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Conventional manual lithological mapping (MLM) through field surveys are resource-extensive and time-consuming. Digital lithological mapping (DLM), harnessing remotely sensed spectral imaging techniques, provides an effective strategy to streamline target locations for MLM or an efficient alternative to MLM. DLM relies on laboratory-generated generic end-member signatures of minerals for spectral analysis. Thus, the accuracy of DLM may be limited due to the presence of site-specific impurities. A strategy, based on a hybrid machine-learning and signal-processing algorithm, is proposed in this paper to tackle this problem of site-specific impurities. In addition, a soil pixel alignment strategy is proposed here to visualize the relative purity of the target minerals. The proposed methodologies are validated via case studies for mapping of Limestone deposits in Jaffna, Ilmenite deposits in Pulmoddai and Mannar, and Montmorillonite deposits in Murunkan, Sri Lanka. The results of satellite-based spectral imaging analysis were corroborated with X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Magnetic Separation (MS) analysis of soil samples collected from those sites via field surveys. There exists a good correspondence between the relative availability of the minerals with the XRD and MS results. In particular, correlation coefficients of 0.8115 and 0.9853 were found for the sites in Pulmoddai and Jaffna respectively.

In recent years, transformer-based deep learning networks have gained popularity in Hyperspectral (HS) unmixing applications due to their superior performance. The attention mechanism within transformers facilitates input-dependent weighting and enhances contextual awareness during training. Drawing inspiration from this, we propose a novel attention-based Hyperspectral Unmixing algorithm called Transformer-based Endmember Fusion with Spatial Context for Hyperspectral Unmixing (FusionNet). This network leverages an ensemble of endmembers for initial guidance, effectively addressing the issue of relying on a single initialization. This approach helps avoid suboptimal results that many algorithms encounter due to their dependence on a singular starting point. The FusionNet incorporates a Pixel Contextualizer (PC), introducing contextual awareness into abundance prediction by considering neighborhood pixels. Unlike Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and traditional Transformer-based approaches, which are constrained by specific kernel or window shapes, the Fusion network offers flexibility in choosing any arbitrary configuration of the neighborhood. We conducted a comparative analysis between the FusionNet algorithm and eight state-of-the-art algorithms using three widely recognized real datasets and one synthetic dataset. The results demonstrate that FusionNet offers competitive performance compared to the other algorithms.

Multispectral imaging coupled with Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Signal Processing techniques work as a feasible alternative for laboratory testing, especially in food quality control. Most of the recent related research has been focused on reflectance multispectral imaging but a system with both reflectance, transmittance capabilities would be ideal for a wide array of specimen types including solid and liquid samples. In this paper, a device which includes a dedicated reflectance mode and a dedicated transmittance mode is proposed. Dual mode operation where fast switching between two modes is facilitated. An innovative merged mode is introduced in which both reflectance and transmittance information of a specimen are combined to form a higher dimensional dataset with more features. Spatial and temporal variations of measurements are analyzed to ensure the quality of measurements. The concept is validated using a standard color palette and specific case studies are done for standard food samples such as turmeric powder and coconut oil proving the validity of proposed contributions. The classification accuracy of standard color palette testing was over 90% and the accuracy of coconut oil adulteration was over 95%. while the merged mode was able to provide the best accuracy of 99% for the turmeric adulteration. A linear functional mapping was done for coconut oil adulteration with an R2 value of 0.9558., Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication

Interest in home gardening has burgeoned since governments around the world-imposed lockdowns to suppress the spread of COVID-19. Nowadays, most families start to do gardening during this lockdown season because they can grow vegetables and fruits or any other plants that they want in their day-to-day life. So, they can survive without spending money on online grocery shopping for fruits and vegetables during this lockdown season. In Sri Lanka, home gardening was a trend during the past couple of months due to this pandemic. Most of the families were trying to do gardening for their needs. But the problem is, nowadays the government is trying to release those restrictions to start day-to-day work in Sri Lanka. With this situation, people are starting to do their jobs and they do not have time to spend in their gardens continuing their gardening. We thought about this problem and tried to find a solution to continue the gardening work while doing their jobs. The major concern is people cannot monitor their plants every time and protect their garden. So, we decided to automate the garden work. With our new solution, gardeners can monitor some important factors like the plant's healthiness, soil moisture level, air humidity level, and the surrounding temperature and water their garden from anywhere in the world at any time by using our app. Plant health has a significant impact on plant development, production, and quality of agricultural goods. The goal of this study is to create an automated system that can identify the presence of illness in plants based on variations in plant leaf health state is created utilizing sensors such as temperature, humidity, and color...., Comment: 11 pages, 1 table, 3 figures

Digital connectivity gap in the global south hampered the education of millions of school children during the COVID-19 pandemic. If not actions are taken to remedy this problem, future prospects of millions of children around will be bleak. This paper explores the feasibility of using the SpaceX Starlink satellite constellation as a means to alleviate the problem of the digital connectivity divide in the global south. First, the paper discusses the issues of digital connectivity in education in rural Sri Lanka and other countries in the global south. Then, the paper gives an introduction to Starlink broadband internet technology and discusses its advantages over traditional technologies. After that, the paper discusses a possible mechanism of adopting Starlink technology as a solution to the rural digital connectivity problem in the global south. Technological, as well as economical aspects of such scheme, are discussed. Finally, challenges that may arise in deploying a system such as Starlink to improve rural digital connectivity in Sri Lanka or any another country in the global south will be discussed with possible remedies., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

As field surveys used for manual lithological mapping are costly and time-consuming, digital lithological mapping (DLM) that utilizes remotely sensed spectral imaging provides a viable and economical alternative. Generally, DLM has been performed using spectral imaging with the use of laboratory-generated generic endmember signatures. To that end, this paper proposes generating a single-target abundance mineral map for DLM, where the generated map can further be used as a guide for the selection or avoidance of a field survey. For that, a stochastic cancellation-based methodology was used to generate a site-specific endemic signature for the mineral in concern to reduce the inclusive nature otherwise present in DLM. Furthermore, a soil pixel alignment strategy to visualize the relative purity level of the target mineral has been introduced in the proposed work. Then, for the method validation, mapping of limestone deposits in the Jaffna peninsula of Sri Lanka was conducted as the case study using satellite-based spectral imaging as the input. It was observed that despite the low signal-to-noise ratio of the input hyperspectral data the proposed methodology was able to robustly extract the rich information contained in the input data. Further, a field survey was conducted to collect soil samples of four sites chosen by the proposed DLM from the Jaffna peninsula as an algorithm validation and to demonstrate the application of the proposed solution. The proposed abundance threshold of 0.1 coincided with the industrial standard X-ray diffraction (XRD) threshold of 5% for the mineral presence. The results of the XRD test validated the use of the algorithm in the selection of sites to be surveyed, hence could avoid conducting a costly field survey on the assumption of the existence of a mineral., Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, pre-print

Oil reheating has a significant impact on global health due to its extensive consumption, especially in South Asia, and severe health risks. Nevertheless, food image analysis using multispectral imaging systems(MISs) has not been applied to oil reheating analysis despite their vast application in rapid food quality screening. To that end, the paper discusses the application of a low-cost MSI to estimate the 'reheat cycle count classes' (number of times an oil sample is recursively heated) and identify 'critical classes' at which substantial changes in the oil sample have materialized. Firstly, the reheat cycle count class is estimated with Bhattacharyya distance between the reheated and a pure oil sample as the input. The classification was performed using a support vector machine classifier that resulted in an accuracy of 83.34 % for reheat cycle count identification. Subsequently, an unsupervised clustering procedure was introduced using a modified spectral clustering (SC) algorithm to distinguish critical classes under reheating. In addition, laboratory experiments were performed to ascertain the ramifications of the reheating process with a chemical analysis. The chemical analysis of the coconut oil samples used in the experiment coincided with the chemical analysis results and was statistically significant (p < 0.05). Accordingly, the proposed work closes the gap for using multispectral imaging for oil reheating and proposes a novel algorithm for unsupervised detection of critical property changes in the oil. Hence, the proposed research work is significant in its practical implications, contribution to food image analysis, and unsupervised classification mechanisms., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, pre-print

Coconut oil known for its wide range of uses is often adulterated with other edible oils. Repeated use of coconut oil in food preparation could lead to many health issues. Existing methods available for evaluating quality of oil are laborious and time consuming. Therefore, we propose an imaging system hardware and image processing-based algorithm to estimate the adulteration of coconut oil with palm oil as the adulterant. A clear functional relationship between adulteration level and Bhattacharyya distance was observed as R2 = 0.9876 on the training samples. Thereafter, another algorithm is proposed to develop a spectral-clustering based classifier to determine the effect of reheat and reuse of coconut oil. Distinct clusters were obtained for different levels of reheated oil classes and the classification was performed with an accuracy of 0.983 on training samples. Further, the input images for the proposed algorithms were generated using an in-house developed transmittance based multispectral imaging system., Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, journal

Parents are always worried about the wellbeing of their children. As per the Statistics Report 2017 by Missing Children Europe Organization, a child is reported missing every 2 minutes. Due to the imminent threat, parents are prone to buy their children mobile phones to keep in touch with them. However, giving a Mobile phone to a child can cause issues including cyber bullying, improper use of social networks, access to mature age and illicit content on the internet and possibly, phone theft. As an effort to tackle some of those issues, this paper proposes a solution which enables parents to call, locate and track their children using a child-friendly mobile device. The common scenario the device would come to play is in enhancing the safety of a child who would travel alone on a typical route; for instance a child who walks from home to school and back. The device can be calibrated to keep track of a typical route of travel. Then, if the device de-tects some deviation from the usual route, it would trigger a notification to parents. A probability matrix based nov-el algorithm is introduced to detect route deviation. De-sign details of the mobile device, along with the details of the route deviation detection algorithm are presented in this paper., Comment: 6 pages; 8 figures

Hyperspectral unmixing (HU) has become an important technique in exploiting hyperspectral data since it decomposes a mixed pixel into a collection of endmembers weighted by fractional abundances. The endmembers of a hyperspectral image (HSI) are more likely to be generated by independent sources and be mixed in a macroscopic degree before arriving at the sensor element of the imaging spectrometer as mixed spectra. Over the past few decades, many attempts have focused on imposing auxiliary constraints on the conventional nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) framework in order to effectively unmix these mixed spectra. As a promising step toward finding an optimum constraint to extract endmembers, this paper presents a novel blind HU algorithm, referred to as Kurtosis-based Smooth Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (KbSNMF) which incorporates a novel constraint based on the statistical independence of the probability density functions of endmember spectra. Imposing this constraint on the conventional NMF framework promotes the extraction of independent endmembers while further enhancing the parts-based representation of data. Experiments conducted on diverse synthetic HSI datasets (with numerous numbers of endmembers, spectral bands, pixels, and noise levels) and three standard real HSI datasets demonstrate the validity of the proposed KbSNMF algorithm compared to several state-of-the-art NMF-based HU baselines. The proposed algorithm exhibits superior performance especially in terms of extracting endmember spectra from hyperspectral data; therefore, it could uplift the performance of recent deep learning HU methods which utilize the endmember spectra as supervisory input data for abundance extraction., Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures