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Change detection for aerial imagery involves locating and identifying changes associated with the areas of interest between co-registered bi-temporal or multi-temporal images of a geographical location. Farm ponds are man-made structures belonging to the category of minor irrigation structures used to collect surface run-off water for future irrigation purposes. Detection of farm ponds from aerial imagery and their evolution over time helps in land surveying to analyze the agricultural shifts, policy implementation, seasonal effects and climate changes. In this paper, we introduce a publicly available object detection and instance segmentation (OD/IS) dataset for localizing farm ponds from aerial imagery. We also collected and annotated the bi-temporal data over a time-span of 14 years across 17 villages, resulting in a binary change detection dataset called \textbf{F}arm \textbf{P}ond \textbf{C}hange \textbf{D}etection Dataset (\textbf{FPCD}). We have benchmarked and analyzed the performance of various object detection and instance segmentation methods on our OD/IS dataset and the change detection methods over the FPCD dataset. The datasets are publicly accessible at this page: \textit{\url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/ctundia/FPCD}}

Requirements of large amounts of data is a difficulty in training many GANs. Data efficient GANs involve fitting a generators continuous target distribution with a limited discrete set of data samples, which is a difficult task. Single image methods have focused on modeling the internal distribution of a single image and generating its samples. While single image methods can synthesize image samples with diversity, they do not model multiple images or capture the inherent relationship possible between two images. Given only a handful of images, we are interested in generating samples and exploiting the commonalities in the input images. In this work, we extend the single-image GAN method to model multiple images for sample synthesis. We modify the discriminator with an auxiliary classifier branch, which helps to generate a wide variety of samples and to classify the input labels. Our Data-Efficient GAN (DEff-GAN) generates excellent results when similarities and correspondences can be drawn between the input images or classes.

Deep learning has led to many recent advances in object detection and instance segmentation, among other computer vision tasks. These advancements have led to wide application of deep learning based methods and related methodologies in object detection tasks for satellite imagery. In this paper, we introduce MIS Check-Dam, a new dataset of check-dams from satellite imagery for building an automated system for the detection and mapping of check-dams, focusing on the importance of irrigation structures used for agriculture. We review some of the most recent object detection and instance segmentation methods and assess their performance on our new dataset. We evaluate several single stage, two-stage and attention based methods under various network configurations and backbone architectures. The dataset and the pre-trained models are available at https://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/gramdrishti/.

Unsupervised image-to-image translation is used to transform images from a source domain to generate images in a target domain without using source-target image pairs. Promising results have been obtained for this problem in an adversarial setting using two independent GANs and attention mechanisms. We propose a new method that uses a single shared discriminator between the two GANs, which improves the overall efficacy. We assess the qualitative and quantitative results on image transfiguration, a cross-domain translation task, in a setting where the target domain shares similar semantics to the source domain. Our results indicate that even without adding attention mechanisms, our method performs at par with attention-based methods and generates images of comparable quality.

We perform stability analysis of an accretion disc around a stellar mass black hole. The cooling of the accretion flow due to bremsstrahlung and synchrotron radiation processes are considered. The solutions with shock are perturbed at the shock location and the radial dependence of perturbation is obtained by solving the equations numerically using fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. The perturbations are assumed to be infinitesimal, thereby allowing a linear analysis. The frequencies that solve the equations are found and the existence of unstable frequencies implies instability., Comment: submitted to A & A

The topologies are obtained for accretion flows around black holes as the parameters, accretion rate and specific angular momentum are varied. Paczy{\'n}ski-Wiita pseudo-Newtonian potential is used to mimic the gravitational field of a Schwarzschild black hole. Both stellar mass($14M_{\odot}$) and supermassive($10^8M_{\odot}$) black holes are considered. The effects of bremsstrahlung and synchrotron cooling processes on the flow dynamics are studied. Rankine-Hugoniot conditions are checked for possible shock formation of solution branches of the topology. Stability of the branches and the boundary conditions of the flow are likely to decide the uniqueness of the solution., Comment: submitted to MNRAS

The dynamics of accretion onto a schwarzschild black hole is studied using Paczynski-Wiita pseudo newtonian potential. Steady state solution of the flow equations is obtained using thin disc approximation, including the effect of bremsstrahlung cooling in the energy equation. The topology of transonic solutions are got and the conditions for shock formation (Rankine-Hugoniot conditions) are checked. Shock and no-shock regions in the parameter space of accretion rate and specific angular momentum are identified. We motivate the time-dependent numerical simulation of the flow, as a candidate for explaining the quasi periodic oscillations observed in black hole candidates., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, uses AAS Latex

A few classes of the light curve of the black hole candidate GRS 1915+105 have been analyzed in detail. We discover that unlike the previous findings, QPOs occasionally occur even in the so-called `On' or softer states. Such findings may require a revision of the accretion/wind scenario of the black hole candidates. We conjecture that considerable winds which is produced in `Off' states, cool down due to Comptonization, and falls back to the disk and creating an excess accretion rate to produce the so-called `On' state. After the drainage of the excess matter, the disk goes back to the `Off' state. Our findings strengthen the shock oscillation model for QPOs., Comment: MNRAS style. MNRAS (To appear)

The black hole candidate GRS 1915+105 exhibits a rich variety of variability. Assuming that the earlier paradigm of black hole accretion which includes a shock is applicable for this system as well, one can classify these variabilities into four classes. We present light curves of these classes and discuss the basis of our classification., Comment: Latex file with two figures

Accretion and outflows are common in systems which include black holes. Especially important is the case of the well known micro-quasar GRS1915+105 in our own galaxy, where super-luminal outflows are detected. We present a few observation which are suggestive of an outflow which is generated very close to the black hole, within a few tens of Schwarzschild radii. In the presence of mass loss (e.g., an outflowing wind), the electron density of matter within the centrifugal pressure supported region (which generates hard X-rays) goes down and it is easier to cool these electrons by soft photons coming from the Keplerian disk. If, on the other hand, the post-shock region gains mass from outside, the spectra would be harder. These properties of spectral `softening' of the low state and `hardening' of the high state have been detected in several days of RXTE data of GRS1915+105 which we present here., Comment: 10 latex pages with four figures (Submitted Astronomy and Astrophysics, May 2000)

We discover a definite correlation between the frequency of the quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO) in quiescence states and the duration of the quiescence state of the transient X-ray source GRS 1915+105. We find that while the QPO frequency can be explained with the oscillation of shocks in accretion flows, the switching of burst to quiescence states (and vice versa) and their duration can be explained by assuming an outflow from the post-shock region. The duration of the quiescence state is inversely related to the QPO-frequency. We derive this relation. We also find the correlation between the observed low ($\sim 0.001-0.01$Hz) and the intermediate (1-10Hz) QPO frequencies. Our analytical solutions are verified by analyzing several days of public-domain data from RXTE., Comment: Latex, 13 pages with 3 figures; Accepted for Publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters