Lithic tool making by Amazonian palaeoindians: a case-study on materials selection

Abstracts are not published in this journal This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Microcapsules prepared from starch derivatives

In this work, vinyl groups were introduced on soluble starch by reaction with 2-vinyl-4,4-dimethyl-2-oxazolin-5-one. The polysaccharides obtained were characterized by 1H-NMR and DSC. The 1H-NMR spectra showed high degrees of substitution and the DSC thermograms suggest a low crystallinity in the modified starch. The modified starch was used to obtain microcapsules prepared through interfacial crosslinking with DPGDA (dipropyleneglycol diacrylate) by a water-in-oil emulsion polymerization.     

聚乙烯醇对芳纶复合纱聚苯胺导电层耐久性影响

为提高聚苯胺导电层与基材之间的黏结牢度,以聚乙烯醇为共混高聚物,通过连续原位聚合法在对位芳纶纱线表面形成聚乙烯醇/聚苯胺导电层,制备得到芳纶/聚苯胺/聚乙烯醇复合导电纱。分析了导电纱的结构与性能,并研究了聚乙烯醇对聚苯胺导电层耐水洗和耐磨性的影响。结果表明:适量添加聚乙烯醇有助于提高导电纱导电层的结构规整性及电导率,随着聚乙烯醇质量分数的提高,导电纱的电导率呈先上升后下降的趋势,当聚乙烯醇占苯胺的质量分数为4.30%时,制得的复合导电纱线的电导率最高,达到(1.120±0.198) S/cm;聚乙烯醇的添加和质量分数的提高,有助于聚苯胺导电层耐水洗性及在较小外力作用下的耐磨性的提高。     

On improving the productivity of numerically controlled punch presses

Numerically Controlled (NO) machines have in recent years revolutionized the production process, but their productivity may yet be increased by the application of new theory to the controlling computer software. This paper describes the improvement in productivity of a class of NC punch presses which operate from either an off-line computer prepared tape or under direct numerical control. The problem of tool selection and table motion during the manufacture of a product by punching an array of holes in a metal sheet with a sequence of various size and shape tools is formulated as a travelling salesman problem (TSP). Two TSP heuristics, one old and one proposed by the authors, are employed in a comparison test with the.NC press manufacturer's heuristic. Both TSP heuristics generally outperform the manufacturer's heuristic by 10% or more.     

Segmentation of intestinal gland images with iterative region growing

A region growing algorithm for segmentation of human intestinal gland images is presented. The initial seeding regions are identified based on the large vacant regions (lumen) inside the intestinal glands by fitting with a very large moving window. The seeding regions are then expanded by repetitive application of a morphological dilate operation with a much smaller round window structure set. False gland regions (nongland regions initially misclassified as gland regions) are removed based on either their excessive ages of active growth or inadequate thickness of dams formed by the strings of goblet cell nuclei sitting immediately outside the grown regions. The goblet cell nuclei are then identified and retained in the image. The gland contours are detected by applying a large moving round window fitting to the enormous empty exterior of the goblet cell nucleus chains in the image. The assumptions based on real intestinal gland images include the closed chain structured goblet cell nuclei that sit side-by-side with only small gaps between the neighbouring nuclei and that the lumens enclosed by the goblet cell nucleus chains are most vacant with only occasional run-away nuclei. The method performs well for most normal and abnormal intestinal gland images although it is less applicable to cancer cases. The experimental results show that the segmentations of the real microscopic intestinal gland images are satisfactorily accurate based on the visual evaluations.     

Subcarrier and Power Allocation for the Downlink of Multiuser OFDM Transmission

In this paper, a new algorithm for subcarrier and power allocation for the downlink of multiuser OFDM transmission is presented. The proposed algorithm is more stable and it offers a lower complexity and better performance than previous existing algorithms. Khalid El Baamrani was born in Ouarzazate, Morocco in 1976. He received the License degree (equiv. B.A.) in electronic engineering from the University of Cadi Ayyad, Marrakech, Morocco, in 1998, the D.E.S.A. (equiv. M.A) in electrical engineering from the University of CadiAyyad, Marrakech, Morocco, in 2000, the certificate in engineering of the data-processing networks and telecommunications from the national institute of posts and telecommunications, Rabat, Morocco in 2002 and the Ph.D. degree at University of Cadi Ayyad, Marrakech, Morocco in 2005. His research interests include multicarrier modulation, communication theory, multiuser information theory, OFDM and DSL systems. Victor P. Gil Jiménez received the B. Eng. in Telecommunications with honors from University of Alcalá in 1998 and the M. Eng. in Telecommunications and the PhD. degree both from the University Carlos III de Madrid in 2001 and 2005, respectively. He is with the Department of Signal Theory and Communications at the University Carlos III de Madrid as an Assistant Professor. He worked at the Spanish Antarctica Base in 1999 as Communications Staff. He visited University of Leeds and Chalmers Technical University in 2003 and 2004 respectively. His research interests include multicarrier communications and signal processing for wireless systems. Ana Garcia Armada received the Telecommunication Engineer degree and the Ph.D in Electrical Engineering both from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain) in 1994 and 1998, respectively. She is currently working as an Associate Professor at the University Carlos III de Madrid, where she has occupied several management positions. She has participated in several national and international research projects, most of them related to OFDM. She is coauthor of four books on wireless communications and signal processing. She has published 13 papers in international journals and more than 40 papers in conferences. She has contributed to international organizations such as ITU and ETSI. She has performed research stays in ESA-ESTEC, Kansas University, Stanford University and Bell Labs. Her research interests are simulation of communication systems, multicarrier and MIMO techniques.