are distinctive.

Mineralogical Mapping with Accurately Corrected Shortwave Infrared Hyperspectral Data Acquired Obliquely from UAVs

While uncrewed aerial vehicles are routinely used as platforms for hyperspectral sensors, their application is mostly confined to nadir imaging orientations. Oblique hyperspectral imaging has been impeded by the absence of robust registration and correction protocols, which are essential to extract accurate information. These corrections are especially important for detecting the typically small spectral features produced by minerals, and for infrared data acquired using pushbroom sensors. The complex movements of unstable platforms (such as UAVs) require rigorous geometric and radiometric corrections, especially in the rugged terrain often encountered for geological applications. In this contribution we propose a novel correction methodology, and associated toolbox, dedicated to the accurate production of hyperspectral data acquired by UAVs, without any restriction concerning view angles or target geometry. We make these codes freely available to the community, and thus hope to trigger an increasing usage of hyperspectral data in Earth sciences, and demonstrate them with the production of, to our knowledge, the first fully corrected oblique SWIR drone-survey. This covers a vertical cliff in the Dolomites (Italy), and allowed us to distinguish distinct calcitic and dolomitic carbonate units, map the qualitative abundance of clay/mica minerals, and thus characterise seismic scale facies architecture.

Comprehensive Broadband X-Ray and Multiwavelength Study of Active Galactic Nuclei in 57 Local Luminous and Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies Observed with NuSTAR and/or Swift/BAT

We perform a systematic X-ray spectroscopic analysis of 57 local luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxy systems (containing 84 individual galaxies) observed with the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array and/or Swift/BAT. Combining soft X-ray data obtained with Chandra, XMM-Newton, Suzaku, and/or Swift/XRT, we identify 40 hard (>10 keV) X-ray–detected active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and constrain their torus parameters with the X-ray clumpy torus model XCLUMPY. Among the AGNs at z < 0.03, for which sample biases are minimized, the fraction of Compton-thick (N H ≥ 1024 cm−2) AGNs reaches 64 − 15 + 14 % (6/9 sources) in late mergers, while it is 24 − 10 + 12 % (3/14 sources) in early mergers, consistent with the tendency reported by Ricci et al. We find that the bolometric AGN luminosities derived from the infrared data increase but the X-ray to bolometric luminosity ratios decrease with merger stage. The X-ray-weak AGNs in late mergers ubiquitously show massive outflows at subparsec to kiloparsec scales. Among them, the most luminous AGNs (L bol,AGN ∼ 1046 erg s−1) have relatively small column densities of ≲1023 cm−2 and almost super-Eddington ratios (λ Edd ∼ 1.0). Their torus covering factors (C T (22) ∼ 0.6) are larger than those of Swift/BAT-selected AGNs with similarly high Eddington ratios. These results suggest a scenario where, in the final stage of mergers, multiphase strong outflows are produced due to chaotic quasi-spherical inflows, and the AGN becomes extremely X-ray weak and deeply buried due to obscuration by inflowing and/or outflowing material.

Targeting building energy efficiency using thermal infrared earth observation telescopes

Upgrading the energy performance of the UK’s entire building stock is the central pillar of any credible and cost-effective strategy to meeting net zero. This research aims to open up the revenue of using thermal infrared data from satellites to assist in processes on building energy performance improvement. High-resolution thermal infrared data output from space offers the potential for fast and effective monitoring provision that can cover large areas and targeted buildings or sites. We have interviewed a set of stakeholders from government, industry and community groups to build the specific use cases and find out detailed user requirements.

Research on Recognition and Location Method of Insulator in Infrared Image Based on Deep Learning

Infrared thermography technology is widely used in the thermal condition detection of insulators due to its advantages of non-contact, sensitive, online detection. To realize the automatic detection of the operating condition of insulators in complex environments, this paper proposes a method for the recognition and location of the insulator based on Region-based Fully Convolutional Networks (R-FCN). The model was trained and tested on the constructed insulator infrared data set, compared with the SSD model. The results showed that the R-FCN detecting insulators can not only accurately locate insulators, but have an AP (average precision) value as high as 89.2%. Therefore, the findings in this paper have verified that R-FCN has great advantages in the recognition and location of infrared images of insulators and has practical application value.

Application of components analysis in dynamic thermal breast imaging to identify pathophysiologic mechanisms of heat transfer

Using the Brazilian visual lab mastology data set containing dynamic thermograms, applying components analysis resulted in two corresponding images: 1. Slight decrease as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with the cancer generated heat), 2. Temperature increase as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with veins affected by vasomodulation). All components appear clear and distinct. Applying signal processing methods to the dynamic infrared data, we found distinct components with correspondence to understood physiologic processes. The cases shown are self-evident of the capability of the method but are lacking supporting ground truth that is unavailable with such a limited data set.

Application of components analysis in dynamic thermal breast imaging to identify pathophysiologic mechanisms of heat transfer

Using the Brazilian visual lab mastology data set containing dynamic thermograms, applying components analysis resulted in two corresponding images: 1. Slight decrease as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with the cancer generated heat), 2. Temperature increase as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with veins affected by vasomodulation). All components appear clear and distinct. Applying signal processing methods to the dynamic infrared data, we found distinct components with correspondence to understood physiologic processes. The cases shown are self-evident of the capability of the method but are lacking supporting ground truth that is unavailable with such a limited data set.

Bluehoc-based simulation study of user data throughput in Bluetooth-enabled devices

Bluetooth technology aims at allowing short-range communication between portable and/or fixed devices. It uses short-range radio links to replace cables between Bluetooth-enabled devices. In this way, it is similar in purpose to the Infrared Data Association (IrDA), however, Bluetooth is a radio frequency (RF) technology utilizing the unlicensed 2.5 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band. The key features of Bluetooth technology are robustness, low power and low cost with its primary market for data and voice transfer between communication devices and PCs. In this project, a simulation study is done with three major goals in mind: (i) to gather expertise on and evaluate a Bluetooth simulation tool called Bluehoc for further use, (ii) to gather measurements of some Bluetooth characteristics such as throughput in post connection state and (ii) to describe a model that can be used to get maximum throughput for voice and data applications. We also review some of the key aspects in Bluetooth simulation and present models of the Bluetooth devices to get maximum throughput. We show that user data transfer rate (throughput) between Bluetooth master and slaves is effected by distance, number of slaves and slave's start time.