Shot-noise limited,supercontinuum-based optical coherence tomography

We present the first demonstration of shot-noise limited supercontinuum-based spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) with an axial resolution of ...     

Mechanical Load and Piezo1 Channel Regulated Myosin II Activity in Mouse Lenses

The cytoarchitecture and tensile characteristics of ocular lenses play a crucial role in maintaining their transparency and deformability, respectively, which are properties required for the light focusing function of ocular lens. Calcium-dependent myosin-II-regulated contractile characteristics and mechanosensitive ion channel activities are presumed to influence lens shape change and clarity. Here, we investigated the effects of load-induced force and the activity of Piezo channels on mouse lens myosin II activity. Expression of the Piezo1 channel was evident in the mouse lens based on immunoblot and immufluorescence analyses and with the use of a Piezo1^-tdT transgenic mouse model. Under ex vivo conditions, change in lens shape induced by the load decreased myosin light chain (MLC) phosphorylation. While the activation of Piezo1 by Yoda1 for one hour led to an increase in the levels of phosphorylated MLC, Yoda1 treatment for an extended period led to opacification in association with increased calpain activity and degradation of membrane proteins in ex vivo mouse lenses. In contrast, inhibition of Piezo1 by GsMTx4 decreased MLC phosphorylation but did not affect the lens tensile properties. This exploratory study reveals a role for the mechanical load and Piezo1 channel activity in the regulation of myosin II activity in lens, which could be relevant to lens shape change during accommodation.     

A test of independence based on a generalized correlation function

In this paper, we propose a novel test of independence based on the concept of correntropy. We explore correntropy from a statistical perspective and discuss its properties in the context of testing independence. We introduce the novel concept of parametric correntropy and design a test of independence based on it. We further discuss how the proposed test relaxes the assumption of Gaussianity. Finally, we discuss some computational issues related to the proposed method and compare it with state-of-the-art techniques.     

Modified MSWI ash-mix slag for use in cement concrete

In this study, fly- and scrubber-ash from a municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) were mixed uniformly in their production weight proportions; then, the mixture was added to waste glass frit and melted to form a glassy slag. The toxicity characteristic leaching procedure test results for the glassy slag revealed that the amount of leached heavy metals was far below the regulatory threshold. The slag-blended cement concrete (SBCC) specimens were manufactured with 20 wt.% of the cement replaced by slag powder. Three water/cementitious ratios, 0.48, 0.58 and 0.68, were selected to mold the specimens for compressive strength testing. The strengths of the SBCC specimens were close to or higher than those of the ordinary Portland cement concrete (OPCC) specimens at an age of 28 days and were 5–10% higher than those of the OPCC specimens at ages of 56 and 90 days. The experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of recycling MSWI fly- and scrubber-ash with waste glass.     

Influence of sintering temperature on the shrinkage and geometrical characteristics of steel parts produced by powder metallurgy

The dimensional and geometrical characteristics of Charpy bars produced with two different steels were investigated to evaluate the effect of increasing the sintering temperature from 1120 °C (conventional sintering temperature) up to 1350 °C. The problem was approached from the Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) point of view, referring to the standard ASME Y14.5 (2009). The dimensional and geometrical characteristics were evaluated using a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM), measuring the surfaces by scanning mode. The work highlights that the increase in the sintering temperature, aimed at improving the mechanical properties, does not prevent the main benefit of this technology, i.e., the possibility of producing parts with good dimensional and geometrical precision. Moreover, a methodology establishing the measurement procedures and data processing, to be used in future work for the characterisation of more complex shapes, was defined.     

Moralism: mobility prediction with link stability based multicast routing protocol in MANETs

In recent research, link stability is getting tremendous attention in mobile adhoc networks (MANETs), because of several impediments that occur in a reliable and robust network. Link stability metric is used to improve network performance in terms of end-to-end delay, data success delivery ratio (DSDR) and available route time (ART). Energy consumption, bandwidth and communication delay of major concern in ad hoc networks. A high mobility of MANET nodes reduces the reliability of network communication. In a dynamic networks, high mobility of the nodes makes it very difficult to predict the dynamic routing topology and hence cause route/link failures. Multicast in MANETs is an emerging trend that effectively improves the performance while lowering the energy consumption and bandwidth usage. Multicast routing protocol transmits a packet to multicast a group at a given time instant to achieve a better utilization of resources. In this paper, node mobility is considered to map better their movement in the network. So, the links with long active duration time can be identified as a stable link for route construction. Variation in signal strength is used to identify whether the direction of the node is towards or away from estimating node. We consider signal strength as QoS metric to calculate link stability for route construction. Efforts are made to identify the link with highly probable longer lifetime as the best suitable link between two consecutive nodes. We predict the movement time of nodes that define the route path to the node destination. Exata/cyber simulator is used for network simulation. The simulation results of the proposed routing protocol are compared with on-demand multicast routing protocol and E-ODMRP, which works on minimum hop count path. Analysis of our simulation results has shown improvement of various routing performance metrics such as DSDR, ART, routing overhead and packet drop ratio.     

Higher order spectral estimation for random fields

This paper is concerned with the nonparametric estimation of the higher order cumulant spectra of vector-valued stationary random fields onZ ^d by smoothing the periodograms, whereZ is the space of integers and the dimensiond1. We derive the asymptotic cumulant properties of the spectral estimates, and consider an application to multidimensional nonlinear systems identification. Numerical examples with simulated data are provided.     

Decoding algebraic-geometric codes up to the designed minimumdistance

A simple decoding procedure for algebraic-geometric codes C _Ω(D,G) is presented. This decoding procedure is a generalization of Peterson's decoding procedure for the BCH codes. It can be used to correct any [(d*-1)/2] or fewer errors with complexity O(n³), where d * is the designed minimum distance of the algebraic-geometric code and n is the codelength