Many deciduous trees enter a stage each year when their visible growth ceases. This is not always associated with cold weather or lack of water, and may occur with many species in mid-to-late summer. Trees entering this phase are said to be in rest. Rest is caused when internal factors are unfavorable for growth, while dormancy is defined as external factors being adverse for growth.

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been extensively studied and applied to various computer vision problems, including object detection, semantic segmentation, and autonomous driving. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)s extract complex features from input images or data to represent objects or patterns. Their highly complex architecture, however, and the size of their learned weights make their time and resource intensive. Measures like pruning and fusion, which aim to simplify the structure and lessen the load on the network’s resources, should be considered to resolve this problem. In this thesis, we intend to explore the effect of pruning on segmentation and object detection as well as the benefits of using sensor fusion operators in the 2d space to boost the existing networks’ performance. Specifically, we focus on structured pruning, quantization, and simple and learnable fusion operators. We also study the scalability of different algorithms in terms of the number of parameters and floating points used. First, we provide a general overview of CNNs and the history of pruning and fusion operations. Second, we explain the advantages of pruning and discuss the contrast between the unstructured and structured types. Third, we discuss the differences between simple fusion and learnable fusion. In order to evaluate our algorithms, we use several classification and object detection datasets such as Cifar-10, KITTI and Microsoft COCO. By applying our proposed methods to the studied datasets, we can assess the efficiency of the algorithms. Furthermore, this allows us to observe the improvements in task-specific losses. In conclusion, our work is focused on analyzing the effect of pruning and fusion to simplify existing networks and improve their performance in terms of scalability, task-specific losses, and resource consumption. We also discuss various algorithms, as well as datasets which serve as a basis for the evaluation of our proposed approaches.

Syrah is an important wine grape in California but is potentially difficult to manage in the vineyard due to its excessive vigor. Vigorous grapevines require more labor for canopy management and tend to create excess shade, decreasing fruit quality. Winter pruning level, shoot thinning and leaf removal influence the overall density of the canopy and the subsequent degree of shade in the fruit zone. An experiment was conducted to assess the effects of two pruning levels with three degrees of labor-intensive canopy management techniques on berry maturation rate and harvest berry parameters for two growing seasons. In 2008, repeated measures analysis showed no significant effects of severe pruning, shoot thinning or both sides leaf removal on maturation rate of performance indicators. At harvest 2008, severe pruning caused a decrease in yield/meter trellis and Ravaz index. In 2009, repeated measures analysis showed significant effects of severe pruning increasing brix, pH and sugar to acid ratio while shoot thinning and both sides leaf removal had no significant effects on maturation rate of performance indicators. At harvest 2009, severe pruning increased brix, pH, tannin, anthocyanins, phenolics, color density, potassium, amino acid % of yeast assimilable nitrogen (YAN), and the following ratios: sugar/acid, amino acid/ammonium, tannin/anthocyanins and malic/tartaric acid. Additionally, severe pruning decreased tartaric acid, yield/meter trellis, ammonium % of YAN and Ravaz index. The findings presented in this thesis suggest that severe pruning could be used as a tool in viticultural areas with short growing seasons because of the increased ripening speed observed. However, because severe pruning generally increases berry size which is negative for vinification, it should be studied further with irrigation and management practices that decrease berry size.

Rooted stool-bed layers of Malling Merton (MM) 111 apple trees were container-grown in a greenhouse and trained to a single shoot. When shoot length averaged 73 cm, the following treatments were applied: a) check, untreated (CK); b) tipped (shoot apex removed) and top 1/2 of shoot disbudded (T-DB); c) top 1/2 of shoot disbudded and defoliated (UT-DB-DF); d) tipped, and top 1/2 of shoot disbudded and defoliated (T-DB-DF); e) pruned at mid-shoot (P); or f) pruned at mid-shoot and disbudded (P-DB). Treatments UT-DB-DF, T-DB-DF, P, and P-DB delayed the eventual decline in net photosynthesis (Pn) and total chlorophyll content exhibited by the check. The delay in the decline of Pn and total chlorophyll content was maintained for the longest period in the UT-DB-DF, T-DB-DF, and P-DB treatments. Maintenance of Pn and chlorophyll levels following pruning or defoliation appears to result from an increased root : shoot ratio at treatment rather than an increased demand for photosynthates by subsequent growth. Treatment responses of Pn and total chlorophyll content were similar so that Pn per unit chlorophyll showed no treatment differences. Removal of leaves by either pruning or defoliation reduced total dry weight of the tree whereas tipping had no effect. Final dry weights of the basal stem, roots, and shank were reduced by pruning or defoliation. Lateral shoot growth induced by pruning caused an initial decrease in the shank diameter and root and shank dry weights of potted apple trees. / Master of Science

Three tree species, Freeman maple (Acer x. freemanii), swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor (Willd.)) and shingle oak (Quercus imbricaria (Michx.)) were tested before and after pruning to determine the effectiveness of pruning on reducing drag and bending moment. Pruning methods were thin, reduce and raise and meet the requirements set by the American National Standard Institute A300 standards for Tree Care Operations Trees, Shrub, and Other Woody Plant Maintenance - Standard Practices (Pruning). Trees were tested up to speeds of 22.4m*s-1 over 1.6km by driving them in the bed of a truck. Drag, based on a centroid of the crown, and a bending moment was calculated. Drag and bending moment were also normalized by tree mass and crown area. Reduction pruning worked more effectively for Freeman maple and raise pruning for swamp white oak at reducing drag. Simple to measure tree characteristics were analyzed to determine the best predictors of drag and bending moment in the field. Tree mass frequently was the best predictor of drag and bending moment. Information should be used with caution due to the fact that the trees tested were small stature and a limited number of trees were tested. / Master of Science

M.S.

The growing complexity of neural networks makes their deployment on resource-constrained embedded or mobile devices challenging. With millions of weights and biases, modern deep neural networks can be computationally intensive, with large memory, power and computational requirements. In this thesis, we devise and explore three quantization methods (post-training, in-training and combined quantization) that quantize 32-bit floating-point weights and biases to lower bit width fixed-point parameters while also achieving significant pruning, leading to model compression. We use the total accumulated absolute gradient over the training process as the indicator of importance of a parameter to the network. The most important parameters are quantized by the smallest amount. The post-training quantization method sorts and clusters the accumulated gradients of the full parameter set and subsequently assigns a bit width to each cluster. The in-training quantization method sorts and divides the accumulated gradients into two groups after each training epoch. The larger group consisting of the lowest accumulated gradients is quantized. The combined quantization method performs in-training quantization followed by post-training quantization. We assume storage of the quantized parameters using compressed sparse row format for sparse matrix storage. On LeNet-300-100 (MNIST dataset), LeNet-5 (MNIST dataset), AlexNet (CIFAR-10 dataset) and VGG-16 (CIFAR-10 dataset), post-training quantization achieves 7.62x, 10.87x, 6.39x and 12.43x compression, in-training quantization achieves 22.08x, 21.05x, 7.95x and 12.71x compression and combined quantization achieves 57.22x, 50.19x, 13.15x and 13.53x compression, respectively. Our methods quantize at the cost of accuracy, and we present our work in the light of the accuracy-compression trade-off. / Master of Science / Neural networks are being employed in many different real-world applications. By learning the complex relationship between the input data and ground-truth output data during the training process, neural networks can predict outputs on new input data obtained in real time. To do so, a typical deep neural network often needs millions of numerical parameters, stored in memory. In this research, we explore techniques for reducing the storage requirements for neural network parameters. We propose software methods that convert 32-bit neural network parameters to values that can be stored using fewer bits. Our methods also convert a majority of numerical parameters to zero. Using special storage methods that only require storage of non-zero parameters, we gain significant compression benefits. On typical benchmarks like LeNet-300-100 (MNIST dataset), LeNet-5 (MNIST dataset), AlexNet (CIFAR-10 dataset) and VGG-16 (CIFAR-10 dataset), our methods can achieve up to 57.22x, 50.19x, 13.15x and 13.53x compression respectively. Storage benefits are achieved at the cost of classification accuracy, and we present our work in the light of the accuracy-compression trade-off.

A cultura da videira \'Niagara Rosada\' apresenta grande importância em diferentes regiões produtoras, principalmente no estado de São Paulo. Para a produção dessa uva é fundamental a utilização da técnica cultural da poda, que pode ocorrer em diferentes épocas. Dessa forma o presente estudo teve como objetivo comparar o desenvolvimento da videira \'Niagara Rosada\' podada em diferentes épocas mediante a análise de características como o comprimento dos ramos, velocidade média de crescimento de ramos, duração em dias de cada período do ciclo produtivo e soma térmica em graus-dia (GD). As épocas de poda adotadas foram de inverno, com realização em 04/08/2010 e de verão, com realização em 28/01/2011. O delineamento estatístico utilizado foi o de blocos ao acaso com 7 e 8 unidades experimentais cada, totalizando 30 unidades. Cada bloco foi uma planta e a unidade experimental foi um ramo. Para a análise de médias foi empregado o teste de Tukey para comparar os tratamentos de poda de inverno e poda de verão. As variáveis foram comparadas em relação aos períodos do ciclo produtivos: poda à colheita, brotação à colheita, poda à brotação, brotação ao florescimento, florescimento ao início da maturação dos frutos e início da maturação dos frutos à colheita. Houve resultado significativo em todas as comparações entre os tratamentos, de forma que se confirmou que em relação ao tamanho dos ramos, a poda de inverno apresentou ramos mais compridos do que a poda de verão. Em relação à velocidade média de crescimento dos ramos, esta foi superior na poda de inverno do que o observado na poda de verão. Já na duração do ciclo produtivo, houve maior duração no início do ciclo na poda de inverno e maior duração no final do ciclo na poda de verão, de forma que no ciclo como um todo a duração foi praticamente a mesma. Finalmente para a soma térmica, a poda de inverno apresentou valores superiores em todo o ciclo, excetuando-se o período do florescimento ao início da maturação dos frutos, em que a poda de verão apresentou valores superiores. / The importance of the \'Niagara Rosada\" crop is major in several regions, especially in the state of São Paulo. In the production of this vine tree the use of pruning is essential, which can occur in several seasons. With that in mind, this study has as objective to compare \'Niagara Rosada\' vine tree\'s development under different pruning seasons by analyzing characteristics as the length of the branch, average branch growth velocity, duration in days of the production cycle and degreedays (DD). The adopted pruning seasons were the winter pruning, being done in 08/04/2010, and the summer pruning, being done 01/28/2011. As experimental plot were use 4 plants, with 7 or 8 branches each, with the total of 30 branches. To analyze the results was used the Tukey test, comparing the treatments in the different periods of the production cycle (Pruning to Harvest, Sprout to Harvest, Pruning to Sprout, Sprout to Flowering, Flowering to Early Ripening and Early Ripening to Harvest. There was a significant difference between the treatments in all the comparisons. For the length of the branches, the winter pruning showed bigger branches in all the periods than the length of the summer pruning. As for the average branch velocity, it was superior in all the periods in the winter pruning. When considering the duration in days of the periods of the production cycle there was, in the beginning, a longer duration in the winter pruning an a longer duration in the end of the cycle for the summer pruning. When considering the total duration both treatments presented almost the same number. Finally, for the degree-days, the winter pruning showed a bigger rate in all the cycle, except in the Flowering to Early Ripening period, in which the summer pruning showed a bigger rate.

Thesis (MScAgric)--Stellenbosch University, 1994. / Some digitised pages may appear illegible due to the condition of the Microfiche / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Many Proreaceae species indigenous to South Africa have potential as cutflower crops. Commercial production of proteas for expurt, mainly to Europe, must emphasise quality of flowers and time of production. Good export quality flowers have stems longer than 50cm and unblemished flowers. Cut-flower proteas are in greater demand and command better prices during the European winter (September to May, Southern hemisphere), when competition from flowers grown in Europe is less. Both quality and time of harvest can be manipulated by pruning techniques. Protea cv. Carnival (a natural hybrid, possibly between P. neriifolia and P. compacta) produces flowers in late summer, from February through to May. Picking flowers or pruning shoots of Proteo cv. Carnival entails removing the terminal portion of shoots with heading cuts to leave on the plant short stumps, known as bearers. Lateral shoots arising from axillary buds on bearers elongate by successive growth flushes until flowers are initiated terminally. The characteristics of the shoot determine whether or not flower initiation will take place, and will affect the quality of the resulting flower. Plants were pruned to produce bearers of different length and diameter. The characteristics of shoots arising from different bearers were recordea. Thick bearers of length 20-25cm produced the most shoots, and the longest shoots. Plants producing flowers biennially, rather than ann'Jally, produced thicker bearers, which, in turn, lead to production of better quality shoots arising from the bearers in the following season. Changing the time of pruning changed both the flowering cycle and the biomass allocation of Prorea cv. Carnival. Plants of Profea cv. Carnival were pruned on six different dates in 1991. Pruning in March, April or May, 1991, resulted in an annual flowering cycle. Less than 40% of the fresh mass produced in 1993 was reproductive, of which approximately 5% had stems long enough for export. The 1994 annual harvest was of s:milar size and quality as the 1993 annual harvest. Pruning in July, August or September, 1991, resulted in a biennial cycle of flowering. No flowers were produced in 1992, and a large crop was harvested in 1993. In 1993 lip to 70% of the fresh mass produced was reproductive, of which approximately 80% had stems long enough for export. Plants were pruned shortly after flowering in 1993, and the biennial cycle was replaced by an alternate flowering cycle, with a large crop being followed by a smaller crop. The large harvest in 1993 was significantly earlier than normal, but the small crop produced in 1994 was later. The harvest in 1994 from plants with an alternate flowering cycle was similar in size to the 1994 harvest from plants floweting annually, but flower stems were longer. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Heelwat inheemse Proteaceae spesies besit die vereiste eienskappe om as snyblomr.-le verhanctci te wod. Indien proteas kommersieel verbou sou word vir uitvoer moet die klem val op gehalte van blomme en die tyd van produksie. Goeie gehalte uitvoer blomme moet steellengte van langer as 50cm en perfek gevormde blomme besit. Daar is 'n groter aanvraag na kommersieel verboude proteas gedurende die Europese winter (September tot Mei, suidelike halfrond) en beter pryse word derhalwe ook dan verkry. Beide gehalte en die oes periode kan gemanipuleer word deur snoeitegnieke. Wanneer blomme gepluk word of lote gesnoei word van Profea cv. Carnival (waarskynlik 'n kruising tussen P. compacta x P. neriifolia) word die terminale gedeelte van die loot teruggesny. Die oorblywende gedeelte bestaan uit kort stompe wat bekend staan as draers. Laterale lote afkomstig van okselknoppe op draers verleng totdat 'n blom terminaal ontwikkel. Die eienskappe van die loot bepaal of 'n blom inisieer sal word of nie, en sal ook die gehalte van die gevormde blom beinvloed. Protea plante was gesnoei om draers van verkillende lengtes en deursnee te produseer. Die eienkappe van lote afkomstig van die verskillende tipe draers was gemeet. Dik ..draers van lengte 20-25cm het die meeste asook die langste lote geproduseer. Plante wat twee-jaarliks, in teenstelling met jaarliks, geblom het, het dikker draers geproduseer en ook gelei tot produksie van beter gehalte lote in die opeenvolgende seisoen. Die verandering in die tyd van snoei het beide die blom siklus en die biomassa verspreiding beinvloed. Plante van Protea cv. Carnival was up 6 verskillende datums in 1991 gesnoei. Snoei in Maart, April of Mei, 1991, het 'n jaarlikse blom siklus veroorsaak. Minder as 40% van die vars massa geproduseer in 1993 was reproduktief, waarvan 5% steellengte lank genoeg vir uitvoer gehad hel. Die 1994 jaarlikse oes was van dieselfde grootte en gehalte as die van 1993. Snoei in Julie, Augustus of September, 1991, het egter 'n twee-jaarlikse blom siklus veroorsaak. Geen blomme was in 1992 geproduseer nie, maar die oes in 1993 was heelwat groter as die jaarlikse oeste. In 1993 was to 70% van die vars massa geproduseer, reproduktief, waarvan 80% steellengte lank genoeg vir uitvoer gehad het. Die twee-jaarlikse blom siklus het 'n vroeer oes in 1993 veroorsaak, maar 'n later oes in 1994. Die twee-jaarlikse oes in 1994 was van dieseifde grootte as die jaarlikse oes in 1994, maar die blomstele was langer.

A cultura da videira \'Niagara Rosada\' apresenta grande importância em diferentes regiões produtoras, principalmente no estado de São Paulo. Para a produção dessa uva é fundamental a utilização da técnica cultural da poda, que pode ocorrer em diferentes épocas. Dessa forma o presente estudo teve como objetivo comparar o desenvolvimento da videira \'Niagara Rosada\' podada em diferentes épocas mediante a análise de características como o comprimento dos ramos, velocidade média de crescimento de ramos, duração em dias de cada período do ciclo produtivo e soma térmica em graus-dia (GD). As épocas de poda adotadas foram de inverno, com realização em 04/08/2010 e de verão, com realização em 28/01/2011. O delineamento estatístico utilizado foi o de blocos ao acaso com 7 e 8 unidades experimentais cada, totalizando 30 unidades. Cada bloco foi uma planta e a unidade experimental foi um ramo. Para a análise de médias foi empregado o teste de Tukey para comparar os tratamentos de poda de inverno e poda de verão. As variáveis foram comparadas em relação aos períodos do ciclo produtivos: poda à colheita, brotação à colheita, poda à brotação, brotação ao florescimento, florescimento ao início da maturação dos frutos e início da maturação dos frutos à colheita. Houve resultado significativo em todas as comparações entre os tratamentos, de forma que se confirmou que em relação ao tamanho dos ramos, a poda de inverno apresentou ramos mais compridos do que a poda de verão. Em relação à velocidade média de crescimento dos ramos, esta foi superior na poda de inverno do que o observado na poda de verão. Já na duração do ciclo produtivo, houve maior duração no início do ciclo na poda de inverno e maior duração no final do ciclo na poda de verão, de forma que no ciclo como um todo a duração foi praticamente a mesma. Finalmente para a soma térmica, a poda de inverno apresentou valores superiores em todo o ciclo, excetuando-se o período do florescimento ao início da maturação dos frutos, em que a poda de verão apresentou valores superiores. / The importance of the \'Niagara Rosada\" crop is major in several regions, especially in the state of São Paulo. In the production of this vine tree the use of pruning is essential, which can occur in several seasons. With that in mind, this study has as objective to compare \'Niagara Rosada\' vine tree\'s development under different pruning seasons by analyzing characteristics as the length of the branch, average branch growth velocity, duration in days of the production cycle and degreedays (DD). The adopted pruning seasons were the winter pruning, being done in 08/04/2010, and the summer pruning, being done 01/28/2011. As experimental plot were use 4 plants, with 7 or 8 branches each, with the total of 30 branches. To analyze the results was used the Tukey test, comparing the treatments in the different periods of the production cycle (Pruning to Harvest, Sprout to Harvest, Pruning to Sprout, Sprout to Flowering, Flowering to Early Ripening and Early Ripening to Harvest. There was a significant difference between the treatments in all the comparisons. For the length of the branches, the winter pruning showed bigger branches in all the periods than the length of the summer pruning. As for the average branch velocity, it was superior in all the periods in the winter pruning. When considering the duration in days of the periods of the production cycle there was, in the beginning, a longer duration in the winter pruning an a longer duration in the end of the cycle for the summer pruning. When considering the total duration both treatments presented almost the same number. Finally, for the degree-days, the winter pruning showed a bigger rate in all the cycle, except in the Flowering to Early Ripening period, in which the summer pruning showed a bigger rate.